001of Education M jensi roll call please pres here here here thank you please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance Al flaged States thank you um before we move on I'd like to request if members could make a motion to amend the agenda Dr herrian yes I'd be happy to um I move to amend the agenda to add executive session after new business so it would be a new item number six on the agenda to discuss teacher contract negotiations and it would include correct me if I'm wrong Mr Mariana Miss Solano and Dr Solen can I get a second on that Mr Aki all in favor of amending the agenda unanimous thank you oh Mr R um if there are any audience members that would like to go to the podium and speak please do
002so just gonna it's the new school year so I'm practicing wait time so yeah seeing nobody up at the podium we're going to move on and I will forward this item to Dr Solen for opening of school report thank you madam chair uh ladies and gentlemen we have our traditional opening of schools presentation for you if you'd like to um move down to the front row we'll get things set settled e first of all you know before I I kick things off and hand it off to to these guys to add um some flavor about what we did around operations and curriculum I just want to take a moment to thank our administrators who are in attendance this evening uh there's a lot of work that goes into and you'll see some of the fruits
003of that work uh through the presentation but there's a lot of work that goes into preparing for New Year uh with new initiatives and welcoming new students and hiring staff so I just want to take a moment to acknowledge you guys here thank you very much for everything you do so without further Ado I'll introduce our chief operating officer Mr Vincent massiano thank you Dr Solen good evening ladies and gentlemen I am going to give you a brief review of school district District Operations for this summer and I'm going to start with the new schools which I know everyone in this room is aware that we're building two new schools there was a$ 166 million referendum that was passed in 2022 and we've been working in Earnest on that project I'm just going to skip
004down to the bottom section of the slide the um the most important thing is the schools are still on track to open in August of 2026 we've completed schematic design we are in the process of finalizing the detailed design and we'll be actually meeting with the board in a couple of weeks to get approval for the final design before we can go to bid um you could see there construction is scheduled to begin in December of 2024 that's the official groundbreaking real hardcore construction but you know what I wanted to update everyone on tonight is that we actually did start some preconstruction this summer I'll talk about that in the next couple of slides slides so this is just a uh view of the new North End uh School's final design and there's more information
005available on the website um at the chur Public Schools just look for school modernization so in July we did do some initial work at the new North End you'll see that that grassy area um was really the start of the work and by the time August came all the grass was gone and then moving around tons of the um tons of the top portion of the site which is very graded you know from high to low they've done quite a bit of Earth workor already if you drive by the site at Maran and Jarvis you can see roughly where the school building will be it's the flatter area um I know that Mr grippo drove by the site and he thought it looked like kind of a small setting for a building but it's going
006to be a pretty large building and you you could see it much more clearly clearly uh today than you did even a couple of weeks ago at the Norton School site this is a just a rendering of the final design and at Norton we also did preconstruction you know this was in July when they started the work um and this is that same scene this is the backside of Norton school and they had to cut the roadway that went uh around the back of the building where there's some parking that had to cut that roadway closer to the building because when construction begins in December where the existing roadway was will be part of the school construction site and it will be fenced off we also removed some playground equipment uh but we were able
007to leave the swing set uh in the back of the school and then at the front of Norton uh this is a a view and if you're familiar with Norton the playground used to end where those two large trees are on the left side of the screen and you'll see there's a lighter colored area that's all mulched now so we expanded the size of the playground in the front of the school which will be needed when construction begins in December because we lose all that playground area in the back space um and we do intend to add some additional um play areas for the students to replace what is coming off the back so that that is in process and that's concludes the new school so now I'm back to the things that we did
008on the old schools I gave you an easy question this year and the question is what's wrong with what you see here so that pipe in addition to the grass needing cutting and by the way that's mostly crab grass because we can't use chemicals on our Lawns but the the pipe on the left side that was part of an underground drainage system at the front of chesher high school um we noticed actually was reported by John parisina our athletic director he noticed a small hole in the driveway right outside the front door and when he looked down the hole it looked like it went down pretty deep and so what was happening is the result of the whole investigation was the drainage system that was installed you know 20 plus years ago had some issues
009this this damaged pipe might have been that way for the last 20 years so water wasn't draining properly and it washed out the fill beneath the driveway fortunately it was caught and there was no caveen of the driveway but that was part of the work that had to get done this summer so I have just a few pictures here for you this um opening this is the front of chesher high school this opening is where that drainage pipe that was bad had to be replaced um this is the equipment that was used you know to do some of the site work this crane actually has nothing to do with this project this crane was used because we were placing the roof on the backside where the main office is of chesher high school um just
010a couple of you know points here U Not Unusual we had 10 weeks to get ready for the new school year graduation was June 12 and we were ready by convocation date on August 26th all our buildings opened um we finished the replacement of the fire alarm at DOD that happened over the course of last year so that's installed and it's working and it's been approved by the fire department and um you know that's that was a long-term project we're going to be probably starting on du Little's project next to replace their fire alarm system this is the new Refrigeration uh you know both refrigeration and um uh let's see that is cooler and that is the um freezer at Chester high school that was replaced by the loaning dock this is the new condensing
011boiler that went into Dot and I'm very excited about this particular project this is a shot of the newly renovated West gy lockers this was one of the projects that we were deficient from an ADA compliance point of view um this project has been in the works for a long time and this is the last project that needed to be done to complete the um ADA compliance at cheser high school so the significance of that is is that we'll get will get out of the compliance monitoring stage at cheser high school once this is finished and and those will be open in the next week or two um they look the picture doesn't do it justice really because it's much much nicer uh and a lot better than it's ever been right Mary yes and
012John okay uh last thing that I wanted to update you on is uh this is a slide from last year at Highland Elementary School um where we had a make room everywhere including you know a closet area that was converted so that some of us staff could continue to work and this is actually in the hallway where we have some of our learning support and other staff so this was last summer um Highlands enrollment is at 913 students right Scott got um we were at about 850 you know as we entered last year so that enrollment has definitely gone up you know the board has been working on a project um to add modu class rooms we did break ground at Highland about a week ago so that uh project is in the works we
013will be adding two modu classrooms if you're familiar with the backa Highland this is the two portables that are there are to the left of this this is that gazebo area and the two new Portables will added will be added right along that back side and attached to this particular structure so it'll be very nice when it's done we're expecting that the uh work will be completed somewhere around Thanksgiving so we'll be occupying that for the second half of the school year uh there is you know uh all the classrooms are up and running and Scott had a very good contingency plan knowing that these weren't going to be online you know we will need these certainly for the second half of this year and next year as a moment is expected to continue to
014grow which is part of tonight's presentation and this is a fire that um had to be moved as part of this process so that's why it's in the picture that was on the far corner and with that I am going to um wrap up with just a couple of key points from each of the departments in School District Operations on the um Human Resources side we did Welcome 46 new employees this summer um about 30 of those were were teachers we had 25 transfers between buildings uh we are continuing with our health and wellness program Pinewood Derby uh which will be our fifth annual we're going to try and unseat Marlene's three consecutive wins sorry four and we're going to start bowling again on September 16th so we've got enough teams to to roll on
015without chesher Public Schools bowling league uh Transportation our buses have been running uh we did have to add one addition type one route because of the number of students and this was particularly at uh Norton and ditt the uh buses are Fuller than they've been you know since the pandemic so we are um definitely starting to see some of the impact of increased enrollment at the elementaries rolling through and into our transportation routes uh technology we did add a new we replaced an older workorder system with the new up and running working fine uh we did give out the new seventh grade Chromebooks just this past week those will stay with the students till they graduate 12th grade uh food and nutrition I just wanted to mention that last year uh all students receive free
016breakfast that program is no longer available what the state did do this year is anybody that is eligible for reduced lunch gets their lunch free so that um you know is is an important change you know we also were looking at the numbers our total free and reduced population is um up to about 17% right now and that's up from where we were at around 15% over the last couple of years so that seems to be climbing just a bit uh and I believe I might have mentioned this to the board but we were composting at Chapman last year as a pilot uh and we will be adding now will be composting there starting probably in October so that'll be two schools where we'll be composting the student um what's what's left of their meals
017um you know budget's approved up and running we're already starting I work for the 25 26 budget as I said all our buildings open on time all our major and minor minor projects are done with the exception of opening up that West gym uh Locker are high school and I just want to you know thank the School District Operations team they always you know do a good job you know for us not only over the summer but over the school year and with that I will turn it over to miss salano thank you I'm toming you I know you the harmony that exists inside so this is just an opportunity for us to share what this amazing team does over the summer so so many times you run into people who say oh do do
018the principles work over the summer as administrators do you have the summer off and the answer is no it's a really nice Pace during the summer but there's a lot that happens so I'm going to just highlight four of the things that have happened this summer and we'll start with the curriculum writing Institute this is um a picture obviously of the entire crew who was there this summer at Highland all of our teachers and Kevin and I um we usually work with a a consultant um that person was unavailable this summer so I was really grateful to the administrators and to Kevin for all the work that was done to rewrite so much of so much of our curriculum this summer and these are just this is just a highlight of some of the units
019that were written this summer and and the way that this worked was we had checkpoints during and throughout the week so they would check in with an administrator as a thought partner to continue their their process so you can see we had some units written on governance and human rights on the origins of US democracy and national identity our math department came together and really reworked their six through 12 scope and sequence they began looking at a new textbook for our algebra class World Language work worked on a unit for language and grammar I'm sorry world literature the earth science depart um earth science class looked at tectonics so it really was a very large or very uh certainly a diverse group of units that was written so the process now is that teams of
020us are led by Kevin and I are reviewing and providing feedback to those teachers that started over the summer but it's a lengthy process and they will make adjustments to those units um as they go the other part that is whoops um this is a picture of some of our our high school Folks at a table working and other other piece of the curriculum writing institutes that's really helpful is the training that we Infuse into that week so we had a woman named Elba yanton Cruz come and work with our staff on um sorry um culturally responsive curriculum and she spent one day or one morning with us working on this she's a consultant who we've worked with from Aces and the surveys that we did at the end people took a lot away from
021from that experience and having that in the beginning of the week helped them keep that at the Forefront as they wrote curriculum during the week we did have folks on hand for the Next Generation science standards as they did storyl lining to enrich our science lessons and of course all of our curriculum is written in in sort of a backwards design model and we continue to infuse all of those curriculum units with the model 2 instruction and strategies from building thinking classrooms book that we're in a two almost threee series of reading a pictures some of some of our other that's our preschool team with Kim desert up at the top they were working on our transition kindergarten program and that's the entire team the next thing that most of you already know about was
022educator evaluation and I put this slide up here just to highlight the folks who did some work on that as well that was our committee we submitted that to the state over the summer and then spent time both with our district instructional leaders and with our administrative team really delving into what does that evaluation system look like and what does that mean and how will we carry out the details of that as we go into this year so summertime was also spent focused on teacher avow the other piece that I think is is really a large part of what happens in the summer is that all the administrators in this building along with volunteer teachers because this is typically done by committee hired all of the for all of these positions so for every one
023of those positions there's a screening committee there's a first round of interviews and almost in every case there's a demonstration lesson which means you're pulling kids together over the the summer to make sure that teachers are giving a demonstration lesson at usually at summer school um and then of course their top candidate goes and meets with Jeff Solen as our superintendent for the final interview and when he's not available I am able to meet with them so I'm trying to impress upon you that this is a lengthy process we don't take this lightly and that this everyone who sits on those committees also needs to have gone through some training in equity according to New State mandates to make sure that we are inclusive of of all people in our process so once these teachers
024are hired then we get to new teacher orientation which also takes a village so um Jeff and Vinnie and I do a welcome tour of the community we show folks where all of the schools are and talk to them and really try to make sure they understand the community of chesher when they come here we go over the Strategic initiative so that everyone who's coming in understands what our Focus areas are but also how we do business so they need to understand our responsive responsive classroom philosophy um Erica bordino and Kristen lopo have worked for the last two years with every one of our new elementary teachers really orienting them to that philosophy before they start in school and um in addition to that there's technology support sessions for every one of our new teachers
025and Scott Conway has run those this year making sure people know how to access everything that we have available that they know how to um put in a ticket for a technology issue or for a broken window let's say so we we try to make sure we're covering a large area Robin KY comes and speaks to all of our new teachers about special education services and all of the programs that are available to us Kevin talks to our teams about curriculum and our curriculum library and where they can find that and who are the people to go to if they need help and accessing anything um even our cea comes and welcomes our new staff then they go to a building orientation where they meet with the administrator they get a tour and they hear
026really specifically about building things um they end that their three days with some time in the classroom and then as this month kicks off they will all be assigned a mentor so whether they are a brand new teacher to the district or if they are a a veteran teacher coming from somewhere else everyone gets assigned a mentor for the year so we've we survey Folks at the end of every year to find out how we can improve on our process and we have a team Coordinating Committee that looks at this new teacher orientation and makes changes to it as necessary so that kind of gives um quite the overview of our new staff but I also want wanted to highlight transition kindergarten and I kind of feel a little silly putting this up here but
027this was something that happened over the summer because I didn't get a picture of our transition K classes but we know that they are um bursting and we know that families who are there are very grateful for the approval of that program and we've heard from our kindergarten teachers what a difference just in the few first few days the kindergarten seems the kindergarten classes seem to be the year because of course they're all older than any other class we've had so I would say we've had um a busy but successful summer so thank you thank you marleene um just to put a a punctuation mark on Marlene's point about the cultur culturally responsive pedagogy and how valuable that is uh just today we had our data around the students in our school system who speak
028a language other than English at home and we have the largest number that we've ever had 551 students roughly 13% of our chure public school students speak a language other than English at home so um that's a a population that's growing pretty significantly you want to throw something in there I do I want to throw one not ourn when we HED I think while number and there really two reasons why people Public Schools either number one they're retiring or number two which many of these folks can attest you get a call in the middle of the summer that dad is going to take a job in their children's school or the school that's right down the street so that's really where we except I justed toow in there that colorful slide look like a lot
029the the retirees and the folks who have young families and travel quite a distance to be here uh one person said to us uh that just resigned uh last month that um I walk my child to school now that's where I work so you know we don't have a lot of folks that leave retention isn't an issue in the chesher public schools but um we had a lot of retirements and added also new positions this year which made the hiring season a little busier than typical uh so now on for our school opening um if there's a question that I get asked if there's a question I'm ask P more than anything else over the 10 weeks that is the summer it's you know what's what are you guys doing this year what what are
030you doing at one point uh as you could see there I was growing in a beard for my role at convocation Kelly gillow was convinced I was Walter White from Breaking Bad like there are all sorts of hypotheses out there about what's going to happen and so we love to have fun with it you know school should be fun uh it should be fun for our kids it should be fun for our staff and we we want to create that environment where our people look forward to coming back I know a lot of teachers across the state uh maybe Across America that that first day back to school is kind of drudgery and um we work really hard and that's a a collaborative effort from Vin marleene Mike salamini Carol a lot of people pitching
031in to make it this return to school positive and a fun place to be and I think we hit the mark again this year uh I would still pay good money to see Marlene break dance on the stage at Treasure high but maybe we'll get that at Christmas or something special uh I keep holding out hope but what we did do this year was Guys Grocery Games um aside from the astonished looks uh from the Shoppers at shopright in Wallingford thank you to Don drust for uh hosting us there uh we had a lot of fun as I was Guy FTI and uh we we had our celebrity chefs everybody from the maybe the best known Martha Stewart to uh Chef Boyard D and Swedish Chef from the Muppets um what you'll see here in
032the picture if you look closely that is one of our special guest judges um and we had Erica bietti who's incredibly well credentialed to judge uh how our people made school lunches uh we had some guy that worked the Zepp Festival uh or the the sanaro festival like helping prep Zepp in 1973 uh in Brooklyn who should shall not be named and then we had uh vron Rondo kind of stole the show he was really uh gracious with his time and uh and working with our our chefs um convocation like I said we kick things off we welcome people back uh what really isn't identified in in these slides is that you know we've spent a lot of time over the last year talking about how do we ju up what we do in the
033classroom how you uh spent time last year working on making thinking visible and we have recipes uh that we work collaboratively on as teaching teams and how do we how did they work you know do we need a little bit more SP here a little bit more meat hit there you know what what do we really need to make sure kids engage in complex thinking and and deep learning so a lot of my remarks that day were about you know the theme of Jing it up but also spent a lot of time talking to our faculty about uh social emotional skills and how important social emotional uh learning is woven into what we do every day and and something like building thinking classrooms is really a great intersection for that but if you haven't seen
034uh the Youtube video yet you can go to our treasure Public Schools YouTube and see not only the complete Guys Grocery Games but the comments around social emotional learning and uh you know how we Infuse that into our complex thinking I also am excited to share that each of our board members has their own Jed up apron uh chesher Public School Jed up apron so sure I know Tony was keen on a new apron so yeah but uh so that VIN will model after the meeting yes absolutely he loves to do that um we were also thrilled to introduce do little schools Christine diorio is our treasure Public Schools teacher of the year uh she there's been a lot of attention around the emotional challenges uh in the with the work uh for teachers and
035kind of where Connecticut's teachers are and she gave a a great message about um how to find balance as a teacher uh that's also on our YouTube page we were thrilled to introduce Elizabeth Crawford from chesher high school as our par educator of the year she she's got an incredible backstory uh having traveled and lived around many places in America she's from Arkansas and uh it does a tremendous job supporting our students at chesher high school as well as our staff and families so our school by school reports I just want to run through enrollment I know there's been a lot of conjecture and and interest and where are we with our school enrollment you'll see the numbers in italics are projected enrollment uh as of last year and then the Bold is our actual
036enrollment um it's it says first day of school but it's actually as of today we we updated it today so Darcy school we have some great shots of our kids you'll see that each school that I go through will have pictures of our kids at the start of the school year it's always really exciting so our transition program as uh Marlene said has been really successful and well received uh we have great enrollment there there's a par educator and a teacher in there uh in each class uh and that the folks that are in that class are thrilled about the opportunity it Chapman School kick things off lot of smiling faces so our enrollment there um just slightly above the projections five students above the projections so uh you'll see throughout the presentation that pretty
037much every place is is close to the projections uh there's not tremendous variability and as you know the projections have you know increased pretty significantly and will continue to increase over the next few years it do little school again you know close to the projection uh 12 students below the projection but still you know pretty close uh I think this is our only School actually that is below projection but not by much that was Mr Jeffrey just like it was only because there are so many kids in the building he had to squeeze in he's always reminding us about how many kids there are all right so um just slightly above projection here by one student uh but is been mentioned we were at 850 last year uh in 13 this year so really illustrative
038of the growth that we've seen at that building or really the whole North End of town with the construction and everything and housing turnover at Norton school so our enrollment here spot on with the projection it for 27 you know sometimes in August we're running into positions where you know we have to hire a teacher we have to um you know maybe not hire a teacher uh but this year with the projections we went very smoothly DOD Middle School ignite your spark obviously the theme to kick off the year there at DOD so getting slightly above projections here 17 students finally treasure High School such a great tradition to see our kids in their senior t-shirts our enrollment at chesher high slightly above projection well 31 students is the highest we are above projection but
039as a percentage not dramatically higher so overall overall excuse me our enrollment summary uh we are 56 net students above projection uh for this year uh again that's a number that's continuing to grow uh just a couple of years ago we were at 4,000 uh so we are growing you know as predicted um and as our relatively smaller classes at the high school age out and graduate our enrollment will continue continue to increase uh at the bottom line our open Choice student enrollment uh is still pretty re robust uh it would be our preference to have greater enrollment with kids beginning in the early grades unfortunately given the in you know exceedingly High enrollment we have in our Elementary grades we don't have space to add more students for example you'll see no openchoice students
040at Highland at all and uh you know we are constantly evaluating the development on the north end of town so Stonebridge Crossing has one and two one two and three bedroom apartments make becoming available for lease on October 1st uh just like we did last year with soderman uh I think it's sodman way we um unilaterally re kind of redistricted that area to Chapman School and we'll do the same thing with Stone Bridge Crossing so for new people who move in there we will transport you to to Chapman rather than Highland and when we redistrict in in 2026 you'll be ending up going to the new school anyway yeah Tim sure housing units opening between now and June or over the next two years and also an estimate the projected estimate from town hall Economic
041Development whatever it is about uh new kids in town sure so uh the estimates you know can kind of be hard to track you know because they're their estimates what we have is actuals and I'll be happy to share that with the board uh tomorrow the actuals that we have from the new developments in addition uh Vin and I meet with the town Planner on a fairly regular basis to check in on new construction new openings things that are are coming up uh on the market there's uh I think you've heard a proposal for 30 new homes uh really right down the street from our North End School and at this point really any sort of fluctuation we're we're really well positioned to manage uh if indeed that site gets approved uh the construction plans
042for both new buildings include little carve outs if you will that if the enrollment were to increase even during the course of construction we could expand the building and accommodate several more classrooms so you know we're we're pretty well positioned to be flexible um if indeed enrollment does continue to SP Spike at least in terms of our ele Elementary management at the high school or excuse me at the middle school with only about 650 kids at our Max uh back when I was principal we had about 900 kids there so it it's tight and it's uncomfortable but doable um and so I think we're we're okay in terms of navigating that but I'll share the actual enrollments we get yeah people I mean I've heard from people you know you build those houses you're G
043to have all these or not even houses Apartments you're going to have all these kids move in sure like a say one bedroom apartment I don't remember two-bedroom apartment I don't think we're going to have lots of kids move in but I'm just curious to see what the projections are that Planning and Zoning probably gets before they approve something maybe not always I don't know all the rules but I know there's projections that are put out before um developments are approved and then do a postmortem on it a couple years later some projects on and just see how the up with the projections that's a fair request I mean there are projections the demographers when they meet with Planning and Zoning uh try and I think in many cases maybe not every but many cases
044uh predict the enrollment um I know we are working with the town in tracking that sort of data so I'll see if we can get the projections uh which I I know we don't have at the moment um but we can probably compile them VN is there anything you want to add there you're coming out of your chair are all the new developments how many students are out develop actual number students the it's not a lot i' rather share the numbers you know because I don't want to I don't remember the exact num no no that's but we are tracking that um and you're right there is a projection one and two bedroom apartments are not expected produce many students you know from the new North End and there's about 300 apartment units when it's
045fully built out yeah um but we can share that we are tracking it monthly and we are sharing it with Andrew Martelli over an economic de and then the town planner so the only thing that we have to add to that is what the original projections are um the other thing that I'm going to mention is you what we're seeing is a lot of growth just from housing turnover so it's not only the new developments that are driving some of the higher enrollment it is housing turnover yeah yeah if you if you've lived here for more than 10 minutes you realize that a house goes on the market it's off the market and uh often more often than not there are kids moving into that house so uh their the housing turnover has been at
046least as big a uh variable for us in terms of the enrollment growth is the new developments have been so uh that leads me to the final part of my presentation which is around our strategic planning and uh just a a quick review of our mission statement as uh I highlight that several years ago um 2017 we adopted two goals uh really focused on our social emot learning and complex thinking um shortly thereafter we uh reviewed our treasure performance standards and revamped our performance standards uh to is part of our vision of The Graduate at chesher high school and our neas uh the New England Association of secondary or schools and colleges and they um accredited chesher High School uh with our updated performance standards and our Community again in 2021 reviewed our Direction and
047they uh again in the board affirmed our Focus uh on complex thinking and social emotional learning uh I would say it's been pretty good to us and it's been good to our kids um but what does that really mean and so we have two theories of action one for social emotional learning and the other for complex thinking and uh as you can read I I I don't want to read every slide to you but this is our um theory of action around social emotional learning uh what are some of the strategies uh you can see that's one of my favorite videos of all time working in the chesher public schools that a parent sent to us of a kindergarten student D or yeah kindergarten student at Darcy um practicing mindfulness showing mom like mindfulness I'm
048hopeful that you know it wasn't because Mom was needed mindfulness at that moment but um he was showing her counting and breathing and taking dandelion breaths and uh it's pretty awesome when you know you can teach a child a skill like that that helps them navigate uh their entire life uh so we do a lot of uh embedding seal into our work into our complex thinking perfect example I was in a a class the other day where student students uh I think it was day three of school and they had to do uh math problems as part of their fluency practice and you know the question was how many people are feeling a little nervous about this first math fluency and few hands went up and all right let's take a breath you know and
049and just coaching those skills uh are really valuable and you know at that young age it's the same skills we're teaching kids at chesher high school before they take AP exams um and it it it's helpful um so uh these are some of the strategies that we employ uh most recently we adopted the pupil attitude about self and school survey we've already been using that data to support students in unique ways uh most notably last year we started to look at students that were chronically absent and their results and how can we uh support them to be better connected and feel emotionally grounded uh and positively connected to the school to improve their attendance and therefore uh performance our uh theory of action around complex I'm sorry please can you a little about team Mental
050Health First sure so at the high school we have a Teen Mental Health first aid program I think we're the only school in Connecticut uh that has that basically students are taught about uh it really D stigmatizes mental health issues how to identify mental health issues in yourself and others and appropriate ways to guide uh to support how to talk to an adult about a mental health issue finding supports and and services to address those issues Mary is there anything you want to add to that no just the key piece is they learn to go to a trusted adult always if you recognize something you have to see a trusted adult and all 10th grade students have taken it um and this is the third year that our 10th graders are taking team first aid
051and it's I the only thing I don't like about that first aid term is you know the idea that in traditional medical first aid you're the person providing the assistance this is not the case in Teen Mental Health First Aid it is very much about getting that person to an appropriate adult um and how if even if that you're not talking to that person to get to the adult you're not providing mental health support as a a student but uh it really D stigmatizes accessing mental health support which is really important complex thinking our um theory of action around complex thinking uh ties in with a lot of our um oh excuse me this I this is my fault this is not our uh of action for complex thinking that's social emotional learning so let
052me see if I yeah I apologize for duplicating that but we're uh our um complex thinking theory of action focuses on providing students opportunities to engage in deep thinking problem solving creativity and seeing that reflected in their work um that's really at the heart of what we're doing with building thinking classrooms how do we make that comp complex thinking visible how do we make collaboration problem solving uh synthesizing information uh put that at the Forefront of what we do so um yeah this is what some of this looks like and uh we've spent I guess we we really uh dove into learning walks uh in the late 201s and we were doing a lot of that at that time covid came around substitutes became really hard to come by uh and we started to engage
053more with our administrators in learning walks more recently but this year we're excited to have uh teachers re-engaged in that process uh we've said before that you know some of the best PD comes from the people down the hall uh teaching can be a really isolated profession you don't get to see a lot of other people do what you do on a regular basis so uh we're excited to get back into you know more learning walks during the course of this year um acceleration is a term that uh came to favor after covid where we knew that we couldn't go back and teach you a year of stuff that you missed uh we really had to focus on what are the core uh components of what you need to know in this grade level and
054uh so we focused quite a bit on identifying priority standards and making sure our students can achieve those standards hqi is a acronym that stands for high quality instruction and what are the practices that you need to engage in as a teacher to get students uh to evolve as complex thinkers so what are some of the dividends of our work you know um we've seen a substantial Improvement in performance and almost every measure since we've been focused on complex thinking and social emotional learning uh this is reflects our uh data that just came out uh so in the state of Connecticut we're ninth best overall in our smarter Balan performance when you look at our uh reading and math scores together and um I think you know because we've been successful for the last several
055years it's it's kind of easy to take that for granted uh but we were in the mid to high 30s uh back in 2016 17 in that era and so this is again the the dividends of a lot of work that our people have put in uh to support our students and uh that when I say our people certainly you know our teachers and administrators but also our boards of Education over the years our our community members who have partaken in these uh you know re revamping of what we do uh including business people so uh there's really a lot for the community to celebrate here uh this year we're number one overall in our Smarter Balance performance uh for the dur uh so we're incredibly proud of that uh for our students identified for
056special education services we were 14th best in the State uh for that we were fourth best for uh the dur for our identified students we were 19th overall in Connecticut on the uh SAT exam nth in the dur uh niche.com has us at 263 I mean that's not you know from a psychometric perspective the like the most uh valid and reliable rating but it is something that people pay attention to so I include it here uh by point of comparison we were 516th a few years ago um and then on the district performance index the district performance index uh is about 20 different data points uh gauging everything from chronic absenteeism to uh academic achievement to Arts access to kids taking college level courses to the uh physical fitness test it's meant to be wholly
057inclusive of a school systems performance uh we have our highest ranking that we've ever had at 9th in Connecticut on that measure so you know again I I want to uh congratulate and thank all of our people who uh you know make this this this sort of you know cadr of results possible um so it's uh something we're obviously really proud of so just uh is another visual here this is our SAT performance 19th in the state you could see the the um districts that had fared a little bit better are smart balanced achievement in the state you can see the handful of districts that fared a little bit better I know we talk about this a little bit more during budget season but uh to say the per pupil expenditure is dramatically different and
058most of the districts that outperform us would be an understatement uh so I think we represent a great value uh for our taxpayers so I guess all that's left at this point is part of our annual you know affirmation of our district goals uh that concludes my presentation I want to thank Vin and Marlene uh not just for their presentation tonight but for all their work their their guidance and Leadership that they um have for our community uh is incredibly valuable so thank you guys and certainly we entertain any questions that you guys might have please talk of all but uh it is quite the production to get school going especially after all the work in the summer so kudos to everyone um I I've heard nothing about positive comments families schools families mov the
059way things are running so far so tremendous job um regarding Highland two questions on Portables the existing Portables Thea ones are those actually being used for any instruction or for storage two and and two the new modu classrooms I don't remember um getting older I remember last year I know we were talking about possibly purchasing them a more cost effed because we're going to use those Poss other projects but are those being installed as a permanent solution or or reflex will to move to other schools or future projects I yeah so I'll let um Scott Jeffrey answer about the use of those two classrooms which are being used first so um the the current Portables are being used as a music Suite so it's music instruction um to music teachers it's the only special right
060now besides PE that isn't in a hybrid uh kind of in a car and in a room so typically art for example is in two rooms but because of the shortage of space one is out in the rooms and they they switch so kids get equal opportunity both both spaces librar is the same way and as far as the decision the decision was made to purchase those it was more cost effective the strategy long term is either we're going to continue to need to use up for classroom space certainly through 2026 when the new school's open if we don't need the Portables going forward what we would do is take the two 30 roll Portables and dispose of that and we erected or we will erect new Portables using the configuration including that Gazo so
061we'll be able to keep the newer ones and get rid of the older ones that seemed to be the best yeah solution for us long term so even after the new schools are built and redition we still envisioning yes it than anybody else Tim yeah um the student Mental Health First Aid you're doing that in 10th Grade right that's a another grade it's a program designed specifically for 10th graders um that's it's kind of perscribed by the organization that that develops that program for 10 th grade we have offered it to older grades when we first initiated the program but given the fact now that those kids have already taken it is they matriculate up uh 10th grade is where they prescrib the the program I guess was going my mind is offering say seventh
062grade right and then you still have a refresher years later it was just a thought it cost money too I'm sure so well it definitely cost money but um you know we thought was valuable and appropriate I know that our community would make that investment but the program itself uh and the people who design it say the lowest you do it is 10th grade actually they say you do it in 10th Grade basically however have Suicide Prevention programs in younger grades as a matter of fact we had a presentation from the school counselors at DOD just a couple of years ago on a program that they were starting which was called signs of suicide we also the name of the program it's not necessarily we also do provide information on Mental Health other points in
063our curriculum but this is uh you know really a specific program designed to coach kids on signs uh as young adolescen and Coach them on how to access support anybody else sure um then can you just clarify what the new work order system is just for people at home yes when a teacher or other staff member needs to have either maintenance work or technology work done they enter it into work order system we for the yes thank you so the work order system that we uh utilized previous L was called School dude we moved to a more advanced system that actually cost us a little less money called Master library and it's work orders for maintenance or work orders for technology so staff just goes online you know enters a work order and it's routed
064electronically to either our maintenance or technology staff members then just the next one um Miss can I know fabulous and Mike wasn't able to be your facilitator this summer but can you just kind of explain where where in the process of curriculum writing would would a resource request fall in just kind of given us a bigger picture of you know process perod sure and we're going to actually review this it's on the agenda for curriculum Council Monday night but the process is that every year year a different subject engages in a curriculum review process whereby they look at the curriculum the instructional practices the textbooks and the resources Etc and so from that teach the team the department is identifying textbooks that need to be um uh re-evaluated materials curriculum units that need to be
065re-evaluated and that becomes a part of their fiveyear goals for that department and each year they revise those goals and so we meet with them every February to review and look at that so that drives what the curriculum writing is that gets written at The Institute in the summer I think Dr s taking a deeper dive on the index next well um the index that index was from the [Music] 2023 school year the 234 school year data a lot of the actual data points out of those 20 that I was referencing have been released but the whole thing hasn't been released yet so as soon as that is available we will definitely you know like we did last year take a deeper dive into that sure all right well thank you guys so much [Applause]
066order of business would be old business um I do not have anything I'm just going to open the floor to any board members who have anything for old business items no great um and then new business items as Dr Solen said we're going to affirm our strategic plan um I'll just quickly I do request a an edit Carol there's it was if we can scratch I'll read it and I just let you um the Strategic goals of the chesher public chesh Board of Education are integral part of the chesher public schools strategic planning initiative the goals were strike through Ben developed by a large community based group of stakeholders ERS including board members staff parents students and local business persons the plan was developed with a significant data collected from the entire community in 2016
067after the initial plan was developed in 2000 the most recent goals were developed in 2011 in 2019 the personalized learning task force adopted new performance standards that the Board of Education later approved so state law requires local boards to set annual goals and objectives each year because this chure strategic planning initiative reflects the vision and beliefs of the chesher community it is traditionally served as the Board of Education goals each year so the following motion reaffirms the board's commitment to the Strategic initiatives and supports their continued use as the overarching framework used to set district and individual school goals and objectives this year Dr Heron can you read the motion please that move that the chesher Board of Education reff confirms the chesher public school strategic objectives and goals for the 20242 um do I
068have a second on the motion Mr gripple thank you all in favor of the motion that is currently on the floor unanimous thank you and then we um we do have the amendment to the agenda which brings us into executive session so so at the moment we'd like to um adjourn into executive session Madam chair before we adjourn um apologize my uh brain has come up with a question I wanted to ask superintendent please do um in in light of the events of uh bo what was that two days ago in Georgia um how was our security situation I appreciate the question uh Mr grippo the uh we actually had a district security meeting today uh that happened to be scheduled and uh with Chief drife and Mike Khan one of our sro's and um
069we have a representative group including uh M gillo Mr Jeffrey Dr Gad um Vinnie um Mike Papa our technology person so we have a lot of different perspectives at the table to review that uh Jack casner generally attends but uh what we one of the Marquee points we were focused on today is last spring we did our first real training overview for Alice at chesher High School uh Alice is an acronym alert lockdown and form counter and evacuate uh so we are preparing now to train our freshmen who didn't get the benefit of that training last um fall and we've arranged with chure Police Department to do some dry runs this fall Alice we obviously communicate to our uh parents about that we've also developed the script that we will use to create the video
070for our middle school students and uh talking to miss gillo Will um we are prepared to roll that out to our students as well this fall and do that same mock drill stuff that we're doing at chesher High School with chesher police about the same time uh additionally uh there's a program called Mutual link that is really uh enhances communication between the district the video system that we have in the district and treasure Police Department uh so we talked about how to train uh the folks who work at Treasure PD uh who take take the calls and link up to that system uh so that's something that we're also working on this fall uh the mutual link process uh there were some hiccups in that process but we've been working closely with uh Chief drife
071and our Tech Team and mutual link to uh put that all together and hopefully have that on sooner rather than later um there are other things like labeling I'm sure you've seen at cheser high school all the windows uh and doors have numbers on on them to make responses easier uh things like that we're continuing to do that throughout the district um but those are some of the highlights that we're focused on at the moment and are are our sro's in place yeah we have two SRO that that work uh with the town and you know for the town um you know has historically been the the case they uh our treasure police officers first and foremost and there's not you know it's not a secret that our treasure Police Department is underemployed at the
072moment uh they are feverishly attempting to add new officers uh and you know there are times when our SRO have to do Road Duty first um but they're definitely approved for overtime as whenever needed to be in our schools in addition at this point because we've had SRO for so long uh you know our officers our last batch of officers Gretchen and Dave are still on the police department they still come into the schools um you know Lauren Weber is still a officer that is available to us back when we only had one SRO um and so you know those folks are are still on the force and available to the district as well thank you I've said it before but I'll I just need to say it right now which is even before hardening
073the schools one of our focuses is I'll say seal social emotional learning and I say that because my recollection is when we had one of our policy committee meetings a couple years ago FBI consultant came to us and said a study was done over the last 60 years of school shootings 100% of them were insiders people who were associated with the schools and 100% of them said something in advance to someone who just let it go that was just that's how Joey talks so I just encourage everybody to keep that in mind and if you do hear something take it seriously there uh there is an app and information on our website speak up uh if there is a concern uh that if you do hear something of concern that you can report that also
074through Gaggle um so you know we encourage any form of reporting whether it be anonymous or otherwise uh as it relates to any sort of security uh behavioral concern mental health issue what the case may be you know uh it's important to raise those concerns and I think that's really a big part of what uh Teen Mental Health First Aid addresses addresses is destigmatizing accessing that support but also recognizing that this is not okay Behavior this is not typical Behavior this could be the an issue um and how to report that um so I appreciate that point Tim sorry I don't mean to press the issue but our but you will anyway Yes actually I do mean the press the issue I think so yeah what you're saying is is that our sro's are no
075longer at our schools full-time um the they yeah they have a diminished capacity uh from what they typically do that's a change from last year right it is and that was a decision by who the town by the town okay well it's not okay but that's our situation right now that's our current situation I know that it's being Revisited um and you know if they could magically produce several more officers Vin do you recall the full Staffing I want to say it was something to the equivalent of like 50 officers and there are currently 3 48 officers but there are 10 officers down with two officers I believe that are in the academy right now um and two other officers that are occupied training current uh officers um and they are interviewing um to fill
076the other I believe it's four positions so you know while I have the mic I I do want to add that you know the sro's role is to serve you know inside the school Community to get to know the students our response from 911 is not affected if the SRO is not in the building and you know I know sometimes people get confused as to the sro's role they really are there to you know work with the students be part of the community certainly be present and that that is is certainly something that you know we um look forward to having them back in January is is when the expectation for the SRO to be back full-time in the schools I think Tim's point about connecting with kids uh and supporting and being you know
077part of that information Network that's where our sro's have proven to be most critical um you know I think several years ago we had like a a Serial groper for lack of a better term on the Cheshire trail that was a serious issue for our community and concern with safety that issue was resolved by an SRO kids talk to them and and so um I think the the value of bringing in armed security into a school is really pretty limited uh relative to you know the value of having connectedness uh with kids and learning and hearing information that's the most valuable thing that our sro's do uh not you know they are obviously Law Enforcement Officers which is different but um we we really value that relationship that they have and give us that information
078that allows us to intervene before things happen I'm not going to belber sure Adam's Point uh I I feel like we should have known I should have remembered that there was going to be less time from sro's I don't remember that actually coming up but I'm sure we probably talked about at some point but I do want to just assure the public that what you just said Dr song when we started at s program years ago it wasn't for enforcement or to have armed guards in the schools it was actually to build the relationships with students um have students someone to trust to talk to and and just get a pulse what's going on and you know the only concern I have with diminish time is there's diminished time there to build those relationships if
079not there to us so I think we'll be looking forward to get them back when probably staff I do fully understand that um you know there's been some uh attrition not just in this town many other towns so I know the police force rent Bank up but we're conent of that too but thank you for that detail sure thanks for asking that good question Mr um just so everybody understands when when I was still on a job it's about a year from start to finish to hire an officer and they're on they're on their own on a road so it's you know it's a process unless you're hiring certified officers from another department it it takes time yeah that's one of the challenges that Neil expressed at our meeting today was that you know you
080can hire somebody tomorrow but the academy doesn't start until let's say end of October so they've had them training his dispatchers where you don't need to be a certified police officer then you know you get them to the academy and there's weeks on end and then there's training with an officer on the job and like you said it's about a year before they're ready to go you know it's um I know it's been a frustration point for Neil and it's a concern for our community uh that we're working on um and something that you know we have the concern but little influence over on what we do on this side of the street our side of the street I should say I guess correct great I just um want to say welcome back to the
081new school year to all of you thank you for being here there um hugs to Dr Gad and the high school crew um and we're excited about our student reps next yes next meeting next meeting great thank you so we're going into executive session yeah we join into executive session session ready motion to adjourn into executive but we adjourn into executive session uh to discuss the contract negotiations and with no action to follow and to include and and to include Mr masana Miss Solano and Dr Sol is there a second Mr White all in favor unanimous thanks