001great uh can we we will say the pledge um i pledge allegiance to this of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god okay um the first item on the agenda is public comment do we have any we do not have any public comment okay uh moving on to item number two review of the minutes of june 8th 2020 meeting um i assume we've all had a chance to review yep okay are there any objections changes amendments no they look good to me okay um all right um forgive me tony my robert's rules are failing me we don't need to make a vote on these no we uh yes we do actually i'm thinking of this meeting but yes committees we also improvements in the committee
002meetings okay thank you um do i hear a motion to accept the minutes of the june 8 2020 meeting anne do i hear a second next second and all in favor all right great minutes are approved um moving on to informational items and this will be the bulk of our meeting just going through the whole process of professional development in um covid times which has certainly thrown everybody for a loop so i am going to hand this over to um uh miss solano thank you so much so i i'm happy to have the opportunity to talk to you about the professional development that we planned over the summer um mostly because it took up a lot of time and we had a lot of days to hold professional development not only did we have our
003regular days but we also had three additional days that we were fortunate to have provided to us by the connecticut state department of education you know typically we have 180 days of school and they allowed us to use several of those days to limit our student contact days to 177 so that we were able to have some additional time to work with our teachers and we really appreciated that so our goal was that we wanted to make sure that teachers felt as prepared as they possibly could to welcome students to school we felt that by supporting our teachers that they could then turn around and best support our students so our goal was to prepare teachers and by proxy students for a return to school whatever that return would look like we knew that we
004needed to be flexible and we knew that we needed to prepare our organization to respond to the adjustments that we will undoubtedly need to make along the way this year so we began by sharing plans for all learning models including in-person hybrid and remote options as well as a combination of any and all of those choices which we are currently implementing we have part hybrid model we have k through in person we also have students across all level levels who have opted for the remote option we spent some time reintroducing tools such as google classroom and screencastify we also provided tools that met student and teacher needs that were brought forward in the spring one of those particular needs was i'm giving feedback and having a vehicle by which we could more effortlessly provide feedback
005to students by teachers especially for those students at the younger grades who might not be using google docs exclusively all the time which of course they're not when they're in kindergarten and in first and second grade we also thought it was very important that we provide collaboration time for teachers to really wrap their creative minds around these new plans these new learning models and decide on the best ways to onboard students early should we need to move to remote learning there was a lot of um a lot of bumps in the road in in in our plan in the spring because everyone including students weren't used to using all of these all these different tools and platforms so we knew that we wanted to make sure that students knew our in-person routines and structures but
006also our remote routines and structures that are tied to things like google classroom we also needed to talk to teachers and prepare them for improvements to synchronous and asynchronous learning that we've drastically increased the amount of time of synchronous learning of direct instruction that teachers are providing to their students and also some ways that we can improve upon our asynchronous learning after much researching over the summer a lot of training by our curriculum team which included our rams our division leaders at the middle school our department chairs and um and administrators from all levels we um solidified our plans for what learning strategies we would be be implementing to address that six-month absence of school and and not being a part of the in-person um experience since since early march so that's sort of the
007overall umbrella i'm going to turn it over to kevin who's going to walk you through some of the finer details and some of the context for that sure thank you marlon give me just a minute to set up with presenting looks good kevin i can see it on my end there we go okay so as uh first of all good evening everybody uh as marlene mentioned our professional development was really in some key areas to help teachers get ready to work with the unique nature of this year and this summer we drafted learning plans that were companion documents really to the cps reopening plans with really the focus on curriculum and instruction and the overall goal is to make sure that we're enacting our curriculum to the greatest degree that we possibly can given the
008unique nature of the year so these plans really serve as a foundation and a starting point for our teachers and the premise is that if if early on in the year we're starting from this foundation we will be able to move in and out of these different learning models um relying on some technology tools and relying on some key strategies so that the experiences for our students are as solid as the possibility can be in in this year and we know we know that things like learning time are going to be impacted on this year so that's that that's inclusive of some of the time that was affected last year it's also inclusive of um knowing that this year even for our in-person model some of our our time with students is um affected by
009longer arrival and dismissal times mass breaks and those kind of things so we've really tried to design up front a plan that can address some of those needs and for each part of those plans we provided some professional development time of those four days for teachers so you heard marlene describe you know good portion of that plan is based on various learning models are utilizing some technology tools to help support teachers and students and relying on a couple key instructional strategies so a good part of the plan that are helping teachers think through the particulars for at each grade level span k 6 7 8 9 12 what we need to pay attention to for on campus and in person what we need to pay attention to in a hybrid model and what we need
010to pay attention to with remote learning as an option for students and also any differences if we were to go full weight remote and a key part of of this is to be able to move back and forth with these as needed over the course course of the year some of the themes that emerge from feedback from parents and teachers last year from students as well some of the differences between being three quarters of the way through the school year when we needed to move to remote learning versus the starting of the school school year in a different model all impacted kind of our design and a lot of those scenes marlene mentioned already an increase in synchronous learning opportunities for any remote students providing some tools for teachers and students to increase interactions collaboration
011and feedback because some of what were were some of our parameters for this year don't naturally set us up to have student-to-student collaboration in the way they were used to even if we're in person in the classroom and certainly for across classrooms or across spaces in a remote environment so our plans really were grounded in some of those seams themes to help help us enable our or enact our curriculum as strongly as we can one foundation is every class in the school district is going to be relying and organizing their instruction based on a learning management system you're familiar with google classroom from last year and we'll continue use to use that in grades four through twelve seesaw we have added uh this year for our kindergarten through third grade students and some of the
012um you'll notice on the icon there you'll see things like video and drawing photo uh on that presentation screen and some of our struggles with having students be able to share their work if they're working offline [Music] give a demonstration of a reading to so a teacher can hear how a student's reading some of the tools like that um that we were searching for last year are naturally embedded in seesaw and it's tools like that that really helped lead us towards seesaw for the learning management system for kindergarten through third grade and some of those same concepts that brought us to some other universal technology tools that we're adding on to this year again the goal of these tools is really to increase our interaction between teachers and students our collaboration and our remote capabilities
013so for example some of the professional development on our days before school related to class well you might have heard a little bit about that towards the end of last year class flow allows um to do some of the same things that our smart board software would allow in a classroom that allows us to do that remotely but it also allows for some other tools like an interactive whiteboard so teachers and students can work on a shared space regardless of where they are things like quick calling to get a that teachers can make a quick poll for students to be able to respond to to get a quick check on on learning so leaning on some of those technology tools allows us to stay closer to the types of interactions we're used to in the
014classroom within person learning and it helps break down some of the the barriers of the fact that we're going to be in different spots for for this learning um a key part of some of the pd time was allowing teachers to think through how can we get students up to speed on the technology tools that we're using so each grade level band k 6 7 8 and 9 12 had a template of some of the approved tools that they use to plan well how are we going to get students a familiar with the tools that we're using and b set appropriate expectations for use effective uh effective uses for this and set some of the class norms on on how each of these tools might be used in the classroom as you can imagine at
015the younger grade levels more of the onboarding might have to do with how to utilize some of the tools and as you get to the upper grid levels more the onboarding might have to do with effective use of the tools and classroom norms around it but regardless the the mindset is really to help students become familiar with the tools that we might use in each of these uh learning model settings so that we're ready to move flexibly in and out of those as needed throughout the school year so so if i bring us back to kind of some of the pd early on it's being proactive about being ready to be on a few different learning models a few different learning environments leaning on some technology tools to help keep us as close to the
016kinds of interactions with students that were we're used to with our in-person learning and one of the last pieces of the puzzle really has to do with addressing the issue of some of the time the learning time loss that we experienced last year and that we know regardless of the learning model whether we're in person with some reduced time in class or whether we're remote and have to navigate some of the ends of them being remote learning we know learning time is going to be affected so several teachers and administrators attended a series of workshops sponsored by the connecticut center for school change around this notion of acceleration and after experiencing some of this professional development it really provided us a a way to frame our instructions so that we can continue to move forward
017with our curriculum without having to turn and look backward and try to fill in some potential gaps that might have been been there last year and these five areas really help provide a guide for us one is is really focusing on prioritized standards so we talked about this with teachers as having permission to just teach the most important stuff and this is not an easy concept because teachers are very conscientious and they understand that parts of our curriculum are there for a reason and they want to do their due diligence to make sure that they are teaching that thoroughly in the reality of the the situation though we really have to and we have spent some time we'll continue to spend some time prioritizing those things that are going to carry the most meaning and
018the most weight for the long term so those things that are enduring concepts from year to year to year within a certain curricular area those ideas that cut across each of the curricular areas so there's skills like analysis that are that are present in many areas of our curriculum to lead on on those uh areas and things that are going to be essential where learning is sequential you need to understand this concept or skill before i move on to that concept or skill knowing that our time is uh precious with students it also is incumbent upon us to make sure the tasks that the learning tasks that we're asking students to engage in are the most meaningful ones so really making sure we're grounding ourselves in meaningful academic tasks and then leaning on both responsive
019teaching which is not quite synonymous with formative assessment but but very closely connected to the idea that we can have a good read on where students are at any given time and find ways to have quick check-ins with students to understand where they are and then to provide the just-in-time support this is scaffolding to help bring students up to that meaningful academic task and not bring that academic test down to the students so what's the hurdle help they need what's the just what's the information you need right now to be able to gauge in that meaningful academic task our a lot of our special education teachers and reflections on this professional development you know said back to us yes this is what we do all the time we prioritize standards we um you know frame
020what's most important and we help students stage and and step up to whatever the grade level expectations are so these are this is not a new frame or approach for um for teaching but it it gives gave us good grounding to help navigate some of the unique nature of this year and the last thing i'll comment on is this comment of self-efficacy and this is just as important as any any strategy or approach but this is the notion and idea that students believing in their own ability to achieve and we heard this through and through in each part of our professional development with the connecticut center for school change that this belief um that you can achieve these tasks is critically important for success so we're spending time making sure that we're helping foster those
021messages and foster that that belief set within the students um okay that was a mouthful right there but but again the premise is that we know we're gonna have to move in and out of these different learning models we know we're gonna have to lean on some technology tools to help keep us as close to our natural the natural way that we teach and interact and give feedback for students and this whole idea of acceleration really focusing on the most important things and bringing students up to finding some good supports just in time supports to bring students up to those media academic tests is kind of our frame for this year and over the course of several days we chunked each of these pieces of the puzzle out and provided some direct professional development for
022example the acceleration led by the department chairs and division leaders of rams who attended intended attended the professional development by the connecticut center for school change they turn and give it to the staff and also some collaborative time for teachers to really wrestle with these concepts at their particular grade level their particular division or their particular department let's i'll stop there go ahead no thank you kevin thank you for um going a little deeper into into all of those aspects of the professional learning sessions mary didn't know if you wanted to add the piece that was really german into the high school which is those 80-minute blocks and moving an entire school which has really had the frame of much shorter sections to this 80-minute block and how your staff and the work that you
023all did to prepare teachers for what they're doing on the second day of school now yeah you said no it's um our time is different uh we have a little more um vertical time than than horizontal time so our classes are longer uh and and less frequent in terms of being in person uh just to talk a bit about the 80 minute our teacher spent their professional development sessions talking through the kinds of assignments and how they would adapt tools and assignments to the kinds of time chunks that we have in person and remote and as we went along we had a continuous conversation much like i had with all of you um at the full board meeting that students will be synchronous both in person and remote so on their opposite day students can
024and and do need to tune into their class sessions even though they're on their opposite day and what teachers are doing is they're giving instructions to the class basically well here's what we're going to do for the week here are the things i need you to work on now students who are at home for the for the remaining however much time i need you to work on these very specific items and bits of information so that you're prepared for our in-person day and i'm going to do some instruction with the students who are in front of me and then that flips so the students are able to remain in that class on their opposite day for clarification additionally if a student learned a concept and they need a little more time with it they can
025get that on that following day and so it will it will take us some time as we work through these new ways of instructing uh to get the rhythm down and exactly how will we use that time so we are starting out slowly um giving students the opportunity to to get in-person instruction and then follow-up instruction that second day and then on that third day or third third chunk of time it's everyone everyone is remote and on that day it's check-in and office hours uh students can always get support and office hour support right after school on any day remotely or in person depending on what they work out with their teachers uh but that's that's how we're utilizing that time um so that we're we're working through how we have to moderate the speed
026of that instruction and and we have a committee of teachers that will be taking a close look with representation from each department at those best practices that are working across the building and then we we certainly want to replicate that and then see how we're doing and and modify as we go along so that we're truly being responsive to student need thanks mary sure i also wanted to highlight that we were really very cohesive as a district in the plans that we laid out and that every teacher at every level knew what we were trying to do or got the same messages i should say so it was very coordinated um which i think helps when you're when you're talking about a district message and what all of our kids can expect to get from
027their instruction the other thing that we did was to have one day solely focused on social emotional learning and so we had restorative practices training and support for hall monitors and study hall monitors we had responsive classroom supports and sessions for elementary teachers we had school counselors leading sessions to support teachers to support students on their return to school after a prolonged absence we had lots of collaboration across teams across departments on activities even getting to know you activities that needed to be both remote and in person i cannot stress to you enough the herculean challenge that our teachers are facing having to teach both the students in front of them and the students at home that just getting your mind wrapped around the preparation for that the management of that the things that would
028take x amount of time with your in-person students are now going to take be different for your remote learners so breaks and mass breaks getting that in the prolonged arrival and the prolonged dismissal that are impacting our instructional time because of the social distance that's needed the sheer amount of time to alleviate the traffic on route 10 and have that staggered just having to rethink absolutely everything for a principal for a teacher for everyone involved in our schools it it's truly um they've done a great job it's hard work this is only day two and i know that that this is cheshire and so they wanted to be perfect on the first day and and they don't want to make mistakes which i understand we're going to get better at this i think i think
029teachers need to give themselves a little grace and know that it it's going to take a little time before this feels comfortable is comfortable it's a lot and i i also wanted to also address with the technology tools it was not only the tools that kevin spoke of which are so important but under the auspices of a nationwide chromebook shortage and statewide and we believe national complications with google meet that we know are happening in so many districts across the state um so you know the late move of some remote learners that you know mary or any of our principals would get saying we you know we we need to make a change and so all of the many stop gaps in order to make sure that those kiddos got their device and that it
030was programmed for them to pick up i think we will continue to seek out our students who are not having wi-fi at home that will be something that we continue to work on we want to make sure that that students have access to wi-fi in their homes even if they're showing up to school we know that some kids will show up remotely you know because they're in a parking lot at starbucks and we want to make sure that we remove any barriers that they may have to access to internet that we have the capability to do so so we are currently actively seeking not only those who were absent but those who who need our support in that way we want to make sure that we can provide that so i i think that um
031after day two you know we're we're taking the temperature out there and and we know that people want to do better and i'm trying to tell them that you know it's it's going to take some time for them to feel really comfortable with this um i know ann you were in chapman school today and saw some of our remote learners in one of the classrooms and got to experience um what that looked like sounded like felt like in those buildings and i know the the rest of our board members will be doing visits to schools as well and um kevin mary and i hope to have our next meeting from one of those remote locations so that you all can experience what that is like to be both remote um and be a part of
032of the classroom setting i i think it will be good to get the feeling for that and to know what that's like so i'll pause there and uh stop for questions oh yeah well i just wanted to uh since you brought me up into the conversation uh marlene um yeah it was a really nice visit this morning at chapman school and um diana of course the ever cheerful diana um took me into some of those classrooms and it's it's really pretty amazing because on this the faces on the on the big screen are full size so it it it's much different than just a computer screen with the blocks of faces these big size faces and then with the microphones projecting so well there it's really a much better sense of being a a cohesive
033class with students remote and students in the physical classroom certainly it's a better it seemed like already a better experience than what we're doing at quinnipiac with with our combination of remote learners and in-class students at the same time because um mostly because of that big screen effect and and the way like diana could just put her head in the door and say hello hi students uh um at home and and they they all heard her they they were all they were able to get the classroom at home because visually we can see them from in the classroom and and and they it seemed to be working well already and it was you know the second day of school so i was impressed i'm glad thanks for sharing that and um i think too what's
034really important for for you all as board members to remember is that that experience that ann just described is the broadcast classroom so that is where we have put our resources into the video camera in the ceiling and the microphone that the teacher wears and that the speakers that are in the room so that's the the ideal and that is that is what we want to see more of and we will be seeing seeing more of that as all of them get installed and people get up to speed with those i know we visited jeff and myself and vin massiana and our town manager sean kimball visited all of the schools on friday so we were able to get us a peek into um we stopped in one of the was at the french classroom
035right mary up at the high school and so we were able to see them across all levels not all of our classrooms have this so it's important to know that that experience won't be for every student although we're trying to maximize the opportunities for students to be in those classrooms in other areas we have some more makeshift ones because we need to be flexible and and fluid and if a kiddo needs to be out we still want to make sure that they can they can access that information so um i'm glad anne that you got to check it out and that it was working so well and know that we have those across the district but we have a plan b in those other places where we where we don't have those in place yet
036one of the things i just want to add one more quick thing one of the things that was so important seeming to me was um those microphones that the teachers were wearing because they didn't have to be in us in a particular place because the microphones were attached to them but the sound quality was so good and when everybody's wearing masks when they're teaching it it enhances what you hear even for the kids in the physical classroom not just for the students who are remote so i i thought that was an important aspect to the whole technology that was happening and that's such a great point when we were up at the high school and we were in the french class that is exactly what one of one or two to three a couple of
037kids one one kiddo brought it up and the others all agreed he said it's difficult to hear the teachers with the masks on he said and that just makes it so easy you know you're not working as hard in the class when you can easily hear what folks are saying so good really great really great point thanks for pointing that out do any of the rest of you have questions on any of the content that we reviewed related to professional development or instructional time etc tony do you have anything no it's uh it's impressive the amount of work and moving parts that had to happen just to get to the reopening and here we acclimated it's uh marlene you emphasized that it was not an easy task i think it's an understatement i think a
038lot went into it so very thankful uh i actually have my walk through chs tomorrow morning so i'm looking forward to seeing all the smiling faces in the building again that's great that's great i think our teachers just did an incredible job oh absolutely i mean and feedback i've heard so far has been incredibly positive so that's always a good thing especially in treasure so um my only questions are dealing with time in some specifics um i know we're only on essentially day two but um how much is our arrival dismissal and mask breaks eating into instructional time have we been able to and do you foresee that shrinking so great questions and and i think it's important that we tackle that topic head on because there is no doubt that instructional time is impacted
039by all of this we there's no way to bring in that many students into a building socially distance and safe if we're letting them all in at once you know so it it is going to take longer same thing with dismissal we've got to now enter into these mask breaks which also eat up some time we're doing significantly more hand washing than we've ever done before you know especially before lunches and things like that um but on day two it's hard to tell exactly what impact that will have long term because we're still practicing the routines they're still new kids are still getting um acclimated to the lines and which way they can go in the hallway and where they go to wash their hands and you know where the mask breaks are i mean
040you know there's suddenly sinks where you never saw sinks before so things look different um i would imagine that as we or i i my my hope is my guess is that just like any year that once you tighten those things up and they become more of a routine you can do them more quickly so i think we'll be able to see that in the coming weeks okay all right um to tag on to that faith and then kevin i'm sorry to cut you off part of the reason we went with the strategy that we're going with is because we know and we need to plan for the fact that there is going to be less instructional time not just in cheshire i'm talking you know everywhere um so we've got to prioritize what's the
041most important things what are those things and that's what teachers did they began thinking about that and planning for that with their formative assessment with their lesson planning with what what we'll see um assessed on the report card etc go ahead kevin sorry yeah and just a few concrete examples of where we've been able to do some of that work at least at the elementary level um so for example in math uh you know we relied on a few different resources some from eureka some from a resource called achieve the core to really understand what some of those enduring things are that absolutely have to happen and then our district math code to listen elway at the elementary level took unit by unit and said focus on teach teach focus on this here's where you
042can let go of a little bit we don't want to let go of any of it but we had to prioritize a little bit so some of the summer work was kind of shaping that out a little bit knowing that we have reduced time at uh in reading we use junior great books to help expose kids to really rich texts to teach the standards we usually do one book per standard but these are really good pieces of literature so we're using one book to be able to teach into two standards at a time and therefore kind of that time that would otherwise be dedicated to interacting with another rich text gets focused on instruction so we're finding ways really concrete ways to help teachers prioritize a little bit and i know at the minimum high
043school level a big chunk of the work on those pd days was to start um start the conversations on what what is that that most important piece because we might not have the same we're probably not going to have the same amount of time to be able to do this i mean that's just the reality of this situation so that's and i don't see that stopping with those conversations stopping with august pd when we attended the acceleration workshop it was pretty clear the feedback from teachers was this is ongoing work we're going to have to collaborate with one another we're going to keep on checking in with one another on where we are relative to where we would typically be with our pacing and we're going to have to make some collective decisions on what
044rises to the top is most important so i see that work being the heart of the ongoing work throughout the year and then of course um you know some of the strategies that teachers may need to lean on to help students and get there knowing that we've got some this is reduced time so um even though it's the foundation it's that's not a oh we have that all settled that's that's going to be honestly great level department meetings professional development um to do that well and to keep some of the early things that we've laid out somewhat concretely going we're gonna we're gonna need to keep at this work throughout the year so future professional development days are going to be are you going to just kind of pick up the the same process the
045same theme or are you going in a different develop a different direction how how are they going to be shaped and when is your next one so we have five half day professional development days this year we also have a full day in november on election day and we have another day in march but we have committed to staying the course to make sure we get the job done so while we'll continue with our two marquee initiatives of complex thinking and social emotional learning underpinning those are this idea of acceleration this strategy that we're using and as kevin said we will use those professional development times for that we will use what you might often hear teachers refer to as the extra 30 minutes during one one extra 30 minute day per week for that
046type of work um as in it'll be infused through faculty meetings through grade level meetings through department time through division leader meetings this is something that that we are all in on in order to support the kids as we go through this tumultuous year okay all right and then um just kind of shifting gears you have with regard to learning of technology and adopting the technology on your chart kevin it looks like you have set i can't remember the heading but you um the way i read it was you're assuming they can pretty much pick the technology up in a looks like a two-day span the 14th through the 16th is that what you were saying and is that practical for especially for little kids and i don't mean to second-guess you i'm just curious
047so um what you saw there was a snippet of the template that template went on for probably about 10 more rows with with different things and and the idea was to get students up on tools in chunks over the first several weeks of school most of very few of the [Music] lessons will be standalone lessons so if if for example we're helping students get up on seesaw and learn how to uh post an assignment which is one of the skills how to take a quick video of themselves which we already had kids doing on the orientation days believe it or not kind of sharing they're all about me that we would typically do in you know a circle in conversation they take a quick video snapshot of it so even though that list looked long
048the teachers showed them how to post one of those videos and they did it on on kind of that first day so even though the list looks long the skills actually take short amounts amount of time to do we were just trying to be thoughtful of really identifying which of those skills that need to happen if you saw the remainder that was a snippet of the chart the remainder of that chart there's different layers of different universal tools that go on with the goal of the first few weeks to to be up on the essentials in case we need to flex in and out of of different learning environments so okay the work looks longer than it actually will take because most of it's embedded in what they're naturally doing okay and correct i'm wrong
049but i think that was also for teams to sit down and say this was a guideline and then teams would sit down and say we're going to introduce this during these couple of days in these couple of days so that they were covering everything and could you know sort of circle back to it sure and one so for one example that is in sixth grade they use an online big ideas math textbook they actually needed to put that up much sooner because if they're going to get into any of the math content students need to access that book so whatever draft times we had they said we're going to move that up here and we're going to take you know another skill and move it down a little bit lower because they can pick that
050up a little bit later so that was part of we gave them a template they actually applied it to their grade level their division their department okay all right thanks and then one last thing um the broadcast broadcast classroom that ann does such a good job explaining what's going on um with um class size fluctuations um are is that constant is it increasing decreasing um and what happens to learning time if you get a large group in the broadcast classroom i and maybe i'm just missing something but no you're not missing something faith because i saw this in practice this morning in a very short period of time diana took me to different classrooms and one of the classrooms did have more students in virtually and there were only five students sitting there in the
051classroom and there were about um maybe a dozen that were coming in virtually so i think the answer but i'm going to let the experts tell you um is this is an incredible balancing act that these people have put together that our our people in cheshire public schools have have put together it's it really it's it's pretty amazing with what they've done and how they've gotten kids certain kids into certain classrooms some classrooms are have no remote learners in them and those are the classrooms that don't have this broadcast uh capability some classrooms have one two or three kids coming in um remotely and the bulk of the class there physically but then there there was a classroom where more of the students were coming in remote than were and i i think it has
052to do with with the grade level where the families are who are choosing to have their students be remote and then the capabilities of the classrooms and i think it's why it's so important that we get as many classrooms outfitted um because it gives us more flexibility in how we put students into those classrooms but i'll let marlene and kevin well give you the real answer well said it fluctuates you know we we tried to the greatest extent possible after the surveys were administered to group the remote learners into those classrooms that would be set up with the broadcast equipment that didn't always stay stays it was static right especially when we have um you know students that we're hearing from who might need to be home and i think we're going to continue to
053need to be flexible as this this ebbs and flows are you seeing some kids some classes with um 25 28 kids in them we have very few classrooms that have that high numbers i do know that at dodd there may be a few classes for math that are on the higher side okay generally speaking our classes are not that high we would not want them that high on a regular in a regular year um and if they happen to be in that number it certainly would be as a result of the remote and in-person requests from families so it's going to fluctuate okay well that wraps mine up all right okay well thank you guys and thank you to the teachers and the parents and everyone for uh making this work so i guess now
054we're moving on to item b the state assessment calendar well that's interesting to see on the agenda you know faith um after you and i spoke the other day and we were talking about instructional time and you know we we still have to teach the things that are important and i i sort of wanted to put this in because this came out obviously on september 3rd and it articulates this the summative assessment calendar for this year which which comes to us from the state department of education so you can see that the typical state assessments we are still you know beholden to make sure that our students take these whether they are remote or in person and and how we do that will be um a particular challenge that won't be hitting us until about
055january so you see we have the lost links test for our english learners followed by the connecticut alternative assessment that we have to have our eligibility information in by which is for the ngss the science assessment you can see the dates also for that the alternative assessment is due a little further down the road in march um then followed by the smarter balanced assessment which has a date of march 29th through june 4th we usually start it later and the sat so i just wanted to emphasize um without causing any anxiety for anyone especially our teachers and students that yes we have less instructional time and yes we need to give our students and our teachers permission to just teach the most important information um because ultimately we'll still be measured by the same yardstick
056that we are every year that at this point in time um there there is no uh flexibility on that testing so the state looks like they're continuing to move ahead with plans and that's the only reason i put that and put that in there was to sort of show uh those two two extremes is there any chance uh so they're not modifying the test obviously to somehow recognize the most important concepts um they're going full bore with tests as if it's a normal year well we're hoping that what we see is the most important concepts are the most important concepts and we're assuming that will be the things that matter the most um but as far as if you're asking if they're giving us any flexibility going forward so far no oh okay um and
057do you have any advocates in the state department of education who might persuade the powers that be that this may not necessarily be the best course i think really good open dialogue with both our rests and um i know just being on a call the other day with the state department of education i think it's pretty open back and forth for example we were talking about attendance the other day and some concerns and questions came up and you know they really paused and took that information under advisement and are getting back to us and us meaning connecticut not just cheshire but i i think they've been really um open to hearing what districts are going through so this could very well change but i just wanted to make the point that you know we weren't
058we weren't um going to focus solely on hand washing and not worry about instructional important issues okay i'm sorry um ian or tony do you have any questions on on that i kind of took over didn't mean to no no not at this point okay all right um ann you're good okay all right well um that brings us to the end of our agenda um okay do i hear a motion to adjourn our meeting anne tony second all in favor aye all right thanks everybody thank you you guys for the very thorough and comprehensive overview thank you faith thanks tony and ann appreciate it everyone thank you mary