001thank you uh thanks steve i'd like to call this meeting to order the personnel committee um roll call is carol here or jeff do you want me we got it uh mr white okay and the membership anne harrigan tony peregini and me tim white yeah we're all here okay all right jumping back uh pledge do you have a flag jeff or sorry behind me gotcha thank you pledge allegiance to the flag the united states america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice [Music] i did stand up jeff sorry i got this my screen pinned it right at the justice for all so um all right so uh number one topic for us tonight uh there's a couple just and for anybody who happens to be
002watching or if you watch it later uh the agenda includes uh one topic that we're expecting to discuss publicly and then i think the rest of it would probably just be an executive session jeff is that it yes thank you okay just uh my um my goals and then as you said you know just a couple of real quick contract updates as to what we could share publicly okay all right thank you so um yeah so we're here to uh primarily to discuss uh your goals and you sent us uh you sent us a draft of a draft uh what a week week and a half ago something like that um so i will uh oh let me back up so yeah your annual goals this is basically the intention is to measure you you
003know how well the school's doing measure you uh against your goals achieving them uh so with that jeff take it away and uh let me let me add one more thing just for the general public so my idea my hope is really yeah i am your i i am a representative of you the public but uh i'm not an educator so my preference is really for uh jeff to lead the way on uh on his goals uh in in what what's getting done there so with that jeff thank you sure if i just add in case 10 thank you i just keep wondering so this is uh this is goal setting for the current school year for the superintendent's schools and just a little history the board uh tends to do this just around the
004start of the school year usually in october so it's a normal process and given our uh interesting coven year you know maybe uh probably a little different approach than normal but we're all oh sorry that was it so this is a normal process and looking forward to working this through the committee okay thanks folks the um you know the point that uh tony was just making is that you know everything this year uh in everybody's life i'm sure in some way shape or form is somewhat framed by covid19 and that you know really maintaining a safe and environment and educational continuity to the greatest extent we possibly can i think is probably everybody's job one uh that's our our focus to try and ensure that you know we can have our students in school uh
005and our staff and have it be a safe environment and that we can is close to what we would typically aspire to provide an educational experience that's meaningful for our students and so you know i drafted three goals within that context the first is social emotional learning uh you know we have two marquee goals in our school system and we talk about it all the time it's complex thinking to support our students to become better complex thinkers and we want that reflected in the work that they're doing and therefore reflected in what they're capable of and i think we've done we've made tremendous progress along that goal in the last several years the other one uh social emotional learning is another place where we've really intensely focused um and our theory of action around social
006emotional learning speaks to our desire to support students in developing cultural awareness and while we've been working toward greater diversity equity and inclusion for years uh it's really critical i think now to communicate even more so to the the community and to our students around that goal um so throughout the year we will seek to develop and execute a coordinated plan to identify strategies that we can take as a schools community community to support our learners in building cultural awareness and understanding of equity i think the goal has been out there um you know but this our effort this year is to uh more clearly articulate what it is that we're hoping to accomplish and is part of that uh we're working with the state education resource center circ is the acronym you may hear
007um to meet with a community a stakeholder group uh in terms of providing some training and awareness and also trying to look at what we can do in building uh an equitable school system so that's one of the proposed goals and we want to be able to so that the deliverable there is a clear articulation of what the goals are really is defined by that stakeholder group uh or in coordination with that stakeholder group and then uh uh articulated plan on moving forward toward uh achieving those goals the second you know is is really kind of a holdover from last year we were pretty far down the road of developing uh our communications platforms and we've certainly we today as we sit here have a much more robust uh you know plethora really of of
008communication strategies including instagram twitter facebook etc uh we do a lot more video communication than we have unfortunately you know we were in the process of revamping our entire website and when kovid came along it diverted all of our technology resources to providing remote instruction and we're still to a degree in that point in that place but we have slid our website onto a host and we are in the process of building that up right now but we're not ready to go live on that we're still we still have members of our school team undergoing training on the new platform for the web hosting so we should the goal is to have that up and um running live by february 1st of 2021 um but we we have made good progress there but we do
009want to update it our website could use some some work the other reason i haven't pushed that start date up sooner is because um as we're kind of still dealing with the the crisis we don't want to deviate away from what people have gotten used to there we have our website access decrease increased dramatically through the pandemic and now doesn't seem like a good time to throw something new at our parents and and community so we're gonna hold tight for a while on the old website even if we could flip the switch tomorrow we're not able to but even if we could we wouldn't want to because it's just a wrinkle that would throw people and they don't need that at the moment the last item is vision and goal setting i know you've heard
010me at the beginning of the year talk about our 10-year goal process that was established and that the goals were were very far-reaching um and really inclusive uh covering 15 areas and you know we had accomplished many of these you know these goals if you could even call them that a lot of them were just kind of um things we'd like to to try and do i guess goals in that sense but we decided uh when i became superintendent to really focus in two areas that we as a community developed and identified uh and as i i've already mentioned that was social emotional learning and complex thinking and uh that you know would be hard to argue from any vantage point that that hasn't paid substantial dividends the community as a whole and i think
011the vast majority of our our staff could certainly articulate what our two marquee goals are the board is owns those goals they're very much a part of that process even though we've had certainly turnover and board members over the last four years but the you know it is something that we own and that we all understand that this is our focus and so i think what we need to do over the course of this year is again revisit that and i'd like to be as inclusive of community as we can you know the past process included a lot of face-to-face meeting time which is obviously limited at this point in time and i think we will probably have to monitor this closely i certainly don't want to curtail uh involvement for the sake of quote
012getting this done i think it's really important that the community be invested in whatever we decide to do even if it's stay the course um but i i don't want to compromise community involvement like i said for the sake of just getting it done um so this is one that we're gonna have to really closely monitor as unfortunately our numbers right now or across connecticut are heading in the wrong direction but we definitely want to be inclusive of the community in this process of vision and goal setting so that you know i that's those are the three draft items that i had i'd be happy to you know take any questions or discussion obviously sorry ann or tony anything right now i have some thoughts but i'll let you go first if you're interested uh
013well i have one in in the goals i think because this year is so different in terms of the learning environment i know we went remote totally ended last spring but since we're doing a hybrid mile at the high school remote learning days in a modified school day in these goals can the board measure how that's how effective that is for our students have you thought about that jeff like how we as i know that throws our wrench at this it doesn't change these goals but how we're delivering instruction and the international teachers or some cases lack thereof how can we look at the school year and say hey based on hybrid for example high school the modified schedule we were 99.9 effective i i'm still trying to wrap my head around that sure yeah
014so some of the um indicators we would look at would be things like psa t-test thing that just occurred today although that's probably a little bit better indicator of where our students in each grade level 9 10 and 11 today relative to past cohorts in those grade levels um you know that's probably almost more of a reflection of how uh did the spring progress in those hybrid learning models then we have uh mid-term exams now again those are somewhat modified i know marlene has shared with the the board and curriculum committee that this year we are um across the district focus on an acceleration model it's called where we're not trying to go back and re-teach everything that we had done in the past that would be an undue hardship on students it would put
015people just flat over the edge and you know asking kids in the current circumstances to learn twice as much it's not not reasonable so what we are doing is identifying the key skills that kids need to continue to accelerate and matriculate um toward where they would typically be and we did that you know in concert with the connecticut center for school change and other school systems around the state uh that are you know ascribing to that model we would be looking then at like midterm exams so in those exams however we would be focused on the key strategies the key standards that we are pushing in this accelerated model ultimately looking at uh sat scores and final exams is measures of where kids are relative to you know where they typically are performing at this
016time and then you know i think because the entire state of connecticut is going through this and actually the nation but we'd be looking at our performance relative to our peers as well that's more of an apples and apples comparison sure um so really there's really no change how we're measuring because the sats pst's midterms we do that anyway correct it's funny enough uh i lead off my my daughter took a psats today at cheshire high school and yeah so i remember i saw her my wife asked her how it went she goes oh it's much easier this year i'm like hmm i hope that means she was more prepared i don't know yeah i'm almost thinking in it was it worthwhile to include some feedback from students and parents and how covered learning went
017this year i'm not sure if the exams or the midterms just the test scores because you know not you know you know it's funny when and although chester's been always been pretty good performer but when test scorers are never great we don't reference them when test scores are great we reference them and we can't stop referencing them yeah i i almost have a suspicion that the test scores won't tell the whole story you know you've done these surveys uh going into the school year we haven't seen anything yet on surveys how things are going although it's only week six someone there's a way to engage feedback as part of this and again i'm just thinking outside the box i don't i don't get too much thought yet maybe by next time we meet a little
018more one more idea but just wearing some some kind of external input besides test scores might also help yeah i mean i i think just to address a couple of points first of all our standardized testing has done nothing but improve over the last several years which i think worthy of of recognition not that you're saying it's not but i want to underscore that point the other thing is um you know when we went to remote learning last year uh if we weren't the first we were one of the first districts to start serving parents students and staff about how the experience was going and i think there's you know certainly valuable feedback in that and we use that really in a in a formative way much more than a summative assessment of how it
019went we you know just like we do in student assessment in the classroom we try and um test students or quiz them more to understand how do we need to adjust what we're doing to continue to improve more so than say you know this is this is where you're at you know i i'm certainly happy to survey people and continue to go there but right now i don't have a metric to necessarily measure ourselves um to say this is this is because this is also unique i i can't tell you like we want us the goal is to score here on this metric or something because we don't have one yeah it's and it's it's hard for me to to give you that i was like i mean again for me at work and i
020guess lost in the private sector you know you know i'm all these things are easily quantifiable that don't have a social emotional learning really right yeah to it so i struggle how to measure this i i'm thinking it probably falls under your communication goal so i think the communication that is happening between students parents staff and community is probably going to help on that again i'm yeah yeah no that's it's helpful i think we're on communication feedback more than a survey i guess but i uh i'll noodle on it more next couple days i just want to throw it out there yeah what maybe we could pursue is um maybe not so much because like i said um when you stepped off them that there's no there's no uh number to compare anything to there's
021no there's no history for you know how did hybrid learning work you know i don't know what a perfect score is on something like that but i can certainly you know add something around um in that communication piece i think is a good suggestion tony around uh you know embedding certain surveys or frequency of surveys throughout the year to see how how things are going and we can take a look at that data as part of the the process they work on something there go back and look at some of the surveys we administered last year yeah so that's all i have for now sorry thank you and yeah so so i would add um sort of to what tony was saying only in the area of the social emotional learning um because i think
022that what covid and the remote learning and the screen time and i know we're doing a good job but they're still in in my mind there still have got to be some uh drastic effects on uh students social emotional well-being as well as on teachers social emotional well-being as far as that goes and i'm wondering if your goal that deals with social emotional learning while i 100 support this diversity and inclusion part that's going on and i and i've seen very clearly with um presentations from marlene and yourself and others that there's a lot that's been going on in that area um i'm wondering if we should have a second part that goes back to that social emotional learning and the mindfulness and the getting at students well-being their their emotional well-being and i worry
023a little bit because of course we're losing tracy hussy as well or sh she's is she gone at this point november 1st november 1st i thought it was october sometime um but anyways just with that um change also happening um i i feel like we maybe there needs to be a goal in there that that goes back and addresses some of the the basics of what we were doing with the social which i believe we've been really successful with over the past four years five years but i feel like we're moving on to this other part with the uh diversity and inclusion piece and with all of the covid stuff that's been going on i feel like we need to also revisit the emotional well-being yeah i think that's a great suggestion and that um
024you know from from where i said i i appreciate that feedback that um surveying around not only scl but also the academic experience makes sense you know i i don't think our academic success is what it is without that focus on the sel piece and so you know we don't want to certainly lose sight of that either yeah i and i totally agree with that comment that the academic success is very closely tied with that success in uh the students well-being and the way they just the way they feel about themselves yeah one of the highlights of my school visits was walking into a classroom at um norton in time to be part of a mindfulness experience with with sixth graders it was really great you know to see that integrated it's such a critical
025time um for that work and we're not losing sight of that either yeah yeah a survey about how our kids are doing on the on the sel side is also important great thank you that's all i have thank you ann um all right so uh a few thoughts here jeff so last spring we did some surveys and last spring is different from where we are right now but last spring we did some surveys and i thought oh that's useful but then also in retrospect i said to myself you know six weeks had passed and i've really i mean i heard from other parents too it for that time things were not they were incredibly difficult but what i also remember at that time was looking back i don't think i certainly as a parent and
026i suspect many other parents including ones i talked to they had no idea really what was even supposed to be happening yeah and and so what i'm wondering about for uh this year is could we create some sort of metric to give that information to the parents uh so here's an idea that's just coming to mind right now brain dump you have a syllabus a college syllabus i don't really remember it in high school but just as an example because you're talking about collegiate classes or collegiate style courses so you have a syllabus you have dates next to it all right when is this basically the topic that you're going to be covering i say all this because i've i've heard from a number of parents a number of high school parents since school started
027who've been scratching their head over the hybrid model now i'm not i'm not questioning the hybrid model itself but what they've told me is that you know there's teachers who some teachers say how do i put this on monday and tuesday some teachers teach two different lessons and some teachers teach the same lesson on monday and tuesday so when you're the remote student they say don't worry there's nothing to do here the basic concern on the part of parents is if that's how the school year operates i think this is i think this is a basic concern at least one of one one concern by parents you're only going to get through half the material in the given year i mean you still have the same number of hours in a year i mean it
028might have changed by a few minutes or something but you know it's eight to two or whatever it is 180 days a year 177. um but it's like half their time is remote and the teacher saying you don't you can go do your own assignment but then it's not necessarily being measured in a way at least that the parents understand and so what i'm wondering about is how can we how can we increase the confidence of parents that they're going to be getting through all the material that they feel should be covered in a given year and remember i mean we have parents who you know they've got the tony's perfect example two he's gonna remember two years later what is what is uh your son tony um all right you're gonna remember two years
029later what your second what your second kid is doing when they're taking basically the same class um and this is what i'm hearing basically from parents already that they're they're voicing concerns and my concern right now here today um is i don't i don't want this to continue and when i say continue i'm i have to assume that you know teachers are teaching what they would normally teach so we're in week six they're at the same point as they were six uh you know in week six a year ago but parents definitely are questioning yeah let it back up on a on a couple of things if i could there okay you brought up the college experience and you know i remember my undergrad experience where we'd go to class tuesday or thursday or monday
030wednesday friday maybe shorter periods whatever and [Music] never in that time do i remember a professor after class saying now you're good there are always expectations that you're doing work between live class sessions and this is no different so if in some classes there is more of a tune in live when we we go back to that accelerated uh curriculum piece in some situations there are you know you're gonna have to tune in tomorrow virtually to follow up on what we did today in other cases it's you have work assigned for this time tomorrow that you need to do that would be more work that might otherwise be independent anyway so if a teacher is saying that tomorrow you don't necessarily have to tune in it's not like the expectation is ah it's like when
031i ask my own kids about don't you have are you supposed to be doing independent reading they're like independent reading you know no no that's what you're supposed to be doing um and so yes that in some cases what are what kids supposed to be doing and to hear you say you know parents don't have confidence obviously you've heard from some parents that don't and we don't have an understanding of where people are on that until we have more valid data like the you know that uh to hear from some is is not the same as hearing from a broader audience is what what obviously we aspire to do so um yeah i mean definitely i i could go back as a you know tony suggested as well with the the survey and you know
032i want to take a look at what questions we were asking when we did it multiple times if you recall last spring to kind of gauge how things are doing i think this fall you know uh hindsight being 2020 we probably should have surveyed a little bit earlier um you know retrospectively to kind of see where things were going relatively early but there's a pretty massive adjustment um and the next two items on our agenda have also been quite time consuming so uh you know retrospectively i wish we had gone back and surveyed maybe you know three weeks in now that we're you know closer to five weeks in at this point um but you know it doesn't mean we can't move forward with it now and i think we should so i think that's
033i i think that could be useful a useful tool but ultimately i'm just going to go back to where i was last spring which is i didn't know where we were supposed to be anyway right i mean my daughter was in kindergarten no i know i know but but the same concept i believe still applies so you're you're a parent your oldest child is a freshman in high school you don't there's it's very likely that you really don't know much about what your child would even necessarily be learning necessarily be learning and that's what i'm looking for i want parents to be uh have a better um have access to you know better information about where their kids would be um now if that's relative to the year the prior year that's one way to
034measure it as you i'm not sure you know another way and i'm not i think over the course of the year that would be difficult anyway because i think covid's only going to get worse in the next few months anyway um maybe as you had said before measuring against our peers so i don't know if there's a you know there's a superintendent's uh uh not a committee but an organization across the state like where are schools where are schools actually at on november 1st so all right you're a month behind where you were but where are you relative to everyone else maybe that's the best that we can do i i i just i want parents to have um i want parents to have a better understanding of uh where where things should be um
035they can't i find it difficult to reply to a survey if you don't really understand what you're replying to other than i guess it's okay yeah you know surveys are they helped right it's but yeah i'm with you tim on that too because i'll be be honest with you i have a daughter chester high school junior here i mean i know the things she's working at i know her her assignments or work but i couldn't tell you like what the goal is for semester for a year for that course you know but the syllabus is for things to cover are you good to know that and i understand things will change you know if if we're far behind for a reason if there's an outbreak of covet and teachers can't be whatever that is it
036has an impact i understand they'll be revised yeah um but me another way to look at this too is maybe it's more about consistency between the classes being taught yeah another topic well i think there's something here i know we can't really quantify yet but i think someone can probably take away work and see if we can find a way to figure this one out yeah mary and i dr gab the high school principal you know i know you guys know that but you know we've been talking about not just talking about but planning for a couple of weeks two i think critical steps forward um one is the inclusion of more students like you know we have a cohort a and b but we also you know it doesn't get talked about a lot
037is like a cohort c that attends school every day so what we've been doing is gradually adding more to cohort c and we do that based on need um and i i understand the idea of consistency too you know in classes that you know some classes you know when you're looking at the accelerated model they do still need to meet particularly through certain stretches daily and we're doing more synchronous learning in some places others may not necessarily require that um but being clearer about that could be helpful for parents to understand like where are you with this class and why but we are also mary and i have been planning to do more synchronous um particularly at the close a quarter one uh which would be in a couple of weeks to transition to more
038synchronous daily learning um given the fact that it doesn't look like we're unfortunately going to be in a place you know we were hopeful uh most optimistically to get everybody back full time um the numbers unfortunately don't seem to be trending in that direction and then the mitigating strategies that we're asked to employ in order to have a safe school environment aren't changing and it's almost impossible with 1400 kids and the additional staff to have those in place so we're looking at changing our instructional structure to being more synchronous um but you know i'll ask uh you know i know we'll have an update on this at the curriculum committee meeting but i'll ask mary or maureen or whoever to add more on that transition when we meet on monday but the survey thing you
039know i definitely want to go back i can throw you guys a a draft to that asap around you know what you mentioned around the instructional and academic experience and i agree with tony it definitely falls into that communication plea piece that we could we could put that together does that make sense yeah yeah um let me see uh so you mentioned this so the the the draft that you sent us was uh labeled smart goals so just so you know people at home watching smart it's an acronym it stands for specific measurable achievable relevant and timely and that's what i'm that's what i'm hoping we get a little bit more out of here in in your goals just jumping over to him for a second uh so the the um the social emotional learning
040uh you put in here in your goal while we have been working toward greater diversity equity and inclusion for years the need the need is greater now than ever um so to me when i'm when i'm thinking in terms of smart goals specific and measurable well you said greater so greater than one and what the next sentence i i think speaks to that develop and execute a coordinated plan which will identify strategies that we can take and that would be over the course of this year would be the timely piece of it okay that you know that's the time of the piece i guess i'm just wondering like the that's the speci you know it's develop and execute a coordinated plan which will identify strategies so identifying the strategies development of a plan um and
041you know initiate that plan that we can take as a school community so the specific um piece of that is the development of the plan of strategies that we can take support learning learners and building cultural awareness and understanding of equity uh i think you know that's specific it's measurable as to whether or not we did it it's attainable i i think you know over the course of this year as things currently stand it's attainable um i think it's realistic and certainly relevant to um the work that we're doing being that that's a component of our um theory of action around social emotional learning and the time-bound piece of it is that it'll be done during the course of this year i would so good so step one is a plan and got it when
042the plans finalize there will probably be other goals and objectives as part of that plan yeah that will be probably another goal if not this school year attention next one and i would expect that one to have specific things to be implemented and measured but yeah be nice to know just what the plan is right yeah right now the plan is to develop a plan you know one of me for that goal you know yeah i don't i don't necessarily have a problem with it i i i think i know tim's going like okay yeah it's specific enough you'll be playing with a road map that tells us how to get to some achievable goals as part of the whole initiative the the time this office yeah this school year i mean you know is
043it by february 1st is by march 15th at 2 p.m is it that time specific or is that something work expect to have by the end of the school year yeah i think right now um [Music] given the the vuca world we're living in where you know everything's so volatile and you know i'm hopeful to nail this down by the end of the school year as we continue to work out with circa and our community partners like you know social services in the town uh on this plan uh it would be for the end of this school year then the next one the next one is you know february 1st to have the the website roll out but like i said i do want to you know after your feedback um incorporate a component on
044the survey here so i would need to modify that second goal but the there there it's more you know specific there's a clear time-bound nature to it it's relevant to our overarching district goals with respect to communication um that one's a little bit more straightforward i think but again i do want to incorporate the survey feedback you've given me sure sure so just looking at going back to smart specific measurable achievable relevant and timely or time-bound so i'm looking at the goal number two i'm wondering what your thoughts are on this the the last sentence in it inherent in this goal is the inclusion of a procedure for ensuring integration between all platforms with the express goal of driving social media follow followers to our website so that makes sense to me do you i
045mean do you have to me the specific and measurable there is not simply the date but it would be all right let's increase let's increase this by a hundred percent i mean i'm not saying that's that's the best way to do it but but is it and then we actually know that people are learning something i mean who knows there could be russian bots on there or something there but we're gonna have an idea you know if if i have a general idea if people are if if awareness is increased among a lot of these things what's going on within the cps well the other thing about our new platform is that we're provided a more robust data uh feature on the back end to see you know in terms of like hits and things
046like that on the website to know you know what sort of traffic are we receiving so at the very least we'll have a um a good uh benchmark for like what what's typical here uh i think as time goes by we'll have a a better sense of you know because we we really right now don't have a great way to capture the number of hits we're getting you know we we can see that on social media probably better than any place else right now the same way that everybody else does you know how many followers do i have how many likes does this post get etc but we we certainly want to make sure that people use the website is a is a go-to resource um but we don't have great data collection on that
047now with our current platform and this new platform will provide more of that yeah i think that's yeah i think what's what's uh missing today is the fact that you know again because the technology is a little antiquated on the current website i'm pretty certain even google analytics doesn't plug in nicely with that as it is so you're not getting the benefit of a report that shows all the searches happening in the site for content that people are looking for and whether or not they found it and i think having that capability is gonna help um you know cps tailor the content to what people are looking for which you don't really have so i so it's really not just streamline communications but probably more timely yeah meaningful and i think your point tony with
048the back end analytics we can better you know based on the feedback we get around search results on our site and things like that you know we can then as it's been explained to me push that content to the front if everybody if 9 out of 10 people who go to our website search calendar then i make sure that that's on our homepage front and center kind of thing you know it's like using that to uh using those back-end analytics to tailor our content as you're saying we're looking forward to that yeah absolutely and i wanna again so i do this every day yeah so you know you'll be able to see things like if people are searching for what's the cohort schedule of cheshire high school right and 20 search results come back but
049they don't click on any of them yeah well part of your property answer wasn't found and you might say oh i need to push something up or tailor it so so it sounds like some of this is measurable um although once it's live i think by the end of the school year like february march april may june you'll have some analytical data right you know the traffic right and so yeah i'm actually looking forward to it yeah and i do have some down time so i can help with this anyway i'll do it for free okay um the third one where i was you know like i said i and i if i said it once you know i i said it several times in the in the overview is i really don't want to
050compromise community inclusion on this last item for the sake of completion um you know the the meetings i had with ptos and with the school business partnership and um you know we we did part of this at a board retreat there were a number of interactions that i had with the community our teachers that are face to face and you know really got meaningful feedback students groups of students at the middle and high school you know i really am anxious about kind of putting something together that is such a touchstone document for our school system without having intensive feedback um and so i you know this one i i wouldn't see us rolling out until you know probably january or february with the hopes that by that point we can have more face-to-face time but
051because i i really think that's a critical element of this last one i know that's optimistic tim but you know the the i really don't want to compromise for covid on this one you know we really face the face i mean my my view the next note i have on here is delayed strategic plan yeah right which is and not incur actually to us yeah no i'll say i frankly i am probably encouraging you to just even delay it because i mean you just look at the the trajectory of the infection rate and stuff right we're going into flu season you're probably going to just find fewer and fewer people who even want to participate in in-person media um which are unnecessary type of thing yeah and i just think it's to me it's just
052the type of thing that could get you know kick the can down the road not indefinitely but you know may or something like that but then it doesn't but then it's not even really a goal for this year because you're not going to get anything this year by the like by june 30th say right right and frankly you know if we were in a position where the wheels were falling off the bus you know in terms of the school system and we needed a dramatic turnaround maybe it's different but you know we're in a position where we did as a board and community update things a few years ago it wasn't like we haven't touched our our goals for 20 years or something like that you know we're in a decent place so you know
053if if indeed it carried over to when conditions were better for in person you know i don't think we're losing a heck of a lot is my point so i agree with you that that's not a front burner item i mean that we need to focus perhaps more on the sel and um academic survey into the communication piece and making that a bit more robust and understanding that that third goal will be a priority as soon as we can get there um from a public health perspective sure sure okay um a different a different topic um that a goal school climate how do you how do you see that uh baked into these goals here yeah i think or is it should it be separate yeah i don't see that baked into these goals per
054se um as much as i think the the focus on how are kids doing you know we've had very few disciplinary issues i guess when everybody's forced to be six feet apart or whatever it tends to cut down on those things and you're wearing a mask um even whispering under your breath is tougher these days you know um i i think that hasn't been is critical um you know maintaining a school positive school climate is critical i think the the equity piece is a critical component of that overall i i think when we do sel surveying that's going to be a component of how is your child doing in school and i i see school climate is not as much about how kids are necessarily always you know treating each other but how is your
055child doing in the school environment are you know is there an anxiety there is is are they feeling safe and comfortable now safe um you know we may think of as with other kids uh you know gonna take my lunch money i don't see it that way these days i i see it more of in the grand scheme of covid are our kids feeling safe you know dude are they feeling safe at school emotionally and we need to definitely gauge that and make sure that's being addressed i see that as the forefront of issues for us so our survey is not just for parents by the way i don't make that clear i'm just on the topic on the topic of school climate and bullying to be short about it you know what i remember
056what i remember reading was the the two biggest problems were probably on the bus in the playground the bus there's actually i mean i think there's more kids getting on the bus now than there were at the beginning of the year right yeah it's still hard anywhere i mean we would cap buses at 70 before now we cap at 50 and most of them have plenty of good seats still available yeah so i mean there's you know kids can separate themselves also physically in that way to some extent uh we've been encouraging kids actually to be um not just separate but uh like basically a um assigned seat if you will don't change seats because what that helps us with is contact tracing if if somebody live we know who you were sitting next to
057yeah yeah absolutely that makes sense um okay but so even on the playgrounds that's the other one that i was thinking about for the young at least for elementary school i mean your numbers that you we haven't i don't think the board's seen any of those numbers since lockdown and yeah not worried about that but the numbers yeah have you just off the cuff i mean are those numbers down dramatically okay dramatically okay and do you happen to know the population that are in the building and like i said the separation and everything and i think people are focused in a different place today just trying to get through the day yeah no no no that's why i worry about the sel component more than the the discipline piece per se sure no i can
058i can understand that um so uh with regard to one one way that bullying happens is online so if you break down the you know the hundred instruments that you had last year and you know 10 or 20 of them were online is it fewer than 10 or 20 this year or is that up because i'm guessing that with covid you probably have more people online more of the time so i'm just curious about that as like one small piece of the bigger picture has that changed at all or you i don't even know if you would know that per se yeah but if you've gotten any feedback anecdotally no the time that people are online is pretty well structured i mean for us you're predominantly online with uh a teacher the the online issues
059tended to come outside of school time yeah you know things like social media and whatnot but we don't have many issues like that at this point even the outside of school time yeah that you're anecdotally that you just happened totally across the board everything seems to be significantly down okay yeah no i'm not thinking that it'd be like necessarily your responsibility but i could easily see where parents talk to a guidance counselor teacher principal or something and we want to know that yeah yeah okay okay that's that's good here thank you um i think that's i think that's it for me right now all right so let me revise this and shoot it back to you okay yeah that's him out you know i'll certainly go through you know the revised document i'm sure annual
060too but there's any other feedback we'll get it to you and jeff maybe do one more meeting the committee figure out you know that the irony is out and then we can send a full board for and i i i'm having a a senior moment there's a board yet the board votes on the goals correct now we haven't typically um you know what we've done is i've just built them in to the end-of-year meeting the year prior so there hasn't really necessarily been a vote i think we could discuss some executive session or something yeah yeah and uh just so that if there's any feedback although i'm sure we'll hear from them before then anyway but i forget well i'll say i'll draft it and send it to everybody that's fine yeah no no i
061mean i i definitely feel we need to get you know if people if any other board members want to chime in i definitely want to hear from them yeah i'll draft it and send it to everybody awesome great okay all right thank you jeff appreciate that um so uh call for a motion to go into executive session to discuss and jeff feel free to cut me off if i get this wrong well i i actually have the agenda here discuss two items yeah i mean it's up to you guys i mean the point here we could either i could just give you a very cursory update because frankly i don't have a ton to report where i don't know that we even need to go into executive session okay and why don't i give you
062that update and if you feel at the end like you want to then we can go there if there are other specifics we want to address yeah tim i would just like give a public update because you know we as a board have not discussed negotiations as they were ongoing so i'm sure members of public are probably curious where things stand and uh you know both tim and anne were obviously not uh in the teacher's unit negotiation meeting the last one we had so i don't know if it's maybe worthwhile just 10 minutes second session to review what we sure yeah i'll leave up to you in tim okay yeah let me let me just uh being relatively new to the board i'm putting on my my sort of newbie hat here and just want
063to uh share something with you know parents or voters back home which is so jeff how many uni so you have about 650 700 staff uh less than that we have about 600 staff all right you've got certified staff and 200 non-certified we you know um certified is certified as teachers basically and administrators and administrators okay yeah we we have um several bargaining units the vast majority of our staff are represented by a bargaining unit so we have the administrators bargaining unit the teachers custodians and and maintenance staff uh ias and secretaries are our five bargaining units um and i i say those in like broad terms uh you know like ias have other individuals like the the cafeterias that support staff and things like that in their um like tas the teachers assistants stuff
064like that caf monitors so they're broad terms but pretty much all of our staff are represented by some union the two biggest obviously being being in terms of dollars really the the teachers union by far is is the biggest uh the administrators union is also you know financially a more significant impact even though they're uh smaller in number i think there are 16 and a half certified administrators and um over 200 uh um 300 380 uh certified teachers in the district so uh the union negotiations for those two groups uh usually cover multi-year contracts uh three to four years typically the processes is pretty uh involved is is tony could certainly attest you know um to to those with the administrators bargaining group um there you know has been a lot of a conversation what
065we typically do is take a look at what other settlements have occurred uh around the state we look at you know where uh what sort of compensation package do the members of the bargaining unit have relative to their peers around the state and that's important because connecticut is a binding arbitration state and so what they do is if uh the town and the bargaining unit can't come to an agreement on a contract it ultimately can go to binding arbitration and the arbitrators there look at what's the town's ability to pay what is everybody else getting paid and then they you know assign terms to the contract now that process is like a fifty thousand dollar process in its own right like when you have to pay arbitrators you have to pay your legal representation uh
066the other side has to get legal representation um that we don't pay for but it's it's expensive uh to enter in and it's also incredibly time consuming so these are all variables uh for consideration as we negotiate contracts with respect to the administrators bargaining unit uh i think we've reached a very fair settlement with them uh the three-year all-in number for them and i i can share this because tomorrow we're voting on this as a board is under seven percent um though so all in includes two things and you'll you'll hear that term all in versus gwi gwi is general wage increase so the person at the top step is getting what percentage of arrays i mean it most over the administrator contract it's about 2.5 i think three years out um but typically you
067know it's it's lower than that um particularly in the first year there the settlement is all in 1.65 so the administrators wouldn't see a percentage salary increase above that that would be the cap for anybody the all-in also includes the motion on the salary schedule so there are steps in the teacher and administrator contract so when you go from step to step as you move up steps there's a pay increase inherent in that and there's a percentage in that and so that's built into the all-in uh salary increases so uh just a quick overview i just want to make sure i have the numbers right i i saw a look on tony's face that year one is 1.75 2.5 second year 2.65 third year uh there are benefit cost increases every year as well in
068that that process the other thing that we did with the administrators there's not much in the way of language that we would change um but one thing that we we did change was uh we have offered hmo and ppo plans over the last you know forever really after the first year of that contract we're dropping those uh plans as options which administratively on our end makes life a little bit easier to not have people in those plans it's not financially much of a difference for us because technically you know over the last several years if he if administrators elect or even teachers elect to be in those plans they have to pay the difference the member does between what the uh high deductible plan cost is to that one so if a high deductible plan
069is is 12 grand and a hmo plan is 20 you've got to pay the 8 000 difference um is an example but if they say plans it's a same provider network uh so someone switching from ppo to hsa they're not they're still going to go to the same doctor physician uh as i remember those one things that came up in some discussions and that's you know that's the whole structure for the people's union so in the end it does save them money i think so that's going to help both groups pretty well yeah definitely so that's that's the um the cap contract the teacher contract uh before you go before you go any further could i just back up on that for one second the the administrator yeah you said the three number it's a
070three-year contract proposal right yep you said 1.65 2.75 and what was the third number 1.75 2.50 2.65 all in okay i got that all wrong say it one more time uh 1.75 1.75 2.5 0.65 okay and you also thank you for that and also you i if i got you if i caught it correctly you use the phrase there is a benefit cost increase each year correct yeah who is it so is that an inc an increased cost to the to the union member or to okay so they're paying more and more the union members are paying more and more each year for their benefits yeah and the way that works let's just say arbitrarily that the cost of the insurance per the individual you know if you have family plan i'm just throwing out
071a random number these aren't quotes but uh family plan insurance costs the district 10 grand this year employee cost share is 10 they pay a thousand dollars next year let's say the let's say we froze the employee share it but our um are uh the cost to us went up to eleven thousand dollars yep now they're paying ten percent of eleven thousand so it even though their percentage didn't go up their costs can still go up okay in this case you know typically the cost of insurance to us goes up annually so even if they had the same percentage they would be paying more but in this contract settlement they went from 11 to 12 and a half percent to 14 over three years and it was nine and a half 10 and 11 previously
072i think yes yeah and so what that um when you look at how our administrators are compensated compared to other communities our pay is on the lower side our benefit cost share that they pay is on the lower side um so you know that's it's part about an entire package and that's where things shook out you know after a lot of negotiation and when you look at you know where things were and i know you know we talked as a board about this that this is uh you know fair deal for for both sides at this point and if you if you could just off the top of your head um what's the range say for a single i mean i'm pretty sure there's actual like dollar numbers like a single is 10 000 and
073a family with you know whether it's two kids or 14 kids it's like 30 thousand dollars for yeah i i don't want to um because i know i'll be off base on that that's good okay that's when you're negotiating it a month and a half ago but i didn't commit that to memory yeah yeah okay i was thinking from a budget perspective just to give just to give people an idea of the numbers here that we're talking about yeah i think that's i'll have i'll have vin ready to answer that question tomorrow okay all right thank you and we took discuss this at the board meeting okay so that was was that agenda item number two yeah the uh the cap the cheshire administrative personnel which just also so that's you said there's about 16
074or 16 and a half and a half in that group the the teachers union exact same process it's all statutorily defined so we have to initiate negotiations with them by a certain date then same with administrators then we have if we don't have a solution a resolution to that we have to go to mediation where a mediator comes in and works between the two parties to try and resolve the contract whatever differences are left ultimately if it can't be resolved in mediation statutorily again by a certain date you need to go to binding arbitration in that process and then ultimately you know the the arbitrators would kick back a contract that would then go to town council in this case with the teachers we've come to an agreement with them through the mediation process uh
075you know an agreement in principle so basically what happens now is our attorney and their attorney are finalizing the contract the draft contract that contract will then go to the members of the bargaining unit to ratify this has already happened with the administrators the administrators ratify the contract now it comes to you the board tomorrow the teachers on the other hand haven't received that finalized draft yet which is why i haven't provided it to the board yet because it just hasn't been finalized there are a couple of language items that we are just trying to you know put a bow on and we'll send it back to the like i said the attorneys are working on resolving that then we'll get it out to the teachers to vote on and and you to review um
076but tony adam and catherine sat in on that process and spent a lot of uh time including i think we we came to an agreement about 11 o'clock on a friday night um party night yeah we know how to party so um it was definitely i think you know after a lot of time and energy fair agreement and i'm looking forward to sharing more with you and the community once we we get to that point where we can do so i i thought it was uh we none of them have been non-productive i'm not trying to be passive i thought it was one of the more productive negotiations we had both groups i thought john redford's team uh came to the table they did a great job he was recognizing the uh the fairness of
077everything talked about there was no contention it was just uh a lot of good back and forth it was collaborative in my opinion um i'm happy with that deal hopefully the board will get some more details and exact session tomorrow night and hopefully teachers gratify it we'll see yeah and i i think it's one of those things tony i totally agree with you that um you know both sides walked away wishing that we could have done some things better in in places but also respecting the fact that you know this makes sense uh for for every party so uh i agree with you that you know that well there were strong feelings on both sides of the table everybody you know kind of put some of that stuff aside in order to come out with
078a fair agreement and i'm looking forward to sharing it too as tony was saying okay um i think just one last question just the the administrators who is the administrator is that your assistant principals your principals and then a few people at hummuston yeah it's um everybody sorry yeah it's all right it was exactly what you mentioned all the principles of system principles the group that maybe you know people don't necessarily realize is the special ed supervisors as well so rodney carey marie uh broadway and tracy hussey in that group along with kevin hanlon okay and then you uh and your assistant superintendent of curriculum marlene solano and your c o o vin maciana though you're the three administrators who are not in the union correct okay so it's about 20 people total the union
079is 16 and a half okay yep thank you yep was there anything else that you wanted to discuss in executive session not that i you know i think we've covered the highlights here tonight anything that i i don't have a final teacher's contract to to show you i think that would be you know tomorrow we can hit on some of the numbers in the executive session hopefully even have a final contract to give you at that time we're pretty close okay tony ann anything well ann might be gone and tony's i'm good i'm good i i think uh i think we have an executive session tomorrow night in the board review uh state union negotiations so i'm looking forward to sharing the detail i think some of you we already have this but share details
080of both contracts there's a a lot in there that we're trying to resolve for a number of years i think finally again so it's all good i'm hopefully this i'm looking forward to the teachers ratifying this yeah put it behind us and focus on the rest of the school year but we'll get more of that tomorrow night okay all right notes on the goals i'll i'll uh just go over that on any any input i'll send to you and jeff between now thanks man okay all right i mean i'm good i think move to adjourn tony second all all those in favor all right all right all right thank you everybody