BOE Curriculum Committee 3-9-21

001and harrigan here and tony perrigini so madam chair you have a quorum thank you um does anyone have a flag or i do okay let's get that up there and we'll say the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right um okay first item do we have any public comment let me check our cps see if there was anything there's been nothing let me just check from earlier today nothing to the cps covid email account okay alrighty um okay um next up uh review of the minutes for february 8th 2021. um and have you had a chance to review and okay i move we accept the minutes for uh last

002month's meeting february 8th my birthday if you recall happy birthday anne no last february last meeting let's just keep it going why not okay i second oh that was easy all in favor all right um so any new business i don't think we have any nope any old business none so we're going to move on to informational items um first item on the agenda is celebrating black history month thank you faith i want to introduce this topic because we just came out of the month of february which is black history month and there were some really neat things happening at the various schools um i happened to be there talking with deb menke and kelly grillo one day and they shared with me what their student council had planned which was really exciting um and

003then i was also seeing some of the pictures of things happening at dodd and so mike woods has you see we have a number of visitors here today so we have deb menke and kelly grillo from norton school and mike woods from dodd middle school and so we just thought it would be appropriate to give you um a synopsis and i think our either dr gad or dr reed will be sharing about the happenings at chs as well so we wanted to give you just a glimpse into some of the activities that our students were involved in we fully recognize that in our work with equity that we need to infuse more of these types of learning into our regular curriculum but for the time being we had a number of parents reach out to

004central office and ask over the course of the year the types of activities that we would be engaging in during february for black history month so we wanted to make sure that we shared those with you our curriculum committee tonight so i guess i'll turn it over to uh principal grillo from norton school to start us off hi everyone thanks for having us um so like marlene said she happened to be at noor in one day visiting and uh we were in the process of planning for our our first um ever black history month uh museum and um our our student council advisors are deb manky and fran houser who couldn't be with us tonight but deb is here to really um share with you the the origins of where this project um came from

005and how our students took it pushed the bar like as high as they could possibly push it from this small little nugget of an idea our kiddos um came up with this really magnificent way to celebrate um black history month at norton school so with that being said i just i'm happy and very proud to introduce cheshire public schools teacher of the year and norton school amazing teacher and student council advisor deb menke thank you so much kelly um and i hope marlene we have the little video too right that mike put together for us i hope that that's gonna be there but we're really excited to share our norton black history museum presented by the student council tonight fran and i are advisors of the student council and as advisors we're really trying to

006focus on everyday leadership and we've really tried to step back and put the students in control of um what we're doing and our group is very eager um to share and make their ideas reality so earlier in the year when we discussed that we wanted to do something for the black history museum fran and i kind of came up with this simple idea of a walk-through museum um and the student council members what we thought we would have was just research a person and it would kind of be um portraits hung up more like a gallery but um the mute i think when we said the world museum they really started to have a very different idea of what a museum was all about and they really took it to the next level and they

007started to see rooms and they came up with ideas of um writings and how geography tied into it and how poetry is tied into it and they decided they wanted to include other grades that might be interested in adding to it um and also not that this was part of the walk-through museum but they recorded children's books that could be loaded up onto seesaw and into google classroom so that um younger students or any student could have a time to listen to um to fiction short books and they also looked up youtube videos um and what was interesting is they didn't just really go for black history they just looked for really interesting things like the howard university band um or um they had the um harlem um dance company just dancing and clips of

008simone biles and other um just clips of things that were very interesting to the students so their enthusiasm to find things they were just eager and they just incorporated me it was very joyous to watch um so fran and i planted this little seed and they really grew it into something that was very different um and i know kelly will agree that our our students in all school got had an opportunity to visit the museum um we got really positive feedback from the students and um from the teachers um so i think that um i know what was really exciting to me was more than just learning about people which is where we had kind of started it um and that it really turned into time to tie into all of our curriculum and also

009give us the idea that black history is all of our history and that it really touches everything that we do and that we're doing so hopefully there we have the video um that you can if i could just enjoy it for it's hard to really capture how powerful this was our school hallways became museum exhibits and our classroom teachers toured our students around our building um to visit these exhibits and remote students included at times i saw teachers with kids on on cell phones and i you know chromebooks walking around the hallway so that everyone had an opportunity to uh visit these exhibits and it was pretty marvelous in a year where things are so um well a bit drier than usual right like this breathed life into our building these kiddos just traveling through

010our hallways with their little clipboards because the student council created um a sort of a guide you know through the exhibits and it was it was just absolutely um energetic and and powerful and and wonderful and this will be a tradition that will live on at school we already you know are thinking about how we'll tweak it next year uh but it was a great start and thank you well they weren't even things i talked to kelly they wanted to do like qr codes and i we were like we can't we're not ready we're not ready to do this yeah they were really excited it was very exciting to watch their excitement they really took it to a different level it was awesome it was awesome so i know i was sent a copy of

011the video um a little long so i'm gonna i'm gonna condense that was there any particular part that you wanted to hone in on okay give me a second here so while we're waiting have any of you guys um traveled into atlanta and the airport and actually walked the concourse or walk the uh the span you know normally you can hop the train or you can walk if you have been sitting too long but it's a whole history of um atlanta africa american african-american history it's it's really cool can you all see deb manky now on my screen okay hi my name is and it was their understanding and they were african-american and they lived during a time when being black and women limited what they could do but they were hard and persistent and

012most important except from the publisher the exhibit is courtesy of miss macarena hi i'm charlotte after a lesson on dr martin luther king's powerful i have a dream speech our norton school's second graders honor dr king by sharing their hopes and dreams for the future i'd like to share three of these amazing hopes and dreams my dream for for my community is for people to not litter my dream for myself is for me to get a good job my dream for the world is for it to be a better place here are some more dreams for people for communities here at norton my dream for myself is to help others my dream for my community is for everybody to stay healthy and safe from the pandemic my dream for the world is for kids to

013be president another one is my dream for the world is for everyone to be kind to each other my dream for my community is for everyone to have a good year my dream for myself is to help everybody hi my name is joe this is technology you know you know people are google these aren't how many people are google devices um most church athletes lebron james most searched gymnasts and simone vinyls most surgeons basketball dunk michael jordan will search tennis players sabrina williams the research female player poet maya aguilera search star spangled banner britney houston no search talk show host opera whiskey research tap dancer gregory hines no search mathematics kathryn johnson bush public nurse um search kubernetes shirt wise winner kendrick lamar most search college homeland homecoming howard university most search performance beyonce most

014searched speech martial hi i'm kayla dwyer from the student council mrs lachance's second grade class has made some amazing black history month posters this one right here is about martin luther king's dream and this person named liliana says that his dream was that he wanted all people to have equal rights which is true her dream is her coronavirus to be gone in my it says in her dream coronavirus would not exist anymore here are some things that she could do to make her dream come true to wear a mask wow great job liliana hi i'm amelia here's a poem from an inspirational black fella when you see me sitting quietly like a sack left on the shelf don't think i need your chattering i'm listening to myself hold stop don't pity me hold stop your

015sympathy understanding if you got it under otherwise i'll do without it that's just part of the beautiful poem named on aging by maya angelou this exhibit is courtesy of ceraya samantha glenn hi i am maya this exhibit is this is an exhibit dedicated to african americans who inspire the world of music they made new types of music such as blues and soul socks soul music often referred to simply as soul is a popular music genre that originated in the african-american community throughout the united states in the 1950s and early 1960s this exhibit is courtesy of the fourth grade in student council hi i'm cam here are some important quotes and inspirations from the civil rights movement and other times in black history poverty urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of

016war become a national obstruction this exhibit is protein of joseph giragazzi student council members is about black americans who have served in the government small head non yards was born in 1963 kamala harris earned his law degree in 1989. kamala harris became a vice president in 2020 her full name is kamala devi harris kamala harris was born in oakland california kamala harris stayed from 1990-2021 this exhibit is made possible by the norton school of third graders hello well thank you dead manky and norton student council and mike salamini for filming that lovely presentation of the live museum at norton school anything yeah can i just make a comment first of all kelly and and deb i miss you guys um not that i don't totally love being liaison at chapman school this year um but

017um i do miss coming to norton school to read or and just to see you guys we miss you too ann but anyways um that that was fabulous i i could have watched an hour of it i hope it's an hour long and um and it you know really it just goes to show why we have a teacher of the year at the school and why we are a blue ribbon school and all the other accolades that norton school has had in the last several years so i just want to say thank you i know that it accolades like that don't come without a lot of hard work but hard work doesn't seem like hard work for the people who are clearly enjoying getting the students to produce what they can produce letting them take

018an id a small idea and run with it make it into a big thing and a big important thing is what this is and it's it's really it's just marvelous to to watch the kids and the pride that they take in what they're doing so thank you you the two of you are doing such a service to our school um and i hope that video can get around let's let others thank you ian thank you um yes kelly i know kelly lens um has that link and maybe was thinking of posting it i'm not sure if she has but um we can certainly share out the link if you want to watch it in full it was probably only a little bit longer but it it didn't even do it justice so i i apologize

019like in real life i hope next year we'll be able to invite everybody in that's my hope thank you is it possible to send that out to board members that link that would be great thank you that was wonderful thanks so much thank you so much it was it was awesome well thank you norton school and now mr mike woods has some information to share with us about how dodd middle school recognized uh or celebrated black history month thank you marlene very much i'm just going to share my screen here looks good mike all right so i can't see you guys obviously you're seeing this so um just i wanted to give you a brief overview of how the different teams um had done activities with uh black history month um starting the overarching piece

020in which i spoke to team leaders about and also spoke um actually these these three themes first started when i was speaking with uh chris and juliano over the summer as things were uh really ramping up around the country was one really recognizing what is going on reflecting on it and then making connections with uh within our own community so carrying that theme over to black history month telling the team leaders you know make sure our activities recognize the figures of people of uh african-american heritage um and also what were their lasting contributions reflecting on their journey ensuring how adversity and obstacles have been overcome that we take a look at those elements as well and then connecting current social events to the journeys and the struggles of african-americans fight for uh equality so and

021kind of taking a look at that that helped shape some of the prompts some of the activities some of the approaches um that teams took um at dodd seventh grade teal team um students were making google presentations we embedded some of the technology pieces that we were taking a look at um and even you can see uh some of the prompts what were people famous for how our students lives have changed um as a result of of african americans throughout um we had um prominent african-american figures such as rosa park uh rosa parks and and taking a look at um you know her contributions of of what she did and did not do um which was actually what made her uh such a prominent figure uh in the civil rights movement taking a look at

022uh another trailblazer um across all different areas such as sports with jackie robinson and taking a look at what his contributions were really as the trailblazer in sports we are very fortunate to also have some media as a former social studies teacher i'm a huge fan of of introducing different media to engage students to to really give them a hook and allow them i think uh filmmakers do an excellent job in doing that for us so um we took a look at different african-american stories the prominent picture hidden figures taking a look at even our maroon team watched the melody 1963. it's a series of american girl dolls that have uh dolls of of different uh color and heritage um and disney had put out the movie regarding that um but in this um they

023really focused on where the obstacles were so going back to the presentation that you saw before taking a look at the obstacles that had been excuse me the obstacles uh that had to be overcome and each one of these stories uh spoke of those obstacles in the lower right hand corner you can see they talked about the tulsa race riots uh hidden figures you know the three women went through their journey of their obstacles that they faced at nasa um and those types of things so um really taking a look at studying how things were overcome um in society back in whatever time period was uh depending upon the figure as well and then finally it was the connection piece uh taking a look at how our students can be connected to some of these

024struggles to some of these journeys um into some of the accomplishments of the of african americans in our uh society we've also introduced um in our book clubs in the language arts classes stories that have a lot more diverse characters different diverse perspectives students are taking a look at some standards that ask them to relate and connect um you know we we take a look at different authors and and their perspective we did take a look at uh langston hughes uh was um we took a look at a couple of poems from langston hughes that he wrote on the yellow team um i don't know why my hyperlink for my complete list is not there i will get that in um and then we also took a look at uh the prompts and reflection activities

025in social studies uh below here um we had our black history month our black history month periodic table um each one of those colors represent people from politics sports arts and entertainment science and those types of things and then this was in our blue hallway and it talked a little bit about what their significant accomplishment was but i thought it was really creative this was an idea that came from our new social studies teacher clara o'shaughnessy that she brought with her from a previous school so we really made that an opportunity for kids to take part of and to to read about as well i think after this we took a look um at where we can grow with future opportunities and i think it really is uh something that we need to take a

026look at even you know take a look at this month with women's history month as well but you know just really taking a look at current social movements um and their impacts on american society you know growing our library connection uh collection with more diverse um stories characters prom plots authors and those types of things and then we have uh you know areas to grow that we can do some more standalone reflective activities in each of these areas that correlate with diversity not just an african-american but including gender color ethnic background and then really taking a look i know christian giuliano our division leader for social studies has really done a lot in incorporating dimension four and that's in the c3 framework of social studies but really taking a look at how we're communicating and

027taking informed action what can we have our students to be contributors um to you know any struggles um any recognitions um or any purposes that we can help um you know taking a look at reflecting and relating to diverse backgrounds moving forward so that was our brief overview if anyone has any questions uh just a quick question mike um i'm just wondering if um are there uh conversations at dodd at the dodd level about like the black lives matters movement and things like that really current stuff that's going on yeah and we we dealt with that at the beginning of the year primarily through social studies um i i would say kind of the same approach that we had with the capital insurrection really more individual conversations with kids answering curiosities and those types of

028things we really haven't rolled anything out um you know as part of curriculum or standalone activities yet but really we focused a lot um in august and september um making sure teachers felt supported about if kids had curiosities um you know and information about that great thank you and i feel like we lauded you last month meeting for for dodd middle school so i'm going to hold back on my praise this month oh well i appreciate that and thank you but you know it's there mike um okay i confess my ignorance could you explain um c3 for me i'm sorry yeah it's the um it's the social studies framework it's almost like the ngss for social studies okay so there's four yeah there's it's college career um oh my gosh college career uh readiness um

029standards that we take a look at um but primarily there's four dimensions in it and it's it's along the lines of identification up through upper ends of and taking informed action where kids and students um do activities and we look at it from that those four dimensional mindsets um and and taking a look at those mindsets um how do we create our activities and how do we embed uh the skills that are in those activities primarily for social studies i can tell you social science teacher there are probably skills in every single subject area so yeah okay all right thanks you're welcome those three c's are college career and civic life and as we go a little bit farther into um our meeting next month i think it's next month uh we'll be hearing from

030the social studies department who will be presenting to the cheshire curriculum council and so you'll be hearing a lot more about the c3 as we move forward next up i believe we have dr reed to talk about activities and happenings at chester high school related to black history month yes hello and congratulations to the other levels who elementary and and um dad looks like you guys did a wonderful job with the students um so we did a couple of activities at the high school um considering they're i think pretty organic in nature which i think is is good um the first one was actually brought to us as an idea by gabby who is one of our home monitors which really i think shows that the educational culture in the building includes all you know

031from teachers to hall monitors to you know uh cafeteria aides that were sharing that responsibility she came up with an idea um she found a website called 28 days of living poetry and she vetted that through and well speak the um school the library media specialist and um worked together they came up with a schedule for students each day to read one of these poems so the students would get on in the morning say the pledge the announcements and read through one of the poems so that was really a daily look at some of the wonderful celebration of authors through black history month and then we did our second activity was a culminating activity and we did this through our um it was to focus on these 28 days of poetry and we did it

032through our advisory program so just a quick review the advisory is um we have we meet like every other week approximately in a normal year a little bit less this year um but we um it's organized by grade level and we meet in groups of um 10 to 14 kids and all faculty have their own advisory and it really is a place for us to share our activities and and work with connecting with kids for um the faculty members so um at the end of february we held one of our advisories and um we as i said it was a culminating activity for the 28 days of living poetry so in the advisories the students picked um out of that website the poems that they thought were really um important you know that they had

033been hearing all month and um they they talked about them in this group with their advisory teachers and and their fellow students so there were some you know questions thrown out so that they had some pieces to to kind of latch on to and talk about with these poems so that happened at the end of february um and then our next um organic activity really was driven by students we have a group called rams against racism and their advisors are john demeo who's an english teacher and greg clad nicky who's a social science teacher so rams against racism worked with and well speak again library media specialists and they wanted to highlight a book called between the world and me by tana hissy who is a black author and the book is really um a

034letter it's it's a it's a short read very powerful a le kind of a letter written to his son about society and and um circumstances and feelings and um the future and so the the um the group rams against racism felt that this was a very powerful read and wanted to share it with students so they developed three different book discussions that they held through google meets and um ann was there i popped in on one of them and and shared some of what was going on it really was an incredible experience they ran for a little over an hour each book discussion and there were probably 15 to 20 kids on the screen in these google meets just sharing out their thoughts sharing quotes from the book throwing them out for discussion relating to

035their own lives it was a wonderful very powerful thing to see the students interacting like this um so actually i think i'm going to if you don't if you if i'm going to try this share my screen just to show you the um the main leader of rams against racism sid actually developed a google classroom and he put up uh like google slides for each of these sessions so i just want to share with you because he did so much work on this um one of his sessions let's say all right can you see that yes you may want to present we can see the whole thing okay so i will just and i'm just going to quickly go through the slides just to give you a flavor of what he did um so he

036were the moderators they had they had specific guidelines that they had to follow you know to keep it a safe space for everyone to talk and they really were so respectful of each other it was amazing um so you know here's one of the things that they did in a chat type in a word or phrase so we did that and then after a few minutes we allowed for discussion among the group talk about emotions talking about another quote that has to do with the the um discussion then actually quotes from the author so that they had pieces to talk about um that continued and then you know at the conclusion of of the book this was the last session kind of talking about interpretation and and what can we do now um so i

037just wanted to share that with you so you got a flavor of what these students were doing each of these sessions um and they really were amazing they ran it all and kind of sat back in the background but you know it would would join in the conversation just as i did when i felt there was a piece that was you know i was dying to share um so it really was almost as if i was with with my colleagues it was amazing so those were the three activities there was one more thing that wasn't directly related to black history month but is in um some has some relatability to it it involved about 60 students um we are working with facilitators from the connecticut state department of ed to conduct student focus groups to

038further explore equity within our school so last week you know the end of february they we about 60 students gathered in google meets and small groups and we were allowed to have one adult with them so we would have these school counselors in each of the sessions and um the students were just asked questions by the facilitators no identity or names would you know be um will be shared but it just helps to analyze students perceptions of equity in our building so again not directly related to black history month but a part of the whole process of you know looking at through this lens of you know how we're doing and what we're doing and celebrating um everybody and diversity so that is what the um chester high school group was up to for the

039last month you've been busy yeah really any questions okay hey um i haven't i just threw this out for y'all um so a great survey of modern um african-american history um have you especially at the high school but even in the middle school gone back to um the 18th and 19th century and looked at you know original source documents and and you know like banneker and and um you know uh booker t washington and w b du bois and and frederick douglass and and had the kids read their works and respond especially vis-a-vis you know um today's event current events and um just wondering what and what their what their reactions are when they read these works um so i i'll jump in mirror you can add on too if you want um just kind

040of excited by that question because yes it's in our curriculum you know it's in the social studies the english and they do study these pieces throughout their time at the high school of different courses different areas and i don't even want to say it's just limited to social studies and english those are the most you know the ones that i'm most familiar with um other areas as well you know um so yes they they analyze they share with each other they make connections to today that that's a common occurrence at the high school very personally and and in english classes they'll do they'll make connections between historical documents and then imaginative literature and and contextualize modern texts if they're written from a different historical perspective so that it's it's very deep work that they do

041in in those departments absolutely and all part of our creed and it's it's the same thing at the middle school we just do it better for us it doesn't mean you do it better for us yeah it's it's definitely embedded in our curriculum um and that's been a long standing piece when you start taking a look at all the way from we go all the way back to the triangular trade routes um we take a look at this the slave trade we take a look at companies that were doing this back in the day so there's there's a large breadth of you know the origins of slavery in america already embedded in the curriculum okay all right thanks um so i guess that wraps it up right we don't have any other higher level here

042high school is it so you guys thank you so much um and do you have any further comments or no i'm good i'm pleased with everything that i've seen and uh i feel like and this goes back to when my kids were at the high school i it was clear they were reading things from different authors and and synthesizing information in different ways so um i so i know it's going on and it continues i saw books in my house that i didn't buy so so nice job to everyone yes congratulations thank you thank you i'm actually gonna go wait i'll just put thank you oh you can stay through the end of the meeting um all right we are going to get a mid-year data review um if we could and it is in

043the agenda so kevin hanlon is going to walk us through the mid-year data review for the elementary and middle school grades thank you marlene i'll take just a second to um well first a little bit of orientation this is not um a typical i'm sorry that i've got a car going my time yeah uh this is not a uh a typical report that we would give at the curriculum committee meeting this is part of an ongoing effort this year to pay really close attention to the learning that our students are having i am all of you are parents our teachers are just keeping a keen eye on making sure that our students are still learning um you know we're obviously in a different instructional model this year with our classrooms looking different than they historically

044have so it's it's writing good to ask a question about how are students doing this we would often do this type of mid-year data review of the curriculum committee meeting but we wanted to make sure that we could share about how our students are performing so i'll share with you tonight just a few snapshots of our reading performance in kindergarten through eighth grade and our math performance in kindergarten through eighth grade so give me a second just to present a tab here okay so i think uh that you can see that and give me just a second to orient you to what you're looking at this is a chart that shows the percent of students performing in bands three or four so that's our proficience end-of-year proficiency levels are higher uh on the scholastic reading

045inventory the reading inventory we've shared some of this information before for each grade level you can see a few sets of bars the ones that are in the salmony orangish tones are from the 2019-2020 school year the blue ones are from this year on the left the left hand set within each grade level are our fall scores and the right hand set within each grade level are winter scores so overall programmatically programmatically from looking across the grade levels we can see that our reading performance is very very near for most grade levels within about two percentage points of our performance as compared to last year now this is from a programmatic view anytime that i would we would show this type of view to our principals or teachers um they are instantly uh and rightfully

046so going uh down to the student level and paying attention to student growth and that's not what we're necessarily showing this this year we are showing movement towards end-of-the-year proficiency but we're not down at that student level as our teachers would be really paying to pay intensity individual growth so as as i'm reviewing this some of the things that i think are important to note is that uh at our winter which is approximately mid-year we are very close to performance that we have been historically there's one grade level all again within about two percentage points across the board it's important to note that those um trends from fall to winter the growth the movement towards end of year expectations from fall to winter are very comparable to the type of movement towards end of year

047expectations that we would see in a normal year and even the one grade level that's a little bit more than two percentage points off we do still see that growth moving forward so on the whole our students are performing at or near where they have in a non-covered year relative to reading when i take the same uh type of look at math um again this is percent of students performing in bands three and four on the easy cbn math assessment same orientation the salmon bars are last year the blue this year the left-hand set in each grade level is for the fall and the right-hand set is for the winter we also see performance that is very similar to previous years where we were probably about two percent under our typical performance in reading we're

048about that same percentage over in most grade levels so math we are performing it in really strong ways and this is um one lens to just keep keep a real clear focus on making sure that our students are still learning when teachers are looking at this information they're instantly going to if they have a student who isn't reading uh showing their reading where they want to be they are i know from the meetings that i've been involved in with with our rams and division leaders the plans are are in motion to try to get students move along um and back up to where they want to be and through those these kind of data review process they have an opportunity to do so so on the whole really pleased with the fact that given all

049of the parameters that this year uh has shown that we're seeing um good growth good movement within the school year towards our end of the year expectations in both reading and math we are near our um typical performance room with with reading near or at and we are at or above our um recent typical performance in math those are all really good signs that even though um you know this year has clearly looked different than others that were that our students are demonstrating a lot of learning growth or a lot of learning and showing their proficiency towards some key ending year benchmarks it's a brief uh mid-year data review um as it relates to our covid year i'll take any any questions and do you have any questions um that's a lot to how i

050you know i would have expected to see it a huge drop but even still the kids are meeting they have been meeting um what were you expecting and does this surprise you or are um i can't even frame the question but i i guess the first place is what were you expecting to see yeah so i i don't know if i would have been able to put exactly what we were expecting from this year i know our efforts were to try to make this year as close to a typical year as possible and the thing every step along the way where we have checked in on how students are doing they have shown that they are they have learned and are still learning um the things that i think are painting into that could actually

051lead into kind of the next item that i agenda we have you have heard us talk about uh leaning on this acceleration and leveraging technology tools and i think that has done a few things one it's really sharpened our focus on the things that are most important that we need to be teaching we were talking about that during the middle school showcase you asked a question about can you give examples some of those priority standards and what's what that looks like so i think the sharpening of that focus and really keeping the most important things in front of students has led to this continued growth a collaboration among teachers any teacher meeting where we're we're saying kind of what's going well with this year the first thing out of uh the the teachers feedback to

052us is the time to collaborate with one another to have that sharp focus has been really important so um in terms of what we were expecting i i don't know if i would have been able to put a stamp on exactly what we're expecting but i know that the efforts to keep moving forward with the curriculum not trying to go back and fill things that might we might have missed but to keep on moving forward and helping scaffold to bring kids up to that has been a key um key to this and the fact that we're constantly engaging in conversations with teachers looking at data like this at the teacher level we're looking much more you know at the individual student data it's just helping us really keep the truck focused on making sure we're

053doing the right things to move kids forward so i don't i know your question was about what did you think was going to happen i don't i don't know but i'm i'm very pleased that we chose um through marlene's leadership and connects with the center for school change i think grounding our work this year on that acceleration strategy has critically important you know we've we've heard of some districts who went and spent the first month reteaching lost units from last year and that is just not how we approached this year and i think it has made a world of difference and so um a couple of things um of course it goes right when anyone asks it um have you were you able to parse the data to see if there was a difference between

054the um in-person instruction and remote learning and also um there's another one just went these questions just pop in and out of the head let's go with that one and i'll try to remember the other one while you're talking yeah so we haven't done a full kind of district level review of that um in this systematic way however that very same question has also come up in every meeting so i know that's something we're going to be paying a little bit closer attention to as as we're moving forward because i think that's that's important what is this experience and what does student growth look like for um for our students who are in person versus our students who are remote and are there any differences in that kind of performance i i will say that

055at the that's in a snapchat like this at the teacher level they're very keenly aware of of the individual students and that performance and um anecdotally i would i this there are similar ranges in terms of strong and good growth the way we wanted and and students who are not quite growing the way that we want them to in both in-person and remote so i know those teacher-level conversations are happening we don't have right at our fingertips that kind of instantly can we can we parse that up but it's that very question is one that's on our minds and i know that we're working to look through it for that lens great and and then um how has um your the interventionists the math interventionists and the and the reading specialists have they been working

056overtime or is this i mean are we seeing um are we relying on them more or is this just uh what do i want to say um not normal but um this is the result of everyday instruction um do you see what i'm saying do you know what it is by and large it is the result of everyday instruction okay there there are a small number of students that might be popping up and paying attention to that we might not have in in a non-covered year but not in any remarkable numbers and not in anything that i would say shows us any trends or those kind of things so in large part we're not seeing huge numbers in in our kind of srbi groups um or anything of that nature this is largely um largely

057grounded in the good everyday instruction that's happening great okay well i do want to say to mike and to kelly um and to all the other principals good job um in terms of your work with your teams um i don't know if you guys want to add anything but okay thank you kevin all right um okay so uh we're going to move on to the next item and that is update on teacher professional development yeah and and i feel like i might have already said uh the bulk of what i wanted to say in this we've had one half day professional development day since our last um since our last cricket committee meeting of course we've had uh collaboration days where um it's teacher driven on how that collaboration time issues we've had one professional

058development day or a half day that's been planned at the building level and we have leaned on acceleration and you heard through the middle school showcase the emphasis on priority standards there's other parts of that model including scaffolding for students responsive teaching really building that self-evidence efficacy in students that believe that they can achieve some really meaningful and and hard things through good effort um and good um meaningful tasks for students so our professional development looked a little bit different on leading some part of those acceleration strategies but every building worked on some part of that acceleration model and also ways that we can leverage technology to help support the engagement of both in-person and remote essentially the things that you heard via the middle school showcase i will also say that we are currently

059have a group of approximately 50 teachers continuing with um acceleration and professional development through the center for school change very similar to the initial group that worked in the summer revisiting that work um that's ongoing we're about two uh through two out of four sessions so this is something that is not uh just covet specific we see it as something that is really going to help move our work forward in the district beyond this year so let's go go ahead marlene sorry um i wanted to let the committee know that while it's been we've talked about the difficulty that we've had to do professional development that we would typically do by getting some subs pulling a department together having all those people in one place to collaborate to learn a new topic because we have

060because of cobid and not having enough subs for a luxury such as that in this type of year we have not been able to move forward on on some key pieces right that we had plans in place for um some of it was math related some a lot of it was science related we've had a great opportunity to not only have a group attend through the center for school change those acceleration workshops in the summer during the power outage i might add but we have 51 uh of our cheshire public school school staff attending um four sessions that are from four to six that's where i was jumping on and off when i was talking to you earlier and i know kelly grillo is there and dr gad and mike woods and kevin and also

061kristin pells at the high school and myself and jeff along with a really broad range of teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade who teach everything from ap physics to you know elementary reading and these sessions are set up again i want to reiterate what kevin said and i want to go back to faith to something to that you said i think um one of the last meetings when you heard us talking about prioritizing standards when you look at the standards that are there there are many many standards and they aren't all to be given the same amount of weight or the same amount of time in the curriculum and so when we talk about prioritizing them we talk about the ones that are most important to student overall growth and so that's where we spent

062a lot of our time at the end of last year in the beginning of this year we're continuing to do that as we enter into this third trimester fourth quarter this this workshop and what we're hearing from teachers this is really good work for our district you know we um we're trying to teach rich authentic tasks that engage students complex thinking skills this supports that mission so we're not only prioritizing standards that's like one of the things we're talking about how we scaffold for kids how we scaffold for students with a 504 plan with an iep students who need intervention students who this year may have been remote who we're going to be reintroducing to schools next year and how do we make sure that we can we can reach all students we talked today

063about responsive teaching kelly's been doing a lot of this work with her staff on getting questioning techniques to really draw out those those do students know something or or don't they um within that questioning and then talking about student self-efficacy so i just want to highlight our teachers and our administrators today who you know after a full day sit down for a two-hour session of acceleration training why be because we want to do even better next year and we're so encouraged by the results that we got that kevin showed you that we want to continue to do that because we we believe on our students and and we know that despite this pandemic they're going to continue to do really great things and they're going to achieve at high levels so i just wanted to

064add that in so if i know acceleration was brought in um to to deal with what we're going to be um you know almost truncated what what we knew were going to be restrictions on on instruction time um but now you're finding that the results are pretty good so is is this acceleration going to become normal the new i hate that expression but the new normal right yeah what we know is that all of the strategies that are inherent in this term acceleration which might not be the best term to use but that's what the literature has us using we know that most of that is those are all good teaching practices and we get our teachers together and you hear department chairs and teacher leaders getting so excited and talking about we do this

065these are examples of how i how i scaffold these are examples it's good teaching so we have to remind everyone that this is what it's grounded in it may have a new name you know or it may be referred to something that we didn't didn't term it before but this is the work you know this is the good stuff this is what teachers can dig into that we can spend time on professional development and spend time in collaboration and spend time writing our curriculum with these rich authentic tasks right we don't want kids just memorizing stuff that we know that's not going to work for them in the world we want them to be able to have those transferable skills out into the real world to get jobs we know the type of skills that

066employers want we've embedded those in our in our performance standards and we know that we need them to think complexly whether it's using the c3 standards for social studies or the ngss standards for you know science we need to continue and develop this so this is um something i think that we're we're excited about and when we've met with the administrative team that's on this call and our teacher leaders and we've talked about what are the things during the pandemic that we want to keep that are working well acceleration is always mentioned you know and the things that we we don't and then there's things that we want to change and make better but acceleration has been identified by all these groups as something we want to continue i see you again yeah can i

067think something important that you're hitting upon in in what you're saying marlene is um this professional development is vital to uh because the teachers can't do this they can't zoom in and find i mean as a whole school district right all of them have to be involved in it and you can't just do that on top of everything else that you're doing it has there has to be a concerted effort there has to be time devoted to it and quite frankly there has to be money in our budget devoted to professional development so that we can offer that to have all of our staff prepared for you know different ways of zooming into on what needs to be done in any environment and so i applaud you for um for finding you know you know

068following what needs to be followed and developed in this way but it it's it's i just want to make sure that people know that it's not done without a lot of effort and there has to be a commitment of money and time devoted to uh to training all the staff in these best practices thanks ann so that's that's my update on uh our mining kevin's update on professional development next month when we talk to you we'll be sharing with you all about our full day of professional development that is happening this friday but we're not gonna get ahead of ourselves we'll talk to you about that next time great okay um thanks and um and i fully agree with you on on the budget i mean you know yes it needs money but oftentimes it's

069a point that i made during the the budget meetings um you know i'm going to harp on them again but the unfunded mandates and people outside the district who think you know especially in our legislature who um just kind of keep want to keep on piling on um and making demands that pull away from academic um efforts and and something as vital as teacher development i just kind of just on my soapbox saying i wish they would kind of take a breather and let us you know let's get the money going where it needs to go and that is into the classroom and to the teachers so anyway um all right so we're moving on to smarter balanced assessment yeah faith there was um an email that i know was sent to the board from

070uh jack bester and he i happened to click in um after the public comment um he has also sent that email to the kobit 19 email where we encourage folks to send in how do you want to handle that mute unmute i mean um yeah no i think let's um it came in and our policy is to read it um do you i don't even have it uh you've got it okay yeah bear with me i have to i have to increase the font a little so i can read it hold on okay uh this is from jack bester in light of tonight's discussion on statewide testing at the curriculum committee meeting i thought it would take a few moments to let you know where i am coming from as a retired school psychologist i

071have a great deal of respect for the assessment process in determining how to improve instruction for students the problem is that the next generation common core aligned computer adapted assessment system currently in use was poorly developed never properly vetted or field tested and rushed into use in order to meet a politically driven demand the smarter balanced assessment is simply a bad test since the u.s department of education has given each state an opportunity to secure a waiver from administering this test this spring i think it is incumbent on the school administration and board of education to consider what is in the best interest of our students this year after all the students have had their learning disrupted for nearly a year now despite heroic efforts by teachers administrators and the board of ed to present

072instructional lessons all admit that it bears no semblance to normal learning in fact instruction in the years of covid education represents a new normal and all that it entails it is important however to recons to recognize that the federal government offered flexibility because it fully understands public sentiment is to suspend 2021 mandated testing altogether so in its recent letter demanding that assessment remain in place for this year the u.s department of education provides each state department of education with a great deal of leeway as to the administration of the 2021 mandated testing one of those flexible options allows the state department of education to request a waiver for shortening time spent on testing as far as i know the esea law only requires that each student's skills be measured in reading math and science and

073older grades on the same test i would ask whether the board feels it is in our students best interest to undertake 4.0 to 4.5 hours of testing not including practice benchmark and interim tests and preparation when they are still trying to adjust to a new normal in their learning as much as i believe the smarter balanced assessment protocol should be abandoned entirely i recognize that this is not on the table right now however we have an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of our students by speaking up and encouraging the governor and state department of education to pursue this waiver and limited limit the time our students will spend undergoing meaningless and pointless assessments during the 2021 school year i had meant to end my statement here but late last night i

074received an email from ajit galapa christian connecticut state department of education chief performance officer who was responding to an email i had sent to acting state education commissioner and members of the state board of education i had asked whether the csde slash connecticut state board of education would be asking for a waiver in order to shorten smarter balanced assessments this year he neglected to answer that question but sent me information on smarter balanced assessment protocols which i was unaware of particular interest to me was the use of interim assessment blocks and focused interim assessment blocks which were made available to school districts to serve as formative tools to support teaching and learning throughout the year these interim assessments were outlined in a 12-page document released by the connecticut state department of ed 629-20 entitled sensible

075assessment practices for 2020 2021 and beyond within the doc that document it becomes clear that interim assessment blocks and focused interim assessment blocks are meant to teach to the test outlined within this link in endnote number 9 2019-20 interim assessment overview there is discussion on overlapping items therefore students who take icas and iebs more than once or who take the icas and iebs in the same grade levels and content areas may see the same items more than once ica equals interim comprehensive assessment that is a smarter balanced assessment in itself in other words icas and iab's draw from the same bank of items and performance tasks with endnote number nine is a broke breakdown of the number of iabs and focused iebs available for each grade level a review of that chart available indicates that

076there are a total of and he outlines i will not list them for you how many in each grade level from grade three through grade eight how many ieds how many focused diabetes i was shocked to learn that so many interim assessment blocks and focused interim assessment blocks were recommended for grade level youth and supportive instructors i would like to know how many of these iebs and focused iebs are administered at each grade level and in each school to our students i believe it is important for board of ed members to be made fully aware of how much time our students are spending in this test prep process simply redefining the instructional activity as formative instead of summative does not mean it is supposed it is does not mean it is proposed as anything other

077than test prep apologies for the length i hope you were able to read to the end the mandated statewide testing process is complicated and i believe riddled with double talk resulting in further confusion and frustration bottom line the smarter balanced assessment protocol remains highly controversial and making it more complex by redefining terms making it even less transparent and troubling as always i look forward to hearing any discussion on this important topic jack thank you um so it um it does raise some questions and um i i do want to just ask i'll just throw them out to you marlene um can you give us you know just if you want to give us a brief overview of the jennifer genesis of the smarter ballast assessment um and kind of put it into a perspective for

078us and there are a few other follow-ups if i could sure and faith i think what i'll do is sort of refer back to um february 11th of 2019 which was our curriculum committee meeting um back in that year when i was the curriculum coordinator and i had shared that the common core state standards are a set of academic standards in english language arts and math in kindergarten through 12th grade they were developed through a state-led effort by governors and also by state commissioners of education and this was made up of 48 states and the genesis of these standards was to provide a common set of standards across states because prior to this there was huge variety on the quality and the content of what standards were taught in any given state we knew that

079just from having students come in from out of state and sometimes they were off by you know grade levels and it was hard to um you know to catch them up i'm sure that wasn't just the case here in connecticut in 2010 the connecticut state legislature they unanimously adopted the standards which we refer to here in connecticut as the connecticut core standards and so districts do not have a an option for opting out of of teaching the common core or the connecticut core and so the smarter balanced assessment really came from a place of those states um uh getting together and the this consortium the smarter balanced assessment consortium was put together to find a way to say well what's the accountability measure how are we going to see if teachers districts states are teaching

080the standards that they set out to teach and so how would we how would we look at that so it started out as an achievement measure and here in connecticut we now look at a growth measure so i know that norton school and at times chapman have other schools in our district has been recognized for the growth that students are making and so we can see that very clearly now with this type of assessment along with that assessment because teachers again we are wanting to see where kids are along the school year and by by giving them a formative assessment we can understand all right so was there something in this last month that i taught that i need to revisit or that was my teaching aligned with um with the standards and is our

081curriculum aligned with the standards are the things we said we were going to teach are are we meeting that goal so in connecticut it's become an accountability measure where it's you've heard jeff talk about the one sort of apples to apples comparison we have and that parents families have in choosing a district that they want to live in an education system that they want their children to be a part of is that next generation accountability report where you can see how kids in cheshire did compared to how kids in durham did et cetera et cetera and we look at um at also at our special education students to see what is the gap and you've heard us talk about our gap is one of the lower gaps in our dirk um i can't remember if

082we're the highest but i know we're close to the top jeff would know that off the top of his head um and so these are some of the things that we look at to see what kind of changes do we need to make as a district as a as a curriculum um etc we'll look at growth over time too because teachers are teaching what we want to see it helps us to determine where do we need to put our professional development efforts you know how do we need to align our professional development and efforts to give teachers what they need so that all of their students make a year's growth parents can use that information too by looking at their smarter balanced assessment student reports to see where students started and where they are and

083every student in k-8 is given a growth target to say based on the metrics they should be making a year's growth and this is what it is so you can see if your child has made more than that growth if they've made their growth target if they haven't made it so it's a piece of information that um gets shared during parent conferences along with lots of other information about how kids are doing how they're doing in the classroom um the kinds of uh teacher-made tests that they're also given to to see along the way how they are doing so i don't know if that was more than you wanted to know no that's fine that's good and and so um so that the parents i mean what i guess what we should tell our viewers

084um is that you know you are about to send out the letters to parents uh just outlining the yeah that's the item that's on sorry let me just talk over here that's the item that's on our agenda tonight is actually the letter that will be sent to parents um outline letting them know we do this every year um right let's know that the smarter balanced assessment is coming we tell them the dates um it's all total about four four and a half hours students in grades three through six um get the english language arts and math test seventh and eighth as well in grade five they also are tested on science five eight and eleven is where the science comes in and three through eight is um english language arts and math okay so just

085to address the question that that mr bester did raise about the iabs and the focused iabs it said that they are recommended do we actually use those in class or um you know this is going to sound very very um uh non-professional but do you do you just for lack of a better term wing it i mean um you know no testing in the classroom you know pre-testing in the classroom but you um you have such confidence in the program that you're sure the kids can take what they've learned sit down and do the test so we do a combination of things the only time we're using the interim assessment benchmarks is when the teacher is looking for that other piece of information to make sure that kids have have mastered part of the standard

086if we're assessing whether or not kids are getting what we taught and we're trying to identify who might need more help then we we do use some of those interim assessment benchmarks we're not using all of them okay all right they're used as needed sometimes teachers will use some of them they can pick and choose which ones they want to give sometimes they'll use them whole class to make sure that um as as like a whole class activity and then students will go off and do other things on their own but as as you heard me talk about before we're we're teaching and our learning walks have been focused on complex thinking this acceleration strategy is really talking about deep learning experiences our curriculum writing institute this summer is to put in authentic tasks authentic

087performance-based tasks for our students to do so we we are not um a district that um believes in test prep nor do we think that there's a you know and mr bester would certainly i'm sure disagree based on based on his email and i appreciate that um but we don't feel that we are teaching to the test i don't think there's a good way to teach to this test i think it's pretty complex in what it measures and i think the performance tasks that they're asking of students really require them to be deep thinkers okay and then um so i'm just the um you it sounds we've already addressed this but you do lay out for the parents how to interpret these tests and and the teachers and the parents work together for the betterment

088and the advancement of the students um based on some of the results that you see in these tests for these right so the the individual student reports go home in the fall it depends on when the state you know shares shares that information and so that's sent home and we often get phone calls from parents teachers really get these calls and help me you know help explain this to me we send home some literature i know kevin gets some phone calls um when the smart balance first came out we did a number of parent sessions making sure that parents knew how to understand them principals communicate in their newsletters information about them so there's ample opportunities uh for folks to to to learn more about it and and you know understand what the implications are

089for their child and again i want to stress it's one data point yeah right and and so um you know you've gone through the you've gone through the benefits that drive to the school and and to the parents when they figure out the test what would be uh if this were to be suspended for another year what would the impact of that be and how do you intend to use the test this year um especially because it's such an unusual year and we don't have results from last year so what do you what do you want to do with those so a couple of things um we we really use this information again we use the we will use this year's information to look at our curriculum even though this was an odd year this

090is going to be a valid and reliable indicator of some of the other assessment and more classroom assessment that we've done to gauge whether we need to make any any tweaks so so that's sort of on the curriculum side certainly on the instruction side as well but we'll be looking at where students were two years ago and looking at those growth measures to see did they make the growth that they needed to the state has had and kevin you may be a little more on top of this than i um the state has has uh communicated to us how they might be identifying um what those targets would be this year the results that we get this year um will not be used in any penalizing way so that's never happened to us we're in

091good standing our scores continue to rise um but in some districts where they have been remote this year and they haven't had student engagement um sometimes the results of those are used to determine whether or not they're a school of need that needs to be have support from the state um that that's not about us but our teachers use those um they get that information in the summer in the in the fall and they use that to look at their incoming class to see where the holes might be in learning for their incoming class what they might need to focus on um we also use it as a one again one piece of information to determine students who might need intervention who might need support who like at dodd we might put into a numeracy

092support class or a literacy support class who we might put our literacy tutors with at the elementary level we're also you've heard us talk about our english learners we want to make sure that they're meeting those benchmarks as well so we're really using to monitoring each student's growth trajectory um we use it to screen or identify for the intervention process curriculum revision we also plan professional development around some of this um am i missing anything kevin pretty exhausted um ann will it will it show to any extent what um this success or not success of the of your attempt at this accelerated yeah yeah yeah we could draw good job conclusions that our instruction has been successful if during a pandemic when we had all this lost instructional time if our kids made the growth

093that we wanted to see great thanks sure you know um it just i think i think the concern i've talked to with mr with mr bester is is um the fear that data will get in the way of real teaching you know um i think you know where we'll start we'll become so dependent upon metrics and numbers that that for lack of a better term the art [Music] the intuitive uh just understanding that takes place in the classroom between teacher and and student will somehow go away or evaporate or be replaced and i i think you know that is a concern for all of us with with education is you know um because we are becoming a data-driven society and you know so i don't know um perhaps things nothing can replicate the experience that

094happens when a teacher and a student a teacher in a class are in person together aha moments that magic that happens you don't need a computer you don't need a test to do that you're talking systemically right and you're talking about me being accountable to all of you to make sure that our kids are growing yeah i i don't think you should just take my word for it i think it's probably good to have a little bit of data to back that up yeah so you know that that's how i would i would answer that we're looking at district-wide data to make some of these these changes the teachers are more focused on are the kids in front of them growing what can i do today to make that happen what kind of a connection

095can i have what kind of an engaging lesson can i have in order to motivate this student and get this student to the next level of writing or reading how can i get them to be interested and passionate about this this novel you know how can i get them to write about experiences they've had um yeah that that's why people got into teaching in the first place i like to think of teaching as an art and a science right so and it's a delicate balance of both but you know where when i cut where i come from it's we need to put some trust in our school district and the fabulous job that they're doing should give us some confidence that our teaching staff our administrators are are attaining that balance that art and science

096of good teaching and good education so i am yeah i think you need both yeah and i think it's healthy to have these discussions every now and again so absolutely but you know you do have that letter i don't know if you want to put it up so our massive audience can see what the test schedule is are you ready to do that or do you want to um no the letter hasn't been sent out yet this was really informational for for all of you um i don't know if mike we've even solidified that those particular dates i'm happy to put it up i just don't want to do so no that's going really we had originally you know planned to send this out march 29th so it hasn't but generally speaking we're looking at

097it early may yes early may i mean just to give give a heads up just to win very much draft form um very much in line with um what we have typically done which is largely the beginning of may for again english language arts math and ngss okay great all right well thank you for that very thorough um analysis anyone else have any other comments or questions i would i have a comment um marlene that was a that was a great synopsis that you gave and uh if we're going to have any kind of discussion as a whole board can we get that taped part of what marlene said and make sure that the other members um get a chance to digest it as we have i think it would it would be uh helpful

098we can just refer them to this meeting yeah but we have to know where in the meeting to send them to yeah so they don't have to sit through the whole thing it's we have so many meetings we really do i know we do i know um okay and and i don't want to keep this one long longer than it's going to be so um but thank you and yeah we'll find i i will go through and find where this starts and send it out to everybody so they can watch the discussion um it's actually at the one hour uh one hour and thirty minute mark no one hour mark it started at eight o'clock so okay um excellent um our last item tonight is the uh student engagement and expectations at the high school

099so and for that we've got dr gad thank you so much for being here and sharing the information sure thing so um i will offer to you about four topics regarding student engagement and expectations first uh the increase in in-person attendance uh upcoming fingers crossed prom and out and events um our social and emotional learning connections and engagement of students and then finally how that ties into our homework policy okay so uh increasing in-person attendance i know that that's been a topic and i just want to reiterate why what the complexity is at the high school level we have over 1300 students we do not have a mechanism to cohort them where they remain with the same cluster of students for every period they move around and interact with multiple groups of students so at

100the beginning of the year we opted for a hybrid model which 17 of the 19 dirk b schools are still operating in a hybrid model we have begun in earnest uh to move toward increasing in-person learning so we've brought in many four-day learners uh from about late fall to present and we have increased our four-day learners to 328 to date as of our last influx what that means is we have in person every day just about uh six 650 more than that students in person every day which is where we were at the beginning of the school year when we were in our full hybrid model and we had split the school in half and we had very very few remote learners so now we have over four days that that number of students in

101monday tuesday thursday and friday because we've increased our in-person learners what that means is students who attended in cohort one now a portion of them about 170 or so attend in cohort two and students who typically attended in the hybrid model cohort two also attend cohort one about 158 so that's where you get the additional 328 which increases our numbers to where we were at the beginning of the year it's excellent because we want our students in if we could throw the doors open and go back to fully in person safely we would but we do still need to socially distance we can't increase in-person learning which then reduces the cohorting that we could muster given the structure of our school but doing that and it decreasing social distancing is a problem so right now

102we are able to bring that many students in and maintain social distancing but we're now starting to see that some of our sections are at or are very very near capacity so we are currently problem solving that very issue to see how we can work through that and it was a letter that i sent to all parents along with an explanatory video today saying that we need to get more information from them we're doing another google form which we've done multiple google forms uh to ask parents to let us know what changes they wish to make uh and so the next one will has gone out to parents and the due date for that that will close on march 29th so that it gives us ample time well not a lot of time but it

103gives us time to analyze those requests and ensure that any additional returns are done so that we are still able to maintain some level of social distancing hopefully as things continue to progress news continues to be positive about vaccinations and declining infection rates we can move faster it's our goal but we also have to do it in a very very precise way so that's that update uh aligned with that is we've begun planning for the spring and i'll be talking about this with um our pto tomorrow evening uh this was an idea that we we had a couple of months ago but we had to see where numbers went we are looking at both of our proms our junior and our senior proms being held outdoors under tents uh which is going to be a

104really unique venue for us for students in person venues still with even with the updated guidance from the state does not allow more than um a too small a number it's still at 100 of of in-person attendees in an indoor event which our problems far far outnumber that but within our tents in in an outside function we're able to utilize 50 of a tent capacity which gets us exactly what we need uh for our typical prom attendees so that's exciting we are also looking at graduation on the turf whether it's splitting the the class in two depending on how we can seat everyone or or what but we are committed and dedicated to that occurring on the date period um that's where we are so um in terms of sel and engagement we want our

105kids to have an exciting spring so we're also looking at our typical ap art fair um to be an apr exhibit to be held outdoors we're looking at award ceremony outdoors our honor cord ceremony outdoors of of course uh attendance from from parents but simulcasting we can't invite parents to attend so details will be coming out as soon as we have more guidance it does seem to be shifting and loosening a little bit every few weeks so we're hopeful but right now um given given the guidance that we have we're planning on this level and so we're looking at outdoor events with tents uh plans for overflow um and having outdoor in-person activities uh so that's important for social and emotional connections and we have a goal at the high school that has been year

106long to focus in on social and emotional supports teachers survey their students as part of our school-wide goal to determine needs to see how students are doing and feedback as we've gone through the mid-year discussion evaluation discussions teachers have said over and over that student input has really been invaluable to them as they've engaged in this incredibly challenging teaching uh and and learning so students have been sharing some of how this experience has been for them and teachers have been able to adapt as they go along the physical education department each wednesday has had uh wellness wednesdays and the past three have been devoted to time management and we found that our students really do still struggle with time management and it's good to engage them in that dialogue and teachers and school counselors recommend

107students who struggle to with time management to meet with them directly and we can also and do assign them to our learning lab which focuses on executive functioning support really time management support and that ties into homework uh we have a homework policy which is a guide when i use the word policy it really should be emphasize that that's policy little p not big p not not board policy but school-based policy so um we reviewed our our our policy and really we endeavor to to create practices that are broad and tied to our our educational philosophy and through those policies we can then address individual concerns that might arise uh policy really isn't created um to address every single individual question but but to address in broader strokes what we believe in our current policy

108that the the first part of the homework policy we we reviewed this in our instructional leadership team and we feel that the the first part articulates what our beliefs are very strongly about homework that it's about practice it's about reinforcement it's about preparation and it's about applying learning in a deeper way where i think the policy becomes confusing and what we are actively revising is the section talking about time that can that comes out as a misleading um set of time ranges so better articulated is that each course that a teacher teaches will assign different kinds of homework practice and reinforcement might take a little less time while application and integration work requires more time and long-term projects require not only additional time but students have to find time to seek out guidance from their

109teacher to help them plan accordingly and really that's the spirit of of that policy and teachers uh are really accountable to their students and to the work that they're trying to to get them to understand and to learn and to work through deeply and i will say having been a high school teacher for many many many years if you're assigning something and the kids have other stuff do boy they let you know so they're very direct about that and teachers are very responsive to that and i think all of us felt that the way the policy was written especially given our current practice and our current focus on supporting our students and ensuring that they're doing okay in this incredible environment it really didn't track with where we were and any questions um i have

110a couple comments one is on um i think this is a beautiful opportunity to bring prom back into its essence of just getting together with our classmates and having a good time and let's let's take some of the money out of it some of the awful expense and um the divisions that that creates between the families who have money and those who don't um i think outdoor under a tent sounds wonderful it sounds like so much fun and um and hopefully we can continue with just a simpler a simpler kind of celebration that's just my personal views on on prom having gone through it only once with my own kids and once myself okay um with the you'll have to get mr hair again and go to prom yeah if only there were a mr

111harrigan um and i was just gonna share with you mary that dr gad that um college students also have time management problems and even in this year when they have more time on their hands to be doing their work they're still having trouble with the motivational part of it and so um we we all continue to struggle with that and you know how do we really so much of learning comes from within the student themselves and it's it's hard sometimes to motivate them when when in a climate when they may be feeling very um emotionally distracted i would maybe call it but keep keep up the good work and thank you thank you yeah thank you um so in along those lines you know again it's a different year totally different year so um how

112about when it comes to you know assessing grades especially homework grades i mean are our teachers taking a different approach with regard to grading these assignments and um you know some it's things that would have been graded in a normal time or perhaps just being used for evaluative evaluation purposes and and um not necessarily going in and and if that's the case what do you do when you have only a few grades even though the the work is there and and they're using it um you know more as a is a guide and a development tool i think teachers are are doing a range of approaches in response to their students and student needs and if the student uh isn't clear on on where they where they stand uh certainly the first step is to

113talk to the teacher and to share concerns uh that you know parents and and students can certainly talk with their teachers and and ask um and ask about their their status in their um and how they're six how they're doing how they're succeeding additional feedback um then then they'll they'll work to that i think i think teachers especially this year um but in every year are really quite responsive um and concerned about how students are feeling about what they're doing and about how they understand their progress it's all about communication yeah yeah um it just said so you had your first round of uh or the teachers had their first round of vaccinations today right today um how many in how many high school teachers i do not have that number off the top of

114my head but i will say that very scientifically a lot okay there you go and so round two is april april 6th okay um and so that should bring that should will that help you with your spacing issues do you think or well here's the thing because students still won't be vaccinated too right so we have to take all of this into consideration and we know masks work and and but but we have we have it's a balancing act it is really a balancing um it's a balance between um infection rates uh proximity mask wearing um it's it's all of the above and and i can't i can't i cannot appropriately convey um the extraordinary complexity of one change let alone or 200 because you you because of the way our schedule works it's not

115grades it's not by grade it's not by grade level each individual student has potentially eight courses in which they're enrolled and so you multiply that by 1300 and you get another scientific number a lot of sections right so that all has to be evaluated and measured but we're working on that that's precisely what we're problem solving now so we can make it as easy and streamlined and as safe as possible for everyone okay okay great um yeah all right that and we'll just you know if you don't mind updating us on a regular basis and just let us know how it's going that's great um you know and with regard to proms and all i'm i'm so glad you're going to the pto because clearly this is a parent an administration issue um because you

116know that's who runs the problems or the are the parents so um i don't anyway thank you for doing that and um was the last thing so um and sports are coming back on also correct uh because basically they've been on okay winter sports were in and spring sports are on deck and the day that winter sports end is the day that spring sports begin and it is mid-march and will there be spectators or in crowds at this point no okay but so this is all a wait and see yeah okay i think that covers all my questions um okay thank you can i piggyback on your on your last comment faith um so have have we had any discernible um any measured uh covet responses to our sports gatherings we have had some um

117some infection rates uh from teams um to teams that are not yet we have had some but but not not school to school that as a student on the travel team actually um we've had some some some infection there so so we're just um um we're just responding to it on an individual basis correct when it happens right and everything all of the safety protocols um that they can but we have we have had positives on teams yeah thank you and and actually thank you anne because i go back um all right so we're we're dealing with baseball lacrosse um softball um and i'm going to go back to the spectator question clear can spectators sit way out in the fields i do not know the answer to that question steve is really the better

118person to to give you the the absolute details because he said he he actually had an sec meeting today and so they they have dialogue and i haven't had a chance to speak with him since that meeting but but they have meetings weekly to review uh all of the the procedures that schools are following so we're all on the same page and faith middle school's in the same boat as you know we're waiting to see what we're allowed for spectators and those types of things the middle school is looking to open up spring sports as well we have locker room conversations as well in that whole entire thing so the ciac is putting out guidance for us excellent thank you yeah and i'm sure the whole town will know because that'll be a big event

119for sure so okay um thank you very much and um i guess that and and our agenda so um our next meeting is april 19th and ann do your thing so moved okay um all in favor all right thank you everybody good work good work yeah thank you kelly grillo for sticking around all right to all of you who came out tonight for this and and for your presentations i really appreciate it yeah thank you so much good night everyone