Cromwell BoE Meeting April 5, 2022 6:30PM

001everyone i call this meeting to order at 6 32 pm this is our special meeting um alessandra would you please take roll caller um sure you can add them to the roll call yes okay thank you all right next is the approval of our agenda additions deletions we don't have any because it's a special agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda as it is dipty second by catherine all in favor pose abstentions motion carries agenda is approved under new business tonight we have action item a and that's approval of the updated cms building specs which you should have a copy of in front of you we do have um from our building committee our chairperson rosanna glenn here tonight if you could also actually add her to the roll call please and so

002we've previously approved these ed specs um but there were some changes made and we'll have to also look through them tonight and see if we are wanting to approve them so that we can move forward and there are changes although i think our copy is not highlighted so do you want to go through the changes or do you want to call up rosanna how do you want to do that i think having rosanna go through it would be a good idea i just want um to remind the board these as we go along we have our building committee meetings other things come up and rosanna could talk about that people from the public are speaking and they're making recommendations and then we're looking into them and i think it's really important for everyone to know

003that even if the recommendation is made we want to make sure it's part of the ed spec whether we decide that we could afford it as a town or not afford it but we have to be mindful and sometimes it's i'm preaching to the choir because those of us that are sitting here understand we have to be mindful that when we make recommendations to either add or change something there are certain things that are reimbursable at the rate in which rosanna will explain and then other things that will not be reimbursable by the state so it's something that we will have to then move forward and go to town council and board of finance to get an approval for and then um most likely a referendum to get an approval from there is not um

004there is a formula that we use but eighty three thousand three hundred and thirteen square feet of this building is reimbursable because that's the formula for the amount of students that were allowed through the state grant anything above that is not reimbursable so we're going to talk about some of the things that we we all want everything right i'll be the first one to say it i'm your superintendent i want everything for our kids everyone knows i i don't live here i'm not a taxpayer here i pay a lot of taxes in the next town over and i have a lot of this stuff and it it's tough you have to make a big decision our decision really is to look at what the school programmatically needs and then it's the town's decision to make

005the decision make that decision if they want that or they don't want that um what we're doing and what i'm going to tell you what rosanna is going to share with you is what do the kids need but then what have community members come out and spoken out about as a community um that they would like to see that doesn't mean we say 100 we have to have it that doesn't mean 100 we don't have to have it it's really up to all of you who live here it's up to the town council it's up to the referendum at the end of the day so i think it's really important to know that if we change the ed specs to say one thing or another there's there's one big area of um if you want

006it's karen that we're going to talk about and make a decision that doesn't mean because the board said yes we're going to do this we're going to look into it it's going to happen it possibly can change and everything can change right up until the last minute until we submit our grant so i think it's important to know that we may be back here again and say hey we included this in the ed specs the problem is is that if it's not included in the n specs then we're gonna the chances are we'll have a harder time getting reimbursed and the state obviously you all know isn't an upheaval in this department so we want to make sure we get it right um that doesn't mean that things are not going to change as we

007go along we're going to have to look at this quite a few times and we're definitely going to have to look at it as we write the grant and submit the grant in june if we get that far once the grant is submitted then it gets a little bit stickier so we want to make sure that we do a really good job um but we still have time to make changes and talk and as a matter of fact i spoke with a town manager and said it would be a really great idea if we can have mirian sylvester the director of finance come and explain so if you if you us we the town all of us um add an extra thousand square feet right and it's not reimbursable what does that mean well the

008town will be hooked up be on the hook for and then how does that play out over a 10-year period a 20-year period a 30-year period so the you have more knowledge and meaning the building committee and most of you so many of you and i'm so thankful you really are you're going above and beyond and you're coming to all these meetings um but we have to keep that in mind too as we make these decisions we want everything i want everything of course i'm going to be the first one to say i want everything for our kids but i think we also have to be very mindful about what is affordable and what um the town is willing to support and it and then at the end of the day it's up to the

009people that live here to make that decision which includes all of you so i just want to start off with that before rosanna gets into the weeds about some of the changes um and then she could just give you an update about everything else so rosanna if you want to take over feel free do you mind coming up to the podium so it's carrying on so that you can be live streamed but she said all right so the last digital copy i have is from march 29th but i believe there was another one submitted this week yeah okay but there are changes that i know of that went in um one of them was the number of classrooms so we did an audit of the classroom quantity to make sure that it matched so 34

010total and that's right we confirmed that okay um let me get pick up my email i should have done this before so there are a lot of little things when um the building committee went to go visit colchester we noted a couple things that we liked let me find my email sorry i had it up and then i closed it so as as we go through this process the building committee is visiting schools so we were able to visit um colchester middle school um and of course as like i had said you don't know what you don't know until you go around and start visiting of things that that are not are not in our schools or that would be really nice to have in our schools is it a need is it a want

011will it support the program is it something the nice thing that we noticed is they they have a room that is just for coding that was built and planned for over six seven years ago now that's not needed because it's integrated into interdisciplinary so you don't need a separate room for that so that's a cost savings that a lot of schools that started doing steam or stem over the last few years have a coating and we realize we don't need a coding room because it's integrated into the robotics and the kids have everything right in front of them now which wasn't so back then so that's just something that we noticed that's an expense that was a pretty big expense that we don't need we don't need to have okay all right so one of

012the things we had asked about was uh teacher microphone systems for accessibility that's already included yes so that's included that's included um practice rooms for the band there are two practice rooms that he was able to wheedle in there 50 square feet each so that should be in that spec now um we had asked about so in the um what's that class called intervention um no where the students learn how to cook but not the homeless not the homick one for um the special needs what's it called the life skills thank you my brain was not working right there so for life skills we had asked about um washer dryer in addition and roger stated that you basically get an allowance for all of that so as long as it fits within the allowance you

013can put whatever you want in there for the most part um and then cafeteria storage we opted not to pursue that any further because it would take away square footage from other areas so the tables do fold up you just put them against the wall and that should just be good enough and then we did add outdoor seating for the cafeteria we want to make sure that was included they should have also included netting and fencing for the soccer field as well as the dimensions of the soccer field that should be in there somewhere probably under outdoor or something okay um so well so yeah so while you're looking at that the other big um point of discussion is the auditor so um for the building committee meeting later we do have a before and

014after comparison of what the current stage and auditorium sizing is in the middle school versus what we're going to with the ed spec the biggest [Music] difference right now is that the stage currently at the middle school is 300 square feet and the proposed one in the ed spec is 900 square feet the reason why it's 900 square feet is twofold one is that you're trying to still stay within that eighty three thousand square foot allowance and secondly anytime the stage goes beyond a thousand square feet it requires additional infrastructure support so if we wanted to have a stage that was similar in size to the current stage it would cost us somewhere between three and four hundred thousand dollars extra that would not be reimbursed by the state so why do we need a

015larger stage well if you talk to teachers and performers today they would claim that the current middle school stage is small just as is so going smaller seems rather ludicrous in my opinion that's just my opinion um so um that's something that the the building committee is going to talk about does it have to be in the ed spec today um i would say no that could be something that we discuss or vote on later but i would say before we go to the town for any kind of vote we definitely need to figure that out um so the billing committee today is going to be talking at length about it um the larger stage the the audientorium itself is going to be slightly smaller so i don't remember the exact numbers but i think

016the current square footage of the auditorium i want to say is 3700 square feet and we're going to i say 35-ish square 100 square feet so you could potentially lose about 100 seats in that space the ed spec has a minimum requirement of 250 seats the current auditorium has 490 seats i believe our desire was to have 500 seats so that we can fit the entire school population as well as some teachers can actually sit as opposed to having to stand during these sessions that they have so again if you if if we wanted to expand on the actual auditorium size we would have to go and exceed that 8 300 square foot 83 000 square foot limit that we have based on the state standards and that would just come out of the um

017the town the town the town would have to pay for that um so why is the auditorium so important it is a central focus it's a community area and our community citizens as well as business businesses utilize it as well as well as a student population so it's not just for the students it's for the whole community and if you're ten dollar building you know to skimp on the one main focus of the building one of the main focuses of the building just seems a little short-sighted in my opinion all my with the um the building committee and again i think the biggest deterrent is cost that's pretty much the only reason why you wouldn't want to go down that path as far as space is concerned we have plenty of space for it the

018auditoriums would be situated in the front of the building um and yeah 35 thank you so that you could extend it out if you had to the front side of the auditorium or the back side of the stage i should say would [Music] um amphitheater which is really nice so you can have outdoor shows or events and and you'd have access to the specs end of the stage um which i think is pretty cool and that is already included in that spec we oh that was the other thing that i changed is moving the amphitheater outdoors yes okay so there with the current layout we do have a storage of 600 square feet which today we only have 250 square feet so one of the biggest complaints was that we don't have enough storage with

019the current stage so we're gonna have plenty of storage now um with the new setup um we do have the layout was provided but it's not we don't have the prints for this meeting so it looks similar it's just that the stage is going to become much more narrower so that extra 400 square feet that you lose with the new design actually comes off the side wings as opposed to like the depth so that is what we're going to be discussing it's not going to be it's not going to change that spec today and in reality it really doesn't impact um you know the grant paperwork i should call it but it does impact what we go to referendum with or town vote with so that in the ad specs i'm sorry it's on page

020six oh my god i have to picture eighteen 18. if you look at page 18 so we had five different options right it was um leave it as is so it's important for everyone to know the history you know it work better than i do um it used to be a high school the middle school used to be high school so it was built with a larger square footage for the auditorium um the gymnasium and the stage since then in many iterations of it it could change by next year we don't know as far as what the state says is reimbursable and not reimbursable the stage and the auditorium for reimbursement for high schools is a bigger space in middle school it's not so if we're building from scratch and that's what the committee voted

021on to start to build another building you're now going to be building a smaller stage and a smaller auditorium because that's what is typical for a middle school what we have now is not typical that doesn't mean we don't use it and and put it to really good use we do and we still feel in a lot of ways that it's too small however when we're talking about funding and reimbursable being reimbursable you're not getting reimbursed for that space if we were to add extra square footage so then we talked about if you take on that if you look at that page um we're talking about a 950 square foot stage which is smaller 400 square feet smaller than what we have right now at the middle school if you're taking that storage space which

022is 600 square feet you can add that but then you lose storage space and honestly we cannot afford i school after school you need space to store things and we make those mistakes quite often can we do that and i pretend that we're going to have somewhere to store the students you know for plays and for band and for everything else yes but it's not realistic so that was another option that we talked about which i don't believe is a good option but really that's up to the building committee and it's up for grabs dr what i'm hearing is it sounds like we don't necessarily have to make the decision tonight on that so should we move to some questions or you do and you should vote on this ed spec as is right now

023and what your or you could change it you could vote to amend it um to leave it as is and stay with the 950 square foot that's going to be smaller and keep the square footage of the storage space as is which is the way we had this written um i gave uh i have i have a neutral opinion i understand that it would cost money to the town i also understand it would be really nice to have a bigger stage so uh it really is up to all of you in the building committee in the town to make that decision but you would be moving forward with these ed specs if you voted on these ad specs we do need voted on ed specs at all times so that the um architect can make

024tweaks if we don't have it voted upon specs there you can't make tweaks so in looking at the timeline though it looks like the building committee cost approval is on april 20th so would that tweak have to happen before right which so we'd have to call it another break so oh no no no i'm sorry we we could make tweaks we could make tweaks right up until we submit the grant the town council come back could come back and say um we don't love this idea we want that you know we want that conversation can continue to happen we may have to make tweaks um depending on other constituents and what they have to say isn't finally this isn't no this can be changed the big stuff and this is a big thing so we

025have to make a decision this this is a big expense it's a big thing the town has to want it everyone has to be kind of almost on the same page um but you can vote on it as it is and then we could amend or you could amend it right now you could say we want to go with the bigger and we want to make that amendment and we want to vote on that um i are you not here to steer you one way or another rosanna's the building committee chair so i'll allow her to do that i just want to make sure you have all the facts okay all right and with that let's open it up for questions matt i saw your hand up of course you did so here's the question

026right we i i'm fully on board with with um you know programming for the arts i'm a big supporter of theater and all that is there another auditorium in the district that's a larger size and could be used for some of those larger performances for performances yes but for practice snow so like if our band today would not be able to fit on the stage as it is so if they wanted to practice prior to a performance they'd have to truck all the way over to the high school every time they would want to do it which seems ridiculous and then and then you're battling with the high school because the high school has something and then you've got scheduling right scheduling questions all right i'm just i'm just trying to kind of how we

027do it now we could have missed coach come up and tell you how how does it work right now with the size of the stage um so how does because what i'm hearing is it sounds like like ideally we build a stage that's either slightly bigger than we have or at least what we have now i'm also hearing that that's gonna cost between three and four hundred thousand dollars more in the end and that won't be reimbursable it is reimbursable but it's much it's a much different reimbursable rate so instead of 39 it might be more like 10. it all depends yeah right very very minimum very minimum we could possibly they've given waivers before but we're i want the town to know that we're taking a risk we're not going into this thing thinking

028we're going to get that 39 point whatever 39 reimbursable rate if we did it would be great and it'd be a miracle but we have to go in thinking that they're not going to be giving us that reimbursable rate um and the town you know so we really we have to be prepared to say we're going to pay for this we have to be prepared to say absolutely right exactly and it's not considering the auditorium expanding that that price was just for the stage itself not that just for the stage so my other my just i want to make sure i heard things properly what's the current seating we have in it currently how many seats do we have the auditorium we have currently and the the ed specs have this going to be which

029would be very small even now when we have whole school assemblies nice to have the whole school together for whether it was our veterans day assembly or we had somebody come in you know we could get all the kids in there but all the teachers have to stand so in that regard we don't have really enough capacity for the whole building if we want to do all school assemblies at 250 i would have to break down by grade levels we'd have to do multiple assemblies it wouldn't be an opportunity for us to be together we also have a very robust uh drama program and this year's com i've had over a hundred kids participate um this year because of covid and we were still trying to you know keep things as as well contained as

030possible we only had 35 so it's just a whole different was a whole different atmosphere still fabulous but you know just not as much kids that we brought on as we've done in the past 50 our drama program would be really um tough and it's also limiting because there are some assemblies i assume that you do where you're paying speakers to come in correct and if you pay them for an hour and talk to all the students that's less than paying them from them to come in for three and a half hours to allow for transition time between grade levels and so forth so it actually does does lead to some other issues down the line right yeah right um i just i'm just trying to make sure i understand before we kind of go

031down this road what i'm hearing is and correct me if i'm wrong ideally we have a big stage 500 seats roughly in an auditorium but if we do that we're gonna we're likely going to pay for it out of pocket and we run the risk of paying for all of it out of pocket at the very least not getting reimbursed at the same rate we're getting reimbursed for the rest of the building is that fair for me to say yes and and the auditorium um is sized to fit more seating i think it's i think the latest one was 450. um but that's a smaller stage no slower speech yeah it's a smaller stage um get reimbursed for half the population so half of 495 245 is what you'd get reimbursed for so any any

032permanent seating above that you don't get reimbursed for so can you back up for just a moment so the seating we would have 400 plus seats but we'd only be reimbursed for half of them in the current ed specs okay well right because the expect just says two i just want to make sure we're not only having 250 because our show is selling but nothing less than 250. so anything we're on the hook for it okay and there's also remember there's ffes too so furniture um whatever and fixtures and yeah well that is another um it's it's how we have a certain amount of money allocated for that so we have to be smart and say well if we want those chairs then we can't have this well the other question is if we go

033with a bigger bigger stage knowing that it's more expensive but there is value to the community i would argue right the other side of that coin is does that also mean that we're going to spend a lot more on av because we have to now increase the number of speakers we have and the lighting and the way that works and you know so it's it's not i'm thinking of it it's not just seats and a stage but but there's other items that that can come into play there inclusive in that price which is why they're saying anywhere between 300 and 400 thousand dollars so that includes all that extra stuff everything that we would need to make that stage yep okay all right i mean it's a lot of like fire i think we have

034a question stuff that i'm sorry about that i was just saying thank you for your help no it's a lot larry go ahead two questions so what is the current the size of our high school stage do you know what that is just trying to get an idea do we know or never got a reply oh mr sinclair is still working on that okay so another i'm just thinking why is it why is that the number for the middle schools like is it doesn't every district face this issue then you know what where did they come up with this number that it's so limiting i'm just some other towns must have been confronted with the same issue right nobody wants to build smaller so do we know why it's this there's a formula just like

035with everything else and we stick to that formula depending on the school so it's different for elementary versus middle versus high school it's a complicated it's a complicated decision a lot of districts are faced with this some districts choose towns choose that they're going to fund so that they can have larger areas and a lot don't they say this is it and this is what we have and we and you go without it you have to look at the risk versus the benefit that's what the town has to really look at what's what's more important and and unfortunately as elected officials you get to make that those fun decisions and then and then the town you know will speak for themselves but it is very common for districts to stay within the reimbursable square footage

036that is given once in a while people go outside the box and say this is important enough that we as taxpayers or we are willing to take on extra because it's important to the community but um going in to it i just want everybody to know the truth is that we're going into this this is how we're going into it um and is there a risk right is there a risk you have to look at the risk of are the is the town going to say we don't need this you know huge or some people who live in the town i say the town people who live here um we don't need all this and don't necessarily understand why we would need such a large stage and uh don't work at a school every day

037and and see all of that of course we see the benefit of increasing our students opportunities for the arts and everything else and um again i'm preaching to the choir i'm sure all of you do as well those are the things that you have to think about um there is no guarantee though and it's very it's the formula is take the the auditorium split it in half that's how much how many kids they something like that right then you're reimbursed for half of that or some it's a very low percentage above and beyond and it's standard for all of us based on the number that we would go on and the number that we would go on for enrollment is 492 students and just one more so how many seats are in the current high

038school auditorium do we know that the high school i don't know just trying to definitely bigger than the middle east yeah i think it's it's definitely bigger than the middle school you could fit the entire school in there yeah so about definitely definitely bigger than the most we can um ask i've heard that it's not the seating is not bigger at the high school than the middle school but i could be wrong i think there's more see i think there's more seating available at the house the stage is definitely bigger the stage is definitely bigger so i do have a question um i guess i'm confused so the middle school stage is based on our enrollment it's not it's not the universal um like you said six 950 square feet is just for a district's

039enrollment so a town bigger than ours would have more square feet okay which is kind of crazy right because if you're doing a performance you're still but that's how the state works we never say that the state makes 100 sense it gives an edge to the groupers that are larger for sure with their programs and i think there's a lot of things different than the other states when it comes to jen these buildings i was just wondering other than the drama club the music program you mentioned maybe the outside community uses that space as well so who uses it is are they charged a fee to use that space yep so like um was it something in dance really company company in tempo they'll like come in and then they do get um charged at

040an hourly rate like a hundred dollars an hour plus custodial fees whatever it is so there was a local group too i don't know if they're still together but there was some other local group in town and it's yeah there's another theater group there's a theater group in town yes i don't know if they used that stage or the high school stage and a lot of times in in all honesty it's a community building their community events like this is a private company right so we of course we charge them a rate to use it but if it's a community based organization we charge them for the custodial fees and some sometimes we waive the building fees it's part of the community our kids are involved it's the right thing to do um i don't

041want you to think that we're going to make tons of money off of this we're there isn't going to be like you know a revenue right just for commercial companies james is like james is agreeing do you know about this group or what it's called do you mind just chiming in if you have any information cromwell community theater um it has used the high school and um we we we're going to be using the high school again in the um fall this year but having more performance bases available would be allow for more flexibility so for example for this year the cromwell community theater wanted to do a project of the laramie project and we're going to be doing it in the fall we initially wanted to do it in october but after going through

042the dates that the high school auditorium is already booked now we're doing it the second weekend of september and that's just showing how booked the the high school stages if there are more opportunities you know they'd be able to do it at different times and in the past they've done um two cabarets and two full musicals um the musicals had i think 50 people in the cast each um and use the high school but you know the more options and and availability that the community theater would have the more programming that they can put on and i know um you know the when i was in cromwell schools um when i graduated in 2011 our all-school production had 12 people in it and uh now the all school productions are much bigger and when i

043was in middle school there was no all-school production and now we have a middle school music program that's with that is built up by parents and community members that really care about it so i know that it's growing and there's more use than there was ten years ago great thank you so much thank you very much hi mr sinclair was on the stage so i was able to wrestle him down to the stage and get the answers current stage here is 1222. current capacity is 485. so very similar yeah little stage is a little smaller because because he used to be a high school so yep that's why we have that number over at the middle school right so it programmatically i mean as you can tell am i doing a good job trying to

044be neutral programmatically and you know what our kids would gain and what our community could gain there there's a lot to gain um but that's up to the community to weigh you know the risks versus like councilman dimitriana said the program has grown and the arts is growing and part of my interview question three years ago was how are you going to continue to grow the arts program we can do it um and our kids are very interested in it and they love it and it's the a in steam um but i want to make sure that you have all the facts of what this is going to entail before any decision is is made all right i believe catherine has a question so um i i have a hard time visualizing the the shrinkage

045in 1300 we lose 400 square feet correct of stage about 350 400 400 about inch ish so i know we have had i one of my kids was in that production that had like 100 students and i'm sorry you went here when then what's his name mr sullivan started the programming it was all inclusive and mr borgeson's continuing it unfortunately it was a victim of covid but the a lot of intermediate school kids wes and ecs kids went through the play took in kids from every genre every walk of life and if we had to cut kids because of a stage size our programs and our productions have outdone at the middle school have outdone high schools so they're they've been outstanding i don't like spending extra money like this and i'm willing and saying

046we're not going to get reimbursed this is a lot of money but i do know that the volume of what it's done it's we have issues of kids there's the sports kids there's these kids there's these kids and they've all come together to be different parts of the play um and uh we were so blessed that the middle school currently can hold that capacity uh and i believe that mr borgeson's gonna bring it back because he's he's incredible he's so good at what he does but um i just want people to be aware that it's no one's turned away from this program everyone plays a role and if we cut our stage i don't know i don't know if that's going to make us cut kids going forward because we can't fit them all on

047programs and just to add you know about the cost if you take three hundred thousand dollars and if we had to pay the full amount you're really looking at approximately twenty dollars per year per household to pay for it over the course of the pond which for some people is a lot but i think for some people 20-year bond you calculated that out that's what it comes to okay average well the big thing i guess is if we if we build it small and save the money right that solves the money issue but does it then limit the use of the stage absolutely and and you know school buildings yeah they're they're under a board of vet but the whole community uses them so if we go smaller and save the money which i'm all

048in favor of saving the money we potentially now cut out entire sections of the community that would have it would have used to it so there's there's either way there's going to be a loss either we're going to pay more for for something that has more use to the community or we're going to save the money and say to the community sorry fewer of you have access to this now so you know it's it's really kind of a difficult a difficult decision to look at and i you know thank thank you and members of the building committee for trying to rifle all through this and then coming back and explaining it to us in terms that we can understand right and it is is a focal point gonna be the one the first spots they're

049gonna see because the auditorium will have its own entrance area separate not separate from the school but kind of closed off from the rest of schools they're gonna see that in i really want to give this the attention it deserves but i'm looking at the clock and yeah i want to be conscious of everyone's time here tonight so if are there any other questions or is anyone ready to move forward with a suggestion recommendation on what we have before us either recommending it as is which is with the smaller stage or we could amend the action to increase the size does anyone want to move forward with either of those options or a different option sure [Music] if we vote on it like this does that mean we're taking the option off the table to

050go with the bigger stage like you can't change it we could change it again we can change it yeah we could change it later on it just gives you it adds more work because basically with this ed spec as is it goes back to the architect and then we start the cycle of getting the financials figured out going to the bond council yada yada if we change it after this point then we have to start all over again and it could put everything at risk to getting this set for the referendum and for the grant proposal so what did the building committee what was the consensus did you guys vote as to whether what that's tonight at eight which is unfortunate did you have a question alan i'll make a motion we proceed with a

051larger stage okay i think at this point in time is there a second to that motion second do we need to specify how large um you can do um the 1350s okay oh saying do you want to be similar to what we have today the 1350. so you're saying the high school is 12 20. so it would actually be larger than the high school so 1350 is what we have today at the middle school if you want to be similar to what the high school has then it'll be at 12 20. was it 12 what it was it was 12 22 and uh i neglected to put in mr sinclair's last statement which was he wants it to be 5 000. no he said at least 1300 if you're gonna go for the for the

052middle school so i would use 1300 on the outside so i revised my motion to go 1300 square foot okay i'll second that okay any discussion okay are we all in anyone sorry all in favor raise your hand opposed opposed okay 50 being opposed so we have one two three four you were for it all right eight in favor eight to one motion passes okay thank you very much rosanna thank you okay and our next item i'm so sorry for the long delay but without further ado we do have our trainer here tonight his name is dustin james raider you go by dusty or dustin you can let us know when you go dusty okay and he's from generally speaking we also have our town council members here to join us we have jack henahan

053james dimitriadis and paula luna so thank you for coming sorry for the delay but i'm actually glad you were here for the building conversation that was fascinating there you go that was fascinating to to listen to i i don't envy the decisions you guys have to make um i i will briefly say that as a as a person who still does theater thanks to the program at my high school um you know it's been an immensely positive impact on my life um so uh it's nice to hear that you guys really want to support the arts for your kids because it's so important i also was a high school english teacher and as an english teacher i then also did the drama programs there as well and uh again just the way the kids get

054so excited when they get to do a program and you know it's on this big stage and they've got the lights on them i mean it's an experience that none of them none of them will ever forget um i'm gonna just nudge myself a little bit more forward because i can't see my own slides from here um so today i'm talking about lgbtq students um a little bit about me i am transgender uh i transitioned my senior year of high school um female to male uh i have always been involved in education uh i was a a tutor while i was in high school i like i said i was an english teacher i actually did my student teaching here at cromwell high school which is pretty cool to come back just really quick story

055because i know that we're a little bit over on time and i'm going to try to get you guys out of here by 8. i had a student um we were doing uh memoirs in class and i was sitting over at one of the computers over there actually and a student came and sat down next to me and uh the cord on her headphones came out of her phone and started playing this song called take me to church by hosier anybody familiar with that song it's if you've seen the music video um it's very much about like uh the violence that has suffered in hate crimes against queer people and so she you know immediately turned it off and was like oh sorry and i was like no no i love that song have you

056seen the video and she was like yeah i was like it's a really good video right and she was kind of like yeah it is and i didn't think anything more of it until i got her memoir a couple of weeks later and in it she came out and that was really powerful for me because i i had to wonder if i hadn't had that brief interaction where i like openly said something about a pro gay thing would she have felt comfortable enough with me as her teacher as her student teacher not even her regular teacher to come out to say you know even though i of course wasn't telling anybody you know to to be able to say that to a person who's going to understand and be empathetic it's just so important um

057so i like to start out with a few statistics because i think it's important to realize that there are numbers here um the the research has been done for you uh 90 of transgender people experience a report experiencing harassment mistreatment or discrimination on the job of course that's talking about adults but if it's happening to adults you know what's happening to kids 41 of transgender people have reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6 of the general population and the numbers rise as you get worse treatment so if if people are harassed during their job that number jumps up i think 10 percent um if if they're you know denied promotions goes up 15 20 um i believe the highest percentage is about 61 um for for getting worse treatment and then the two in the yellow

058at the bottom i really want to highlight because obviously this is the board of ed we're talking about our students over 40 percent of lgbtq plus students have seriously considered suicide about 20 percent have attempted i'm just gonna let that sit for a second because that's if you know two lgbtq kids at least one of them has seriously considered attempting suicide and then of course 48 percent of lgbtq youth reported using uh self-harm including over 60 percent of trans and by non-binary youth which we're getting into those terms in a moment i just want to point that out because these are real issues these are not you know trivial things that sort of like oh they'll be fine if you say something about it it really does affect these kids the way that you treat

059them will affect how they view themselves and how they progress in life and i think this is the most interesting statistic because it shows the other side of it 78 of those who transition from one gender to the other reported that they felt more comfortable at work and their job performance increa improved despite high levels of mistreatment and what that means is when you transition you feel better about yourself because you get to be who you are you're not trying to pretend to be somebody else you're not constantly worrying oh is somebody gonna find out who i am is somebody gonna you know disrespect me because of this you know that they might because everybody knows but you still get to be who you are you still get to live as your authentic self we

060tell students all the time you know we want you to be yourself we want you to be able to express yourself we want you to feel comfortable and confident in who you are right if our students leave and they don't feel good about themselves we don't know if they're going to make it we don't know where they're going to end up but we do know that when our kids are loved they succeed so i want to talk about some trans terms i added the ones on the side i'm gonna put them there just for now you'll notice that they're under a pink umbrella uh because it's under the umbrella term which is transgender uh so the first one i'm gonna go with is mtf versus ftm it's pretty simple it just stands for male to

061female or female to male uh transgender transitioned instead of transgendered has sort of become an outdated word that people don't really use anymore the verb form of what a transgender person does to go from one gender to another is transition so i transitioned from female to male i didn't transgender because transgender is an adjective english teacher cisgender is basically what most people in this room are cisgender means that you're not transgender you you feel comfortable uh in the body that you were uh given at birth uh transgender versus transsexual versus transvestite transsexual and transvestite are not commonly used these days transgender is the big umbrella term it basically encompasses anybody who doesn't really feel like they belong in the gender that they were assigned at birth and again we'll get into the categories over here

062uh transsexual is specifically somebody who has had medical operations but it's sort of weird to talk about some your medical operations with people you barely know um so most people don't use transsexual anymore but that's where that's from and then transvestite is somebody who dresses as a gender that is not their own um again not super commonly in use because there are more terms now uh to use it to use instead uh intersex this is one i get a lot of questions about because most people think that it's it means hermaphrodite uh somebody with both sex organs or something like that and while that can be true essentially intersex is just about having uh more than two chromosomes so most of us have an xx chromosome or we have an xy chromosome what a lot

063of us don't know is that you can have more than two chromosomes it's very common um i believe about five percent of people are intersex but most don't know it because it doesn't actually show up in any physical way um for for really the only way that you can tell for sure that you're not intersex is by having uh your dna processed and seeing what it comes up with gender identity versus expression so this one it's it's kind of very similar gender identity is who you are right so i'm a man i'm a transgender man my expression is masculine right i express myself as a masculine man identity again nope sorry identity is is about who you are expression is about how you express yourself just because you're transgender doesn't necessarily mean that you're expressing

064that all the time there are some people who can't feel comfortable with their family if they come out or don't want to or haven't yet and so they won't express their gender with them but their gender identity doesn't change based on their expression it's still who they are i do want to go over these terms now non-binary essentially the binary part is the idea that man and woman are the only two categories that are allowed to be taken non-binary sort of gets to the idea of like i don't really feel like either of those things i don't particularly feel masculine i don't particularly feel feminine and that's okay so non-binary is generally not associated with any particular gender agender again not associated with any particular gender there are nuanced versions of these if you identify

065as cisgender and you're ever not sure about any of these terms and somebody tells you that that's what they are you can sort of get away with generally these are all terms that mean i don't associate with any particular gender or i do but only sometimes gender fluid is the one where sometimes i feel masculine sometimes i feel feminine and that's where you'll get the expression some days they'll dress masculine some days they'll dress feminine but they're still gender fluid or they're still non-binary gender non-conforming again not really feeling like they fit into either boxing so expressing themselves without thinking about gender androgynous uh usually sort of an intentional like not trying to look like either or maybe trying to look like both pan gender again a similar thing where it's like i can be

066any gender i want depending on the day genderqueer again more about not really associating with the boxes of gender that society has sort of like brought us all up to understand i'm going to open it up for questions really quick because i know that terms can be hard is there any questions about the terms or any terms that you guys have heard that you've been wanting to know about yes honestly if it's not presenting in any way you really wouldn't need to um but if you're doing a dna test for you know paternity or to find out if you have any preclusions for cancer or anything like that that's a really good way to find out yes cis so transgender comes from the latin root trans which means to cross over or two moved cis

067comes from uh i think it's actually weirdly enough the greek for cis which means same so it means same gender versus changed gender essentially thank you for asking that's a good point anybody else can you just explain a little bit uh gender fluid i think it's really important to yeah because gender fluidity that doesn't mean it could mean daily because you're not just that's the part where i think a lot of people think okay well i've changed my mind or by i don't feel you know i feel like a man i feel like a woman i feel like they what gender fluidity and we see it a lot is sometimes it's it's daily it could be twice a day a little if you don't mind talking a little bit about that because i think that's

068really fascinating for people to learn absolutely and i'm actually going to tell a joke that i that i love um about uh a person who is gender fluid and uh they were hanging out having breakfast with their father and their father kind of looks at them and notices that they're wearing you know sort of men's attire and so the father says so it's a sunday and the kid goes oh yeah i guess so and father goes funny i thought it was a tuesday so you guys all got that joke before i got to the punch line and that's okay um but it is very much about just sort of you wake up and you sort of feel how you feel i mean how many times i mean especially for women uh wearing a dress versus

069wearing pants right generally if you're wearing a dress you probably feel more feminine you're feeling like you want to show that you know be that much uh be that kind of expression for yourself whereas somebody might also wake up still feeling feminine and wear a set of pants but it's a different kind of feminine you know we don't all wake up and put on the same clothes every day and for people who are gender fluid it's the exact same thing their closet is just a lot bigger it would have to be it doesn't make being in the closet any more comfortable but yes so when you gave us those statistics earlier are they starting to zero in to see where um people may be attempting to commit suicide actually doing bodily harm are they looking

070at which they're falling under of the different umbrellas because the from what i hear the most confusing for especially high school age kids to figure out is the ones under your pink umbrella yeah absolutely and the interesting thing is that like their labels and ultimately you know a person should choose their own label it shouldn't be assigned to them um if somebody you know matt i'll use you for an example somebody looked at you and said no you're a woman i feel like you would not enjoy that very much i feel like you enjoy being a man right it's who you feel comfortable being yeah that's how you're comfortable and anytime somebody's trying to tell you you can't be that thing it makes you a little bit uncomfortable um so when you're looking at those

071ones for kids there's a lot of online resources the trevor project is the one that i'm referencing with those numbers uh they do they do a survey of uh high school kids i believe every two years i wanna say i have a link actually at the end that i was gonna take us to um but they are looking at it is largely the people who are in the transgender and gender non-conforming categories uh that are the highest rate of suicide and uh or suicide attempts or serious thoughts about suicide and also of course self-harm um honestly the the the toughest thing about that is that because there are a lot of options it can be hard to know which one you sort of feel most comfortable in um which is why you have honestly so

072many is because people are like well that doesn't quite feel right and it's because it's a very new thing to not have to have a gender i mean up until now if you if you were a person who didn't feel like you had any particular gender you usually would pick one and sort of roll with it whether that made you happy or not but as we get more accepting and as we find that people can be like you know you can be who you want to be more options are coming out and i can see why that would be confusing for kids is there a gsa um at cromwell now yes yeah and and and having that gsa can be a really great support service because those kids the power of getting to talk and

073hang out with people who get you on that level is incredible um one of the resources at the end of the slides is uh this man named tony fariolo and he's absolutely fantastic he's worked with pretty much every transgender child in connecticut um and and does group therapy and sort of leads facilitated discussions with them and it's just a great experience for them to be able to be around other people who sort of get it who can talk about these things with the same understanding uh as they would of themselves so that's my best advice is the gsa has to be strong uh and i will say that gsas are also usually heavily influenced by the uh by the drama clubs just throwing that out there um uh you look like you have a question

074age when can a person know so going way way back into like freud era uh freud believed and to some extent he was correct he was disproved on a lot of things but on this i think he was right that we associate with one of our parents usually starting by like a year old maybe two years old like very very young we start associating with either our mother or father um or or neither if you have uh two of the same parents and that sort of shapes you and who you are and by identifying with that gender so you know at a very young age when i was four years old i remember telling my parents i'm a boy and they of course didn't know what transgender was at the time and they were just

075like no you're just a tomboy like it's fine no worries um and i tried really really hard to wear dresses i tried really hard to have female friends i tried really really hard to like the color pink and dolls um i tried really hard to be a girl because my parents had had two sons and they were so excited that their third child was a girl so that they got one of each at least um that didn't go well for them but they understood you know eventually but for me it was really hard to to be able to say like this is how i feel because i had no context of the language the i found out that i was trans i realized that i was trans at the true colors conference in 2008 spring

076of 2008 and i found out what it was and i was immediately like this explains what i've been feeling my whole life so when do they know very very young very very young that's why you'll see kids transitioning as early as kindergarten in preschool because the fact is that they know i don't know any trans people who have stopped being trans i'm going to keep going on the side there will be time for yeah no it continues yeah i um i i go to p flag meetings in hartford uh which is really great by the way uh and there are uh people who go to those p flag meetings who are in their 40s and 50s and sometimes come as one gender sometimes as the other and you just roll with it you know i'm

077gonna have us continue uh lgb terms these are about sexuality the other was about gender and you'll notice i have the the new philadelphia pride flag over on the side here and obviously it's got the classic rainbow and then it's also got the white pink and blue which are the transgender flag colors and then you can see the it doesn't show up very well on the screen but black and brown to include the fact that our black and brown lgbt folks do exist are important have largely been erased uh despite being at the forefront of our activism um so just wanted to point that out that's the most up-to-date one if you want to use a pride flag for anything i highly recommend it it's also just really pretty um i think you all know

078what gay means i think you know what lesbian means uh bisexual i'm not going to go into those is everybody all right with that okay bisexual usually means two or more genders and it doesn't have to be necessarily both men and women it can be uh women and people who are non-binary right uh any of those genders uh pansexual generally any gender uh is something that you can be attracted to asexual not attracted sexually to people uh just in general not interested in having sex just isn't their thing um demisexual will only develop sexual after having known somebody for a while so until they get to know you they won't have any sexual attraction to you sexually fluid similar to how you can be gender fluid you can be i mean a lot of people

079would say that oh that makes you bisexual that makes you pansexual but ultimately gender and sexuality don't have to be static by any means uh you can wake up as a teenager and be like yeah i'm bisexual and then 10 years later be like you know what yeah i'm pansexual uh you can wake up and be straight for half your life and then sort of be like you know what i think i actually do also like the other gender or i think i need to shift the way that i'm thinking there are many people who marry early in life have kids and then halfway down there uh you know bringing up their kids and realizing actually this isn't who i am that's why i'm not happy um or maybe that i need to change this

080about myself to be happy uh romantic orientations so there's also i've said a lot of this is about sexual attraction there's also romantic attraction i don't want to get too deep into it but romantic attraction is not always on par with sexual attractions there are people who are physically attracted to perchance all genders but only romantically attracted to some just like there's asexual there's also a romantic so not feeling romantic attraction um and again most of these you don't have to worry about because it's not you ultimately this is really about just knowing that these are identities that exist that many people uh identify with and that's okay right quick question on those yeah so in wanting to be sensitive to those the people that are you know maybe unsure or it changes what is

081your advice if any for those around them and how to you know address them and things like that it gets very tricky and confusing especially for younger children you mean like how to tell kids about it no i guess how to address the you know how pronoun wise oh pronoun wise i mean pronouns are pretty easy kids especially very young kids will pick things up like that um and if you're if you're a parent you know i'm not a parent but i know um a little bit and generally speaking kids are the most accepting group of people they are still learning about the world um there's there's been a lot of use of the phrase you know no child is born racist no choi no child is is born homophobic or transphobic or any of

082those things either if you just teach them that it's normal just say oh yeah this person is using uh male pronouns today so he's gonna use he and him and his and then i say you know what this person decided that they're feeling different they're going to use she her hers the the earlier you normalize it the easier it is for them to adapt to a lot of times people who are you know adults have a harder time adapting simply because we weren't brought up with it and we get sort of stuck in our ways but with kids it's very easy usually to just say like hey this is how they're feeling and if they aren't okay with it that might be a conversation i have with the kid privately does that answer that a

083little bit sort of kind of do you want to um i guess so on any given day if say they're um students at school they would have to i mean tell the class how they're feeling that day i'm not quite sure so usually those kids i mean the easiest way to find out is is to ask the student themselves like hey like how do you want to go about this what's going to be easiest for you and you can say you know uh all right the kid is going gonna raise their hand and answer the first question of the day and you'll use the correct pronouns for them as an option and people will hopefully just follow that okay um you can also say maybe we don't you know maybe we just use neutral pronouns

084in this class if they're comfortable with that that way people don't have to worry about it changing back and forth again if they're comfortable with that you can also ask if they want to be called on at all that day because maybe their whole thing is that they're not looking to make a big deal out of it so maybe just they're going to watch and pay attention and take notes but not necessarily raise their hand and that way it's other people might not be needing to address them but usually the best answer really is you know what would make you comfortable because it's going to vary kid to kid all right um and then i just put polyamory down there because that one's coming up now uh where people are in uh multiple relationships at

085once and i'm again not a big deal uh just something to be aware of and i want to make this really clear no sexual orientations or genders are inherently sexual there's been a lot of talk the whole don't say gay bill that's been going around where there's this idea that if you teach kids about lgbt people that it's going to corrupt them sexually and like the amount to which we teach kids about heterosexual couples like look at any disney movie um you're you're teaching kids from a very young age that being a human being who falls in love is a good thing and there's nothing wrong with that um but you're also teaching it that is specifically heterosexual couples and i'm not telling you not saying disney has to change all of their movies or

086that they're bad or anything i love disney movies nothing wrong with having heterosexual couples kiss on on movies on tv shows kids are gonna see that there's nothing wrong with having homosexual couples kiss on tv shows and movies because it's not a sexual thing in kids movies if you can have a heterosexual kiss that isn't sexual you can have a homosexual kiss that isn't sexual and when it comes to gender it's no kid is thinking to themselves i wonder what's in that person's pants no kid is thinking that um and if they are please take them to a therapist most kids are just like how do i address this person they are different from what i am used to and if your answer is a really calm oh that's just a person who is a

087woman that's all the content they don't need the context if they're wondering about what transgender people uh are all about you can very easily say oh well they were born in one body they were born as a boy but they feel like they're a girl and so now they're a girl it's a really easy explanation for most kids and so the the the misconception here tends to be that inherently you have to talk about sex when you talk about uh sexuality uh sexual orientations and genders and it's like that's really not it at all um things you want to say that it might be offensive if is anybody here familiar with this are microaggression if you're not familiar with her microaggression i'll just do a quick summary basically it's something that you say uh that

088you usually intended as a compliment but is actually sort of a backhanded compliment that's a bit of an insult the most common one that i uh use as a reference is if you're talking to somebody who is uh perhaps uh of an asian descent uh and you say oh you speak english so well there's there's an implication there that they are not of us right there their first language is in english and you can tell and that makes them different and you're pointing that out to them and it sounds like a really nice thing like oh you know english is a hard language to learn i'm glad that you were able to be so successful with it but because it's really highlighting that otherness it becomes a problem so these are just some questions or

089some comments that are frequently used specifically for transgender kids and people that sound like they're really nice but kind of have this sort of like undertone to it uh i never would have guessed that you were transgender i get this one all the time like oh i never would have guessed and i'm like yeah that's the point i you're not supposed to be guessing because it really shouldn't matter right um and and there's this implication here with this one that you should be able to guess that transgender people don't look normal and we do most of the time if you really want to come across as male or female you should do this giving pointers i assure you that people who are transgender have thought way more about performing gender than you have uh the

090amount of thought that goes into it like one of the most common examples i think is that you know we're sorry just backtrack we are all constantly performing our gender the most common way that we think about it is in the clothes that we wear the clothes that we choose to wear uh every day right it's in the way that we style our hair it's in the way that we carry ourselves around a building right men i'm going to step over the side just for a second men when they cross their legs and they're sitting in a chair typically cross it open like this whereas women sitting in a chair typically cross their legs and it's tight i can't do it sorry and it's just a thing it's not every single man and it's not

091every single woman but typically that's a way that is a physical performance of gender that is different so when you say and like i said most of you haven't thought about that because you don't think about performing gender because it's something that you've done all your life and there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with not thinking about it but just being aware that like we've thought about it a lot we we know how to be the gender that we want to be and most of the time we are presenting in a way that makes us happy um nah i don't believe it that's just kind of like dismissive like if it's because you don't believe in transgender people existing or the identity existing like that's one thing um but also just like the

092flippancy of that one um what surgeries have you had i mentioned earlier it's a little weird when like one of the first questions that people ask you is like so what's your medical history have you had surgeries um and especially like such an intimate surgery that they're talking about is it's just really bizarre um and it's really personal and if you're not planning uh to get in bed with a person you don't need to know like that uh what's your real name this one i get a lot it's often actually referred to as a dead name because it is no longer used if you know somebody before they transition and they change their name you can ask them how do you want me to refer to you when i talk about something that happened before

093you transitioned so for me i i say that name no longer exists that person never was real there was a performance that i did and i hated every minute of it not every minute but you know i prefer to just call he was he was dusty he's still dusty and again that's a that's a preferential thing and it's just for when you're talking about a person in the past tense also good to ask about their pronouns that they want to use when they're talking about the past i male pronouns name dusty all the way but there are other people who are like no back then i was this other person and that's we'll we'll honor that and it's just a difference of opinion um again preference uh but you're so handsome or pretty the implication

094being that we can't be handsome like excuse me um uh and then of course uh i've known you for so long do i really have to change everything like this and this was one that i got uh when i first came out in high school i had a few friends who were like i've known you since kindergarten i really have to like change and they meant it as a joke but to me it was like you've known me since kindergarten and you don't care about me enough to like make this small change and ultimately these questions just sometimes happen and you don't even think about it the important thing is is noting that transgender people don't have to respond to this don't have to answer these questions i'm here tonight to answer these questions so

095i will but if you like met me in the street hopefully you wouldn't immediately dive in and be like hey so i was just wondering what surgeries have you had and it's just like a weird question but anyways a little bit about who i am like i said i came out in high school i went to glastonbury high school which you guys have a little bit of a history now with um the the whole lawsuit thing uh between the track runners uh the female track stars i guess at glastonbury um and your female track stars here uh who are transgender i actually wrote an article about it for the new york times times that'd be cool hartford current a little bit different i wrote an article about it for the hartford current saying how great

096it is uh that cromwell was allowing their student athletes to transition and be on the teams that they should be on and i'm just going to address this because it it's something that a lot of people you know struggle with because it's the idea that well if they're transgender and it's a woman well they've still got the testosterone and the hormones and and you know the that sort of thing and i i always think to that you know if it's about hormones let's stop separating teams based on gender and separate teams based on hormones everybody gets tested every week or every month or every season whatever it is and then if your testosterone levels are under this you're on one team if your testosterone levels are over that you're on the other team and i

097can't think of anybody who would actually do that because it's not about hormones it's about being transgender and being transphobic um i like i said i do want to note that you guys are here pretty late already so i'm going to skip some of this i'll talk a little bit about my experience as a teacher uh my first year teaching like i said i did my student teaching here i did my first year of teaching in avon and i had a really great experience experience my principal was super understanding he himself was actually gay and was openly so and at one point in the year we'd been having some issues with uh bullying and so he decided he was going to tell students his story to try and inspire them to recognize when bullying is

098happening and do better it was really really powerful and i took the next day for all of my classes and i said i'm gonna do it too and i came out to all of my students that way and uh word got out and it got published in the hartford current um which was pretty cool and i had student after student coming to me saying i'm so glad that you told everybody because this makes me feel better about who i am and not even just the trans kids just any of the kids who felt a little bit different any of the kids who knew what it was like for their friends who were transgender or who were gay being able to have somebody visible somebody in a normal job who is part of this community was

099really powerful i also teach at uh uh central connecticut state university i teach introduction to women gender and sexuality studies and one of the things i talk about is if you can't see it you can't be it if you don't see somebody like you doing good things doing normal things you kind of get this impression that that's not meant for you and of course success is meant for everybody later i went to canton i uh taught at canton for a couple of years again i i didn't come out but i also wasn't quiet about it um i had already come out there was an article about me in the paper i had done a ted talk at that point and i was like if students google me they will know everything that they need to

100know about me and i'm okay with that and i did have students come up to me and they're like so it's is it true like are you transgender and i was like yeah and they're like oh okay cool and what was interesting is um i can't and we didn't have i don't know i think we had one person of color who was an adult at that school who was the choice program coordinator and we had a number of choice students uh and once those students uh found out that i was transgender uh they came to my classroom during their lunch every day we had the same lunch and like six or seven of them would come and hang out in my classroom because they know that yeah i'm not black but i am a minority

101i have been under that stress and having somebody who gets that was really important to them which just goes to show again representation is super important so a few common questions that i get from from boards from teachers uh the first one what uh when did you know you were trans you actually did ask that already one uh and i knew by the time i was five years old and had i had the language i would have been able to express it because i was able to say i'm a boy but didn't have the word transgender didn't have that knowledge so you'll find kids coming out earlier and earlier because now that language is getting uh normalized how young can you sort of a same question um what bathroom do i use i use the

102men's room um but my my comment on this is always like when you go into the bathroom i don't know if everybody else does this but i think everybody else does this when you go into the bathroom you do not make eye contact you do not make any sort of like you don't touch anybody you don't you if you can avoid it you don't even brush next to them uh you go to the bathroom you go to the stall or or whatever it is uh you use it you hopefully wash your hands and you leave and at no point in there are you there for socialization of any kind hopefully it's a little bit different if you go in there with a friend obviously but if you're just going to use the bathroom there's really

103no reason for it to matter who's in the bathroom as long as everybody's following the same bathroom protocol that is standard that being said obviously we do have in most of society gendered bathrooms um and it could be really uncomfortable for uh some people to go into the bathroom that they're assigned obviously in north carolina there's the bathroom bill that means that people like me uh who are uh were born female have to use the female bathroom and i don't know about the women in here but i feel like it might be uncomfortable for a woman to walk into a bathroom and see me using it just i feel like that's more awkward um but that's just how i think about it i guess how did my family react my parents were incredibly supportive they've

104always been very supportive they're actually quite wonderful um my my dad my mom is a teacher my dad is uh works with cabe which i'm sure you all are familiar with probably um he's the executive director over there which is uh you know it's sort of become education is the family business again i get that question a lot what surgeries have i had and i'm actually not going to talk about that one i just put it up there because i want to address that everybody's probably wondering it have i ever regretted my transition no no there was one time and it was just because i was frustrated because my suit didn't fit right uh aren't you worried about what people will think yes constantly all the time every time i do a presentation i always

105wonder to myself like what if this is a trap what if this is that somebody set this up they found out who i am and they thought to themselves if i set it up at the right place if i handle it the right way i can get him there and then i can hurt him and that is something that i constantly worry and is anybody here familiar i'm again i'm trying to go as fast as i can familiar with the movie boys don't cry absolutely amazing movie and for many many many years it was the only movie that i had uh where there was a transgender man as the main character hillary shrink did a phenomenal job deserved the oscar 100 wonderful film if you haven't watched it please do it is there is graphic

106violence so like be aware of that before you get into it uh it's based on a true story and basically uh spoiler the transgender guy uh gets shot in the head at the end and that was the only movie i had that had somebody like me in it so when we talk about representation the effect that that had on me i there's no way i thought that i would make it to 30. there is no way i i thought i would die by 18. i thought that if if not i would probably kill myself before i graduated college and for a very long time that's what i thought was going to happen to me because it was the only representation that i had so yeah i am constantly worried about what people are going to

107think and how they're going to react and then of course people are always like but they can your hormones can affect your brain and i'm like yeah soak in like tylenol so the questions about like policy now more um bathrooms locker rooms do the next one and that one yep uh overnight field trips generally speaking first of all you're the easiest way that you're gonna have is ask the kid if they have a preference if they don't have a preference locker rooms they use the one again that they choose generally that means that if it's a trans male kid they're going to use the men's room if it's a trans woman she's going to use the the women's room uh if she or he feels uncomfortable it is good to have a third option available

108either a coach's room a a faculty bathroom or a nurse's bathroom or something like that but you cannot you cannot you cannot tell that kid that they're not allowed to use the bathroom that makes them feel comfortable and the question i always get after that is well what if other kids feel uncomfortable having that kid in there and ultimately their discomfort is not the same as the trans kid's safety because it's the safety of them and their mental health it's the safety of them being able to be who they are and again bathrooms are not a place for socialization you go in you don't pay attention to anybody else and you get out ultimately that's what it comes down to and overnight field trips again you have to be careful but ask the kid what

109they want most of the time you when you do overnight field trips at least when i was in school and when i was a teacher the kids chose their roommates and usually it was based on gender but ultimately i went on a trip when i was a transgender in high school and i was like i feel comfortable with these three female friends so we're gonna share a room and those three female friends were comfortable with it and it worked when a student transitions mid-year again ask the student i've had instances where a student wanted a letter set out to the whole school and they managed to do it and they made it super easy so all the faculty knew students knew even i think parents knew and it was just a really simple way to

110say hey this is going to be a thing that your kid will experience and the school is supporting it and there are other ways as well they can just quietly do it i did it pretty quietly i just told my well i told my teachers and i told my friends and i uh came out during a presentation when a student says that they are uncomfortable sharing with a bathroom or a locker room with a transgender student that student who is uncomfortable you can offer them the other bathroom as well they can be offered the coach's bathroom they can be offered the nurse the nurse's bathroom but you can't force a transgender student to use a different bathroom it has to be by choice when is it acceptable to contact the parents this has been a

111big question for kids who have not come out to their parents yet and the answer is you cannot add a student to their parents because it could create an unsafe situation at home it's a really sad reality but it is the reality that we live in outing a student is never acceptable ask the student's permission first and then if a non if if the parent of a non-transgender student is uncomfortable or angry that their student has to deal with another with a transgender student you can offer to separate them and make sure that they're not in any classes together you can again offer the alternate bathroom for their kid but again that parent does not get to dictate what another student does and when i say the word other uh i want to make sure

112everyone knows it is a verb and it's basically when you take somebody and you make them separate from the group and therefore discriminate them against uh discriminate against them for that reason reasons why we need to support these students i don't i don't think that anybody here uh doesn't want to support the students um but just you know be aware they may not have come out yet um defend them against everybody uh parents teachers administrators board members obviously their peers but those four groups of adults some adults either have their own biases or just not educated on the subject so it's important to recognize that i have been bullied by other teachers i've been bullied by administrators for being trans it happens and it's important to be aware of that respect them and use the

113pronouns they ask you to use and again if they're feeling like if they are gender fluid you can ask them every day there are places that make like pins i think actually the uh ccsu lgbt center um which i work with uh has pins that have he him she her they them ask me like little pins that they could wear um if they wanted to and if they felt comfortable um and then of course help their peers be empathetic be when i was in uh a history class a psychology class i answered a question the teacher asked another kid in the front hey what do you think about what he said and the student goes he who and the teacher goes him and he points at me and the student looks back at me and

114he goes she's not a him and the teacher goes yes he is i think he would know better than you and it stopped it immediately no further comment from the student it took three seconds and no more commentary no more thoughts of bullying from that student just all right whatever i guess i guess i gotta be on board with this teachers are really powerful and then the last thing these are just some resources p flag um glsen hrc glad they're huge national organizations the trevor project is really important i won't get into it now but if you go on the charger trevor product projects website you can find all the facts that i was uh giving you guys at the beginning um tony fariolo who i mentioned excellent with with trans kids has worked with

115basically every trans kid in connecticut um including me um and of course my website there generallyspeaking.com thank you guys so much time for questions now if you would like are there any questions from the board our town council you did a great job thank you so much really appreciate it um also sorry there was a little bit rushed there i was trying to no you were amazing and this is matt brown i just want to introduce him as well um so chair of the lgbtq yes so i just want to say thank you everyone thank you dusky for the training today and thank you for celina and the entire board of ed and the town council members who were able to attend today um again i am one of the co-chairs of the cromwell lgbtq

116committee we're going to be uh continuing to see more in the coming months for our criminal uh spring into pride events that are going to be culminating in an event in june um selena's going to be handing out just a quick little one-pager where you can follow our facebook page and also uh we have a criminal care signs that we're selling like lawn signs in town as well which do use the flag that uh dusty shared as well so we're um ready to go there too but if you have any questions here i'll be hanging out too but thank you guys so much i know this was a jam-packed night i know i'm going run to another meeting too but thank you everyone thank you thank you so much for sharing your story again dusty

117we really appreciate it of course thank you guys for listening okay with that is there a motion to adjourn dipty second kellyann all in favor pose abstentions