001i call to order this meeting of the march 14th curriculum committee cheshire public schools um can we have a role ann harrigan yeah tony perry genie and faith ham here i'm sure you have a quorum thank you rice for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which against one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay do we have any public heart we have not nice tan why thank you um okay uh first order of business then is a review and approval of the minutes of february 14 2022. um i take it if you've had a chance to review they are right on the screen if anybody needs to uh take a look i remember yeah i remember well yeah
002everyone would speed reading um okay uh do i hear a motion for approval so moved second all in favor approved um informational items health and p.e no okay we're gonna move a little bit here and there i have it right up on the board oh actually we need to go back for that last why didn't i put this out i'm sorry informational items well actually let's go back we have to go back and correct march 14th minutes minutes yep we could take a these were the march 14th minutes though yes that we saw yes yeah oh okay all right we'll do the right ones okay so let's say we'll just correct the uh motion do i have a motion for approval of the march the minutes of the march 14th meeting 2022. so uh second
003all in favor hi sorry about that okay um so um on under informational items we are going to review the letter for the 2022 um ncss uh letter to parents and you will recognize it because it is the same version of the letter you have seen for a few years now the thing that is different obviously are the dates because every year we let folks know exactly when this will be coming up so as you can see grades three through six will start may 4th grade seven and eight may 3rd through may 5th for the smarter balanced grade 5 will take the science test on may 17th grade 8 will take the science test on april 27th and grade 11 will take it on these various dates may 23rd and 25th for different periods may
00424th and 26th okay so one twenty schedules of course you're gonna be recognized yes i am do you recognize me um so how long is the test each time kevin why don't you speak to that question so each um each session is blocked out for either a class period or at the middle in high school or an hour at the elementary school elementary school they don't often use the entire hour but that's these are untimed tests so we block out that amount of time there are some natural stopping points in like in the ela assessment for example there's uh reading passages and there's two of them at the at the earliest grade levels so there's a natural stopping point after one of them and so that's often a natural spot so teachers use their judgment
005about taking breaks right right and because it's untimed they have a little bit more flexibility than in a timed assessment to be able to do that great thank you so we do it over these days and we we plot out the number of anticipated days and the the only reason i ask is because it looks like a lot of dates up there but if you're spreading it out over all the grades that are taking it it's really just 45 hours time slot yeah yes for each one yeah okay thank you and that had been a question i had asked earlier as well so um um okay and then just i know that there are some parents if we could just address this issue who uh parents and and members of the community who um do
006have concerns about standardized tests than what we're trying to capture and if you could just address those for the community and allay some of the concerns people might have about um what are we using especially with the younger grades what are we seeking with this information sure sure so there's a couple of things i would say to that number one we are more than happy to have conversations with any parent out there who has a question or concern they can contact their child's teacher that's first and foremost all the time we're more than willing to talk to them at any grade level and explain how they're used the next thing is that these are required tests by the state just the way the cmt was many years ago they are really what help give us
007as a district an idea of how well we are doing so is our english curriculum aligned to the standards when we get those scores back by the district we can tell if we've covered these standards or what we need to go back and re-teach in third grade before kids go to fourth grade or what we need to reinforce in fourth grade when they come back next year if they were in third grade the other thing that it does is it lets us know how students are growing so we can see where they left off we could see where they were pre pandemic and we can see if they've met what's called their growth target so we take a look to see are students growing are they healthy so if we have a small group of
008students who we think should be achieving more growth we can intervene and put supports in place for them to make sure that they're not falling behind or they're not lagging they don't have lagging skills so it helps us from a curriculum and instruction standpoint of where our teachers might need additional support and resources it are where we need to make curricular revisions and it also helps us to know where we need to put our energies for our students and where we might need to offer accelerated practices things like that for our students as well and given that we're coming off a panda off of the past two years 18 months what do you expect to see um what should we what should we all be looking for um what do we hope to see um
009because i know you've you've introduced acceleration uh the concept or the strategy of acceleration how do you expect that to manifest itself in the scores that sure so the concept of acceleration can be a little tricky because accelerating learning means making sure that all students are accessing grade level material grade level standards so it makes it sound like we're going past but we're not we're just continuing to move at the grade level and we want to make sure that we're not going back and re-teaching because if you do that you can get caught in a loop where kids never catch up so because we've spent a lot of time on accelerating learning and prioritizing the standards and scaffolding for students and we put time and energy into coaching and supports for our students both at
010the elementary level all the way to the high school level we are based on our internal measures really hoping that our students will demonstrate growth from the last time they took it our individual students will all make that year's growth that's ideally what we're looking for for a healthy checkup okay do you have anything no okay as marlene said we've seen this before i know i know but it's a it's a new year i mean it's a different year we're we're still dealing with that monster out there and i just was wondering um you know it's it's the big hog moving through the the uh boa and it's almost out that you have always good analogy with make the metaphor queen um okay well um it'll be thank you for that and um all right
011so ready for that now old business we're going to review the language for the consideration of library uh books and classroom resources and ideally recommend it be moved over for consideration to the policy committee so yeah um do you have i do i do so this is a tricky bit of um language here because we have existing language that says that if you have a complaint you talk to your teacher if you're not satisfied you talk to the principal if you're not satisfied go to the assistant superintendent and on and on it goes and so what we're trying to be very specific about here is if a parent has a request to reevaluate a resource we want to make that plain to them and we want to make sure that it's linked in things like
012the handbook at the high school for parents so that we we have an obligation to make sure that k through 12 parents know that they're they have an opportunity to re request a reevaluation of a resource or a material so as part of that it's sort of when you look at multiple um policies you can see that there's this 6000 series about instruction and it says when the curriculum committee meets there is a process by which a committee of teachers selects a resource that they they look at multiple sources they present one to the curriculum committee they defend why they want it it goes on display in the office here at central office for two weeks we take any public comment we keep that comment on record for years and then um you know it's
013it's put back out but if a parent has a concern that we want them to know what the process is so what i did was um and you can each have one of these the yellow on this document is the new language i sort of put up the what is not highlighted is some old language just so you could get a feel for what kind of a change are we making here so let me give you a moment to read the non-highlighted version and then the highlighted version again just to get a sense of what sort of a change if anything are we making are we just in my opinion it's just to clean up some language look okay so marlene you're saying that we're replacing the old language which is the top part i'm
014giving you an option with the new language which is the highlighted right and that top part only goes to number three but it's it's a public complaint policy that is fairly lengthy um well that that was my next question which was i thought the problem was where it what where this is located in within our materials right i think if we're going to do anything with it i think to put it in instructional makes it makes it clean because it's easy to refer to it we know where it is a parent would know where it is we can link it in agendas at open house etc and then the back the back is fairly new i took some old language and some new language and just sort of updated it so what is the source
015of the highlighted material cabe gave some samples um some of it comes from berlin public schools okay something similar portland public schools had similar yeah that was not um i did not take creative license no um is there still this part that says instructional materials that says the board of education is responsible for the selection and purchase of texts and other instructional materials or is that that part is all in the um it out in 6 000 i think i have it right okay no that answers my question yeah it's all in there when it this is not the right one it's uh 6 000. thank you so do we also keep the one two three there you go is that the right one thanks i'm a little bit blind just a little bit if
016it's in the distance i've got you okay thank you up close together um all right so this outlines how we do things right that we have um one will be available that we put it out for two weeks textbooks are defined as a resource with 50 or more time upon the information you know all of that so so that we don't notice it all right okay great thank you so i do think it makes sense to put it as the next step yeah as a and this currently is under public communication public or community relations community relations community relations yeah um since we're dealing with instructional material and text then i think it makes more sense to put it so if they're like this language then we can we can say we want the policy
017committee to take this up and we've made some recommendation to the language yeah i i mean i think the most important part is that it's now under request for reconsideration of instructional materials rather than complaints right because that just sets the wrong tone yeah great yeah and also because we do review our inspection materials we should and we do and yep yep we take that into consideration as part of the five-year review also you know we would obviously deal with it then and the teacher might handle it then and there it may come to mary it may come to kevin it may come to me but what we've seen so far is that we haven't had any um it typically is resolved at the teacher level um okay so i'm a big opponent of the
018passive board a passive voice because what it does is it shifts um it takes responsibility off of somebody so the first sentence the perceived problem regarding instruction and instructional materials should be first discussed by the parents already a perceived problem by whom um you know i just think we open the door if we're not more specific there um and that's what happens with with a passive voice we could have anybody come in who really doesn't have the authority to to make it to to make a good request yeah um and i don't know what you guys think of that but that's my biggest concern here i mean we could have well it does say discussed by the parents and guardians and teachers yeah yeah and also i don't know i'm just trying to think what
019it might do what the language might do and there could be a community member who doesn't have kids in the school but that wants to address i mean that person also should be they should allow to talk with somebody if they have a concern i think um maybe if we just um acknowledged that there are there there are sometimes objections raised to materials by um interested community members parents guardians et cetera um and as a lead into this and then a perceived problem regarding instructional material should be first discussed because i you know i think there are people uh you know there there could be groups that come in and raise a ruckus that have nothing to do with the cheshire pool school system um so i think when if we could sort of define
020without uh you know protect the right of the community and the parents to have a say in this but not leave the door open to an outside agitating group that's and it's happened in we see it going on in other districts across the country so so i'm thinking i'm trying to starting to think how to best support that right so i think and again if you all think it's let's see let's back up a step though and say because i let's address that but let's address the first thing first do we think that this language or this type of a change is something before we words before any word smithing is done because i'm wondering this is this is the curriculum committee we're getting into some deep policy work now that's not our as we
021sit here is not our purview it really is the purview of the policy committee who would share this with the attorney and make sure that this was legit before it came back to the board of education but what we could do is say to our colleagues who are on that committee listen we want you to take this up we we discussed in committee you know the the the um issue of whether or not this is limiting to parents and guardians or it's open to community members so we want you to wrestle with that as you make your decisions with this new policy or with these policy language changes okay i'm not saying we shifted to them but i'm a little worried that we're taking on some work that is really meant for the other committee
022not to say hey let's give them the heads up that you know this is something that we we talked about within our committee and we think you should address it as you take this on in policy okay what do you think um i agree with that and also because it will come back to us and at that point we can also add our words missing yeah i mean any of us could attend the policy and right and the policy uh committee also will if we bring something up and say what about this they'll hopefully say well we talked about that and this was what we came up with okay i'm fine with that i just um as i said i think we um it's just too non-specific and that for a sentence for my taste
023but you know there are ways to remedy it and um it is a decision by the committee's assertive associate associated committee so um i raise it and let's see if others feel the same my boss sits on that committee so i can maybe talk to him about that that's where we put all the lawyers right so the question really is limit to parents or guardians are we open to community well actually i think it yeah i mean the community should be involved but is there any way to protect the interests of the districts from outside influence people who may not have a vested interest in cheshire public schools i think i grabbed that okay and so um no child shall be required to read a text or review material with the parent uh which parent
024or guardian's view is objectionable so as soon as the parent or guardian raises an objection that child no longer still can go a couple of different ways i'll give an example of a novel that was being read at the high school the parent didn't like the novel thought that the content was not particularly her taste for her child spoke to the english teacher the english teacher said we do a couple of things we can give your daughter a different novel to read or i could tell you where we are in the book give you a copy of the novel so you could read it alongside your child as we're going through that's what the parent opted to do okay there are some other things however that by law um parents can't opt out of um
025they can opt out of things like and you're gonna have to help me out here kevin but i'm thinking specifically at the elementary level some of the human growth and development lessons are one of them aids education um [Applause] so this is at the elementary level well it's at all levels but it's shared mostly at the uh and there's not even any room at those levels for substitute texts they have to read it's usually not in a text okay those those are areas where the parent can opt out of and but they can't opt out of the subject or or the in that particular unit of instruction that's what as i am these are the few what these are the few instances where the parents can have okay everything else if we deem this part
026of the curriculum then um then it's ultimately district decision so this hits the this hits the conversation that something that you know falls not within uh that would be that 50 another piece of instruction material are they all in the health curriculum exemption from instruction it's actually policy 6144.1 substance abuse education is required by state statutes for all students annually and students are not exempt if the religious belief and or teachings of a student or his or her parent or guardian are contrary to the content of the school subject or to any part of the school activity the student may be exempt from participation to receive such an exemption the parent or guardian must present a written request of exemption to the principal stating the conflict involved there's a medical exemption for phys ed a
027student could be exempted from instruction on aids upon receipt of a written request from exemption from her parents dissection of animals is another area exemption from these or any required instruction do not excuse a student from a total semester hours regard for graduation but they can get an exemption from the section of animals okay so those are some that are in our policy are we talking about gender-neutral pronouns and policies like you just said her i wonder if that are we doing any of that changing to there i know that some places have gone to that i do not know if that's anything that our policy committee has taken up we could just make them plural and use there would be okay any scrambler nuts i think i might suggest we're doing it like pretty
028widespread it's going to be our steel everywhere yeah i think a lot of places are if i'm not mistaken our last safe school climate committee survey questions had all changed hmm i think we had changed that and that was three years ago we wouldn't want to be behind on these issues okay ms chair i'm happy to make a motion hold on one second i'm a celebrator the committee should consider christ okay um for lack of a more graceful way to ask this does this put is this um neutral in terms of the burden of proof and that if a parent comes is it is is it assumed that the parent coming forward with an objection has to prove his case that there might or that there might actually be grounds for objection or is it
029on the district to prove why do you see what i'm asking why we need to keep a particular book i guess maybe it's just my personality but the way that i would view something like this is an opportunity to have an open communication and that i would be wanting to hear what might the things be that our district has overlooked in choosing a textbook so i'd want to know about that person's perspective and where they're coming from and what parts of the resource were questionable or what graphics were questionable things that were asking on the on the back page and then i would also view it as an opportunity to communicate the work that had been done by the committee in choosing that based on you know what standards were they trying to teach and
030what opportunities that they had and so use it as a learning tool for both sides to then you know take into consideration as we look for new materials so i i don't i don't know that i see it as a anyone has the proof it's more of a coming together to understand more about the perspective of the district and the perspective of the family to make the best choice for for that child and or perhaps to make a change moving forward okay so in um again i there's uh as we're making recommendations to policy maybe that needs to be stated as well that we are not looking to set up an adversarial relationship on in either direction but we are looking for something that will um facilitate communication will facilitate communication and actually um ensure
031that um whatever the objectives of the lesson are are conveyed the child gets it um in a matter in a manner that that um well just that they get it i just um i think if we stay at the outset what we're hoping to achieve with this they'll be i'm sensitive to it as well reconsideration um uh library books and classroom resources policy to the board of education policy committee for review and possible adoption by the full board of education so we could just leave it as construction materials if we could rather than all those things because they're all instructional materials okay do you want to share it i could put it up here so someone could read it yeah i was just trying to be consistent with the language that was that's fine i
032see [Music] so just before in that draft language for the reconsideration of instructional materials to board of education policy committee for review okay i will move okay all right one more time kevin i'm sorry thank you so much how about i read the motion then you can say so most right okay that's my little promotion for the draft reconsideration of instructional materials policy to the board of education policy committee for review so moved do i have a second sure okay um any discussion all right all in favor we're good thank you all right um well that was a tidy meeting i just can't go back okay um do we need to say something though about moving it to a different place it'll be in our minutes okay yeah in the minutes um we review this
033and the recommendation in the minutes is this possibly included in the 6000 series parentheses attraction for the board thank you okay good catch thank you um all right well that completes the agenda so um unless looking to to adjourn um i guess do i have a motion to adjourn so moved all right and all in favor all right okay thank you for being here you're welcome if only to