001i 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 thank you everybody for being here um for the final meeting of the school year for company meeting call to order seven o'clock um our first order of business is public comment yes i believe we have at least one a piece of communication for public comments kevin i think you have a copy of that i do i'll read a letter by michael sheehan who addressed provided requests that let it be read into the record and it reads to the cheshire boe curriculum committee as a parent of a child in connecticut public school system i am concerned with the mandates and direction that the conservative department
002of education is forcing upon cheshire's curriculum and watching the past few cheshire boe meetings it seems that one's race equity social justice and addressing systemic racism are to be a large focus of teacher training and developing k-12 curriculum i'm concerned because this push for diversity equity inclusion is being directed from heartbreak and designed by the state education resource center to the best of my knowledge circa has not sought parental involvement in the development and the standards of the mandated african-american latino or even studies course that all connecticut public schools must teach nor has her own district reached out to the parents or the community for input on an issue driven course in october in the october curriculum meeting the state education research center outlined its equity and diversity training for faculty and administration the serp
003representatives could not articulate their objectives quantified measures for the program's success or state unequivocally that the training was not based on an assumption of implicit bias in the cheshire community it's been nine months since that meeting what has been accomplished with this training service vision statement mission statement is as follows cert believes that all students have the right to access opportunities and experiences that reflect and respect their differences and abilities we are concerned in connecticut educational outcomes for students of color students who are english language learners and students with disabilities continue to lie behind outcomes for other students to help eliminate these opportunity gaps terp addresses institutional racism and other issues of social justice in schools and districts and both models and facilitates equity and education in quote i would like to know what institutionalized
004racism and social social justice issues you see in cheshire public school systems or the curriculum that warrants a cert training and the state mandated curriculum change for cheshire school system furthermore what training materials are being used by circ with the cheshire administrative and teaching staff copies of any training materials should be made public also any reading materials that certainly suggested our administration and teaching staff should be made available to the public if racism and social justice are community problems should you include the community in developing solutions search also offers training and program for youth called youth leadership for equity the description of this program opens for the following statement a vast majority of people remain unconscious as to how their racial and cultural identity impacts their approach to life in general it then goes on
005to state that cert can provide training and technical assistance around self-awareness and cultural identity one of the stated goals for the youth undergoing this program and training is to understand how aspects of their identity impact their capacity advocacy and have influence on their educational community what does this mean what will understanding political understanding look like i contend cirque's opening statement on this is not fact it is an opinion i would like concrete examples of how circumstances youth training and what they are teaching children about their own racial identity lastly at a march 9 critical clinton a committee member stated we fully recognize in our work with equity that we need to use more of these types of learning into our regular curriculum why is this necessary what problem are you trying to solve should you
006not be more concerned with our students math science writing and comprehension skills we should not be teaching our children to view every subject through the prison of race we should most certainly not be teaching that one's race and identity makes them part of a racial construct that is responsible for institutionalized racism in government or education this could lead us to where a child will feel guilty based on the color of their skin and child of differing racial makeup will demonize that same child because of the color of their skin i feel that the current trend in ct's public education system will divide and segregate i do not think it will promote the belief that a person should be judged solely on their character and individual actions my child is at an impressionable age he has
007not been taught at home that one's race makes him superior or inferior he should not be taught this at school as a parent i would hope our elected officials would make sure that our local community was more informed of the curriculum change and exactly what would be taught to our children before such changes are implemented i ask that you slow down the current trajectory for this course and delay its implementation allow our community to have the information it needs to educate themselves on their curriculum perhaps the knowledge of what will be taught may alleviate some concerns parentheses my own ruler however if that same knowledge causes some to object to the curriculum change they should be given that opportunity thank you for your time in consideration sincerely mental sheet 6 14 2021. thank you thank
008you um okay sure later in our discussions um so first order of a bit of business is review of the minutes of may 10 20 20 20 20 21 meeting um i want to have a chance to review do i have a motion to assess minutes so before we get into that so i i know uh ann mentioned there was a discussion about what the school started yeah which wasn't on the agenda right now but it was yes i believe this was under um you're talking about the um high school schedule yep into the 80-minute period of block schedule a continuation that way so um well i guess the question is and i think she wanted to make sure that people in the community had information that had been presented a couple of years ago
009and dr gad and uh students that are ahead of the field right now well you can certainly add that in there um i feel disgusting i don't want to wait for the other guy's minutes okay um somebody did not have an accepted motion sarah motioned me so there's no second necessary so um well i'm just thinking um they were not part of the minutes it was brought up in um discussion i'm wondering if it could be an agenda item later on so it is a more formal discussion as opposed to just a um well the point here is procedurally just you know again because from the tools you know oh yeah there was a discussion but it was up to gender and that it was talked about so i would definitely add in a summary
010of that all right so do i have a move to table these minutes um until our next meetings thank you very much recommendation on that topic um the sense of the board is not that it is a bit at this time it's not that we don't want to look into it but uh more importantly with the pandemic well it's not that it's winding down now we're getting out of the school year starting next school year i just thought about something about this maybe he had a more retreat this summer i want to talk about what work and what didn't work with the hybrid manual remote learning i can tell you a lot of families um whatever remote learners you know joshua high school still started 7 30 the fact that they saved that hour so
011to get ready and the bus was a huge help so i don't know his latest school start times i almost feel it's i don't see it become a fad but there is certainly a place for it but i think after the sense from jeff yeah that was a priority until we see what went right wrong i suggest you know if you and dr solomon and team really want to visit that topic maybe that's a priority for us um also in that discussion was the notion that there is too much there's a lot right now on the plate of the board of education in the administration with regard to getting the school back up and running and also getting um the modernization report successfully through the referendum this will take up a considerable amount of time
012again um especially if we do want to present it to the community and get feedback one more time um so uh i believe i told him that at the very least yeah it will be until much later in the school year when when things have settled and the more pressing not that this is impressing but the more immediate prostitution sure the point all this is going into is something that the district wants to do we're looking to you know our goals for the final school year you know which is good but more importantly to determine whoa but but bethany's required attention if someone just requested it all right all right um new business we have an out of country field trip request um so we have um dante mayo here um from the high school
013who is going to discuss the trip to puerto rico um for jesus high school students april 18th through the 24th in 2022. now you all have a link but don also has a short presentation so we're going to prevent screening thank you for this opportunity um what you're going to see is a presentation um that is prepared for parents um in our enrollment meeting that shares a lot of information about the trip so the trip that we're proposing um aaron griffith and i are proposing a trip at the language and cultural culture trip um to puerto rico in april of the april break next year the trip will be seven days um i i've been before the board a number of times to present trips um this is my this will be my eighth uh
014with ef and on the side i have some pictures of trips that i've taken previously uh i obviously think travel is a really important first-hand experience for our students and um just traveling myself uh my first trick was studying um shakespeare in england and since then i've done a lot of traveling um through other in other countries as well but this will be my eighth trip with students from the high school um one of the things that really drew me to this particular trip is oh aaron and i uh are going to be teaching the black messianic studies course that is being offered um this year we saw this as a direct connection to that trip um we're hoping that this will be an opportunity for students to experience first hand the cultures that we're
015going to be studying and um what i liked about the design of this trip is that it it includes opportunities for kids to see cultural aspects you know museums and um lake locations and doing walking tours of the city we're going to have a cooking class a dance class um and we also get to see some environmental features of five minutes in bay um and also one thing i really like about ef is very able to cater this forward to our interests and having talked already with our tour coordinator um and expressing the connection to the black latino studies class um we can focus on uh african influence in in puerto rico as well and that's going to be a highlight of the trip so even though it's the language and cultural trip um the
016language is not required the trip will not be conducted in spanish we will have a bilingual tour guide who's with us at all times who is a local of puerto rico and they will do any translating that we need we do have two different opportunities so to sit down and have conversations with students at a local school and for the family and so i think this will be an opportunity for our kids to have conversations and learn about culture quite firsthand from people who live in puerto rico um one of the things that i'm really happy about with this trip is that i was able to secure locked-in dates typically when you sign up with ef you have a range of dates and so even though i might pick the friday of the start of
017our vacation or april break um they will give us a window of five days before and after this year sunday of our april break is easter sunday and with all the disruption that we've had over the past few years i thought it was to actually lock in a date that is the monday after easter sunday so our students if they choose and if they celebrate easter they choose to celebrate that with their families and not have any more disruptions to their families this did mean that there was a little bit of a price take pick up take off because um to lock in those days they have to like really secure the flights um ahead of time so our trip will be april 18th to the 24th so it'll be monday to sunday this is
018also really important because the kids should not be missing any school aaron and i both teach ap classes and this is right before the ee exam so we were really keen also to not be missing any school with our students so um we will we would be flying out of bradley airport which also means that we would be leaving monday morning from the high school to go up to bradley um and returning back on sunday the 24th to bradley and then taking the bus back to the high school which i will coordinate um yeah this was really just a wonderful opportunity like i know it felt really early i'm a very cautious traveler and i wasn't ready to even think about offering a trip or opposing this until i felt that there was some security
019in travel and that there were the restrictions were being limited in a way that i thought were reasonable and safe for our students i've traveled a lot with ef and i'm really secure that they are very um concerned about our students safety and that they want what's best for them but i just also felt like our kids needed something to look forward to and that we needed something to like just you know be excited about again and i wanted to make sure that what happened in that for them um and created some opportunities for students to have something to look forward to um obviously you've traveled with ef before so i don't need to tell you too much about this but one of the things that i do want to announce them is that ef
020has a along with the piece of mind policy that comes with their insurance and i do require and it's included in the price that the all of the travelers on my trip buy the insurance um because it just makes life a lot easier should there be any issues um and if like should the board decide for any reason that they don't feel it's safe for us to travel it makes it so much easier when all of our travelers have the same insurance and i also think yeah they've done a really great job of working with us in the past that's part of their peace of mind um response but the coped piece of mind policy also means that if on our trip for any reason if a student contracts coped they will pay for the
021hospital visit and set them up in a hotel and they will also pay to fly the parents down to be with their kids in the hospital that is part of their policy and that is a new coping policy that they have which i just think speaks to their attention yeah this speaks to their attention um to like the safety and just wanting parents to feel comfortable with where their kids are and that they're in good hands um and having traveled with them uh you know i don't know multiple teachers at the high school travel with yet but they're also really good at working with us um and solving problems should anything come up i think they've done a good job in good faith resolving a lot of issues with us it's a touch screen oh
022it is okay um included on this tour is a 24 7 24 hour seven days a week our tour director they meet us at the airport they're with us the entire day um they're with us all the days until we leave um they bring us back to the airport we also have 24-hour emergency support provided by ef one thing that's unique um they said as part of the norm the norm for national travel is that there's professional overnight security dedicated to our group so in our hotel there'll be a local security guard who is just working for us just make sure the kids don't get out of their rooms which totally eliminates me having to put blue tape on their doors which i typically do um and there are required background checks for adult travelers
023but right now that would just be um mrs and i were already approved um and then paying for the tour they offer scholarships i encourage all the students if they decide to go on the trip to apply for a scholarship they can get anywhere from a couple hundred dollars for a couple of thousands a couple thousand dollars and they have over fifty thousand dollars in needs-based scholarships and they really encourage kids to sign up for it and kids can also get a giving page which when they sign up for their trip instead of saying oh buy me a suitcase they can give their family and friends the link and people can it's kind of a gofundme for their trip people can donate directly to the giving page and fund their trip and as i said
024i offer the travel this travel protection plan which is there it's already included in their price if they wanted the travel protection plus plan which i thought was not necessary it's an extra 180 they're welcome to take that on but this one is already included in our price and these are the things that out first and again included in our trip is the trip prices the round trip transportation the tour director all the transportation that occurs um all of our safety hotel safety sorry all of our hotels um guided tours and activities any entrances to museums breakfast and dinner daily i'm actually really excited about that because i think exploring food in a culture is important so lunches kids can like go and buy what they want to eat for lunch um our overnight security
025are those the student dishonored ratio is ten to one this is an eight country trip so this is not an international trip uh our personal learning guide and our assistance the accident the illness and accident coverage which is part of the insurance the support team of ef oh the other thing that's really nice about this price is that it includes tips and security tips and gratuities in the past i have um had to collect that separately but for the national trips they include that in the price of the trip and i also question them because i'm a very good tipper and i don't like to undertip people and i also wanted to make sure people were getting their fair price and i said are these people being tipped according to the industry standard and like
026well and they assured me that they are that there's no expectation to tip beyond that so tip is included um and of course access to the giving page and then i think the next one is probably just this is the the price of the tour paid in full is 3089 and then parents have the option of setting up monthly and five weekly minutes for the trip they can do that all through the year so if they want to collect you know money or put money aside and then do that all at once they can also do it and then this is this was part of the enrollment presentation so it's a qr code if they want to access the website directly i appreciate the link to their site yes i know having the having the
027agenda for day-to-day um do you have any questions no no none of those okay um just curious are they gonna have a vaccine requirement or no do they i a lot of our students are vaccinated and um i you know i i think we'd have to go with whatever the cdc is recommending and whatever you recommend in terms of travel i mean obviously i need to know from from the school's perspective and from the from the fourth bed perspective like what the requirements are for like our students who travel but hasn't yet doesn't know this in-country trip and so they i mean we'll go with whatever the united states is you know suggesting as travel um you know and movement if the flights obviously planes and airlines require that and we'll meet that standard um
028if like when we arrive in the country like whatever the suggestion is whenever we arrive in puerto rico like whatever the requirement is there at that time like you would abide by whatever rules exist well it wasn't it was 10 months away too so i mean okay um aaron and i are really really cautious so i think you would err on whatever um is most cautious and prudent in this situation and um you know that is like part of like you know our guiding practice to have the word about approve the trick just means we could come to you if we have any questions about like you know suggestions that you have about how to handle that and obviously because the world may change and that's the point of having the travel insurance as well
029okay yeah i would definitely follow it up more uh gotta have some deadlines but hopefully it's not issues right um um i think it sounds exciting finally um well i thought it made it easier to pick a destination that was in the united states as well because it meant that we had a little more familiarity with whatever was being suggested as guidelines rather than dealing with another country that might have a completely different situation it's very local yeah i appreciate you bringing up that you're tying the trip in i think all our trips always have to be culture aspect first it's not tied to biology or language so that's nice to see um this is i don't want to discuss a letter but earlier early in the meeting but there's two i think there's two
030different things there there's a circ guideline training that uh district on diversity equity inclusion and then there is the latino studies which actually is quite passed almost two years ago and set part and parcel suffered from what circus doing that is not a course that's teaching racial biases divisions of all cultural awareness that's when so in this case closer a lot because it's coming more and more and there's nothing else like this yeah it's not excuse me it's nice that you didn't time it but at some point before we actually offered the course there's got to be some front part i'm not just a the skull needs i think i'll be able to share more about that yeah yeah so this is positive it's cultural these kids need to be exposed to as much outside
031travel as they can possibly get i understand it's very positive yeah thank you so i mean it's open to all students even though it is you know connected to the course like anyone who has an interest in coming with us is welcome and of all ages too right yeah in the high school right okay um all right so thank you so much i know being that there's days left of school you certainly don't have to stick around we're glad that you were able to come and thank you so much for your time i really appreciate it thank you um right so um do i hear a motion that we approve the out as a committee approved the out-of-country field trip to puerto rico from april 18th through the 21st 2022 um to be moved to
032the full approval you're making a motion thank you any discussion none all in favor great classes easy okay um no all business then we move right into informational items um first on the agenda is um curriculum writing institute all right so we've been sort of talking a little bit about this for a long time now and it's finally coming to fruition we will be holding the curriculum writing institute in june it will be next week thursday and friday and next week by monday tuesday and wednesday maureen and kevin have both been working on this along with some of our coaches we were fortunate enough to work with linda who was actually the plain person to run the niagara evaluation at cheshire high school she is very well respected and knows our district a little bit
033from that evaluation and our [Music] a lot of construction happening this summer and uh we were able to find space at highland school so we'll be meeting at highlands and we've got some breakout rooms she will be doing some training on creating performance tasks that are authentic and are directly tied to our standards this meshes with our acceleration work and that we're looking at priority standards and how to make rich engaging tasks for students we'll be tying in our vision of the graduate as well and really learning helping with helping teachers and facilitating how to make rubrics work for for teachers and how to have kids really take ownership of this work that it's got to be meaningful to them and so that's that's the guide that we're that's our focus as we go into
034this um over the course of the next couple of years we our goal is to have a digital curriculum library k through 12. we have that in pockets right now but we think it's really important to have it digitally so that it's accessible to the teachers who teach that course and we'll keep you posted on it post post to june um when we get back in the fall but we've got um the feeling really um what is it what would the digital curriculum library i mean it would just have resources that um they could print off with the kids or it would be actually this is sort of what our curriculum library will look like and you can go to the elementary middle high school curriculum or ua curriculum and this is not completely populated
035in full but when you click on it you can get to whether you want whatever subject area you want to so if you are a social studies teacher and you want to see how you might be able to tie something to the english standards for that grade level you have access and you can do so if you we just hire you and you're a brand new teacher yeah um you don't just get my notes you can go right to the library and get what the district has written and created and what's been approved so that when we have turnover no one's lost everyone is up to date because this is where we'll keep our most up-to-date document some of these things include assessment that we wouldn't share because we don't want those assessments being seen
036by the kids every year prior to but this is you know sort of on that on the um so how long do you think it's going to take you to populate all of those files i'm hoping that i'm i'm optimistic three years okay but knowing the teachers who are involved in it if it's not working for them and it's not paying off for kids then we don't want to replicate it but you know it's it's seeming like that will be the plan and we will offer this three years in a row and that way we'll train more staff and get more people's voices involved so that teachers really have their hand to get creative and of course our curriculum documents are living reading documents they're going to change over time right but we want to
037make sure that you know nothing gets lost and then that will clear on what those alcohol exactly okay and so we'll hear more about the backside of this likely september okay all right um next is on the item professional development federation coaching and gsm yes so um we were talking we've been talking a lot about acceleration we've heard a lot about bombs forward and how we're using some of that money and i just thought this would be a good opportunity to share with you sort of what that plan is looking like for next year so last summer when we had the pandemic and the power outage and the hurricane we had actually sent about 20 or so teacher leaders to this virtual training to the connecticut center for school change on this topic of acceleration
038and we sat there in our various places with you know some folks were at mcdonald's because that's where there was wi-fi and it was really a comedy of errors but everyone agreed who was on this call k through 12 that this was good teaching we were talking about remediation if we all went back to try and heard me talk about some of this we went back to try to fill in the gaps those kids would always be behind never catch them up so it was the best way for us to make sure that kids didn't lose any time due to pandemic so we prioritized standards and then we talked about how we would scaffold and pre-teach to get them to learning on a grade level we also have talked extensively about building kids self-efficacy and
039really believing that they could do this despite the terrible odds that they've been up against and that meant believing in our teachers that they could do it and that believing in our students that they could do this work it also meant making sure that the things we were asking them to do were the important thing right that they were tied to the most important standards so this began to catch on and we were using that collaboration time that the board had given us to have people teaching teachers teaching like subject areas time to collaborate we'll really force that collaboration and that you and i've talked a lot about how do you ensure that across all these buildings that everyone's getting the same thing so it it really helps us to develop that so fast forward
040to march um i think everyone here is going part of the tuesday afternoon from four to six club and teacher leaders attending virtual workshops on tuesdays from four to six to do another layer of this acceleration work and mary and kevin and myself we all had a small group virtually that we would work work with on these topics because while these topics sound simple they're much more complex when you have a variety of students in front of you somewhere after a little some who aren't and how do you get them all moving so fast forward a little more to this curricular writing institute we'll be using the institute to plan for that type of acceleration in addition at our retreat coming up in week next um and wednesday um we've got two days two mornings
041set up where we have the instructors from that acceleration workshop providing support to our team to our administrators we want our administrators to really feel comfortable in this and to know how to to even to leave this even further next year and so as part of that we've also got monthly phone calls meetings set up to support our administrators as they go through that process they'll need that so that they're able to talk to folks about some bumps in the road and how we would get past that and we continue to do this work at the same time you heard in the bounce forward conversations that we've had about hiring some additional staff and coaches so we have um we have now two full-time assistant principals to cover up our remaining elementary schools plus we're
042working on hiring a coach at the middle school i'm sorry a math that person at the high school a math person as a support teacher at outside middle school and we take because of shifting some of the response teaching responsibilities around we're able to pull some of our teachers to further develop their coaching skills and we'll be going through coaching workshops in the fall so we've got a point person in an assistant principal at each level who will help you liaise on to that kevin and i will be creating a community of practice here for those teachers to get support with coaching and we will also be working with the connecticut center for school change to get support outside of the district or to work with other coaches in other districts like ours so we're
043putting in a lot of levels of support ultimately so that we can be shoulder to shoulder with teachers and helping them through this process because we know we still have kids who are coming to us after being little last year sounds like a lot of work that all good and all for a great cause and to have a very busy day driving the question the team how much time and support could stay no i think we have a really good plan in place i i think we're just you know shifting looking at our calendar reallocating time reallocating finances resource um to make sure that we can be there this is the work this is what we do and we're very excited about it um and it's not not yet complete there are actually other things
044but um one of them if you were to look at our professional development updates pre-pandemic you would have heard ngss ndss and ntss so we're also very exciting that we're restarting our partnership with the connecticut science center that will look like for our elementary teachers we have most of our elementary teachers who um fall in 2019 participate in a dss workshop about every one of two teachers so we will bring that workshop to our teachers who didn't have it a year almost two years ago now in our in our november pd session also at the elementary level we have moved to the training trainers models so our rams got trained from the connecticut science center and then they took that up to grade levels so we'll continue that work with five train trainer sessions for
045our brands relative to science at the middle school level um we will have a one-day training to get everybody back invested in and what ngss looks like in the middle school level and then we're excited they will be attending our monthly science division leader meetings um for an hour chunk at a time as consultants to help us do the work throughout the year but that's not additional time that's embedded time in already existing meetings and then at the high school at the high school we've been working with julie barker who's the science department chair and we've met with folks from the family science people believe this was march 10th of last year we're all downstairs in conference room a and we had the science teachers there and we were working on infusing ngss into their
046lesson plans so we were doing what's called lesson study where collectively you take the topic you write about it and that was on march 10 and they thought oh wouldn't it be interesting to study they said you know they're calling this a pandemic so maybe we can integrate i remember that conversation yeah yeah so we left and then we were number two so um next year beginning very early in the school year we will be pulling the earth science teachers together to do lesson studies so we would all get together and we would plan out what that looks like then we would go together and observe each teacher and say okay so what in this lesson worked what didn't what do we need to change and is this getting to the heart of what we
047wanted to do and we've been fortunate again with some of the title for grant money that we will be able to run that not just for our science teachers but also for biology teachers so i think people are exhausted as everyone is out there teaching right now i think people are very excited to get back to some sense of normalcy and all those plans that we had made and were not able to accomplish just for a lack of you know being able to be together science extra time does this cost it does this thing for the team to how much do they have to devote um you know you talked about your your workshops and this and that and um and he just asked the question about do they have the time what are we
048can you quantify each i mean uh participation needs to it's it's across the board right so our brand this is part of their job if i look at um liz human at the high school and in well speak we're looking at their teaching load and we are making sure that they have the ability to do some of this coaching and that in their schedule they are then available to come here for that those progress professional growth opportunities um tom toscano will be doing some of this work for math at the middle school and kristen shanley at the middle school so we're looking very very much at how we are you know how they're scheduled what their time is so that they can be here and be available to do that and we'll also be reinstituting
049our learning models next year and all of those folks will be instrumental in being a part of those learning laws and then um acceleration was um kind of a response to copic um i mean that's initially what it was intended for but now it seems to have become a regular i mean it's almost it's a new it's kind of like you stumbled onto something that seems to um be almost a better way of instruction so is this a is this going to continue to be temporary for say that three years or this is now i would like to see this okay um what we've seen in in all the trainings and the research that you've been doing is when you look at the number of standards that we have here in the united states and
050you compare that to other countries our our our bar graph is up here and japan is down here and so we really need to make a joke and some of the training that we've been to and if you've heard of murray condo yes you know but we need to re-condo the curriculum and the standards because you know we're running just i don't mean cheshire but just in general teachers are running around your kids are running ragged there's a stress level there we really need to slow down and we need to focus on what's most important and spend the time on that and i think what what you're going to see is our next item on the agenda is a continuation of we don't typically do a snapshot of this type of data we share those
051standardized data that's more tied to state um funding and so forth this is a snapshot that shows us that somebody's working here okay so i don't i don't need to move it on if you have other questions i'm happy no no that's all right teachers have stated i've gotten further in my curriculum than i had any other year and it's an amazing feeling so they're really well if you're excited about it we're overall yeah um okay so item c is [Music] so we have that you can probably the second slide we have been as you know in two other um fricking committee meeting updates we've looked at some lens on both our reading and math performance out of k6 or k8 uh over the course of this year so i'm going to give you two
052end of the year views for reading and for math both are are ultimately strong if we were to consider that at the end of this 14 or 16 months worth of education that did not look normal that we would have strong performance in in poetry and that that would be something that um that i think we should celebrate so in this view you're seeing an agreed level performance over the past four years unlike our fallen winter data we obviously don't have spring of last year but in this view it kind of gives you a relative sense of how our overall performance is the two areas in green and this is reading data on the reading inventory um in each of these grade levels the two areas in green are at or above our all-time highest
053levels in um in reading data and i would say on the whole um our meeting scores continue to be as they were after the mid-year just below or x previous performance a slightly different view on this that i think shows that students are continuing to make growth is actually on the next line and that's looking at the growth of the group of students over that same time period so that first row is our current sixth graders the percent of students who met with benchmarks as third graders and then there's fourth graders you didn't have fifth grade data and then again sixth graders and it is often the trend in reading and math data that the percent of students needing mastery out of these students does go up over time um so even in the areas
054where we weren't quite as strong as maybe historically we're still showing growth from our students over multiple years so this is really strong reading data is not without areas of focus and areas of need things that absolutely need to be addressed and i'll get to that a little bit later but this is pretty significant celebration of some of the good work that's happening if we look at math we continue to be static at this performance because where we were near or at great historic levels in reading we were at or above historic trends in math and five out of the six grade levels have an all time kind of highest performance level score within that and that's a combination of factors you talked about acceleration talked about internally this is multiple years utilizing the curriculum
055so students familiar with the strategies and the approaches and a lot having to do with the collaborative planning teachers so that here's really when it comes down to it the essence of what needs to happen uh for students and so that's again the view the grade level view and if we go to the cohort view the next supply we'll also see those similar trends up over multiple years in almost all the grade levels so that's this data um and our reflections on how we approach this year really are going to help inform us going forward and i think about it we've been talking about it in our reflections and teachers this way if this is what happens when we have some extended getting into the building getting out of the building mass breaks inability or
056less of an ability not inability less of ability to sit down and confer in the kind of ways that we would typically as part of our best practice if this is the kind of performance that's happening here we actually have a really prime opportunity to leverage this to bounce forward and really see some strong performance at the backstreet english and our students i'm i'm really excited for those opportunities um you know i said giving me every match break was replaced by two green conferences and we did that every day of the week that's a whole lot of learning that can happen for for students so um we're really looking forward to kind of moving this forward a little bit and a few of those reflections show up on the next uh one more slide so
057we talked about acceleration practices one part of that has been paying attention to our pacing so really hear the standings that you need to address within the school year um let's make sure that hey we're collectively in the same spot and being that we're still continuously exposing students to grade level work so that's a big premise of acceleration the collaborative planning to make that happen has been huge the research note there is one thing that also gives me a lot of hope and promise for the future is watching uh times and places um when education has been erupted in other uh other parts of the country at other times so hurricane katrina and then there absolutely that caused education or a recent study that kind of shared in rural uh west that sometimes your budgetary
058reasons to go down to 48 week or day construction to save money in all of those kind of research studies around those interruptions when the return to normal happen student performance right back up to merely anticipate if that's the case we really have and we lean on the research and some of the best practices that go with how do you get students back up after after an interruption it really shows a lot of problems for future some of the areas that i know we're going to need to focus on uh i mentioned conferencing before they absolutely are found students but the fine-tunness of that um the frequency of that is a little bit less than it would have been so i think that'll be a an important part of moving our reading work forward we
059have noticed we're paying very close attention to our youngest grade levels um phonics instruction how we approach teaching that does require us to really get it unless they have students who are reading provide feedback help move them along in that front so we are seeing a few um possible gaps in that and i've already planned for will help in the next video level up how to tend to some of those areas of time so that's a good part of our planning another affirming piece of research is as as we have looked into ways that help support students one of the things that you'll see on research is high dosage tutoring when you look at what happens in high dosage tutoring it is a lot like the structure that we have for our lsts and support
060for students so we're we probably will have some more students who are going to require that but we have the structure and we have the people who are trained to do that so that is another very affirming as we looked into that research and got received some information on just the effectiveness of that we were pretty excited to say well we that really mirrors what we're doing they have more skills that we have potential on that but we're not being doing a structure we're just including some more students who might be struggling and we continue to uh through this curriculum writing institute uh which one we'll be doing uh one of the lenses of that curriculum writing institute is we're having teachers from our pupil personnel department special education teachers occupational therapists involved in that
061writing as a way to help all of us understand what are some of the most significant needs of our students and what are some ways that can help address that those needs through our core curriculum so i see all those things as helping us bounce forward and all of the performance but particularly that math performance is something that's just really incredible something to be proud of and i know the teachers have worked hard to make that happen certainly been a combination of these things as well as you know the resource that we're using provided but we must always talk about eureka every year and that's because we're staying the course and making sure that everyone understands they're spending time with our math coach to make sure that they understand how to teach in this way
062also i just want to reiterate what you said kevin how important it is that we have special education teachers paired with regular education teachers during this institute so that they're working together and one's not in their silo over here and you know regularities in their silo over here we're really actively breaking down those barriers to make sure that people are working side by side not just when there's an issue that a student good question so i noticed on the assessments and you know the grade three recommended fell off of all nine eyes yeah still still very room lost so now they're ending in the fourth grade are gonna be uh some focus in that cohort to yes so one part of that on the reading end that the pundit's instruction piece you really should kind
063of round out learning how to read that often happens by the end of second grade and if it doesn't quite get there you're really using third grade as the time to share that usher so as we looked into what students are struggling a little bit more and where those struggles are that's kind of an area that popped up so you've heard us talk about pat castle before she is already on providing some tools updates strategies for teachers to really zoom in on some of those needs that's not all of the needs of rick relatives but it is it is a likely um chunk that if we attend to that early and often in the school year when the students are fourth graders and actually the same is true from our second and third grade performance
064we're saying the same um [Music] um yes same mindset on helping support that cohort i don't know if we refined exactly where some of the needs needs are yet but i know so have you seen that that same trend over a period of history i'm just wondering is that a is that a development issue with a child with the children i mean is there something about that the development that goes on at that age that would somehow explain it or is it the curriculum i mean and or because i mean even second to third grade what i used to teach and i didn't have a couple years of elementary um a second grader was so different from a third layer sure um you know that you just started to see things change in that third
065grader and that yeah so that's why i'm wondering for that that timeline developmentally that's a lot of abominable milestones start to i'll say you pull out and hand out by the time you get back so if we pair that with some of the eruptions that's happened some of the construction that was really good but maybe not as ideal as we'd want it's not surprising to me but this is where there might be lights and decent needs so it's not surprising to get an front it's a little bit predictable and recoverable i think that's right clearly so much about the research on on when you're able to address it in a more normal way you can get back up so that's i know we'll be doing that for sure right okay and our last item the
066update on the african-american black britain so i know we've known dr reed and dr gab have shared sort of along the way what has transpired and kept us abreast of this when it was originally just percolating so i would like to be able to share a little of that history or let them share a little about history today and also talk about where we are so the course itself has been um you know obviously was was approved in the legislative legislature um it's public acts 19-12. it's a one-party course and it's an elective this is not a mandatory course for any of our students but what an elective this year we have this is the first time we have offered it and we had 84 students request to take the class for some of those
067it was the main collection and for others it was an alternate selection but they did not need to choose something in social studies or for this course this was definitely an elective option for them um i think this also helps to sort of shape some of the conversations when we think about the makeup of the cheshire public schools so i thought i would just share with you some of our recent sort of involvement so we have currently 11 students in worlds who are american indians 409 who identify as asians 100 141 black students 3 286 white 214 hispanic and one hawaiian pacific islander so when i think about this course and and where it came from the policy and i don't want to i don't want to bore you with too much about like you
068know the background but but sort of for anybody who might be watching about how this didn't certainly didn't originate with with this this group in front of you the policy originated from the connecticut legislative black and puerto rican caucus it started as a k-12 initiative and was passed as an elective for students in grades 9-12 circ was written into the law alongside the canadian state department of ed to collaborate to develop the curriculum the spirit of the law was to provide an integrated course that provided instruction on both african-american black and puerto rican latino studies so the idea is that it covers content knowledge and identity development so it was interesting to me to learn that there are over 150 members of this advisory group that helped to create this um and i'll give you
069just an example of some of the representation where they came from yukon central southern west conde con the connecticut community colleges the coast guard rural suburban and urban school districts and then the rest like crack and learn and ces they had nine different committees that were formed but i think the one that was most relevant to us is the focus groups and those were held from march 1st to may 8th and i know faith that you were able to attend probably the last in-person one that they had before everything came crashing down i think if i read this correctly the sort of the theory of action behind this is that if districts teach this african-american puerto rican latino studies as part of their social studies curriculum then all students will have the opportunity to learn
070about the history and impact of african american black and puerto rican latino contributions to our country to our state and students of color will learn about the history of their ancestors and more fully develop their identity if i think about it a little more i can say that if districts teach this course then all students will have the opportunity to learn about history from a perspective other than a euro-centric view and students will receive the message so if we think about again our some of our demographics they they will be seen and heard and recognized in what they're learning about in school so we've always thought that this course comes under the umbrella of our social emotional learning umbrella right comes into the umbrella of our district initiative and that's when i had shared that
071presentation with you about how this really ties under cultural awareness and responsible decision making and all of those areas of the castle standards so the um the course was a new course and that's something to turn over to dr reed and dr gad just to share how a new course goes goes through how it's communicated how particularly um this course was communicated to to students and and how it did they deviated all from the regular process that kind of thing no i didn't need you from the regular process you want to go ahead and talk through it we brought it here and share the puzzle and then yes we did share it with um we knew the instructors that we would like to teach it one is miss banaya who's really an expert on latino
072really what i'm trying to say and then aaron really is an expert in the multiplex so obviously they have growth to make with learning than enforcement but we spoke to them about teaching it because we knew that that passion helped them they were excited to team teach it also so um you know i think word really went out through our instructional leadership team and you know reaching out to kids when it was course request time we're offering this course we're excited about it the history teachers the english teachers were all on board with continued to advertise it to the kids through the student request process of scheduling so that was a big part of the public science because it was also put in a program of studies say this is going to be in addition
073to the program studies that was developed in let's say december i think that's right and so we utilized pretty much verbatim the course description was part of the state materials that they sent to us so that's the course description that goes out to everyone in our school community and it's published online as well and then that's that's the guidebook that our students use to determine what they want to sign up for the followings so i can certainly share with you the course description the course is an opportunity for students to explore accomplishments struggles intersections perspectives and collaborations of african american black and puerto rican latino people in the united states students will examine how historical movement legislation and wars affected the citizenship rights of these groups and how they both separately and together worked to
074build us cultural and economic wealth and create and create more just society and local national and international contexts horse wolf will provide students with tools to identify historic and contemporary tensions around race and difference map map economic and racial disparities over time strengthen their own identity development and address bias in their communities learning objectives and essential questions that will guide instruction and student inquiry include and then we have again something that i had shared in in the in the link so there's this was provided as the draft from the state department of education and the state education resource center the implementation sort of hurdles that i see with this is professional learning right because this is a new course and we're not something that necessarily any um social studies teacher or english teacher is going
075to be familiar with i have learned much this year on about history that i never learned growing up as a as an adolescent so there's a need for the teacher of this course to engage in professional learning to support successful implementation i think we were glad that we had that relationship with cerf because they were putting together that professional learning plan the other piece was to continue this conversation to make sure that the board knows and is aware of the steps going through we need to make sure that um that families were aware of the course when course selection came out when they you know helped their students select this course we need resources to teach this course and we needed to make sure we had budgeted for that because we didn't really know what
076the budgetary constraints were to be we also needed to give consideration um to what would we do if we had depending on how many students enrolled in the course what did we do if we had six students enroll the course would we still run it we don't typically run courses with less than um you know 12-15 students so we did not have to address that because of the number of students that we did have um we needed to look at how we ran the course you know staffing etc and we needed to give consideration to making sure that um that our teachers were prepared so what we have recently received cut off the presses is the launch of this training with the community so there will be a leadership launch on july 14th where all
077of us at this table will be attending a session in the morning there is a summer institute of which john and aaron griffiths and our history department chair will be a part of so we are going to be sending them to that in august then there will be training and this is um partially why we have offered this course this year is because we were promised that as the pilot your teachers would receive this training so we thought it would behoove us to make sure that we did this in this year so that our teachers were a part of that and would receive that specialized support so in quarter one they will receive training in october again in december again in february again in march so we feel that they have a good support network
078in place they'll be working with other teachers in other districts as well as with circle facilitators i believe that central connecticut state university is also offering a one-week training in july and there's a professor from yale who is also offering some supplemental support so i feel that i feel that our teachers are in good shape to be able to to handle this and was very happy to see that dawn was thinking about the cultural implications and how she could support that we sort of are looking at the positive outcomes on this for our kids as the fact that the rigorous content included in this course will support our district's strategic initiatives to you know lead them to be complex thinkers we think it provides students an opportunity to learn about different racial and cultural backgrounds
079and provide the opportunity to for our students to learn the history of people of color that they might not otherwise have gotten in our regular courses so i would say i'm happy to answer any questions that i might be able to to the gentleman who wrote in earlier today i'm happy to send some of the contact at circ i really don't know some of the answers to the questions he was asking about them as an really pointing organization the direction to some of these other things to help answer some of his questions i'll wear this going back to i think it was 2017-18 that the caucus the state are discussing 2019 i think it was asked then to be elected and ultimately be mandatory after a couple of years right so there's no mandatory department
080down below there's [Music] the challenge we all have and our scholarship has is the amount of you might have mentioned the other day is everyone this is mainstream media and all of the opinions and uh all over the place and critical race theory diversity inclusion everybody's racist everything's racist it's not a razor as a parent you have to wonder what's going on right but we look at what's going on in cheshire and look at the means of our our students our culture our diversity um i don't get the sense that this is a curriculum that's going to divide and separate our kids it is about cultural awareness now when you sprinkle to serve mission i understand if you need those words right it has the kind of connotation i guess the point is you and
081the rest can have been very proven to not just jump on any game language without sort of thinking through a sign i know that was implemented being implemented for what works for cheshire and so but for parents that are not close to this they're not watching this meeting tonight they've been watching any discussions over the last few years um i the place that i had last week was an artillery herald and one of the educators uh the son of peace of course was quoted saying uh it was going to create an empire racist classroom so i already had people say so what does that mean our classrooms are racist and so you know it's that's the mindset out there because you hear all this noise um so i i would very much like to see
082whether it's uh some recorded sessions or other things going into the fall uh some kind of education right here for parents to tap into you so they want to catch up on what this is and how cheshire is actually remembering it it's there for their purview i can't help but wonder and use the s word summit then when that was rolled out a few years ago we underestimated that she came to appearance on this right shiny new thing or really where it was going on a whole facebook thing once we had some sessions with them it got a little clearer but it was too late the reception was done there was noise out there i don't think there's going to be the case here but i'd rather remind ourselves it's not just our kids that
083we're trying to um make them aware of all the cultures and their influences it's also parents because you know they need education too listen directly so i was just uh i hope that we find a way to include that uh i know you can't teach him on this other day but he's got to be a little bit questioned but that's a there's a new perception of what actually happens and you know all the how you play sensitive topics out there the skills is going to get the wrong attention for all reasons until folks actually see in action and to that end um we do i i i am concerned that this is going to um get larger than life um you know and i understand uh mr shane's concerns i really do you know he's
084got a small child and he's wondering when you hear that it was originally supposed to be a k-12 um and when i went to the focus group it is not off the table they are still going to push the k-12 um curriculum and they do want to make it mandatory at least from the sort of perspective so those are not linked to rest yet and i i think you know this is you know sixth point b of the of the standards and someone a friend of mine found it buried in the department of education before it i find it i don't understand why this wasn't the concerns of parents are that was this done in secret wasn't i don't know i mean it is a public document but it was a very well very public
085document why you know this should have been out there this is not like talking a new math curriculum this is not like talking a new history curriculum this does go to the character of people what have we been doing all of these years um you know and and you go through these it is the other thing that um the law requires is that it the standards can cert's gonna dictate what this course is they've said that as well so there is no we have to follow this and some of the questions it raises are concerning as i read through it what are some of it okay there you go what is it i guess the question is what are the concerns nothing at all i absolutely think we should be doing um well first of
086all it just presupposes that we've never taught slavery or we've never it is very much a slave based curriculum now i haven't seen dawns but these standards are very much focused on slavery and the black community is so much more than slavery um there is like also um you know there are there there are folks out there and there is a conservative black movement that says we are beyond we are not just the product of this horrible scourge that is on this country we have done so much more um and as i read through this i don't see that celebration um and where were some of these other groups consultant and i can you know i've got if anyone wants them i can get literature that that would present this um but what are some
087of the concerns when you talk about um a uwem the course is an opportunity for students to explore accomplishment struggles intersections perspectives and collaborations of lack we'll examine how historical movements legislation wars affected citizens rights of these groups and how they vote separately together work to build u.s culture on the commonwealth for more just societies um you know we are an imperfect union always working for justice but i just don't quite understand you go through and it's more just society more just society more just and the kids are going to um as far as i can tell the you know agency engagement in what ways of african black latinos in puerto rico people demonstrated agency in developing organizations how can young people take informed action to address pressing issues on their own communities what is
088that going to look like you know is it going to be you know um for example why not just i can give you a number of organizations that simply need tutors to work with inner city kids um or is it going to be marching in cheshire i i guess both are equally valid but i think for the kids in developing and raising up the educational inequality that is taking place we all know in the cities get our kids in there helping these kids um you know i just i see a mindset that sir took to this curriculum that presupposes we're all in unconsciously biased um if we're white and so therefore we're going to have to somehow eradicate that whereas human history is is right with tragedy but glory and i just would love to
089see someone who develops a complete and round examination of humanity i'm sorry i guess i'm one of those who says that um i hope for the day or we don't see color where we truly do i mean they say that you know it's racist construct it is not scientific fact in this case i believe the science you know we are all people and i just don't know how focusing and it's i been not in any way trying to demean slavery or anything else but to focus solely on that is to in some ways almost deny the humanity of the black community because they are so much more and they have accomplished so much more um well i actually had a concern i more than i think we said written or let's talk about contributions society
090economics so forth so how well-rounded it is um i just don't have the same reaction however i uh i don't believe in order should get worse that's kind of the right people based on and we're not a scholarship does that so i know i'm not signed up for that i agree with your faith i look for today when we look beyond our appearances i think the more we focus on college and more advice we get but i'm also trying to understand what the actual issues are of the course for cheshire what are the issues in the course how's it not going to affect us but but going back a little bit certainly we must identify some areas that this course can help with so if this course is implemented and you're out measuring how do
091we measure success with tonight's tonight's point what problems or issues opportunities our school is i would love to answer that question okay so there's plenty out there because we'll be asked by the parents i think we'll see at the end of this and i think the state will be looking at it as well i don't think we'll be helping people with that but for our purposes i would like to hear from our students at the end of this to see what their takeaways were i think it's great so you know who cares what their what their expectations this will certainly be continued as we you know press forward without the training that students are saying at the end i think we're all interested to hear what the next well probably around this time next year
092well i mean i think i i would at some point perhaps like to have a broader either board meeting or curriculum meeting where we are able to have dawn get up and present more particulars about the cheshire course you know what is the what does it look like what um you know what what does she want to accomplish with this and how is she getting there um and have the parents have an opportunity to ask the questions right or wrong you know are they is it being fed by the media or is are they feeling this viscerally that they are somehow under attack you know let's but i don't want this to blow up in any way i want a community discussion of this because it does go to the heart of one's character you
093know yeah am i a racist inside you know that's what a lot of people are asking and whether this is that course or not you know whether it has anything to do with this course that's still out there and i think you need to head on and talk with the community and not just say well you know we'll find out after the fact i think at some point early in the year we should have that dialogue and at least open the forum up for anyone we may only get two parents so what action you're asking for you ask in the start of the school year once the course even before it was of course outlining content or no is do a somewhat uh don't say a deep dive but enough of a guy to understand
094the content and see just some of the concerns you have of the students who have selected the course you know if that is the audience to have a conversation with it's you know these these kids who have said that this is interesting to them as we would do with any course we would share that information that might be a good place to start to make sure that the parents of the students who are taking the course are educated on what that content will be and then as as that progresses that can be shared out for any other parents who are interested or or wanting to know about other course offerings that nice way to of course see election night and parents can talk directly to department leaders about typically what freshmen are going to take
095so they learn what the whole whole progression is but we also do requirements for each grade level in the beginning of the year we don't always talk about electives and this is an elective so i think i i might my thoughts as i was listening to all speak was you know i think i i think speaking with the students and the students who looks like the coursework to explain what's going to be taught and what the kids are going to be learning because they're going to be part of a pilot program and so that's the important thing for the parents to be aware of a new course that was developing that as we do with pretty much every course which is part of our philosophy yes we're teaching you certain content but also what students
096learned in class is also important so what is it that you're interested in reviewing what are the ways in which you're imagining the material all of that is important so students will be influencing this pile of course as much as of course is sharing a set of standards which needs to be the point thing is about the course it's going to evolve within applied courses would there be an opportunity for students even parents or students that we're on course and get feedback sure okay so um there's an event at the end of the course where there's um showcase of what each district's experience and teachers experiences work with of course and that's going to be referred back to statements another thing i'm thinking too not necessarily moving into this course but what we received today
097is from our students feedback from our students on not this course but in general that that will be something that we need to share with the board as we look at policy and really have a more conversation about what the kids are saying i think that the high school does a really good job and they talk about creating the conditions for students to be you know in a safe space and i think there are always as always i think they're going to be pockets of kids that don't feel that way and i think they were very forthcoming in sharing with um the counselor and the team that was dispatched to get student voice so that may be something else that we should really listen to as we move forward and we need to continue to
098get student voice as as we even look at them absolutely and you know ask about who or what you know what what are the items you know i know the school itself classrooms or other that uh are the students that i view an unsafe space now you know what is that you know the world has no insight what that means we got the components i do not want to um you've mentioned the parents and they're the back to school nights but i want to keep our ears open to what's going on because it's a very broad time right now and the best thing we can do is is communicate um and if they feel even if they're not in the high school level yet if they feel they're somehow being cut out um i think
099we're gonna have a bit of a from conversations and from just knowing um you know again what is what's going to go on with this with this program and let's at least um get something more than a herald article on the topic so are you referring to the program that's in the state documents vision that cert mentioned are you talking about and you're going to talk with the parents but at the same time that big you know that big balloon is out there with cert saying we want a k-12 curriculum um i maybe they dropped it but i have certainly seen that they say obviously a lot of things but it's got to work for the legislature so you know i don't know how much we can i don't know how much legislature but it's
100hard for us to educate parents on what the lecturer is going to do when they but we can't over communicate the course as of life it's not the fault of people in this room or our school system per se it's just the noise around us uh especially we have so much staters that you know miles away that are not tuned in to cheshire so parents eventually have their radar um so i have been forced to commit to helping them here locally but you know what we believe what we are working on for our students with our students i think we have to focus our microcosm here yeah there's a great opportunity done right and you know again there's there probably will be other stuff coming out of the fight on these topics but you know
101parents uh feel this is not the appropriate force or it needs to change you know all the power is going because those are the voices sorry i had asked kevin earlier [Music] and they were the group who was looking for the k-12 experience at least that's not for my research that's what i recall but i asked kevin this if you just quickly look and find out how did it pass in the legislature and i i can't read all his notes legislature passed to 122-24 in the senate so it had i would qualify that fairly broad support from by the time you got finalized so i think we have a couple of things that we're looking at um working with dawn and erin on communicating out early and often about that of course to that group
102we want to make sure that we continue to provide updates here as we go through and we want to make sure that we're hearing the student voice certainly by june but you know along the way have some updates and be really thoughtful in how we communicate out this elective just as every other course it also it's been possible making resources available to it yeah we could probably do something on the website that lists knowing no longer they have been excited about all of the ways in which this can be which an experience is possible and i would imagine there's going to be on their classroom a rather extensive offering of resources and they'll should have other students like a national web page well and it's a great opportunity too for community education and um you
103know there um it certainly has um expanded my reading list you know um but you know it's um for both sides of the political aisle it's it's picking up books that initially might make you uncomfortable um you know i mean to um you you gotta you gotta dive in you've gotta see what this debate is about but um you know that's perhaps as you say a web page where or at the library page or something but again a broad spectrum of ideas i mean there are some interesting things being quoted and that they the perspective is very rich okay so um our next meeting is wow september 13th so i guess that concludes once after september we're second minute