001um Mr jeny can I have the roll call please M Mr Mr G here M Mr M Rosenberg here Mr White here thank you um I I do ask for you to um stand with us for the Pledge of Allegiance and afterwards if you can please give a moment of silence to the Madison Wisconsin situation States thank you right we begin this evening with our student reps um report and I believe you're running solo right am okay all yours Lydia all right good evening we have a few announcements to wrap up 2024 so hang tight starting off with a thrilling note midterms are just around the corner students are prepping to take their exams from January 16th to the 22nd to harness their overwhelming excitement CHS link crew will be hosting what we affectionately call
002Coco and cram these are test prep sessions in the library for our freshman students during the two days prior to Mid midterm exams meanwhile our length leaders will be assisting the freshmen in creating study schedules organizing materials and preparing for the exam for their exams in all the for subject areas but before the Doom and Gloom of midterms we wanted to get CHS in a nice festive mood students cut and assembled snowflakes during our advisory sessions yesterday which can be seen by the front entrance of the high school be sure to stop by to check them out our snowflake making got cut short though because someone here wanted our feedback for the Board of Education review of chure cell phone uh tresure cell phone policy so every student completed the cell phone use survey to
003give Dr Solen an idea of chs's opinions on the matter Switching gears the end of 2024 is only the beginning for the future at CHS in fact just last week CHS implemented e-hall passes which aimed to increase student accountability minimize potential for past misuse and monitor student Behavior patterns the season for winter sports has also just begun and with the finalized casting for our spring musical Foot Loose rehearsals will be soon up and running you'll also soon be hearing about our incredible Unified sports program and the recognition by the C CIA later tonight as well closing off every everyone and whoa everyone around the school district will be taking a well-deserved holiday break from tomorrow December 20th until January 2nd we hope you enjoy the holidays thank you fantastic board members have any questions or
004comments for Lydia well thank you I wish you a happy holidays so and we'll see you next year but you're welcome to stay because I am loving the fact that they're all these faces right now in front of us so thank you Lydia of course um up next I believe we have some partnership Awards Dr Zen we're doing the first one I think Dr herrian is harrian uh will present with us the DD partnership award yes hello everyone thank you for coming out tonight um this evening principal Guillo Kelly gillo in the house um SE she is delighted to nominate Carrie banck for the school partnership award for Dodd Middle School car's unwavering commitment to building a strong School home partnership is truly inspiring as a dedicated men member of the PTA she continually supports
005teachers through thoughtful Hospitality efforts throughout the year car's dedication shines through in the many events she volunteers for and the countless hours she devotes to chairing committees attending meetings and collaborating with the broader PTA to plan and execute meaningful initiatives her tireless efforts organizing events like stock the fridge the coffee truck and teacher luncheons reflect her deep appreciation for our teachers and her commitment to fostering a positive and supportive School environment overall car's role in strengthening our school's connection with the wider PTA Community greatly enhances the educational experience for students her exceptional dedication and hard work make her an outstanding choice for the school partnership award Carrie banck please come up here the chesher Board of Education thanks Carrie for going above and beyond for our students thank you that was the most begrudging for
006you Smiles remor very good [Applause] our next partnership award is Chapman School um Chapman principal Diana Burns said it's her honor to recommend Nas Nastia and I apologize if I messed this up kukina yes no okay good from the American Red Cross for the school partnership award the Red Cross has made a meaningful and lasting impact on our school and this award celebrates the vital role Partnerships play in enriching the educational experience and fostering student growth Chapman is proud to recognize the American r cross for their incredible support of Chapman School recently they provided our students with a program call there's nothing stopping you from becoming a preparedness Champion through this initiative our students learn essential skills like proper handwashing techniques they also gained valuable insights into the life-saving work the Red Cross does to
007support communities like ours on behalf of our students staff and families thank you to the American Red Cross for your commitment to helping us create a safer more informed and and prepared Community congratulations and we are so grateful for your partnership the treasure Board of Education thanks Nastasia and Red Cross for going above and beyond for the students of Chapman Elementary School anasia there you are thank you would you like [Applause] of unified Champion schools Dr Solen I believe we have two which is really exciting tonight so I think Mr Mr J phone first or well we're going to bring up uh from the CIA and um Special Olympics Barbara horn and Steve trone Coach good evening members of the board I'm Barb horn I am unified Champion schools coordinator and members and and a
008staff member of the Unified sports division of Special Olympics and CIA I am thrilled to be here today to be part of celebrating Highland Elementary Schools renewal of their UniFi Champion schools national B Banner status reflecting an ongoing commitment of inclusion for all students in the athletic and social Arenas Highland Elementary is a model for other schools when I'm asked by a new program for a connection with a successful unified Elementary program Highland Elementary is always my go-to school in my Outreach new programs I often share Highland's best practices such as their UniFi newsletter their UniFi leadership team their seasonal celebrations 900 students from all grade levels participated in the spring unified celebration buddy reading and unified Morning News are other examples these activities reflect the three components of unified Champion schools Unified Sports inclusive
009youth leadership and wh School engagement which qualify them as a banner school I'm very pleased to be here to shine a light on a school district which offers a pathway of unified opportunities from elementary to middle school and high school with Highland Elementary laying the foundation for new friendships and connections and speaking of that pathway my colleague Steve drafon would like to say a few words about the high school program [Applause] thank you Barbara and congratulations to Mr Jeffrey Elementary program as Barbara mentioned it's one of the finest programs we have in the state here and that's just a reflection of what you guys do at elementary so good evening Dr soul and again uh members of the board great to be back here at chesher uh chesher High chesher Public Schools heart yeah yeah
010um I'm the assistant director of the Conneticut inter Scholastic athletic um conference Unified sports program Special Olympics uh it's not very often that two schools in the same district receive a unified Champion recognition Banner in the same year it just demonstrates how strong chesher Unified sports are here the national unified program offers opportunities for students with and without intellectual disabilities to participate in athletic programs and activities currently close to 90% of eligible high schools have a Unified sports program but some of those schools go above and beyond to successfully demonstrate larger commitment and inclusion by offering additional activities to achieve the overall goal of full schoolwide social inclusion Sports Olympics North America recognizes those schools as a national unified Champion school it's not very easy to achieve the chesa high school unified program serves as
011an example to others of how to make all student students be part of a school climate to achieve National status a program must meet 10 national standards uh which Encompass three components whole school engagement involving the whole school inclusively inclusive School leadership allowing all students to get a chance to be leaders and of course a Unified sports program which which they have chesa high school unified program is no newcomer to this prestigious award through the continued dedication and commitment of the program chesher High School athletic department and Administration chesher has once again met the requirements of national status we at the unified office congratulate chesa High School District for continued support in this inclusive program for all students as the former athletic director I had many opportunities to present state championship teams to our board
012tonight it is my honor to present an award for National recognition to our Unified sports team so I ask head head unified coach Matt gida athletic director John Perino and principal G Gad and members of the unified team if they're here to come forward and accept your National Championship Banner [Applause] we'll no buck Shir today how we doing there ready when you are I know RI but there's still time John look every everyone look here Smiles one more very good anybody else want to take piure okay as soon as our high school Champions Clear the Stage we're going to invite the students athletes and representatives from uh Highland School up on the stage oh my God what what an incredible it's conratulations not going to put it on the back of the car or something
013cck all right so if the folks from Highland School could come on up [Applause] this way guys thank you conratulations bailing out of the photo everybody look right here smile one more smile [Applause] forid special thank you to our teachers mentors who make this possible for our students uh encouraging them and dedicating their time but also to all of our families who are here this evening who support the program and make this success possible so thank you all very much thank you congratulations everybody up next um Dr Solen if you can uh introduce our guests of our trade Partners my honor so um the I think this is the last group of recognition recognitions for this evening but um uh about two years ago uh we had a school Business Partnership meeting and wanted to
014breathe some life into our our programming and called members of the trades community in chesher and uh we were thrilled to be able to meet with them and pick their brain about how can we better support our students at the same time supporting the local trades and uh among the many ideas that were brought forth was any any way that we could better connect our students to the trades and so we decided to offer for our middle school students and and uh high school students the opportunity to get out and visit the work sites to go see it in action and I think uh you know one of the concerns was the the old mental model of Trades being you know dark dingy workplaces where um you know everybody's covered in in Greece and um
015that it it wasn't really a glamorous place to work uh that model couldn't be any further from the truth that uh our trades Partners in this community absolutely do hard work still but uh the the demands have shifted and they're not only the professional demands but also the demand for people in the field uh there's tremendous demand in these fields for skilled uh members of our community to get out and connect and and learn and work uh in these partners that we're acknowledging tonight so over the last two summers these folks have taken their time uh multiple nights over each of the last two summers to invite students from Treasure high school and Dodd Middle School into their workplace to educate them and their families about the professional opportunities that exist and so we uh
016would be remiss if we went longer without recognizing them uh unfortunately this evening Doug Johnson from marry and Manufacturing could not be here so uh I I want to welcome up uh from East Coast mechanical norm and Steve from Richard Chevrolet Jason and Jill from FF Hitchcock um Mike and from hanoa Aerospace Jamie roord um if you guys could all come up we just want to say thank you we have a plaque in production um we just don't have enough skilled laborers in the market to deliver on time um but it will be a belated Christmas gift for you uh at your place of work so if you guys could come on up we'd love to just say thank you so much front here with you guys begrudging group shot no no these guys are
017C [Applause] thank you Dr s and I just want to kind of make a comment because I you know this is an area that's really near and dear to my heart as you know trades and skills um gave my family an opportunity for employment um but also built communities so uh and I do in my day job um promote Career and Technical education so thank you so much for your partnership you know not all children will be going to college um and this is another opportunity for them to build community and and grow the community as well so any board members have any comments or go ahead Mr White thank you so the when I got elected to the board about five years ago if I recall correctly the very first conversation I had with
018the superintendent was about encouraging alternative Pathways because I graduated from chesher high in 1990 and my recollection from that time was that college was tantum out to success and no College wasn't and it never sat right with me at all at that time and it built over time and it was one of the one of the Lesser reasons why I wanted to run for the Board of Ed I think it's getting I see it you know in the news a little bit more where I think people are recognizing it so I think that's a really good thing but I just want to say thank you very much for taking the time because taking the time with the students because I've had interns before they can be great but they normally take more time than you
019get a benefit from them so you're put putting in the time and I really appreciate that just um from you know from our perspective sitting here but it's so much bigger than that it's for the in my view it's for the whole country because there are kids who end up spending a lot of money on College and it isn't really a benefit to them um so thank you all of you um yeah it's uh this evening is really um fantastic and it shows how far we've come um when I uh first came on the board in 2018 um I asked an administrator who is not here sitting at this de right now and no longer works here um I I ask this person I go um what happens if uh a student decides maybe College
020isn't for them and they're you know 16 years old and at the time the answer was well then they have to leave chesher high and and apply to a technical school not the there's anything wrong with that but that's a big decision at the age of 16 um and then we uh moved forward to I think one of our teachers got the a grant for a CNC machine and then I think there was an evening where I think we all shared our stories of how all our like Grant my grandfathers worked the line at Pratt and Whitney um you know and all these great stories of how manufacturing is fantastic for the for the state of Connecticut and for our students here and it's great that tonight uh you come and and we h honor
021you as as a man as manufacturers here in chesher so it's a really great that we've come this far so yeah I just want to thank um all of our trade partners for being here tonight and um uh to just to point out that I had a lovely conversation with these gentleman from uh East Coast mechanical and it was explained to me in just a very few minutes how how successful it it can be for some of these young people to um go through at the the technical program at the school but then get right into um working hours in their Junior and senior years and these hours are then applied towards their um apprenticeship hours um they quickly get certificates built up and um and they're they get into jobs and they're placed in
022positions where they're making really good salaries as young people and that's absolutely what we need um across our country today so to all of you thank you for all that you've done because we've had years of really good Partnerships with with um people in the community here in Cheshire and I I just wish that other communities had as great Partnerships as we have here in chesher thank you from the bottom of my heart thank you did you have comment um I just want to give a personal shout out because I just took my car from Richard Chevrolet and he did a fabulous job um but I also want to clarify too that you know you give our students an opportun an alternate opportunity even though you know again kids can choose to go to college
023they can choose to go into the trades or they can do both so so you know we really appreciate the fact that we have this wealth of Community Partnerships within chesher so thank you again um I know Dr Z oh good evening um just to reiterate what te um Tim said that um many of our students do need other choices you know they need to be Su we want them to be successful when they leave us um as seniors in high school but also we want to make sure that they are on the right path for them what makes them happy what makes them successful so um there needs to be choices and we appreciate um our ability and your ability to help us with this partnership to make sure our students are making that
024right choice that career choice um to make them happy and successful so thank you I know we've showered you with a lot of Praise but it's deserved um not only are all these businesses so welcoming to our kids and Community uh but also so valuable to our general community so um you know not a paid endorser but you know look these people up when you need work because they do great jobs for uh our kids and the broader community so again thank you all for for being here tonight and what for what you do for our kids thank you um next item if there's uh any audience members that would like to address the board um if you can come to the podium and state your name and address please no do we have something
025thank you I Patricia Baker 341 South brooksvale Road chesher Connecticut I come to say how proud I am of the equity and diversity policy that is on the agenda tonight and how important it is having uh just re recently retired from running the Connecticut health Foundation whose whole mission was to eliminate racial and ethnic Health disparities this is a fundamental policy that can make a huge difference difference because it requires intentionality in ensuring that all of our students have the opportunity to achieve the success that's best for them whatever that is and whatever level that is and Equity really requires us to think differently about each individual student thinking about them in terms of what barriers structures and institutional issues that they could face so I am proud in the uh to be a member
026of the community to see a policy like this that provides this kind of opportunity and a commitment to full uh full education and history for our students so I want to thank the policy committee and the board and the school this really makes a huge difference around not only developing the policy but I hope how we implement the policy because polic is only as good as the implementation and execution so thank you thank you Miss Baker any other audience members would like to address the board great up next we be our committee reports we're going to start with um curriculum so I'll hand this over to miss Cullen and to give the curriculum report please thank you madam chairman um so the curriculum the curriculum committee meeting um was held on December 9th and um
027tonight we are going to go through a quick report on the meeting and ask the chesher Board of Education to approve two motions this evening that will go into a littleit more detail on approval of a textbook and approval of two um outof country field trips I'm going to turn it over to our assistant superintendent to give us an update thank you so to review the meeting we had uh two guests that evening we had Kristen hassa our German teacher who presented on a trip to Cologne Germany this is a trip that has been an ongoing Exchange program with students and families in Cologne since 1983 and students will live with host families attend school embark on two-day trips and she is uh requesting the board's permission to continue with that trip the second trip
028is being coordinated by Tina aone our French teacher and that is a trip to Ren and Paris France also during the summer months from July 19th through the 4th of July and she um Miss aone reviewed her field trip request and that was to take students to who had previously hosted French students here in chesher to take those students for 12 nights um in October sorry uh they did this in October they want to be reciprocal and now they are planning to go and spend time in Ren and that area with families as well so those those are two items that are are up for further discussion um after the report um in addition I shared with the committee that we had Matt mvis who's the director of skills 21 he's part of our Ed
029Advance resque he came and spoke to two different groups he worked with our administrative team and he also worked with our strategic planning committee which is made up of a host of teachers from around the district it was a really great presentation all about artificial intelligence and how teachers can use it how school system can use it and how our our teachers can use it to help students be more critical thinkers so his presentation was really exciting and um both scary and energizing and we have invited him back in March for our PD day to do a broader communication with our staff the other update was on the teachers and science coaches that you also graciously approved in last year's budget and I want to tell you that the first session of Robotics in grades
030four and five is nearly complete the students this this was designed as a pre-engineering experience um but the stem and and and stem teacher coaches really shared about all of the seal implications that this has had for students so while yes they learned coding and while yes they learned about robotics they really learned so much more uh they talked about emotional regulation and collaborating with each other having to compromise they talked about that sheer perseverance that they had to had to endure to get the robots to do the things that they wanted and there's one robot and three kids in a group so you really had to work together when asked uh when they asked the students the students said that they had to learn to work with partners and that they had to learn
031to be a better listener so it really was a positive experience um the other thing that we discussed was that Vince massana and I recently toured the Southington agroscience program and while students from cheser currently have the option to apply to Lyman Hall we have 13 students at Lyman Hall this year um the district we're just exploring whether or not the Southington program might provide yet another option for our students so the Southington a science program has connections with some of our local Farms in Cheshire including Dietrich Farms and Kurt's farm so um we're thinking about a next visit to Lyman Hall to also just get an update on what they have but it was I'd say we it was a great day and we had a wonderful experience with the students um last but
032not least in January we will be getting a um overview of the schedule um from Dr Gad or perhaps from Mr hanlin at that point in time but um also at our next meeting Mike dine who is our department chair for health and PE will be sharing about some changes to the health and wellness curriculum and last but not least there was um a YMCA survey that's going to go out to support children with special needs Doug Levens has been meeting with us as part of the um Health District Health and Wellness committee he's really been so active involved in so much of what's happening in the chesher public schools and he's connecting with the special education parent teacher Association to conduct a survey to see what kinds of activities the YMCA might provide to
033students with special needs so some really nice things happening and last but not least um which was covered at the November agenda is a new textbook so we have Essentials of human anatomy and physiology it this book was reviewed by a team of teachers including Anna harasta Pam Mell and Tanya Cory who are high school teachers they were looking for an updated book that was aligned to the ngss content and standards there were a lot of things they liked about this including some intera i options online they felt that it supported multilingual Learners that the questions provided in the text have varying levels of complexity and particularly had some real world application they looked at everything from the readability range in the book to um lab manuals and clinical case studies they liked the PowerPoint
034slides there it they had done this research over the period of more than a year so this book went on display both at central office at the chesher public library at chesher high school and we also posted it that it was available to our families there was no feedback from any of those groups and it has passed the twoe um review period on public review so we're asking um for approval of that textbook tonight so I'd like to make the motions um the first would be that the chesher Board of Education approved the purchase of the following textbook Essentials of human anatomy and physiology 13th edition as recommended by the curriculum committee is there a second Dr herrian any comments on the motion that is on the floor Mr grippo um Can can you uh
035say again which groups reviewed and and had no response I I missed the groups it was out for public review at all the places that I mentioned it was at at our office at the library and we leave a a page for if anyone has any public comments on it they can submit that to us and there were no comments thanks any other comments great um the motion on the floor miss Colin and if you could just read it one more time for clarification that the chesher Board of Education approve the purchase of the following textbook Essentials of human anatomy and physiology 13th edition as recommended by the curriculum committee all those in favor of the motion that is on the floor unanimous thank you next one bonjour are we clumping these together or are
036we separating the two countries they are separating okay go ahead Madam first motion is that the chesher Board of Education approve the participation of chesher high school students in the educational field trip to Ren and Paris France from June 19th 2025 to July 4th 2025 is there a second Dr heran any comments Mr gripple um just a quick question um do we know of any logistical problems of traveling on July 4th into New York I'm assuming none none were discussed but they're working with a company that actually some of our board members I believe took down the name of the travel agency because they came highly recommended how long is the trip for um it's from June 19th through July 4th oh okay they um it starts June 19th because they want some time for
037our students to actually be in classes and then at the end of the trip they'll be doing some sightseeing great all those in favor of the motion for the Run and Par France strip unanimous thank you and then we have Cologne Germany I believe it's hallo what is it I'm not German so I can't is that it my brother speaks German not you well I'm going with cologne so we'll see okay the that the chure Board of Education approve the participation of cheser high school students in the educational field trip to Cologne Germany from June 19 through July 2nd 2025 it's there a second for the motion Mr gripple Second Great Is there a comment all those in favor of the field trip to Cologne Germany unanimous thank you next item we have the calendar
038committee um and I believe I will forward that to Dr herkin so the the calendar committee uh met on December 3r um and Dr Solen at the that time shared a draft of the calendar that was approved at last year's calendar committee for the 2025 26 calendar and um also a proposed draft of the 2026 27 school calendar um Dr Solen said that because of the opening of the new schools this calendar the 2025 uh 26 Calendar is different from past years so in order to allow as much time as possible to move into the new schools during the summer of 2026 the school year is starting earlier and ending earlier than in past years and um the committee reviewed uh the significant dates uh within there uh so the first day of school will
039be for students is August 21st 2025 which is significantly earlier than than usual uh that means the convocation is scheduled for August 18th and professional de development days on the 19th and 20th of August um also uh November 4th and March 20th 2026 um with no snow days that means the last day for school for students is projected to be June 4th of 2026 and the last day for teachers would be June 5th snow days will be made up June 5th through June 12th and any additional snow days Beyond those six will begin with April 10th and move backwards to April 8th those three days and um I would also like to volley this to Dr Solen if you want to explain in any more detail the open the early opening and early closing of
040the school year sure so um I think as you hit upon we are opening schools in the fall of 2026 as such we're going to need time to transition everything really the biggest uh challenge will be getting everything out of Norton uh into the new Norton and demoing that building and laying down space for parking uh so that's where we really need as much time as we possibly uh possibly can get uh and in and doing so we we are adjusting the calendar as you mentioned uh one other point came up uh which is you know if we are making every effort to stay to that calendar that we can be this this didn't come up at the calendar meeting but came up uh since then Adam raised the question we had been thinking about
041was you know does a three-hour delay help that so you know that's um not anything we're considering for the the current school year uh but I think in the spring uh Carol and I were talking about just H bringing returning here with that conversation to consider a three-hour delay for next year here uh we're still reviewing all of that so so it looks like we have uh a motion to approve we're separating the calendars right now um if I can actually ask Dr s can you clarify there was some conversation about depending upon construction were we going to come back to adjust the calendar if right yeah so it I think it's in the um that first year if there this next year's calendar if there um is extensive snow and we started to push
042out the number of days uh once we got to August or excuse me once we got to June um I forget the day off the top of my head was it 12th is it on there June Jun une 12th we were going to start taking back from April days that would be a significant number of snow days uh we'd be taking it off the back end of the April vacation for a few days before we go back to additional June days but um you know the likelihood of you know not on what you know okay I I would just like to add um there's already been significant notification of our families and the community out there and um that will continue and um these calendars are also are available on our website for chesh public
043schools great so if you can um if there's a motion for the first calendar 2526 I believe sure I move that the chesher Board of Education adopts the 2025 26 school calendar as presented is there a second miss cullinan any comments for the 2526 school year calendar motion Mr White thank you so to be perfectly clear I support the dates all involved here and I'm happy to vote for that in favor of the calendar but I do not expect to be voting in favor of this tonight I attended the calendar committee meeting uh probably a few weeks ago and I tried to address a concern and I didn't feel like it was addressed adequately for me my basic concern is that when we did the calendar 9 months ago 10 months ago we I was
044unaware of it until we were voting and I did not get to uh thoughtfully consider what it meant to me the vote um that is on me that I didn't was not aware of it until we got to the meeting that night and I apologize to the voters for that regardless um my basic concern is we're changing from last year we changed Columbus Day to indigenous people an Italian-American day and the the basic concern I have with it is that I it's unclear to me what we are celebrating when we add indigenous people's day and this is I I I would like to know what we're celebrating um and so here's just a little bit of back ground on where I'm coming from on this which is just in the past few years I've tried
045to bring our kids they're in elementary school to different places one time we were went out to visit family in Arizona and we went to a you know some of the we went to a national park or National Monument um near Phoenix some other places and one of the things that I picked up on there when I was speaking with the historians who work at these parks and that is how they describ themselves was as historians what they talked about the history that existed was before any um European colonist showed up there were Wars for natural resources among the indigenous peoples there was people were captured and enslaved and that was Arizona we also brought our kids up to Montreal we went to a museum up there and basically the same story was sort of
046told by Just One of local historians Museum employee who I don't think was trying to uh create any story other than what they had learned it was just like a one-on-one conversation and so the concern I have is what's happening in America is let's change from Columbus Day to indigenous people's day because and and I asked I asked uh miss harrian about this and she can tell me in her own words but basically my take on what she was saying at the calendar committee when I asked about this why we're doing this and I felt like she said well the um the indigenous peoples took care of the land before the European Colonists came here and then we took the land or something to that effect the concern I have is we're as a board
047of ed I feel like the pendulum was over here in the past talking about the you know the the Wonders and virtues of European colonists and everything that went right and had no acknowledgement of all the wrongs that were committed um relatively relatively little acknowledgement and now what's happening is the pendulum swinging over to the other side and I I don't like that there's a middle ground where you I feel we can be more candid and forthright about history um the rights the wrongs and the way I see the world is generally most things are mixed there's not a lot of things that are like purely virtuous or purely evil um and so I think our history could definitely have uh details added to it important details and so what I'm hoping to do by
048asking this question is really to have a dialogue about this and have people talk and say you know tell me I'm wrong if historians come forward and tell me I'm wrong I'll I'll eat my words I have no problem this is I'm not a historian but this is my understanding based on you know observation and just talking to people who I believe are probably experts in their particular field in history and so what I want to do is basically just have more of a conversation about this rather than um well this is what other towns are doing so we should do it too I I think we could serve the uh the school children of chesher and the town at Large better by having a more robust discussion about this so it's not saying that
049um making you know the day indigenous people's day is something that I'm opposed to uh necessarily but I want to know why and I think it could be I think it could be done differently and for that reason you know I could still be sued here tonight but right now I'm planning to vote against the calendar and again it's not about the the timing of any of this um it's just it's about this one particular thing because I I do feel like there's a much bigger conversation that could and should be had about it one second yeah I that's it for me thank you any other comments Mr gripple um Madam chair I'd like to amend the motion um to uh read that the treasure Board of Education adopts a 2526 school calendar um and
050change um uh indigenous people's day Italian-American day to indigenous people's Day Columbus Day I believe I don't believe we called for the motion in second already care no we're still in discussion are we in discussion on the motion we we haven't even called the motion and oh you haveen any called the motion oh yeah we're in discussion right we did yeah we we have a motion in a second and we're discussion right so so it is it is appropriate to have an amendment so there is a motion there's an amendment to the motion currently can you please read the amendment again Mr gripple sure um that the Board of Education adopts 20 the 2025 202 school calendar and uh change indigenous people Italian-American day to indigenous people Columbus State is there a second for the
051amended motion on the floor Mr White comments on the amended motion currently Miss col yeah I'm I'm just um I'm a little bit surprised by the amendment because my recollection is that we had a very robust discussion of this last year and this actually the way we did it and worded it was a compromise to both sides um being conscious of um the demographics being conscious of indigenous people's day and we we weren't jumping on any bandwagon of districts around us because if you took a look at what probably correct me if I'm wrong um many of the district in the state of Connecticut have called it indigenous day we went out and kind of changed that um the composition to call that day indigenous people and Italian-American day so I think it represents Heritage
052and the country and our state and our town um after the robust discussion that we had last year Mr grible um I agree we did have a robust discussion about it last year um and and last year I think the point was or was attempted to me to be made that the state of Connecticut no longer recognizes uh Columbus Day which is not true uh the could because the state the Columbus Day is still on the state of Connecticut calendar um there are only 14 states that don't celebrate uh Columbus Day and Connecticut is not one of them so the the calendar that that we're proposed in does not um uh synchronize with the state of Connecticut this is something we're choosing to do on our own so all I'm attempting to do is to
053bring our calendar back in line uh with the state of Connecticut any other comments Dr Aran yeah I just want to say um I find myself in a difficult position right now because I kind of agree with the uh Amendment but I don't agree with the way that it's being brought up right now um as Miss cullinan said we did have a robust conversation about this and I did not vote for this this change that we have um Mr White I believe you did and now you want to have another conversation and change it back to something that was proposed during our robust conversation I Believe by Mr grippo back then um so because um I I feel we need to honor that conversation that we had and the outcome that came from it I
054um I will not be um agreeing to this proposed amendment but in theory I do agree with it D white thank you yeah just to be clear I seconded it I'm not supporting the motion I just want to have the discussion that was all thank you I mean um I'm just going to rewind and and agree that we did have a conversation um I was present at the calendar committee meeting last year um and my stance my position was that um you know we do not want to honor colonialism which led to the forceful taking of land widespread um and and deaths of the indigenous people um and then we also the full board wanted to honor as well you know the contributions of Italian Americans so we're we're doing two things here we're honoring
055the culture and history of the indigenous people as well as acknowledging the contribution of Italian Americans which is why the compromise was laid out and we did approve that naming last year so I I will not be as supporting this amendment at all um and I think the other piece of this is that we also need to consider given that we have school construction going on um that we need to approve a calendar so that we are not delaying the fact that our community needs to understand when exactly school is starting when it's going to end so that they have enough time to properly plan as well so the motion is on the floor um Mr gripple one more time if you can read your amended motion uh that the cheser Board of Education adopts
056the 2526 school calendar and change the uh and change indigenous people uh Italian-American day uh to um indigenous people Columbus Day all those in favor of the amended motion all one in favor all those who that oppose the amended motion four the uh motion fails we are back to the original motion if um Miss Dr heran I think you read the original motion again I move that the chesher Board of Education adopts the 2025 26 school calendar as presented those um second Miss cullin Madam chair we still on discussion we are we we can discuss because we're forwarding the motion again yes uh I just like to say um I I won't be supporting the motion however I did attend the meeting and I fully support the calendar and all of its contents uh I
057think it's well thought out um it it uh fully um or at least attempts to to the to best of our knowledge about being able to see the future entirely um uh helps helps us uh plan for school construction uh and the uh I guess the the hope the hopefulness that uh construction will be done on time and that the move will then go smoothly um I know that the you know you can't help but read social media and there are comments of uh well uh you know what if it uh doesn't work out and what's the what's what's the contingency plan if it doesn't work out because we'll have redistricted all sorts of people and we'll have schools that open and schools that don't open and you know what happens then but I guess
058we that's not really really part of the calendar committee uh discussion but or is it I don't know if there's something that has to be considered there but uh yeah um I I won't be supporting the motion but I do support the motion if that makes any sense then can I just say I I think the time for this discussion and for the amending of the name of the day the holiday that we take off should happen during calendar committee meeting which it didn't but it could next year so I would ask that if people are really cannot vote for calendars because of the name of one of the of the holidays please come to calendar committee meeting make your motions then so that we can take care of it before it comes to the
059full board uh well I I did attend uh Mr White basically said everything that I would have said anyway and as a uh a member of the board but not a member of the committee I felt I would have been um out of place to speak at all unless it was part of public comment because I didn't want to uh create an illegal meeting so I did uh listen and consider um and if I recall the I don't know if the vote was unanimous or not um when uh Columbus Day was changed for the 2627 cuz I think it was it was already baked in for 2526 um yes it was unanimous okay yeah so anyhow um it is what it is thanks okay thank you any other comments Mr D thank you yeah just
060my recollection of the calendar committee meeting for people who are watching on TV the board Ved has a number of committees the that consist of pretty much three board members MERS the calendar committee cut me off Jeff if I get something wrong here um the calendar committee is more of a staff committee with a board one member uh Miss herrian is the liais on to it and my recollection of the meeting was not about make I I thought I conveyed my concerns and you disagreed and that's I totally respect that um but there was one staff member who said okay this is probably above our pay grade can you move this conversation along to the board of ed that was that was my take and so I didn't I didn't push it any further and
061I actually don't mean to push it here tonight I mentioned this to Sam in advance I'm not trying to um I do believe strongly about it although I also do um so that's a little bit on the calendar committee and how that functions and my take on what happened there uh rather than making motions to amend anything there but I do have a real question for the superintendent which is if this calendar is not adopted tonight what does that mean mean to you from your perspective because I mean the truth is is that I could I I can support it I've made my point here I really would rather not I would like to sort of uh I would like to have a more robust discussion about history and what we're doing here because I
062really do believe that a lot of towns are just going oh that sounds good let's do it without putting a lot of thought into it that's my own perception right or wrong that's it that's my concern but what does it mean if you don't have your calendar uh tonight because I could vote in support of this it's not that I want that done that was I think the first thing that I said I do want you to have a calendar yeah I think uh particularly given the unique nature of the calendar over the next two years adoption is early as possible is certainly welcome um you just to go back to your point about who compos who can like who are the members composes the the committee um there are different Union Representatives on that
063committee there are um PTO representative board represent representation um so it is a kind of inclusive committee um and certainly if if we wanted to have a broader Community deliberation on the merits of Columbus versus indigenous peoples they versus Italian American Heritage um I would suggest just that maybe we uh publicize that in advance of next year's conversation and we just go from there but certainly early adoption on this calendar is is welcome uh for our community can I just ask Jeff do you mean that that discussion would happen at a board meeting or at the calendar meeting probably at the calendar committee meeting I mean it's up to you ultimately if you maybe we take that convers station up early in the year next year at a board meeting you know solicit opinion via
064survey or something um of our parents it can be done in a myriad of ways and um maybe that's something we discuss at another Point Mr gble um how many votes do we need for it to pass three or four this evening yeah just three simple majority of present yeah okay thanks any other comments yeah I I just think um I think it's just two separate things the calendar right the days and times and weeks and beginning and ending to facilitate the construction folks to know they have some extra time right to move furniture to level the building Etc and then the indigenous people Columbus Day Italian-American day is a separate factor of one of those days on that calendar that you approve or disapprove is named after something so I think tonight it's important
065that we move the calendar so people can plan ahead so like Adam I don't know one of you said like people need to know right like I I was already looking at you know like when kids are going to get out this year in June 4th that's a long time for parents to plan for child care so we need to get that out in our community so they can start figuring out a camp or whatever is going to happen um I so I understand your concern about it because the feeling that if I agree to this I'm agreeing to all these names convocation day and professional development day and Etc um and I think you know as Dr Solen said there is a time in place for us to discuss that further if it needs
066to be discussed further and have input um on what people think so I'm just saying tonight I think we need to vote on on moving the calendar forward within the notes obviously it would say that further discussion needs to be had any other comments so the motion that is on the floor currently was the um to have the treasure Board of Ed adopt the 2526 school year calendar as presented all those in favor of adopting or in favor of the motion that's on the floor right now three Mr jinsky all those oppos two motion passes next motion Dr herrian yeah I move that the chesher Board of Education adopts the 2026 27 proposed draft school calendar recommended by the calendar committee second is there a second Mr grippo um comments on the motion that's on
067the floor comment no Mr I'll say um I I will support the draft as there is still opportunity for change you any other comments great all those in favor oh Mr White go ahead yeah just following on the comments that the superintendent made a couple minutes ago could we have a discussion about this like next September get back and the board I'm just I'm looking at board members right now because this is a board discussion we the supered discussion should go back to committee to the committee yep okay definitely welcome a conversation further on this um but I think we need to plan ahead to have that conversation and do so within the committee and then bring it forward to the full board yeah okay thank you um all those in favor of the motion
068to approve or adopt excuse me the 2627 proposed draft school calendar recommended by the calendar committee unanimous thank you motion passes thank you calendar committee um next committee report would be finance and it looks like Dr herin or Mr Masano don't go at once I I'll start and I'll um send it to Mr masiano let me find my place here go okay included in your packet is the financial report for 2022 23 board of education budget reflecting expenditures and encumbrances um Mr Mariana will uh provide us a discussion and then move on to the medical benefits report that's okay with you Mr M yes it is thank you and good evening members of the board our November report I'm happy to say we've got five months down uh in this fiscal year the um expended
069and encumbered portion of our budget is 80 . 4% which is typical at this time of year the um budget is tracking very well and as I sit here tonight I don't have any specific concerns about any of the line items in the budget we did speak last month about a very high medical benefits claim month in um October the you know I'm going to jump right over to medical benefits and say that in November our medical benefit claims were a mil 148,000 So Below the $1.18 million expected uh and that enabled the Reserve balance to actually increase by 94,6 23 so the uh Medical Reserve ended November at 1.48 million that's 1.24 months worth of claims however that is going to be booed off by two things one I did talk about last month
070the high claims that we've had we know that we're receiving $250,000 in stoploss reimbursement so that will increase that 1.48 million and also we received notice just last week that we'll be receiving another roughly $200,000 in prescription rebate so that will bring our Reserve fund balance to about 1.9 million certainly healthier than um it is currently leaves us in in reasonably good shape I think that the only you know going back to to the budget as we go forward if medical claims you know continue to Trend you know along the lines of where we are in November we won't have any impact on the operating budget if claims Trend worse we want to make sure that we have some room in our operating budget to fund additional uh monies into our Reserve fund again I
071don't I don't see the need to do that at this point so our budget is holding and we'll keep watching medical benefit claims and that's really the long and short of the finance report there are no questions I will introduce the next item Mr G um uh you're next you were going to move on to the presentation yes okay uh so yeah so my um I just like to say that um it's nice to see that at least we have at least one month relief on the medical benefits and that's before uh stop loss yes yes that's before 200 50,000 uh which you know will be booked soon but I don't enter it on the report till I know it's booked and uh just like to comment uh looking at the the uh the budget
072detail and seeing uh very little shuffling between accounts is I don't think something we've seen in quite a while so um good news so far it it looks good and obviously we'll we'll make more of the moves as we get later into the year but right now everything's you know looking quite good so we hope that continues thank you all yours okay the next item I'm I'm going to um just introduce it and I will ask Emily Taylor our assistant chief operating officer and Erica bietti our director of Food Services to make a presentation on this topic but in June of 2024 at a fiscal year end meeting the board did discuss a recommendation to increase our meal prices for student meals for this uh fiscal year that we're in the board decided not to
073increase prices but rather you know look again at our meal prices as we entered the new school year so tonight's update um from Erica and um Emily will be about where we are with meal prices where we are with our revenues and a preliminary recommendation so with that Emily Taylor our assistant Co yeah thanks everyone um good evening so you have two things in your board packet you have a PowerPoint presentation I'd say that's the cliff notes and then you have a memo which is the more meaty version with all the all the bits and pieces you might want to look at for the uh preliminary recommendation for an increase to school meal prices last spring I believe you all discussed potentially increasing the school meal price and that conversation was ultimately deferred to this
074fall so here is the conversation uh but I want to give you some background so last last year when you all were having this discussion chesher Public Schools requested a waiver for an exemption to uh have their meal prices at the CSD Target price which was 385 last year um that our district weighted average was 375 and ultimately we received a waiver so that we did not have to increase our meal prices to that 385 number and last year was the first year where we did not have free meals in the 23 24 school year free breakfast was still provided and the year before that was when there was free breakfast and lunch for all students so ultimately the meal prices didn't have that much of an impact in those years because students were getting
075those meals for free so um and one thing you should note about I'm on the background slide is the district weighted average as you can see our weighted average and meal price is going down year after year there is a lag there so if you're looking at the 23 24 school year uh our district weighted average is actually the data from October and that's always our October data is used to determine our district weighted average how great job okay so if we're moving on to our next slide which just has some history of meal price increases uh you have going back to 2122 school year 2122 but I will say prior to school year 21 and 22 the last increase to school meal prices was in the school year 1819 with some it was either
07610cent or 25 cent increases and before that the last increase to school lunch prices was in 1415 and School breakfast was 056 so as you can see starting in 2122 there was an increase to High School breakfast and K8 lunch and a 15c increase to high school lunch there were free meals for all so again the impact to students was pretty negligible because they were getting free meals the rate of inflation that year was 6% and the minimum wage uh was $13 and what you're going to see over the course of a few years is the minimum wage starting January 1st of 2025 is going to be 1635 so there's been a pretty significant increase to the minimum wage and we'll talk about Erica will talk about that in a minute um and the impact
077that it has on our school uh meal programs so in school year 2223 there was a 25 cent increase to lunch only uh breakfast price remained the same again that was a free meals for all so there was not really an impact to families and then going into school year 23 24 is when there was free breakfast for all but school lunch prices went back to the free reduced in paid model and we are currently in school year 2425 there was no change to meal prices um so that we could have the conversation that we're having now and again uh you can see that the minimum wage is going up this January did I forget anything that's great cool I'm going to pass it off to Erica in a minute and this is a brief
078presentation so that we have time for your questions but we are requesting that starting next school year uh that we increase the meal price by 25 cents which will increase the average meal price by 78 7.8% across breakfast and lunch we're not proposing an increase to the 8 O milk option and you can see in the table and the preliminary recommendation which is slide four gives you the increased prices at all the grade levels um but again increasing it by 25 cents making it a little bit easier um for families we haven't increased um in a few years and one thing that's really important here is that we are not guaranteed that waiver that I talked about the beginning the slide that allowed us to not increase our prices so we might be subject to
079an increase anyways and so we want to share the information with you really proactively BEC because come spring when the waiver is either available or not we might need to move our prices upwards anyway so we want to just share the information and provide you some information but Shar uh Erica you want to talk about some factors yeah can I ask a quick question first before you leave of course yeah I'm still up here but um it's is isn't it true though that this year we don't have that um that division between paying reduced and free that it's either the threshold is either free lunch or paying for lunch um no so yes and no um free lunch is reimbursed federally the state of Connecticut has a um they have funded with arpa funds the
080covering of the 30 cents and 40 cents that parents would have to pay for the reduced so that's being covered through the state of Conneticut through funding that they have from arpa I believe it's still arpa it it might have changed um pots as the money has as what it is so it's not funding there is still reduced families still qualify for reduce the state is the one picking up the 30 and the 40 cents that would have hit those families directly um so that 70 cents a day is covered in in that facet and is that going to continue with the state or that is not determined so the legislative session opens uh in January and I know that the school nutrition Association across the state is fighting for funding for the reduced meals
081as well as meals for all and uh various other um important factors that face the nutrition industry the school nutrition industry I apologize thank you for reminding me no problem Oh yes so our factors um so there's many things that um bring us to get to the school lunch price and making sure that there it is being that integral part of the school day and they have the fun um the best meal in front of them so the minimum wage for us and the Staffing in the Staffing structures that we're facing right now that is a very large increase we want to make sure that our wages are are competitive in the school nutrition Market especially with our neighbors around us and that we're offering our people um a competitive wage and that it brings
082in excellent staff that we have who care very much about our students and work um very hard to make sure they have nutritious meals and the other major part is seeing all of the food increasing and all of the food cost prices rising uh I know the bird flu has been all over with eggs it's been crazy we do have eggs it's fine um so we choose to have products that are like for our chicken example it's whole muscle chicken we prefer to get an item that is more expensive but it is a better quality item and it's better for our students where there might be alternative items that are available but we would prefer to have the quality of the local produce that were're able to get all the fresh vegetables fruits everything that
083gives the students a wide variety of options um and the so the paid lunch Equity waiver it was the first year that it was ever offered was last Year and that is due to the excess funds that could be available in the accounts and the state made it a grant for that one year that's why we're unclear if they're even going to have it be an option um it's kind of like the funding for the reduced meals they're not sure what's going to be available or what's going to be there so it might not be available and we wouldn't want to have that for our families and rely on that waiver oh and also so the 25 cents um increase when we took a look at our meal sales from last year it would give
084us about a little over 100,000 in Revenue um based on the meal sales from last year so 25 cents to the families would then be able to give us revenue of a little bit over 100,000 which would help us combat these increasing costs and keep the program self- sustaining which was part of the next slide sorry no you're fine you jumped ahead so uh the last SL here so our conclusion what is the impact to our families when we do an increase of 25 cents per meal um and you can look if you look on this last side it'll say at the elementary middle school and high school what the current cost annual cost is if a student ate breakfast and lunch every day at school and the annual increase to a student that eats
085breakfast and lunch every day at school is $90 if we do a 25c increase so that is a the individual impact to our families and like we said we are currently self- sustaining the operative word there is currently and so we would like to continue to stay self- sustaining and we of course want excellent and nutritious meals for our students so I'm going to open it up for questions but like I said the next time we'll probably talk about this is when we know if we have the waiver option available um in the spring but we want to prepare you for that conversation early so I'll open it up to the board if I can add just one point and I the the paid if we get the waiver the implication though is that the
086the difference between the cost of meals and the price we're charging is made up by the Food Service Department's reserves so I just wanted to be clear that if they give us a waiver it's not because the state is going to make up the cost difference that's correct it's because we have a Reserve balance that that we're using and we use those excess funds for um kitchen enhancements equipment repairs equipment rep placements um staff professional development training any of the above um to improve their environment and for the students new equipment very nice uh speeds of the serving line gives better presentation to all the food items makes it much more um attractive and a desirable Choice thank you questions Mr Grio um uh firstly I'd like to say um I've had the opportunity to
087work with your staff and have uh done several events uh with your staff and the quality of food is excellent and the staff are fantastic and professional um and so I and so that's I guess besides the point I just want to say you run a great operation um so the the 100,000 in Revenue that you're talking about is that so you hope to generate an additional 100,000 in Revenue but does that then allow you is that just allow you to break even if the waiver goes through or or is that are do you have like a certain amount of um I don't know profit isn't the right word but no we are a nonprofit so our goal is to be able we like to in the sense Break Even we do need Reserve funds
088so that we're able to replace the equipment if anything breaks um that's not always accounted for and put into it it sometimes is in capital depending on the volume of the work um but if you know the milk cooler breaks and we need a new one or the freezer goes down and it needs repairs um so we need to keep those reserves in there it does work to deplete the account just because the waiver was available to not increase would mean that food services would be offsetting the price so we would essentially be serving meals that costed us more and we'd be offsetting that cost price and um what is the status of your reserves right now is it near zero or is it so the reserves are currently being used so we are in
089a mid project so the reserves are being used right now to replace the we've replaced half of the serving L the serving lines have been replaced at chesher high school as well as flooring and um new equipment and uh Panini presses and now we have the second half of the project that's going to begin and that is where there's Plumbing Electrical uh new ovens new ranges new walk-ins we did the walk-in fridge and freezer at the high school so they are very large projects so it is difficult to say the exact amount that would be left in the reserves once we complete that project which saying that once the high school is complete then we would move on to Highland which that school is the next one that would need a redo in the servery
090especially with the enrollment at the numbers that it is it needs a better layout so that they're better able to serve the students and give them most of the equipment there was original from maybe 30 years ago I'm not sure it was before me that's all I know and the the increase that you're proposing is it up two 25 cents per meal or is it that's that's your proposed so increase that's the proposal is is flat increase 25 cents by every meal okay breakfast and lunch we don't prefer to operate in dimes and nickels it makes giving any change back to students even that much more difficult and if you moving to increase a flat 25 cents is easiest for us in the actual service industry and for parents and given that would put us
091above hopefully that would put us above the recommended price so that we wouldn't have to do this year-over-year um we were very grateful that we were able to do this during covid when it had no impact to families and that has gotten us even closer to this Mark so we haven't had to impact or re like increase it a dollar family like no one wants to see a dollar like that's too much so small incremental amounts of the 25 cents make it much more palatable and easier on families who we know are always um plenty of people are always struggling and any help that we can give is always better beneficial thank you wait sorry thank you uh yes I'm not sure if I missed it or not but I'm curious is any is any
092of our funding Federal yes and I'm wondering do you have a number do you know what the number is annually and if you don't that's fine no it would I don't have an exact figure of what would be separated federal and state um I could figure it out no no that's fine my so this is more of a rhetorical question I guess is to figure out how much money is at risk right now we have a new president Trump will be taking office and I've seen the headlines about cutting quite a bit uh including I'm thinking where it might intersect with school lunches snap I don't know exactly what what we get or it that's not the point the point is is just to be aware of what could be coming because I'm under the
093impression some of the stuff could just happen administratively and then it's cut off in January and so if we go spending reserves and we don't have that I'm being totally like this is these are the articles that I'm reading I don't know how it would work but it could happen and I just want to be prepared for that and then um one other point oh uh do we do you so Vin Emily Erica whoever knows the last couple years we have had unpaid balances that we've tried to chase on because uh it hasn't necessarily been people who are unable to pay but maybe there's a few families that were unwilling to pay uh because we didn't enforce I'm just curious how how big a number is that right now and just how and and if
094it's if it's a small number that's a it's not intended to make this to discussion but the concern and how that would play into this sure increase right now so I the the balance as of November the unpaid meal balance as of November is about 3,000 which is about where it was at this time last year U I'm sure the board remembers that at the end of the year it was about $118,000 that the board's operating budget had to cover to repay the Food Service program that's a requirement under state law uh and we'll continue to try and work that balance and collect as much of that as we can like we did last year in the most respectful way that we possibly can um so we do follow-ups by text uh by letter and
095by phone call as well we do so so I mean I'm happy to support this I just wanted to make sure that those two particular risks are incorporated into your thought process and how you roll this stuff out yes including the U reserves um the state of Connecticut has very strict parameters around negative balance um and our ability to interact with students and family so we do the best that we can given the structure that fits with it within that and um we do constantly try to work with families there was new guidelines um October 1 that increase some snap uh threshold amounts where families could qualify for snap but they wouldn't qualify on a traditional application and we're always working with our families if they do need it and how we could better help
096them um it is hard to say who can and cannot we do not try to dis discern that all we do is is State the facts of what is there what meals were charged and what's on the accounts and then we go from there thank you thank you J yeah thank you for the presentation um something that you said that I really want to commend you for is this idea of maybe spending a little bit more but getting the high quality products in our meals for our children so please continue to do that because um from my perspective that's really important and then I'm hoping this is a quick question that can be answered very surfacy because I I don't mean to go into a big long talk on breakfast but is there any benefit
097to just putting a bowl of fruit out for our students for you know the whole thing a whole Apple a whole orange a whole banana sure I mean it seems like that would be way more nutritious than whatever packets of sugar contained breakfast surprisingly a lot of our items are sugar reduced compared to the actual same product name in the store um we do put out whole fruit um especially if it's farm fresh apples oranges you could put them out whole they will all go in the garbage you will just fish them out for the rest of the day if fruit is in its whole form students are less likely to eat it depending on the consistency of it I I just we have checked garbage cans we do scans we get very upset when
098food goes in there we work really hard that it doesn't um breakfast in the classroom does make it more difficult to give an array of options because we want to ensure that the classroom stays and it's nice and clean and neat form and that items are not spilling they're not messy they're not sticky you don't have kids coming up with like hands full of anything um but we do try to offset it those sunbites um that are on the tray those are a breakfast offering that we feature at the high school um that we would love to expand to all schools they are very labor intensive for us to make but they are deliv ious they are delicious I had one earlier I was like thank you but they are sticky they're they're a little
099sticky and I hadn't thought of that um but we we do try to give as many options to students in the variety of forms thank you no problem Mr gripple uh this a procedural question are we supposed to take action on this I don't see a motion or anything are you are you just telling us that you're going to do this is that is that is that what we're not telling you we're going to do this what we're saying is we're prepping you for the conversation that we're going to have in the spring that we might need to that may so there's no motion tonight we don't want to Tak unilateral PR oh okay gotta the preliminary part okay prary the motion are too difficult families okay thank you yes they are um I just
100had a couple questions um just for clarification first off isn't there an adult price if I were a staff member it's on there $7 it might be worth it tasty $7 proposed at$ 725 preliminary proposal gotcha uh the adult meal price is set by the state of Connecticut based off of the meal price of the highest paid student we did not come up with that $7 we did not decide that it is set for the state of Connecticut I have answered that question for teachers very often okay um the other question I had was you talked about equipment I thought that was in our capital budget though uh for the most part the replacement equipment for Food Service you know other than cafeteria Renovations that is carried by food service department budget oh okay yeah
101so we we do have a couple of items in our capital budget that like the Highland cafeteria the chesher high school you know cafeteria Renovations that's renovation not just purchase of refrigerators those types of things things typically then wouldn't the income that's made could help to offset the unpaid balances versus having to take it out of our operating budget no the state law specifically yeah indicates that unpaid meal balances have to be paid to the food service operation by the board's budget it was three different committees that each put the spin one said that it that it has to get paid the other one then said that we cannot collect it in any other way or discriminate a child um and then the another piece of legislation said that it has to come from the
102Board of Ed budget I don't know if they all talked to each other or they did a phone game but the three of them put it together to be a perfect storm of um that would be a legislative conversation it is okay it it is and speaking of legislative conversation you know one thing that the board uh lobbied for last year was to increase the thresholds for free and reduce price lunches because they're set federally and they're not indexed and they need to be indexed you know certainly in the Northeast and here in Connecticut so I do anticipate that we will ask the board to add that to its lobbying list again I think I think it's important that we do that and and see if we can find a better way to provide you
103know funding for families who need it the threshold this year is um before taxes 57,000 for a family of four so you a four income four household of four no matter how many people have the income you have to have less than 57,000 before taxes to qualify for reduced that's not even free that's just the reduced price insane not realistic um sorry I just want to ask a question I was just looking at your chart um there are two different lunches at the high school a $4 and a $5 is that like a deluxe lunch or something or yes oh have you seen the Panini presses they're very fancy oh okay we do offer there is two tiers we have a market that has Express meals that are grab and go as well as um
104made to order Deli line that offers uh fresh sliced deli meat salad quinoa salad and then we've got um a better and a bowl line now you guys just get the whole food Spiel um which offers like fresh made salad bowls uh pasta bowls um local baked potato bowls anything is offered there so we do have the tiered pricing so that we can even bring in some other elevated it uh that fit into that the you can ask they have a Chick-fil-A sandwich we do it every other Friday it is a very big hit it is a great chicken breast I would it's whole grain and everything and it's delicious so that's it yeah but it's actually after meals sorry it was going back to Vin before we leave the financial report oh okay um
105thank you ladies um I do just ask if we can kind of come back back to this conversation so that again for communication purposes for our families and so forth that we make a decision earlier or sooner rather than later yes thank you we'll be back either April or May you know with a final recommendation if that's your question okay yeah yes we will okay so Mr way has a question for thank you yeah I may have missed this if so feel free to just have us move along performance contract uh bids have been exended to January 9th bid due date so they did a walk through and the due date is January 9th correct got it and you have nothing else going on in January so you're good yes I'm kidding I'm being sarcastic
106there there's we have other help working on that project as well but yeah Big you know we got requests from a couple of the interested proposers that the the date that we had in December they weren't going to be ready so we didn't want to miss the opportunity to get everyone's proposal so we extended to January 9th so we'll have the proposals then and how many how many BS did the walk through five five okay do is which is which is fine I mean we've got you know the big names that we would want to say okay great thank you you're welcome any other thoughts okay so that concludes the finance report or finance committee report um then we're going to move on to the policy committee Mr E is not present um so I'm
107going to forward this to Dr heran again if you can give us the policy committee report sure so the policy committee met on December 2nd 2024 and um first we had a presentation by the director of Technology um Mike Papa who is always enthusiastic about talking about the state of technology in Chester Public Schools uh he he's very proud of what we provide in chesher public schools and he explained the Safety Management program Gaggle that monitors all student drives and talked to us about keywords and how things come up and it was very thorough um another product of Gaggle is a program called speak up which is essentially a digital tip line that encourages K through 12 students to share their concerns anonymously so that was um that was a very very good conversation um
108we're happy to have Michael come talk to us every once in a while um um then we reviewed policies for a possible first reading including um 0521 non-discrimination policy and notice which was scheduled for a third reading but we're bringing it back to a first reading because on the advice of our attorneys uh it was recommended that we dovetail this policy with a sexual harassment and Title 9 policy um so another first reading is for 400.1 42.1 44 which is all the sexual harassment Title 9 and regulation so those were the first readings I just have a question on that can we expedite that after so I know you said you were foreing it to the attorney to review last time oh it was it's already been reviewed it's all set but um I mean
109the board policy requires uh three readings but yeah um it could be accelerated I thought when I was there at the meeting I thought we were forwarding that one again or we were waiting on we were waiting on uh attorney gold that that's all set now I mean that's that's what this reflects and her advisement was to couple it with the uh sexual harassment policy because they're complimentary policies they interface with one another okay thank you um so we're not doing a motion for first reading um then we had uh some policies up for a second reading including 42125 security check and fingerprinting criminal justice 4118 .51 rights responsibilities duties social networking 6148 FAFSA completion program and 6172 alternative education program and uh those are up for a second reading and then for a third
110reading um we have 5114 suspension and expulsion due process and 0523 equity and diversity um we have had and those will be coming up for a for approval by the board with the third reading um so we had a policy for discussion 51 3181 uh electronic devices and we'll continue with that one in future policy meetings um I know our student rep had said that they were surveyed any yeah the the surveys have gone out and we're going to discuss all the results at the next policy meeting we surveyed parents staff and students so uh January 6th is the next meeting so then we have two policies it looks like that we're going to need to do um a motion for approval first one is policy number 0523 the equity and diversity um policy so
111somebody can please make a motion on that one so let me just give you a brief overview too um so Dr Solen reported that our uh attorney Goldberg reviewed our draft policy made changes to update the language in this policy um we deleted things like some definitions that are social constructs and not legal definitions and um so this has gone on under review for actually many months now and um has gone through lawyers and c and um all sorts of scrutiny we've had um people come to policy meetings and and talk to us about concerns and um I think we've addressed as much as we can uh with this policy so I would move that the policy um that the where is my motion sorry move that the Board of Education give a third and
112final reading to policy 0523 equity and diversity and direct the superintendent to put said policy into immediate effect is there a second on the motion Miss Cullen and um discussion on the motion Mr gerbo thank you um so we've been uh I guess revising this policy for the better part of six months or so uh when we first uh had this policy it was full of uh aggressive and divisive language in my opinion um and uh as the months have progressed uh through the um a work of myself Mr perini and um our attorney who I guess sort of had the final revisions Who removed almost all of the inflammatory language except for my opinion the actual word Equity um uh it it it is no longer I I question why we're even approving this
113policy I I don't even know what what purpose it serves or the intentions that we mean to to put in as as part of our policy it it's not exactly clear as to um what what it does um almost all of the language can be found in our uh uh affirmative action policies are um uh part of the non-discrimination policy that we'll be reviewing again uh Title 9 language uh all of the uh any of the other uh title federal language that we go by um and so I again I I question uh why this this Board needs this policy on the books at all um it's as I as Dr Solen and I had our uh I guess final discussion at our last uh policy meeting um we both agreed that this is not
114required by state law this is something that this board is I guess choosing to do um and I certainly uh have voted against it at every Cho uh chance that I've had and I will continue to do so thank you any other comments Mr White thanks uh question for the superintendent I was I watched one of the one of the meetings that I watched on YouTube [Music] um you think you were asked about problems that are um problems that would be addressed by this policy and my recollection was you said that there weren't any problems that would relate to this policy you address them as they come up something along those lines are there any problems in your opinion that would be addressed by this policy does this solve a problem yes is kind what
115you're asking I don't know that it solves a problem as much as it makes a declarative statement yeah okay so no I understand it being I understand it being symbolic um but so um here one second so I in general I do support the concept um for example um Equity we have foreign language Learners here in town kids who are displaced from war who have come here to chesher and I wholeheartedly uh support legal immigration the last thing I want to do is have my son get shipped off to a foreign war they come here and I do view it as a responsibility of the town of the board to support those kids who are displaced and give them extra support learning English is a basic one um to assimilate I think that's important that
116we do that um so I I support the I support the goal I do think there are definitely times when uh we can do something but paraphrasing the paraphrasing the superintendent I feel like it's a u solution in search of a problem it's it's unnecessary and so I won't support this tonight thank you any other comments from members of the board yeah so um I agree with Dr Solen that this uh is a strong statement um but I don't agree that it's it's symbolic I believe there's a real purpose for having a policy on equity and diversity um Dei at its core is really simply stating to our vulnerable populations um English language Learners is just one it's not just the students it's it's the families it goes much broader than than um just who's
117in the schools um but it's other vulnerable populations that we have um our entire lgbtq plus families um are vulnerable in a lot of ways and I think a strong statement um saying that we value um all backgrounds that we value everybody's um where all of our students are coming from and we want to get all of our students the uh best education that we can offer to them and the only way that we can do that is by being I believe that um Miss Baker who spoke earlier on during the audience participation said you have to be intentional about um including all voices and Val and showing that we value where everyone is coming from and I think that this policy does that it it really shows what we are committed to here at
118chesher public schools and I think it is necessary to have and uh we've been working long and hard to make it um really pretty brief and um concise and it's um it's an expression of uh what we value here at chesher public schools and it it it's it's important it's important to those families um when they're looking to send their kids to school they want their kids to feel safe and to feel valued and they want um parents want to feel um as part of the community as valued members of our community so I I am definitely supp in this Miss col so Dr Solen I don't want to put you on the spot but I heard somehow your name mentioned in um giving some information on why we're doing a Dei policy so maybe
119you can elaborate on that a little bit because I'm a bit confused over at this time and I think this has been about 6 months that it's been rolling around and again we're at the point to vote vot on it and there seems to be still some confusion as to what Dei means and why it's needed and maybe you could clarify some things well I think the the value like I said in terms of the declarative statement uh the value in having this policy is just that that um you know I know that every educator who works in the chure public schools and I I believe that every person on this deis believes that every student who walks through their building through our our doors regardless of background is valued um and that we will
120do whatever we need to do to provide them opportunities to be successful and um there are uh there's you know deep history uh that indicates that not all students have that same level of access to success and this outlines the steps that we will take as a school system to ensure that uh that happens I think we certainly try and do that now to the greatest extent that we can um but the policy you know really codifies that and uh sends a message to every member of our community about our commitment to to do so and maintain that commit thank you doctor for that clarification and that's exactly why I guess I'm so confused here because I'm not understanding why we wouldn't as a board of education and obviously my background is in education so
121I'm a little passionate about this why we wouldn't want every child who walks through our doors and every family who's behind that child and the community as a whole to know that we as a treasure Board of Education believe um in accepting every child that walks through our door regardless of wherever they've came from where their families come from Etc and that we believe in a diverse culture and how healthy that is for all students to have exposure to other peoples and religions and Etc and Etc and um Equity is something that stands for something different from being equal Equity is that we make sure sure the playing field is equal for every child right I mean and I I could go through a lot of examples of that especially with my special ed background
122and inclusion is exactly that I mean we saw that right in front of us today right we saw that with the children from Highland and the children from um chesher High School where they value each other as equal members of the school population whether they're a child with a disability whether they're in gen Ed whether they're purple pink white green whatever they all stood up here right in front of us holding that right that they were awarded because they know how to understand diversity understand inclusion and they all grew from that everyone grows from that exposure we have a general Ed population that can become passionate about students with disabilities and later on in life people that they're working with who may come in to a company or wherever with a disability they have that
123empathy build into them because what we have given them in the Treasure Public Schools so I will vote for the the um whatever I'm voting for but I'm voting for ity policy um yeah I I just want to say uh and Maria I agree with everything you just said uh and I I also believe that a uh a declarative statement like this isn't necessary because this school system has demonstrated through action that uh we believe in these things and I also uh believe that again this this policy is not needed because we already do these things and it's perhaps um you those who support this it maybe it makes you feel better that we have it but not needed it's not necessary and I I think uh you know the original um uh version of
124this was incredibly divisive um and would have would have passed probably the first meeting if uh I hadn't spoken up and if Mr perini hadn't done some research and uh spoken with cab and and asked their opinion on things um and and you know we've just gone through a very divisive election um and and and I think that that um you know we should have a more statements about perhaps uh reconciliation and about understanding each other and not about trying to um enact uh uh language that perhaps can be divisive instead of uh bringing people together because um the the final version of this even after it passed the uh the lawyers uh purview there was still language in there about applying an equity lens to everything that we do and no one could uh
125um Define for me what that meant and to have that language in a in a school policy that that essentially would override everything else that we do um I thought was unacceptable and luckily uh I saw it and and we got rid of it but again um that's to have even a a framework work on the books that can continue to be tweaked uh I think is dangerous um the actions that we take the laws that we follow make this one of the best school systems in the state of Connecticut and I don't think that uh having a layer on top of it like this is necessary I'm sorry but I respectfully disagree with you I can't sit here and justify one of your comments about saying that the actions that we take prove that
126we believe in um um diversity and equity and inclusion just because of what we do in our schools I don't know about you but I don't know what happens in every school in every classroom in every child's lunch table Andor on the bus or at the bus stop Etc that happens to him or her during the day I can't sit here as a board of member and say I know that all the actions that we take protect all of our children protect our families and we accept everyone so I again have to respectfully disagree with you that this says that we are expecting that to happen in our schools that that's what we believe is happening but this in writing it says it has to happen because that's what we believe I mean we are
127the guardians of what happens in those schools so you know I I mean I think we could just respectfully disagree and move on but you know I am passionate about this and have to disagree with you so should I just leave my button on because you know I'm going to come right back at you so fair enough um and I again respectfully disagree with you because what you're saying is is that we've been operating without any guard rails up until this very moment which is absolutely not true we have up hundreds of pages of policies and laws and and uh administrative directives again that has made this one of the best school systems in the state and this policy is not necessary it is not needed because we do all those things already just because
128we have a declarative statement even because we have a declarative statement doesn't make even this U uh change anything it changes nothing so just because we have it it changes nothing well again and and this is my last statement on it because I I think we just disagree but I can't say how many students are in our schools 42 4200 okay I can't say that every single one of those children when they walk through that door get off the bus and walk through the door and go into their classroom that they feel that they're included I know that not all of them do and you know it too so I don't think I know what you're going to say well this just because the words are written down means it's going to happen you're right
129it's not going to happen we can't say that those words are going to make every 4,200 kids feel a certain way but you know I'd rather go down saying this is what we believe in in chure that every child should feel that way and that we believe as a board of ed that kids are diverse people are diverse our families are diverse our community is diverse they need to be included and there needs to be equity and I I you know I fully agree with you Amry um this is this is very aspirational this language and um there's I don't think there's anything wrong with having aspirational um language because we do want to stand behind this as a board in my opinion um and you you know if if the argument that we don't
130need policies because we're doing it anyway then we probably don't need most of the policies that we have because we are following We are following policies We are following rules and we are following the law in chesher public schools um yeah I'll be supporting this policy I to than thank you to the policy committee I understand the length of time that it took to kind of navigate the legal Le of it all and the um board attorney for assisting with this um and I just want to just you know this policy acknowledges the things that we are doing and and I feel like it should underscore that you know this is a safe space this is an inclusive environment and we are being proactive and like an said you know there's nothing wrong with being
131proactive we don't always have to wait for the state to tell us what to do uh and we've we push on the superintendent to be Innovative this is one way to be Innovative to get ahead to to be really Progressive so again I I understand the work that went into this and I appreciate it and I I feel that we can move forward um I feel comfortable with what you guys have finally established within the Lang language so thank you for all your work Adam Tony wherever you are um and I will be supporting this so that being said there is a motion still on the table um if Miss heran can you read the motion again I think I can find it somewhere here that the board of chesher Board of Education give a
132third and final reading to policy 0523 equity and diversity and direct the superintendent to put said policy in to immediate effect all those in favor of the motion that is on the table three in favor all those who oppose the motion that is on to oppose motion passes next policy there is um needs to call for a motion yes uh the other policy for third reading and vote is 5114 suspension and EXP expulsion due process um this policy was reviewed and it's regulation containing statutory changes uh we did have Connecticut Association of boards of Ed c um they originally combined two other policies uh for easier reference the policy contains language that reduces the maximum number of consecutive days for in school susp suspensions for preschool to grade two and shortens the maximum out of
133school suspension from these for these grades from 10 days to 5 days um we have also been looking at this for several months and it has gone through all the readings and reviews and um I'm comfortable with this policy but let's see how this one goes you read the motion so I would move that the chesher Board of Education give a third and final reading to policy 5114 suspension and expulsion due process and direct the superintendent to put set policy into immediate effect is there a second Mr gripple second is there any discussion on policy number 5114 the motion that's on the table Mr gero um I just want to say I uh Dr herrian I I'm not sure if you said this already but uh this policy is very long um and what was
134written I guess through years or months or whatever of legislative committee where they've gotten down to a lot of minutia on how to handle ex uh expulsion cases um Dr Sol we we discuss this at length as well so um there wasn't a whole lot of changes to me made um there wasn't aspirational page that I think we kept in right so it was essentially untouched at the end of the day right I don't think we changed much of anything basically we had to combine two policies and um integrate the legal updates like the ones that um Dr herrian mentioned there the around the changes really things that honestly don't impact us ever we we don't suspend a lot of preschoolers right but we still want this policy yeah we still have to adopt it
135by law any other discussion on the motion okay so we have the motion to um approve policy number 5114 those in favor of the motion that is on the table unanimous thank you motion passes um next item if there are any other committees that need to be reported on nope okay we're going to move to um the approval of minutes for November excuse me November 21st I do need a motion if somebody could Mr Gro can you move that the Board of Education approved the minutes from meetings uh from meetings held on November 21st 2024 is there a second on that Mr White second um do we have any additions or corre CS that need to be made at this moment in time no okay um those who approve the minutes the motion on the
136minutes of November 21st 2024 all in favor unanimous motion passes thank you [Music] all uh next item Mr secretary are there any corresponden to be read sir um I am not in possession of any and I don't see digital any in my packet um I recall an email that we received I don't have let me see hold on Mr ziny no it was oh GE I forget the topic it was written by um let me see if it comes up here I don't know if it was oh uh Mr bester was that that was was that meant to be read or not yes it was okay I do have that you have it okay yeah I have it um uh to the members of the Board of Education and District administration I must admit I
137was disheart by some of the audience discourse at the last Boe meeting that called for book Banning in our school libraries I remain a firm firm believer that understanding others through Reading is a uh crucial Pathway to compassion and empathy that will allow us as a society to move forward in acceptance of and solidary with who may with I can barely read this evening um who may think and believe differently by giving in the fear we threat threat to relegate anyone who dares to live or Express themselves differently to a world of rejection and hate this is not a s sentiment uh that is shared by any moral spiritual or Humane standard that I know is particularly unnerving at a time in our history that is dominated by Relentless myth and disinformation the presence of
138many online groups that are organized to promote promote minority viewpoints as if all all of us agree with with their thinking I just want to to caution you that those who are not as passionate about such views should not be ignored just because we choose not to attend or listen in on public meetings please continue to respect and honor those of us who want our children and grandchildren exposed to a wide variety of multi-ethic viewpoints and cultural experiences I hope we can all agree on this that the daunting task before Educators is to prepare the upcoming generation for the time in which they will live I can only trust that you will not fall prey to the anxieties and fears of those who are too frightened to face the realities of an increasingly complex and
139mostly unknowable future John bester and that concludes correspondence thank you sir you're in the middle of chewing so but we are on to the superintendent report sorry I'll at school lunch talk and not having dinner catching up with me but anyway um we were oh thank you um this evening we're going to be um providing an overview of the pupil attit attitudes uh to self in school survey it was something that we had adopted last year and and really I'm really excited about this new frontier that we're engaging on I mean the for the school system we have been focused on uh social emotional learning as a goal for uh N9 years now and never really had a way to gauge what sort of progress we were making uh in that regard and this represents
140a tremendous opportunity for us to uh gain some understanding about how our students do perceive themselves and in their school environment um and it also allows us as buildings to focus on how do we best support our students to make sure that they are feeling uh positive about their school uh in experience because that only helps them be personally and academically more successful so you know what we're going to talk about tonight and what you'll see in our data is that um a lot like our academic data uh we do really well we do exceptionally well really across the board um we didn't become the eighth best school system in Connecticut per the district performance index by not reviewing our data and even though we're doing well identifying places where we think we could do
141better and that's a real Testament to every teacher par educator um an administrator who works in the school system as well as our our students and families so Marlene is going to uh take you through this uh overview of the past um and uh I I want to just uh add a few sentiments at the end some some thoughts that we've kind of distilled down after going through this process with our principles and um our staff over the course of this you know basically first semester Mary everybody still awake so you recall that um back a couple of years ago we had the presentation on this survey and we were very excited about it because we'd been working on social emotional learning for so long and we really didn't have a way of gauging whether
142our efforts were panning out out and we felt that we needed some way to determine how our how our kids were doing you know how did they feel what were their attitudes about school what were their attitudes about their teachers um because we're really focused on removing barriers to Student Success that's really what's at the heart of this so um you can see that there in that first page or second page that the success of how our students their our students experience is is really determined by their attitudes and the attitudes that they bring to learning and this assessment is got multiple ways of measuring students attitude to school to their learning and to their success and so we're using this this measure to look at it from the district from a really high level
143overview which you'll get tonight and then each of our schools looks at their own individual School data and then we look at that even further to the individual student so the way that this pass assessment is set up it's looking at nine what are called attitudinal factors so feelings about school how a student feels about their own learning capability their self-regard as a learner if they feel that they are what their behaviors and attitudes and learning situations are their attitudes towards their teachers their General work ethic how confident they are in their learning and their attitudes towards attendant attendance and their whether or not they feel that they're prepared to respond to the curriculum demands the way this assessment is set up it it sort of groups some of those factors into three buckets connectedness
144do they feel connected to school do they feel a part of things do they feel included and then their self-efficacy do they think that they can do it how confident are they do they feel prepared and then there's these General motivational factors about how much you know what their attitude is towards their work ethic and if they feel like they're putting in their best so on page five you can see that there are some color codes that go with the results and so the lowest level of satisfaction is we're talking about students or cohorts in the lowest 5% and then that green band is really pretty pretty wide it's the 31st to the 100th percentile uh if you'll skip to um the graphs so if you go past page eight and you can see this
145page we're out of order this first cohort is our grade K through 2 students so when you look at the overall percentages of students who who answered these questions their feelings about school in the percentage was really very high 94.6% preparedness for learning all of those are are high but if you look at the national um standardized measures below you could see that that's also still green but there's some variability there if you look at the next page you could see it broken down by school for that same for those same factors again that's a that's a healthy look there's some variability there and that's why the schools will be looking at their own individual School data and their individual student data if you turn to the next page this is a look at our
146grades three four and five so [Music] again you could see that self-regard as a learner their percent there was a little lower when compared that again that's that's just looking at the kids within those schools if you look down below in the green that tells you what how they measure up against other kids in the nation if you turn to the next page you could see that broken down by school so what stands out to us the yellow the yellow at Chapman School tells us that we need to look at what is what is this telling us about feelings about school because that's a lower a lower score when we look into that we see that it doesn't mean that it's the whole school doesn't even mean that it's the the a whole grade but
147you can kind of get to what that means so that would that is an area of focus at that school if you continue on to the next page that is our grades 6 through 12 so you're looking at secondary DOD and the high school the national percentages percentiles rather are at the bottom and you can see that there are some areas for Focus if you flip to the next page that gives all of the information 6 through 12 by school so each of our teachers I'm sorry well our teachers but each of our schools is looking at those and then they're coming up with some goals for themselves so if you look back on page six there is a goal statement there that this school is working on enhancing social emotional learning by addressing areas
148identified through the past survey data and they're looking at improving students attitudes towards attendance their feelings about school and self-regulation and that is aligned with our district Focus area and they talk about how they're going to analyze data what strategies they're going to be working on they're going to be engaging in professional development about integrating those seal practices into their daily routines and academic instruction and how they're going to engage families to supportal initiatives at home if you flip to the next page this is a middle school example the strategies and activities are certainly more um more um more detailed but by utilizing a responsive teaming approach and analyzing the past data and taking their knowledge of theal components they're going to work to support and enhance students social emotional learning and they're looking at
149improving their self-concept and fostering a positive School climate so one example of doing that is they've developed a loft a lunch Loft in the cafeteria they took some feedback from students about how loud it was in the cafeteria they made some changes to the amount of students who will be in there and they gave Alternatives such as the lunch Loft to help out they've also engaged in um professional development about an engagement rubric and how they went over that with the students during advisory about gauging their own level of Engagement in in the work because the work can be challenging and so that's something that I've heard many of our middle School teachers talking about as something that they were excited about doing this in this time before winter break and just two examples of
150some of the um some of the action steps that principles and teachers are taking to improve to to remove those barriers to learning that were identified in those in those past results com thank you thank you for this Marlene I'm curious I I may have missed it we're comparing ourselves to the nation here yes typically we're comparing ourselves to the state and other metrics I'm just curious yeah there's no um we this is a an assessment that's not required of all districts it's not required of all other towns so the the the metrics that are behind it are really for national standards and um sorry n it's um you know National standing and we don't have any they didn't give us a data set for the state no okay that makes sense um and also
151I appreciate this and I've seen in action in our own home what's happening at Norton and it seems to me like it's a good thing action steps being taken in the classroom so thank you for that we we've been focused on strategies by building so is is Marlene shared a couple of different um versions of building goals uh and as you know I said sharing some thoughts at the end um in the fall uh between meeting with principles and going in buildings and seeing the PD a lot of the PD that we had in November at least at all the elementary schools was coaching teachers in how to read this data um and we can drill down to the student level so you can see in your classroom uh where kids are uh and tailoring
152skills coaching to support that um and so when we were talking about do we look at districtwide goals we could establish districtwide goals um the building goals have been really powerful uh that we've seen because it's really focused to that cohort of students yeah as long as stuff is anonymized it's it's not going to be nearly as helpful as when the teachers have the right the individual information and it's I I feel like it could be really powerful and thus far it's been it's been surprisingly good uh and when I say surprisingly I'm speaking on more on behalf of a fifth grader so anyway thank you so I want you to think about this sort of from an srbi model so so most of what's Happening Here is to strengthen that tier one instruction that
153happens every day in the classroom and that's what we're doing some professional development around and that's what that engagement rubric was targeted to but then we also have that tier two and tier three where school counselors might pull kids who you know need an extra boost or different they might counselors might help teachers with navigating some leadership opportunities for students who might not necessarily navigate to that but who need that in their life and in their school life so um we have training focused for talking about training Focus for our school counselors for our school psychologists so it's really that tiered levels of support to remove those barriers and we've done a fair amount of training for our admin team too uh going through not just how to access the data but that second step
154how how does that um data turn into an action plan and that's what they ultimately engaged in with their their teaching staff so that um you know like I said it's it's turning the information into action that supports the students and and that's why it's so exciting because like I said we we were focused on strategies in the past but the strategies were um disconnected from data to tell us how that was going um it was all good stuff uh and I you know I know that when we initiated that many years ago we were at the Forefront um but didn't really have data to tell us exactly how we were doing and how to support students at that individual level we have school climate data but uh that is anonymized uh and that is
155valuable uh but it doesn't support individual student growth the way that this does which is has really been rewarding yeah I mean this in my mind what this does is at a high level it'll you to move resources around move people around and take action where it's most beneficial most needed and most beneficial so anyway thank you for doing this it seems to me like it's working really well and there are you know sheets of data here I mean you're looking at a lot of data points uh the nine indicators uh in various buildings and stuff like I said at the outset there's only one area in all that data where yellow shows up this this is green yellow and red in the reporting um you're not going to see red I the data overall
156is solid however you know we are always looking to find places to to evolve and to grow and that's where we're focused um with the buildings and supporting that you like a little snapshot of everything if I brought the actual reports they would be lengthy thank you Mr um Marlene can you just explain the difference between the mean percentage and the percentile score because it doesn't seem to well in my mind reconcile all that well because it's like I see one it's like U the mean percentage for feelings about school on on one of these was 87% but then it says the percentile score is 41.6 which would seem to be very low if from the way I understand a a percentile score normally so what what am I missing yeah you're you're not alone
157Adam we we we we had the um we spent some time with this and we had to revisit it a few times so the best way and Jee you can help me out here the best way I could explain it is these are all the percentages of kids who responded let's say affirmatively and this is that information compared against the National Standard so or or the or the or all the other kids in the country this is just our school this is against all the kids in the country right but then that would mean that it's like a pie in the sky standard because wouldn't this then um sort of allude to that the the percentile is like near 100% yes on everything which does not seem to be realistic at all I would think
158our results are pretty good but compared to this percentile that doesn't seem to make any sense yeah we've had those same conversations and the the data you know is normed and you know we we've gone back to the um the uh you know the rep who's been awesome by the way and helping us and you know we've had other conversations internally about do we do we kind of reshape the norms for our own local expectations a little um so you know this is really new um we've had two administrations and we're still you know kind of getting our feet underneath us as it relates to that but uh I I we we appreciate the question we have the same question okay I I definitely agree with you Adam I think you know feedback to the
159company would be that they need to adjust the bands the bands are way too the sticker shock of it all is like it's we're in the green if we're at the 31% which is not comforting to see at all and I know we dig a Little Deeper but if there's any way to align it we've done some of our other sorry so we've done that with some of our other assessments knowing the students that we have here and how they come to us and we've made adjustments to the band levels and so Jee and I have talked about doing that after we get through this second year because we we could also you know look at sort of like cut scores like we're not going to consider anything below this number truly as a green
160you know I mean there's such variability there that you know let's get through this year let's look at how these goals shake out for those individual schools and then maybe we look at if you have anything under you know 75% this is where your focus should be's one more question so does that mean that there's like one or two questions in each of the question sets that's heavily weighted and those are the questions that are throwing everything off is that kind of like what you're thinking because it seems like maybe there's a uh let's say the question set is like 20 questions and 18 of them are affirmative but there's two that are really the ones that they're looking at and those are the ones that are off or you know are are not what
161they were expecting yeah I don't know if that is exactly it I mean on the K2 there are 27 questions on the 3 through 12 there are 32 or sorry 50 questions so it is yeah it is it is different and certainly right okay I I can't expl fair question and that's we have the same question on some of that but um you know we do think that it's it's an entry point right and it's uh a place for us it's really uh ignited a lot of really good conversations and efforts uh around coaching these skills which before it was um it was definitely something that we were focused on obviously but it wasn't it wasn't always tied to how students are perceiving it and this is has really helped us to to establish goals
162and to really focus on these things with these strategies and we're going to monitor to see how those strategies influence results sorry just one last question so is this like 99th percentile is good and one percentile is bad or is it like you know if you're in that one percentile you're the best you know how is it reverse or how are we supposed to look at it the average if if you look at um the with the colors on it I believe it tells you what the average is and so but again that average is a pretty a pretty wide band yeah it's too wide it's too wide that's all it is again though when schools are making their goals they're not making them based on being in the red and the orange and the
163yellow they're making them based on looking at the green and picking the two or three areas where they're the lowest in the green to improve upon them so regardless of the color we're not going to get too hung up on that we're still going to look to in the low areas the relative weak areas to improve those and I I think from what I remember from uh seeing this information curriculum there's just a lot of information to be able to dig into to get to really get at what it what we need to improve upon yeah for example if when you look at the individual student reports um anything that that has not no green in it you're able to know who that student is and then follow up so any other comments questions thank
164you Marlene um Dr Solen yes um there are several other items uh that I want just quickly uh shoot through uh I did make an announcement to the community yesterday that uh treasure High School principal Dr Gad was intending on retiring at the end of the year um but kind of found uh what was more of a dream job for her but that starts on February 3D um so she made the difficult decision to um move on in the middle of the year and uh we have appointed our K through 8 curriculum coordinator Kevin Handlin uh who's with us tonight um to be the interim principal well we were already engaging in a search process um I roped in a number of students and staff to help create a recruiting video which we sent out
165um to all people who hold the administrative certification and uh the video has had over 900 views on our YouTube channel um so the position will be posted in January for people to be able to apply uh and um it's already available internally and we'll have an external post and work through the process our plan is to appoint that person for a July 1 start date but um you know if they happen to be available sooner that'd be great but uh not necessarily part of the plan or a requirement uh wanted to report that we had 25 visitors from uh China last week it was really a unique experience uh I want to thank all of our students who speak Mandarin and cantones at at the high school for helping facilitate that um they were
166here to uh the the visitors were here they're all Educators from from China at various levels and they were interested in um how to infuse more fun into education uh I tried to convince Vin to dress up as Tin Man again but um I guess we weren't that fun um so that didn't work out but uh they did learn a few things and uh it was a great experience to have lunch with them and our kids to have lunch with them it was it was fun um we celebrated our groundbreaking on our two brand new schools this week uh Monday uh just again want to thank the community and you know the countless people who uh have played a significant role in getting us to this place where we are uh improving our community and
167improving our school system improving opportunities for kids uh through the construction of these allowing us to um best meet their needs not just you know academically but you know with the community needs and Recreation I gave everybody a packet that is the itinerary for the groundbreaking and the uh acknowledgments on the back but I also in that packet have included a couple of items that I'm assuming the um the nextg school building committee uh um approved this evening uh they had been reviewed by the Town Council um these are notifications that are going to people who live in the neighborhood around the two schools uh that include a uh timeline of construction it includes uh in one case the uh on the Norton uh drawing it's got uh it shows where the fence will be
168for the construction zone and things like that so it's pretty informative uh and I just wanted you to have this in case you do get questions from Neighbors uh or have questions yourselves uh about uh construction there are contacts here uh that can help their their onsite to be able to guide people through any questions that they may have so it's a great resource that resource is also available on our Chester Public Schools website under school modernization you can check that out uh lower leftand corner School modernization and and those resources are there um in there the documents you you will see that uh we held the gr groundbreaking this Monday but the actual construction itself won't begin until January 10th at both sites so we're really excited about that you know that that it's
169the day is is really pretty close to here um of course the closer we get to that that point of opening our buildings uh the closer we are to red districting our schools uh to uh best me our our needs and balance our our uh buildings so that will uh be initiated this spring and when I say initiated I mean starting to work with uh vendor on um pulling together the the enrollment data uh so that we can start this process so that by next Fall by the time that we're engaging in the budget process we have a sense of how many people do we expect at each building and making sure that um working into that next year that subsequent Year's budget that we're all in a place to be able to make good
170decisions about uh what sort of resources are necessary in those places so uh that's the plan with our our school construction stuff uh finally I want to just acknowledge um one of our members of the audience this evening suu Yang uh Mr Yang has been been visiting us from gangan do province and um South Korea all semester when I tell you this man is um the consumate professional uh he's just such an impressive educator uh his character and his commitment are incredible uh he has a massive fan club at Highland School and will be desperately Miss uh when he returns home uh for the holidays uh this will conclude his program here in uh United States and we just want I just want to say thank you so much for uh everything you've done for
171our kids and our community uh not just academically but the cultural component has been awesome so thank you very much suo thank you uh and finally uh I'm I'm assuming I'm not entirely sure why our other student rep Malachi baa wasn't here today but my guess is he's resting his face because uh two days ago he found out that he was accepted to MIT and I haven't seen him stop like grinning ever since that an incredible accomplishment so um just want to give a shout out and congratulate Malachi I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to do so next month but I wanted to share that great news with you that concludes my report thank you any questions comments for the superintendent Mr Gribble uh just a question on the uh po the student population study
172the redistricting redistricting study yeah um I know um most of us were I think all of us we're we at the uh the reception uh over at Byron's uh what was that couple was that last night couple night last night yeah last night and it's certainly a topic of discussion was all the new development going on in town uh good or bad depending on who you talk to but um is there I'm assuming all of that development had been sort of taken into account when we we calculated the size of these schools because when I drive by the North End and I'm like gee those are some big condos over there like that can hold a lot of people like so was that sort of like already taken into account when we when we sized
173everything or sure great question yeah so we worked with de demographers pretty closely in that process when we initially designed the schools if you remember but then um you know that was a couple of years ago right and so things have been approved since then and things have evolved a little bit but one of the elements that we built into the design at each building was a space to make additions if necessary and that could still be integrated into um the build if necessary so I think we'll be paying very close attention to that the the great news is that we've gone through a lot of the bidding process at both building so far and we're um pretty well under the budget at this point um and so there is room to be nimble to
174a degree uh if that need need is is um you know comes up through this process uh so I know that this updated review will include everything that's not not only stuff that's that's built but also approved um because there are calculations for you know how many uh occupants you can expect at certain size dwellings and stuff like that that you know we'll spend I'm sure Vin and I will spend a lot of time with the demographers and our planner and other relevant Town officials to make sure that we are capturing everything that's you know available to us all the everything that we possibly can when we do the redistricting but it'll also like you know I said inform the build if necessary thank you Dr Solen I just have one question do we have
175kind of a process for the uh princi ipal search as far as in phases uh how many interview cycles and so on before it gets to the board um we don't yet I mean generally speaking um we plan on uh like I said kind of casting a a wide net uh there's been good interest so far uh we will U try and what we try and do is bring in as many candidates as we possibly can for an initial screening uh just to make sure that the resume and the individual kind of aign uh are they articulate uh do they um we've already engaged in some solicitation of of feedback from the stakeholders at the high school level about the things that they're looking for in a new principal uh from parents staff uh students
176and we've actually been interviewing um staff so uh that we'll kind of gauge these people against that criteria and then we'll um engage broader stakeholders after we weed out folks that clearly don't meet that criteria but it was difficult to tell on paper um so that that'll probably be uh toward the end of February uh we kind of knew that the budget season in January would be pretty consuming so that's really when people will be applying at the end of that we'll start screening so I we'll get through that process and then move to stakeholders including the board right thank you I know haven't gone through the Norton process it was yeah pretty rigorous um so thank you um there is no old business so we move on to new business um I do have
177a few items just to kind of reiterate um already with what the superintendent had already said the first is the the I have groundbreaking news on the groundbreaking so anyway um for those at home and those who weren't able to join us on Monday we laid the foundation for our children's future with two incredible new schools so for me I felt like it was really an inspiring month for our school district and um celebrating the groundbreaking of the new North school and Norton Elementary Schools um and I truly believe like these events are a testament to the our collaborative spirit and our dedication to the community so um I just want to extend you know our thanks to everyone who played a role as the superintendent stated um our current and former Board of Education
178members Our Town leaders and just overall the supportive community so and and thank you again for investing in the future of of Education in Cheshire in addition to that um again the school naming process for the North End School has officially begun I believe um there was I think the solicitation of naming proposals was published in the paper already V not yet okay so but I encourage the public to participate share the recommendations based on the criteria that is uh or will be outlined um because I feel as though it's a unique opportunity to leave a lasting mark on our district so um your input is invaluable so thank you for your continued support as we embark on the these transformative projects um the next item I do want to address is um recent events
179such as the tragic school shooting in Madison Wisconsin um I feel that it reminds us of the critical importance of maintaining a safe and secure environment for our students and staff and I want to assure our community that the safety of our schools remains our highest priority um I do want to thank um take a moment thank Dr Solen our school administration and local law enforcement for their ongoing efforts to keep our schools safe um in their proactive measures in planning and and the dedication provided providing us a sense of security um that allows our kids to learn and grow um lastly as we approach the holiday season and the end of the year i' take a moment to extend my warmest wishes to our community this time of year reminds us to reflect on
180the progress we made the challenges we face and the strength of our Collective efforts so I hope everyone enjoyed is a restful and joyful holiday season filled with family and friends and the like so I look forward to all that we um achieve next year together in the new year so let us continue to work together for the betterment of our students families and community and that concludes my report so thank you everybody happy holidays thank you to the four that are here with us and the next item is adjournment we will yes sir I hear you I I just wanted to ask a question before um move to tournament um I'll say I'll ask this very delicately of Dr Solen has the Staffing challenges that we had at the beginning of the year um
181are they on schedule to be um uh reestablished by January if that riddle makes any sense to you you know I'm pretty fatigued um I don't want to draw the eye of uh others not not sitting here know what you're talking about yes so um I I would say uh halfway yeah I think yeah we're we're getting there we're we're getting there yeah that's uh still being resolved um all right contractually or or just contractually okay yeah got got you all right thank you thank you Mr gr before we adjourn I do want to acknowledge the upcoming meetings that we have um so on Monday January 6 7 pm. the policy committee will be meeting at humiston um and then we go to Thursday January 9th at 7:30 um looking forward to the presentation of
182the budget here at Town council chambers Monday January 13th at 7 um a curriculum committee meeting at humiston boardroom and then Thursday January 16th 7:45 will be our regular business meeting here at Town council chambers um and then there's a breakdown again for the budget meeting schedule January 9th will be here at Town council chambers at 7:30 where the superintendent would present the budget um January 14th uh we have DOD Middle School would be the location that's at 7 o' where the public um it's a public budget review and the administrative review of accounts Jan 16th we're here at Town council chambers and at 7:30 for the Board of Ed Board of Ed business meeting we moved to January 21st at to do again for 7:00 um another public budget review and administrative review of
183accounts January 23rd we're at DOD Middle School 7 PM this would be the public informational meeting board of board member responses to the superintendent's budget adoption of a board of education budget budget if possible hopefully and then lastly we have January 30th if we need it um a special meeting of the Board of educ Education to adopt um the board education budget and so December 23rd to January 1st we have winter break schools are closed and then January 20th we will be off for Martin Luther King Jr Day schools and central office will be closed on that date