001all right i don't know where did i all right here we go can you hear piano playing no okay we are live yes okay then um i will uh call this uh meeting of the policy board of education policy subcommittee to order on let's say april we'll check anybody april 20th there we go okay i can't even see without moving my glasses around at the 6 34 p.m and um i've forgotten the order of things miss jacinsky please call the roll you are muted [Music] nope still muted unless are we all muted no no okay can you hear me now yep yep yes can you hear me now i'm mr here ms rosenberg here mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum great um i'll stand for the pledge or jeff do you have
002a screen for the pledge i do something or you have a flag in your background even that'll work let's do that yeah okay 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 and justice for all okay reframe okay good evening everyone um [Music] dr solon is there any uh public comment for this evening not related to the policy committee uh more reserved for tomorrow evening yeah there was a [Music] note on standardized testing for tomorrow night's meeting oh yes yeah i think we all got that okay very good um then i guess we will move to the uh first our third item on the agenda i'll hand it over to you jeff great um i'm just going
003to present the screen here can everybody see the uh agenda yep yes so um the policies that we have for this evening are uh the discussion and and review the the non-discrimination policy uh this is a policy when i click on the link can you see the policy being opened or just the agenda we see it okay um this is something that we've discussed in the past uh the discriminatory discriminatory practices around the employees age date of birth etc uh that we're not allowed to ask questions that would pinpoint the applicant's age uh we've had a conversation around this before um so i'm not trying to look here as to carol do you recall why this is just under a draft yeah you know jeff that's the wrong agenda that one oh oh yeah i
004say this does not look like because we're on march 8th my apologies yeah i was just texting you to tell you that yeah okay then i'll stop sharing my screen for a second um this is what you get from rolling out of one meeting into the next okay my apologies this should look uh much more familiar well this is one of the last times we get to do this anyway right and we're not we're not exactly putting on a first-class show tonight if not i make so i apologize for that um so this is a second reading um as i was saying before this is a policy that we reviewed before uh it really illustrates you know the change in law highlighting that we can't ask candidates about their age um and anything that would
005lead to the potential for discrimination based on age so dates of attendance and graduation from educational institutions for example it's honestly pretty straightforward it's a change to be legally compliant we've been doing this anyway but it's just a matter of updating the policy are there any questions on that policy i'm just trying to recall if there were any comments from the board meeting from last time but i don't think it was on this one i think there were just questions actually but points of clarification but sam did you have a question i'm just you know this is our second read i just don't see any edits you didn't add any other edits we didn't change anything aside from the you know the the standard language that was in there right and then the level of
006i guess reporting or grievance of discrimination so i'll pull it up again here so that doesn't change if there is whether it's um related to age discrimination or other forms of discrimination there is a path to uh file a complaint on our website right on our home page and we would pursue that path ultimately you know the connecticut community commission on human rights you could file a complaint with them or some other body if you're not satisfied with our complaint process but um you can file the the complaint like i said right on our website and that would go to uh robin and carey to process so this would be a title nine uh you know in essence if there's for this sort of issue the title four but the the um this change really
007is exclusive to the the issue about the the stuff in the gray here this age related change okay thank you sure any other questions on that one um seeing no questions um i will entertain a motion to see this would be to move move to a second rating correct third i think it's third reading i'll move to a third reading okay uh yes right no this one's going for a second reading oh it is okay yeah yeah yeah right because yeah a second reading for the public right right correct okay um move that the policy number 411.11 personnel non-discrimination be moved uh for a second reading do i have a second what was the policy number adam um i said did i read it wrong four one one four one one eight dot one one
008there you go yeah there we go what did i say did i have too many i had no eights and too many ones i think is what what happened is that what happened all right um so uh tim can i get a second again on the revised motion thank you second um all in favor aye passes unanimously thank you okay jeff you're up again well that was so smooth i'm happy to move on into a community relations parent involvement this would be for a third reading we made some changes here to i mean this original was from 1997. uh communications has changed substantially since that point and uh one of the things that we had talked about at the last meeting is that it would be nice to have scott conway who's one of our
009technology leaders in the district talk about parent square and unfortunately he's out of state today and wasn't able to join us for this meeting but we will invite him back to the may meeting and he can get an overview because you had questions about the efficacy of that communication and i was looking forward to having scott show you some um you know information that we get on the back end when we send that those postings out about how many people were contacted how many people were reached and this same sort of information we've had for many years with school messenger but it's much cleaner and allows for much better two-way parent communication with the teacher or people who send out messages so it's really got some nice enhancements that really dovetailed with this policy well
010um so we're gonna invite scott back for the main meeting to kind of provide that overview but you can see yeah we basically just updated everything to be more contemporary and as a note i did uh i know i was gonna say as a note i did download the app oh i did great and i became more familiar with it and it's like oh yeah this is it's a pretty powerful tool to have to chat with the uh the teacher right uh teachers in general um it looked like you can even set up chat groups for certain groups and that sort of thing too yeah i think i familiarize myself with that but and i don't know who has i'm sure only certain people have permissions to set those up but right and we use
011i mean there was a legal addition um to this really about if the district has to go to three weeks of remote learning and things like that that are hopefully um you know never going to happen again um but you know the legislature built that in and required it in our policy right but we used it as an opportunity to update it as well so so just to review all of the language that has been revised here is from statute um or much much of it is so 10 through is statutory um these eight and nine um excuse me nine is also statutory uh eight was language that re we updated uh because it really just wasn't contemporary okay yeah because from 1997 i don't even we barely had electronic communication right 1997. yeah i
012think the old policy mentioned something about smoke signals was sold okay um are there any comments or questions on this no seeing none all right um on for the next jeff oh well tim's got one go ahead tim i do this is just uh for future reference a question i could ask in the future i'd be curious if you it without spending a lot of time on it if you could tell if there's an increase in parent-teacher conferences now the video streaming is you know more readily available so if you started you know before covid to now i'm not looking for any answer tonight or anything in the near future but i'd be curious to know it seems to me like it would probably increase participation i'm just i would be curious to know that
013if it had it kind of dovetails with our working theory about how holding these meetings remotely is easier on people um and it's one of the things i think we've taken away from the pandemic you know for instance in the coming weeks we're going to be holding many um invitations for preschool parents of preschool-aged children to learn about school modernization you know we send stuff out to our you know pre-k-12 community but that doesn't include a lot of you know folks with child care younger families and so you know we are doing those remote at different times of the day when it might be easier for a parent with an infant or toddler to be able to access that you know remotely and what we saw when i was principal at dot and we started
014to really do a lot of power school communication is that the number of parent conference requests really fell off at middle in high school because parents knew in you know almost relatively real time compared to getting your report card every 10 weeks how your child was doing so there were a lot less you know conferences now you know i think it's still the the same that there's not as much demand for parent-teacher conferences at the middle and high school level but across the district we've added the remote option and a lot of people take advantage of that now yeah thank you they prefer that a lot a lot of people prefer it some prefer in person and that's okay but you know to answer that question we do see a lot of remote thank you
015the next item um on the agenda was graduation requirements uh it was a very simple change that graduation should not be held until 180 days and 900 hours of school work are completed and establishing the graduation date the district may establish for any school year a firm date for students in grades 12 which is no earlier than the 180th day we have to have 180 school days so for an example this year we had an issue at doolittle where we had to start the school year two days delay we have to wait if that happened at cheshire high school those days would be added to the end of the year and then when april first rolled around we could establish a graduation date that was no earlier than 180 days from the start of the
016year so the start of the year didn't happen until two days later they'd be added on we'd have to make sure that we cover 180 days of school so it allows it provides a little bit of direction in terms of when we can establish the graduation date it doesn't mean like some seniors may only go 174 days if after april 1st there was this you know catastrophe this is where it came from really with some of the tornadoes like hamden if you remember several years ago farmington during our graduation protocol you know in 2020 you wouldn't have to just keep adding days on after april first for seniors to be able to graduate so that families can have firm graduation dates it's really just a smart logistical um addition that was uh allowed by statute
017any questions on that one yeah sorry this is the third reading so i think we've answered most of the questions on these but [Music] all right so in that case we'll move on to the next item grading systems the change here was that we were required to add a component uh that the board is in favor of weighted grading we advise we have i mean going back many years in our handbook where classes are fall in terms of grade weighting so um [Music] it it's really pretty clear that an ap [Music] an ap um class is weighted higher than a a ccp class which is weighted higher than a college prep class ccp being competitive college prep and it basically encourages students to take a more rigorous course load um which depending on the college
018you're applying to would be necessary so it is a broad general practice across connecticut that this occurs i know we've talked about it a little bit uh tim go ahead thanks adam um yeah so i i support this i mean we i told you before i have some reservations about it but i could support it i do have one question that crossed my mind in the past month uh a student so you so your students who are there with you for four years that's pretty straightforward i presume all the waiting would be straightforward but what about a student who transfers in or do you have any situations where students take courses outside of cheshire high and it's a different grading system that they use i'm just curious in general how do you how would you
019address something like that you know i appreciate that as a former high school pr principal that's a pretty sophisticated question um and yes we do that so students are permitted to take courses off campus you know i you know we've we have students that take courses through stanford um stanford excuse me through uh community colleges through online programs over the summer in addition to it those courses in order to be included on your high school transcript have to be vetted so what we'll do is interested student submits that in advance to the guidance department the guidance department will review the course description with the uh department chair from that department let's say it's a science class and they'll evaluate an appropriate weighting for that class if it's if the you know student seeks to include
020it as part of their transcript so yeah we do have a process for that but it's a good question thank you any other questions on that all right the next agenda item the fafsa completion again these are items that we've we've discussed uh in the past this uh is required of us to include this policy as you can see this is a brand new policy for us um it's really what they're trying to do is that there are a significant number of students in their state experience who aren't really fully aware of the federal aid available to them and it may discourage them from applying and seeking uh higher education and we we certainly want for any student who wants to seek higher education to remove any impediments and this encourages districts to do that
021to ensure that we get our students to engage in the fafsa cheshire actually has such a fast high completion rate that we've been honored by the state for this um so we're our guidance department does a really good job of making sure that kids are aware um it's not forcing anybody to go to uh higher ed but certainly those who want to seek that option we want to make sure that they're aware of this so um i think we've like i said we've done a pretty good job with that having been honored by the state for our work with it um so i'm so after the third reading or that's our third reading this this question finally clicks into my mind after yeah it's like what's this osmosis i don't know um but so the
022fafsa form does that need to be filled out in order to apply to a college is that like almost like you have your credit application ready to go if you're looking for a mortgage you know kind of thing or it doesn't have to be at all um i think this is uh independent of the college application process but it allows you to determine what sort of federal aid and assistance you could be avail yourself to which obviously you know if you've seen the price of colleges i mean i knew about it i've heard about it now that my son's a junior i'm really like stunned that it could range from you know 13 000 to seventy thousand dollars or higher and you know depending on where you're going to school you know the fafsa it's
023good to know what sort of money might be available to you so it helps a student know what their what higher education is affordable to them outside of any um resources they may have had through savings or or something to that effect is that what you're saying right like and that's so that that allows that allows a person to know like through whatever their socioeconomic status is like what sort of pool of i guess loans are available to them before like a a university may put together like a a grant package for them or or something like that that's outside of that that's like right it could run from grant through aid um and you know it's interesting too now the is the i don't know that things are evolving in a way that colleges
024i heard um from i think it was dr feldman i'm trying to remember who was sharing sam you were in this meeting the other day was it dr feldman who was saying that if your family has a gross income under 75 000 and you're accepted to either cornell or colgate that it's you know it's paid for yeah there's a third percentage and you kind of did that too you can also gave you know if you're 7500 they paid for the full four years yeah so i mean there are in our guidance department um stays attuned to these always changing opportunities uh whether they be through individual scholarships that are you know more to cover books and things like the cheshire foundation offers a tremendous diversity of scholarships that great opportunities for kids and very generous
02541 000 this year through the cheshire ed foundation to a number of students it's incredible um but they're also you know like we were talking about here federal packages and then school packages and we try and support families and and seeking that information that's really what this is is just encouraging families to look at this resource to determine if there's a benefit for them or not yeah i was just trying to understand because i don't know when we first mentioned this i think in the first reading there seemed to be a little bit of pushback uh from us a few of the other board members and i i was trying to understand what the controversy would be i think on that you know when we were discussing that i think the the genesis of that
026angst was that every student was forced to do this whether or not you're going to college and it's not that's not the case it's really yeah that's not what this is i don't think right now um we're just trying to make sure i think the state's really trying to make sure that everybody knows that it's available to them this isn't a cheshire problem but it was a statewide loss so we have to adopt the policy sure okay thank you yeah sure um any other questions on this one and i think we do an excellent job with this already um because it gets you know college gets very overwhelming for families and you know you have to educate them to to let them know what their options are out there if they choose to go that
027it's it's not anything that should deter them um from applying to your point adam it doesn't impact the application process um for college it's just another added bonus that if you have a school system that has the support um because it gets overwhelming and i've gone through this you know twice now third one's coming soon and it's every round just seems to be like my first time around again and so the defense department you know calms me down and lays out here's what your options are yeah we only serve that decaf for those junior parent meetings everybody's amped up already yeah no i do think this i do think this is really valuable um there are there are you know loan sharks out there i'm not sure that that's the best term but they will
028charge really high rates um and you can get you know lower rates and higher rates and people it's not just the debt you're taking on but if you're given really bad interest rates by somebody who's there to make a profit and not there to make a profit and help people if they're just focused entirely on profit people can end up in a huge huge problem students who who really make a good faith effort at trying to do what people always say you know get an education go to college stuff like that um and it's it's really awful for the people who are who end up in that situation and the only thing i was i was putting up a little bit of the like you know um concern about this uh simply because i i'm
029a believer that multiple pathways to success in life are possible and i really don't like the idea having grown up in cheshire and i i often heard sort of the mantra like where are you going to college there are certain benefits to that it's not necessarily right for everyone and i just wanted to be clear and jeff assured assured me that we're not going to 100 for this fafsa but that's really important to me too because you know electricians plumbers you go into trades you don't necessarily need to go to a standard four-year undergraduate college um and i think that's i feel it's important to repeat that in these meetings when people are listening to it you know it's uh college can be great but it's not for everyone but even if you go in
030that other pathway tim it this process helps to alleviate that oh yeah potential insecurity that most people have um no matter what level of you know income you're at you just you got to be educated prior to going in on the national level that's why we have such a uh you know a request for canceling student debt because i think back then we didn't inform the public well enough right so yeah no and i don't want to yeah i mean if you go to be an electrician i think it's 25 000 for one year of school they're still you may still be taking out loans for that yeah right i don't think a plumber necessarily goes to any sort of school they might i'm not sure of the trades exactly but no there's money involved
031um yeah anyway i i support this we could also sell bumper stickers that say my other car is a student loan and still modernization that way that's the innovation that we're gonna we'll try it try anything to pay for school modernization all right so um the last item we had was you know if you recall we just finished updating this and then changes were made and um we had to [Music] make one change and again this isn't a cheshire public schools issue given the fact that we're to my knowledge the only public school system that embeds birth to three and right into our school system but if you recall this highlighted language talked about making sure that birth to three service providers had a seat at the table when planning ppt's uh pupil personnel team
032meeting when planning ieps individualized education plans for children but like i said we already have birth to three is part of what cheshire public schools is knowing known for and those people are already at the table they work for us as a where in a lot of districts they don't so not a cheshire issue as i mentioned but because it's statutory we had to include it any questions or comments okay see none um well look at that um all right well uh i guess i will uh if there are no other questions or comments on any of these policies i will um go ahead and make a motion uh move that uh policy number i'll try and read correctly this time uh 1101.1 community relations pyramid parent involvement 6146 instruction graduation requirements 6146.1 instruction grading
033systems instruction um fafsa completion program and 6159 instruction individualized education program slash special education program program be moved to a third and final reading is there a second 10 seconds um any discussion on the motion no um all in favor uh sam oh there we go thumbs up great okay it is unanimous motion passes um we have other what is that i'm not even sure what that means on our agenda other does that mean new business i'm not even sure how to interpret that other yeah are there any other issues i mean sam just raised her hand but i do know you know i just want to affirm the idea that we are going to bring scott into next month's meeting is that okay with everything yeah that'd be great yeah okay great yeah um
034sam go ahead you had your hand raised i think i i emailed dr solon about this about the um gifted policy talented gifted dr solon if we need to create a draft or i don't know when the where the current one is in our files yeah i apologize if i missed anything there you were kind of breaking up just a little bit but um the we solicited uh cabe for an updated policy as it relates to uh talented and gifted we're awaiting that from them and as soon as we have that we'll share it with the group uh to be reviewed i would imagine it will be on our may agenda yeah they said with the next update the new revised version is going to be included so we should be getting that within the
035next couple weeks so we should have enough time between receiving it from them drafting our own going through the reads to post by july 1st then right yeah there's not i don't think the uh the policy police will come after us if it's not but we also have the alternative of uh advancing it we can't adopt the policy uh if we're comfortable without going through three readings if there's a time sensitive nature to it if we we look at it and we feel super comfortable and we take it to the board and they feel super comfortable uh i don't think that there's a reason we couldn't read it in may and then read it in june and maybe even again what we've done on some occasions is on the june 30th finance meeting and done
036another reading there uh to just adopt so again okay let's take a look at it and see how comfortable you are with it and we then we can accelerate it or not depending on your company are we anticipating some major changes here um not really no okay just we're required to identify um it's again it's one of those things where it really kind of the changes reflect what we're already doing so i think it will be something that you guys will look at and i just want to confirm and look at it and talk to kevin and marlene and make sure that everything is good and get their assurance and then uh we'll take a look at it but i really don't think there's gonna be anything eye-popping and i think it'd be pretty easy
037to adopt it's um is this a large policy like a title ix policy or is it something that's a couple of pages yeah yeah because you don't want to know we could get it in time to read through it old cape one atom is two pages but since the um legal language is now adding in talented prior to that it was really just focus on gifted so i guess we'll wait and see what really how many lines they change that sounds good all right um is there any other items to be brought to our attention right now i have nothing right now so i guess i'll uh entertain a motion to adjourn we have a second oh there we go okay all in favor it is unanimous this meeting