Cromwell BoE Meeting February 9, 2021 7:00pm

001lisa on or is alessandra on alessandra yeah alessandra's back okay and joining us to be taking minutes there she is i'm here i just didn't want to put the camera on because i'm going to be typing in another screen so you would you would just still see black anyway you know what i mean like so that's okay i'll do the attendance and then um i'll be typing mm-hmm okay so we're good steve oh sorry yeah you can uh you can start we're good okay great um so i will call the meeting of the krama board of education to order at 701 pm uh alessandra could you do roll call please certainly mrs cantwell yeah mr flanders he'll be a minute or two late mrs kelleher here mrs lamberson here mr matrulo here mr menendez here

002mrs murley lindsay will not be joining us tonight mrs post yeah and mrs russ yeah hunter voice i saw him on the um he may come on he did ask if it was okay if he joined us anyway because he likes to be on um and be able to answer questions from the board even though um he didn't have to so he might join us in a little bit okay mr fortinbock i'm here mr nedo is there anyone else on from the board of finance it looks like mr ireland is on mr island okay the attendance is complete great thank you um just as a reminder to our board members um for purposes of making alessandra's life easier when there's a motion in a second i'll try to announce who that is so we can

003have that reflected in the minutes um okay next approval of agenda editions and deletions and shares review of agenda highlights so tonight again we'll have a further update on reopening but the majority of the meeting will focus on a further review of the budget so there are no additions or deletions with that being said is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented motion motion from lori is there a second second second second from jen comments or questions hearing none all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed abstentions the motion carries unanimously uh okay next correspondence dr macri um yes we did receive a letter um [Music] dear dr macri and members of the board of education the members of the edna c stevens and woodside intermediate teaching communities would like to extend our

004sincere appreciation for providing us with early dismissals on wednesdays the frequent changes to the learning model for our students requires additional planning and preparation we are grateful to have this invaluable time to plan and collaborate in order to ensure we are providing the best education for all of our students having this time on wednesdays is vital as we continue to remain fully operational during the pandemic teachers feel less overwhelmed knowing they can depend on the additional time thank you for recognizing our concerns and helping us to give our students the very best with sincere gratitude to the teachers at ecs and west and that's all i have okay thank you uh on to public comment uh we do have some members of the public that would like to comment so i will just read the

005rules for public comment before we turn the floor over to them so individuals are welcome to address the board of education for up to three minutes each during the public comment portions of the meeting but board members will not generally engage in dialogue the board of education chair may at his 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 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 all

006comments must not include personal attacks and comments cannot be discourteous threatening vulgar or otherwise inappropriate the board chairperson may his 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 boisterous or are repetitious the board of education reserves the right to limit public comments to particular topics so first shannon hughes brown is shannon yep my mom okay the floor is yours if you could just give your name and address for the record please yep um my name is shannon hughes from so good evening dr macri chairman trullo members of the board administration our names are shannon hughes brown my pronouns are she her and this is matthew brown with me pronouns he him we have two

007students in the cromwell public schools we are speaking today to implore this body and the school district to bring gender diversity and inclusion training to all adults in the cromwell public schools we bring this concern with a sense of urgency today with the permission of our child a strong courageous and emerging activist we are sharing our own gender transition experience our child transitioned over the course of the past summer coming out as non-binary in august we met with our school administration to start the name change process we met with our child's new teacher and our child came up with their plan to tell their peers the first day of school the saturday before school started we were surprised to find their google account had not been changed to their new name despite making the request

008weeks prior research tells us that it's critically important that trans and non-binary students are validated like their cisgender peers a study published in the 2018 by the american academy of pediatrics revealed alarming levels of attempted suicide rates for transgender youth with attempted rates for transgender teens two to five times higher than the attempted suicide rates of their cisgender peers one effective way to reduce the suicide risk in gender minority youth is to honor their chosen name and their personal pronouns the school principle did work to have this corrected before school started but this was not treated with the urgency or seriousness that is required to honor a trans child's identity i wish we could say after this our experience improved but i cannot several weeks later we received our first power school notification and it

009again wasn't updated so we reached out to the administration i learned that it was intentionally not updated because it was against the district's policy to change a child's name in power school without a legal name change document we informed the administration that cromwell's policy violated connecticut law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression that went into effect in 2011. allow me to read an excerpt from the state's guidance for civil rights and protections for transgender students updating a transgender student's education records to reflect the student's gender identity and chosen name protects the student's privacy and ensures that school staff consistently use the appropriate name of pronouns upon such a request schools should correct student education records to accurately reflect the student's chosen name and gender identity regardless of whether the student has

010completed a legal name change students are not required to submit any particular kind of documentation to change student records relative to gender identity upon review of the guidelines the school and district administration informed us that their policy was outdated and proceeded with the name change a policy that had been outdated since this law went to effect over the past year we've experienced numerous microaggressions that harm gender minority students like class lists for valentine's divided by boys and girls being told how boys and girls should dress for the 100th day of school or email notifications that reference he she pronouns without that you have our responsibility to create a more inclusive community for all our students and our community needs more training our experience may have been avoided if the district followed connecticut guidelines and provided

011professional development regarding gender minority students to teachers and staff we ask you in your budget and your professional development planning to provide our teachers and staff with this training so they have the language and information they need to support all students from everyday communication to understanding the importance of quickly changing a name we created a presentation that includes examples research additional resources and trainers that i'll send to chair machula following this meeting we thank you for your time we thank those educators who supported our child through this journey we ask that you provide these amazing teachers with the resources they need to be even better for their students and lastly we applaud our child for their courage and bravery to allow us to share their story to help more students gain access to the education

012they deserve thank you shannon and if you do send me those materials i'll throw them to the rest of the board thank you um i know matt was on the list as well just was on the list knowing that our comments were a little bit over three minutes just to make sure we had enough to equal up to six so but yeah so the comments were equally sure understood thank you okay uh colleen sokolowski is colleen on i don't believe she joined um i did get a texture saying she was having trouble uh logging on there is a colleen that's i seen the participants hi hi yes i'm able to join thanks okay perfect sorry about the difficulty um so if you could just give your name an address for the record calling yeah absolutely

013hi my name is colleen sokolowski i live at 61 washington road and i have one student who is in the public school system i have a high school junior um first of all i would like to thank all of the administrators and the teachers for everything that they've done this year i know this is a difficult year and they've done a fantastic job of keeping things moving along in this environment so i really do extend a very sincere thank you to all of you the reason i've asked to come speak here this evening is to make a comment regarding snow days i know that dr macri and our school principals receive requests from parents of all students from all grades and it is difficult to meet the needs of each grade and we know that

014every time you know the white flakes fall there comes the hope of a day off in the form of a snow day i would like to thank you though for continuing to hold school via remote learning days this is very important for our high schoolers who take advanced placement classes our high schoolers have been in the hybrid learning model for nearly the entire year so they have not had the same level of in-person instruction that the younger grades have been able to benefit from the ap exams are rigorous passing them with a satisfactory grade can really pay off for our students in their college years uconn and all of our directional state universities allow direct credit offsets for successful ap exam grades and that allows many of our students to enter college with credits already

015completed it's not unusual either for students who plan for this and take several ap classes to end up being able to graduate from college early and save significantly on tuition by doing so and there are also private colleges and universities that will do the same so for the 2021 exams the college board has determined that the ap exams will return to the full format similar to 2019 and prior and the college board has also recognized that there's been some significant disruptions to the school year and that some school systems may have compelling reasons to delay administration of the ap exams and right now we can't predict what our situation will be 12 weeks from now but our students and our teachers are preparing for the exams to occur in early may as originally scheduled and

016they need all the hands-on instructional time that they can get the students taking these classes and the teachers who are willing to teach these classes are motivated to succeed and while we understand that full in person for the high school is not possible at this time the hybrid model is clearly sub-optimal for this group of students and teachers so please continue to consider their needs when you are determining whether a snow day is a nicety versus when it's truly required delaying the end of the school year via snow days does not help this group of students so thank you again for all your efforts this year and thank you for allowing me to speak this evening have a good night thank you okay uh moving on reports of liaisons from the town council and board

017of finance uh mr florenbach we'll start with you this time since i started with mr ireland last time i don't know i thought i was first last time but that's all right it's quick uh so uh tomorrow we have a town council meeting and uh we will be approving the final looks like uh the final group for the diversity inclusion committee and we have one two three four five looks like we have 12 members that are going to be uh approved going forward so that's going to be taking off and taking on a life of its own going forward so that's it thank you thank you john ireland are you on john going once i i see that you're unmuted but we don't hear you [Applause] going once going twice okay uh john we can't

018hear you so we'll move on from the border finance update for tonight okay uh superintendents updates and responses to boe comments and action items from prior meeting dr macri i would just like to um quickly acknowledge three amazing people who are retiring who have announced their retirement um nurse deb pember uh was the is still until the end of the school year the school nurse um for seven years she did announce um her retirement earlier uh last month and i just really would like to thank her it's been wonderful getting to know her um she did save my life when i fell and she made me fill out all the appropriate forms that's when i knew we were doing that right um wonderful woman and i wish her the very best in her retirement mr

019paul nori has announced his retirement as well um he's our educational software consultant um and he has been with us for 18 years in a couple different uh positions and we wish him the very best of luck as well as he um gets to enjoy his retirement and then we have mrs um lori valenti has been a para with us for over 25 years and she also retired at the end of december so we would like to acknowledge all of these people who have serviced our children supported our children supported our staff over the years and wish them the very best of luck and you will see their retirement letters um in the back of the packet and then i will save all of the other um the action items uh regarding the questions uh

020they fall into the the proposed education budget so we can do all of that at once if there's any questions great thank you so um thank paul deborah and laurie for their years of service i know paul has helped me many times on powerschool so he's the power school king um next presentations and reports of administration budget update reference a uh dr macri or ms burke yep mr sperk can go ahead and report hi good evening everyone in the packet is the um the year to date through the end of january our information um i put some additional information in the memo this month and i'm happy to answer any questions that you might have um we are working very diligently to control expenses the best we can to our ability right now while trying

021to balance safety and some significant building issues um it seems like every time we turn around something needs a repair um but i'm happy to answer any questions that you have regarding that information thank you ann are there any questions from the board if and if you do have any if you could use the raise hand feature please um i i just have one question and i'm not sure if it's possible but to the extent that we have the esser grant funds and the coronavirus relief funds that you're showing at the bottom of the page is it possible going forward to show how those have been applied you know what line item they're they're being used for like for example there's a you know deficit and certified and non-certified salaries and to the extent that

022the the funds are being used to offset those deficits it would be good to know that so if that's possible i can tell you that the um lesser funds um the 143 that's 100 applied to line 112 in the budget the chronovice relief funds are going to offset some other professional technical services for cnas and substitute nurses that we have also it will offset some of um the group of 600 object codes for example cleaning supplies sanitizer disinfecting wipes and also a small amount will offset the 700 objects the equipment total but for the next um meeting i can show that in a little more detail for you that's fine i think it'll just give us a better picture of you know what the net number is in each of these numbers yeah we just

023got our first um group of reimbursements so those will be applied to offset the expenses it just hasn't happened yet because we just received the money recently okay thank you uh one last time any questions from the board hearing none uh new business item a stipend approval reference b dr mac or anything to present there um yes we have am i okay we just have one um reference b and i believe um it's at the middle school um and it's the tech club um miss kochiola if you quickly want to speak to that certainly that's um good evening everyone that's a club that uh mr doug kiss has run uh for probably about the past three or four years and the kids get together and they learn all different kinds of tech platforms and he

024does projects with them um this year it will be all virtual um for the safety of of our students so he was just waiting for that to be okayed and he's gonna begin soon for the kids thank you thank you any questions from the board hearing none is there a motion to approve uh reference b motion motion by catherine is it a second extensions emotion carries unanimously hey uh item b reopening plan update dr macri okay um very quickly um or as quickly as we can i know everyone is waiting for a reopening update um nurse julian hansen is on the call as well um to help clarify uh some of the information that we have um received we were on the call um with dph this morning um i asked a question um i

025put it in the chat i put it i sent it to them privately and then i asked it out loud in front of over a thousand people of um regarding the new variant um the uh of the um variance of the uh string of cova 19 um which is the b117 stream which is a strand sorry from um from uk so um we know this is what we do know um and for those of you that have been reading and catching up um we do know that it is 50 more contagious first we thought it was 30 to 40 percent more um we learned that it's about 50 more contagious we have learned that it is definitely in the united states um we've learned that it's going to become the um the predominant strain in

026march and it's doubling every 10 days in the united states we also know that in connecticut there are only two labs so as far as we know we only have 20 confirmed cases um to date but that doesn't mean that there are only 20 confirmed uh cases uh in connecticut in fact there probably are very more uh there are more um when i asked the question about you know we we've loosened restrictions for basketball for students coming um for interpersonal activities we've we've um done our best to try to get our kids involved in things and and helping them stay as safe as possible they still have to wear their masks we discussed all of this with dph and their response to us and with shipment and goodwin as well yesterday we were on a

027webinar was we are taking one um we are taking one uh week at a time because of course we all want to know long term and so do i i want to know long term and unfortunately we are not going to know anything long term um for for a while again we also know that the vaccination um has most likely will not be administered to uh school personnel until and uh middle end of march and then today i heard maybe um early april um and how that will be done has not been determined yet because cromwell only receives 90 about 90 vaccines um obviously um they won't go out of ball go to school personnel they'll go to the community um and the people who live in cromwell can sign up and and and such

028but um they will not all go to um the teachers and the personnel and personnel so it could be until uh the end of april if we're lucky hopefully um i'm hoping or march until all of us are um vaccinated if we would like to be um so with all that information being taken taken into consideration we also have been doing pretty well with cases um and i can let jillian report on the amount of cases we have that are active right now um and jillian if you want to just quickly talk about that and add anything that i may have missed um that's important about the new um strand sure um so we are doing the case rates are pretty well doing very well in the schools we have um for active positives we

029have three students at ecs and zero staff we have one student at wis with zero staff cms has zero students one staff and chs has one student and one staff so the numbers are are pretty good we do have for quarantines we have four staff across all four schools uh quarantining and we have 67 students and those are mostly at ecs and wis we are doing a great job of social distancing within the hybrid when we do have cases at the high school in the middle school we are not coming up with a lot of contacts because we can spread out the desks at six feet um which we can't when we're in full at the with edwards and at ecs um and i think you covered everything you know we are concerned about these

030new strains um we're not gonna sort of see the results of that for a while you know we have to take things week by week that was said multiple times from dph um it was a little bit concerning obviously to hear that it's doubling every doubling cases every every 10 days the good news is is that the members in connecticut overall are going down so those are that's you know hopeful and the only other update is there was a lot of questions uh about masks mask wearing and double masking and apparently cdc is coming out uh this week with new guidelines on masking and whether that's a change or not i don't know but i think there's been a lot of questions regarding that they also talked and and they were very um very clear

031about how they felt about um sports and athletics starting up either in schools or outside of school um and of course they they want our students to be back to as normal as possible um but they would like us to reiterate and i would like to reiterate to our families is we can't have everything so if if um it is it is difficult there the kids social life we definitely know it has taken a back seat um the problem is is that if someone who is participating in basketball or cheerleading right now um track which will be outdoor um if one person is to get uh turn up positive we have a problem because there's we would say that everyone is a close contact we would have to so we really need our um all

032of our students in particular our student athletes who really would like to continue the season because it's a short season anyway to really be cognizant of the decisions um that they are making um because uh the season really does depend on it and we really want to try to continue to have as many of these activities for our students as possible um our clubs our planes we are doing um we're doing a pretty good job with um being able to still have them um so we'd like to continue that so the big question is uh uh when are we opening school full-time uh secondary and i've gone back and forth with uh nurse hanson and particularly with mr salneshi who's our health coordinator we have the final say um however obviously i'm going to work

033very closely with mr neshi he's the he's the expert in this area more than i am even though we're on the calls all the time there still are a lot of worries as far as the new variants but we also know that we need to get our students back so we talked about a full reopening on the 17th and then we talked about why that probably won't be a good idea with um the three days out for students we then talked about um perhaps the 22nd and we went back and forth about um what we're noticing with quarantining when students are near each other and how long it takes really to spread and then when we can get things back to normal um or as normal as they're ever going to get um so we

034are looking at a a start of uh bringing back our high school students and our middle school students on march 1st as long as everything um stays in the direction of which we're going i don't like to pull kids in and out i don't like that at all i don't think it's healthy for them but the truth of the matter is that that may happen we may not have a choice um these might be very telling if we have an increase of the the other strain then we have to go back to the drawing board and we're constantly at the drawing board um but mr neshi feels much more comfortable with a march for uh first start that'll give everyone uh time to look at again um how are students sitting in the cafeterias how

035are um we know in the classroom if if we want six feet apart we know that that is not going to happen it cannot happen well the only way that can happen is if we stay in the hybrid model so automatically we know that that is something we will have to sacrifice in classrooms with all students coming back however students will still have the option to attend remotely but the kids would like to come back to school but they want to come back all together um so we've seen a lot of positives with the hybrid as far as being able to keep our kids uh in person uh for for a long time for some what of time we're trying to avoid uh going to remote um learning because i you know i don't like

036that um just as much as as any anyone else does um but we're going to at some point have to take uh the risk if our numbers stay you know where they are which is a good thing um so we are shooting for march 1st um and that's like we said with um everything staying as it is uh we're going to have people who are very concerned about that other strain we are very concerned um this will give us a little time to wait it out and see what happens with it but at the same time it also gives us some time to prepare um so that we can spread our kids out as much as possible and go back to the drawing board of what else can we possibly do at secondary but it's

037important that everybody knows that that six feet of social distancing um is really impossible at the secondary level and even at the intermediate level the younger kids um just don't get um the same reaction to covet as our older students do so that is where where we are as far as reopening um i do like i said we work in collaboration with the health department that is not this is not solely my decision um and i think we do a good job looking at the big picture which is very hard to look at um sometimes so march 1st will uh hopefully be our starting date for full back to school learning for uh for everyone um with always knowing that we could be low on staff we could um you know we'd have to make

038changes last minute and that's the really difficult part is that we have to get comfortable with making changes last minute or we'll never we'll never take the leap um so with that being said i feel that the only other there's a couple other things that i would like to discuss with you and just bring up to you we don't have to decide tonight we have another meeting on the 23rd um but i want parents to possibly be prepared for this if we do come back full secondary march 1st or not um i would like to continue the half days release on wednesdays at least until the end of march um our teachers as you can see are getting a lot out of it many of them have shared what they're working on with lessons and

039and just how they can just differentiate for the students that are in and out because of quarantine they are working their tails off and they're doing a great job so i would like to extend that at least until the end of march and like i said that isn't something we have to determine this evening i just want to put it on your radar so that we can put it on our teachers uh and our parents radar and then the last thing is um you heard from mrs sokolowski this evening which is wonderful we also have got we got a few emails today but not too many um about parents who are very disappointed in the snow day situation and they don't really understand it so i just want to quickly try to explain it to

040you um we have 183 school days in crownwell that is what the board voted on many years ago before i was here we're mandated to have 180 um but we are um a district that has 183 which is excellent that means we're able to provide students with three more days of instruction that means we're paying staff for 183 days um work days if we cut to 180 days which we are at right now because remember we pushed it out um that is also a financial obligation uh to pay people and we we we plan on doing that we were also told by the state department of education that we have three days those three days so we have 177 days for this year we're we're exempt from three more days that doesn't mean we take

041those days and we say let's use them what i'm trying to do is save them if we should have a snowstorm or god only knows what could happen these days and i don't put anything past it um if we lose power then we can use those days as real days and we wouldn't have to make them up a lot of people um would like to see the snow days and have them made up in june there are many reasons why that isn't a great idea one is our students have to be masked one hundred percent of the time except for when they're eating that's not going to change um we it we do have air conditioning in um cms and ecs now we have air conditioning everywhere but it's very different than having central air

042um they're still wearing masks and it's not uh not it's more comfortable than it's ever been but it's still not all that comfortable and then they're going outside and they're playing with their masks on um and such so we either give up the the snow days or we give up the sundays um and the fun and the fun days and i um i feel that we can uh do do both kids um could go outside and play um after school um some p parents are struggling uh with the daycare i i unders we understand that however um we really need to provide that remote learning to our students who are it's credit bearing their credit bearing classes at the high school so we're taking a big look at the entire district it's not one um

043or two grade levels it's pre-k through through 12. so we spent a lot of money as a district and as um taxpayers to provide our teachers with the best technology so that they can provide remote learning we've come a long way our teachers are doing an excellent job our students are able to access their learning um is it ideal no we all know that it's not ideal um but it's better than what we had march april and may last year so we will continue unless um you know there are times that very interestingly enough if we had half days it still really does impact um our high school and um getting the kids prepared to take their exams so we'll continue um on this trajectory we'll um i would love to be able to help

044families i know it's i know it's difficult but we're all doing the very best that we can um and and and you know it's 75 i really think it's like 85 percent of the people want the remote learning and uh 15 to 20 don't um and um we understand if children get pulled um we don't want that to happen but if families have no other choice um we understand that that could you know that could possibly happen throughout the day but we will continue with the remote learning days um along with many other districts and our last day of school will be june 9th as of as of today and that is all um really that i that i would like to talk about any questions um i did get a really great question earlier

045what if you know we just don't take the recommendation of the health director and that's not a good idea because um that's their area of expertise and i i don't think it would be wise as a district to move forward without 100 percent support from our health uh district i think there's a question from catherine we'll let you go first yep thanks jeff um my question was when you were on that call and they were talking about the new variants which has been pretty popular lately and a lot more is coming to light with it one did they see any of the new variants the uk variant in particular since it is the only one in the state of connecticut that has been in the school systems and number two have they discussed because the

046cdc is starting to present guidance on having students back in school do they um discuss any coordination of that information along with the new variants that are out there catherine i asked a lot of that same question today and i got let's take it day by day um jillian was on the call with me um and basically um they do not have enough data to support whether or not the new variants is in our schools they have reason to believe that it's not permeating the schools um but then again we only have two testing sites in connecticut right now and we only have 20 cases um and it's difficult for them to really say with any certainty um they we talked about the same thing so if it's 50 percent more contagious um what does

047that look like and will the mitigation strategies still work for this strand um did they discuss that the mitigation strategies masking and social distancing are what are supposed to be working for the new strain because that's a lot of the research i've seen has said that yeah they did and they they did talk about it but jillian if you want to join me very little catherine we got very little um information unfortunately as much as all of us were pushing i really believe that because they don't they don't have the they don't have that data they're looking at other states right now that have had in other countries um but they don't have the data in in connecticut yet so it was really difficult to get a straight answer i'll be honest with you and

048i don't think they were trying to give us a straight answer catherine i don't know if jillian if you yeah you know i agree you know we asked three the question in three different or in three different you know areas and they didn't want to answer it until dr macri got on and actually asked it verbally so i think they're really trying to i think what what dr mack you just said is is correct they they didn't want to answer the questions because they don't really know the answers they're you know they have to collect the data they said week by week you know as as we know we'll let you guys know um they you know they think that the medication strategies that we're using are gonna gonna be successful they're hoping that the

049vaccines that they have out are going to be effective um but they weren't really giving definitive answers which was the and mike i said i just came right out and asked my question was really specific and um it was asked verbally at one point because i wasn't getting it um answered and i did feel badly for putting them in that situation but i needed to be able to answer that for all of you and for myself too as we're making this these decisions um it's a scary place to be but it's also we're in a good place as a state so it's uh and they even admitted to be admitted to um you know we're getting some contradicting information and it's because they don't know um and they don't want to guess on what they

050don't know so we're obviously in the same scenario as we don't want to guess but we don't know which which is why um when we you know we meet with sal and we talked about let's give it a couple more weeks it's nine more days if we look at it it's nine more days it might really um rear its ugly head and we'll be able to know more and we'll be able to spare which i always try to say is any of our students or staff getting sick um and stay in hybrid and that would be uh we would be able to have some in-person learning or we just by march 1st if if the media mitigation strategies are showing that they do uh work with with this strand then we go back and we

051give it a try knowing that it's week to week um if it was you were going to get it and you would get the common cold i would say let's do it um but sadly that's the hard part on but they didn't and nothing was very uh there was nothing clear for us today well i do appreciate that we have a return to a tentative pencil then we do return to school date because um i had someone point out to me the other day that um the second half of the alphabet at cms has missed five tuesdays in a row they've been to school three days in the past four weeks i know and i'm every time i hear that i thank goodness that we don't do the four days like a lot of districts

052do and we don't have full um full pd days um on wednesdays or professional learning so that our kids get that wednesday but you're right i can't say that you're not i'm you're right everything you're worried about is everything that i'm worried about um constantly every day so let's let's hope for the best and play it um i say play it by ear that means jillian myself and sal will talk 20 times a week and we'll keep having this conversation and uh let's let's let's hope that the mitigation strategies do work and that we can first as safely as we're going to be able to okay thank you sure thank you uh selena so do i have it right to say that we're basically waiting to see what happens because of the four day weekend

053before going back because the nine days i think would put us at just after the 17th so how how did we do with after the holidays in the other situations i'm trying to remember if there was a spike or not because i feel like they're we expected there to be one and then there wasn't really much of a spike but i could be wrong um we did okay um we didn't do great as a community we did okay um our school district did okay we also um as you as you can see as those letters come home um just today or was it yesterday when was it was yesterday um we're still finding out about positives that occurred that we didn't know about um and those come up about one to two weeks later through

054sal and that is still concerning um to us um because people are not telling us and we also believe that what's happening um ms kelleher is that people are knowing that someone in their family is positive they know they're a close contact and then they're not getting tested um very symptomatic they're not getting tested um more of that is happening so do we have a perfect picture no we don't yes we are looking about the the nine to ten days after coming back from the 15th which would bring us um to the 25th um but or the 26th really and then at that point um that was when sal said well let's just think about full capacity march 1st um it's we're rolling the dice and that is really really really hard to do because

055there's no perfect answer there's part of me you know that was like let's give it a try um but we are we are concerned about giving it a try and most of the concern is coming from we're we're doing we're able to have some in-person learning that we're so afraid that we're going to ruin that um if this thing is to um become much worse the variant is is as bad as it's predicted to be um and then the mitigation strategies aren't as effective so we really want to wait and see um and um see if anybody else goes first and see what happens many districts are in the same conundrum as we are um they're all over the map they're all over the board as far as what they should do as well too

056we have some that started um some uh today um on my hassell we have a lot of districts that are in full but they have about 40 participation so the good thing is that we um have a high participation rate at the elementary school we only have about 15 percent of our students um remote so about 85 to 90 between west and ecs actually in full attendance and then at our middle school um misty fury and miss um kochiola if you want to just talk about we have a higher percentage rate of students that are are coming to school versus choosing to go into remote than a lot of other districts so i see that as being ahead of the game um it's everything if i didn't say you know it's it's just everything uh

057combination looking at it and playing it slightly conservative because we've made such great progress thank you um selena did you have any follow-up to that no thank you okay dipty hi um i was wondering with um this new variant um have any parents express pulling out any more kids into remote at all to be honest with you i what i'm afraid of is that just uh we're getting more and more information but a lot of people don't even know that it's mutating as quickly as it is um so i feel like in some ways parents may be getting this information from us um and so far i do not believe i can the principles could uh maybe speak jillian maybe i missed something but i don't believe we're getting any more remote learners because of

058this uh this new variance i don't believe so um if i'm wrong if i'm misspeaking please uh correct me administrators or jillian i i think that the numbers have you know there's there is fluctuation in and out but the numbers have sort of been somewhat consistent um so you know i we always there are wazar people that are pulling every once in a while that there's equally people coming back so um i don't think that that's a huge concern but our numbers are are good at the moment and and we're doing well the other piece is that i wanted to mention is about the high school and then and the middle school when we are in full and we do have a case um you have to there's so many classes right so they have

059four classes in a day and when you look at the six feet perimeter you're usually taking out between four to six kids around the positive case and then you multiply that by the four classes and then you multiply that by two days and then you add in lunch outside contacts and um what else am i missing um the bus sorry the bus get the bus on the bus and yes that's a big one and um and now potentially putting in sports so you're you're gonna talk about big numbers when we have to do contact tracing when we're back in full um so that's another piece to the the puzzle you're looking at like 60 to 70 kids in a quarantine for from one case thank you uh dipty any follow-up to that no okay thank

060you any other questions from the board selena sorry just one really quick question has there been any talk of changing the guidance as far as quarantining at all to make it easier on the schools mr aneshi is not moving on the quarantining especially with this new strain he's um and we've been okay i have to say that we've been okay um so he he definitely he there is no movement and not just for the schools for the entire community he he is not bending on those and i think that's why cromwell we as much as it's it's difficult cromwell was in a really bad place it was like in the top 15 for um cases and now uh we're v you know we're we're we're dropping tremendously and and i think that ha you know

061it's the work that uh that they that they're doing uh to make that happen so i don't think he's looking uh to minimize that right now thank you any other questions okay okay uh hearing none i'm sure we'll hear more as we move on in the month okay on to the major topic for today um proposed education budget for the 21 22 school year so just to recap we are also meeting on february 23rd and march 9th i believe with the target of voting on the budget on the ninth if it goes that far um certainly next meeting is an option as well so between last meeting and this meeting board members submitted questions to the administration you should have received responses to those in your board packets um so we'll just open this up

062for further questions from the board members dr macri i know there's some additional presentations that you would like to make so would you like to do those first and then you can answer all questions from the board afterwards sure um i think that would be the best way to do it um we do have our part of our instructional leadership team here this evening um and i will hand it over uh to carrie and mr von bakoven is going to put the presentation up um and it's really talking about um what we need um in cromwell public schools uh for curriculum leadership and development and what does what is the difference between uh curriculum development what's the difference what is curriculum um and uh what are we looking to do in order to move forward

063um and so in your packet we gave you many references um for you to read about strands and standards and standards not being curriculum and it's a lot to really um digest for me it's my passion and i love it i could read this every single day and it makes me so happy but for others it is difficult um and we gave you one example of a unit of instruction so um tonight we have dr mclean and part of our instructional leadership team um that will be presenting to you about curriculum leadership and development so dr mclean i will do my best not to interrupt even though this is my passion we'll see we'll see okay go ahead good evening everyone in response to some of the board uh questions dr macri asked that i

064put together this presentation for you tonight and so what we're going to talk about is the importance of curriculum what it is what the process is and kind of what we have the work that we have to do going forward and so to help me to do that i have invited our part of our instructional leadership team our secondary team essentially and they are new faces and so i thought this would be a good opportunity for you guys to get to know them um so we have julie shepherd who is our secondary numeracy coach we have krista scallow who is our secondary um technology coach and amy arnista who is our new secondary literacy coach and we're going to go through this with you um this is you know like enza said we're curriculum people

065and so we can talk about this all day but we're just going to sort of give you a general overview um of of kind of the basics um is it who's who's who's my banner so next slide yeah next slide yep that one no that one yep okay so what is why is it important why is curriculum important curriculum is really at the heart of everything that we do academically in a school you know like this is the reason that we send our kids to school is to get an education obviously schools do a lot more than than just um educating academically but it really is at the heart of of what we do academically and so essentially it's preparing students for college and careers is the very basic level of what we do but

066we're also trying to make sure that those students are me are we're preparing them to meet the needs of a changing world and it really does open the doors for collaboration for students and adults so when you have a good solid curriculum there's a lot of professional discussion that has to happen and there's a lot of student engagement that happens with that curriculum it provides an overall plan to meet the needs of all students and so you know not all of our students are in the same place and so your curriculum provides a roadmap for what do we do when our students are need in need of support and what do we do when our students are in need of enrichment and where where can we go with that and it's all put together so

067that there's coherence so that we can ensure that students are going to leave each grade level in each course with certain skills and there's alignment along the way again help teachers to align and plan a progression of certain student learning goals and objectives so when you look at a curriculum as a whole you know exactly what kids are going to be learning at each level so that you can you can progress and you can add on to all of those skills as they go along provides an opportunity to create and empower teacher leaders in order to do this work the teachers have to be invested in it they have to get involved in it there's a lot of professional development that um they're gonna get in this process which is gonna help them um and

068is gonna benefit them along the way and there'll be you know people that will train and and will kind of take a leadership role in this um and finally it's going to provide measurable targets for students um via formative and summative assessment so in other words formative assessments are the assessments that teachers give to check to see if if students are following along and getting to where they need to go and then summative assessments are you know your end of unit you know can the students demonstrate that they have mastered the skills in the entire unit as a whole next slide please all right so here's some quotes from some experts on the importance of of curriculum a guaranteed and viable curriculum ensures that all students have an equal opportunity to learn each student will

069have access to effective or highly effective teacher and access to the same content knowledge and skills in each section or class so again there's that idea of coherence from robert marzano for educators to meet the challenging learning needs of students they must have a clear roadmap to follow throughout the year so that's larry ainsworth and actually ainsworth is the author of the curriculum design method that we're we're going to use to build our curriculum in cromwell and finally from the state department of education the process progresses from evaluating the existing program to designing an improved program to implementing a new program and back to evaluating the revised program so it really kind of gives you an idea of the the cyclical nature of this because curriculum really is a living document and it never really

070ends you don't really ever finish that curriculum and put it on a shelf and say we have finished the curriculum if you're doing it right curriculum is going to change all the time and it's going to change based on the students that you have in front of you and it's going to change based on the way that the world changes and um you know on a million different things but it really is something that you're constantly looking at and so that brings us into this uh slide which kind of gives you an idea of what curriculum is and where we start so if you take a look at that kind of salmon colored it says national and state standards so that's where we start and they give us these very basic outlines of what the

071state standards are students you know like this is where we want kids at each level in each um discipline and what we do is we unwrap those standards and we say okay so in order for a student to meet that standard these are the skills and concepts that they need to have in order to say that they have mastered those standards and so then we go and start building from there and we talk about what are the big ideas and essential questions that we're going to have those students explore so that they can demonstrate that they understand the skills and concepts in that unit and then we begin to build the units of instruction units of instruction have maps they have they have a scope and sequence they have um pacing guides so that there's

072a map out of exactly what is going to be taught in that unit and then once you have that then you can build in your lessons and your strategies because your lessons and your strategies are going to change depending on your students in the classroom finally we build assessments to make sure that the students are getting all of this and then we kind of start that process all over again so that's sort of the basic concept of why curriculum is important and what it is and i'm going to turn this over to i think julie who's going to talk about the actual curriculum writing process steve i think you can go to the next slide yep hi everyone i'm julie shepherd i am the secondary numeracy coach um so good evening to all of you

073and thank you for having me tonight i'm excited to be a part of the um crownwall community and i'm going to continue on what kerry had begun to talk about with um curriculum and the process that we go through so she mentioned larry ainsworth and this is one model of his which is reverse curriculum design it's one model for developing curriculum and it's a very comprehensive process as kerry began to describe and it's really summarized your um with an overview of the recommended progression for for this process um starting with prioritizing the standards and without eliminating any but building a solid foundation for planning instruction assessment curriculum the unwrapping piece of the standards is where we allow teachers to really know the standards inside and out by identifying concepts and skills that students need to

074be able to know and understand the next piece of this process is teacher clarity and learning intentions uh um focusing on learning intentions and success criteria where we students are identifying um and understanding what they're learning and exactly how they're gonna show their learning with that success criteria the next piece of this process is common formative assessments and this is a step-by-step process to create quality formative and summative assessments that are directly aligned to those learning intentions and success criteria that were identified in the previous step and then finally once that one unit of instruction you have one unit of instruction developed the rigorous curriculum design is that flexible framework for creating multiple units for an entire grade level or course in any content area and that really keeps the standards instruction assessments and resources

075very tightly aligned and focused as carrie mentioned curriculum is always it's always changing but this is a timeless practice and process that can be followed regardless of the changing of the standards of the expectations of what students need to know and be able to do she within your packet and dr macrae also mentioned this you this goes along with what you received there's a sample unit starting on after your budget resources there was an article and then starting on page four of the packet of resources you have one sample unit from a grade five math unit i'm starting with a scope and sequence and this outlines an entire year of the units of instruction and moving throughout through that packet you will see a unit overview and that's where the standards have been prioritized and

076unwrapped and then progressions of what comes prior to that grade level and after that grade level and the standards are really broken down for identifying what students need to know and be able to do following that unit planning organizer you'll see a pacing guide which breaks down the standards and the learning targets and intentions week by week for each unit of instruction followed by a pre and post unit assessment which are those common formative assessments and a performance task and then there's one model lesson included in this process i'm sorry in your packet which is part of the process this is only one example of a lesson and throughout the unit teachers would have multiple lessons so this is really just the beginning of the units that teachers are creating this doesn't include all the

077lesson plans the strategies the tasks or tools that they're going to be using throughout the units so that's part of the process as well you can go on to the next slide um so as a team we took a look at the anticipated number of hours for writing curriculum um for cromwell schools and what we looked at was this is based on a minimum of six units that need to be built you have a sample one sample unit in your packet but if each course or grade level um when we're talking at the elementary level and content area um has a minimum of six units this is how many units need to be created overall the district so the minimum would be 1695 if each course or content area had six units with a minimum

078of 714 units at the secondary level and 462 units at the elementary level and we estimated that one unit of instruction would take approximately 40 hours to build with teams of teachers as kerry mentioned the importance of having a team of teachers collaborating to do this work and taking ownership and building these units take about 40 hours for one unit so overall it would take about 67 800 hours and then um also throughout the process you were constantly monitoring revising and um the curriculum continuously and then monitoring for implementation and then every three to five years the curriculum is reevaluated you know a piece at a time and you're continuing that process so along with the after the curricular curriculum writing happens then the curriculum needs to be implemented and there's a quite a bit

079of professional development that comes along with that so i'm going to pass it over to amy who is going to talk a little bit about what that entails next slide please krista thank you hi everybody good evening my name is amy arnista i am the new secondary literacy coach i'm happy to be here in cromwell and thanks for having me this evening as julie stated in order to prepare teachers to engage in high quality development of curriculum there are several professional developments that our team just discussed and we wanted to share those with you tonight the first one is ongoing coherent instructional guidance which means that we want to make sure that all teachers are working in the same direction and they have the same in guidance from the curriculum vertical alignment you want to

080make sure that teachers are having the opportunity to talk to the grades that are above them and below them so that they know what students are coming in with and what students need to go and also that would help with supporting students who need extra support for getting on grade level and students who need to accelerate professional learning communities how to use utilize the meetings um together as teachers to collaborate around best practices uh also it's important for teachers um and to know how to use the coaches that they have available to them and how to co-teach and accept and give feedback um another professional development opportunity would be blended learning models for student learning student-centered and relevant learning that promotes choice um also and this could be an entire college class for a new

081teacher would be highly effective instructional strategies um that tie to standards and learning targets i we find that um the teachers can always use some extra support in developing their toolkit in how to um teach the best instructional strategies along with that toolkit would go technology tools and those are ever evolving and changing and it's great to get extra support in that area also looking at rigorous um increasing rigor in lessons through depth of knowledge and task design and lesson planning something to always go back to and refresh many teachers already know how to write lesson plans very well but it's always good to collaborate with others and get the latest feedback on differentiation strategies and access strategies through udl which is on universal design for learning also it's important for teachers to be able

082to identify and create quality resources that have an equity lens also um re returning to the instructional data teams and using formative and summative assessments to drive instructional decisions and uh continuing to check for understanding the best ways to check for understanding so this is not a comprehensive list but it is a pretty lengthy list of things that would help our teachers return to or learn for the first time on how to effectively implement curriculum through these professional development opportunities so i am going to turn it back uh to the next slide and i believe um dr mclean is gonna share about this yeah so i asked ian based on some of the questions i asked ian to kind of pull out of the curriculum budget because there was a there was an increase in

083the curriculum and instruction budget but i want to sort of um explain that to everyone so that everyone knows that this is not necessarily an increase in the curriculum and instruction budget it's just programming that has been moved into my budget so i asked anne to take a look at the numbers and at 51 of the entire curriculum budget that we have is attributed to programming that i took out of the schools and so you'll be able to see that there's a decrease in the school budgets in places because i pulled these programs up into my budget which makes the most sense because what we were finding was you know we've got some teachers that are using this program in this school and we had some teachers that were using it here and there but

084if i can get a quote from a company for you know a bulk amount of licenses we often get them much cheaper and so for me as the curriculum person i really need to have a handle on what programming is being used district-wide and so i've pulled the um technology the instructional technology programming all into my budget so none of these programs are new they are just programs that are new to my budget so they basically lived somewhere else at one point and the next slide so these are programs that we have always used but that the prices have just gone up this year and so the quotes that we got for this year are higher than they have been in the past near pod we are using more licenses than ever and we are

085going to have krista do a demonstration of what that program is and how important it is to teachers goguardian is a program that we use so that teachers can monitor student screens as their teaching and as you can imagine that is essential in this these instructional models that we're in i ready we've always used i ready licenses but we are using it more um we're using it as a blended learning tool in grades three through five and sixth grade math um and we are probably going to go towards a benchmark assessment and i ready um starting next year which will be a shift over from our star assessment and rosetta stone is our language program and so these are programs that they're not new um but they they have been increased because um we're either

086using more licensing or just the program itself has increased in price and next slide and this is krista good evening i'm krista scallow and i am a district-wide instructional technology coach and i'm also a parent of an ecs kindergartener and resident here in cromwell um so my job is just to kind of discuss the technology and the importance and impact it's had on cromwell public schools thus far um so i'd like to just start just with two quotes from the department of education specifically the office of educational technology um so the first one is just to provide students with the education they need to thrive in a globally connected world we must find ways to design fund acquire and maintain the infrastructure that will make connectivity a reality for every teacher and student in every

087learning environment so right now especially with you know all the circumstances that we're going through with covid and hybrid learning technology is at a peak um it's extremely critical that the students are front loaded with how to utilize the technology the teachers are trained um and we can build as much engagement as possible um the second is technology can be a powerful tool for transforming learning it can help affirm and advance relationships between educators and students reinvent our approaches to learning and collaboration and shrink long-standing equity equity and accessibility gaps and adapt learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners so these both go along with the vision of connecticut which every learner and educator benefits from the full potential of technology to support a personalized and impactful teaching learning research and advancement so

088my role too is to go along with that curriculum is now to integrate that technology we're looking at a blended learning environment with a lot of personalized learning and student choice we want our students to be able to verbalize how they want to reflect what they learned and give them the technology tools to do so so with that shift in learning technology there's a key component um they need to have the access so we are a one-to-one district now which is amazing so all these students have a device that they can access um we've also given them you know plenty of opportunities to have internet and make sure that they can access the internet and be able to get onto their classes remotely um and then the next is just to prepare these teachers um

089you know in eval um giving um google forms out and reaching out to all the teachers in our district it's really just seeing what they need from me and a lot of them are just asking for that training and just to see how to truly implement it and the second most important thing was student engagement they really want these kids to be engaged as much as possible so it's not here to replace the teaching but just to increase that so we really need the investment the infrastructure development time and help more than ever you can go to the next live studio so i just wanted to highlight four um important programs that we're currently using here that have an extreme high impact on us um the first two you could see the first one is

090iready which dr mclean did touch upon it is a comprehensive assessment and instructional program that empowers educators with the resources they need to help all students succeed um i have a couple quotes coming up from teachers and coaches in our district who are showing and really proving that impact that it's having on their teaching as well as the students in their classrooms um it's providing actionable data that's tailored to instruction and practice um and it's research based and proven to work so we have that research that backs us up that's showing that there's student growth we also um hopefully we'll have this proposal to switch to nearpod as dr mclean had just mentioned um once we go to our district leadership team um and get the vote from them as well the second one is

091nearpod um your pod is a technology tool that engages media and formative assessments allowing for interactive instruction while fitting with the blended learning model so a lot of teachers are using this it is taking their um google slideshow presentations but adding informative assessment it is nice because the students that are remote can either work along with the teacher the teacher can guide the uh the lesson and their info control however they can also give that control to the student so the students can take this tool they all have the same exact content that they need it could be differentiated as well and they can take it on their path and be able to learn what they want at the pace that they're capable of doing it's real-time data and post-session reports at the end of

092every near-power lesson allow teachers to immediately be able to assess their students and plan for the next instruction um the third program i'd like to highlight is what is called gizmos so gizmos are math and science simulations for grades three through twelve we are using these um both in the middle school and high school religiously because we can't do labs so due to hybrid learning and the you know the six foot distance we have been able to implement gizmos as that component so it's critical the science instruction and the curriculum um because we have that lack of science labs currently they use an inquiry-based learning approach that has been validated by extensive research as a highly effective way to build conceptual understanding so you know we you might have heard the ngss and our assessments

093that are coming up and this is really preparing our students to do well on these assessments because they need those labs they need to have that experience and that background knowledge to be able to answer the questions that are coming up on these assessments that they're shortly going to be seeing um it also uh directly aligns to the standards as well as the ngss assessments as i just said and it allows for blend and learning to whole group to one-to-one so there's a lot of options to be used with gizmo and finally the last one is goguardian so goguardian has now been implemented district-wide which is a tool um that it works conjunction with google classroom as well as any of the internet programs students are currently using and it allows the program to act

094as a security as well as a safe browsing component so the teacher can instantly see what the students are doing which also keeps them accountable as well as keeping them safe so you know our biggest priority is making sure our students are safe while using the internet and using their digital tools and we want those teachers to be um available to be able to make sure that they're going in the right direction as well so the teachers can have live interaction with the students they can actually chat to their students and give them compliments um i've seen this you know firsthand today i can give an actual example um where my son's teacher was saying great job you're doing a really good job i see how hard you're working so it's positive reinforcement it's building

095that interaction between um the student and the teacher and that trust um and it's really making sure that they're truly engaged in their learning and i'm going to take over now steve um so if you want to stop the presentation i do just want to because i was asked just to highlight near pod just to give you an idea and just to kind of give you those focus areas as well as go over a couple of i ready reports just so you guys can really see the data that our teachers are getting before i go over those couple quotes and end my end of the pres my part of the presentation so i'm just going to share my screen and i am going to start with nearpod um so nearpod like i said is an

096online component mine obviously isn't as robust because i haven't been creating the lessons i've been actually instructing other teachers and working directly with them to create these lessons under their account um but i did want to highlight a couple of things so we do have a nearpod library which allows the teachers to go in and look for different topics that they're working on it's nice because they are bringing in that racial justice and the equity and we're talking about mindset and mind growth um so all of these are in here and they're geared from um pre-k all the way up to grade 12. so they have some lessons that are pre-created that they can then take and put them in their library and then be able to edit them and make them work for their

097own students we also have a school library the school library is a place where um this particular one is for cromwell middle school where teachers are sharing lessons so when they're looking for lessons in their creating lessons they're sharing amongst their department as well as their grade level so we have some teachers that are doing what's my style of learning let's collaborate um some different science lessons things that they're finding um and the middle school teachers are doing an amazing job of sharing and being able to have everybody be able to use those things that they've created um and i would like to just showcase one just so you can kind of see what it looks like so the near pad lesson would start now the teacher would add it to their library they would

098be able to share it as well and they can control it so as a teacher i would be walking through and i would be controlling the slides the students cannot move on until i actually move them on so it gives everybody enough time and it lets them have their thinking time and be able to answer some of these formative assessments that are built in and i won't go through the whole thing but this one was just on their learning target so you can have these targets the students both home and in school are able to learn um and it's great for the hybrid model as well as just in person um so you can embed videos you can embed sound clips i'm just trying to get to some of them so here's one like do

099you disagree or agree with the statement everyone learns the same justify your answer so this teacher put in a poll the students can now vote yes i agree so they read the two scenarios which one describes you so the kids then vote and then what happens is on the teacher's end they're looking at it and on their screen on this actual page everything is popping up so all the students responses are popping up it's instant the teachers can take this um information right then and there retweet their learning take over a google me put up a jamboard and be able to re-teach right on the spot so the formative assessments are extremely beneficial for the teachers especially when we're getting into that curriculum so this is something that would come into that curriculum writing that

100would be a tool that i could embed um and be able to help these teachers create these presentations so that they have them from years to come obviously they would have to be tweaked as curriculum does change so this is just the gist of nearpod i don't want to take up too much time um i do want to show you two different um reports um but i would like to you know start i was gonna save it more towards the end but i think it's some important information um and it's something that we as a district are proud of so so far i'd like to just share and just give kind of um like a celebration so so far we have seen 15 growth in reading from the fall diagnostic to the winter diagnostic district-wide

101we've also seen a 24 and a half percent growth overall in the district math scores using i ready so that's just my forefront just to kind of show you a little bit about these reports and what the teachers are getting but it's growth from um the fall to the winter so over four months time and as you know with three through five they did start on the hybrid model so they weren't in full person the entire school year so the growth is pretty incredible so taking a look you can see that these are just some examples teachers are getting diagnostic growth for a student so as you see here over here on the right hand side this line down here in the middle is mid year on grade level so this is where we would

102like our students to be these students are against sample students due to privacy we cannot showcase our true data because there is private information on that so however this student you can see her his her diagnostics they are here with 565.74 588 so they are not yet at this green mid-year line showing the teacher that they're not on grade level anywhere in this above this green line and up they would be at that grade level at a 580 or a so by the end you can see this growth um and then off to the left hand side here on this report you see the typical growth so in this case this student made 175 of typical growth so the i ready reports what happens is they take this diagnostic assessment they start and the um

103the questions will get harder they go back and get a little bit easier and they really place the students on their individual instructional level they then show how much growth that student should make it's not saying that this student has to be on grade level according to them because as we know there are students entering say grade three at a first grade level but we want to make sure that we are targeting that student to their independent growth level and ensuring that they are going to make the appropriate growth that they should in that school year of course our goal is to get them close to grade level as best as we can the next one at the bottom is now their stretch room so this is really to stretch them so this is really

104to move those points as much as possible and get them even further and as you can see this student made 93 so this student is pretty close to their stretch growth which is amazing you can also see that we have for a whole entire class so teachers are able to see individual students growth their whole class so they can see the students that are on grade level who are close to grade level they get to see all of this data and their growth as well as how they're progressing throughout the year and then you can see it as a school so the data overall off of the diagnostic which is given three times a year it gives you a lot of information and it helps plan that instruction the second report which is my last

105report is just on some of these um diagnostics more so for the students but it gives the teachers this information so as you can see we're assessed on these four strands in math and it gives them all of the things that the student needs it gives them suggestions it gives them resources on how to provide intervention and next steps for instruction you can also see that it's going to do the whole entire class as well and it tells you what students are where and where they should be as well as a whole entire school the nice thing that it also does here is it'll break it down there we go um into the whole entire class and it'll actually show you instructional groupings so i think this is something that's amazing for the teachers that

106they truly like because it'll group the students based off of needs and where they need to be and what they're struggling on and then as you scroll down you can see here's the instructional priorities here's some priorities that these students are really not grasping as well as some tools for instruction and some things to recommend that the teacher would need to re-teach to get them to where they need to be in the next step of this report so i'm going to stop sharing and then if you can just go back see for me steve can you put the presentation back up please so while we're waiting for steve to put the presentation back up i just really wanted everyone to see and understand where our dollars are going and why it's so important um if

107we want to be rigorous and we want to be at the top of our game we need to make sure that we're funding um the resources that our teachers need and we're investing in our teachers and our staff but i'll let krista continue and then i'll go on i'm almost done i have two more can you just go to the next slide please all right and just these are the next two quotes that i just really thought were important i really wanted to get these anecdotals from teachers so that you can really see what our teachers feel about it that have been piloting um so the first one is i ready has begun changing the way we look at data it has allowed for natural grade level discussions about the common core state standards additionally

108the data gives us precise information on each student which allows teachers to best differentiate the instruction it has been an invaluable tool so far this is from sarah gallotti who is our um reading coach at wis and if you can go on to the next slide um so this is coming from miss waldron a fourth grade teacher here at wis as well i have found that utilizing i ready in the classroom is an amazing way to meet the many needs of our students i love that they can explore their path and know what is unique for them we can watch them grow throughout the year throughout the path and diagnostics i love the future iready has to please students in instructional groups based on their strengths and weaknesses on the diagnostic assessments we can differentiate

109instruction by pulling those groups and teaching the lessons from the teacher toolbox that ireti recommends for us based on each group iready is easy to learn and navigate which is what we need teachers work so hard every day to help their students succeed and reach their fullest potential utilizing a website like iready to may help make this happen for them is just perfect for us so these teachers truly are using this and and driving their instruction from it they're holding conferences embedding growth mindset and our youngest learners so some of our teachers especially uh miss waldron and another teacher that i did speak to are having a chart up on their board and they're filling that chart so they're making their students as soon as you pass so many lessons we're going to fill our

110chart and when we get there we're going to have a huge celebration so it's really making them want to do this and really want to improve their learning um and in this quote she had referenced my path and i just want to clarify that my path is a path that every single student has once they take that diagnostic what will happen is they don't put them into lessons that they need to work on to get them to their fullest potential and hopefully make that stretch growth that i mentioned before so other than that my my portion of this is done but i feel these tools are extremely you know beneficial for our teachers and i hope you can see how much our teachers truly appreciate everything that we're trying to do to help them with

111the curriculum thank you for your time carrie did you want to say anything before i take over or no you're dying to no go right ahead dr macarthur i'm not dying to i know one of the hardest things um is trying to let go of curriculum and instruction when i left as a principal was trying to let go of uh seeing the kids every single day um and i'm trying to let the team do that but of course i still have my hands in it um so as you can see um curriculum and instruction is the heart of the is the heart of the district and the instructional core our students what they're learning and how they're learning it and how our adults are adapting to that learning um is critical um i have been

112asked quite a few times why don't we do this glastonbury does that or why don't we do this rocky hill does this why don't we do that west hartford does this and that um one we don't have all the resources that the district hat has we have we have a lot of resources we need different resources we need more resources and we don't want to be those other districts we want to be cromwell um our kids are amazing our teachers are amazing if we could put forth um the energy the time the financial resources into creating this um curriculum which is going to take about three to five years we're not talking about overnight you can't rush it we need to make sure that our teachers are involved they have to be the authors with

113the curriculum supervisors these are the experts of um of their of of how to write curriculum um it's not an easy task we just don't learn this in uh school when we come when we become teachers it's really a special something we specialize um but it can be learned um we have to invest in our students we we want our students to be ready when they leave high school but we don't want them to just be ready our kids have been ready they've gone on um and for the most part i think our kids have been successful in criminal we want them to soar we want them to set their own personal goals and give them that opportunity um through all the resources and all the opportunities that we want to create for them i

114see so much in crownwall and so much potential but if we um don't invest in that um it just won't happen um so the excitement is here um we need the resources we have a framework we need to um be very coherent about what we're doing we need to look at data and everything uh that we do should be revolving around student learning in the instructional core so the team really i was excited to present this tonight and i was really trying to explain to you why and it's not a huge increase in curriculum and instruction but why it is so much needed um it's time now is the time to do it and we are ready willing and very able to we have a great team so any questions regarding the presentation any of

115the dollars you did ask um someone did ask i believe it was jen she wanted to see what it would look like on the budget um and it comes it comes after the budget questions if we were to add in a world language and the tech ed teacher um and obviously we're going the wrong direction uh but we wanted to just show you that because it was an ask um and that would increase the budget to 5.35 i believe um so that is it and we did answer all of the other um questions that you had for us if you want any clarification you have more questions um we're here to help all the administrators are on line and so we'd be more than happy to answer your questions and have a discussion as to

116where we should go next great uh thank you dr mackery and your team so we'll open it up to the board and you know this will be the open forum ask any question you want about the budget book number uh what you saw tonight so this is really for the board to start asking any and all questions so i saw jen's hand first and then dipty go ahead jen sorry hi thank you um so and just thank you for um adding those two teachers in i am you know definitely mindful of the fact that we are in a pandemic and trying to save money um so i i was glad to see um them in there but i also you know i understand that we want to try to save some money so i guess

117my big question is if we don't add these two positions in and we wait until maybe next year um are those i know that the graduation requirements increase these students now need 25 credits they need stem they need foreign language so if we don't add them for next year are our kids is the class of 20 22 23 2023 gonna have what they need for those graduation requirements i will let miss d fury take that question the the short answer is yes but are we offering more opportunities for our students by having these teachers no because uh we do have teachers teach a sixth class um and what does that really look like um misty fury will tell you but um go ahead miss if you're if you want to take over sure hi good

118evening everyone that's a that's a great question um right now i think we're we're reacting to the fact that we're in like an emergency mode and when you saw that position for the pe health and for the capstone we realized that those um students who are going to fall under that new requirement are going to be juniors and the expectation from the state was that those that extra health class would be taken their junior year and we want to make sure that the capstone has done their junior year because if they if they can't get through it they need to have some time their senior year um in case something else happens and it's probably a better time to have it have it done junior year um with regard to tech ed and world language

119could we use those positions sure do i have world language teachers teaching six classes yes i have both tech ed teachers teaching six classes yes um would we be able to fill those classes yes um but in terms of necessity right now in order to survive uh those other two positions would be be critical um in order for us to to get those um to get those credits that are necessary for graduation this has all changed because not only have their requirements changed but the number of credits have changed as well kids need um that class will start the need for 25 credits versus 24 credits um so will they need to be put on board um if not next year the year after absolutely um we've always we're our tech classes are filled right

120now and they're both both tech teachers are teaching six and that's a real opportunity to grow our kids our stem program our manufacturing program we don't want our kids in study halls as often as they are we have a lot of student we all of our students um there are so many areas that they can grow in um and they just don't have the opportunities because um we have so for example if we had another tech ed teacher um the tech and the two teachers that we have would be teaching five um then the which obviously we have to pay a stipend but it's it's not a large stipend so it does save us money but the point is that there would be four uh more classes available to students in tech ed um in

121manufacturing engineering we pick it whatever our kids pick it uh we do surveys what do they want us to give them what do they want to learn uh want to learn and world language the same thing um right now it's we have enough to have them graduate um but don't we want more that you know than that so that they can have more to move on capstone and pe if we don't have that next year we lose accreditation our kids uh that class of 2023 will not graduate we need those positions that's none nor here or there and we've um i wasn't the first one to bring this to your attention i know mr fury brought this to your attention before i got here um it was uh this isn't this shouldn't well just the

122new members it should sound new but this shouldn't sound new to to anyone else um we knew this was coming thank you um dipty and then lori hi i have a question um about the the tech um presentation and um the programs like nearpod and ireti once the um curriculum is developed with its um corresponding assessments will the um assessments from the technology piece be necessary or will they be used in conjunction with the assessments from the built-in curriculum like will we have a need for those tech programs once the curriculum is built with and it's assessment so we're going to build a curriculum around those tools so nearpod is is basically just a delivery system for the assessment so teachers are creating assessments and it's a way for them to create assessments so that

123they can get data very quickly from it so that they can adjust curriculum on the fly um so it's not really like a bank of assessments necessarily that they're they're pulling from outside of our curriculum there there are things that they're maybe tweet they may have like a lesson plan or something that they're they're working off of but they're really developing it based on what they're doing and it's an opportunity for them to get some data quicker than you know a paper pencil test that then they have to grade and then they you know can have to go in and to adjust curriculum so um the answer is no they probably they won't go away just because they're they're tools that give us data quicker so that we can adjust what we're doing in the

124classroom faster so it's really the i can't i'm trying so hard it's the artificial intelligence that we need so terribly and that we use in society every day so for example when we went to school um we took an assessment whether it be formative or summative we either had to send it out to be graded it would be sent back to us that's smarter balanced now back then it was cmt it could be months before we receive those those assessments um you take in a quiz you write a paper and the teacher would give feedback it could be a week two weeks but in order to really find the strands that you're lacking or you need i should say remediation in it could take a while if you're taking the assessments through this artificial intelligence

125component ir whatever we're using the artificial intelligence does that for you so the teacher is now using that time and saying okay this student needs this this and this and instead of trying to figure out exactly what the student needs they're using that time to create what the student needs as far as strategies and lesson planning and so on so it just helps the teacher um move forward quickly um with what the student needs and it's and it's more engaging because just because it's 20 21. and those are that's really for formative assessment i mean your performance tasks and your you know like your standards mastery assessments those have to be teacher created like those those are not something that you're looking for quick information you're really looking for that informative assessments in more summative

126assessments or mastery based descent assessments um those those are teacher created you know for their specific content and unit um so kind of just the two different ways that we assess formatively versus summatively thank you uh lori and jen yeah i just have a question um in the budget binder in the section under the staffing and benefits um i was just going through the charts and i just have a question about um there's some headings missing i'm not understanding what these codes are for the none for the page that says non-certified staff at the top if you go over there's some columns that don't have anything at the top and there's all these codes and i just i'm wondering what what these mean um like it has years of service and then there's a next

127next column with these codes but there's nothing at the top so i'm just wanting to find out what they are i think it's because i'll let and speak but i think especially on the first page we don't have levels where district the district level so there's nothing up there and if you flip to the next page it tells you the level the levels of which those people work but i'm not sure if i'm answering the correct questions there's codes in there so they mean something like i can take the question okay so on the first page in the section under office secretarial staff the only column that's not labeled um for example says 12-6 12-4 that's connected to a table in the background programming of this excel spreadsheet that gives you the information for other

128columns it's like a lookup table code it doesn't it just for example if you go all the way to the bottom um aa3 means administrative assistant three so three corresponds with the contract the steps on a contract oh okay so 12 measure 12 month secretary so it's really it's it's just internal coding that we use to help us create the spreadsheets it's it's just informative it doesn't impact the numbers okay it was confusing because it's not yeah it's really for the back end of it mrs cantwell so that we yeah okay i just wanted clarification on that yeah i mean on the next page if you look at custodians hc means head custodian custodian one custodian two c1 c2 so it's it's just attracting titles that we use to create um other pivot tables in

129excel okay thank you i think that's the only column that doesn't have a header yeah it is it just i didn't know i was trying to make sense of it and i i wouldn't have if i didn't ask you so thank you sure lori uh jen um okay so just in terms of um the professional development i know the there's a big increase in the amount there which goes in line with the curriculum development obviously you need to do some training around that um but i was wondering given what the brown family shared earlier um is there any potential that some of that money could be used towards gender identity training um for our staff we actually um i will turn that over well carrie you could do and then siri as well um because

130we do have um someone who is actually going to provide some of the training for us i'm not going to say uh complimentary because we do pla pay a shipment and could win a large amount of money but they're also going to provide that training for um our staff as far as the language and everything that we need to learn however the component that we really need to focus on is what does it look like in the curriculum and what does it look like every day yeah and an instruction um and i did actually i was really really really hoping and i tried three different um carriers that i know that offer this oh no you're good can you can you hear me now um so i reached out to three different companies and all

131of them told me that they they had a they were either booked or they were not able to do it for the end of this year so i in our professional development calendar for this year i really really tried to get a spot for each of the schools in um this year but i we are going to look forward um on that and um potentially try to find a spot for next year and enzo's got some things in the work too and sarah i don't know if you want to add to that hi everyone yes so you know more and more in the schools we are seeing um you know um transgender students and um it's it's coming up more and you know even for us administrators i think it's it's definitely a learning curve

132for all of us and i had a conversation with our one of our attorneys from shipment in the fall about this because again it's it's such a huge learning curve and we want to make sure we are doing everything right and we are um ensuring that you know everything is equitable within the schools and of course the curriculum carry um but i did speak with um one of our attorneys from shipment and she is willing to provide and does provide training um and i think we're going to start with administrators first and then kind of go down the line so if she we can set up which you know definitely is something in the works we haven't picked a date yet of course but um set up training for the admin um first and then

133we can train our staff to ensure um that we are following guidelines um allowing equal access you know in the buildings and um really making all students feel comfortable based on their gender identity um you know and that's something definitely that um we're going to pursue um so yeah it's it's probably um a pretty penny which dr macri um mentioned but it's something that i think is obviously worth spending money on and um you know i'll continue to um update you as as the plans kind of unfold and another reason why i know i i believe you've heard this last year policy updating policy is incredibly important uh the policy was extremely old um and um we weren't there yet um and the family read the policy uh the you know the administrators that that's

134the policy that they have that's our that was our most updated policy we need to make sure that we continue to move forward and update policy um so that it statutorily um were uh in compliance and it's what's best for our kids especially in this situation thank you uh laura your hand is raised did you have a follow-up oh sorry no i just didn't put it down okay no problem thank you um so i don't see any other hands raised at this time uh by the board members so you know i do think we need to have discussion on the number um the 4.8 uh the point was made earlier that we're you know still in a pandemic and we do have people in the in our town that are still struggling financially uh and

135trying to come back from this um on the flip side you know every one of our students has been affected by this uh because they have lost time out of school so from my perspective i think the you know we do need to focus on increases in the curriculum portion of the budget so that we can help our teachers help the students get back to where they need to be but of course every dollar we spend one place is a place we can't spend it elsewhere so i do think it's incumbent upon us to sharpen our pencils and take a closer look at the numbers to see if there are areas we where we can do without for this year one other point to note is that i'm advised that the grand list has actually

136decreased a little bit this year since last year so just from you know that perspective the taxable base is is lower than it was last year so we need to take that into serious consideration when we look at these numbers so um you know that's what i'll say about that i think we do need to start looking to see if there are areas where we um you know can do without so um that's my point and i'll i see two hands ready so i'll turn it over to katherine and then lou so catherine go ahead please thanks jeff um yeah i definitely taking into consideration all the questions we've exchanged and conversations we have that last meeting in this meeting and understanding where the town stands in relation to its residents and also its businesses

137which are a critical part um they really i don't believe my guess is that they don't want to move the mill rate very much so um just in in addition we we discussed a lot about the curriculum and additional requirements that are needed for the high school level um and so i really think we need to take a second look at certain things to see where we can shave it down of course nobody wants to cut curriculum i mean curriculum is very important i don't fully understand all of it just because it's not my background but i do believe that um we really need to take a look and see what what's in what's imperative that we do um currently um for in additionally other costs that we have for example some of our ap

138exams are we really going to explore are we going to explore the option again of having the test takers bear the burden of paying for those costs for next year are we going to to foot the cost um things like that nature to to bring down a little bit our our overall budget um we are in a pandemic our our students are struggling but our residents and towns are struggling so um we need to find that right balance and i don't think that we are quite there yet thank you thank you catherine uh lou [Music] hi good evening everybody uh yeah i want to reiterate uh what chairman truly and captain just stated um first of all i want to thank the hard work of the staff and the administrators you guys have a difficult

139task ahead i agree with the curriculum and what our students are what's best for our students i fully agreed to get the kids back to school you know it says as quickly as possible i agree with all that um but you know as as board members we have a responsibility to our children the staff administrators but we also have as catherine stated we we do have a a responsibility to our town as well and our residents and taxpayers um i i like to using the statement that kevin did use about you know sharpening our pencils is um leave it to to dr macri to see what options um uh to go back and and see if there's some benchmarks that maybe we can we can look at if the 4.88 how how we can look

140at some uh small percentages uh in other words if we brought down a quarter percent uh what would that what what what would the view be what would be lost uh doing that quarter percent or and then and going to another benchmark to half a percent uh and then even maybe three quarters of a percent to see what what options we have and and what can be lost without jeopardizing uh curriculum and and um and the students education and we have a obviously we have a lot of hurdles but we also like everybody stated we're we're in a difficult situation for not only the school the administration but um our taxpayers and um there's a lot of things we like to do we wish you had all the money in the world and we were

141we just weren't in the situation we have we're all tightening our belts in in one way or another even in in our homes and i think it's it's been coming on us to to do what we can and uh through dr macri uh leadership to see what we can do to to show not only um you know the town but um our residents that were were have their best centers in mind as well not just the students but the but all the other residents so uh i would propose that that's something we can um get some feedback on possibly and see what we can do um to be a little um give some options um so that's that's what i want to say but thank you very much for for putting this together it's amazing

142the presentation was fantastic for someone who's not in the education business it's it's really i learned a lot so thank you um and that's it for now i guess um thank you mr chairman thanks flu um and in years past we have have done what you suggest in terms of picking mile markers and then seeing what it would get there so we can certainly do that again um sure if you get if you oh sorry um whatever direction i just you know we'll certainly end this meeting with some direction to make sure we're on the same page in terms of the way forward john the president's stimulus package has passed the house in washington and it includes a fairly substantial amount of money for education have you been or anyone getting any feedback on that

143and what we might be able to expect out of that uh should it pass more or less as as is um so we do i did send out the information uh to i don't even remember was it last week or earlier this week about the esser grant so there is an esser grant too um and it is a federal grant and um we will be receiving um we're not a district in need uh by any means um we will be receiving about 641 000 um in grant funds however um there are districts obviously who are receiving millions of dollars and and so should they because of their need um it is a grant that is uh very very closely monitored and so i sent you information the other day the application comes out on february

14422nd um i'm very well-versed and so is um the rest of the instructional team um who's worked in a an urban district of what these um grants require as far as reporting we will have to do a needs assessment we will have someone um that is assigned to us a consultant from the state department of education there are areas that we can um use the grant um but we absolutely cannot supplant uh the grant is um for all students to help catch up from the loss of the pandemic so we have to be very careful on how we use the grant uh seven years of experience of writing alliance district grants for millions of dollars and making sure that we're in compliance and not supplanting is one of my specialties i actually enjoy doing it

145um so we look forward to that application coming out on february 21st and we will adhere to all of um all of the criteria that has to be met um and it is like i said it is closely monitored and uh we are held accountable uh for for that money um that is all of the money that i know of um nothing else is coming uh toward the way of cromwell except for it for that um and as you as ann just said um the crf funds we just got our first payment our first drawdown so it takes it takes time um but we will look at how we can utilize um some of those funds for sdl for social emotional learning um however um we do have to to make sure that we we

146meet those requirements um and that is all we know february 22nd i'll let you know more as soon as i see that application um and i just of course i um you hired me to be uh the greatest advocate for the students you all have to do um you know and your your jobs are a little different than mine um it's important to know and as jeff stated um yes the community has been everyone has been impacted one way or another through the the um pandemic a hundred percent of our students have been impacted um through this pandemic and it's my responsibility to tell you what i believe our students need and i uh there really is no fluff in this budget at all i will go back um with your direction and cut whatever

147you would like me you know to cut and i will give you i'll show you different options um but what i've noticed uh is no one ever really wants to do um the hard work and when we have to cut we have to cut do and no one everyone says we don't want to cut positions we don't want to cut athletics we don't want to cut because it's important to all of our students um but we we will have to cut somewhere on and and i'm more than happy to come back with um options of of what will get us to that you know the quarter percent the half percent three-quarter percent one percent less but i just want to prepare you that um that will have implications on our uh students and which is

148in our staff um and for me that's my that's my number one responsibility thank you um first of all let me say that the fact that you like doing that stuff fills me with horror i love it john i have to say we're pretty good at it it's just just very frightening i am now very very very much afraid of you um doing it for a long time uh but that that grant is from the previous uh stimulus package we have there is a new stimulus package that's winding its way through congress now which includes a substantial amount of money for education are we getting any input from cabe or whomever about what the implications of that money are which would be which would be stuff that would show up in the next fiscal year

149no i just heard about the sr2 you know the second part of it that's all we've gotten and if there's more funding coming our way i will be so excited but i um and i was on the phone with frank not just myself and i'm meeting with fran benowitz today um of caps um and there we don't know of any other funding right now besides that second phase of the esser um grant um i hope so i hope you're right it might be worthwhile to make that question and i was stuck on a meeting with friend today myself yeah she's great yeah let's keep asking can't hurt us i hope you're right john um thank you uh jen thank you um so i think i think last year we had talked about at one point

150making that capstone teacher a non-certified position and i just wanted to see if that was still a possibility and what the cost difference would be and the pros and cons of that and then also just in line with catherine's what katherine said about ep testing i'm open to having that conversation again as well and just wondering what the cost savings would be if we had students pay for all or half and of course we'd still want those students with financial need to have the test for free um i could let misty fury talk about the ap testing component and what um she has noticed um this year on regarding ap testing and students who are um opting to not take the test especially when they're seniors uh they really just need the course they don't

151need that uh they don't need to take the test um when we pay for it we say you're taking the class and you're taking the test and um to me i i i i think i made it really clear last year how i feel um i think it's a shift in mindset in the community um i do feel i still feel that it's something that we should be doing although i am listening to um you know my high school principal who's on the the ground doing it um and some kids are opting out of taking the test which means we have less students taking it um and we actually that is part of our report card as well um i don't think it's unfair to ask people to help with ap testing fees it's done

152in many many many districts but it's if it's not successful um we we do have a a loss as well because it is re uh it is part of our report card we we get dinged on it um that is a question we can revisit again uh we did try it this year without uh all that much success um and then the capstone i believe that has changed it must be uh correct me if i'm wrong kerry and fran must be a certified teacher because it's credit bearing i i don't know for sure but carrie and fran so that that teacher has to have a full five sections of courses in order for us to do this at this point um you know these are these are juniors that need this class next year and

153they will they will have a full full load of students that have to get this and and it will probably be a hat they will probably have two sections of it like we'll do probably do a half years that we what we decided half year friend that's correct they'll they'll be receiving a full credit in a half years amount of time so they're going to have outside work that will have to be necessary in order for us to have everyone go through if you think about it um that that class is very large it's 152 kids if you take five sections and you um have um 25 in a class times 5 is 125 kids um no sorry it works out no it's 70 no it's 20 kids right and it works out that we

154can do a semester and then a semester for the 150 kids have 75 go through it first semester have 75 go through its second semester i just want to i'm just i take a step back and listen i of course that's my job for us to always always reflect and put the students first but this should have started four years ago to put our students in this situation and to have them work on a capstone project that they should have started two years ago when they're already stressed out uh we didn't know the pandemic was coming um it's a little it's it's a little disheartening to me and it's going to be very difficult for for them um and like i said i know i understand we're in a pandemic people are struggling financially um

155but this really isn't a conversation we should be having at the last minute um and i and we broached it last year and we had to cut it because we we need we were a district without social workers which is absolutely um ridiculous so we have a lot of and i'm not just saying to to the board but as a community um what do we want cromwell public schools to look like where do we want our kids to be um and and and how important is it on for us and and it is worrisome to me slightly uh when i hear uh that our kids are going to be juniors and they have to complete you know they have two years left i'm not worried about the pe uh because they have to take the

156class but a capstone project is pretty intense which is why now we need that certified teacher because we need a lot of support for it so i really don't want it to be an after an afterthought as we move forward thank you um i don't see any hands raised at this time so i'll just make a couple points um i did talk to lindsay who couldn't be here tonight and she thanked the district for their work and putting the the budget together did agree that the focus should be on the curriculum but uh again sort of concur that we should take a look and sharpen pencils and look at things more closely um so i you know i did hear the quarter percent half percent three-quarters of a percent just so everybody knows uh roughly

157each quarter of a percent is equal to about eighty thousand dollars so if we're talking a half a percent that's 160 three quarters of a percent that's 240 thousand and a percent is 320 000 so that's that's not chump change that's a lot of money um so i just want to give everybody sort of the you know put that into perspective in terms of what reductions amount to i do have a couple of questions just on the process do we have a further update on when the presentation to the board of finance will be i see mr ireland is still on i don't know if you if you know that answer uh no no pressure certainly but is my microphone working this time yes we can hear you sorry new computer didn't set up the

158mic it just perfect timing um so we have got our next board meeting uh in two weeks i believe it's the 20 uh 26th something like that last thursday of the month um you know i've been having some conversations with uh with the chairman i'm just trying to start to get our docs in a row to kind of see what the timeline of things you know will start to be um but i think we'll probably have a clear picture you know after that meeting as far as when we think some of our workshops and things will will get started i know at the last meeting um there was a question about uh you know last year the referendum obviously you know changed the process with the pandemic going on i don't know if we've heard

159anything new uh from the state if that's going to be you know the same or not but uh i'm hoping to start to get some more information around this thing as we get uh as we get closer but um you know i wish i had some more detail for you but you know our next meeting will be in a couple weeks hopefully after that we'll have some more uh some more info okay thank you yep uh anything else from the board okay um hearing none then i if everybody's in general agreement then i think perhaps dr macri if you could do the exercise of doing yeah i think doing it in increments makes sense uh you know maybe a quarter percent half percent three quarters and you know i i leave it up to you

160on that last one if you want to go a full percent or you know 0.88 now let's see how bad it is and that can be our marching orders for two weeks from now and in the meantime of course if anybody has further questions or things they would like to see or ideas uh you know please feel free to email dr macri if that's okay dr macri yeah oh absolutely of course always um yes so i'll give options uh we can give different options and then of course we put a um a number on things and then you have a number obviously in your in your in your book and we could talk about um things that we switch out uh i just um i'm i'm grateful that everybody is really interested in learning and

161understanding and uh wanting to move forward instructionally um with putting crownwall at the top and that means giving our kids the best opportunity um instructionally but we are going to have to make some sacrifices um and or we have to say some really really strong prayers that the medical benefits and all of that comes in a lot less because because we're uh playing with those numbers uh as well so um and then just please remember that we are in negotiations with four different unions this year so that does put us uh you know in a difficult situation so um i will definitely do that exercise i'll come with numbers all the numbers um are in the book and all your questions have been answered and if you have any others please feel free to ask

162um and uh my team will be ready with um those decreases and prepared to share them with you thank you you can just put one bit of information in there while we're all together just in terms of the ap tests can if can we just have some numbers in terms of how many students took the test this past year understanding that they had to pay for them compared to years prior when they didn't have to pay for them just to see what kind of real impact that had on decisions to take the test or not take the test so testing doesn't the testing won't take place until may oh that's right that's right you are right you're right but how many registration uh you went can we give an idea of registrations so far usually

163they wait to the left i know how you can they usually do wait um i'll talk with mr chapin to see if we can get some kind of idea a lot of the seniors want to opt out which is unfortunate because that hurts the school right okay understood it's not going to be perfect but thank you for that clarification and this is a good year for us to actually um and i'm not 100 sure carrie but i do know um this might be a good year this was probably a good year for us to to play with this a little because um because of the pandemic and um our report card is it's going to be very wishy-washy anyway because our students are going to be taking smart balance we're not getting a report card

164we're not even getting one so this is a good this is a good year actually to to give it a try because it won't really uh uh take away from our report card i didn't even i didn't realize we weren't getting one at all yeah we're not getting a score at all so we're taking the smarter balance but they're not giving us um an overall school rating this year so next generation accountability report they they said absolutely not well i mean they put in a waiver for it they're waiting for final confirmation but it's pretty much assumed that it's going to happen oh that's good that's great okay hey katherine give you the last word sorry not to prolong this or anything but um with the number of students that aren't going to take the

165um the ap tests that are seniors i mean are are they not taking it because of the pandemic i know a lot of those students are just because i know a number of them are checking out so to speak at this point in time and a lot of them are actually going 100 virtual they they're they're not even going to school as often as they can there's a there's a lot less um interest they're very deflated from unfortunately this pandemic senior year that they're getting which is less than anyone would have ever wanted for them so do we think any of that has to relate to the fact that they're graduating seniors in the middle of a pandemic that don't have an interest in putting more on themselves no i don't i think it's typical

166of there are many seniors who we've always told them if we pay for the test then you have that's part of the requirement of the course is that you take the exam and there's a lot of reasons for that and the fact that they're opting out is simply because they have gotten into their school um they had it on their transcript when they sent it for their application to show that they are taking the ap test um which shows that they're taking rigorous courses and then they've they some of them have decided just not to take the exam at the end of the year because they feel that sometimes that the particular school that they're going to will not accept ap court ap credit and so they don't they don't feel the need great thank

167you okay so to be continued uh two weeks from today hopefully won't snow again i know please covet snow that's all we talk about budget all right um informational principle reports references f g h and i attached to your packet are there any questions okay seeing none uh item e informational human resources personnel activity reference j any questions um i just want to bring to your attention on unfortunately but fortunately uh miss tamora is back um she was hospitalized unfortunately she's doing well um but that's why uh two months of um the hr report uh because the poor woman couldn't do it from the hospital bed although she did try she did try to continue to work from the hospital but and i think she may have been talking to me as they were bringing

168her into surgery right michelle um she might have fallen off somewhere but um we do have two months so please just take notice uh that was why and she didn't mind that i shared that information with you because she felt badly great thank you for sure um okay topics for future agendas and possible action to approve additional topics nothing new to add from today's discussion any questions no okay uh comments updates announcement from board members and administrators any administrators just feel free to raise your hand any board members me none okay um that is the end okay is there a motion to adjourn motion motion by worry is there a second second second from that catherine yes okay second by catherine any comments or questions hearing none on favor hi extensions uh opposition extensions none

169okay motion carries unanimously we are adjourned at 9 21 pm thank you everybody and have a good evening