001okay at this time i'll call this meeting of the criminal board of education to order at 03 pm alessandra would you do roll call oh sorry i'm here mister yeah here i'm here electronically he'll be absent tonight here i'm here here i'm here this is john ireland i'm here thank you so we do have one addition to our agenda tonight we have a presentation by csg and at the end of that we'd like to add a possible action to to approve that the um program move forward and anything you'd like to add to that and answer is that how you would i'm saying no mr cycling from csg is here and he's going to do a presentation and he'll explain what that actually means what we are agreeing to move forward to do it doesn't
002mean we're agreeing to build a new building next week which i would love but that doesn't mean that so he'll explain it okay and other than that we have some celebration of our staff and of course updates from dr macri is there a motion to prove the agenda thank you jen second thank you dipty all in favor opposed okay motion passes we will move on to celebrating our faculty and staff i'll turn it over to you dr macri hi good evening everyone we have so many things to celebrate tonight but i will start with principal fran d fiore it is with extreme pleasure and overwhelming pride that i notify the public that mr fiore has received the 2021 uconn early college experience professional recognition principal award for program support and advocacy this is a very
003prestigious award at is as it is only awarded to one recipient each year so hundreds of principals in connecticut and misty fury received the award so i congratulate her the role of the principal is to be knowledgeable obviously of the ece program characteristics support assist and involve teachers with professional development opportunities expand course offerings to support specific needs of the student population and to ensure students are prepared for post-secondary opportunities misty fiore will be honored at a virtual professional recognition awards show ceremony very uh via youtube thursday this week may 13th at 5 p.m if any of you would like to come i could definitely pass that invitation along to you and you can join us congratulations to miss d fiore very well deserved honor misty fury are you there yes thank you dr macri
004i really appreciate that you're welcome thank you for everything you do but one thing i'd like to say though the reason for this is because of how strong and how um credible our ete teachers are that we have at the high school i would not be getting this award if it weren't for those teachers absolutely and we'll talk about misty fury in a little while again with the not so great news bittersweet news and now i believe um miss kochiola is on the phone to honor um our custodians miss coach yes good evening everyone yes can you hear me yes yes okay good all right hello everyone good evening um i want to this evening along with our whole school we would like to honor paul scalora matt mctigue and gail lavadia and i would
005like to recognize these individuals as they take great pride in their work and they have kept our schools clean and safe for all of us throughout this whole unique year their dedication goes beyond their contractual duties particularly in this extraordinary year these three individuals went above and beyond they prepped the building for safety by following all the covid mitigation strategies taping hallways measuring spaces in the classroom moving furniture for optimum space and they certainly made sure we had all what we need on a daily basis to keep our desks clean our kids safe and keeping a rather challenging building clean and operational paul will in the morning you'll see him in the morning as he uh participates in the morning drop off helping kids to get out of their cars to go into the school
006matt he's he's amazing how we keep that cafeteria spotless and sanitized after every lunch wig and gail is always on night making sure everything is clean at night and she always provides regular updates um i can go on and on they're a great team whom we would be lost without so i want to thank publicly paul matt and gail for caring for our cms community and being the best team members and they have such a strong work ethic so you are our quiet heroes that make it possible for us to teach and learn especially in this extraordinary year so i want to thank them very much i agree with miss kochioli obviously our the board of education is in the middle school and paul matt and gail could not be more kind and very conscientious
007of their work they take such pride in the school building and what they do and they absolutely are friendly faces to the students and the staff so they truly are our silent heroes so thank you for um honoring them tonight miss kochiola it's well deserved absolutely i'm honored so i want to thank them and the big thank you on behalf of the board for all of your hard work to our custodians and congratulations to mrs d fiore for your prestigious award it's well earned next we will move on to celebrating our students mrs coachiola would you like to go on with ethan nixdorf yes i would love to um ethan um we felt was so deserving of recognition he's our eighth grade student um and his mom i think is on the phone ms janine
008maron um ms maron were you able to get through yes i am i'm here thank you hello there so everyone i want to introduce you ethan i do have a small um video um you can see after ethan ethan um has grown in so many ways over the last three years he has made incredible gains academically but more importantly he has grown socially and emotionally as autism often manifests in difficulties with disruption of schedules ethan has not only learned to adapt to changes in classroom assignments teachers and timing but he readily embraces change he's become more independent engaging and is now initiating interaction with small group peers during long distance learning he enjoyed unique modifications he stacked wood for his mom as part of mr penny's pe class along with many other mr penny assignments
009his favorite being uh being able to do 10 push-ups he recently even modeled his hair after mr penny that's a pretty funny one so you can ask ms marin about that one um and for those of you if you know mr penny um he um has his uh his own unique hairstyle he sings uh frozen songs on video for mr ferguson he only liked music in school as mr b suggested he works on country and continent puzzles for mrs pavlik's social studies class and he takes notes in mr jerry's social studies class he played board games both for mrs cross speech assignment and occupational therapy for miss covey if you give ethan an assignment he enjoys like the ixl.com math assignments he may even do it over telling his mom he has to do a
010hundred questions to get a hundred percent instead of the 20 minutes assigned by mrs bremer to break up the isolation of the pandemic he's often asked to do his homework at his mom's peaceful chaos yoga studio bringing whatever materials he needed he set up a sensory sensitive space to do his work ethan has a great sense of humor and he always has a funny line for different circumstances preferring being back in the building ethan loves to initiate greetings to his science teacher mrs sagirl he gives a special thank you to the calf staff for his ice cream sandwich they give him every day most importantly ethan has gone from not being able to stay in a general education classroom for the entire period to not only staying but giving presentations with the help of his
011wonderful paraprofessionals over the last three years ethan has participated in unified sports unified music cross country and he helps the office maintain our bulletin boards jesse does a great job without him i don't know where he'd be and carries out various other office duties through his life skills class with the help of mrs bremer and miss covey he has carried over his life skills into the community by now using his wallet library cards and making purchases outside of our school community ethan has participated in the recreation department unified soccer and unified baseball he's a frequent patriot not only at the mall library but libraries in rocky hill and weatherfield as he knows just what each collection holds and which year he took out what he's a wonderful son brother service dog owner student community member
012singer athlete and comedian this young man manages both his autistic challenges and rare mental condition like a champ so thank you ethan for reminding us every day how valuable diverse learning is and what it means to be amazing part of the cromwell community and we will certainly miss you as you move on to your next journey at high school so thank you for allowing us to talk about ethan and hopefully you get to see his um a short clip about what she's grown so thank you again and thank you ethan for making our lives special congratulations ethan we are all so proud of you thank you so much for sharing that mrs coachiola big congratulations to him we're so happy to hear about his progress and good luck next year in high school i'm sure
013he'll do extraordinary yeah yes and thank you thank you ms marin as well for being such a fabulous parent for us as well so absolutely thank you thank you for recognizing just how much he's actually grown in the last three years you know the transition to middle school was tough for any kid it was going to be a little extra tough for ethan and i'm just amazed at how much he's matured i think out of any three years in the last 14 he's grown the most since he started at cms so thank you for everything and all of the support well that's wonderful to hear and i'm glad he has you so i'm sure he will do well and you've always been such a good supporter mrs marin so thank you thank you okay so
014thank you everyone thank you and no correspondence tonight okay i'm told we do have a public comment do we have mrs gaduti on the line yeah i think you're muted alicia you're muted i will read the rules for public comment so individuals are welcome to address the board of education for up to three minutes each during the public comment portion of the meeting but board members will not generally engage in dialogue the board of ed chair may his or her discretion extend the time for public comments 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 student's teacher then principal and followed by the superintendent before bringing the comments to the board of education however if you feel if
015you do not believe your comments have been addressed appropriately or if you believe they should be shared with the board of education for any other reason please feel free to do so and lastly all comments must not include personal attacks and comments cannot be discourteous threatening vulgar or otherwise inappropriate the board chairperson may his or her discretion curtail any public comments or terminate any such individual's privilege of address at any time if they violate any of these rules violate reasonable standards of decorum are voicious or repetitious the board of education reserves the right to limit public comments to particular topics and without further ado if you'd like to state your name and address mrs gaduti if you're able are you unmuted i don't think she can hear us alicia are you on the line we
016can see you but we can't hear anything yet can you hear me now we can yes we can hear you can you hear us online okay uh good evening i'm alicia gadouti from gateway road the proud mom of alex uh junior olivia a freshman and sam a fifth grader in our many years living in but i wanted to share my concerns about policies and procedures that i feel need to be put in place related to the safety of student athletes i'd like to just share a story about the recent experience that we had we have planned a family vacation over april her son alex is now playing baseball and this is not a valid venue option wouldn't lose any playing time for the remainder of the season reluctantly we let him stay home with his
017grandmother so that he could fully participate in baseball on the morning of april 14th we received a call from alice's jv coach saying there was an accident announces her he was hit in the face of the line drive coach said he was bleeding badly and his teeth seemed to be knocked out of place the coach was not able to determine if alex had a head injury as he wasn't qualified to make that confirmation we had called the trainer he was on the way coach was told the trainer would be there in 10-15 minutes in the meantime our son's lip was completely split his teeth were hanging down he was spitting blood the coach told us that he was all alone with team he had a first aid kit but no ice he then sent us
018a picture of alex which will for those of you that are parents imagine it would stay it's going to stay with me forever coach told us the trainer was on the way ten minutes passed then 20 and then 30. it did feel like an issue within me alex's grandmother arrived but he had yet to be properly assessed for head injury according to the accident report it was an hour on alex's pit when he was finally assessed by the trainer brain injuries and released alice went to the dentist who directly sent him to ccnc the space was stitched by the plastic surgeon he had immediate dental surgery to brace his teeth in place he ended up with a serious infection and has had two root canals with another one potentially pending i tell you this not
019to make you uncomfortable but really is an alert that we must immediately address serious issues related to training equipment staffing and safety protocols for our student athletes we've spoken with the athletic director principal dr mackery really concerned to learn that the trainer the ice packs didn't need to be included with first aid supplies for teens i was disturbed that there isn't a procedure or training for coaches about when to call 9-1-1 i was told that there isn't an expectation currently response time for medical staff for trainers when a player is injured however a commitment was made to us to immediately address these gaps now nearly a month has passed and procedures have not been reviewed and updated assessments have not been done to determine if another coach needs to be added or be allocated to
020the team additional training has not been provided to coaches i was told that i specter now supplied in first aid kits i'm grateful alex will recover from this accident though he will have two or maybe three root canals and a scarred lip it could have been much worse could have had a brain injury or more severely broken bones or an injury impacting his eyesight as parents of student athletes we need to be confident that the safety of our children is the top priority for the district and that policies and procedures are put in place and properly followed to assure that end alex's situation brought to light deficits in our safety planning and protocols and i'm asking today that we immediately work to review what is in place and address gaps so that other student athletes
021get quick appropriate and thorough care i think and we are happy to help with that process thank you so much alicia and we're very sorry to hear about what happened to alex thank you for bringing this to our attention do you have any comments you want to add we don't generally respond to public comment but if you'd like to chime in you have to trust that i am doing everything that i possibly can i have spoken to miss gudati and there are many intricacies that are in place we do have a written we have a written format that and we have spoken to the coaches miss hanson and miss maher are working together i did ask miss udati to call nurse jillian hanson so that she could be provided with the most recent update so
022i would advise miss kudati to do that again as well but we take what happened very seriously however um i'm addressing it okay yeah okay next we'll move on to sorry can we just get an update on this for the next meeting to what the status is of uh of the protocol follow-up follow-up on this please sure okay do we have hunter on the line for an update for chs yeah i'm here thank you hunter um for the general announcement the carbon club recently hosted a river cleanup event um at the state park this week the school celebrated teacher appreciation week last week many clubs offered gifts to high school's teachers and there was a spirit day on friday when the students dressed like teachers and the teachers dressed like students thursday was also nurse's
023day nurse jen received a gift from several student organizations ap testing started last week and will continue until the beginning of next week mrs tobias mrs leahy's class along with the work study class at a fundraiser where they sold plants room fresheners and mother's day cards the student council holds an executive board election for next year congratulations to all who were elected especially olivia polkowski our junior board of ed representative for next year on saturday the class of 2023 held a fundraiser at chipotle and middletown on april 27th the school celebrated the day of silence the day celebrates and recognizes lgbtq plus voices that has historically been silenced the gay straight alliance collected donations and handed out rainbow pins for the occasion on wednesday april 28th many of the students aged 16 and up received
024the pfizer vaccine for the chronovirus in the auditorium the students will receive their second doses of the vaccine at the second clinic on may 19th the seniors had their senior celebration at the tpc on may 1st most of the class attended and the class got to watch the senior video after dinner for sports yesterday the boys tennis team had a match against odin they unfortunately lost 1-6 but played a good game they will compete against east hampton on thursday the girls tennis and softball teams also had games yesterday the tennis team had a tough game against old lime and ended up losing despite their strong efforts the softball team played against morgan and won 16-1 today the boys baseball golf and lacrosse teams all had games the girls lacrosse and softball's teams had games as
025well the boys golf team played against hail ray they will play against adam killingworth next tuesday the boys baseball team played against morgan they had a close game but lost three to two the boys and girls lacrosse teams played against north brantford both teams ultimately lost but had great performances the boys lacrosse team will play against capital classical tomorrow in old favorites on thursday the girls team will play against old fabric on thursday as well the girls softball team played against north branford they will play against the valley regional on thursday the boys and girls track team will compete against old saybrook tomorrow thank you both are there any questions for our student reps from the board okay next we'll move on to carmel middle school representatives audrey dana if you'd like to start uh
026hi austin is this austin so starting off with the art club the cms art club has been in the process of brighting brightening up the lobby of cms by painting two colorful murals one mural was chosen by the building administration and the other was designed by anna marie mueller a student from art club all students have been working together to add their own colorful touches to these artworks we are also exploring possibilities for decorating our display case with a unique design and with softball the girls softball team is currently 0-2 the team is working hard and continues improving each day the baseball season is off to a great start players are happy to be on the field and have adjusted to the new covet guidelines for the 2021 season our current record is two in
027one crownwall won their most recent game against easthampton with a score of 18 and one we have high expectations for the rest of the season cms track had their first home meet on april 30th against ram middle school due to the pandemic it has been difficult to find time to train at the chs track but the cms athletes stepped up to the challenge they ran well despite the rain and wind mvps of the meet were austin vison and audrey dana the team had their second meet against mcgee middle school in berlin yesterday both the boys and girls ran through and dumped well but mcgee ended up prevailing the coaches wanted to give a special shout out to the mvps of the meet peyton kessmer and caroline phillips both placed in their events and always cheer
028on their teammates they are a great example of what the cms track exemplifies the tech club will have its last meeting on tuesday may 18th in tech club students design scenes from famous retro video games 3d printed items using our new 3d printers and work to create an orientation video for 5th graders coming to cms next fall cromwell middle school future teachers club continues to meet on a weekly basis meetings have been filled with many visits from engaging guest speakers that took the time to share why they entered the teaching profession also the future teachers created and designed their own google classrooms lastly each featured teacher crafted a lesson plan and were afforded the opportunity to teach his or her lesson to the club okay thank you both are there any questions for our representatives
029from the board seeing none thank you audrey and austin next we'll move on to reports of liaisons from the town council and board of finance mr fornbach would you like to begin sure i'll go first thank you uh good evening everybody steve fort in back town council uh just a couple of things uh one um the diversity equity and inclusion committee is hosting a george floyd remembrance on may 25th at pearson park at the football field uh it's going to be starting around 5 30 and they expect it to go until about 7 ish um i know the 25th is already a busy night uh in town uh but uh if you can pass that along to the student uh that'd be great um and oh they'll also be so this is so the committee
030is hoping that this is a kick off kind of introduce everybody to the committee who the members are and um you know talk about some of the other um functions that they're looking to organize going forward um so and so the other question i have so that that's my for my liaison report but one of the questions that i had and someone can address this is now that the pfizer vaccine has been approved for under 16 is there going to be another um a vaccine event or a set up like they had at the high school and the other comment i actually had a couple of parents contact me regarding um so there's some confusion about the number of people that are allowed outside for outside events i know that as of the 19th of
031may that changes so right now it's 200 but does it go up after the 19th um because there are a bunch of events that are upcoming uh so there's some confusion uh parents have been asking me and i figured i'd pass that along so if that could be addressed i'd appreciate it thank you thank you um dr macri i assume you want to address any information about outside events in your superintendent updates so it can wait until then correct okay see in vaccine clinics that's something we don't know about yet a second vaccine clinic hasn't been right okay thank you and mr ireland would you like to report for board of finance please yes good evening can you hear me yes okay great um so just real quick and it kind of feels a little
032bit of a you know wrap-up kind of report last tuesday uh the referendum uh was held in town uh the uh the pledges did pass we met uh science board that evening and um uh set the mill rate and took care of uh you know the final steps in in the budget action for uh 2021 to 2022 and so um uh you know that did pass last week in case uh you know for a reason you haven't heard yet but uh other than that um that's pretty much it uh from uh from my end thank you are there any questions from the board for either mr borenbach or mr ireland okay thank you very much and at this time we'll move on to superintendent's updates and responses to board vet comments and action items from
033the prior meeting dr macri okay okay let's see where should we start um first i will have misty fury and miss coachiola update what we are doing for graduation and promotion so who would like to go first is steviary sure i i can go first at this point we have looked at providing a graduation similar to what we have in the past except for we are going to have a few um changes one is we're allowing students to have four tickets um so they can have four guests come we are planning on putting those four guests in pods so we have 137 graduates which means we will need a 137 different pods created with four seats in each pod and making sure that they are distanced appropriately from the pod next to them the pod
034behind them and the pod in front of them this graduation will take place in the front of the building similar to what we've always done the stage will be much smaller the students will not be on the stage because of the way we are going to need to distance them and so the graduates will be sitting in the front and we will have a much smaller stage but the graduates will be distanced between each chair and so the 137 of them will be distanced out we plan on spreading these seats as we typically if you know our traditional graduation try to picture that going across the um visitors parking lot and we're going to be utilizing all of that space for seating up to the island so it will be actually double the space so
035that we can make sure people are distanced apart we will need to know what graduate has each pod because in case we're asked to contact trace we will need to know where everyone is seated with that said we know that typically the graduations has had a certain amount of tickets and then people would just uh join in around the the outskirts that won't be allowed this year because our outskirts are actually being used because we're spreading the um the people out so so much um and that we can't contact trace people we don't know um so we will only allow the four tickets for each graduate i guess that's pretty much it and the band will be playing and the chorus will be singing so that's really really good thing thank you that's it thank
036you mrs d fiore that sounds like a great plan if it were to rain are we going to be using that big tent that's out back instead is that the backup plan yeah okay so if it does if it does if the weather's bad we're going to use the tent um what we're going to do is we're going to have the tickets the four tickets we're going to have two different colors so what we will do is we will utilize one of the colors so if it does pour we do have to have graduation based on the plans for project grads that can't be cancelled and so we will only allow two uh tickets per graduate if it's pouring okay and will we be broadcasting this live streamed for those who can't attend i talked
037with mr madoff yep and we're we're going to live stream to anyone who can't see it um it will be live streamed we've already discussed this and we've done this on the past couple of years anyway so um we um we're definitely equipped to do that thank you are there any questions from board members jen i'm just curious what they're doing for project graduation do you know what what's going on for project graduation mr fiori oh yeah sorry i didn't hear it yeah so um the project the parents have organized um a a trip uh to quasi and the students will be going uh to quasi park for the uh entire evening through into the morning um and they will be going there by bus the bus will be leaving the buses will be leaving
038by the high school and returning to the high school and so they will be spending the entire evening well into the three hours of the morning at quasi park sounds great any other questions catherine i'm assuming there's not going to be parking issues with because we're using some of the parking lot area we have a plan in place of how to dismiss teachers early so that when the students are um ready to go we will have most of the staff um leaving the building we've addressed everything that yeah we've needed to address it's this has been in plan since well that that's really for eighth grade but typically in the evening when we do have a night graduation um we have many of our staff has been great they all volunteer we usually have about
03940 teachers volunteer for graduation and they will park cars along the bath and they will park they have a whole system that they use and to provide handicap parking as well and even though we're using that that part up to the island we shall be we'll be fine because we typically have never used that for parking anyway thank you any other questions no okay that's all very exciting thank you for sharing back to you dr macri are we going to continue with the end of year trend here yes miss t fiore is there anything else that you would like to talk about for end of year activities um we did have the prom for the senior celebration for the students at the tcp on may 1st it went very well um i'm not sure if
040there's anything else misty fury that you'd like to yeah um sure sorry yes i'm sorry i'll uh yeah we have lots of things planned for our seniors um we have our senior awards tonight which is may 20th that will be taking place under the tent each each award recipient is allowed to bring uh two guests um so and we're also going to be live streaming that as well because we got such a great response last year because we had to do it virtually um and they said you know parent grandparents got to be in the in the safety of their own home and watch and watch their grandchildren get awards and so we've decided that just because we have only two tickets for each award recipient we're going to live stream that as well so
041that'll happen may 20th we have quite a few concerts planned throughout the next few weeks and we actually have um typically as you know we've always gone to the carmel diner for breakfast this year we're going to have a wonderfully catered breakfast um from i think the pickled deli the pickabilly deli or or the picnic they are going they are going to be catering breakfast the morning of graduation and we're going to be doing that right under the tent um and so the students can enjoy that and then fall right into our practice that we typically have at like 10 in the morning so they'll be right there on on the campus and we'll go right from breakfast right to the rehearsal and we are planning as you'll see later we had to change the
042date of six flags because six flags were opening later than we expected but we are going on may 28th which is a friday the friday before memorial day weekend the seniors will be going to six flags and i think that's about it thank you so much i'm so happy to hear that they're able to have all their celebrations this year yep everyone has worked very hard in every school building all the teachers parents um working very closely to give our kids everything we possibly can and still stay within the guidelines to the best of our ability miss coachella would you like to go next and then um we can quickly have mr butwell and then miss detuno this is detuno speak to your end of the year activities but we'll have miss uh coach go
043next sure hello everybody um yes we sent out two eighth grade families uh a pretty lengthy detailed explanation of uh how we're going to work on promotion this year so this year we're very fortunate that we can have the promotion outside under the tent up at the cromwell high school in the back of the near the soccer field and we worked with mrs d fiore and dr macri about dismissing um staff and we were very specific about what time parents could arrive we are very fortunate that we can have two parent or family members i should say two family members per student to attend because we're going to create those small two person pods to separate because we're still contact tracing and we want to make sure that everyone stays safe we are asking everyone
044to wear their masks even though they're outside and we're asking folks ahead of time a google form was sent out for folks to sign up ahead of time names and phone numbers so in the event we have to contact trace we'll be ready to roll and we'll also be live streaming so folks will be able to as i had said they'll have a front row digitally and we're looking forward to it and we're going to be able to do this rain or shine because we'll be under the tent because we're pretty limited and in our times because of you know the high school and all of their activities and you know just telling folks to dress accordingly and we're all go and send them positive thoughts for sunny weather for the 8th and looking very
045forward to bringing our kids to the high school um you know having their promotion ceremony and then um bringing them back to the middle school for dismissal so it's we're excited thank you ann that all sounds great any questions any questions from the board oh good nope none okay can we move on to woodside mr butwell if you have anything to share hi everyone can you hear me okay yes okay yes so um woodside is working hard this year to have some of the traditional events that our fifth graders enjoy so we will be having uh we did complete our dare program this year so we will be having we won't be having a huge um dare celebration altogether but um detective tolton who was our dare instructor this year will be um having a
046celebration with each of the fifth grade classrooms and while he meets with them he'll be recognizing the essay winners from from each classroom and also recognizing the work of each class um those uh classroom level ceremonies will be streamed to those parents who would like to watch that will be coming up on may between may 17th and 19th depending on what day detective tolton is in those classrooms we've also been working very hard on our fifth grade picnic which we are thrilled to be able to put together for our fifth graders that's going to be on monday june 7th and of course with social distancing and health guidelines we had to change things up with it but we've been working in conjunction with the pto and helpful parents and of course classroom teachers to come
047up with activities that will be both safe and fun and um follow all the guidelines for social businessing so we're looking forward to that day and then finally on the last day of school june 9th we will have our promotion ceremony um we're going to hold it in the gym as we do each year we're going to just we're going to stream the ceremony to parents and we're going to also break that ceremony into two sessions so that the kids as they come into the gym will be socially distant so we'll do four classes um four classes and four classes um and i just wanted to mention in addition uh we're working with ecs right now to coordinate the step-up day events which we know the kids enjoy meeting their teachers before they go home
048for the summer so we're working on getting we have plans in the works for second graders to come over and visit woodside get a tour of the building and of course meet their teacher for next year and then we are we'll be doing our in-house step-up days for our third graders going to fourth grade and our fourth graders going to fifth grade thank you so much thank you so much i'm happy to hear officer tolton has reunited with the students briefly that's exciting i didn't expect to hear that um and i think that the ceremony might go even better broadcast because it's really hard to see in that gym as far as promotion ceremonies go so good plans does anyone have any questions or comments none okay thank you then we'll move on to ecs
049mrs detuno thank you mrs detuno are you on the line to give us an update maybe not hi everyone can you hear me yes can you hear me now hi everybody um all of our students in grade two will be recognized in a celebratory video created by our classroom teachers and these will be streamed to parents in addition all the second graders are going to get a promotion t-shirt and we'll take pictures and send those to parents as well like mr butwell um shared with you we are excited about a step up day for both ecs preschool decay k to one one to two and then two walking over to woodside to meet their new teacher thank you are there any questions for mrs detuno none okay and thank you very much for the updates
050everyone and dr macri if you'd like to get back to your updates that would be great great okay um let's see quickly we had an sel piano social emotional learning panel that we put together we included myself dr mclean who is the moderator we had social our social worker we had teachers and we had mrs marin a wonderful parent janine marin who you heard from earlier um she owns the peaceful chaos yoga center and we streamed i'm sorry we didn't stream we taped recorded um i'd say it'll be approximately an hour hopefully by the time we get it down and we'll be sharing it with the community about how do we respond to covid19 and help our students and help our adults with the stress that everyone has been under it is based off of
051the work from dr mark brackett and ruler so everyone was phenomenal we plan to share that very shortly and we'll have flyers sent out to everyone and we'll have it posted on our website so i'm very proud of everyone and thank you to all the teachers social workers kate puro mrs marin for participating it just made it such a more lively discussion we have a district and school equity committees formed our school equity committee at the high school has already began writing their position statement for equity and inclusion in all schools we have formulated our district equity committee we have parents and students and staff on that committee as well i have to tell you we did ask we sent each school sent something out to invite parents to ask to participate on the committee
052and we had an overwhelming response so we actually had to turn some people away otherwise it would have been over 100 people and that doesn't become that productive so um i'm very happy that we have many families that are very interested in participating in the district equity and inclusion committee we have a lot of work to do and i am hopeful that we are going to make a lot of headway so that has been happening as well i do have um dr mclean on the phone and she's going to quickly let you know about our summer enrichment update as you all know our students have fallen behind in many ways so we are doing a few things this summer with american relief funds and other grant money to be able to catch our students up
053to the best of our ability like i mentioned in the past we do have a quite a few students who are are behind are quite behind and are struggling and are failing courses and are disengaged because of um for lack of better their socialization component is missing they haven't been in school things are different the math squaring it's all has an effect on our students so dr maclean do you want to speak to that george good evening everyone um we're i'm excited to be able to expand our summer school program we've created a summer learning institute for our secondary students in grades 6 through 12. there's about we've identified about 75 to 80 kids in each of the buildings the high school and the middle school these students were identified based on their need for
054maybe some transition support going from with to the middle school or from the middle school to the high school to do some academic support within the program we are embedding some social emotional learning um we're going to be providing some executive function support and we've partnered with empower sports adventure center in middletown and they're going to be providing some fun leadership training for our students throughout the summer session so where the session is going to go from june 21st to july 29th it'll be four days a week monday through thursday with the exception of july 4th week that will go tuesday through friday because that monday is a holiday and it's going to be a half day program in the morning so we are just in the process of contacting students now um to see
055if they will be able to attend this will be free of charge to the students and we're really hoping that we'll be able to get some social supports in place some transition supports in place and to you know support academics as well but really focus on that relationship building piece so that students can be more engaged in their school work and their school community so that's what we're that's what we're planning so far great thank you and as far as elementary school we are looking at extended learning programs for next year and i'll tell you a little bit more about that we just finally got our allocation from the state department of education for the elementary and secondary emergency school relief fund under the american rescue plan so i'll talk to you a little bit
056about that but before i do that thank you dr maclean any questions for dr mclean how did we identify which students would qualify or would be good candidates for the program and can she put in layman's terms what executive function support means how do i identify students that need executive function support dr mclean do you want to talk about srbi and um yep okay sure we have some students that are uh receiving some academic supports um and so we you know we used a variety of data points we also worked with our social workers and our student support services staff to identify those students that could potentially need some transition we looked at attendance data we looked at several different data points that identified um these students um that that will need some extra support
057that we feel will need some extra support going into next year do we consult with our teachers when we do this too like the the students actual teachers that we're looking at yes they're part of the srbi process i'm sorry we have srbi teams yep they're a huge yeah we have srbi teams in place that identify can you hear me yeah it was just me i was just trying to explain how the srbi process works that's that's a team of of um staff members but it's hugely uh run by teachers because the teachers are the ones that are usually um bringing the students to the srbi process but if you want to say anything else about that carrie go ahead nope i was just going to say exactly that okay okay lori has a question
058go ahead lori so this summer uh learning institute this is this going to be separate from extended school year or is that going to be are they going to be combined is it all one program or is esy going to be separate so the esy dates wouldn't necessarily be these dates doesn't totally no es5 are actually different yes yeah yeah i didn't know if you were thinking of putting it all together so you're still keeping it separate yes and the summer learning is that going to be at the high school it's going to be at the high school and it's going to be um are we having it all at the high school carry or did we decide on two buildings nope the middle school students will be at the middle school and the high
059school students will be at the high school we have a lot going on at the high school so we have to and just one more thing do you know if esy will be at high school again ecs and high school okay thank you sure any other questions so just to clarify there there is no summer school programming at all for pre-k to 5. no okay no research based when you're looking at um if you can't offer something that's more extensive so the entire day which we can't chances of parents being able to drop students off and pick them up are very minimal because of daycare issues so usually parents choose to enroll their students in camp also it's just too expensive to do it both ways for everyone so we focused on secondary because of
060the credit bearing classes and we really want to make sure that the quite a few freshmen uh going into their sophomore year can get caught up so that they can graduate on time um so we we looked at this more as a transitional uh summer school program and we'll do extended school day hopefully beginning in september for elementary okay thank you any other questions no okay move on to presentations and reports of administration in your packet you have reference a the budget update do you want i'm sorry sorry more oh yeah i'm sorry i'd like to congratulate um mr dandelia mr daniel dalia is our district teacher of the year for this school year and i would just like to share this with you um it's amazing with mr delia i believe that all of
061you at this table know who mr jilly is because all of our students go through him and when you mention mr delia's name to students they immediately immediately light up he truly is what the definition of a teacher is and means and besides being a phenomenal educator he is a compassionate person as well and then there is a committee that meets and it's consists of former teachers of the year um it is run by the cea and myself and dr mclean get to participate um and there were teachers on the committee and there was a board member and a teacher on the committee um mrs cantwell and i just would like to read this this is um what mr delia wrote when he had to submit his reflection about community involvement so he is not
062only a proponent for children in the classroom but outside of the classroom not only in cromwell but in his own hometown as well and mr delia says as he reflected upon his community involvement outside the classroom i realized that over the past 20 or so years my focus has always been on improving the lives of children when my children daniel 18 and emma 21 were young and participating in youth activities i would make sure that i was involved i volunteered as a youth soccer coach and became the league coordinator for newtown youth soccer so that i could play a direct role and have a positive impact on my children and their peers beyond that i volunteered in the classroom for both of my children and was a member of the pto for their entire 10
063years in public school i volunteered to be a coach on both odyssey of the mind in bethel connecticut and invention convention in cromwell and he writes in parentheses prior to it being a stipend position as uh i did too dan same thing in north haven as i felt these provided students the opportunity to grow create and make decisions that would help them in the future one of his fondest memories or his my fondest memories was working with the residents of covenant village as judges for the local invention convention competition finally i thoroughly enjoyed bingo calling for pto bingo night career day at cms and working with a wonderful group of colleagues to make a stem night at woodside a great success over the past four years i increased my community service significantly through serving on
064the newtown board of education as vice chair the board of advanced regional educational service center joint boe bof and lc non-lapsing work group holley school capital improvement subcommittee facilities and finance subcommittee as chair these opportunities mean so much to me because i am able to serve both the students and the community and have a real and positive impact this service to the community has been both challenging and rewarding and i plan to continue to serve in the future as i feel the most rewarding experience is the ability to serve and that's how mr delia looks at teaching he looks at teaching as an honor and an ability to serve our students every single day and to find something extremely special in every student and i believe that if you talk to any of our children
065they will tell you that he does exactly that and his colleagues agree as well so a huge congratulations to mr delia and we are going to absolutely encourage him and i believe he's going to do so apply for the teacher of the year for the state of connecticut so congratulations mr delia i'm not sure if mr adelia is on the phone but if anyone would like to say something i hope he's listening laurie go ahead if he's yeah i just want to congratulate mr deleah and also um you know the other candidates were very strong too and it was it was a good problem to have it was a really hard decision and we're very lucky that we had three excellent candidates and we struggled and i'm not good at making decisions but but i
066mean mr delia he's just phenomenal and i just want to congratulate him and thank him for everything he's done for our district well thank you for being on the committee lori and i'm not surprised at all that mr julia won and i guess they asked him the right question because i can't believe how much community involvement he he is involved in wow does anyone else have any other comments from mr delia okay well congratulations to mr julia from the board okay and lastly um talking about the grant and then our budget as you all know you don't see the budget here on specifically so you don't have to make any very difficult decisions we've been working incredibly hard to try to figure out how we're going to make up for the 312 thousand dollars i
067think it's very important for everyone to know some people believe that we always make it every single solitary year so why not continuing you know continue to cut the school budget the lea i want you to know that when that happens our kids go without so for example this year in order for us not to go in the red is the as of the board of ed and you'll see when you look at the budget update reference a we are using grant funds um to cover that those expenses that we've incurred we all we received grant funds directly for kovid but then we also have had to use other um expensive other grant funding for this so our kids will go without something so for example had we um had the allocation we perhaps could
068have had a summer school program where we would have been able to offer it to our elementary students all day long and provide transportation so that's something that is greatly needed it's not that our students are not at risk in fact we have kindergarteners and preschoolers that are not we don't know where they we don't know where they are they didn't come to school this year so in finding them um and then coming out back to school obviously they could have benefited from something this summer however unless you put something in full program in place it's ineffective and we don't want to do something like that um so i want everyone to understand that i also want to just explain to you that we finally did get here from the state department of education yesterday
069or the day before may 9th and they gave us our allocation formula funding for the american rescue plan and cromwell will be receiving uh one million three hundred sixteen thousand dollars three hundred and twenty four thousand um so obviously that three hundred and twelve 000 so that we don't have to cut what i had proposed when we started the budget process for example the social studies teachers we need them now more than ever because not only obviously our students should be learning uh to be civic leaders in social studies but we also need to act absolutely provide intervention in enrichment and this will allow us to do so with the focus period so we'll have enough staff coverage in order to be able to do that and so that we can meet our students needs
070also what we talked about was athletics we know that our students their well-being is very important and participating in athletics and after school program the research shows that if the students are involved they are more apt to be happy and healthy and they come to school and do well so obviously we want to make sure that we do that so we we are not looking obviously at that we are looking um we can't put that in the grant because there are specific buckets um and luckily um myself and dr mclean worked in a uh a district in need of improvement in the past so we've written these grants there is support out there to write them efficiently however dr mclean and i are going to do it on our own so that we can save
071some money and we've done it before and we feel that we can do it again and make sure that we are following legislation so we are going to have to switch some things around so that things fall into the categories under the american rescue plan and the esser relief fund and then we'll obviously have to put some of those items into the lea budget so that we're making sure that we are legal in in all aspects so that's the good news some of the stuff that dr mclean talked about um is obviously coming out of the american relief funds we already have it spent and we didn't even know what the number was we went with 1.3 and when the numbers came in dr mclean did a happy dance because that's where what we need
072um to be able to meet all of our uh needs so we are in good shape there i won't put you through torture and have you work on cutting anything however i want you to know that this grant is only two years so eventually things hopefully what will happen is the gaps will close in the two years and we will obviously still need to have an increase in the lea budget as time goes on especially with graduation requirements and the social emotional component of our students needs so that is it that's how we are making that happen so you don't have to vote on anything as far as cuts any questions regarding the um i could forward this to you too it's you could just see what all the districts allocations were and it's based
073on our title one funding so um as i explained previously the state was did not have the correct numbers or formulas so they had to hire an outside agency and we just received them but we have been planning this um and thinking about how we're going to write the grant which is due we receive it on may 17th and it's to may 24th so dr mclean's and i it's a good thing we got our doctorate together because we spent a lot of time together we're going to be spending a lot more time together writing that grant and getting it in in a small amount of time that doesn't mean they approve it immediately immediately though they will give it back to us for revisions so any questions so that means right now you don't need
074to cut the 300 you're just moving things around based on we'll move things around and then we'll do like what what happened this year froze the budget and then only what we absolutely needed um we had to do that because of what i'll talk to you about next um and we'll move things that you can use for this grant um into the american rescue plan and then obviously uh things that should be paid by lea um we'll leave an la okay thank you okay the um social studies teachers they're going to be hired for two years no so the social studies teachers i i will leave in la i'm going to so uh i'm sorry when i use lea is i mean the district budget so we have to create plans as a school district
075that are in uh compliance with federal uh obligations and so we know with those federal obligations there's four buckets it's the same as the esser grant buckets so we've been thinking along those lines we know that we are going to need the social studies teachers forever something that will go into the grant which will be posted as a two-year position um we believe we still have to run some numbers is for example the social workers that we'd like to have in every building so that position will be posted for two years everything that is funded through the grants is always posted as grant funded some will have limitations some will not because it's not only this grant we have other grants as well um so we do let whoever is going to apply no if
076it's just a two-year position and then you never know what could happen in the future but we do we are very honest about the procedure so you will be looking to add two more social workers with that grant this current yes with these current funds we're looking to add the two more so that each building can have one we're going to need it we already need it right now as you know as a school counselor we are looking to have two years of a um a special education curriculu i'm sorry special education uh supervisor working with miss o'leary we have much work to do as we know that our students who have struggled in special education the most after during and still in the pandemic we have many outplacements that we have to attend the
077ppts so um we are looking for some support for two years that position will only be posted for two years as well and obviously the recommendation will come to you because you're the only one who's allowed to hire that position those will be grant funded we talked about the curriculum supervisors those obviously will be grant funded but from a different grant and then everything else is programmatic of learning loss trying to catch up our students and providing programs that we definitely know our students need both extended date school day and then summer school and hopefully we'll have enough to do summer school for for two summers we're not sure we have to see how many kids enroll where we end up because we don't know who we have to hire yet um because we're not
078100 sure parents have to make a decision and those uh forms have been sent out to families so it's complicated because we just found you know we just got the the go kathryn i have a question as we talk about um the different positions that aren't our traditional teacher type teacher positions but like curriculum writing and all these other um you know we're going to need a new high school principal can you give a brief overview of how the application and hiring process goes for some of these positions whether they're a district-wide position something that's in within the board of ed office or just at a higher level within one of the schools because we do seem to have a lot of open openings popping up and do we look to you know how do
079we post where does it go who interviews who reviews that kind of thing sure so we do have we follow the cbas so the collective bargaining agreements for everything that we do um we are not in violation of every single one of them so they're all different so if you're an administrator you have to post inside for seven days you can find them online under um board of education they're at the bottom the contracts are under there mr morrow shaking your head so you can read all the intricacies so that we're not here you know all night but we do form a committee so for example um it could it's posted for seven days for the administrators internally that means to their own union then we um it is uh at the discretion because it's
080silent um of my team depending on whatever team that i it's not always me that forms it either it's dr mclean as well the school principal it all depends on who's where it is um and we interview the the people who applied from within that union that's the administrators union that's completely if no one applies then we go out that means when you go out and that means you're going out to anyone everyone you're going out to all of cromwell and the entire state of connecticut the entire nation whoever it's a search for whoever wants to apply so you have to apply we form a committee um and we make sure we have representation from cea depending on what the position is other groups and we have a very strict rating scale michelle demurrow and
081myself we've worked very hard to create a rating skill so every person who is on the committee actually has questions prepared ahead ahead of time they're given them the last minute they ask a question we have a rating scale we have a rubric everyone has to rate the person so there's two different ways of reading we rate by number and then recommendation as well so there is a very very thorough and very transparent process that we go through for every single union as far as whatever their cba tells us we have to do so just my understanding we go through the process first internally and review all the applicants and go only we could do both so miss tomorrow can come up it depends on the cba so we could do we could do both
082we can actually do both and it depends on which contract we're talking about they're all different so michelle can explain a little bit more but i definitely recommend i know it's it's a lot of reading but to read the cbas as far as hiring because they're they're so different yes uh as dr macri has stated a lot of the collective bargaining agreements state you have to some of them state you have to post in and out could be for five days ten days the administrator's contract basically states you have to post inside for ten uh seven days first offer them the position give them the opportunity to apply uh their contract does state that we're not required to hire someone from within if we feel that that person's not um maybe possibly the best candidate
083however we just follow the cbas for all positions for administrator positions there's a committee that's placed together like dr mackery stated we discuss confidentiality we go through the protocols of what a committee is required to do from rubrics hiring the best candidate in the most qualified candidate for every position so that's done at an administrator level at a level for a teacher that's done at the principal at the building each principal puts a committee together that committee could be two to three people they interview the applicants they hire the best applicants all rubrics are sent to me and they're kept uh in my office for a year year and a half two years and depending if anyone has any issues or they want to foi the rubrics okay okay so unless there are any other
084questions we're all set with um i want to make sure yes we're all set with everything i uh will review later um actually i do have to do it now sorry i'm sorry i thought i could do it later um as you will see in the retirements um we have quite a few people who have been with us for some time um that we definitely want to acknowledge so earlier i said this news is bittersweet we have misty fiore who has decided to retire as the principal of cromwell high school she's been employed with criminals since july 2010 so she's been a principal for over 11 years um and she will be retiring as of june 30th to uh 2021 um i want to thank misty fury for being so welcoming supportive understanding really just
085helping me walking into a new district as far as being a new superintendent she really does know everything about the district and i can't personally thank her enough and i'm sure the staff and the students feel the same way this is a huge loss as i said to her however it is a great gain for a connecticut for the connecticut association uh um of school administrators which she will be taking the lead on um as being part of that uni uh union for for many years it is definitely going to be so much better uh the person who was at the helm was wonderful but misty fiore is really just going to take over and do a phenomenal job and i look forward to working with her in that capacity so she's not really leaving
086me but she will be leaving cromwell i wish missy fiore and her family her newest grandbaby charles she's going to be spending a lot of time with him and she deserves the very best she has been an educator for 36 years so congratulations to misty fiore you will be missed but i am so happy for you next we have miss jennifer eyde who is a science teacher in sixth grade at cromwell middle school since august of 1999 so 22 years at the middle school and she will be retiring also as of june 30th 2021 this year she did uh the incredible um she was one of our remote teachers and as you all know remote learning and remote teaching is not easy and she did a phenomenal job with engaging our students and i wish
087her the very best in her retirement as well so that's we also have kathy ribeira who's been a paraprofessional at edna stephens and cromwell since 1988 so 33 years we are incredibly excited for her we wish her the very best 33 years is a very very long time to be devoted as a paraprofessional it's a very difficult job very rewarding but it is a very difficult job so thank you to miss ribeira and we wish her the best in her retirement and then lastly we have miss laurie man jean who has been a calf manager in cromwell and has employed has been employed in cromwell since 1994 and she is now also [Music] retiring after 27 years of serving the students of cromwell public schools making sure that they are well fed well taken care
088of and i know she takes her job very seriously and we wish her the very best as well and now i am officially done with that section okay so at this time tonight we met the facilities committee met and we have chris cycle here from csg and he'll be presenting to us tonight on the future project that we're hoping to move along and i don't know if you have the if you can get it back up for us um and mr cycle we'll take it from here during our meeting we basically went over a little bit of the history going back to 2016 as some of you remember and what's needed to move forward on the next steps do you have anything to add dr macri nope just thank you to mr cycling csg they
089continue to work with us they've been working with us since 2016 and still are eager to help cromwell do well by our students and i appreciate their support as we navigate this process all set sorry thanks can you hear me now okay uh so the first part will be uh the timeline from now until uh june 30th of 2022 which would be the deadline to submit a grant application for a building project to the state of connecticut so that'll be the first part the second part will be just an overview of the 2016 facilities review for both uh edna stevens as well as cromwell middle school and then the third piece is uh there's a slide in there for some budget information um just some high level information so that everybody kind of gets a
090sense of what we're looking at as conversations evolve and recommendations are considered okay so as i mentioned the timeline so starting now in may um this process would would initially begin with reviewing the needs uh within the town between edna stephens and the middle school ultimately a recommendation from the board of ed would come would go to the town council and board of finance again with some budget information that i'll get into a little bit later those are all functions of the board of ed then ultimately the the town council and board of finance uh would review and move forward the recommendation of the board of ed and then ultimately establish or appoint a building committee to take the process through the grant application through june 30th that building committee can be appointed as the
091facilities committee that we met with earlier here tonight can really be anyone through this process so assuming that that happens between may and june at the end of june let's say the recommendation gets the approval to move forward or the nod i should call it to move forward into the next step the next step would be to hire or retain an owner's project manager similar to ourselves to sit down with the superintendent administration and write ed specs educational specifications for the project that is ultimately recommended to move forward so that will happen july august september october-ish somewhere in there some programming as well as uh um we would issue an rfp request for proposal for an architect to prepare schematic schematic design documents a function needed for the grant application in june so we'd get
092that applic we'd get that rfp out we'd issue it we'd select an architect and then initially start that schematic design process conceptual design process along with the educational specifications to get through just about through the end of 20 to 21 if you go to the next side so starting uh january february and march um we'll really have some uh more focused conversations around uh the actual design the layout the different scenarios develop an estimate ultimately getting to the end of march now i put in some dates in here i just made some assumptions for conversation sake for this for this schedule um i assume that we would have uh an approval or a referendum that would coincide with the budget uh on or about may 2nd i'm not sure of the exact date but i
093just used it for conversation sake so march would be the time that uh town council and board of finance would recommend the project to the town meeting um that would be set for some time in uh late april and then with the potential for the referendum uh in early may uh next slide so just a few other things along the way there that are going to happen continuously updating town council and board of finance on uh the progress of the project that's decided to move forward um again recommending uh the appropriation and bringing it to the finance committee for their approval needed for the for the time meeting planning and zoning uh part of the charter is to have uh design review meetings um completed and then ultimately again in march setting the special tile
094meeting date um and then uh preparing for the potential of a of a referendum april uh there's there's three resolutions that we would need for town council that are part of the grant application the very first one there on the left establishing a building committee that ultimately is going to happen sooner that's one of the three the second one is to authorize schematic drawings and specifications to be prepared and then the third is to authorize the superintendent to submit the grant application to the state so those are the things that happen in april go ahead next slide as well as again um uh collecting any of the certified meeting minutes or we would need um the voting tallies uh for a successful referendum or town meeting certified we would collect all that information and get
095it in by the june 30th deadline so does any before i move on does anybody have any questions regarding timeline no okay great so now again i'll take you through uh a brief recap of the 2016 facilities review so the architect at the time dra they went through both buildings as part of their scope and they measured did a layout came up with some scenarios um and then ultimately again as as we've stated previously in 2016 the decision was to move forward with that in the stevens however the same level of work prior to that was done for both buildings so that's where i'm gonna leave with this these next few slides so oh no god the back one yeah sorry so uh the existing edna stevens this is the layout um you can see
096the the classroom sizes they kind of they denoted them by color for the different sizes now you can go good next slide sorry so a few again back in 2016 a few a few of the major concerns that came up regarding the facility was its age then code compliance and ada compliance uh corridor with was it was an issue as well as security controlling visitor and parent access educationally classroom size and conformity kindergarten didn't have toilets that was part of the program that they were trying to implement then classroom environment which i believe has been upgraded at edna stevens part of the covid pandemic and then location of early childhood education program which has also since been been modified and improved so again these are just some of the some of the items that came
097out of the report in 2016. next slide ultimately uh after several options they did decide to move forward with a new building for edna stevens as you can see the uh the white shaded building was the new building uh immediately adjacent to the gray shaded building which is the existing so that was uh that was the scenario that they decided to move forward with then unfortunately just kind of stalled out bringing us here today go ahead next slide so now we get into the middle school again same thing architects went through did a layout measured the building identified the classrooms uh classroom sizes science room sizes uh one of the initiatives that they were trying to achieve then as well was uh an early notion of clabs or classroom laboratories those are the in large
098science rooms trying to get to 1200 square feet currently they were anywhere from 685 to a thousand square feet um significantly smaller than what the new program was trying to achieve okay so again some uh concerns with the facility again its age uh code compliance technology upgrades the modulars which are still there educationally again you're going to see a theme here classroom size classroom environment media center computer labs we're adjacent science classrooms as i mentioned were just small and then the stem program was currently taught in the home economics space which i believe to still be the case today next so a little bit further with the programming that was done on the middle school again in 2016 on the right hand side i know it's it's difficult to see but they did come up
099with a program um at the time and i'll get to that to that net square footage in a second but a few of the things that they wanted they were trying to achieve were all the classrooms grades six through eight they wanted to get uniform 850 square feet each they were trying to get the science classrooms to be 1200 square feet and there was also desire as i believe there is now to retain the existing gym and locker room area as well as the auditorium um those two spaces given that their size and this now being a middle school um would be extremely hard to retain uh in a new building project so those were some of the items that they they tried to incorporate they didn't actually incorporate in this model here on the
100right so recently we met with the superintendent we went through current enrollment projections right now for the middle school 2022 is the peak enrollment at 481 students the state uses that as as their initial step for their allowable square footage per student so based on that uh the maximum maximum square footage that would be allowed is 808 square feet the building currently is 83 000 square feet so it's already 3 000 square feet over what the state would consider eligible i'll explain a little bit further on the last slide with the budget where that comes into play and ultimately the program on the right um uh resolved to be about 85 000 square feet so they're about 5 000 square feet over uh what would be allowed next well so again in 2016 um the
101option that was selected though did not move forward was the addition of a classroom wing and new science classrooms to try and achieve that right sizing of some of the classrooms as well as the enlarged uh collab science rooms the 1200 square feet science rooms good next slide okay so now uh budgeting related to cromwell middle school um the existing building as i mentioned was 83 is currently 83 000 square feet the state uses a per square foot target of 450 per square foot for a renovation cost that multiplied by the 83 000 square feet is approximately 37 million 400 dollars so that would be a rough estimate of a grant application to renovate the entire existing building as it sits right now again we mentioned that that program that they did come up with
102in 2016 was even about the 2000 square feet more than what it where currently sits right now because they're they were putting on some additions the current reimbursement rate for 2021 is 49.64 that's important because even though the grant application goes in in june if the referendum is not held in may as my schedule indicated earlier the state does allow you to extend the referendum out to november to the regular election um as long as that is stated uh and resolved at the town council prior to june 30th so there needs to there need to be a resolution saying we'll have a referendum in november or anytime anytime prior to november right um if the referendum is held after july 1st then a new reimbursement rate would apply however that's not published yet so we
103don't know what the 2022 reimbursement rates are currently like i said it's 49.64 so it would be about 18.9 million dollars would be the town share um that would be that would be added to the debt service uh over time where the um additional space the additional square footage over the allowable 80 000 square feet comes into play is here um there's a there's a calculation that happens that says okay you're allowed 80 000 square feet you're over that um and then there's a percentage reduction that takes place because you're building a bigger building than the state would normally allow um what that represents here is about three quarters of a percent so it takes it from 49.64 down to 48.29 um or about 500 000 an additional um town share funding so your town
104share would go from 18.9 million to about 19.4 or 19.5 rounding that's just to renovate the existing building thereabouts with an approximate square footage of what it currently sits at 83 000. if you were to build a new building based on the maximum allowable square footage of the 83 or the 80 000 square feet using an average 600 per square foot for new building cost new building demolition of the existing building and so on uh that's about a 48.5 million dollar project the reimbursement rate for that as you'll notice is 39.64 which is actually 10 percent less than the renovate square footage or i'm sorry then the renovate reimbursement rate and that's intentional by the state because they encourage you to renovate your buildings versus building new if at all possible so in that can
105in that scenario the town share would be 29.3 million to build a new building so again i just i want to note that these are very high level square footage based numbers uh however in talking to the superintendent um and the finance department we we needed to establish some sort of um range if there's an appetite for numbers that look like this and ultimately the project the program or the project is reduced in some capacity then it would just reduce these numbers these are these are kind of ceilings still very um rough but it's it's kind of the top at the top end of the of the grant options sure so if we were to build a new building at cms we're a little unique because the board of ed sits at the cms building
106does that not so it happens in a lot of districts where the board oh yeah i've never been in the district that happens everywhere i've lived they've been separate um but does that get included in the renovation do we take down i mean how do you take down just or would you take down just part of the building and does that impact our reimbursement rate um because it's essentially in middle school well it's not so much the designation of the school as it is the board of ed space board of ed spaces are typically half of the reimbursement rate if they're a stand-alone project and again these are conversations that would come out of the the schematic design process and the programming with the architect that selected um but if the board of ed were
107determined to remain as part of the project there's a very good argument that it it would it would receive the same reimbursement rate for that square footage as the rest of the building if it were to remain in the same if they were if they were split off then it would probably be it would probably go in two different two separate grant applications you'd have one grant application for the middle school and then a separate grant application for 50 of your renovation of your reimbursement rate i mean for a board of head space um i just wanted we could obviously ask mr cycle as many questions as you have i want you to he's here so we took up all his his night so he might as well answer as many questions as possible but
108what i would like for you to know as just going back in the history of when i got here which was august of 2019 there was a building project on the docket but it was put on the burner again and i was asked to contact csg and work with them to find out where we were we worked together um along the board that was involved at the time we talked about ecs that was what uh this is why i wanted chris to really make it very clear to everyone is that at that time the superintendent's recommendation and i believe it was two superintendents ago and then continued with the prior superintendent um without interims not talking in terms but the prior superintendent that we would move forward as a community with ecs i believe differently
109my philosophy is slightly different i believe that cms and tommy is here both buildings are in rough shape they both need to be done as soon as possible however i believe that is it is in the best interest of the community the district our students not only for operational purposes and inefficiencies but for programmatic purposes um that we move forward with cms first either be a rebuild or um whatever a renovation whatever you whatever the committees decide to do but we stopped at as uh chris mentioned we stopped at ecs got the building at specs we pretty much were ready to go to we we did have a tri board meeting with the board of finance board of education and the town council and then we decided to wait because it felt rushed and that
110we didn't really look into cms as much as we should have so a year and a half later that's what i've been doing and kovet has brought many things to light not only operationally but educationally um our students it because of the age not because of the amazing actually because of the amazing teachers um that we have especially the focusing on stem or steam which is science technology engineering arts and mathematics we have a very gifted fine arts staff at the middle school and we have excellent stem teachers and i would like for uh the library media center to become the hub um like a makerspace space as um we should be doing and finding pathways for our students as early as middle school so um i'd also like to bring back the students that
111we lose to aerospace and engineering and stem focused schools and and magnet schools and i believe we can do all of this um and uh change things programmatically which will make the building look different than um what was proposed back then which was just to rebuild some classroom wings to enlarge classrooms we really would want to make the focus of the school we need to we would re-look at this which is why chris said we would have to go back and hire an architect and look at this plan all over again and pretty much start almost from scratch we have a lot of history which is great however we need to make a decision as the board of education if we want to move forward with getting all of this information and that pretty much
112would be the motion this evening is to do you as the board of education want to move forward with anticipated pre-referendum costs so hiring an architect and an owner's representative so that at the approximate cost as chris said between 50 and 70 thousand dollars so that we can uh figure this out and what we want to do and then obviously follow the the process and the timeline that chris outlined i have spoken uh just so and i've looked at the bonding from the town and spoke to marianne sylvester and tony salvatore and everyone knows that it has to be a community voted on a project however i i did ask and look at the service stat and it looks like cromwell will have many projects off the books starting 23 24 24 25 and that's
113most likely when we anticipate the larger part of the class for 20 the school year 24 25 that's when the real construction would begin there would be some other soft costs one to two million dollars perhaps the year before but the larger cash flow would come after that and cromwell is in a very good position to bring another project on board and it is my recommendation for programmatic for student engagement for inquiry-based learning for the 21st century there's a plethora of research out there that says the the actual building the space where students are learning has a lot to do with how they feel valued by the community and obviously as we know each age group we still need to do ecs we've made many adjustments we could hang on for a few more years
114but with cms it's so crucial for our middle school students to know that they're valued and there's a program for them and a pathway for them and that they are welcomed every day by a building that is in great condition and right now that is not the the case so um i just wanted to preface it with with that and then selena i'm sorry i'm sure chris can answer any of your questions um and hopefully myself or tommy can answer questions as well um chris and tommy are probably well i don't think tommy was in that position at the time nope so chris has the most history so feel free to ask chris any questions regarding the process are there any questions at all none huh okay would anyone like to make an emotion to
115approve the anticipated i'll make a motion thanks john the anticipated pre-referendum costs for the architect and owner's rep services would be the the motion so thank you thank you is there a second is that lou okay thank you lou all in favor aye opposed abstentions okay the motion passes great thank you so much for your presentation for all of your time here tonight and thank you dr macri for pursuing this our students deserve it thank you to mr cycling for not giving up on cromwell um it's a lot of work 2016 to 2020 21 is a long time so thank you very much you're welcome okay dr macri really covered a lot in her um in her earlier report with her updates so we're going to bypass b the reopening plan update we are fully
116open did you have a question catherine one question sure i know i asked it before but um i know that we still have teachers that are working remotely and live streaming into classrooms where students are learning and i heard there's a lot of struggle for those students are we asking those teachers to come back to the classroom this school year even though there's just a month less than a month left so it all depends on the doctor's recommendation if it's an ada accommodation so if it is an ada accommodation we follow any requests that have been written from the doctor we still do have remote learners who choose to be remote we are not moving forward with remote learning next year it is our expectation as the district that everyone come back to school um
117we understand that there will be some students that may need accommodations because of an illness or of some sort where they cannot and they may not be able to be vaccinated we're talking about the little ones um or whoever else chooses so we will have to come up with a plan to be in compliance with the law and it goes back to what always was anyway so as far as teachers coming back it all depends on what our needs are so right now our needs our needs have been met for the most part we still are continuing to stream based on the needs of the personnel which obviously i can't discuss um and i don't think i should say much more we evaluated um the performance of the students who are in a classroom with
118their teacher live streaming in because that seems to be as difficult to struggle as a student that's sitting at home live streaming into a classroom yeah i don't think that anybody disagrees which is why we're not moving forward with streaming i think everyone is on the same page from the teachers unions the state department of education um any research that you've read i think we all are in agreement that streaming was a band-aid for something that we never expected to come but we are evaluating we do evaluate all of our staff so everyone is evaluated and all of our students will be and continue to be evaluated we have a iready assessment a star assessment so we are looking at all of it and we definitely are looking at the difference of remote learning it's
119really hard to tell too because we have had kids who have been quarantined two three four times then we've had teachers who are streaming in so there's so many different variables that to say i would love for someone to do this as a research study they would have a hard time but i'd love i'm sure someone will do this as their doctoral degree in the future um really what was the impact because really there are just so many variables um on streaming in and kids streaming can i can i change my question then do we have any teachers that have been live streaming into classrooms coming back into the school for the remainder of the school year yes okay thank you sure so maybe we should just actually touch on quarantine you mentioned quarantine it
120made me it reminded me that some you usually go over how many are incorrect i'm not sure if jillian is still on i did tell her she could disconnect because we were going so long so miss hansen are you still on she said i'm still here of course you are of course you are mrs hanson you're always there she miss hanson will inform you of active covet cases she can fill you in on quarantining which we are still doing and we need to finish strong and that's what mrs hansen's going to tell you as well our kids have been able to participate in so much we need to finish strong i know it's frustrating i think our kids care less than our adults it's it's difficult with the masks and everything else but um although
121changes will be made in society after uh the dph call this morning it does not seem that it applies to schools we really want to finish uh strong and get through the next month to the best of our ability and jillian if you want to just touch upon the vaccine clinic that we have going and then how the process will work as far as perhaps getting a clinic for 12 to 15 year olds which will look a little different because um they can only receive pfizer as of now and it has to be refrigerated at a certain temperature and many providers are saying dph is saying no to school systems in general but you can actually go to the provider which we've been working with chc so it's to be determined as far as the
12212 to 15 year olds but we are definitely in contact and jillian has been in contact with chc but it's a little bit more of a difficult process because it's not moderna or johnson and johnson no we did moderna correct yeah yes no no we did find her oh we did and pfizer is the only one that oh i'm sorry we did so why are they the only ones so jillian why are they saying that it's more complicated for refrigeration and everything for 12 it doesn't make sense to me then you're right we did do visor we had to it or am i wrong yeah and understanding sorry go ahead no no but you're right it does it does need to be refrigerated um they do come in large batches um and so when they
123open up a large batch they have to use that right away so it has to be you know we had to work very very closely with chp and give the exact numbers of people that were wanting the vaccine that day due to people being sick and quarantined we did have some extra doses and we reached out to other staff that still wanted the vaccine to try and use those doses and they certainly don't want to waste any um so it is it is a bit of a process um and you know it has to be looked at very carefully because they they don't want to waste doses yes it does need to be refrigerated uh jill i feel badly because i as you sal and jillian know i was on two webinars at the same
124time this morning and to me in my head i'm thinking well okay we did moderna that was why but catherine just enlightened me again as i forget so what did they say this morning as to why i heard i heard i believed that was part of it was there error in some is that why they're looking at it more closely now or is it did or they didn't really expand upon it they didn't really expand upon it i think they that was the other webinar we're on that was more maybe i well i don't know more more telling um as to what the the reasoning but i know that they do waste doses um because there is a shortage right in some you know we're doing much better in the united states than other countries
125but we certainly don't want to be wasting doses in large quantities um so it is a little bit more tricky to to get these clinics um but we are i definitely have been in contact with chc and i'm waiting to hear back from them as to if we can offer a clinic and how how that will run and then that's to be determined you know we definitely will be incorporating the middle school and the high school students that were not eligible um and we just have to see you know what they have to offer because as you can imagine every school district in connecticut is is wanting the same thing and to keep in mind that we only have four weeks of school left and the fiser vaccine has to be separated out by three
126weeks in between the first and the second dose okay now there's a lot of school districts value reminded me that's exactly why too many vaccines are being wasted which is why we talked today about doing a survey sorry you're right it was the other meeting i was listening to two different ones um do a survey of our students first so that we can better inform the provider in this case chc hopefully um so that we're not wasting any vaccines because we wasted quite a few not on purpose it's just because of the process and then i know meredith public schools had over a thousand vaccines and and they had called me and said send your students over i said we already did it we had not use some of our own vaccines so it's that
127was why i'm sorry that's why you just reminded me it wasn't on that one it was the other one i had two phones on today okay go ahead jill sorry to interrupt you no so we just need to we just need to be very um you know involved with chc and make sure that we are are using and that's difficult to do when you maybe do a quarantine the day before um you know that can change numbers drastically and you have to look at who's signed up and who's you know then can't come and and then people that are sick just in general um and those things that's that's like we we weren't we weren't too badly in crumbling we were able to use the ones some of the doses and i think there was
128only three that were left over so um we worked hard to make sure that we were not you know wasting any doses um so we did talk about the vph call this morning did talk about um things possibly changing on the 19th but the math mandate is still in place until the 19th and what comes out on the 19th is still to be determined um the governor hasn't said there is some talk that that will change things outside uh but uh the dph call said today you know that's three weeks from the end of our school year and what you know cromwell has been very successful in what we've done so far and i think to change things for the last three weeks um is not recommended is that that's what they said um they
129they said you know you should continue on with what you have been doing because it's working well um and we don't know what the changes that will be made on the 19th until that happens so it doesn't give us a lot of time to prepare uh as far as quarantines go i mean i think we're still we're we definitely are seeing the results of of um people being vaccinated and people being outside more which is a good thing we have five active positive cases and they are all at cns and as far as quarantining is going we have only two one staff quarantining and is that that's a cms as well and then as far as quarantine students we have four at ecs zero at west 41 at cms and two at cromwell high school
130so definitely a big change from what we've seen in the previous month so i think that's good news jillian can can i just ask if you're a student oh sorry yeah can can i just ask if your student does get quarantined what is now the recommendation for return to school i'm a little unclear on that yeah it's it so we did move a couple weeks ago to the most the least restrictive quarantine it is that on the cdc website you can you can look it all up but it is that you if you test on day five or after from the exposure to the positive case so you have to look at the day of the exposure and go five days out and if you you have to test on that day or after that
131day you can't test before day five and if that test is negative and it has to be a pcr test not a rapid tough like an answer didn't have if that test is negative and you can provide the results to the school nurse then your student can be cleared for school after day seven so that basically is day eight after the exposure and day one is the day after the exposure so let's say you were exposed on tuesday day one starts on the wednesday if you do not test at all then you have to remain in quarantine for 10 days and can return on day 11. okay thank you very much we do have to does that make sense it does thank you very much for clarifying dipty you had an additional question right yeah
132hi jillian stipti um this quarantine does not apply to children who are exposed during um athletics am i right it does oh yeah no i mean are they different yeah i thought they were longer it is different yeah yeah the ten day you're right okay oh i'm sorry i thought you bet they didn't have to at all no no but they have to do longer i think they have to go longer am i right i'm not going to interrupt go ahead jillian answer dipty's question because i misread it but you didn't it's ten days yeah uh yeah so for any athletic involvement so if you're playing sports they consider that a higher risk activity than sitting masked in a classroom so if it's athletics and you're playing on the you know in playing in competition
133then uh you have to quarantine for 10 days coming back on day 11 and there is no test out um guidelines for that and that's that's written by dph and uh in their in their school recommendations thanks catherine um based on the number of students that we had at the vaccination clinic and the number of students that may have turned in their cards that said that they had two vaccines already so that we can calculate their no longer need to quarantine date i know there's a lot of kids coming up this this current week we're in do we have an estimate of how many students at the high school level that may be vaccinated already or will anticipate being vaccinated over the next month or so legally we are not allowed to ask for a
134copy of the card some if you have so for example if you have been you need to be quarantined you get a call you need to be quarantined we ask you um jillian or whoever calls says have you been vaccinated that's the only question we're allowed to students are submitting their questions now i think some are yes um i don't think um i don't and we had the clinic knowing that we're not even allowed to actually know that who the like we have a list but it goes in the shredder at the end we're not supposed to know it's so it's re it's it's under all the hipaa laws and everything else but jillian and i talked about this at length you know we try to figure it out we said there's approximately 80 kids
135but there were 380 it was 85 students i think who received the vaccine or close to that number and we had 324 qualified to get it so we if if we said even another half perhaps and since then and it's very important for everyone to know the board and the community people have rushed to submit uh religious exemptions for the vaccine the legislation has not made a determination as to whether or not those will be accepted um none after i think april 28th jill is that correct that's correct were accepted but just because it took them it doesn't mean it actually means anything because it it still has to be dis determined legislatively so there's a lot of legalities still to come which is uh why you see a large expense when it comes to
136legal issues we do our best to figure them out but this is unchartered water go ahead lou yeah so we we have had some parents offer the vaccine cards and we will accept them if they're offered but we can't ask for them and we we will only ask for them when it is in a quarantine situation just like dr macri said that's the only time that we are allowed to so um but we are certainly people that are sending them in we are accepting them and and um they will be but with the other immunizations that your child has lou did you have a question yes um in regards to uh the policy changes that may or may not come down that we don't know yet regarding the last meeting uh that you have with
137the department of health the state somewhere in that yeah in that realm um and the finishing strong um am i to believe or to understand that no even if the state comes down on the 19th or 20th and says that you can take more than 200 individuals in a gathering outside et cetera am i to believe that we're not going to take any of those considerations into play um and i i do get the finishing strong that's that's a great thing but i'm a big proponent in getting things back to normal as quickly as possible without putting undue risk yeah yeah and again would that we already did it's already being done if it's an outside event like we don't cap who attends sporting events we is we i know there's i know there's some
138events upcoming uh that i i was hoping to attend um that um i'm going to talk specifically in the music program i know the event i've been to a couple sporting events already but a music program where they're being capped at 200 outdoor is that is that the case if that happens after the i'm just saying because there's a i know specifically being previously very involved in with my kids in the music program i still am very involved with a lot of the parents that are actively involved in the music program and boosters etc and to try to um avoid what happened last year with the students not being able to take some of their performances having people attend the performances especially if they're outside i want to be able to to make sure that
139there's they're being you know being treated um and there's if there's an outdoor event and the in the demand the governor make some recommendations or allowable recommendations to schools are we we are fair across the board so i i have mr fiori on the board i just want to make sure um i have to sign off on anything if something was capped and it was outdoors it was specifically requested by perhaps yeah i just want clarification i'm getting mixed i'm getting mixed uh it's fair across the board yeah i'm getting everything i'm getting mixed opinions from individuals in the community oh don't worry you'll get that no i want to that's why i want to clarify now with with with staff with with your you know superintendent um and and individuals uh health officials and
140whoever we need to do to make sure that you know if there's an event and it's and it's we're doing it by the you know by recommendations and it comes down from i know some man is being lifted uh coming on the 219th 20th i want to make sure that that's being taken into consideration if it's an outdoor event so every single thing every decision at the ul ultimately is a decision of the health uh coordinator um the local health department everything is we use dph and cdc obviously we have to make sure we adhere every single thing that we do any event that has been proposed has been in writing and mr aneshi looks at it and offers suggestions he has not turned down anything uh that i've seen um that has been proposed
141indoor is a little different for for specific reasons um as far as limiting certain things to tickets we've done that in the past also as well as part of our practice but i don't know i don't know where any of that may have come i'm not sure i will follow up with you i will certainly do that and also yeah no i will follow up with you i will i would specifically follow up with you um also um uh are we going to get once you find out what comes down to pike for us as far as policy changes will you um will you be able to i know the year's coming to the end but if there's anything that happens between now and we're going we're not going to meet before the 20th so
142if there's some something that happens could you let us know because i think it's important well really when's the next meeting i always let you know and i always let the parents know too i said um an update and then whatever i sent to families i sent to you you be at the same time if as a parent you get it um and then i forward it to the board myself or lisa so every single thing that changes every single time and we have covid19 uh i see that yeah it's all no i'm saying between now and between now and our next board meeting there's going to be a lot of things happening over the next week and a half a lot of things happening coming down from the governor's office down right you won't
143see too many changes in the school system where um today as jillian said with tph they are making very uh strong recommendations uh and to the health advisors that we stay the course and do in regards to masks and social discipline and things but the out you know with the outdoors going to be it's going to be held across the board regardless of the activity it yeah it's already met it's already again i'm not questioning that that's your intent i'm just want to make sure i want to follow up with you because i want to make sure the information i'm getting and i'm portraying to you here or this board that there's people come to you and they ask you things or they get mixed signals i want to make sure that it's addressed and
144that people get the right information absolutely i appreciate it um everything anything that we have been able to minimize and be able to do and feel safe about it especially the quarantine period we're at the minimum within school uh we have have done all that so and and as always parents can contact the school contact me i appreciate it i know you're a big proponent on getting back to normal i mean we all have been in school a lot longer than a lot of other districts you've also been you give us regular updates i mean we get the weekly principals updates that always get sent to the board you give us your updates with the weekly principal updates but we when there's a change i mean we get it right away and as board members
145we always get copies of it so she's i feel like we've been on top of all of that um and we've been aware so if i've noticed that a lot of parents are not always reading there's a lot that comes out and not all the parents read what comes out and then they question everything because they haven't actually read all the information because it's a lot but they need to read what's coming out from the schools in the district because it's it's been laid out and i've tried to limit um because there's so much important information coming out and we've had people request for other things to come out so i've tried to limit what i'm sending out that isn't as important because i want to make sure parents read what is very important but
146all of that will continue to happen as as it has been the entire time that i hear from parents is mainly because they didn't read all of the information and society and everything that's happening in great in society is so in some situations so contrary to what's happening but schools we've been very commun you know communicating regularly everything is out there and if someone has a misunderstanding um it's usually because they they may not have read like you know the information and obviously there's so much out there so please encourage people to call the school look on the website um and read and read your emails it's hard i know everybody's really busy i see it and i see no one ever told us this and then i go back and it's in four newsletters
147that went out the week before i try to stay away from social media but people tell me anyway and i'm like no that was in the newsletter four times for a month um and in bright yellow letters um that gets sent home every time there's a positive case so i understand so they know what's going on so i want to i i want to follow up with you i want to find out what their concerns were and about maybe it's just that they were addressing something that was misrepresented to me so i want to make sure yeah i think the parents should follow up with me and i can tell them where to find the information is very easy to find it's right on the website and i send it out i email it um
148i am more than happy to talk to anyone who wants to talk to me sure okay um dr macrame looking at the rest of the agenda is there anything you want to table or should we move on to the teacher leadership academy so i just by and the reason why i think we should do this i believe uh mr uh dr vason is on as well with dr mclean as far as teacher leadership academy dr vason are you still on thank you i'm here dr maxwell okay how are you i'm well how are you thank you for waiting so long i'm sorry um if we could get through that and then um the only i i think we could table the rest um i really the only other thing we really shouldn't should be quick
149anyway yeah the vision and mission okay okay so thank you very much to uh dr maclean and dr vazon we really would like to build teacher leadership capacity in our district you don't have to have a 092 or be an administrator to be a teacher leader to be a paraprofessional leader to be a custodial leader to be a calf worker leader anything you could work here and be a leader you don't have to be an administrator and we work really hard to offer those leadership capacities and however they do require a lot of training and dr mclean and dr vasson have been working very hard to i don't want to i think i think it was going well but i think it's going even better now because there's that strong connection between um central connecticut
150state university and cromwell public schools we're trying to revive it after kovid and so you can take it over from here and let us know how everyone's doing okay um so it's been my honor to work with uh with dr mazon from central connecticut state university and the teacher leadership academy over the last few years um this group of dedicated teachers have worked to develop their leadership skills and have implemented school improvement projects that have impacted the culture and academic in our schools despite the challenges of the last year and a half these teachers have given a great deal of their time to support students and their colleagues i'm really proud of the work these teachers have done this cohort of teachers include carol astaire with karen bosworth nicolette burns diane delarota marissa humphries peggy
151lair courtney mason andrea middlebrook lisa pergolisi dead rocket priori melissa saguero and stephen st ange um dr vizona are you on still i'm here dr mclean did you want me to comment now yeah go ahead sure okay i'll be i'll be very brief um certainly dr macri and dr mclean have mentioned a few things that i wanted to highlight but i'll amplify something that dr mclean said um you know we're so proud of the work that these teachers have put in i've had the pleasure of working with teacher leaders here in cromwell for the past four years and i've seen incredible growth in their leadership abilities and capacities and i've also seen them undertake some amazing projects that have enriched the school system i want to emphasize like our board of education members these folks
152are volunteering their time so it's really important that we as a community celebrate these teacher leaders who have put in so much extra time i also want to emphasize something that dr macri said before about leadership and how important it is at all levels the research tells us the most successful schools and school systems have leaders at different levels of the organization that includes formal leaders and roving teacher leaders like we are uh building the capacity of here in cromwell and we've got a video i think to show you um where some of the teacher leaders are going to tell you in their own words about what they've been doing but to conclude i'm super proud of them and it's been a great pleasure of mine and my work uh to work with them thank
153you thank you dr bazone um christoph gallow and desmond gotham are our instructional technology coaches have put together a short video that highlights the work of the teachers that i'm hoping we can play for you now is policy and instructional technology i also serve as the partnership with liaison where i've been lucky enough to work with the criminal public schools for the past four years one of our main projects in this partnership has been to run a teacher leadership academy and i've had the opportunity to co-facilitate that teacher leadership academy with several members of the promo public schools leadership team including the last two years with dr kerry mcqueen i wanted to take a few minutes to acknowledge the hard work of our teacher leaders for those of you who don't know teacher leaders who
154participate in this program do so voluntarily they take their own time to come and learn professionally to build a community of learners together and then go back into their schools and lead overall the teacher leadership academy enhance the leadership skills for many teachers across our district specifically the teacher's leadership academy provides us the platform and the guidance to initiate a project that we believe to be beneficial to permalink we learned about the importance of understanding and navigating the systems within school what goes into planning a new initiative that contains multiple moving parts and how to have important commercial conversations during the beginning of the year we joined teacher leader and we were looking for a way to kind of build community and culture and climate at our school we did not do it alone we
155actually had students that were kindness ambassadors that got involved grade six seven eight students and they were a tremendous help in us being able to pull up that week unfortunately due to scheduling changes and ultimately coping we were not able to see our project to fruition however by going through the planning and organizing process we still gained so much uh it has been a pleasure working with so many colleagues who think out of the box um it has been a great opportunity you know to work with these folks to collaborate with them to bounce ideas off of them through professional and sometimes personal discussions we were able to learn from each other uh experiences different experiences depending on what building you taught it and perspectives as well as leaders and teachers i have tremendous pride
156and i'm so proud of the work of our teacher leaders they have enriched the public schools for our students they've run great projects that has made things better for all and they've taken their leadership skills that they've learned in the future leadership academy and brought them back to their schools for informal leadership opportunities the teacher leadership project that i worked on was building equity at woodside with our students from hartford so mr buffalo and i came up with the idea to have a bus reward system he gave me freedom to figure out how to do that the greatest result of this is when i looked at the data between the problem of buses and heart for buses the amount of referrals for bus behaviors was down to only seven for the hartford buses but the
157hartford buses had a significantly less amount of referrals than they did the year before i even started this program it was a really successful program for my teacher leadership i decided to implement mastery-based learning so my service learning is a concept of getting rid of standardized grades of abcd instead of focusing on what skills we want our students to learn so this has been our kind of pilot program we currently have a few teachers who we made a necessary basic community and we are all working together in a way to make a school on interact towards focus on standards and skills into some not only as an educator but a leader because you know being a leader is not just about accomplishing things just to accomplish but to make sure we are you know helping
158our students so that's the ultimate goal to make sure you know every student has been successful it's been an absolute pleasure working with dr zone and the teacher of leadership academy it's been amazing to watch the teachers dedication to improving teaching and learning and culture environment the work that they've done on their projects throughout the last couple years has really impacted our schools in the way that they function on a daily basis i'm really proud of you thanks so much i'm really proud and this has been a great experience for me as well [Music] hmm [Music] so thank you very much to dr mclean and and dr vasonas you can see the projects that our teachers decided to work on um are a huge contribution to their schools and to our district so i thank
159dr mclean dr vazon all of our teachers tremendously for the work that they do and hopefully we will just keep adding more and more teacher leaders to our leadership academy as we move forward thank you i echo that thought and let's give them a round of applause and love seeing all the projects that are going to just influence our students and help them you know be the best that they can as well i'd love to see the collaboration with the teachers so thank you and thank you for staying on the line all night so quickly we absolutely need everyone to stay we need a quorum um for voting uh and executives will come into public session again so i'm sorry it's going so long but we just asked you to stay and mr flanders don't
160hang up we need you okay she did not bribe me okay so next on the agenda is approval of minutes and motions from the april 6th reference be in your packet is there a motion to prove the minutes okay catherine second by jen all in favor opposed extensions okay motion passes moving on to the healthy food certification reference see in your packets is there a motion to approve this certification by dipty second okay jen all in favor opposed i john is that your opposed oh sorry no that was me saying hi okay all in favor okay motion passes thank you next is the cromwell public schools mission and belief statement enzo would you like to go over that first sure just very quickly um we uh that as we meet as a district leadership team
161and jen lamberson is the board's representative um and we have been working uh for about two years it would have gone much quicker if we didn't have a prob a little blip in the middle um to rewrite um our vision and our belief statements um placing students first i believe says it all as our mission and we are sticking with that however the vision statement is in bold and this is what the committee we word-smithed looked for uh words that were really important that we believed every uh child should um that every person in cromwell should believe for our students and should want for our students so if you have any questions myself dr mclean the principals are on the committee uh miss lamberson uh we'd be more than happy to answer otherwise i would
162like for the board to move forward and this will be our official mission vision and belief system okay is there a motion to approve second catherine all in favor aye opposed extensions motion passes now we also have approval of out of state six flag senior trip date change is that something we need to yes well there was a date change and i just wanted you to approve it to make it official because the park wasn't officially um opened so we had to go back and uh we we missed we misinterpreted something is there a second catherine all in favor opposed extensions motion passes moving on to informational principle reports reference f g h and i are there any questions about those and then we have human resources personnel activity reference j any questions on those
163can i just make a quick comment i was excited to see that we hired a french teacher yes and i heard he was an internet in my district and i've heard very good things about him so i just wanted to let you all know i did and we um have a couple so far in the docket for the high school so um perseverance it's it gets frustrating at times when you really can't but i was like we're not giving up we can't give up we're not giving up so let's just hope i think he really wants to be here so or keep our fingers crossed that all is good okay board committee reports policy was it supposed to meet tonight but got cancelled so we don't have one for that in facilities and technology we
164definitely talked about that already so we'll skip that topics for future agendas and possible action to approve additional topics anything okay comments updates and announcements from board members and administrators um start with catherine anything dipty yes yes we'll do that at the next because the personnel action was due before oh no it is in here yeah yeah michelle did put it in here sometimes the person starts after so i was yeah so that's for um paul dory correct sorry jen anything okay i just want to quickly give a quick thanks to the ptos for everything they did for a teacher appreciation week because i know that's a long week and we also appreciate the teachers and everything that they do and it was also nurses appreciation um we just calf workers a hero's day so
165really we just really appreciate everything everybody does every day because it's one person we are we are not in it alone we're all in this together so thank you to everyone and um it's been a rough year but i am so incredibly proud okay at this time we have an executive session is there a motion to for the purpose of discussion and possible action of agreement between the criminal board of education and the united public service employees union criminal board of ed administrative support staff local foreign thank you john second all in favor opposed sentience motion passes and john i'm going to call you back so we can disconnect this call