001foreign good evening everyone at this time I'd like to call the Cromwell Board of Education meeting to order at 7 pm Alessandra would you take roll call here don't believe so thank you next we'll move on to approval of our agenda additions deletions and chairs review so tonight we have some celebrating our faculty and staff we will also be looking at the program of study for the high school and an overview of our science and reading curriculum legislation as and some other things obviously that are some updates and before we approve the agenda I do have some additions so I'd like to add first on the agenda executive session for the purpose of discussing records of strategy from the teachers contract negotiations that would be for our executive session portion and the second item is
002to discuss and take possible action on the teacher's successor contract for the 2023 through 2026 year and third I'm just changing some wording we do have an action already listed not an action but we have verbiage executive session for the purpose of discussion concerning sorry um discussing the options available and possible action is what I'm adding the and possible action to the board regarding its Transportation agreement an executive session so that's regarding dacco so those three items would need to be added is there a motion to add those to the agenda there were three so the first one was the teachers executive session for the purpose of discussing records of strategy from the teachers contract negotiations then the second part of that it's listed separately but discuss and take possible action on the teacher's success
003or contract for the 2023-2026 year and then the third was just to add the words possible action on the dacco piece that's a lot thank you as our second dipty all in favor opposed extension motion carries and the agenda is approved with those additions next in our agenda we're celebrating our faculty and staff and tonight we have Mrs detuno up here from Edna C Stevens to highlight Terry Ferrar good evening everyone [Applause] it is with great honor and pleasure for me to recognize an ECS staff member tonight for celebration of staff and uh here with me is Terry Ferrar and she is a science instructor at Edna Stevens school for our K-2 students words that describe Terry she is positive all the time extremely helpful to all she loves to teach science has an outstanding
004work ethic and is committed to the students at ECS our students love Mrs Ferrar they love to attend her science classes she increases students Knowledge and Skills and truly enhances their attitudes towards science her science lessons are exciting and relevant her expertise in making connections among science and the students world and the community is amazing Mrs Ferrar encourages science and query problem solving into her lessons but most importantly she has the ability to impact all of her students when Mrs ferrar's not teaching you can find her uh loading reading carts making copies searching for materials for the teachers etc etc that goes on and on so at ECS we are very lucky to have her and I would like to congratulations congratulate her on this special recognition [Applause] thank you so much for being here
005tonight Terry I know you love attention foreign but I know Terry personally and I mean talk about work ethic and volunteer extraordinaire she's done so much for our schools whether you know her or not she's been helping all along um from just the goodness of her heart I think a lot of times so I'm so happy that she's here teaching science kids love science and they're going to be getting ready for a stem program so it's perfect so congratulations anybody have any other comments I I of course this is for ours amazing we are so lucky and I say that truly we are so lucky when I first got here um hearing about everything she did I didn't realize that she was actually not on technically on staff I'm like what do you mean we're
006not paying this lady anything um we are blessed and and yes we figured that out a little bit even though it's not everything that she's worth because she is worth so much but everything that that Mrs dituno said about you Terry is true and more I feel like when I go to ECS I always see Mrs Ferrar she's always running around doing something but most importantly every single kid is so excited to see her which means she is making a huge impact on them and in science um and we all know it is not easy to teach science period and especially to elementary students it's so important to get them excited about it and you do all of that and more for all of us so thank you so much Terry from all of us
007um we are we are incredibly grateful and I know the kids are too thank you very much um I just want to say honestly thank you to you and to Mrs detuno for giving me the opportunity to do this I'm not a certified teacher I'm a scientist I have a background in biology chemistry physics astronomy you name it I've got my hands in it some way and I have taught before I taught at the college level but teaching teaching our little guys is is something quite different I'm really quite proud of how the science program has come along so I'm excited to continue doing that and keep in mind that this generation of kids are our kindergartners first grade or second graders they're the ones that are going to be going to Mars think about
008that you know so this is the kind of thing that I like to talk to them about things that are going on right now and as my shirt says some people only dream of meeting their site their favorite scientists I get to teach mine and the more Hands-On things we can do the more engaged they are and I just like getting dirty with them it's a lot of fun I enjoy coming to school every day so thank you for letting me do this thank you [Applause] and next we also have celebrating our students at ECS so if you'd like to introduce your student you're celebrating I have to say I was so excited about this and the student that we recognized has been practicing and practicing but he went home sick today but you are
009going to see him because we videotaped him and you'll see him at the end of my speech but um when I was asked to select a student for the celebration of student recognition Hassan syed's name came to mind immediately and when I shared my thoughts with his former teachers they could not agree more Hassan entered ECS in kindergarten the school experience was a whole new world for him even more not knowing English but that never held him back his persistence and passion for Learning and desired to work hard towards success is proof today his growth and development over the past two years both socially and academically have been amazing to see and he continues to make us proud at ECS last month he was a presenter at the veterans assembly he stood there proud and
010recited beautifully in front of over 200 people Hassan's second grade teacher stated that Hassan has grown so much because of his love for school and learning and when he encounters challenges he faces them with resilience and overcomes his fears he is respectful and kind to his classmates and is always there to lend a helping hand now Hassan brings forth such a positive light at ACS so on behalf of his teachers Mrs logodicio in kindergarten Mrs siste in grade one miss godino in grade two and Mrs Ramsey his ell teacher we are so proud to recognize him for this special award and so now I'm going to show with you share with you good evening my name is Hassan say it I am a second grade student my favorite thing to do at school is learning
011Miss Ramsey my ell teacher helps me to learn English I wrote and said words every day until I got The Hangover I I now I can communicate with my dad and Friends I am teaching my mom and sister how to speak English I I like being at Anna Stephen School thank you and have a good night [Applause] I would have never guessed he was CLL he's very fluent thank you so much for highlighting Hassan he looks like he's come a long way and all thanks to all of his teachers and his ell teacher um we're very proud of him thank you all right correspondence do you have any tonight I do um we received a letter uh from Middlesex health and it's to it was to Cromwell High School the boys and girls soccer team
012they raised 1565 dollars um to support the cancer center at Middlesex health and they just wanted to thank us for making sure that uh we continue to remember people who are in need so they're very thankful and um we have this for our tax purposes so I just wanted to let you know how awesome that's pretty great we had pajama day we don't know how much we've raised yet officially we're still counting so that'll be great too this is a very exciting letter that we received from the Department of administrative Services of school construction and grants and review so it was osc I'll remember this one day G and r And in regards to the middle school they visited our site they visually inspected approximately 29.13 acres of land and including the building and the
013fields owned by the Lea which is us for use as a location for a new Cromwell Middle School in conjunction with the law and I won't read all those laws to you site analysis and additional information provided the site appears to be suitable for the intended purpose this letter it constitutes approval of the site by this department as required under Connecticut statute 10-186 d um and 10-291 and 292 amended title 10. education culture section 10287 and regulations for Connecticut state agencies so basically we have met while requirements and the site and project have not yet been authorized for State Grant yet so that is in the process hopefully by the end of the month um but we are well on its way so this was written by Douglas Rogers the director of the office of
014Construction Grants and review so I wanted to just fill you in on this great news because everyone has worked so incredibly hard on this the building committee the town the Educators and all of all of you so it's great news one obstacle overcome I know and was that all for correspondence okay public comments before I read the rules for public comments is there anyone who would like to make a public comment okay um I saw um Jessica first and so you can come on up to the podium state your name and address oh and I will read the rules I know you've heard them before but sorry individuals are welcome to address the board of education for up to three minutes during the public comment portions of the meeting but board members will not generally
015engage in dialogue The Board of Education chair may his or her discretion extend the time for public comments speakers must come to the podium and share your name and address to facilitate efficient sharing of your comments we encourage you to share any comments you may have about instruction discipline or learning materials first with your students teacher then principal and followed by the superintendent before bringing the comments to the board of education however if you do not believe your comments have been addressed appropriately or if you believe they should be shared with the board for any other reason please feel free to do so any complaints or concerns about individual criminal Board of Education employees should be directed to the superintendent in Board of Board of Ed in writing rather than in public comments at Board
016of Education meetings all comments must not include personal attacks and comments cannot be discouraged threatening vulgar or otherwise inappropriate the board chairperson Maya is or her discretion curtail any public comments or terminate any such individuals privilege of address at any time if they violate any of these rules violate reasonable standards of decorum our boisterous or are repetitious the Board of Ed reserves the right to limit public comments to particular topics and the Cromwell Board of Education values the well-being of our students and families those electing to make public comments at a Cromwell Board of Education meeting are strongly discouraged from sharing identifiable information of their children in such comments including but not limited to name age and learning ability and I reminded that any comments made during a criminal Board of Education meeting May become
017a permanent matter of public record that may be accessible by individuals in the future as such any person making public comments during a criminal Board of Education meeting is solely responsible for the information they choose to share we kindly ask that you consider the privacy of your family and your children while making comments okay thank you um first I also want to commend Mrs Farrar I know there are a couple kids in the audience whose eyes lit up when she entered the room um but that's not why I'm here so hello everybody my name is Jessica lamb my pronouns are she her and I live at 12 High Ridge Road I'm here this evening to again support an equitable inclusive and a curriculum that celebrates diversity so last month I stood here before you to
018support a book that was being taught in kindergarten that challenged gender stereotypes and while there are many dimensions of diversity tonight I'm actually here to be more specifically supporting an lgbtq curriculum as well um so as a parent I I know that it's not it's not a matter of if but when our children are faced with lgbtq topics in life whether it's a family member who identifies as lgbtq a friend it could be content that they're seeing on TV or somewhere in their Community or who knows maybe even our our own children are identifying as lgbtq themselves so when there and when they encounter this uh these topics how they react if they find out a friend of theirs is is coming out to them how they react in that moment is so important to
019the well-being of the student or family member who's lgbtq so to me I I believe that this is a learned behavior and it's important that we expose our kids to lots of different topics in schools personally I want my kids to be accepting perhaps even matter of fact when the situation arises and even be a safe zone for their peers since I do believe this is a learned behavior how you react in that moment I need help as a parent I need help they say it takes a village to raise a child I need help from my Village so for example how should I answer questions about same gender displays of affection on TV did you know in the movie Star Wars there are actually situations like that and we sat in the movie theater
020and you know you wonder okay how am I going to respond to this there's a new Disney movie called light year where there's similar situations how about when we're sitting and watching Jeopardy and there's transgender contestants who by the way won a lot of games how about when I sit and watch Wednesday with my teenager and there are two moms that show up to visit one of the students I won't spoil it for you haven't seen the show and then ultimately where I really do need help for perhaps from our language arts department is how do I unteach that they them and there are not necessarily just plural pronouns they're actually singular too so there's so many topics that um and and questions that parents and allies need to engage in and I really implore
021our school to continue the curriculum that you've already started which is why again I just want to reinforce how much I support the the diverse Equitable and inclusive curriculum in our school system so thank you for your time thank you are there any other public comments is the mic on is there a red light there we go there we go hi um first of all I sent an email as well and I did notice when I was reading it over that one little section got put in the wrong place because Google does that sometimes so go with what I'm saying not what I wrote okay um my name is Heidi vanishner I live at 34 Hemlock Court I have a child with special needs who's in the sixth grade at Cromwell Middle School being a
022professional in the education field I understand the need for professional development most school districts that I know of have a half day of school once a month or schedule the or schedule their professional development after school hours according to the proposed schedule for the 2023-2024 school year it looks as if half days are being scheduled twice monthly for children at the elementary school level at ECS and Wiss children have the option to pay to stay at school at the Kids Corner the children at CMS and Cromwell High School do not have this option also most daycare centers do not accept children older than 11 or 12 years of age most middle and high school students are mature enough to be left at home for a short period of time but there is a small population
023of special needs children who are not when both parents are working or in the case of single parent households the only parent is working there are very few options available I am strongly requesting that either these early dismissal days be removed or else offer some sort of program for special needs children so they can stay at school for a full day I'd be more than happy to work with the administration to develop a program that would suit the needs of this population thank you for your consideration thank you are there any other public I'm kind of seeing none I do have two public comments that were sent in via email one was from Cassandra Thompson and one was actually from the prior meeting Stephen Heisman we'd like us to include his Written Letter in the
024meeting minutes for tonight so those will be included um in the meeting minutes and next we'll move on to reports from student Representatives who want to start at the middle school Jack yeah um the student council hosted a spirit week and a cleaning supply drive from November 28th to December 2nd students and staff were asked to donate cleaning supplies such as shampoo conditioner soap paper towels toilet paper and toothpaste to help those in need in our community these spirit days were dressed as your favorite holiday day hat day sports today Taurus day and twin day CMS student council was able to donate about 200 items to the Cromwell food pantry um each holiday season the Mandigo family organizes a toy drive to support the children getting treatment at Connecticut Children's Medical Center this year students
025and staff were able to contribute and collect under 200 toys on December 9th CMS participated in the PJ for kids day um students and staff were encouraged to wear PJs and additionally donate one dollar to support the brave kids at the Connecticut Children's who are battling cancer the CMS Community was able to raise 485 dollars the boys and the girls basketball season are underway the girls team is coached by Mrs Middlebrooks and Dr Bosworth and the boys team is coached by Mr Lemay the boys basketball team played East Hampton and Berlin and won both games the girls are one-on-one and off to a great start all right thank you very much nice job does anyone have any questions for Jack all right Catherine sure Jack how did the first day of the new um schedule
026go today it's tomorrow I just found out it's tomorrow is that correct it's tomorrow it starts yeah yeah um for Wednesday okay um all eight periods and advisory okay yeah we'll have to report next month though yeah thanks Jack all right who wants to start Olivia yeah for the high school okay so for General announcements on Friday December 9th Cromwell High School participated in the ccmcpj day students and staff donated one dollar to support Connecticut Children's Hospital chchs is working with crec on leadership and development they met with CHS students to discuss a wide array of topics such as inclusion kindness empathy and the importance of making sure everyone feels safe and respected within our community carbon Club is selling both honey and maple syrup to raise money the honey and maple syrup come from
027homes of Mr harder and Mr Anderson to high school teachers and Kaya Club is decorating liquor bags with positive messages for the safe for a safe holiday season um for the sports the winter season is coming to a start the girls basketball team had a game yesterday and they won the boys basketball team had a scrimmage against Rocky Hill on December the 8th the boys hockey team had a game against Concord on December the 14th the girls hockey team had a game against hadam Coop on Wednesday the 14th and the wrestling team had a game against Middletown on December the 14th and indoor track and field girls and boys team have a scrimmage currently great thank you very much are there any questions for our high school Representatives next moving on to reports of Liaisons
028from the Town Council Board of Finance I don't believe either one of those are here so Cromwell Middle School building committee and Fields committee the building committee did include a report it's reference a in your packets hopefully you've had a chance to look it over shows the schematics and and where we are with with everything does say we're looking forward to breaking ground in 2023 so hopefully we can stand track with that and um the chairperson Rosanna Glenn did offer if we want to have her come to a meeting and give more details about what where they are with the plans she's willing to do that at any point I mentioned maybe January would be a good time but um just let me know if anyone would like that and Fields committee Catherine do you
029have an update for the fields committee there's not a lot we had a meeting last week um we set our meeting schedule for the next few months um our the Town Council approved a few items one they approved the Little League lights um at one of the fields right next to middle school and they funded our um RFQ for our assessment of the fields and the high school complex so there's a few other items that we're looking into but we there's a whole process it's very similar to the Middle School process where it's kind of a little bit out of our hands right now and then it'll come back to us because they have to get all the um bids to come in for us to look at where where we want to go forward
030um but I think that's about it as any other Committee Member of anything no okay so yeah we're not a whole lot happening right now hopefully it'll pick up more after the first of the year okay just go back to the RFQ you said that they that Town Council approved they approved um and the board of Finance I'm sorry the board of Finance approved the Little League lights and RFQ so we have the funding to be able to look at an assessment of what we can what needs to be done in order to get those fields a dollar amount tied to that 200 000 100 it's like a two-prong project a hundred thousand is going to look at drainage and another 100 000 is to look at the actual fields in the whole complex at
031the high school so it's if you want to Loop in tennis courts and and it will assess the baseball and softball fields in the practice fields that are backed up to ECS so and there's other practice fields that are right along the parking lot because we're not quite sure how this is all going to fall out with the size that we need and parking and all that other stuff so okay and did they go over the timeline for the RFQ thank you any other questions for Catherine all right presentations and reports of administration the 2022-2023 budget update reference B in your packs and we have Miss Burke here this evening did I forget something happens every time oh how could I forget the superintendents update I look forward to it I do okay I try
032to keep it short there's so much going on and obviously I you know give you the weekly updates but um just quickly thank you to our our football team and to our football coaches to Kelly Maher our athletic director our principal our assistant principal Mr crackle Miss Binghamton um it's wonderful to make playoffs but it's a lot of work and um our boys did a phenomenal job this year we didn't win the championship however they took us pretty far and we're very proud of them we did have a last minute situation because of weather we had to change Fields so um coach Maher Mrs Maher athletic director Maher she just really steps it up to the plate and got everything figured out between Friday and Sunday and changed the venue and made everything happen as
033if it was completely there were no problems and you wouldn't think there were any problems except there were a lot of them but she makes it seem so seamless all the time so a huge shout out to Kelly for just being who she is and really caring about the kids so thank you to miss Maher she's actually as nice as she seems and confident so also with our first snowstorm and welcome Melinda St John to our first snowstorm she did an excellent jab our uh our team our cleanup team our our communication with the town as far as who's cleaning what and doing what at what specific time we were minute to minute you know starting pretty much at 4 15 in the morning four o'clock in the morning and we were one of the
034districts that actually got our schools our kids to school on time and try to do we try to do that obviously safety is first and when we think we can be safe safe as as little disruption to the kids school day and then to the family school day because then everyone has to rearrange their schedules so it went beautifully and the roads were great and congratulations to Melinda for surviving her first snow day we weren't too tired not at all um and then um we and just quickly the building committee we visited North Haven Middle School and myself and Mrs cocciola went along and it was a treat for us because that's where we both started our careers as teachers so it was like a blast from the past and we found a lot of
035first of all it was so exciting to see a building that you saw in the same shape as our Middle School is right now and to see where it's gone um Mrs Coachella and I were so excited because we care of obviously the kids about North Haven we worked there for years and it's just impacted them so beautifully now are there things we can learn from and make sure we don't make those same mistakes absolutely and we talked about a lot of that but just to see a community rally together to do something for kids that's just so exciting was pretty awesome and just seeing the teachers that we both know and their names on the doors and you know the school secretaries and just it was just really cool and Ian and I think
036we're more excited than everybody we just focus and look at the building but it was really uh delightful and it Perkins and Eastman was their architect and they are also our architect so we got to talk about a lot of the same things that we saw there that we want to make sure we don't see we remember that was a rebuild um we are completely you know that was a renovate we are completely rebuilding so we won't run into some of those issues unbelievable to our building committee I really cannot say enough about these people they have given up such a huge part of their life they are showing up to visits and asking questions and keeping notes um honestly I think they could take this show on the road when we're done and start
037building schools for people they're just amazing so thank you to all of them and that's pretty much my update unless you have any questions for me there's just so much going on right now in classrooms and getting prepared for the winter break the the big thing that Ian will talk a little bit about is letting you know where we are right now in the budget um in Burke and it's not uh it's it's looking Bleak already so we are in a freeze um I you know I say every year it is what it is and we got what we asked for and there are just so many unanticipated expenses that there really is not much we can do about it and inflation has impacted every area of that we're trying to operate every single thing
038that we're trying to do so we are are pretty much Frozen which means emergencies things that you know kids safety and all of that obviously gets taken care of and some of the other things have to wait a little bit um until we see where we're at and as we are preparing we've had about four of our meetings with principals and with directors we are expect a large increase and you're going to hear a little bit about why from Dr McLean regarding legislation reading legislation that we between teachers unions and administrators unions and Connecticut Association of superintendents are all pushing back to the state department of education but I don't I'm not so sure as to where we're going to get and this is a very very very costly unfunded mandate that has to be
039put into place and we only have one year for a weaver but that doesn't help us financial hardship waiver because we still have to put it into next year's budget because we have to train our staff to actually be able to do it the following year and they can't do it without the materials so you'll hear from Dr McLean a little bit more about that shortly so I just want to prepare you um and I know it's it's tough times for everyone and we are no exemption to that rule we are looking at some Hefty increases and that's it all right thank you any questions so now we'll move on to the 2022-2023 budget update reference B with Miss Burke good evening everyone I don't have um too much to add uh Dr macri summed
040it up quite nicely but I did provide for you our July through November numbers and uh just a brief memo and we are I have recommended a budget freeze I think we need to at this point um really just spend time analyzing purchase orders that we have open what do we what is exactly that we need right now to do what we need to do so I it's always disappointing when your expenses don't meet your budget but we do our budget early and a lot of things change after we have approved the budget and this year is no exception um if you have any questions pertaining to anything on the report that I provided I'd be happy to try to answer them for you oh Jen go ahead I was just curious about the uh
041the the salaries why uh such a difference with the salaries part of the reason with the non-certified is that we were in the middle of negotiating the custodian agreement so at the time we did the budget we hadn't finished that negotiation we have had to hire some additional support staff for special education and as far as the certified salaries go um when we do have people leave and we have new people come in sometimes the hiring rates don't match what we had and the person that left or what we had anticipated so there's just some slight variances in those categories due to those those reasons next we have old business discussion and possible action school calendar 2022 2023 references C and D in your packets we talked about this at the last meeting and decided
042to come back to the table and see what we can do to make some changes so Dr mackery did you want to explain the changes sure um I will call Dr McLean up as well um Dr McLean and myself uh Lisa and Alessandra worked very hard on looking at these dates and trying to take your suggestion which which we really like by the way but there are pros and cons as you just heard too changing to a half day early release and trying to get the same amount of hours of PD and a lot of people it's very difficult for people to understand unless you're in the education world of the need for professional development one things change all the time to um everyone thinks we're done with covid and we are except the repercussions
043of it um right we're not really uh continue to linger and impact our students and will for a very long time their social emotional well-being and their academic learning which requires our teachers to still continue to learn how to teach differently um differentiation has been along for a very long time intervention acceleration has been around for a very long time however in order to do that well we don't have it we really don't have the luxury of not doing that well um right now we have a lot of catching up to do we also have talked to you a lot about curriculum writing and things that we need to change and just some of our instructional strategies in Cromwell in general we've made huge improvements we still have a long way to go but we
044can't expect our teachers to continue to grow and do what we need them to to do without the amount of time they only have so much time and this is really hard for people to understand but they are with our children all the other times so if we could give PD to any other you know a lot of other careers people in careers and they leave their desks and the work is there when they get there but no we can't leave the kids alone and that's huge if we expect the best from our teachers which I do and from our administrators which I do and I and I know you do too then we have to invest in them and that hasn't necessarily happened and so we need this time and we need it even
045more so with a reading program that we believe is coming down the pike without us being able to do anything so between the financial piece and the instructional piece of teaching brain based reading which we've been doing anyway but there's there are some holes to fill we need this time so there is it's nowhere it's a no-win situation honestly and I know that we all understand that um so with that being said the calendar on the left of your packet is the one with the one hour the calendar on your right is the half hour um day release and what we did and Dr McLean if you want to go in and you can explain what we did and why some of them are half day Fridays we'll we try to look at vacation schedules
046and things but gosh so we took exactly the same amount of hours on a half day there are teachers that don't get a lunch period so they would have to have their lunch period after dis after the students dismiss so when we put all of the hours together what both of those calendars have the same amount of hours so there's less days where students are released early but in most cases there are two half days a month to cover those four hours of professional development that we have um in some cases we try to like before the February break I think it was Dr bakri I'm not looking at the sheet we tried to put that half day there so then parents could extend a vacation if they you know if they were going away
047for that long weekend so we tried to be smart about the placement of them um you know there are there are pros and cons you know I as an educator having this chunk of time is invaluable but it you know it also means finding child care for some some people for a half a day too so Laurie okay so just bear with me because I just want to go through I went through this today so being mindful of our conversation was that we would keep the same amount of time exactly just instead of getting doing the our just chunk it okay so I was looking I'm comparing the two calendars and I counted there was 25 purple days so 25 days on the left-handed calendar that we would have gotten out at one hour early
048so if you move over to the other account so now we went from four days that were just half days to 12. so I guess my question is this because we had those four days doing well right right right so that's eight hours Edition eight half days right so okay so if we had 25 days where we got out an hour early that's 25 hours of PD time but if you go over if we added eight half days I got the math just isn't matching up for me I was just trying to understand it because if we added we added eight half days in a half day there's about two hours that's what I wanted to development time so there's two hours that's it because they have to have their lunch period after it's not
049built into the day okay so that was so fast enough so I was thinking about 11 30 and then the 225 right so 11 30 you know and then there's dismissal and then they have their lunch and you know really by the time there's it's two it's two hours okay so then okay so that would be about 24 or 25 hours then so right okay that's that's what I was wondering because I was when I was the mouth wasn't gotcha so it's the lunch okay thanks you're welcome but it's also three hours for the kids Miss right they're leaving at let's say um Cromwell high school they're leaving I mean middle school 11 30. so they're missing more time in this calendar than they are in this calendar yes they are so which which is
050why I never thought you guys right but I was thrilled to do it because right I mean for like I was saying for us yes it makes sense but there is there is time that's lost a lot of difficult sorry I didn't mean to talk about no is it the lunch that there when you have an early release a one hour early release teachers lunch is built into the day with this with the student lunch you can build it all in okay when you release half day it's impossible to build in a lunch during that time so especially for secondary yeah for a second for secondary so we have to provide a lunch one because we want our teacher C and two it's a duty-free lunch and contractually they're in their contract they're they're required
051we're required to do so in order to make up that time we have to put it somewhere so we put it at the end of the day they have their lunch and then they have their dismissal like they have bus Duty and then lunch and then they come to professional development so it does that's like an eight-hour loss of student time then for the year yeah yes if we were to go to a half day schedule then there's no way around that I didn't I don't think we knew that when we were talking about yeah go ahead how how did it work before covid then because we didn't have these Hour release before did we have left we did at the high school we did yeah okay yeah we did in Cromwell we had less
052PD time than most districts that I that I know of for a very long time we had it early release only at the high school but then nowhere else so um it wasn't happening when you put in the early release during covet and we talked about it wasn't it at the elementary level and I'm not sure I don't remember the middle school but wasn't some of this PD happening during the day where a sub or somebody would come into a classroom and the teacher would leave for a portion of the day and a group of them would try and get together sometimes well that happens plc's which they do that during their um you know like if the kids are at specials then they they have their PLC time you know if this when the
053students are we don't we don't get coverage necessarily for them like a substance but the way the schedule wasn't it more that way from what I was only here I remember this before that's what so we if we did this for kovit because the teachers knew maybe yeah no we we did not they had PLC time yeah right yeah so I think the hard part for everyone to understand is there's professional learning communities that um you're talking about students and their needs not always necessarily their curricular what you need to change about your crate about your instruction you're talking about what the need the needs of the kids in front of you are so that's a 45 minute period so that you're talking about with seven first grade teachers um you're looking at data as
054a whole you're analyzing that data it's it's data teams or plcs we call them plc's here and you're making decisions on what you could do with those students um basically you pick a high leverage strategy you implement it in your classroom you look at the data again you see how it works that's what happens now those High leverage strategies that you're choosing and looking at those scientifically research-based strategies that you're implementing you don't um you just don't come out of college knowing all of them and they're not all in your toolbox and they've changed and things change as we learn more about research so for example Universal Design of for learning is how do you make the classroom accessible for every student without changing making it that way for every student for students with special
055needs for regular education students for everyone that's a whole different shift of thinking and you have to have training then on top of that we have curriculum changes in every subject area then on top of that we're building a steam school so we can't expect our teachers to walk into Cromwell Middle School our new Cromwell Middle School in three years and be able to teach project-based learning when we have it's it's a it's a different way of teaching interdisciplinary project-based learning if we don't start providing them with that professional development and changing our curriculum to match that now so yes it sounds like a lot of time but when you're working with a lot of different Learners and my to my point earlier is the social emotional learning component of kids it has significantly the
056need has increased we need more resources and more time so you are actually spending more time differentiating you um that hasn't gone away um it's it's it's what we need in order for us to get where we need to be and I've said this before you we read and you know I could talk we could talk to you about this for 10 hours um when you look at schools in Asia they have they go to school from like seven to one seven to two and then between like seven to one usually one and four is professional development every single day it's professional learning because we could put teachers in front of our kids or we can put amazing teachers in front of our kids and then it's quality versus quantity and I understand the daycare
057issue like I we get that's huge and that's part of our society right we have to it is what it is it's part of the American society but we need to have the best instructors in in our classroom and we're working on it and it's going to take time and um the contract is with the contract is I can only have them for a certain amount of hours after school I can't change that not without that's not true we can change that with a huge impact and that's called money um and that will cost us more than we could afford it I was explaining to Selena to run one school day this was last year and everything has gone up one school day we it's about seventy thousand dollars to hire everybody so your food
058your people your everything your buses everything so we can add one school day to the school year and that's going to be a cost of at 70 grand and probably more now because of all the changes so these are just things that I want you to think of I'm not we could stick with the calendar we have we can come back to the table and think of other things um but the reality of it is is that our teachers and our administrators need this time right now there's too many changes and once that legislative that legislation is enacted um K through two is uh sorry K through three and then we'll explain why we want to do four and five later at the same time to try to save money because it actually behooves us
059to do it that way I there's an impact there's an impact somewhere someone's going to be impacted we could slow down the pace um that's not my that my cup of tea is instruction you hired me as your superintendent because that's my strong that's my strong point it'll always be and so is Dr McLean and so I'm going to try to move us all forward um and to the best of our ability and this is the only way I can think of doing it that will have less of an income an impact on our budget which we can't afford at this point and we do have the 183 other districts don't necessarily have 183 nope so you're remanded by State Department of Education to have 180 days anywhere between 180 and above is a gift
060for kids I wasn't here and I'm sure Mr tuna was here Mr Butt will may have been here I don't even know how long this has been happening um but craml since I've been here is 183 that is a gift I am sure whoever fought for that 183 and the amount of money and time and effort that it took to get students in school for 183 days was very difficult um because it's very expensive very costly so yes we lose the eight hours we don't want less instructional time but we do have 183 student days where a lot of districts have 180 181 there's many different ways of looking at this some districts have 180 uh 190 teacher days we have 187 we can't afford to pay teachers for three more days um we just
061can't we can't afford it um so that's why it seems different in different districts because it depends on and I don't I don't want to use the word value of education but what do we want education to look like in Cromwell public schools for our students and for our staff um and you know having that time and I think even I know the teachers feel this way too like having larger chunks of time to to do professional development is the benefit to that is invaluable like having like just to be able to get in the zone and do something and get something accomplished is incredibly valuable um but again you know when I put my mom hat on I I understand that it it you know there are there are consequences to that too I
062think it's Catherine first so just to clarify when you know the board had asked that you go back and look at the number of hours you looked at the number of professional development hours and at student hours the professional development hours included what we call that PLC piece and everything else and that is what we want to have and not what is required per contract or state mandate correct or is this contract and state mandated hours I I it's we have you know hours that we have in our in our contract that we have that teachers have to but the way that it works is because of the state mandates we then have to provide professional development in certain things like this science of reading for example so we have to train our you know
063our staff in a new reading program and so that's that's sort of the way that it it pans out is there's some legislation made and then professional development has to come in order to meet that legislation and they need the hours and for paraprofessionals it's 18 now right teachers I don't think there's a set amount of hours they say you have to do this this this this this this and you have to do it and do it well because it's a contractual figure it out because it's local yeah everyone has their own local I just thought and it has to happen during the contract time right I understand I don't have a that's not my question um but my when we were discussing earlier because people have asked what happened before why was it only
064at the high school and that's because they were considered just PLC hours and there were this was all pre-covered where things were very different and we had talked about this when you brought to us the one hour release early days those were teachers meeting during the school day because I remember my kids being at ECS and sometimes at West but they would say oh the teacher doesn't isn't here during that time every week they're gone from the classroom there's somebody so-and-so was in there usually it was the same teacher that came in I don't know who they went to meet with but the teachers would say oh it's our meeting time during the day so and I remember you saying we won't have them pulling out in the middle of the day anymore they'll be
065with the classroom all day which wasn't a good thing to do during the height of kovid I should say but just to get a better understanding of what we're looking at what I think I understand I know what you're talking about I misunderstood so during that time so what was happening in Cromwell um there was PLC time built into the schedule for whis and the teachers were able to have specials teaching the students so we didn't need subs so the students were getting instructed in a different way by specialist teachers correct me if I'm wrong Chris but I think I'm correct about West right right and they have the they have the science piece as a science as another layer which is why at ECS we don't have as many specials to cover so I
066bet you that's what the situation so yeah and I can have each principle correct me if I'm wrong but at Wis we never had to put Subs into cover because there was always specialist teachers of because of the way the schedule was and having that science component is huge you have a say a whole other teacher for a special then you could bring plc's together ECS is very is very different what happened at ECS was we got to the point where we needed to have pcl's uh PLC time and look at data but they didn't have the time built into their schedule so we were using building subs and whoever we could manage to grab here and there which took the teacher away from the kids during the day and at this point we've figured
067out how to use pupil Personnel staff which are still teachers to teach the social emotional learning piece um so that's happening throughout the day so that we don't have to have Subs I'm not going to say that it never happens where there isn't a sub because God knows we've uh we don't have Subs we don't have Subs anyways do we have to cancel sometimes we have to cancel at the Middle School PLC time was always built into the day based on their schedule and at the high school it's still a struggle to have PLC time regularly um more more often um even with the early hour delay so basically we've increased PLC time because of the need for PLC time because of the needs of our students and then on top of that you have
068there's professional learning and for you know you're learning your about your students and then there's professional growth for yourself so that you can meet the needs of their of your students and and there's curriculum and then there's the whole curriculum component where like I said we could put people out in the trailer like used to happen a long time ago but then the curriculum sits on the shelf and nobody looks at it and uses it um and that's not effective either so that's what was happening um so you are right we were pulling teachers for sure but we've rearranged the schedules and the early release has helped tremendously with that yes yes to clarify because there have been many questions about that or confused because it was only the high school well your kid was
069having some disruption during the school day which we're trying to avoid by doing the option that we currently have and potentially yeah the new Option that's in front of us so and it used to there was a time where you had Subs that you had regularly do in the building right and you could yeah and you could train them really to take over the that doesn't happen anymore we're lucky we have the right we're lucky we have coverage and we're not splitting classes at this point it would be it's much more of a disruption and loss of instructional time and poor use of time if we were ever to go back to to that model at one point about I mean even now detail teachers from PLC to cover classes because we need we need
070coverage all the time you know like it's it's not it's not perfect now because we have children in classrooms that need supervision and if there's people in PLC then we'll you know we'll pull them you you've been doing this for a year or two um with the one hour and you have I'm sure a schedule of what you accomplished during those times do you find it's been effective or do you think that it'd be much more effective to have the half day but the two hours much more effective to have the half days just as you know being able to sit down with a group of people and you know by the time you kind of get your stuff out with an hour you're packing up and you know and so I think it'll be
071much more effective with the half days we're doing it now because that's what we have and you know but I think there's so much more you can do with a larger chunk of of time you know so where are you getting done what you needed to get done would you say with the one hour or not as much as you hoped right well I mean we we kind of get done what we can get done in that time the you know the way that it's put together I think you know just in terms of quality of time the chunks of time are better but again I understand the cons of that too so you know Kelly had a question professional development calendar yeah I just if it's two hours for every half day that the
072teachers are getting would we consider doing one full day of teacher development because that would we did talk about that too yeah so could we go to 182 to me this half day is it's it's really hard on the parents but it's also kids are losing eight hours of school so if they're losing eight hours of school they're losing eight hours of school it's a day of school and there's more disruption in a half day I'd rather see them lose one full day than four half days so I don't know if that would be considered but I think that would be a more effective use of time we we talked about that um there are a lot of we would have to go back and bargain impact of the adults at this point because so
073you have 183 days and you have 183 days of student days if we went to we'll just say the one day that would mean only um teachers teachers really and administrators because we're salaried whatever would come to work every hourly employee then would not have a need to come to work so we'd be taking away one work day from each person which is now breaking their contract so we would have to go back and collectively bargain with them which at the end of the day we're going to end up paying them for that day no matter what so that's that could be what we want to do and we pay people for basically not doing you know it could give them some PD no yeah except for that's going to cost us money yes we
074can we can give PD but it will cost us money you know it's costly yeah all PD is costly yeah nothing necessary I think I skipped you yeah so yes that is we talked about that Carrie and I talked about it I also I mean in caution I caution because I I you give something up you're never getting it back you're never getting that 183 ever again we'll never find a way to get it back and I just think we're lucky to have that 183 but if that's something that we are willing to give up um I don't recommend it I also don't want to put it it would we'd have to actually give it up we can't just put another day in like the middle or like a full day right because then um
075we'd have to make it up and it you can't do that either and then it's 188 work days instead of 187 work days and that complicates things too everything is up for in the air I mean I think at this point you know this is up to you the calendar really is up to you you could make that decision I just caution you to not decrease student days it's more than that can I just say yeah Lori go ahead I misspoke earlier I now I remember what I was so we added 12 half days for a total of 16. so before we had four now we have 16. so we added 12. so 12 more half days times three that's how much they're losing nine and a half days 36 hours but you had 25
076hours over here so they're really losing in total 11 hours the students are losing 11 hours if you compare the two calendars 33 isn't it 25 plus the eight hours 33 versus 36. Sophia I guess my so when you add up if you take if you pound up all the purples it's 25. 20 25 25 hours on so do you understand what I'm saying I'm just a math person so there's 25 hours on this side that the students lost over here it's going to be it's 36 hours so it's 11 11 hours different so to like dipti's Point earlier that that's what that's what it was bothering me and I was not verbalizing it correctly so I knew there was a gap so I guess one week when this first came up I thought that
077I I was in favor of Shifting it to half days if we didn't the students didn't lose time but they are losing time so I I personally wouldn't vote in favor of this so that I'm just that's my opinion so are we ready to take a vote on this or do we want to think do we have to do this tonight I mean we've already dragged it out to two meetings but I want to make sure it's right we've dragged it out it's really just for families so that they can start planning right we know we have to be here we know we have to come to work families are asking for the calendar so they can play on vacation we could go back and look at the other I mean it's pretty easy to
078tell you the difference between a one day I mean we can tell you that but to go through and look at all the exact hours of what they would lose we need to recalibrate like we need to go back and have time to recalibrate unless you have a better solution of what you want us to look at we could or or we can go back to the way back to the way we were doing things which Matt were you going to say something yeah there's just just a couple of kind of Summer thoughts of summary here I really like your idea I think it's cost prohibitive I think that's really ultimately the problem I I would like the idea of reducing students one day in school and using one entire day for PD I think
079there's there's a lot of value there but in the end it will cost and it's it's unfortunately money I don't think we have I mean we're freezing the budget now that's already that's already a problem so in the concept is awesome um and if it weren't for the money part I would absolutely be in your corner on that really when I look at this it comes down to two things either the the teacher's having a solid two straight hours in PD is extremely valuable for their learning so that they are in the best position to educate our students we in whatever job you have you have to go to trainings you have to learn new Concepts how they work how to implement them no matter what career you have you know teaching is just one
080other career you you have to have those those types of trainings I totally see the idea that you know with the one hours only having the one hour really the teachers are probably only accomplishing and I'm speaking as a teacher who's been through this stuff probably 45 minutes of actual PD during that time because there is set up and takedown and okay everyone time to quiet down let's pull together because when you put a room of teachers together they're just like any other students it's absolutely you know and that's just part of their professional environment so for me it comes down to really two questions here if we stay with the with the one hours with the one hour you know leaving a one hour ending or ending in one hour early that's probably the
081correct way to say that that's less effective for the instruction of the teachers but it's better for the students right because it's more it's more Hands-On in class time so that one is better for teachers worse for students the other one where we have the the the increased half days it's better for the teachers learning but worse for the students and their families so that's really ultimately we're faced with here is do we want to lean towards what's really better for the the parents and the students at the same time the argument can be made the better educated and prepared our teachers are the better prepared they are to provide a higher quality with the with the less time that they now see the students does that make sense so the students will lose eight
082hours the teachers would actually lose eight hours teaching the students and teachers see that as lost time right they they want to be teaching their students but are they teaching at a higher quality with the time that they have so I think that's really kind of what we're weighing here and you know if we do take a vote on this that's really what we're looking at is I think the two-hour block is our teachers will be enabled over time not it won't be an immediate change but over time to provide higher quality instruction but the kids will lose time FaceTime in class time with their students or with their teachers and the parents will also have the difficulty of after school care you know which we we heard from public comments tonight we're specifically one
083population student that presents even greater challenges so you know to lose lose either way and a win-win either way and I guess it's just a matter of how we decide to look at it was a terrible summary I'm sorry it was it was helpful I I think with the exception of the month that has three half day Wednesdays I was okay with it I think it's you know originally I thought there were two months but now I'm having a hard time seeing where the third is it May can I oh because it's a Friday sorry yeah sure John could we maybe compromise and maybe on those two months where we have the three do two so that we're giving back some student hours maybe find but that may month is sorry to interrupt you but
084that may month I think that's a holiday weekend right and that's why we backed it up we just backed it up yeah so I don't mind that one so much because I think that makes sense but that January three in January is kind of yeah I mean maybe if we can we can reduce one of those days we kind of split the difference on the hours sure it has nothing to do with the half days but the second week of November it just looks the way you guys have teacher conferences it's a pretty crazy week with it has um it looks like Veterans Day is on that Friday but then they have teacher conferences on Tuesday Wednesday and then or no Wednesday Thursday and then what's the seventh already a work day yeah so they
085have voting then two half days and then Veterans Day I just didn't know if if we are yeah but if we're revising I'm saying if we could just move is there a way to move the teacher conferences like a week later it just seems like a busy week we had a lot of talk about this no and also you have to be careful with um for State Statute you have to make sure that you're quarterly's end at a specific time it doesn't make a huge deal for elementary but secondary makes a big deal like you have to split them up is have it and just you know so it is about that it's it's like that stretch and we I think we kind of thought that just want like it's concentrated it's a cut yeah
086rather than spreading it out no matter what we do it's like not that great but we could change it if you I mean it just smells like Lori I just want to go back to that I mean we talked about this with the understanding that we wouldn't be losing student time and that's not really what's proposed so um what if you took away some of those half days so that you got it back to so you didn't have 16. I'm just throwing an idea out there just so you could still transition to the half day but not as many of them so that you get it down so that the numbers are equal so they're not losing student time we can do that I mean that doesn't mean we're losing PD time is equal because
087what about just one last day well no because what we're compensating for is that time after school that the teachers are eating lunch and so that now is being replaced with professional development time as taking the professional development time as opposed to having the students release right so it's it's a loss of PD time which we can we can do you know like I'm I'm just saying that it is a loss of PD time doing that it just bothers me that there's 11 hours it's 11 hours difference because that's not that's not when we had asked you to do that it was with the understanding that the students weren't going to lose time so 11 hours is a lot of time so what would be um I I think and correct me if I'm wrong
088if we try to make up all the Lost student time in this half day schedule we're never going to get done what we plan to accomplish so we stick with the one but it's not no because it's not in PD they can't because of the way the contract is because when they're eating lunch it's they can't be working it's uninterrupted uh time so while they're eating they can't have PD which so I would say if we were going to do that and I hear Lori completely I would say stick with the schedule on the left right because this is more professional development time for lunch and there's no you know it's right it's a little bit more hustling around we make it work to the best of our ability but we have to make sure
089that we provide our teachers with an under you know interrupted uh hour lunch does this new this new schedule on the right account for your assumption that we'll be implementing a new reading program so if we weren't necessarily because that's kind of up in the air and we took some time away and then could add it later right well what what we're doing is we're taking there's not it's there's not necessarily more of it it's just different because we had we're stopping the current reading curriculum writing and replacing it with the science of reading professional development because that's what we were working on but it's no longer relevant so we stopped that and we're going to replace it with this so it's not necessarily that there's more it's just we're doing different things with that
090time okay very little so yeah we can't take anything off of the schedule I think we take one half day away I think the months were I mean I think it would be a benefit enough if if we wanted to say this is my personal opinion I think if we wanted to take one half day away I think the benefit of having those chunks of time outweigh would outweigh a half missing a half day that's just personally to me I think that is a is an okay compromise so would anyone want to move toward that option take one one of the half days away and move toward this calendar or do we want to stick with the other calendar we're still missing eight hours of student time understood I think it's a compromise Jen I
091mean I think I would want to eliminate two if we were gonna do that but then you'd rather then we're stuck with the one hour schedule no not necessarily If you eliminate two Oh I thought we were no no no Lori was asking we were talking about eliminating making it equal time because we were saying there's 11 hours If you eliminate two then you're making up six hours so you're losing five and we're splitting the difference right yeah so in that case I just want to make sure so the okay hold on my brain hurts we've looked at this 500 times okay I think you should take away a January and may there's three in January that's what my recommendation would be would be to take January 24th no I would leave maybe that one
092because people will like that one people will January 24th 24th is that out oh January 24th no the May one is backed up to Memorial Day I think January January 24th and the 22nd of May those are the two that I was thinking before you pull the 22nd of May there are the standardized like AP exams that fall those are the first two weeks of May yeah and we picked yeah and we picked there in the morning then before the kids get released from school yeah there might be one on the 8th today so that's why I'm thinking is the eighth really a good day I don't know to Andrew did you I I don't know actually schedule a good question AP testing and 2023. it's calc a b are they in the morning noon
093start time the Avenue definitely want the second week and it would be in the morning or would it be potentially in the afternoon okay yeah so then that's that's the one we'd have to so we could switch so we could because otherwise we'd have two in one week we don't want to do that we would go to May 15 we'd get rid of the eighth and have a full day we'd go to May 15th for a half day we'd get rid of the 20 second and we'd keep the 24th so the half days would be the 15th and the 24th that month does that make sense to every yeah neither one of these is ideal for everyone unfortunately and there's no way around that there never is it's really hard okay would anyone like to
094make a motion on what we just talked about to get rid of the motion what a motion to approve that would be eliminated reference D with eliminating those two Wednesdays eliminate January 24th and also move the 8th to the 15th and add the 15th is there a second all in favor opposed opposed I'm opposed extensions okay motion carries um calendars approved I'm sorry oh yes oh how could we forget about Columbus Day was that it okay um we had some time to think about and do our own research whether we wanted to update the calendar to reflect indigenous people's day or maintain Columbus Day so I hope you've all had time to do that and let's make a decision on this would anyone like to make a motion in either direction I make a motion
095to go to uh get rid of Columbus indigenous people day okay is there a second to that okay the motion is dead would anyone else like to make a motion okay by Kelly is there a second all in favor opposed extension sure by Jen and by Catherine okay motion carries it will remain Columbus Day sure yeah we ran out of colors are looking at it was that everything on the calendar that we had to change discuss okay we don't need to right because it's part of us okay all right new business item a brief overview of the science of reading curriculum legislation by Dr McLean everyone do not let your blood boil with the State Department of Education or were you it is blood boiling curdling actually uh so Carrie's going to give you an
096update of where we stand it's very important for you to understand we thought we were going to be able to keep this at Bay as a state however we are not it is important for you to understand the large impact this will have um financially and right so there's two pieces to it really in terms of financial implications we have to implement a new reading screener which we have now um gotten a quote for and it's uh I think it's about seventy five hundred dollars and we have been looking into curriculums and as of now it's looking like between 303 30. there to do a full implementation yeah we want to obviously the the legislation is for K3 we want to obviously have a consistent reading program K through five we could stagger the implementation
097which we may end up having to do but that will cost us more in the long run because we'll have to provide professional development to two sets of teachers instead of one so if we train all the teachers at once we would save on professional development costs if we stagger it there it would cost more but we'd be able to to push it over a couple years though that's what our options are now we're still looking at programming and we're still getting quotes we're hoping that we have materials that we've been looking through um you know I've talked about this before the speed of implementation on this is just completely unreasonable but I don't see that we're going to have a choice in it we're going to apply for the waiver to get the extension
098for the year but like Dr macri said next year we have to train our teachers because they can't just show up in September and teach and do reading program and so we're going to have to get materials so that they can get professional development for next year for The Following fall implementation of the reading program we've been working with the Consortium to the Middlesex Consortium to see if you know the districts that are in there involved with that if we all decide on the same program or if some of us do then maybe we can save some costs there in terms of professional development so there's still questions but I just wanted to make you aware of the enormous Financial impact that this is having and it's not just us this is every district is
099going through this um I forget what the number is of districts that are using the programs but it's a it's a very small number um so most districts in the state are being you know faced with this um this is not the way I would do it um but it's legislation any questions dipty depends and that's a that's another like huge part because just now like the teachers really like iready so we're going to take that away from them and it's just the thought of doing that is but some programs do have their own Blended learning program we would still need a benchmark assessment but we may not use it as a personalized learning program so that is potentially something that's on the table that it might replace it like how is it like essentially
100different from whatever program you choose from what you're doing now like whatever so right now we use the workshop model right now we use a workshop model with a lot they use the workshop yes we have a we have functions right we're just not there's much more um phonemic awareness and kind of direct instruction for reading and it's it's a big pedagogical shift um you know as well as a curriculum shift which is you which is why really this should take some time to necessarily saying we agree with it as a matter of fact Carrie myself and and Amy who I'd like to say are know a lot about this this is the way we always taught yeah I don't disagree we don't disagree the legislative trying to shift a district that has not necessarily
101done it that way to becoming a district that's done it that way when they just spent you I say they this District before I got here five years ago half a million dollars made me more to go towards this workshop model which I would have never allowed you've never allowed you to do it but it's here and our teachers have been incredible with adapting to the changes so that it's more um it's more brain based learning right phonemic awareness is a it's it's just completely missing we've lost the phonics piece but we've brought it in yeah we have we have pieces of it not everything right even if we kept well even okay yeah there are still things that are missing from our curriculum that we are not doing that we need to add to
102the curriculum so in the past the state in the past when the state has come up with um the huge like you're implementing something that costs half a million dollars they usually will let you prove to them that what you're doing will meet those requirements we've done that millions of times so I feel like I've done that for I did that for a full-time job for five years in the alliance District they're not bending on this and on this it's really kind of a it's kind of circular logic because in order so we could fill out this additional waiver that says here what we're doing meets all this criteria or it could but what they're requiring is data from the screener that nobody is using to prove that gaps are being closed so it's sort
103of a waste of energy to to put yeah we're going to do it but to put the waiver forward because already we're we don't have the assessment that they're looking for in order for us to provide the data to show that we're making progress so the official waiver Amy I don't think it's come out yet oh yeah yeah we've been we've been waiting we have an older copy that we're working off of that we're just kind of doing our own audit of of where we are but it's it's going to change and um you know we're we're going to do the very best that we can to do this in the most fiscally responsible way and to provide our teachers with the support that they need um to to make this effective um but not
104only us but many districts are in a situation where this implementation is is not the timeline is not conducive to doing this wow and speaking with some of my colleagues I do what I'm told so I work for the state department of education they sign off my certificate I am supposed to do what I'm told to do some of my colleagues are saying we are not budgeting for it we we can't you're going to see the huge increase in our budget and they're going to take it out of their budget and they're going to see where everything lands that's I you know I need a job some of these people have been doing this for 35 years or more it's a little different um but that's where we are we are at education with legislation
105the legislators are have way too much power over education and they don't understand it there it's become a political platform for people to switch out things um and it's it's getting worse by the day there are Boards of Ed who have gone up I think to the State Board of Education and lobbied against this like I said caps is out there making a huge waves like a lawsuit kind of waves but it's worse it seems like it could be worse than the financial cost because we've been instructing our youngest our youngest students to learn to read in one way and now we're going to be required to throw that away and have them use a completely different technique so we're going to ask them to basically stop learning to read the way that we've been
106teaching you and now do this new way so they're not going to have no Foundation to do that like you can't make a change that quickly you need it needs to be gradual these kids are going to be Shell Shocked the only thing Matt the only thing that we have as a Saving Grace is that you have pretty awesome curriculum people who have been doing this from the second we walked into the district because Lucy clockkins has we have never been a fan of Lucy Hawkins we came here and it became you better become a fan of Lucy clockkins and then figure out how we're going to teach all the other stuff that kids need to know we didn't drink that we didn't drink the Kool-Aid like a lot of people drank the Kool-Aid we
107never drank the Kool-Aid we still believed in phonics phonemic awareness fluency vocabulary all the true Essentials of learning how to teach reading so when we came here the first thing Kerry and I did was almost cry and say we have a lot of work to do and our teachers have worked like honestly when I say they have worked incredibly hard yeah incredibly hard to make the shifts slowly that we need to make that are aligned with what we need to do except for we don't need a 330 000 program to make us do that we I am pretty confident in Amy and Kerry's skill set and my big mouth who's constantly you know making sure but they know what they're doing but we don't have a choice so your your your aunts your to answer
108your question we're a little better off than we than we think in that respect because we never fell for we never drink the Lucy Calkins Kool-Aid in the first place we were only a year yeah and we were only a year like that happened and then we came in and we're like oh no no we have to fix this now and we have made modifications to it and we have added supplemental curriculum materials to it um assessments yeah and but it still doesn't check all of the marks that we need in order to follow this new model and even if it did the state is saying you have to have one of these seven programs so right that's the end of the discussion is that we don't have that program and we need it so
109did that new program does it mean less phonics for the kids more or more phonics more so you if you use foundations you can keep no you can't keep that foundations is not on the list either foundations isn't even on the list and we have seen years I mean we have data from two different districts and probably I mean just two that we've looked at of an increase in in reading ability for kids especially K one and two and it's not even on the list so that's disheartening because it makes you feel as if these book companies are there's a deal going on here somewhere and that's what's the frustrating piece of it is that not everybody knows how to do it and do it well I'm not going to say we're going to be
110great at it it takes time but I think we were on our way to doing it well without being assigned a basal reader and a program that says here you have to buy this but if if the state says it and there are plenty people fighting this fight like even just today Dr mcary sent me a survey from caps about you know what is the cost going to be and they're they're trying to survey districts and you know make a case to the um State Department that this is this is the fiscal implications of requiring something like this and so there's still fight happening but in the meantime budget is no right like we we have to budget and we have attorney Ritter here this evening I'm sure she can give you her feedback and
111how she feels about it because Shipman and Goodwin has been making very good arguments about whether this is basically against the law to have having this being pushed upon us with the help of cat you know they're helping us so there's arguments being there's arguments and I don't know where the fight will land but I know that what is legislation now and budget season means that we have to be considering this right now and when would be a good time to maybe Circle back on it on the status of everything going on everybody yeah I can give you an update I mean I don't know that much will change um but I can still you know tell you nothing has changed if you you know just no I mean if there's something that is reportable
112then we'll wait until then okay okay all right thank you all right next we have facilities Culinary Kitchen update and for that we have our new employee Melinda St John director facilities is that on it's a red light I want to sing when I get up here I can't sing um for The Culinary Kitchen as many of you probably know this has been dragging on for a little bit of time there were supply issues and raw materials and so forth and I'm happy to say that tomorrow at one o'clock the building inspector health department and the fire marshal are coming to do an inspection so we should get our Co tomorrow knock wood so we're in pretty good shape little nudging everyone thank you any questions any questions about that but you really worked fast
113on that good job thank you well welcome and I'm sure we'll be hearing more at Future meetings and all of the work that you're doing for us so thank you thank you very much thank you all right moving on to the Carmel High School program of studies reference e in your packet and for that we have Mr cuckle all right good evening not too many changes unlike last year's um we have the cover sheet here uh the biggest change that I would say is that we added uh some items here uh one thing is just clubs and activities that we offer at the high school that came out of our parent advisory meeting as just we we needed more ways to publicize to parents and students what we offer at the high school so we
114do have all of our clubs and activities are in the program of studies as well as our career Pathways programs and the only noticeable removal would be two ECE courses Yukon Stats and UConn individual and family development and again those courses are really based on each individual teacher qualification so as you lose teachers with that explicit skill set then you can no longer offer the course it is different than AP AP is can be taught by essentially anybody uh with the with the proper certification whereas ECE is a little bit more complicated but other than that those are the main additions uh and and we did revise the Connecticut automatic admissions program language in there but other than that it would look pretty similar to last year's where we had a lot of changes so
115that would just that could be added back in should we gain a teacher that's that yeah that's and with ECE classes yes we can have those can be offered at many different points assuming we have teachers with the right certification on that are there any other questions Jen you know I love a program studies I know yes um so okay just a couple things I noticed um just go through and maybe this is for a reason but um grade levels missing in some on some of these and course level I noticed in like the music department there was some intro to theater we'll paigeon so page 34 35 36 like if you look at um guitar is a good example there's no grade level or course level listed oh yes okay so there was a
116few of those so just go through all of it because I noticed it in a a few other areas too and then um just one question about course levels I think last year and correct me if I'm wrong I think you would mention that electives were all going to be changed to level one yes is there a reason why some of the art ones are still level two shouldn't be they should all be level one in there but yeah I can make those changes those should all be level one and then on the on 16 and 17 all the proper levels are indicated in terms of what level each class is uh so that is like your um your go-to but we will update the rest of that way they reflect the same changes but
117with art they're all level one and then you have your honors class which is AP um 2D Art and Design but the other ones yeah we can make those edits in there before we go public thank you thank you oh and I'm as always impressed by how many classes we have for such a small school it's awesome thank you any other questions okay thank you very much thank you Jen for noticing those I can barely see it um all right so new business item d new club Cromwell Middle School Unity Club reference F in your packet and do we have oh Mr glowa Right what's this thing hi everybody hi all right so I know I'm the guy who usually spends a lot of time talking even though I say I'm not going to spend
118a lot of time talking but I promise this time I will because both my kids are at home uh with uh uh possibly RSV so I told my wife that I'd be out for milk um so you can all think of some excuse for when I come back two hours later after our calendar discussion so my goodness Unity Club uh uh following in the steps of the high school program uh so Unity Club is really a twofold program which is essentially creating a safe space for all students so it's mainly focusing on providing Equity to our students in a safe space where they can come and feel like they're not the only ones in the school who are facing issues within and without of the community uh it helps build confidence within themselves and we're
119also the second approach is really focusing on um action projects for ways that we can improve the schools a sense of equity uh currently we're looking at something uh called The Cromwell closet which would provide clothing for students who do not have relatively access to clothing and looking for exchange programs with other schools because for all the parents in here I'm sure if you ever saw the lost and found at the schools it is completely overwhelmed and loaded and so instead of having our clothes be reused for the chroma closet instead exchanging with another school so that way when a kid's walking down the hallway they're not like oh you're wearing my sweatshirt but it's a completely different school so we can exchange those and that way like everyone can have access to more clues
120um we are also looking for just uh oh my gosh I forgot our other big program our Action project I lost it it's gone but I promise it was amazing yeah so uh essentially like uh it's really falling in the footsteps of the high skill program uh the middle school program is just kind of like a continuation of bridge that's the other thing uh mentorship programs so uh working with uh our ECS and whisk Compadres over here uh having connections between our Equity coming down to the lower levels to provide a mentorship program for the little ones so yeah and will you be also um having the high school students come down yes yes the middle schools so actually the um the the kind of founders of the equity Club at the middle school are
121actually even though they're uh freshmen they're actually the presidents of the equity Club at the high school so okay uh we've already been in communication with each other and so we're looking to bridge our connections great thank you very much you're welcome this is something we need to approve tonight it's not an action um actually you just have to all right let me see teacher Board of Education must approve I'm sorry I didn't even realize that yet you must approve it before the club activities actually implemented oh geez can we imagine Jessica can I add an action item I didn't even realize this yeah attorney Ritter can I add an action item in the middle I didn't realize we needed okay motion to add the agenda item to Second all in favor I did pose
122extension motion carries and I just had one comment uh you can tell your wife that the store was out of milk you had to stop at a local farm and harvest it yourself milk it yes yes good I like it good it will not be believed but I will say it just restate it that create a new club the Carmel Middle School Unity Club would that be right okay motion from Catherine second from Lori all in favor opposed extensions motion carries congratulations and thank you thank you very much forget the milk do not forget the milk oh good yes all right item e approval of minutes and motions from our November 15th regular meeting reference G is there a motion to approve I heard Catherine I saw Alan all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries
123the minutes are approved informational Human Resources Personnel activity reference H any questions on that yes sir sure I would just like to say thank you um we have Claire Hatfield who was on um last month's uh agenda it was as a resignation but we confirmed it's a retirement um she is going to be retiring after being with the district and at many schools uh for seven years an administrative assistant we wish her well her husband just retired as well they have a little baby on the way um I know her can you tell uh so I'm excited extremely excited for her to to start on this adventure ahead of her but we thank her for all of her service and um we will definitely miss her I asked her if she'll come back and sub
124for us and she says no not right now but she might change her mind in the future so we wish Claire Hatfields well and especially miss her at graduation um and then Mr Owen Watson who has been with the district for 17 years and Mr Watson is retiring as well and um incredibly excited for him as he says he's going to pursue moving back to where he um was born on an island so we are all very jealous of him it sounds beautiful but we wish him the very best and thank you for his 17 years of service to Cromwell Public Schools as well yes on behalf of the board we also thank both of our retirees it's amazing and wish them the best in their retirement I had one question I noticed in the
125vacancies it says special education teacher for ECS and then it says hired outside contractor because of no applications what does that mean is that so sub agency so that means basically we we received no applications from the outside or internal so we sometimes go through reg whether it's crack Aces ease con and we hire one it's an outside contractor that will come in and we do that with a lot of different positions that we're not able to fill some most the time it's long-term sub positions um this is the first time that we were not able to find someone we've been pretty lucky but we still have the position up and we hope that someone will eventually apply for it but this person will be in place until that time correct happens okay thank you
126any other questions while Michelle's up there Lori um there's also the position the supervisor of special education and it says District Grant funded what exactly is that that is the current position we have now and the person that was in this position actually decided to go back into the classroom so we have it empty we have posted oh no actually we have not posted the position as of yet it was a grant funded or a funded position only till June 30th so we are holding off but we would like to post it um and what building was that it's district-wide the supervisor is special ed is district-wide so okay so it it's not I know um we hired oh gosh yeah names right now but no no it's a Personnel um batter and we is
127it okay yes Jess loves teaching and uh she wants to go back to the classroom and we wish her well we can't thank her enough for everything she has done and helped us out during a very difficult time and she's going to continue to help us but a position opened a special education teaching position open where she started and she'd like to go back to her roots and I think there's some days I'd like to be a grade four teacher again too so I completely understand um well thank you for all that you did in that position and best of luck to you so I didn't mean to put you on the spot I was yeah I just I was I didn't realize it was you I thought it was that's why I was asking
128is this another position so thank you so much for everything okay okay Kelly how many um math interventionists do we currently have at WIS because I see two positions now need to be filled how so who do we have once this last person leaves do we still have math interventionists okay so does that mean less kids would get it available right now until these get okay oh sorry is your mic on no sorry the labor market is very difficult right now so um we have been very lucky in the past but I definitely see the applications declining it's it's been a very difficult time and I know this is something that we always say it's not just our district it's other districts but I mean it's it's all over you see it in every industry
129right now it's it's hard to find help um and we are see we are starting to feel it in in Cromwell um unfortunately some of the positions that were part-time that were either um Educators that might have decided to go home and have a family and wanted to work part-time or stay-at-home parents or someone who has retired they're just not coming back into the workforce so we do see that labor market declining um I'm hoping over time it will change those were two part-time positions correct so so we wouldn't want to look to make that do you think it would be more appealing if it were a full-time position it would definitely be more appealing but it affects your funding because when you go over 30 hours you have to offer benefits right so it
130it's because it's a grant funded position we're only allotted so much of a dollar amount and that those hours are allotted so we're very careful about you know the hours okay in a perfect world we would have a certified teacher providing intervention in a certified teaching position which would by the time you pay for benefits and salaries we've been lucky in the education world for a very long time especially with Elementary because so many of us including myself I had to wait a half a year before I got hired and I prayed every single day that I would get a job that's not the case anymore everyone is working everyone is working and teachers um who may be doing intervention or long-term subbing we pick them up very quickly as full-time positions this is only
131the start of it I think the next few years are going to be really difficult in education any other questions um Matt the the supervisor of special education is I I know that it's Grant funded is it fully Grant funded or do we pay a portion no right now so this is a conversation I was going to have with you during budget session um we are posting it as a um for the rest of the year because that's what we agree to as a board we cannot go without a supervisor of special education with CT saids and all of the mandates that we have through State Department of Education um and just things that have changed over time and especially over the last two years we cannot do the director cannot do the job on
132her own so we we are going to need to look at the Hard reality of needing a supervisor of special education we had money grant money because of um you know covid and we've used all that money it's gone so we will be putting it in the Lea and we'll have that conversation um during budget season season I feel that it's unfair to um to basically do that to anyone right now because the truth is we voted on a budget this is what you voted on you have a right to the administrative positions I can come to and say we need to look for something I might I might come to you and say no one applied it's only a six months six month position no one's going to leave their their District or leave
133their position if they know it's not going to be permanent so we don't have anybody so I may be coming to you um with with that cry but right now we're going to try and see if there's anybody who's interested in a six-month position and we'll see what we get we will post it the way it is we have to give it a shot for financial purposes only and in the meantime theories on her own she's on her own with all of us pitching in and helping I know more about Transportation than I've ever wanted to know in my entire life Michelle knows more about what I have to do Carrie knows more about politics than she's ever wanted to know we are all doing the best that we absolutely can with doing more than
134than we have to and that's what's happening Siri will not be able to manage it a lot of the things that we've been doing that are positive multi-tiered systems of support so srbi where special education and regular education work very closely together that's going to take a step back and and we were making some great progress um so no Siri cannot do it alone we need someone else and I need more money and we don't have any and that's the bottom line in a nutshell okay any other questions on that report all right thank you Michelle next informational principal reports reference I J K L any questions on those oh we do have one mistake we do have one mistake Alan but we caught it we do have um a tuition student at CMS so
135that zero should actually be one um and reference J we have one student tuitioning in from another district and hopefully we'll have we have another one that's very interested and so we may end up having two in the future um and they pull they pay full tuition which is a little over sixteen thousand dollars to attend Cromwell Public Schools has that ever happened I know what's again isn't it great no I'm kidding it has happened where um other districts for for certain reasons of something that may be happening with a student will tuition into another District through law through uh litigious situation and the school district pays for it we have never had a family come to us and say we would like to enroll we've had people come but then when they find out
136how much it is they say well they could send their kid to a private school for less money however people want the diversity people want the access to the programming that we have and for a small District we do have access to a lot of programming and it's very uh it's very appealing so right now we do have one student tuitioning in and we have had had quite a few people ask but we finally have our one the parents pay for it yes and this yes yeah we're awesome we're worth the 16 000 now I'm kidding it's about I think right now tuition is in 16 223 that's off the top of my head but I don't know if that's exact yeah we've got the last meeting that's approximate yes approximate all right are we
137ready to move on to the policies second read a second read and possible approval physical restraint and seclusion of students and use of exclusionary timeout series 5000 policy from shipment reference M this has gone through the policy committee and came to us our first read now it's on for second read is there a motion to approve it or any questions all in favor opposed extensions and it is approved and Item B second reading possible approval policy regarding student use of the district's computer systems and Internet safety series 5000 policy from shipment reference n any questions is there a motion to approve Lori second gen all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries those policies are both approved and then we have some on for first read items a through f are there any questions on any
138of those for the first read we could take them individually if you'd like but we will also have a chance for a second read who does oh I'm sorry I'm looking at reference oh the use of commercially or home produced video recordings by by teachers as instructional and on the it I read it a couple times it looks pretty good the only thing I would um eight was changed to item eight was changed to item seven on it and it says administrators must approve video use and it's crossed out and says when deemed appropriate that's fine but do we want to have just do we want to have teachers just make administrators aware if they're using materials that aren't commonly used I'm just thinking you know I would hate to have a teacher use something
139that they think is totally fine then get a bunch of parent complaints and then the administrator didn't know what's happening and we had a long discussion about this in policy and basically teachers we felt used so many different sources all the time it would be really excessive to submit everything to Administration is that everyone else's recollection so that was kind of the compromise there instead of in all sorts I just you know sometimes even the best judgment is second guessed by others someone always encourage people to share something and it is difficult especially today because we use things often everything and so sometimes there's ads and you don't know what the ads are going to be so really previewing it and we have conversations with teachers especially new teachers it could be anybody but so
140does the teachers union has those conversations with them as well of being very careful but you're right we've thought about that ad nauseam at nauseum yes all right no other questions on the second read policies then we'll move on to board committee reports policy committee we have referenced you which are the meeting minutes and then facilities and Technology we have none topics for future agendas and possible approval possible action to approve additional topics does anyone have anything they would like to have put on an agenda in the future or anything that you do Dr macri no okay then we'll just go around quickly and then we do have an executive session so we'll go around and if there are any comments updates or announcements we'll start with Kelly this time dipty Kelly Catherine and uh
141Lori oh everyone's all talked out okay then I hope I read this correctly let me get my notes out all right so is there a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing records of strategy from the teachers contract negotiations as well as discuss and take possible action on the teacher's success or contract for the 2023 through 2026 no I'm sorry and just invite all right for the teacher negotiations contract and Carrie for curriculum and Jessica Ritter sorry okay and the third item is executive session to discuss an attorney-client privileged memorandum that discusses the options available and possible action to the board regarding its Transportation agreement and an executive session for the purpose of discussion concerning an attorney-client communication regarding steps for addressing a parental request under board policies 6114 and 6161
142proposed for executive session and invited it into those would be Michelle tomorrow Ian Burke Carrie McLean Jessica Ritter and Dr macri so the first that will be we would need Michelle for the first item just Michelle and and Dr macri first and second item and then we'll have someone go out and get the next okay so is there a motion to approve the executive session dipty second Matt all in favor opposed extensions we are now in foreign I'll hand it to you when I need you to read that motion yeah oh are we all set thank you okay we are now out oh can I have a motion to come out of executive session Allen all in favor opposed extensions we are back in at 10 37. public session we need to add a new
143action item so would anyone like to make the motion to let's see we have an action regarding a parent request under policy 6161.1 and 6144.1 didn't we'd like to make that Motion Kelly Alan are you writing that down thank you okay all in favor opposed absentions all right the new agenda item is added next let me hand this to you now okay I think we need to do the teachers one first um one second the teachers do you have the teachers it's not the motion oh here it is it's on the back okay is there a motion to approve the tentative agreement between the teachers union and the board for a success or contract 2023 through 2026. 50 second by Jen all in favor opposed extensions motion carries and it is approved third one here
144number two number two okay even though it's three um is it a motion or a move you're gonna make the motion okay emotion the move that the board authorizes the board chair to respond in collaboration with legal counsel to the parents request under policies 6161.1 and 6144.1 in a manner consistent with the terms discussed in executive session is there a motion second all right so motion by mat second by Allen all in favor opposed abstentions okay thank you and then lastly regarding the dacco contract is there a motion to authorize the superintendent to negotiate contract for a period of five years by Jen second by Kelly all in favor opposed extensions motion carries motion temperature and is there a motion to adjourn Motion Kelly is there a second motion um Jen all in favor I
145posed