Board of Education 11-5-20

001uh board education showcase meeting um mr zenski can you please do uh roll call for quorum mr crippo here ms hallon here miss han here miss harrigan mr martelly here mr paragini yeah mr white okay mr chairman you have a quorum thanks carol and bid joint don't i'm here thank you yes thank you everyone after we uh stand for the pleasure that's a real flag time i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice so for anyone that's out there good evening welcome to our four best showcase meeting as you may be noticing we're in a slightly different format tonight uh which is part of the showcase a little bit we're using our live classroom

002technology here at norton um uh mr pasaro's room uh so what you see here is uh jeff and i up front by the smart board in the room we have our board members in the background is marlene uh with that being said we're going to move on to our special recognition so if he gives a second we're going to mow you on over to the next to the next room it's a little bit of a walk tonight so you guys can stay here and watch it okay marlene's gonna facilitate that do you know what's going on here yeah yeah you're always on we are live first is so mr parenting said this evening we have special recognitions and we take great pride in being able to meet the needs of all students in our school

003systems not only academically but socially emotionally and that takes on many forms and so when we're recognized for our academic academic achievement it's great but when we're recognized for achievement outside the economic realm particularly with a program like mr jeffrey is about to describe it's an incredible source of pride for us so this is really a special evening for a special event and with some special staff here to celebrate that with us so without further ado i'm going to pass it over to highland school principals mr jeffrey and this is the quick little miss bordenaro thank you mr sullivan um first i want to introduce our team i uh we have jen calvo stephanie loomer ali ranchito and erica bordenero they're part of our core team and one person who is not here is a

004key player is lisa rettenberg but this is our core team who started with us three years ago we started with unified sports and continued through a grant through the ciac each year we were able to secure additional grant money to be able to support our um our students so our special needs students and their typical peers partnered off uh throughout the different grade levels so right now we typically work with about 20 students all together we each year we're scheduled for one session we've expanded to two sessions the fall and spring session where students are engaging in sports activities together and through the unified national unified champion school program we've also been able to explore leadership opportunities for our students and also whole school engagement so that's what we're really proud of i'm proud of

005our team it's not just the three or four of them but it really is active engagement by our entire faculty who is uh really owns this program so i'm proud of them and so really congratulations to them for this special award this special award emotional unified champion school award this recognition is given to us through as we're one of 38 schools across the country right now that were recognized by espn as a honorable school we're one school in connecticut that was brought up to a national level uh there are other national winners but uh highland is recognized as a representative for connecticut so we're really proud so i know i applaud [Applause] been a long year i have the board to have all the parents in our community community in general thank you thank you

006for the dedication you put in highland for special olympics program i know many happy parents and other students as part of this they couldn't be happier so well deserved uh and i think it's one of the few bright spots i hope you agree that you had this year i might have code in that despite this is still successful so we have a certificate from the special olympics international because the shriver who's the champion so i'm going to present this to jeffries of [Applause] if you'll bear course us after that recognition we're gonna head over to another room for our next recognition thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you congratulations walk across my home all right well thank you for joining us across the hall it's exciting to have this virtual meeting where we

007can come to you from many locations and so as i indicated in the last room that we were in it's obviously a special moment to recognize our students and our community for making an impact in the lives of children not just in the classroom but also you know with social emotional and athletic events but this is uh another incredible achievement for our school system tonight very few communities in the united states get to say that they have a blue ribbon school it takes a world of dedication to helping every student every single student achieve at high levels so less than a fraction of a percent of american schools get recognized for the blue ribbon award so we have a brief video for you to kind of highlight what makes norton elementary school so special and

008then we have a special guest that i'll introduce momentarily to uh share a special citation as well who's controlling what's on tv kelly is now right here hmm good so what's next is the mandalorian season one yes and then i can finally get to season two yeah it's only one episode [Music] season two yeah i do you know star wars [Music] and then rebels is four seasons he's there on the audio issue thankfully thankfully you know there was quick intervention but there is definitely a learning curve to all of this technology and we appreciate everybody's patience and we'll start that we'll take that video from the top again again it's a pretty quick video so enjoy a positive culture and an environment where students want to come to school to learn norton staff members are

009dedicated to providing a comprehensive educational program that meets the academic social and emotional needs of our students combined our rigorous curriculum and cheshire performance standards prepare and encourage our students to be collaborative cooperative learners community contributors complex and creative thinkers effective communicators and self-directed learners honoring the importance of each child's social emotional and academic well-being we employ responsive classroom practices and engaging classrooms with these environments set in place teachers engage students in learning focus on our rigorous cheshire public schools curriculum and the common coordinate standards through high leverage strategies such as individual conferencing student inquiry and discord because of this screen yeah that's what screen things turned off the split screen which fosters a positive culture and an environment where students want to come to school your staff members are dedicated to providing a comprehensive

010educational program that meets the academic social and emotional needs of our students combine our rigorous curriculum and cheshire rewarding standards prepare and encourage our students to be collaborative cooperative learners community contributors complex and creative thinkers effective communicators and self-directed learners honoring the importance of each child's social emotional and academic well-being they employ responsive classroom practices to create safe joyful and engaging classrooms with these environments set in place teachers engage students in learning focus on our rigorous cheshire public schools curriculum and the common core state standards through high leverage strategies such as individual conferencing student inquiry and discourse and data driven decision making our teachers personalize student learning using rich tasks that promote complex thinking it is through the establishment of responsive classroom environments a personalized approach to learning and a deep commitment to data-driven decision-making

011that our students reach high academic social and emotional achievement students at norton have a prominent role as leaders in our community students feel supported are taught the skills they need to be collaborative learners and community contributors and feel a sense of ownership for the well-being of our school norton students are leaders of their own learning and our school culture our student leaders actively pursue community service projects and lead our multi-town meetings to celebrate student work they also assist with morning announcements kindness and gratitude campaigns and even our daily dismissal procedures our students are the heart and soul of women and are successful because they believe they can be and they know they are important contributors to our school community to ensure every student thrives and contributes as a positive care member of our school community

012we use our soaring pillars to guide us we show integrity own our own learning accept responsibility and respect ourselves others and property these pillars set a clear vision and allow our students to soar high each and every day we are the norton night talks the store as learners citizens and good friends yep okay well welcome back and thank you for your patience as we work through the video i mentioned a very special guest here to join us this evening and i really appreciate leslie's upkis representative for the connecticut uh 89th district which obviously includes cheddar taking time out this evening after i'm sure what's been a very long week for you to come here yeah everybody but but certainly those who are running for office to come this evening with a special citation for kelly

013grillo our norton elementary school principal and kristin lopa assistant principal yeah great thank you thank you everybody it's so exciting to be here and and really honor and recognize the work that you've done right and that you do for our children every single day and we're truly grateful because these imprints that you put on them will take them very far in life and make them great upstanding citizens so thank you everybody for all of your efforts so this is a citation from the general assembly as large one uh and it is it's from the general assembly and the cheshire delegation introduced by myself representative lena hand representative fishbein senator abrams and senator sampson and it's in recognition and our sincere congratulations to norton elementary school in recognition being named a 2020 national blue ribbon school

014by the department of education this is one of the most prestigious national honors to be awarded to schools that excel in overall academic performance or progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups we're so proud to have you in our community keep up the great work the entire membership extends its very best wishes on this memorable occasion thank you so much [Applause] thank you delegation for uh helping put this together and signing it as the first one i've seen since i throw in the board on behalf of the board of vet and all our members thank you well deserved and we have our community i know they're excited and happy and i know that the norton school basically anybody's cbs does not start the day saying hey i gotta win a rhythm you did this

015because it's in your dna and for folks at home they're watching uh you have kids in the school system you know how great our schools are we talk about that but i think even better you know how great our teachers are educators and support staff so thank you well deserved i had you honored seeing this about a month ago happy to say it again [Applause] my wonderful staff are incredibly dedicated and ambitious staff thank you for for the recognition like i i said the day that received the award um on behalf of the school we don't go in every day and looking for recognition like this but it certainly is nice for their hard work to be to be noticed and we're very very grateful for it and for our students who are so hard

016working as well and our great families and send us these wonderful kids so it's it's a community award we all this is for all of us so congratulations again ladies uh representative uh sup kiss thank you raymond i apologize yeah um it's been a long week for all of us but thank you so much for doing this and on behalf of the delegation uh congratulations again ladies now if you'll bear with us another moment we're going to go into another room and we have a special presentation about our elementary school technology thank you oh good foreign i'd like to know if you all can hear me kevin can you tell me if they're giving us the thumbs up yes thank you ah thank you so much a couple glitches you're doing okay well thank you

017all for being here tonight tonight we are our board meeting tonight is the elementary showcase and i'm very happy that we have a wonderful delegation of teachers here from all over the district to share with you about our broadcast system as well as a technology tool called seesaw so without further ado i'm going to turn this over to ali kennedy who's going to begin our presentation with you this evening thank you ally thank you hi everyone i'm allie kennedy i am a grade 2 teacher here at norton i have the remote classroom um so we have a couple of features in our classroom that help our remote learners learn um with our in-person learners there are cameras um speakers and microphones that are in the ceiling and i also have this microphone which you can

018see um over here this that's around my neck um during the day and then i can project my voice to them and they can hear me at home and this also gives my students at school a better opportunity to jeremy um with the speakers that are on the ceiling there are also microphones in the ceiling so that kids can collaborate with one another so the kids that are in school can be heard by the kids that are virtual michelle do you want to say hi hello everybody so that gives us the opportunity for the kids to go back and forth no matter if they are home or at school they can still talk to one another and so our day-to-day schedule um okay so i'm christine your phone i am the remote teacher in grade

0193 at highland and a big component of our day is making sure that the first thing the students see on seesaw is the daily schedule so just like within the classroom students walk in and displayed on our smart boards we have our morning message which matches our responsive classroom practices so when students log into seesaw they will see options like you see on the left hand side of my screen they see their journal their activities they see an icon that says inbox and inbox is where they will find their morning announcement for the day within this morning announcement they'll see a brief message from their teacher the daily schedule which includes times what special they have what subjects in order that we're doing for the day and also really importantly they'll see our learning targets

020learning targets are our objectives for each lesson and they are posted within the classroom so it's really important for the students at home to see those learning targets to understand what should i be able to do by the end of the day it's also a reminder of what work should be submitted by the conclusion of the day and also any necessary google meet links as well so when they click their inbox this is an example morning message and it's on two slides so on top you'll see an example of a message from a teacher highlighting something that was covered the day before so in this one you know i i expressed that i was excited to read their notes about the arctic that we took um in our writing unit and if we continue to

021move down you'll start to see the daily schedule so you'll see the morning meeting what our share is going to be for the day we're reading the book wonder so we're focusing on kindness um and then you'll continue to see the subject areas so for example from 9 20 to 10 25 we will be working in math and listed next to it is our learning target the learning target i can round two and three digit numbers to the nearest ten i on i'm sorry to the nearest hundred on a vertical number line science as we move through we'll see also that we're identifying what organisms need to survive and what organisms needs to survive in different habitats you'll even see physical education and telling the students to go to mr webb's message into seesaw class

022as well so they know that they need to then transition to a different class and you'll also just continue to see the learning objectives throughout the day then you'll see the end of the day work semester submission checklist so this is for the students to understand what they need to have turned into the teacher by the end of the day math exit tickets the organism sort using on tci our new science curriculum program that's digital the reinforced notes we're taking in writing a reader's response by the end of the day so this um this schedule and this announcement really sets the stage for the day for these students they understand what their goals are for the end of the day they understand what work they're going to need to be completing and they understand where

023they're expected to be at what time and finally they'll see their google meet link posted at the bottom so all of the information is listed for them and it allows them to also foster independence we're really hoping that they're able to understand where they need to be what they need to do throughout the day these announcements can also be sent to families not just the students but also to the parents so the parents also understand what the students will be completing throughout the day which at the elementary level is very helpful for them so they know what their child is doing at what time during the day so the morning announcements in the inbox and this that is sent to the kids every day really helps the students understand what their school day is going

024to look like even though they're not in the actual classroom so now i'm going to send it back to allie hi again so i'm also gonna highlight um the program that we use for seesaw so as second grade um in second grade we focus a lot on phonics and we focus on different um patterns that students are focusing on for reading what we did in the beginning of the year we focused on a long a sound a i and a y um and so i had previously used an activity like this in previous years where students would just color in the chunk and follow those directions and they would read it in their head unfortunately because there are 20 students when they're reading it in their head during morning work i can't always go around

025and see if they're reading these words correctly seesaw gives me a really unique opportunity to be able to hear every single word that the students are reading and then i can understand if they're having any um difficulties with a certain pattern so i will play you a very cute example day [Music] so that's just a quick little example um you know as i said in previous years they would just color in that chunk and they would i would hope that they would read in their head as i'm walking around but this really gives me a better understanding of where they are at that particular um area and then finally we also do readers responses so when we focus on a piece of text for a unit we will read it together and then the kids

026will have to look into the text to try to answer a question to show that they are comprehending the text now in second grade especially in the beginning of the year we are either um able to have them write their response or they can say their response but again because there are 20 students sometimes it's hard to go around and make sure that they are all giving me that verbal response so seesaw is awesome for being able to give students that ability to record their response into their journal and then i can listen to it later on and make sure that they understand the skill the happy lion walks into town because he wanted to say hi to his friends so he wrote it and recorded it which is even a bonus and so they

027can show that they are really owning their own learning as we say at norton and um showing their skills in those ways i'll pass it back good evening everybody i'm kevin hanlon the cooking coordinator and susan squire a first grade teacher at chapman elementary school um shared with us two video clips to talk a little bit about and talk a little bit about fostering a classroom community and also some of the instructional approaches that she uses with both remote and in-person students my daily goal as a teacher who teaches students in school and students learning remotely from home is for my remote learners to be treated the same as my students learning in the classroom i always say to my students that even though some children are in the classroom and some children are at

028home we are one classroom family i teach live throughout the day with the exception of lunch recess mass breaks and specials however music art and library are students as well during independent reading and during independent reading and reading conferences i turn off the microphones so that we are all reading this also gives me the opportunity to read with individual students in the classroom as well as having conferences through a separate google meet length with my students learning remotely i would like to share with you a couple of examples of how i include and engage my remote learning students to feel part of live instruction good evening i am susan squire for foundations lessons or phonics lessons that entailed reviewing short vowels i pulled out and pulled up my slides that show um the different sounds

029for the short vowels and then we practice blending sounds to say words so what i can do for so that my remote learners at home can see my screen as i pull up a smart notebook page as well and have it side by side and so i want the children to join me in practicing to say the sounds of one of the sounds for example i would write the letter and i would say sound they would say sound they would say and then they would blend and they even say that that if i just wrote that word and i pointed to the first sound they wouldn't be able to see it so as i write each letter they're able to see it and join me and the class in blending the sounds to say words

030that's just a small example of a foundations lesson i would also like to show you a sample of a ranking lesson so we just finished our writing unit two in formative one unit in which we learned about spiders and that part of the unit uh was to take notes so in order for my children at home to be engaged at the same time as my students in the classroom i once again had a book ready virtually here that i would pop over the screen and i would maybe turn to a page in which i wanted a model um taking notes or to have the children take notes and i would read for example spiders can be big or small they can be brown or black some spiders are red orange green or yellow and then

031i would um i can minimize my screen the same way i did for foundations bring up a page in my smart notebook file and then this would start for example spiders for a class collection of notes the children learn that you take notes by either writing words drawing pictures with a label or join complete sentences so i write model by writing words and writing big or small indicating the size of spiders as i write the children not only in the classroom but the children at home can see me writing at the same time so these are just two little examples of how i engage students at home and in the classroom at the same time and our day starts with morning meeting where we um get together as one classroom family and we start our

032day with listening to the chapman morning announcements and then we have our morning meeting which begins with greeting each other to begin our day of interaction and engagement thank you for listening for foundation okay i'd next like to invite michelle earley who is a grade 3 teacher here at norton elementary school [Music] hello everyone i wanted to take you through a day in math in the life of a third grader we have many different things that we focus on and again we start with our daily target which is listed on the board and then there are several interactive parts of the day where students work with me or with each other we work on fluency we develop a concept and then they use a problem set and an exit ticket you'll notice that i also

033give them an option when finished so they know that they can go on zern or do a different math enrichment activity our fluency is very interactive we sing songs and we practice group counting all right so we're going to start off by singing the eights on to have our brains remember some of those multiplication facts thumbs up if you're ready good thumbs up remote friends if you're ready good all right here we go here we go [Music] oh all right so now remote friends you're going to have the opportunity to type in your answers and in-person friends we're going to say that numbers so i'm going to say the first time where everybody gets your brain ready for the second number eight so now the remote friends type in the next number after 16. excellent

034so after 16 are we both friends then 24. what i'd like to point out about this is that remote friends can be interactive either by speaking or by typing their number into the chat for this particular activity i've also switched the screen format where the students are not looking from the overhead camera but from the camera attached to my computer so they can see um me a little bit closer and then other times we also use a present mode where they're able to see the entire smart board screen all right so we're going to start off by singing the apes on to have our brains remember some of those multiplication facts thumbs up if you're right good have a great remember all right friends so we're going to start off by saying sorry about that

035all right so the next thing i want to point out is um in math often we need to see student work and there are several ways that students can show their work in this particular case the student who is remote has taken a picture of the work and uploaded it to the seesaw platform you can see at the bottom that i'm able to give student feedback and they can open up their journal and see this message the other thing i'd like to point out is by this red arrow you can see seen by parents who have joined the seesaw family are able to see my feedback to students and um they can see the work that their student is completing in class i feel like having parents part of csa allows them to monitor their

036student work and have feedback from the teacher as well another way students are able to show their work is by actually typing right onto a document that's been uploaded so for this particular case you can see that the student used the typing feature to show their mathematical thinking and next up i'd like to introduce jennifer dube and grade two from doolittle school thank you um i'm going to kind of pick you back off of what michelle um was talking about so i'm going to go over some ways that we keep students that are remote and in person connected and interactive and then i'm also going to talk a little bit about some seesaw features that keep us connected and help me monitor progress so one of the big projects we do in second grade is

037a landforms project and it's really exciting and the kids make landforms out of dough and normally it's a big group effort we make the dough together but this year having half the students at home we had to kind of come up with some creative ways to have everybody do this project for this culminating activity so parents were very kind and either blocked out or made dough at home so we got onto the google meet which um they get onto every day for social studies anyway so when they came on this time we collaboratively and together um did our landform projects at the same time so my students in school were creating their land forms out of dough and my students at home were on the camera also doing it at the same time um so

038we did it all together we waited a few days we painted together um and so they were able really to kind of work together even though they're in two different locations so just another way that we um try to connect our remote learners and our in-person learners um so this is an example of the seesaw activity that goes with it so to check for um you know proper land forms and how they did on their project and give them a chance to show it off since i can't be at their house to look at it i created the a seesaw activity where they would record themselves talking about their project so i'll just give you a quick preview of this little girls hi mrs derby today i made um my project and um i'll show

039you what it looks like and um it it's really important they might see the same so this here's my ocean and there's like an octopus in the shark and then these things right here are my hills and um this is my mountain these things and this is my valley like through there and then it goes into the ocean and this is my waterfall and some waterfalls made stream but this one didn't because it went into the ocean and this is my volcano and i have three four three over here and then this is my plane all of the green stuff i'm missing so um as you can see she was able to explain you know all the different land forms and she was very proud of her work and able to share with me um

040i could go around to my students in school and look and they explained what their land forms they were making was but um this is a great way for me to connect with those kiddos at home and see what they're working on and so i'm also just going to show you another cool feature about the seesaw um my students every day take a picture of their problem set or their exit ticket so that i can keep them accountable and check on their work and see where you know people need help and whatnot and as michelle said we can leave comments down at the bottom which is great you can also leave voice comments so if you want to explain something more to them they can listen to a recording of you saying um what you

041need them to kind of work on and then also i was able to draw this picture of what i wanted her to show me for the next time so um she drew the discs correctly but we've been working on drawing them like a ten frame so i was able to draw the example of what i want her to do for the next time so that she could see what she needs to fix and work on that way so seesaw has been a great way to check in and keep kids accountable but also interact with them talk with them and see where they're at next thank you so you can see just from everything that the teacher shared with you tonight that they are really working very hard learning all kinds of new things on how

042to support their students that are doing remote learning and also their students in the classroom and how they're also working hard to balance that between in class and at home learning so they're doing great um the biggest piece also here they've shared a lot about the seesaw platform and how the special teachers are also providing the learning for students through the remote learning also our tech department has been having parent support sessions um and really it's to provide that technology support for the families to provide some software support especially on seesaw and the google platforms and also to give that open communication between home and school and to listen to the concerns from families that are remote and be for us to give us some feedback on how we can make it better and i

043think the biggest message is that this is all a learning process for everyone and every day is better than the day before but i really want to just congratulate the teachers that were here tonight and thank you so much for sharing all that learning that's happening it's amazing what's going on in the classroom so thank you thank you so we hope that through some of the presentations and shares that um allison and christine and michelle and jen and susan by the way video tonight and came at the end here that they shared that we can see that we're working really hard to try to keep a nice classroom community strong interaction between remote runners and class miners and we have some tools embedded right in see-saw the one thing but i don't know hopefully we

044know that all these are very easily embedded right in the program so we're not going to different programs buttons for students to click to be able to record video audio and so on so we want to thank thank you for your attention to this and i cannot thank the crew in this room enough for for sharing what they are doing on a daily basis and all of our teachers who are working hard each and every day to try to make this situation um as positive as it possibly could be so stop right here [Music] any questions for the board at this time sure can you hear us kevin i can hear you can you still hear me does the board have any questions for the presentation team thanks uh yeah can so with regard to

045the seesaw that is that an app on their chromebook is it something parents could log to you know via their desktop or laptop computers easily to review the schoolwork being done by the students is an app that parents can download and they can have it on their phone so they can get notifications through their phone it can also be accessed on the computer the students have access to safa through their clever portal so it is easily accessible for all persons involved anybody want to have one it looks a little bit like a social media feed for for the parents and students so um it's a natural kind of you see something that a student might have posted on the day from the paradigm and it's really easy to see that comment on it themselves like

046it any other questions from board members at first or oh i can't see yeah yeah thank you tony um i just wanted to comment firstly that uh that the system is incredibly and uh um and that the work that the teachers and and the administration have done to really synchronize all of these uh different applications together is is really fantastic it's a huge improvement over the um uh i guess hodgepodge is a strong word but you know the the system that we're using last year for remote learning this is uh a million times better than that and uh just a you know a great job for everyone and you know and keeping the children's interests together as perhaps some of you heard earlier the evening uh the teacher left our room and we began talking

047so it was me focus all day and to learn in a meaningful way i think is really great um interesting we have talked about this in the past what this is uh k-3 how are we going to expand this because it does seem to be um much more inclusive of everybody and including parents and um you know how do we how do we extend to higher grades to higher grades yeah and obviously you know there's that balance too where we need to have it developmentally scaffold in an appropriate way too right so you know at the elementary level for a second grader who's home and we're trying to monitor this is even more intensive than i would say if the student was in person you know using seesaw provides such incredible feedback they you know

048think back just you know five years ago if a student was doing a ditto and bringing it home you're not of what necessarily provides it's unbelievable as we you know have developmental differences right high school kids we're trying to prepare for full auto time so they're going off to college uh shortly or beyond high school and need to be able to manage more of their own work we have systems like google classroom and powerschool readily available at the high school i you can get as a parent a daily email you can get an email every time a grade changes from powerschool if you want to monitor how your your child is doing but then also you know opportunities to connect with the teacher to find more information about how that's going in terms of engagement

049we have put 60 of these audio classrooms in across the district the cheshire education foundation has generously donated 10 more that helps the engagement significantly but we're also revamping what we're doing at the high school with a more synchronous learning model than starting now um and so hopefully between those all those things you know we'll find higher levels of engagement you know frankly we're going to school every day which is a step ahead of of most people at this point as well so hopefully you know that combination supports this in this really unique timeline i don't know if uh ann or katherine have any questions uh before they pop back up so it's tonight the first night or first time when we started a meeting or tonight i think folks noticed little little weird issues

050only because we're in three different rooms three different purposes um and trying to switch control back and forth normally that's not the case are our classrooms combining different rooms to do a lesson yeah that would be very rare that we would have um throwing it between multiple rooms like that uh but this is our first time doing that and there may be a need for that i i think we've talked a lot about the idea that this is we've been given a huge barrel of lemons and so we're trying to find a lot of different ways to make lemonade and you know this is just another learning experiences you know for us as a school system and doing this tonight you know kevin and all the really intelligent people marlene is in the room and

051robin and kerry but a lot of intelligent people in other rooms and that participated tonight they'll go back and think about how do we is there a way to leverage what we just did tonight to support engagement and learning across the district we navigated a tech issue and how do we interact here and how do we invent the slide there and um are we seeing and hearing each other those are all cases that each teacher who has remote students is navigating each and every day and that's a whole new skill set a whole new way of managing their classrooms and i can't reiterate enough how amazing our teachers are doing um add to that management at that navigation um ken mentioned that it's getting better each and every day but this is a whole new

052skill set um thinking about how to interact with our students and set up the day uh and i can't compliment our teachers enough for going to those places i will tell you they are much further along and they believe that they are they're doing absolutely incredible things so just take a moment to acknowledge uh that part of the work that we do thank you yeah we certainly acknowledge the fact that i mean everyone in school has had an adapt quickly technology and i know a lot a lot of professionals don't start with school officially open you know i think the board recognizes the fact that this hasn't been really an easy year to try that features a couple of speed and technology and utilizing it um you know it's one more curveball throughout them but

053i think they've so far knocked out of the part um so so i know someone had a question that was our spokes that i thought her in the hallway earlier so i've total number classrooms we have in cps how much how many of these classes are equipped and i know that the education foundation uh donated some funds for additional 10 more classrooms thank you that's always a huge help so are we halfway there forward away there oh we're probably just fully getting there yeah we're probably about a quarter of the way there at this point and a lot like everything else that we did at the start of this year we had no idea what was going to happen but i think a lot of people thought oh my god we'll be full remote by

054you know the end of september um and so as we learn and experience we're just evolving and i think what we've learned from this experience is that these audio rooms uh are really beneficial for our students again not just during this coming time where we have remote learners but during a traditional classroom setup the the audio in here is so powerful to be a part of that you know it's something i think we're going to continue to explore as a school system moving forward thank you jeff any other comments or feedback adam uh i just took one more question um you know the uh installing these this microphone system is appears to be a permanent installation or semi-permanent i know that it can be moved around and stuff with effort um have you guys you

055know let's say you know two years from now or three years from now um have you already sort of have an idea of how these systems can be used when everyone is just in person or or what were your thoughts on on that sure so i mean you can hear the difference when i wear the mic around my neck too yeah yeah amplifies that's great yeah so uh when we come back to quote uh what are the benefits of the current system i think as we continue to install these systems we probably wouldn't add as many cameras as we do now but the benefit in the camera and maybe you know we focus on a more portable method for the camera but the benefit for the camera is if you know sparky broke his leg

056is too much trouble to get in down the road perhaps someday we're either recording a lesson or we're allowing a student to uh remote in and still participate in the classroom the real benefit though i think post covid is the audio setup that will be available for our classrooms there is data supporting just the enhanced audio component leading to greater understanding and higher achievement it is a lot easier here yeah it's crystal clear when you're there you can hear it when i put the mic on and when the teacher is wearing this it's through the mat yeah even through the mask and that was one of the issues that we thought that this would be beneficial too it's a little tougher to hear and we gain so much comprehension to reading facial cues and when

057that is taken away for people that are sitting in the back of the room it's that much more challenging and you can hear this crystal clear even though you can't read my lips you can't see my face but you can hear everything i'm saying is if i'm sitting right next to you benefits to hearing impaired students students with attentionality issues kids with central auditory processing disorder which i'm from singing yourself rather all of those type of students benefit from having just the implementation system in the classroom so that is what we think takes us you know yeah every student benefits students with you know as marlene was saying central auditory processing or attention issues hearing issues those those students benefit even more so everybody wins really yeah so with regards to the audio you said

058everybody um everybody wins the kids at home the feedback that you've gotten from the remote learners is great clarity yeah it's funny you say that because um working with the cheshire foundation we wanted to put a name to it and so i went to our high school marketing class and said what do you think and so one of the first names that you know that i love that i know andrew is a fan of is ramplified for amplified rooms but not every you know school guys rams is the mascot but another one of the three names that they initially proposed was the clarity classroom and those kids understand it better than most because in a cohort setting you know their home it you know half of them are home in back and so they experienced

059this and for them to one of the three names they came up with was clarity classroom said to me that you know it's a different experience when you're at home participating in this sort of audio quality yeah no i'm just saying because there's going to be moments when even the you know the most disciplined teacher would probably turn to look at a board and the voice would trail off a little bit sure this is fantastic yeah you never i mean you never lose it and catherine and ann i know you guys are participating from home maybe one of you uh could share with us your experience at home what it's like to have the audio there well the i'll go first um the audio is really great i mean i'm i'm amazed at how clear

060it is so it's i can see where you know students would have a much easier time remotely um staying engaged because everything is so clear it's great and by the way you're super clear here too yeah yeah oh really oh good yeah see that was another you know reason that we wanted again there are there are reasons to do this during kobit and then but you know please i hope that kobe doesn't last forever and we're not having to worry about this perpetually but um during covet we wanted the students at home to be able to hear but as you guys are experiencing the students at home it's like they're sitting right now when they speak everyone in the room can hear them plain as that and so they're as close to being a part

061of this room as they can be without being in the room so that's that's during kobe that's pretty important for us i would just i would just add um that it is difficult to hear the other kids in the room especially the farther away they are from the mic and we can turn that up that's a simple setting so if a student it's simple if you're not the superintendent and don't do this every day but for teachers who do this every day they it's easy to turn that up and we make those adjustments all the time sometimes it's too loud in the back so we make those adjustments and it's just a setting on the computer oh that's great just is the um of the two components the audio which is the more expensive okay

062well the video is a pretty small fee it's um the camera we use although it's a very high quality uh camera but i mean you could kind of purchase this for home use it's not a special ht camera or anything like that it the audio in installation are the most expensive part of this so because this this actual microphone is like the next generation of microphones i guess i'm not a audio visual expert but audio visual experts joined us when we engaged in this process and you know they said this is next generate this is super high quality it's the equivalent of buying like a 5g phone today it's going to get the most shelf life out of it as opposed to we could have bought a cheaper 4g phone and you know to continue

063on with that metaphor and you know three years from now those may have been obsolete this is going to carry us for a number of years okay i'll i'll preserve sure to answer that like the cost though it's about three grand a room for the all the components no and the video and the installation yeah so generally speaking about not about the audio but about the video is it adequate is it great are there improvements that you feel we should make not necessarily to the video i think the video is a bit of a it's a stop gap it's a it's a back-up plan um when we come back from covid uh it's obviously i mean you can see kevin on the screen pretty well particularly if we we pin him out you know something

064like that we can we can see the classroom pretty well it's a quality picture um so i don't know that it necessarily quote an upgrade would be necessary um and you know with privacy issues we don't want to show the whole room we we did this intentionally so i think the camera that we have is is very good for the purpose it was intended so i'm taking it from a slightly different perspective not a wider angle but a narrow angle can you lock the camera in or can you just move over to the smartboard feed if that's something in particular the teacher wants to show to the student if you can't yeah you can present screen in the student at home doesn't see any of the camera it only sees what's on the smartphone yeah

065okay or i think it was michelle early maybe that was saying that you can see you know if we set up a laptop too or other cameras we can do different angles so i i have to just take a step back and thank marlene and kevin but i also know that they would definitely thank people like mike papa b jacobs tom leewock scott conway a cast of several who worked all summer long to make this sort of stuff possible but have doubled that effort since we started to order as many chromebooks as we had to prep them b jacobs mike papa and b's husband were working over weekends he's not necessarily a tech guy but we just needed more hands and they were you know going above and beyond and you know that was a

066volunteer effort um to put the chromebooks together and get them into our students and staff hands and now they they go around marlene and that team have set up visits to each school so that people can consult because teaching is hard um doing this is harder and anything that our tech staff can do to help they have been there 150 it's not even fair to say that it's like it's unbelievable the effort they made awesome so just in life just kind of said that we have a lot of people here tonight uh i want to thank kevin and kelly the entire staff here first of all for sticking out tonight staying late after a very long day uh three different presentations the showcase and for folks that are watching you know we have uh tim

067andrew and faith in the room uh we also have robin which we'll talk about in a minute we have marlene for everyone that's stuck around tonight uh thank you and so i appreciate the effort we all appreciate the fact that it's been a learning curve technology but we have some really great feedback especially if i want whatever so thank you for the commitment thank you for adapting to this and making it with budget season coming up very quickly for us if jeff hasn't reached out to you already i'm sure uh he will but there's any approvals you think the board needs to invest in this we'd love to hear from you in a couple well actually about a month so unless there's any other feedback or comments um [Applause] as i am before which is

068the appointment of our director of people personnel services thank you mr parading [Music] okay here we are on the agenda um so as you know we've had the unenviable task of replacing our pupil personnel services director mrs cousins this fall and i want to thank the cadre of parents teachers support staff and administrators who helped with thorough hiring process we had several outstanding candidates and the selection process was certainly not easy miss robert and kerry has spent the last 11 years is cheshire's elementary grade special services supervisor over that time she has focused on providing exceptional care and support for our students and families while we have seen an amazing student achievement growth across the board much of that growth can be attributed to ms carey's efforts to ensure that identified students at the elementary

069grades are receiving high quality and supportive instruction she's known by her families as someone who's fair knowledgeable and collaborative her peers respect her for her work ethic creativity in supporting students families and staff and her tireless dedication to all miss kerry has articulated a deep knowledge and vision for supporting students in our school system ladies and gentlemen of the cheshire board of education i'm proud of nominee robin ann carey is our next pupil personal services director for the cheshire public schools thank you uh is there a motion from the board andrew yeah move the cheshire board of education appoint robin and kerry to position of director people personal services effective november 6 2020. further let miss carrie be compensated according to the collective bargaining agreement through the cheshire board of education and the cheshire administrative

070personnel very second second faith discussion and robin you're welcome to come sit up here just so people can see yeah everyone know who you are just to be clear on this this is an appointment that you as a superintendent make and this is a ceremonial show of support by the board of ed just for people who are watching yeah sure is that correct yeah the board of education has to appoint all administrators but as a board of education by law you hire one employee and that's me and i hire all the other employees um so yeah but the board does appoint formally all administrators per policy so go ahead mr grippo i just want to say again congratulations on your appointment uh we had a little discussion uh earlier and we've got to meet you

071formally and uh i think you're going to do a great job and congratulations thank you thank you very much i'm i'm really very excited to um continue to support cheshire public schools in this world exciting for me and i'm looking forward to it any other uh this channel i was just going to say you know we saw you in action last year with a highland showcase and then our discussion informal discussion tonight and i was just amazed with the fluency that you demonstrated just moving through the entire program i was in awe so welcome aboard congratulations uh the director the former director of public personnel services was tracy hussey correct she was also the principal of hummus in school she she served in that capacity the pbs director oversees honest in school so is that

072so will you be is this role the same or is it i'm just wondering the rules of sure sure that's a great question so you know what we've done is take a step back and say organizationally what's you know what are the strengths and weaknesses we have within our leaders strengths and weaknesses per se but what are areas of specific expertise how do we best detail all of the needs and demands we have as a school system with the strengths of our staff and so actually robin and i are working through that process now well she will always oversee hummingston school for her her role as pps director we may have some other uh administrator working on more of the day-to-day operations so you know like i said we try and align uh the responsibilities

073and those always evolve you know things have evolved tremendously in the last year so you know we're trying to align that so that we can you know best meet our student needs so that's you know kind of to be determined at this point okay so it's a good question so do you think sure some of that discussion what's come out of that is i mean our vision our vision for hummus in school is it's an extension of the high school so it's a program that's been designed for students who need additional support or more than support than what's available in the environment of the high school it's a smaller environment it's a therapeutic environment but it's essentially an extension of the high school so our hope is that in looking at the position and looking

074at the involvement in it that we're going to be able to really breach and connect hummusting to the high school and vice versa so that when we look at transitioning our students from the high school to huntington we have a smooth transition and the staff is fully informed to be able to pick right up and support that student and then when that student is ready to return to the high school that communication and that bridge is open for them to then return so i think based off of those visions and that discussion you know we're going to continue to talk about how we want that to happen in a nice smooth way and who are the players that will be involved in that sure anything from our online friends to steal a term from earlier

075tonight uh no i i just also wanted to um congratulate robin i think this is fantastic i'm i am delighted that uh you are and you know you already know cheshire you know the students you know you know you know what everything that you're going to be dealing with and it's great that we were able to um basically you know kind of move you along to the next level um internally so i'm really happy i know that you'll do i'm sure a great job and uh so it's exciting and congratulations again thank you thank you very much well robin i said earlier congratulations thank you thank you for staying on and taking on this role like very familiar with your achievements here it's just nice to see the continuity and then of you here and

076i think the great things for our students so thank you unless there's any other comments or feedback the motion is move that the cheshire board education appoint robin and kerry to the position of director pupil personnel services effective number six 2020 further that miss gary be compensated in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the cheshire bar education and the cheshire administrative personnel all board members of favor please raise your hands it is unanimous congratulations robin [Music] so congratulations uh moving on item number five on our agenda is the discussion a potential approval contract between the cheshire board of education and the education association of cheshire jeff and or vincent or marlene do you want to walk us through the highlights sure i'm happy to do that with the um eac contract recommendation first of

077all uh i want to hit thank you tony for some of the highlights we have approximately 400 teachers in our school system who are deeply committed to supporting all of our students and as you've seen tonight uh our our students have found incredible success and i would be remiss if i did not take this opportunity to thank all of our certified staff of course all of our other staff here we're tonight talking about the teachers in our school system um they're some of the best in america and that's really on display every day and i i just want to take a moment to acknowledge that particularly during this time when all of us i mean i understand that all of us are are asked to do different things in our livelihoods and in our lives

078and uh our teachers have been really flawless with making that transition there's always room for growth though and that's one of the things that i respect most about our teachers is that you know almost to a fault they're never satisfied they're always trying to do better and our students are the incredible beneficiaries of their dedication so that being said the board of education and the leadership for the teachers union the educators association of treasurer engaged in deep conversation about particularly during these challenging fiscal and uncertain fiscal times how do we come to an agreement about what's fair uh for them as educators and and what makes sense for us physically as a community so the uh some of the significant language adjustments we made uh highlighted around the school year so uh cheshire high school

079is one of the few high schools in connecticut where uh teachers were asked to teach six classes and we identified that as an area you know that mutually what what can we do there to best support our students and so um through the negotiations process we have moved the a third of the teachers at the high school will be teaching five classes directly but that sixth period will be spent providing academic supports or collaborative time each of the next three years will kind of phase that process and starting in the 21-22 school year we have added some more teacher directed early release time for middle and elementary staff as well to provide more collaborative opportunities for teachers as we talk about tonight you know we are our teachers are always learning and trying to improve

080their craft and just sharing this information uh with each other on the fly every day has been really beneficial we want to try and leverage that uh as we move forward as a school system i appreciate as a working parent although my kids are older now it's not that long ago that i remember what do i do with my kids on those days we're going back on some of the days that we had previously scheduled this is a central office team to kind of soften that impact on parents as well um the uh you know of course the the biggest component to all of this is is the financial piece uh in the 2122 school year the there are two real fiscal components that we look at one is a general wage increase increase and

081the other is a step increase the cost of moving up steps there are 14 steps on the teacher union contract so you start at year one and move up each step each year that you successfully complete and up to 14 and at that point 14 years you're on that top step and that that pay only changes with general wage increase so uh next year or excuse me for the 21 22 school year there will be no step advancement but all i employ all teachers will see a 1.75 wage increase the medical co-share that they're expected to pay is 15 in that first year in the second year the uh general wage increase will be 1.23 with a 1.33 step increase so there will be step advancement and that will cost us about 1.33 a grand

082total of 580 000 in the first year 863 in the second year teachers will have a higher medical co-share in that second year of 16 the third year uh 1.5 general wage increase 1.29 step for a total of 965 000 dollars uh then they have a medical co-share of 17 uh the third year 1.75 general wage increase 1.27 step increase for a total of 172 804 and a medical co-share of 18 so there's offsets on the wage increase by increased medical co-share that our teachers pay and the other thing you need to know is that those numbers are in terms of how much the total cost impact will be our projections because this would assume that no teachers are retiring is limited turnover so you know that we do have very limited turnover in cheshire

083um because i think people appreciate being part of a great team and being supported but um it's not exact so you can't you can't you know say four years from now it's it was supposed to be a million 0072 why is it 995 it's because there is you know turnover that occurs so um i will certainly see the fact that mr manciana is much more uh financially versed than i am um in many other ways too but if you have any questions for either of us i know we could certainly be happy to answer them well what i'd like to do is check i'm going to give you an opportunity to get some just for folks watching uh the board as the details been aware for some time but we want to give you the

084opportunity to summary because there's a lot of components to the process that they did a good job summarizing it i know the bone marrow has asked the question so uh so we're going to send you guys a discussion and i'm going to entertain an emotion so i can make a motion uh mr chairman i'd like to make a motion uh move that the cheshire board of education approves the collective bargaining agreement with the education association of cheshire for the period of july 1 2021 through june 30 2025. is there any second and here in seconds she just beat you captain sorry uh discussion questions yeah um just to jump back here i i tried to jot down what you were saying on the general week and the step increase i missed year three general wage

085okay um so year three gwi was uh two one point five one point five gwa all right so so my take on this is year one the total increase step band general age 1.75 2.56 2.79 3.02 correct okay where they are so the the cost share or the medical culture yeah the medical co-chair 15 year one 15 16 17 where is it right now 14 14 14 right now so it's going up one percent a year for four years okay what is that so the cost the cost of that the cost of the teachers is that very generally speaking family different from a single person but is it a couple hundred bucks a year that one percent yeah yeah this is big messiah and i know people can't see me but i will adjust the

086question so the medical co-share going up from 14 to 15 basically if you look at the teachers as a group that's an increase of roughly 55 000 so our costs are offset because the teachers are paying it and that amounts to about 150 every teacher okay and again just using an average because as you say some teachers are in single coverage so yeah family so and that's roughly 55 000 per year cost shifting from the board to the teachers because it's going up um net increase if you were to take what we're saving on the health care or the the calculated increases 580 000 minus 55 000 so 525 863 in the subsequent year you could figure it's closer to 60 grand 860 early 800 000 you know 965 in the third year closer to

08765 000 again because of the extra percent um 900 000 a little over a million um million seventy two thousand so you're probably closer this million on the nose in terms of projections jeff you mentioned earlier a top step for our 14 year folks what percentage of our teachers are impossible uh it's a significant percentage right now um it looks like we have 62 percent yeah 66 um one 83 on the other 87 on the third so yeah it's in the first contract here 62 percent of our teachers are a top step by the time you get to the fourth you're assuming no turnover which isn't realistic 72 will be a top step so if you um one way to look at the general wage increase is that 62 of the teachers are top step

088their total increase over the four years is the six point two three percent so they're getting a little over one point five percent per year and certainly i think there's difficult financial times um that's pretty reasonable in terms of an agreement that we were able to reach with the teachers is there anything built into this that's like uh we're hopeful there might be some cost savings like you know getting people off of uh name brand drugs and over to prescription uh generic drugs type of thing just in general that you're hoping for well we're always looking at you know how we can improve the overall cost of medical benefits one you know certainly one thing that the teachers have agreed to is to take a larger portion of the co-share but then you know the

089things that we do really not only year in and year out but month in and month out we do look at what the costs are we do look to try to save money on prescription drugs and try to get increased rebates that was one of the advantages when we went to see them we saw a substantial increase in the prescription rebates we would get from cigna as compared to anthem but the other important component is we're really stressing wellness and programs to improve employee health so that over time the claims that we see you know aren't as high as they would be without without those wellness programs and the wellness programs not unusual in the industry right now do focus around diabetes management you know heart and hypertension you know those are key focus areas

090because if you treat those diseases early or even prevent those diseases it saves a lot of money in claims over the long term and one of the other things that we did when we switched to signal last year is there is a health coach that's employed by cigna that works in the uh in town here and we share our benefits with town so there's a health coach that's here three days a week and is doing all kinds of programs to try and get our employees to engage as part of the health and wellness program always looking at it tim i mean medical costs are certainly something that is a large portion of our budget you know everything that we can't manage it besides just trying to show the cost of teachers not the staff so

091i know catherine had a question wasn't so much a question i just wanted to um you know i was a member of the negotiating committee uh along with uh tony and adam and the teachers i just wanted to um make a point that the teachers approached the negotiations in a in a very professional and good faith manner and there was never um any rigidity really on their part and i think they made it easier for us to be able to reach an agreement with them that was you know financially um responsible on our side but also provided you know the support that they deserve really i mean i am a huge fan of our teachers as i think we all are and um it was important to me that they understood that we value them

092and we can't do everything that i think we would like to be able to do for our teachers you know we just can't afford that it's not a blank check sort of situation but um it was they what am i trying to say it could have been a very difficult process to go through because of the fiscal realities that we're dealing with and they were um really i just think that they did a very nice job on their side as we did on our side so i'm very supportive of this contract i think it is as we would say fiscally responsible however it also shows the teachers that we do value them and the great phenomenal work that they're that they do so that was what i wanted to say thanks yes uh thank you

093mr chairman um firstly i'd like to thank you for appointing me to the negotiating committee this is my first time on the team are you sure you're still thankful an incredibly enlightening experience um i want to thank the administration and also the uh the the teachers negotiating team as captain said um i think that the teacher's side came in with an open mind and we tried to go in with an open mind i mean i know for me personally as as everyone knows i think you know my goal was to really try to flatten the cost curve to come out the reasonable agreement and um i think that we were able to do that i think this is a fair agreement um where we where we couldn't perhaps compensate financially for the teachers we were

094able to to um improve their their quality of life and their quality of work environment uh and i think the teachers recognize that i think maybe we weren't sure if the the teachers would ratify this because it was you know in my opinion a fair agreement i wasn't sure what was going to happen but i'm happy to see that they ratified it i know that i'll be supporting this uh tonight and i'd like to just thank everyone hopefully the town council will feel the same way but we'll see yeah uh yeah i just want to add on the catheter now so just a little uh background uh you know as much as we want to have a whole board in negotiations you know we try to live a number of folks on both sides so

095it was myself katherine adam uh we also had sandy pavano uh from the town council since she's our liaison for the town council who said it and i tried to do the meetings and expert catherine ann said um yeah for me and i've been through a few negotiations as some of us have and you know they're always you know somewhat difficult the early ones i think 10 years ago were a little more uh stubborn on both sides you know there's some things that work through i will say again it's not taking away from anybody everyone always approaches this in a professional manner there's really no drama and i think what kathryn asked that is uh john redford i think uh did a great job and represented membership the teachers that were in there with us

096and we sat you know in a large room library high school you know in a big u-shape and we're able to have dialogue you know it was uh it was a fresh change where you can help the exchange our points and ideas and have a discussion you know have some cookies when they were available uh yeah we didn't we did not get to the agreement before the mediation thing uh so we did go to mediation on a friday night no less um and we got out of there shortly after 11 o'clock i believe uh but even that was you know as expected we all heard each other so um so i do want to thank um you know the board the board members also get a lot of input going to the negotiations uh you

097know it's we're all constantly aware our economic realities uh especially going next year i think the 1.75 percent year one is very reasonable i will tell you we tried for zero you know trying to keep things but you know that was just not going to happen especially with other settlements going on around the state so that being said um this settlement again i haven't seen any recent sentiment data i know because we're in a four-year uh contract term most towns well not most but large part about three years yeah i think this settlement in totality is slightly maybe lower um we look at the percentages and i know folks saying well jesus why are you guys short-chaining teachers well we're not you know these these percentages are very fair and the echo adam said is

098that we're trying to improve the quality of life too especially during this covert time so one of the key things for me in this contract above all else uh has been the change from six courses to five at high school we've been trying to do that uh as a board for a few years now uh with enrollment kind of setting off and the fact that teachers need more time prep time student time we felt this was the contract to do it and we worked out a way to do this over the course of three years so it should be a hopefully a smooth change and i think the benefit will be seen both by teaching students and more time for one-on-one so that being said i will support this i do want to thank the

099the membership for ratifying the contract have an open mind and i hope you don't realize that you know we're always trying to keep the largest um asset i mean he's been the entire school district our asset but you know if it's not for our educators you know none of this would work uh our students wouldn't be where they are in support so we try to always keep that in mind especially with the fiscal reality so uh i think this is fair i hope uh the commander town council sees it we'll see the same so again i just want to say thank you uh and also for the work on the patience of this process because it was a couple of months um thanks tony you have mentioned before that all that you've mentioned other settlements

100around the state so i'm really thinking about you know parents or voters at home who are watching who may not be aware of the process the other settlements around the state that is because if this doesn't get passed by the board or adopted approved by the board approved by the council we end up going to arbitration binding arbitration and ultimately what happens basically by law is that the arbitrators will look at those other settlements around the state so it is entirely relevant to the vote we cast here tonight yes okay yeah and quite frank but and then when it goes arbitration forget about what was just agreed to you start over right uh you both go in with your best offers and a lot of factors are taking consideration um so but yeah that's a

101good point thanks for watching people understand the process infiltration is incredibly expensive too and so we'd rather invest that in our educators than just pay attorneys to argue over things and you know there are things that are compromises in this deal on both sides but it would probably hurt more to have it forced upon us and it cost everybody more money so we're in a great place and just the one last thing and i know i said this only a couple weeks ago with the administrator's contract but could you give some context you have 400 teachers 600 or 700 employees one two unions five unions this is one we have several yeah five six five five unions this is this is the one the single biggest one without 400 teachers out of your six or

102seven hundred employees okay correct okay all right any other comments questions from board members seeing as there are none and thank you for everyone here and watching your family's watching for sticking through this we're almost there so the motion on the table is move that the cheshire board education approves the clinton bargaining agreement with the education association of cheshire for the period of july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2025. all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous awesome thank you congratulations everyone [Applause] well my watch says 10 15. um we do not have anything else on the agenda uh before we adjourn for the evening i guess for the board we want to thank everyone tonight administration and staff pleasure give us a great overview of the technology and very much watching

103at home uh please send in your question to the coverage address uh you know uh dr solomon teamed undressed before next meeting we'll certainly get to him at the next meeting um that being said can i ask one point of information no i really want to send them out sorry please go ahead i do not want cheshire public schools to shut down this winter are you in need of substitute teachers with relatively few qualifications where anybody can pitch in yeah i do i did put out a video tonight to our parents you can see that from our information today i actually substituted in first grade and third grade for a bit to help cover that was enlightening and exhausting but fun anyway we do we can use that because you know i'm not always in

104a position to be able to do that nor is marlene so you know anybody that's interested please see the video and the email message i sent out today you can go to our human resources website click on the link there to kelly services and i want to make a real point about indicating that you may not be cut out for first grade substitute teaching and that's okay and first grade substitute teaching may be your dream you can have some flexibility and where you want to work so um my weight volunteered in a high school classroom at uh mathematics ironically today um so you know we all have different strengths and you can bring whatever you need to whatever you have to the table that would help us we really want to be able to keep

105schools open and one of the biggest factors is staffing thank you thank you thank you public service messages sierra while you have a good one [Music] motion it is unanimous thank you everyone thank you thank you thank you bye everybody