001are we live what's going on here we're working on it yeah okay got it jeff's our test tech specialist tonight gotcha i wasn't sure so my uh my my daughter is out she has covid actually that's good for me to mention it to to you because i was at the meeting on thursday night she got tested on friday morning i tested two i was negative um my son is negative too good you were sitting at the end oh here we go we're having a little trouble it's not on youtube throwing up the scene that i see in front of me even though we did this earlier everything the same and it's it's throwing something different all right but it is we are being recorded right now and i can i'll post it immediately after the
002meeting okay have you gotten any emails from anybody about it no yeah so okay so we're not live kind of a rough day so uh sorry we'll just add this to the pile and make the best of it i apologize for the issues but if you wanna i'll if we if you just wait three seconds after i'm done speaking here adam you can say okay ready and you can ask me to count the take the roll i'll take the we'll just start the meeting from there and i'll edit all of this original part out all this person oh right tim's talking about all that great okay oh yeah sorry about that yeah that's all right you ready all right so i'm good with this i don't know if you i don't know if any wait
003hold on okay good evening everyone this uh board of education policy meeting is being called to order at 6 35 and it is my watch keeps going off i think it's may 23rd right does that sound right to everyone okay great um dr solon would you call the roll please okay mr grippo here miss rosenberg here mr white here mr grippo you have a quorum great um uh well you know what there's a flag in the background there dr sol and we'll just use that for the pledge that way you don't have to do anything fancy that works for me good okay works for me all right [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty
004and justice for all [Music] if i do say so myself we may be getting the the hang of the virtual pledge that sounded actually in sync today so um so uh dr sullin you said that there might be some adjustments to the agenda this evening um i guess right well i guess first let's go to is was there any public comment there was none okay very good yeah the um two items that i would recommend that we postpone to the next meeting would be number policy number three five four three and three four five zero school activity fund in monies in school buildings both of those items will be covered by a report by mr maciana and a representative from clifton larsen associates who's our the accounting firm who recently finalized or has recently conducted
005an audit of the student activity accounts in the school system there are recommendations um you know that that have been drafted and those include updating those two policies from 1996. mr massiana was able to schedule a virtual our next meeting will be virtual i think it's june 14th adam um if memory serves me yeah and that would be seven o'clock to review those two policies among others so um i don't know if anybody wants to make a motion to table those two items mr white if you want to move that those two uh policies be tabled to the next meeting uh i'm let me i'll just uh so i movement policies three five four three school activity fund and three four five oh monies and school buildings are tabled until our june 14th policy meeting
006i'm sorry that would be postponed table okay that's yeah so if you want to give that another shot i apologize all right so i i moved that policies three five four three and 3450 are postponed until our june 14th policy meeting is there a second second any discussion all in favor is unanimous thank you um okay so it looks like we're going to start at policy 1140 does that sound right right yes okay great and which one are we going to start with the our i guess our existing policy sure we can take a look at the uh existing policy of distribution of materials that's 1140 this is our existing policy that you see on the screen i don't know if you've had the opportunity to review that this policy was original i guess last
007updated in 1996 april 15th so we're coming up on its uh what 28 year birthday yeah by the way dr sullivan i don't see are you sharing screen yeah i don't see it either yeah i'm not sure i'm assuming you're talking about the cpf policy yep not the claim policy that's there how's that here we go yeah good good looking better there we go thank you so again uh april 15th uh 1996 so just over 28 years old this policy uh outlining you know flyer distribution announcement content of those distributed materials basically a statement that really that our kids can't be exploited you know for instance if a local business came and said hey we've got this activity going on we'd love to get some students uh during the day uh to come and and
008work for three days and uh we're not gonna pay them obviously that's you know being exploited uh so that you know it's all left to the superintendent's ultimate discretion as to whether or not um these things are appropriate and i'll be honest with you we don't get that request uh at least not in the six years i've been superintendent anything like that um and then budget and referendum materials be a bit more germane uh this day uh as we start to embark on our school modernization process basically that we can only share the specifics of time date and location the question or proposal to students this is only two students and again as you know we think about contemporary issues we don't really give a lot of paper to kids to take home anymore we
009do a lot of that through through virtual distribution so the cave version of that same policy is not frankly dramatically different than um than the cheshire public schools version although there were a couple of items that i wanted to highlight for your attention and um maybe your consideration so the beginning of the policy uh outlines the three same you know rough ideas that are outlined in our policy with this paragraph here all requests from groups or individuals to have children distribute materials to people in the community with the exception of requests from school connected organizations like pto or board appointed citizens ad hoc advisory committee will be referred to the office of the superintendent to determine whether requests comply with overall school purposes and policies they take a little bit of an exception to the
010idea that the [Music] pto and ad hoc advisory committees would not have this reviewed because i think even well-intentioned you know they may inadvertently send something out that is in direct violation of this this policy unless the board feels like it's okay if ptos and ad hoc advisories violate this i just don't know that it's a great idea so my my recommendation would be that either we remove the exemption or at least refer to the principal who could consult with the the superintendent to review the the policy the other consideration in here again a lot of this language for use of students is is the same um this isn't just a note from cabe that would be removed unless um you wanted to just re remove the cave no we don't distribute paper planners notebooks
011or anything like that with advertising on them but i don't know that it's a bad idea to just keep that part in there anyway and just take the cabe note piece off but the dissemination of religious materials is something i had a question about materials that have a religious content may be available to students during non-instructional time the district shall impose content neutral time place and manner restrictions on the dissemination of religious materials to ensure students are aware that materials are not being endorsed or sponsored by the district that would be something i would recommend we perhaps consult with floyd about you know potentially removing that piece i you know i i it but that that's your call as to whether or not you'd like me to do that other you know again as i've
012worked in the district as an administrator for 17 years i can't remember that issue ever coming up although we do have um some religious uh clubs i if this would encroach on that i don't want to do that um the kids may have clubs and activities after school that you know they want to do but um i you know if if this is something more about you know having a religious group come in and in um proselytize or something i know that under free speech is a public building we would have to make the building i'm not really sure what this is speaking to so i i would want to consult with floyd upon you know your consent to our attorney to um get a little bit more clarity around this issue um i don't
013know for me uh i think that the policy that we have is actually arguably better written than the k policy it's a little bit more general gives you and and your administration a little bit more flexibility on all of these issues with the exception of advertising may you know maybe adding some advertised to advertise clause might be something yeah i i agree with you there adam i i you know i hadn't really thought about reverse engineering it you know just pumping the cave language into ours i think this would be our policy would be stronger if we take that paragraph about advertising in the school push it into our version and then i think we're we're good at that point i can consult with floyd on the distribution of religious materials it's not covered in
014our current policy to get his advisement but you know it's i don't know what you guys think about that um sammy had your hand up yeah i i would definitely go in the direction of consulting floyd i'm just trying to think of you know jehovah's witness right that's the first thing that came to my mind when i read this i mean are we allowing those types of items to be distributed to our kids during or after school though because you have certain like the temple i know uses hummuston you know on the weekends for religious schools so where does that line cross i guess yeah they they engage in the building use process which we couldn't um any religion we could not exclude based on the on the religion so if you know an objection
015you know something that we may even not have a religious affinity to they could use the building as well as anybody else i mean i um that sounded terrible but yeah you know i know what you're saying a made-up religion hated dogs well i love dogs i might find it objectionable that this religion hates dogs but i under that we have to permit that i mean i don't want a little bit of guidance about what are we trying to address here that's where i'm struggling yeah and i also thought about like the boys and girls boy scouts girl scouts if there's any any affiliation to a religion of some sort i'm just trying to anticipate all these like you said you know different possible relationships with his memory he probably recalls years ago we had
016to review a policy that specifically included that we had to permit the boy scouts it was literally written right in the law yeah well yeah aren't they specifically like a group a usage or something like that yeah yeah but that's you know but i think what we're trying to get to here is what are we trying to do with this dissemination of what is this even covering and so we can ask that question tim yeah no so my question is the answer to that i'm thinking is why it's on the agenda why i mean if it hasn't come up in 17 years i i'm just curious like yeah just that one component hasn't come up oh oh oh okay okay so you're just saying that one piece other things came up you referred to the
017gabe guidance and uh the cape guidance okay yeah i mean it's fine if you i mean if you want to talk to floyd i i wouldn't put a lot of time into it i uh yeah god knows there are a lot of fish to fry these days but uh that that's i mean that's a pretty quick question i mean my my reading of it would be i think it was more of a dissemination of literature kind of like what sam was saying like a a jehovah's witness uh pamphlet for example right or something like that um yeah i don't yeah because i don't think we've had like uh members come on campus and hand me out literature during a you know a lacrosse practice or something like that um because i guess technically that's kind
018of what this is talking about um but i think i think it was more about um it seemed like you know more in the the the reference of like a student group or something handing out stuff in the hallways or something like that i mean this may be something if if you're going to distribute these materials like the district has to we could do that every tuesday at four o'clock in front of god middle school you know i mean any religion that wants to do it we're not going to say no but this is the kind the the location time and place and it's on your website or something you know that's all i can think is you know maybe what this address is but i would want to get a little clarity seeing is
019this has never come up in my tenure as an administrator yeah so i guess and then the other thing would be adding that clause about advertising because um i guess in all these years we really haven't had a problem with it but it's not in here either so well we we haven't had a problem with it because we we do that already i mean a lot of the advertising stuff we we are really strict about now there is the one exception to this which you know maybe you carve out or bring to light here we do permit advertising in certain places so like programs excuse me for you know sporting events uh at the uh alumni field there we allow that uh on the game field you know on the softball we do permit that
020under those limited circumstances so you know maybe we call attention to that here um so i even recall i until maybe even back in the day uh there used to be like you could buy book covers and would have like you know local community average red and white you're like yeah yeah yeah right right yeah right yeah you could fold them over the books and you know do that you know are you gonna do the kids even do that anymore i don't even know right yeah you don't see i mean back in my day it was the uh the paper lunch or the paper um grocery bag right yeah second sam you had your hand up yeah i just wanted to go back to so right now doc's thrown we limit advertising to certain areas
021right because i know we do a lot of fundraisers with businesses you know wanting to buy banners and so forth so that's only in restricted areas at the moment yeah so the pto can do things i mean if they're doing that as a fundraiser they might have a certain angle on that that's but as a school system the only advertising we permit is when uh we you know sell space athletic venues and we have limited that to the baseball softball and the main turf field just one quick point on that so you don't do you know like the the um drama doesn't do like a playbill anymore because i know we hadn't i recall that in years past just like a standard playbill where it might have they do and like that would be the
022that's fine when we do like uh game brochures and stuff that falls under that category oh okay you said games i was thinking sports only yeah so yeah okay i understand i was just trying that more inclusively yes we do it for music and yeah yeah and play as well yeah i mean to me that seems all what you're doing seems perfectly reasonable i don't really want to see like cheshire high school presented by verizon wireless right but what you're doing makes sense i think it seems reasonable so we can scrap the north end verizon theater at the elementary school that's no offense to verizon wait no we're ready right because they might be giving us a lot of money yeah there could be some naming rights in there naming rights exactly so um all
023right is everybody okay with where we are so far yeah all right so the next agenda item was 6145.81 student fundraising activities um we do not have a policy on this in our handbook let me just double check on the cps version um now excuse me we do have it cave does not i knew it was one with that one way or the other so let me present our version this is point eight we need point eight one student fundraising activities four five point eight one yeah it should be uh it's embedded in our it's in the agenda tell you i'm having an off day today would be the title of the document for the policy agenda you're operating off of is policy posting to out there okay i see people in it now all
024right so school money is in school buildings was tabled so the next item is actually advanced courses or programs correct oh yeah yeah i just thought that since the the other three policies are sort of related that i thought maybe you wanted to do the fundraising activity one first yeah so that's the other one very similar so that yeah that's why i didn't i didn't say uh anything because i i figured yeah that was a very sense adam but i'm not i'm not dealing in a lot of logic today unfortunately all right so um advanced courses or programs these are both new uh mandated policies so i'll pull that up and share screen here okay so we're going in order then we're going to go to 61 41.51 okay so uh so i'll be honest
025um uh what's the difference between 51.51 and dot 52 yeah so there didn't seem to be a whole lot it seemed very very similar yeah didn't 61 41.52 seem like a succinct version of the the previous one yeah um so i thought maybe i'd clicked on the same one when i was reading it you know i was like uh yeah so in the um in the policy in effect the policy was designed to provide greater access to rigorous course work for kids and um i'm not gonna tell you that uh we were always perfect in this respect but we um do provide a lot of acceleration options for students particularly you know through math at the middle and high school level all content areas for at least core content areas at the high school level
026have leveling options for example ap competitive college prep college prep there are various options there but on a bit of a history lesson when my predecessor at dodd middle school i will call him the great don malonis because he really was an incredible principal uh first became principal there were i want to say eight levels for each content area and um there's not a lot of data that supports leveling in the middle school so when that got collapsed down the more that it got collapsed down to one level the higher the achievement went and you know so it's a very local example of finding success and it says that you know we should identify students who are performing you know above the grade level um and frankly that's the majority of our kids when you
027look at their assessments uh so you know yes do we need to continue to identify pathways for to ensure that students are challenged absolutely um but as part of their academic plan we already do that with students this would be an implementation for july 1 [Music] but we do prepare students when they engage in course selection at the middle and high school you know a lot of information around the various uh acceleration options that exist um you know even to give you an example at the high school when students take the psat exam there are predictors based on national data that say well if you got this score on the psat there's this percent probability that you'll be successful in this ap class and because we aspire to give every student who is interested in
028capable exposure to at least one ap course or ece course or collegiate level class before they graduate cheshire high school will send letters to kids that don't have any enrollments in those classes and have them connect with their school counselor to say hey you know the data says you would be successful here i see your grades are so why didn't you try it you want to try it do you want to try maybe it's not this ap class maybe it's maybe it's an ece class maybe it's something different but in order to encourage kids to challenge themselves for rigorous curricular experiences and you know the title of this policy is challenging curriculum policy you know and it's really about how to have um you know advanced how do we really push kids to take rigorous
029coursework so the policy itself so just to be clear so this is dictated by statute this policy yes okay so do we have it so it seems like it sets up a framework to identify and at least advanced and or at least advanced because i think there's another policy it talks about gifted i don't know if there's a distinction or not um to in the eighth and ninth grade to almost set up like a a framework on how to identify kids who might be ready for advanced classes so is that something that we do now or is this a formal process that the state wants us to implement i do think they want a more formal process okay do we agree with that well i mean there are some other state laws that i don't
030necessarily agree with but you know we do have to follow state law um and i you know i i don't think this is going to be something that's going to be terribly cumbersome you know it might be more cumbersome but i don't think it's anything that is something we can't do so do we report to the state department of ed now all of our advanced placement students um that's what this is requiring us to do i don't know that for a fact to be honest with you um that might be part of our required upload but i haven't confirmed that with scott conway and tom lee walk to two guys who who do all of our upload of required information to the state because i thought that was like the strangest thing of all it
031was like if there was a a data reporting requirement there or anyone who has identified that they you know had they had to be reported to the department of aid so i don't know i think that you know if it's just a matter of you know strangely written law or you know because we've encountered that before um sam go ahead so i read this as and we're actually working on the same thing dr solon on our my daytime life um i read it as basically allowing um expanding the access for kids if correct me if i'm wrong and therefore we do report it i would assume the reporting impacts the accountability index because don't we have to um identify which courses and i'm trying to picture the accountability index right now yeah at the high
032school level anything that's like a dual enrollment or college level class so ece ap courses those get reported to the state i do know that i don't know if i mean there is a difference between identified and engaged in those classes because not all identified students elect to take those classes i will say the majority do but you know so it is unique um the mandating of this but i like i think you as you said sam i really think that this is a effort to be more inclusive of kids and make sure that all students have access to rigorous coursework which is something we've embraced for as long as i i know um but i do think it's also good to have a mecca mechanism in place to ensure that and if this helps
033with that then i'm okay with it you know and so this does require um for the 22-23 school year that we do design a pathway or a framework of how to do this it's probably going to be a lot like our talented and gifted framework which we're going to talk about here momentarily okay so um did we determine if 51 and dot 51 and dot 52 are the same or no would we have to advance both and i have to apologize i explained to adam when we first logged on here that the agenda isn't exactly as i um thought it was going to be drawn up that's that's on me it was a miscommunication between i guess carol and myself unfortunately she's on vacation this week or she'd be here in the in the meeting
03461 41.51 when you click on that link it takes you to 61 41.52 so well that would explain it yeah which is so you're not crazy adam they are exactly the same as you look at them there because the link for 6141.51 is not accurate um [Music] what i'll do is download 6141.51 and i can email it to everybody on the call on the you know right now and i'll pull it up for people to be able to see it home so so what i just want to try to put this into my own words we're basically this is this we have a we have a program in place for basically for high school ap classes etc etc sort of putting it under a broad umbrella and there's a state law which says we need
035to the st established criteria which we may already have they might change but we need to set the criteria in stone report those in and then also measure on an annual basis the students that are involved or not involved is that not the the measurement of students involved and not involved is not part of this policy uh the conversation yeah the conversation about the measurement of those involved or not is part of the statewide accountability reporting process that they have to look at each this is like a report card for the school system and one of the indicators on that report card is the percentage of students engaged in you know rigorous coursework um and you know so i think when we talk about measuring that that's that's the reference there is to that report
036card this is telling us as a school system that we need to uh identify criteria for students to have access to more rigorous school schoolwork okay and we have that already which we already do so the the one nuance here that i would caution is that middle schools advent will offer advanced academic classes and all in the four content areas of language arts math social studies and science to me that sounds like you're trying to dictate that school districts level middle schools in all of those four content areas which i think would be shameful and a tremendous overstep but um like i said there's only data to support that in math but that may be you know a misinterpretation and i think we can look at how do we you know engage in this policy
037without doing that because that's not in my professional opinion and professional experience good for kids so is it is the state law saying that we have to do that right now the state law says we have to offer advanced academic classes in four content areas they don't really define what that means um so we you know all this is subject to some level of interpretation which i'll review with kevin uh hamlin and marlene uh when we before our next meeting okay so we'll talk about it clarify anything in here and then you know ultimately upon passage i mean legally anyway we would have to design the identification process and so i think we're probably already there but uh we'd have to just put it in writing uh and make it available on our website so
038we would have to do that anyway to comply with law whether or not the policy gets passed but i think for your edification you would want to know what is our process going to be what does this actually mean for our kids in the policy so i'll also bring up that um now just scanning through um dot 51 um that that there's already a contradiction because uh the definition of advanced uh advanced studies uh specifically says grades 9 through 12 right where there's already so there's already a contradiction between the two policies yeah i'm very uneasy about saying we're gonna start leveling eighth grade classes if you know i i don't love leveling nine through twelve to be honest with you you know i mean i do it as a something that i guess we've
039already as a not a school system as a society come to grips with you know i just don't i don't know that it's great for kids though so can i jump in adam yeah go ahead so sam i see you shaking your head you're a professional in this particular situation are you generally in agreement with what jeff is saying like leveling at the middle school level is i am not a proponent of leveling in the middle school or any you cut it out and i'm not sure if i missed the word level but specifically in the middle school we actually got rid of leveling okay i said i i'm not a proponent of it at all we actually work to unlevel our middle schools and we do see higher results from the unleveling i think
040it leads to a lot of segregating our issues are our demographic issues um it prohibits certain groups of students to have access to these types of courses and and that should not be the case so when you have a very diverse population somehow it tends to be that for example all the white kids are in the easy ap classes you know so that's where our struggle lies and i think here it's you know cheshire has been very good like dr solon said in providing access to a variety of advanced courses um my question is is this does this in some way dr solon hinder the kids being able to get credit for courses in the middle school because i know that's out there as well too right so um the access to getting credit for
041courses in the middle school is pretty clearly defined and it's around language and math uh in terms of advanced coursework at this time whether or not that gets expanded but right now all of our kids have that access to those eighth graders and by the way uh sam what you couldn't make out in your audio was clear in your body language and so i appreciate that that point too and um one nuanced addition i want to just add to what sam so astutely said was that when you compress levels all students achievement improves it's not just the achievement and i know it sounds counterintuitive it's not just the achievement of those who are formerly in the lower level get better all achievement overall improves so it's not and i'll give you a cheshire example the
042more inclusive we've been in providing access for students with special needs to class kids that have identified special education plans the more successful all of our kids have been including special ed so you know it doesn't it's it's somewhat counter-intuitive for some people but um it's the reality and there's plenty of data to illustrate it so we'll take a look at this with kevin and marlene and we'll come back next month with some more of our so you get a better sense of what does this policy look like in action right so we'll take a look at this but uh and then what does it mean to your point adam against uh 61 41.51 you know the difference in language is there so if everybody's okay we can take a look at 6141.51 if you
043want oh yeah and just um just so for um a uh a uh an educational layman such as myself leveling means that or not having leveling means that more students are exposed to more rigorous academic courses than they normally would be because because they would have been labeled um not as you know smart or not smart enough to be in an advanced class or something where they can still be exposed to a piece of literature or mathematics or science that they normally would have been exposed to if there was multiple levels of courses of the same thing is that kind of what we're talking about at a base level i think you're right like you know that um i think some people argue that well we'll take all the kids who need the most support
044and we'll put them in a group together and try and give them more intensive support and then through the best of intentions uh they often move at a much slower pace they often emphasize weaknesses over strengths they're not challenging curriculum down right right um and it's it can be a function of lowering the bar um and it like for me i wasn't i know it was gonna be hard to believe but a gifted runner you know in terms of running any great distances was never my for attack but if you put me in with a group that ran faster than i typically did i'd run faster and i think that's part of the you know it's kind of a an analogy here to to this work so that's an analogy that i can understand 6141.51
045adam already gave us a bit of a sneak pre a sneak peek here but again this is another mandated policy about access to academic rigor and they want all students to have access to rigorous curriculum the board should encourage participation in advanced courses or programs communicate information about these programs and courses to parents again you know we are in a district where the vast majority of our students choose to be college oriented um so this is kind of a default position for us even if we weren't in that in that environment i mean we would strongly recommend students take the most rigorous coursework for them possible to benefit them you know as as students and people but basically as a school system you know we need to provide access to these uh courses um [Music]
046limit criteria that hinder enrollment in these courses uh use a variety of strategies to determine how students will be provided access to these courses like what you see right here under four where we have to consider these all these variables and we're always trying to improve i'll give you an example from probably 10 years ago now when i was high school principal we had a student who wanted to take um chemistry and the student you know didn't meet the math criteria and i asked well is there an exam that we could give to determine if the student would be able to take chemistry and the student took the exam and you know didn't do as well is is the the cut off everybody appreciated that access but we also gave that chemistry exam to the
047kids in the class the math exam yeah i so let's have the the class take that exam they did the same way that she did you know so we opened access to chemistry then for more people by identifying you know what truly is academically necessary that would be a gateway to these these rigorous classes so um it does hear tim talk about evaluation that we will review annually data on student participation in these classes and that we look at the you know factors such as gender ethnicity and pre-reduced lunch participation and make adjustments as necessary we've been doing that for at least 12 years we do that all the time we we want to make sure that we're opening doors not closing doors um so jeff i think the there there's only one section that
048i kind of have a problem with okay um and and i don't know if there's any even if there's anything i can we can do about it um but um section 4 part c says the use of students prior academic performance must rely on evident evidence-based indicators of how a student will perform in an advanced course or program so now i'm interpreting that as if a student's prior performance would show that they would not do well in an advanced course almost is saying that want to keep the students gpa up but we're also not willing to allow the student to try it and fail and so is that what it's supposed to mean or am i looking at it wrong because it seems like if the student is all of a sudden just you know
049wants to give it a shot and but they don't do well i mean i guess i guess it's not like in college where you could drop the course and try again on something else i guess it's not like that but we don't do you know quote try again but you know we do have kids change levels sometimes um sometimes it's you know based on performance sometimes it's not but you know when i look at those uh six variables there i think you're considering a preponderance of evidence to support the student you know either entering or not entering the more rigorous class and one you know such uh piece of evidence is looking at their prior performance and evidence base so when i talked about that psat that's a that's evidence um because it'll tell you
050with your psat score you know 42 of the kids pass this class with your psat score 100 past this class or zero so i mean that's really evidence-based sort of uh look at it so you know the idea of all right you want to take uh ap bio but when you took um bio is a sophomore you had an f in that class do you really think it's a good idea to take ap bio i mean so some of those things yeah we just use it as a screener not you must pass all six tests you look at the whole body and you try we're trying as a school system to elevate and provide opportunities and supports when needed for success in those higher level classes but those do those uh criteria do sort of
051form a um a gatekeeping type situation right so you're still determining ahead of time that you're i guess making sure that a student doesn't waste their time is that how how you view it as opposed to not i would frame it in the affirmative in the sense that making sure students make the most of their time okay same i would definitely agree the other flip side to this atom is like parents pressuring kids to you have to take you know the high level courses when it's not appropriate for them to do so um i've dealt with that in you know what i do um and after a conversation with the family realizing okay this might not be an appropriate course for them to be in then they realize okay you know based off the data
052you're right you know okay understood we have to protect our kids from parents too don't forget of course i mean everybody means well you also have to lead by whatever the data shows in past performance too yeah so i just want to i want to put this into my words and see if this is a fair description when we started this conversation i was thinking like leveling on or off yes or no and when i say that just so i don't know adam you might remember this but literally what goes through my mind in leveling it's still sort of shocked to all of it still shocks me and it did even back then it died and finished in 1986. did you get your report card adam the levels which was like high above average above
053average high average average below average and then special like and everyone knew the classroom you were in the home room yeah no sam this is it's true it would go out with every report card that's what we would get um so so what i'm thinking is uh the conversation in my mind it was yay or nay and what it is is really more of a spectrum um you have a whole you have a tool you have a whole tool chest this is the leveling is one tool that you think is inappropriate but there are other tools to ensure the the optimal progress and realistic progress for students is that yeah so the leveling yay or nay thing and i think what sam and i were really speaking to the middle school level having a professional
054and data driven rationale for [Music] thinking that's not a great idea to start leveling everything and pushing that down at the high school level it's really kind of inherent in the system and we don't have a huge myriad of levels at the high school um you know we'll have college prep competitive college prep and then as you you know matriculate in some of the courses it'll open up to ap level work or ece that that level work we want to encourage as many students as are comfortable with their families to pursue the most rigorous coursework and that might not and that that's not a blanket endorsement for every course that means you know we look at you know what are your goals academically how are you performing academically what are you doing personally maybe we
055want to take this ap course but not that course over here and you know i'm sure you know you guys haven't had those conversations with your kids yet but i know i've had that conversation and as a principal i've shepherded a lot of families through those conversations about how how do we make these determinations and frankly the criteria listed in 6141.51 you know recommendations how did you do in some of your other courses what are your interests you know what sort of student are you you know you're going to have to do a lot of summer work in this ap class right is that is that you is that something you're comfortable with well yeah maybe in this content area but not that content area so these are this this gate that is being outlined
056here is really what good schools and good counselors and good principals do every day so nothing in here that i'm uncomfortable with it's really as i said before i think that we as a is a school district culture in a uh high school and middle school really want to push our kids to that level of proximal development as they would say in a theoretical sense um you know hard enough to be rigorous and challenging not so hard to overwhelm or make it impossible or frustration but not too easy either and i think these if these policies help codify that uh approach then i think that's great um i think when it goes overboard is when you start leveling you know elementary school classes and seventh and maybe even eighth grade classes where there's not data
057to support that and that's where we i want to look into this with kevin marlene and our curriculum people and maybe i'll even ask marlene to come to the next meeting to kind of weigh in we can put it first on the agenda or something tim yes just so uh i don't what year is the first year that as of this year or last year what's the first year that students take uh algebra one seventh grade eighth grade well it's it's a bit of a trick question because again we try and meet students where they are okay so we have elementary school students that have taken algebra one oh okay okay so the point is is that contin that continues and math is the one place where data supports you know that level of got
058it uh discerned leveling if you will i mean i had a kid in eighth grade i had his parent tell me i want my son is a freshman to take calculus because he took calculus but it was in chinese i want to make sure he's mastered english with it yeah huh that's impressive yeah this kid was really impressive he was somebody that was way off the charts what's that but that's a math thing now you become a language barrier too at the same time you know are you taking the conte the math content or are you really taking it for the english language aspect of it yeah he wanted both i mean he was a ferocious math student and you know but the point being that you know we're going to meet you where your
059needs are in any class math is unique in its leveling um that it's so sequential other content areas aren't like that so um you know we we do do that now with the levels but typically a student you know in mass uh where we level would be algebra one in seventh and eighth grade in an accelerated you know framework about 60 to 70 percent of our students are taking those accelerated math classes i i will you know review this again with marlene and kevin we'll come back and have a conversation next go around the 61 41 5 1 and 5 2. unless there are any other questions on those two for the moment feel good about it so far okay student fundraising activities i can share screen on our current that one is 61.41 that's
06045. so soliciting and fundraising you see our our policy in front of you and our policy is pretty bare bones yeah why why are we talking about this one it seems i mean what we have seems okay to me are we looking to align it with caves well i'll pull up caves for you i mean i i read through him it doesn't really seem it seems like ours is fine to me has there been a problem the only thing i i like is specifically indicating that when you're doing fundraising for school sponsored events you need to fill out the form outlined in the policy we do have a form and it's good um it's a good form it outlines what the activity is where the money goes etc uh who's facilitating it needs to be
061signed off by people to take some ownership i know that this is something that we're going to review uh with clifton clifton larson um [Music] so you know i think what we'll do is uh we could either postpone this or we could include this statement on the forum is part of the policy that we already have or we can like i said postpone it and see if if vin has a version that they want us to use um i would say postpone it okay but i i think the uh the idea of adding the the form language in there is good since we since it's already practice anyway um at least that would be a good start but um maybe just make a note because i guess it'll depend on what the uh the audit
062found if there's anything additional that would need to be so added there right yeah so at the end when we go through the items that we're going to move forward to a first reading um we'll simply just not mention that right okay so the uh last item for the i think sam was trying to ask a question no i just wanted to image um so i would say i just wanted to make sure that this item also because we didn't review the other two and it has to do with finance in general um hopefully there's no not overlap but there's nothing that would dictate another does that make sense um especially not having gone through the other yeah you just want to make sure that all three policies work in concert and not against each
063other right right right yeah so we will certainly i'll certainly review that with vin um in advance i know he already sent uh a policy out to our administrators to take a look at so we'll continue that internal excuse me internal review process to make sure that they are in concert the next item was the gifted and talented students this is a brand new policy okay basically what this is saying is that where is the school system required to identify students for gifted and talented services so we already have a process whereby every year we review all of the data with the team and identify students for gifted and talented we send out letters to that effect um and it's you know this is this everything that we do we've been you know basically following
064this policy anyway okay since this mix this is mandated policy per statute so did they did they just what two week uh statute or did they was this entirely new statute that just seems that just happens to be in line with our practice um i believe that they created new statute on this yeah i think the change here they had a policy the old policy did not include talented in it so the new statute includes talented now and that the districts i believe are responsible in trying to find multiple ways of measuring the both academic and talented which typically is like in the arts and so on i do know that i do write yeah i do like this dr solon there was one wording i would suggest changing um i actually like this a
065lot i almost want to ask if i can kind of hijack this because i'm rewriting our own ours i figured maybe we can change it to will as opposed to must let me just try to find it because at least it'll give us some more flexibility [Music] sorry my computer is running slow [Music] and it's buffering buffering buffering uh what what paragraph is it on the uh there's a must writing right in the middle of jeff's sheet right now there's yeah there's a must and i think the final determination and the identification of students as gifted third paragraph down was it that one so yeah the identification process must include i would suggest change it will include that might be a statutory requirement you think so because it must include multiple measures in order to
066identify students strengths in intellectual ability creativity or a specific academic area because that the must in that sentence allows it requires us like you had said earlier to not just look at intellectual ability but creativity as well adding the arts component to that i'll ask on that i you know what uh cabe has a policy guru who i can ask on that yeah if you change the wording that that changed the right the intent yeah my thought is it just gives us a little more flexibility on those multiple measures that's all as opposed to must to me restricts us to and maybe i'm reading it differently that's all um it kind of restricts us in a way that these are the areas of measurement but then again you did outline it below so yeah i'm
067just trying to think of what the difference would be between yeah yeah must says this so if you change it to will that means you could add more than this right if you change it to will because will doesn't will say that you're still using multiple measures was it will that you wanted or may i i would like to see will like this is something we will do and it gives us or at least your administration some more flexibility if if um measurements change down the road um to interchange those you know whatever it is that you're going to use that's all i i don't see any difference between will and must in terms of um you know on our end i don't think it would be an issue to change it to will if
068you prefer that language yeah may would be a uh yeah may would is more relaxed yeah will or must i think you know carry it so i'll i made a note for that and i will ask um the folks at cabe for their interpretation on that but i think it should be okay and then is there any way that again the statue says we have to identify but not necessarily service we don't necessarily have to service so maybe some language that says the district will make every possible effort to provide because i don't know how confident you are dr solon in that you know we had the talent the gifted program but is that going to always be the case is what i'm trying to anticipate you know um i think uh on the surface
069that shift to maybe ensure that we continue to have a teacher serving the population now keep in mind that's only elementary school now when you make a change like that you know does this encompass all kids k through 12 that we're going to make every possible and what's the now you're looking at a dramatic increase in a financial commitment there um right you know i i that might might be better served if there's a challenge to continuing with talon gifted to look at that but i'd be nervous about creating a real fiscal demand there right now unless that's where people want to take it so all right um going back to the policy that concludes all of our uh first reviews and i'm going to try and make this a little more straightforward by highlighting
070the the items that we indeed reviewed and are ready to move forward and then we have this so even though we still have some questions there we can still adjust them going into the second reading uh right right so okay and then we would move in our agenda to personnel non-discrimination i'll share this at this point this is the third reading we should all be pretty familiar with this but this is um this is our policy that says we can't discriminate based on age the pcc highlighted in gray is the new part we've been complying with this because it's part of federal law and state law anyway but we don't have it reflected in our policy this is a required change in policy okay any questions on that one no questions is this on i
071thought we did a third read on this already on the non-discrimination i don't think so but we may have let me i hope not let me look at we moved one no that was what that was last that this passed me the meeting before that we moved a policy to a third reading um we had at the last meeting review for a second reading this was on april 20th 2022 review for a second reading personnel non-discrimination so this meeting would be reviewed remove moving it to a third reading right let me yeah let me let me look at the board policy or the uh board meeting here quickly from the last i think the last one we moved to the third reading was the one dealing with um resumes i think which wasn't necessarily age
072i recall because i think um ann and faith had comments which impacts our hiring practices right hiring practices right yeah so i think that was the last one that we did okay first and third rating so at the may 19th meeting we didn't have any policy to report right let me look here on the meeting prior that might be it adam because i was not at the may 19th and i thought that that was our third read right then in there ah well honestly i thought we were missing something because i had actually emailed carol during the middle of the meeting i was like i think we're missing missing minutes for our policy meeting she's like no we didn't have a meeting like oh my bad yeah and the meeting prior to that was the
073um high school showcase the meeting prior to that was april 21st which was a day after the last meeting um yeah so we only had a second reading on that thank you that was a little off in the calendar no no worries so okay um that concludes the policies that we were you know bringing under consideration this evening and moving forward there are um two other points of interest for conversation would you guys prefer to make a motion on the existing policies that we reviewed tonight before we get there or do you want to review these two items and then make the motion at the end i think we can make the movements now i mean yeah all right so why don't i present screen so whoever wants to make the first motion can see
074the mo the um ones that we're moving forward for our first reading the highlighted ones are the ones that we're moving forward okay um all right so i'll make the motion here move the policy committee [Music] moved to a first reading policy number 1140 distribution of materials to and by students policy 6141.51 advanced courses or programs 6141.52 challenging curriculum program and 6172.1 gifted and talented students is there a second 10 seconds any discussion all in favor unanimous fantastic and then the second is move that policy number 4118.11 personnel nondiscrimination be moved to a third and final reading how many is there a second sam second um any discussion all in favor sam sarah there we go it is unanimous perfect um and now we can move on to section four so there were um two
075elements in there i know tim will be pleasantly surprised that the new law removes the sunset date for conducting remote and hybrid meetings uh i think we all appreciate that as we're here this evening again i mean committee meetings are the work of the board of education done in public not necessarily a public meeting but we want to be incredibly transparent and accessible we think that in this format it allows for both and for us to accomplish our work efficiently effectively and transparently uh the cave has not yet put forth the policy guidance on uh you know adopting this as part of policy but we are following and compliant with the law that will be coming soon the policy will be coming soon any questions on that because i know we want to take a
076look at that and codifying it into policy in the near future um i guess uh for me the only question i had was the the part at the end where it's saying um for public comment that if someone wanted to comment that they would have to request in writing to have a i guess a terminal set up so that they could comment during our virtual meeting and i was wondering if if there's been clarification on that or not or if if that could be done through a supplied public link or something so i guess that's that weird thing right i mean yeah so if we get a written request that i don't want to participate virtually this school system must set up a time and place for them to per you know participate um virtually
077real time so right you know in other words you know i don't i don't like this um i don't want to log on this option i don't want to send questions and this is generally more so for um you know usually i mean we have public comment meetings in in um policy in the committee most many boards do not i would save the most so usually in a full board meeting let's say the full board was virtual and you had a public comment section like somebody could technically go to town hall and you know mike salamini could stream them into this virtual space to let them speak for three minutes i really don't anticipate that being a we don't get people oftentimes to comment um virtually via email let alone come in person to a
078policy committee meeting or something like that obviously if it's a if it's a big deal issue adam i've heard you say to me before like if we're anticipating a lot of public comment we would do it in person yeah you know absolutely so that's but we will certainly get clarification when the new policy comes out and is available okay uh tim go ahead yeah so just generally i think my hope is that you or mike whoever is doing it just can work on um making it more accessible like you were just saying or what we're experiencing tonight right um just whatever the stuff is just to try to make it as accessible as possible i mean i've explained all my thoughts on virtual meetings but you know i think i think we should make a
079good faith effort and i'm not creating any sort of timeline on this i know mike's got a million things to do um but it going in that direction i think it would be valuable i agree um sam go ahead i mean [Music] couldn't we just provide them similar to how you had town hall meetings virtually uh provide them the same link that we're on and they just hop into the space i mean granted if they didn't have the means the technical means we'd give them access to it but i think by now majority of the public has either a phone or a computer which they can sign on to this particular link if need be to make comment yeah they you know the only issue i've heard around that is people hijacking that and you
080know disrupting meetings not even members of our own community just somebody who's got too much time on their hands wanting to say profanity or something in a public meeting because that's what gets them excited in life i don't know but um zumba is coming in i don't know what possibility in chapter yeah i mean i like to think our people are better than that but you know we can look at options to get them to participate virtually and when we have clear guidance about what the expectations are it's a real good summer project that we will be working on the last item i just want to update you in the curriculum committee there was discussion about how do school systems navigate curricular questions concerns complaints so they've done work to walk through other policies from
081other districts and they've forwarded to us another policy to consider so in advance of the next meeting we'll get you a copy of said policy marlene is finalizing that with kevin um and i'll take a look at that and then we'll send it off to you to review for our next meeting but i just wanted to make you aware of when you see that show up on your agenda like what is this where did this come from just forwarded on from the curriculum committee so that's the policy that that faith and and we're referring to right okay yep yeah right so next um meeting we're going to start a little differently at 7 00 p.m um to accommodate the auditor uh who can make it it virtually at 7 30 and so um i'm sure
082we'll be advancing the four policies we advanced tonight in that first half hour plus taking a a look at that meeting the policy from curriculum then the remainder of the meeting will focus on the audit if that's okay adam does that make sense yes sam question i just want just a little clarification because we have two links there's a 630 link and a 7 o'clock link yeah the the 6 30 will be um removed okay [Music] then just sent out the seven o'clock link today yeah i see venin's unfortunately as the organizer carol can only send that out what are you gonna do with water it's only one day and i'm already the wheels have fallen off the wagons she'll enjoy hearing that and when she puts the minutes together upon her return anyway all
083right okay go ahead on the agenda great so uh is there any other items or business to come before this policy meeting seeing none uh motion to adjourn all right first and uh sam second all in favor all right it is unanimous this meeting is adjourned at the 805. thanks so much appreciate your patience all right have a good night have a good night thank you