001any one of those three outcomes so to ensure that every school establishes and maintains an active and high functioning ilt so that's an instructional leadership team and that's where the principal School social worker sometimes a coach a couple of key teachers will get together they after school they will have a regular meetings to look at data and look at the outcomes and achievement of the school system of their of their school I should say they do that sometimes with the support of the district office sometimes uh we'll have someone carowanzer push in and help people to really unpack complicated data sets and then we'll have some of our curriculum folks also push in and supervisors to talk about content specific strategies that will support a school's mission of increasing their academic achievement um we will
002Implement a school Improvement plan review process to provide feedback on systems goals and strategies so similar to the way that cabinet engaged in a strategic planning process um we asked the schools individual schools to develop School Improvement plans and in those plans they work to identify the the biggest blockages for academic achievement in their building and they strategize around specific learner-centered problems of practice so what is it that is is is blocking achievement in grade three in my school because I'm seeing that my grade 3 is not as strong as in other schools or um it's not on it's not where I want it to be or we haven't made as much growth in this area and so that's where we really dive in with a lens to examine practices to examine assessment to examine
003student work and then to look at um you know ways that we can we can create many action plans around Improvement in those areas so those are important and our Chiefs right now are heavily involved in reviewing School Improvement plans and providing feedback and really pushing on that academic achievement piece to make sure that um you know we are we are centering on grade level learning and that we're advancing all of our learners um so we're engaging principals in professional learning use utilizing the PLC process so again these are the opportunities that we have as peers to work together to drive that achievement and again some of these overlap um developing a systemic process to inform professional development offerings uh with multi-level feedback for our stakeholders so when we provide professional development excuse me I
004need to exists when we provide professional development we always make sure that we evaluate that to make sure that it met the needs of the teachers and that our presenters are given their absolute best when they're delivering that professional development and so we use that to to for self-improvement um and to push on our own internal processes for for creating excellence um to evaluate the amount of professional learning available at DPS so every year we are always looking at the calendar we spend a lot of time on the calendar we're always looking for ways to maximize that calendar and so as a strategy to achieving all of our goals and outcomes we will constantly look at the calendar meeting time how we organize ourselves during the school day as well to make sure that we're
005utilizing every opportunity um to to look at data and to look at the achievement of our students um let's see where to let me leave off here um the last last couple ones providing opportunities for administrators to engage in professional learning communities we talked a lot about that and solving uh problems of practice um again right now as our principals are working on developing your school Improvement plans um that is happening uh as we speak um principals will lead Community Building efforts through restorative practices so as we address uh student behavior and even even adult behavior in real time um that we're employing some high leverage strategies to build relationship and to make sure that we're moving our schools and our students in the right direction uh review and revise as necessary all curriculum to
006ensure is comprehensive and standards-based there is a strong push to move everything just to highlight our standards in our work um and so that uh content and conversations is not just topical in nature or theme based but it's grounded in standards and those standards are very specific that delineate what grade level achievement looks like when you reach it and then our conversations Must ALL aim in that direction so it's really focusing on that and working with teachers slowly over time to build up their expertise in this and to do that with our students as well and then the last one is to monitor provide feedback and provide teacher admin training on explicit structured phonics in instruction K3 perhaps no more important level in our School District K-12 is can think to be found in our
007our uh our elementary school um all we really have tried hard over the last couple of years to deploy more resources to K3 but particularly around explicit structured phonics so that our foundation coming up out of the middle school is as strong and and our students are used to um to to rigor and also uh we're developing readers in early elementary schools so that they can begin to learn content and access more knowledge about the world around them so um that pretty much gives you a little bit of an understanding about that I hope that was a little bit more digestible uh this time around and certainly can field some questions at the end on any of these items the curriculum standards are Connecticut state standards and National standards and I can certainly uh make
008those links available as Mr selig mentioned before the website um is uh is is we have a new website and those will be able to we'll post those uh for our families so they all can see thank you thank you okay so Talent acquisition is mine and a lot of um what's on this slide are things that are not new to all of you um they're things that we've been talking about that I've been talking with you about for quite some time now um so I'm just gonna pick a couple of kind of higher leverage items on this slide and of course I'm always available to talk with you I know many of you um volunteer to participate in the process so I'm eager to continue to share the the mission and the vision for
009recruiting um there's two real principal Concepts here one is on Recruitment and one is on retention none of the things that that Cara has talked about can happen if we don't recruit or retain our teaching Force um and this year has been um particularly robust in our Recruitment and also in our retention of our existing staff and the overarching concept here is many of you have heard us talk about um it's important for students to see themselves in their teachers and their administrators and one really easy way to do that and clear way to do that is to try to bring in teachers of color who reflect the students that they're teaching and um because we have a Workforce of over a thousand teachers um it's almost um unobtainable for us to talk about having
010a demographic of teachers who um precisely reflect the demographics of our students and yet it's it's an aspiration that we have always as we're looking to bring in um the biggest best brightest teachers that we can find to to put through all of these wonderful training programs and things that we do so um what are the things that we're focusing on this year and you've seen in the goals and in the um strategic planning that we are constantly looking to do a couple of things in recruitment one is to find ways to unearth and locate diverse applicants whether it's economically diverse whether it's culturally or ethnically diverse we're always looking for a diverse Workforce and so we are constantly thinking about what are the ways we can do that one way is to continue to
011build the pipeline programs that we've worked on you've heard us talk about the Westcon teacher pipeline minority hiring pipeline the NYU pipeline that we're building so we're constantly looking at ways to attract and lure young students some students at Danbury High School or even the Middle School to develop an interest in teaching and then to work with some of these partners that we've identified to get them trained to be the best they can be and then to bring them into the district so it's sort of that homegrown model if you will that's something that we'll continue to focus on this year is using that as a really robust way to locate a diverse Workforce we're looking this year also at our para educator group and are there folks in there that have got some experience
012maybe some school credits that we can help them leverage into becoming teachers and and defining a career path that they may not have thought about before the other piece that will focus this on this year is we've put together a team to go to our rescue who's running a coaching series it's called the coaching series to facilitate District creation of a plan to increase educator diversity the state department of education has made it a priority that districts craft a plan for hiring that reflects development of a diverse Workforce and we are embracing that idea and and I've pulled together a team of folks to start looking at our hiring process do we have diversity of folks who are interviewing who are screening what are we asking candidates in their applications in their interviews in their
013participation in our process and are we having a really good dialogue about what we see about the qualities and of those candidates and those of you who've served on interview committees for higher level administrator positions know that we spend a lot of time debriefing to see what you've seen who have you seen who would you like to see in a different role and so this coaching series that the rest is putting on that we're going to participate in is just going to continue to hold the mirror up for us to our practices so that we can go through this year serving the goal that's in the superintendent's goal of creating a plan for recruitment another piece of that which you'll hear a lot about this year is the retention effort I will again bring to
014you I think it's scheduled for November I'll look at our aggregated data on hiring but also we'll you will see over the course of the Year our celebration our continued celebration of those folks that we've already invested in that we want very much to stay here in the district and what are we doing for them are we celebrating their accomplishments you're seeing teacher of the year you're saying Spotlight your school you're seeing a more um vigorous social media presence so that we can celebrate the accomplishments of the really incredible teaching staff and and support staff that we have in the the district so to sum up it really is a two-pronged attack this year one big focus is meeting the State Department of Education urging that we really focus on our practices and that we
015work on recruitment but also the other is our own kind of home developed goal of really celebrating who we have in in our constant striving to keep them here in the district and keep them working with our kids um so you'll see both of those things out of my department this year thank you foreign next up is school climate you'll see the overarching goal for school climate is to promote a safe and supportive learning environment that nurtures the social emotional growth and Civic responsibilities for all students families and staff um so there's a couple uh there's a bunch of different ways that we do that but I'm going to focus on a couple uh High leverage key ways in which the district is promoting social emotional well-being for our students and families as well as
016our staff from the school environment um the first is really to focus on providing and carving out time for social emotional learning to occur during our school day it is something that was emphasized very very heavily throughout the pandemic as a need for students and for staff and families as well and this has continued in our work since returning to the school environment for example at the elementary level it's very common to see things like morning meetings where teachers are doing check-ins to build culture climate and Community within their classrooms they're also providing ways to connect reading and writing activities uh to how different characters are feeling it back in with students to make connections to themselves at the middle and high school level um we have time within the schedule to do whether it's
017Flex or an advisory fashion um to connect students in a larger environment with teachers so that they always have a go-to adult in the school environment and at that level we're also pushing out content that is developmentally appropriate about for example transitioning into Middle School um maybe um uh you know cyber awareness and being aware of who you're speaking to online um you know all those types of things that are developmentally appropriate based on age level in an effort to build um a positive School climate culture and Community um the second uh High leverage thing that we're doing is um really looking at ways that we can create safe schools and there's really a two two-pronged approach there um how we work within the infrastructure of the build thing so how we make sure that
018we have increased our cameras our security the locations of our main entrance and making sure that it's you know a double check-in before people can get into the building um the way we practice our Safety and Security drills so that we're aware of what to do in in the event of a true emergency um those are all kind of the procedural operational things that we do on the school safety and climate and then the other piece is doing things like the Sandy Hook promise start with hello program where we're teaching students within the school environment and empowering them that if something doesn't feel right talk to a trusted adult report that information we've also launched another security system where we're looking at um things that students are searching online so if a student searches a
019concerning topic or developmentally inappropriate topic for their age or grade level that we're able to follow up inform parents have conversations about kids to keep them safe um so it's again working on kind of the building structure as well as the things that we Empower kids to do to take control of their environment and then I think most importantly kids need to learn when they make mistakes that we're helping them to understand why that wasn't the best choice um what is a better option and really engaging uh parents and community members if appropriate in in helping to provide support for those students um and then the last last uh kind of major High leverage strategy is to talk about continuing to Resource our infrastructure development um so that we can continue to have um you
020know schools that are responsive to our students as our student population grows we need more space and we need to make sure that those spaces are adequate um and then also providing um that restorative practices which again is what I said before making sure that we're debriefing with students that we're helping them to repair any relationship damage that they broke maybe it's with the teacher or up here and learn from it and move forward in in a positive way thank you okay meaningful collaboration is up next um so I just want to talk a little bit about the sort of larger ethos that goes behind this so I recently read a statistic that um less than 10 of a child's life by the time they reach 18 is actually spent in school when you add
021in all the vacation and the summer breaks and the holidays and just you know a bell schedule of eight to two or eight to three that only comes up to about ten percent of a childhood so if if we can't find better ways to sort of reach into that 90 percent uh really makes the job of a school that much harder and and really limits our ability to be effective so in the last few years there's been an incredible infrastructure that's been built here in Danbury and we're really sharpening now and sharpening the point on just how this how this works and what we know are going to be some of the most high leverage strategies so uh one of the things that that um you know the three big goals we have here is
022you know work collaboratively with schools business and Community organizations to strengthen and meaningful engagement through joint decision making is really views the sort of you know the the relationship between a um you know a parent and a school is just sort of a critical handshake and when everybody's sort of engaged and everybody understands what their sort of role and responsibility is and even the little things that you can do you really do get a tremendous um uh impact on the um the life of the child but also on the the ability of that kid to be to achieve in school um the second star here is build an enhanced capacity families and Educators to support student learning and the third is develop effective methods of communication with parents staff and students so there's a few
023really high leverage action steps here that I'll talk about the first is we're going to be creating an advisory Council to maintain and nurture Community Partnerships that includes both the private and non-profit sectors so you know when you think about all the you know the the the benefits of of having a community like Danbury where we have good businesses we have a lot of non-profit organizations we have you know access to oh I just lost here did you guys lose me there we are um what do you think about a community that has just a lot of assets available to it you've got to figure out ways to leverage those so having things like um advisory boards where you bring these people in and they can tell you about the different benefits that they can
024bring to your school these These are really um important uh Partnerships to have um identify process and organizational conditions that impact school family Partnerships at the district and school level we're going to be employing the commit the Connecticut framework for Family School Partnerships um district-wise so this is Karen map strategies that she's put together this framework it's a a framework just about what are the ideal conditions for Community Partnerships and what do those look like and one of the highest level leverage partner things you can do for these Partnerships to have buy-in of a superintendent and buying up a strategic plan which is really why this this is um you know such an important piece of the Strategic plan um incorporate student staff and Community feedback to inform school policies budget and activities we started
025doing this last year with the budget and we're going to keep doing it in our community relations committee um identify and deploy best practices for family and school Partnerships we're going to continue to review our current communication methods and to recommend ongoing improvements for engaging and communicating with our families parent square has been a tremendous uh Boon to this effort but we're only in it in our infancy of figuring out how to do this we now have a number of two-way mechanisms that we're building we've started putting out more newsletters with Kevin there's uh social media now that we're that we're starting to engage on and of course the new website will provide a whole host of new opportunities as well we're building and it's a large pieces of this have already been built but
026we're continuing to build and sustain a vibrant parent University that engages parents and families and supporting their children's learning um and Mead's office and family and Community engagement has done tremendous work just engaging families and I know several board members have been to some of these events where just on a Tuesday night you get 50 families at these events who just want to know better breeding strategies they want to know better ways to to communicate with their children about either social emotional issues or just you know challenges that they're having in their own lives um and the other piece of this too is just a building out the the face Center that has a central registration Center in it so you know we really now have with this registration and opportunity to have just a
027physical place where parents and families can come they can get help they can connect with resources um and uh you know just really you know engage with the school district you know it's a single point of contact and um you know they're able to to come in and and meet somebody and and who speaks Spanish or speak Portuguese will speak English and help help them engage with the school and figure out exactly what they need to know to help their child so that's a meaningful collaboration thank you Mike John yeah thank you so um resource allocation and you'll see uh four goals there but uh two of them are I find much more important or or timely uh than the others and that's the second and the third one um and uh me they're both
028very there's a Common Thread uh back to the meaningful collaboration goals in both of those you you heard Mike mention um working with businesses uh for joint decision making and building capacity especially for for families to support schools but the second and third one there the the second one is is to develop an advocacy uh to leverage those voices um that that's what we're going to need in the next 12 months uh for sure and uh over on the action steps uh in the middle there uh we have that will partner uh with the Citywide PTO the city council to build advocacy again that word um among key stakeholder groups because we're going to need them to help us carry our our budget message uh for sure and it's also in the third goal there
029uh the Partnerships with the city uh in the face of the expiring relief grants um and uh the second to the last action step to the right uh to develop a bad strategy to close the budget deficit that is um the expiring relief grants we've started to talk about um getting an advice we have an advisory committee that's already begun to meet that will give us some ideas there uh and also uh to fund the uh the Career Academy that's a very important uh step we have to take you heard um uh at the financial the finance committee uh you heard about the pressures that we're starting to see on our high school budget the different things we have to do whether it's um adding more staff adding more buses adding more safety Advocates and
030so on um it's it's another way of saying we really need the Cardis campus so that they're connected those are the two uh two of the bigger uh goals uh and they'll uh they're right here in the next couple months the other goals uh things that really should be doing all the time uh doing a better job there's always uh ways to to do things better we call that finding efficiencies but uh that's doing any cheaper with less people or faster with the computer Maybe and then uh as we talked about at sites and Facilities this week last week we need uh projections for building maintenance uh and uh expansions uh so we have some action steps to go with those so um I'll leave it at that given the time and um thank you
031very much so those are the six goals and respective strategies that the cabinet just walk you through um different from what we had shared previously one of the action steps that were in those boxes and so that was the detail that you heard this evening so I know that we I see a couple of questions in the roadmap q a document that was in the chat I want to make sure I get to those questions but I also wanted to mention uh previously there were requests to associate budgets with the Strategic plan itself and so once we have approval I would like to also go through that exercise with my team um I would say the vast majority of the strategies that the team shared with you this evening um just require strategic implementation but
032there are some things like strategic planning that will require budgeting resource allocation necessarily doesn't require monies but it does require strategic strategic implementation curriculum implementation in terms of the new reading program as an example require a significant investment and so just just to I just want to make the board aware that some of these things do have costs associated with them um and and so some of these things in terms of implementation could be budget dependent and so with that I will open a door I just want to thank again everyone for um hearing the team and I out on on these action steps lastly I also want to share a lot of these things although in um in the Strategic plan in terms of things we would like to do some of these things
033have are off the ground already just because it's part of our typical work and what we've identified as kind of best practice uh but in in in any District you want to make sure that you have a plan uh so that you can continue to assess reassess and reevaluate at its best when those plans are memorialized um to to support growth and development of a district so with that I'd like to turn it back to a board chair in any question the board might have aside from the questions on the um on the document are there any questions Teresa um schools are subject to testing I didn't see anything about raising test scores um is that what you are referring to in in the grades three five eight and twelve uh areas based on test
034scores to be your assessments based on the test course at those levels yeah so we have we we kind of uh Benchmark if you will in those grade levels those are tested areas uh tested grade levels per se we do we do spend a little more time looking at data around the areas that are tested um when it comes to setting those uh benchmarks um we do that through our accountability index with the state of Connecticut in the form of Essa targets and so the state holds us accountable to in meeting those targets um and so there's like almost a whole other document and process around that that that um kind of parallels this work and so um we think of the accountability index and and our growth targets that we set forth in there
035this strategic plan helps us to achieve um in the direction of those targets that that are set with the state and so um on a yearly basis Theresa we do do we have a a testing report um there's usually about two uh probably have one coming up soon let's look at the calendar but we go over all of those targets we go over all of our performance how we how we are doing in terms of both growth and proficiency um and then uh talk about you know kind of the work that we have going on but certainly the Strategic plan um is the roadmap to get us to uh to to the growth and proficiency that that we're holding ourselves accountable for in that in that other plan thank you you're welcome so October 26th
036we'll we'll see some of that yes great um quick question how are we handling parents that may be opposed to teaching um you know sexual content or having pronouns used in the classroom are we specifically only like I'm not sure if we're even I believe did we send out a survey um for pronouns questioning whether or not our students or our parents are on board with that and if they're not how do we how do we have how are we handling that if we are currently or plan to in the future is apparent allowed to opt out does you know how how does all that kind of come into play when it's clearly out there but I really don't hear too much about how we ourselves are handling that issue or these questions or concerns
037you know we we haven't had much um Michelle here but in in that in that regard um we haven't had a lot of controversy we haven't had a lot of approach about it particularly um did we send out a survey last year because I did hear concerns at an event that um their child had received a survey and that the parent was not aware of it is that something that we actually did as a as a district did we send out any kind of a survey a survey on that or anybody nobody's having that discussion if I could just introduce I think one of the things just to add is regarding the opt out for certain um curriculum such as like health and sex education there is an opt-out for parents so there is a
038notification that the parent can opt out if they do not want their child participating in that unit um similarly a unit like suicide awareness there is an opt-out for that um I'm not certain what survey you're referring to but there is a drug and alcohol survey that we have done with high school and um students and there is also an opt out for that um and that is done in partnership with MCCA uh through a grant funding to survey High School youth on their um you know awareness and and potential use of any substances but again there is and opt out for parents that do not wish to have their child engage in that survey So currently in any of the other classes that we would have let's say English social studies if a teacher
039felt that pronouns were something that was important to them or that they feel should be extended in their class is that something that we would um support or is it strictly going to be in certain classes like health or you know like so I'm just wondering because I have heard in other school districts or whatever the case is that there is kind of certain classes where a parent wasn't aware that perhaps in math class or an English class the use of pronouns would be use I'm just wondering what is our position as a as a district as our school in Danbury public schools yeah Michelle we we haven't um it has not come up in it formally in any way here um I think you'll you can certainly see uh some some folks uh prefer
040or or you know will list their pronouns uh you know on a zoom right um when you log in uh so perhaps it could be in an email in the way that they sign up but we have no policy and no restrictions no support and either way to either at you know ask students to do this or ask teachers to do this or to not do this so okay there are no students are not asked to do that by um any sort of a formal process here in Denver it's not part of our policy and it's not anything that we currently are looking into as part of the old the whole development of you know our inner workings because I get this a lot yeah I actually had we've actually I have not had one
041uh instance where that has come up where I was in where that was an issue or a parent felt it was an issue where a student felt it was an issue at least to me formally so um you know again we don't have a policy it doesn't mean that individual teachers or individual students don't display that or don't uh ident you know choose to ident you know put that forward and identify a certain way or put that out to to their peers but we we don't uh support or deny nor anything it's we're kind of neutral in that area right now okay thank you yep anyone else have any questions Teresa how many surveys went out total and what is the percentage of that total is the response 238. hi Theresa yeah I can respond
042to that yeah so we put it out to our entire parent Square list so it was over 17 000 people that went to it's a Google form so it only tracks it when the form's been completed my experience in distributing surveys is that a lot of people will start a survey and then get distracted or get bored or just not take the time to finish it um it turns out we had 683 respondents that's just below five percent if we're using the 17 000 number um that's what I wanted to know thank you so that's pretty low that's not the greatest yeah we sent out so it went out the 23rd and then we sent out two rounds of reminders that week it was open um each one you get like a little pulse of
043people that respond to it but you know survey is not the most exciting thing to fill out quite extensive though you reached out to seventeen thousand that is compatible because every everybody we had in our parents where it all it all went out so yeah and also getting a good response response and getting do you have of what the people who did respond white so that was good thank you we do have another agenda item to get to um is there anything else from board members before we move on okay seeing none Kevin are you all set yes and um board chair cholesky if it is okay with you and the board uh we can leave the roadmap roadmap q a for the Board of Ed questions available uh for everyone um and we can
044push it out via email as well um because many many folks may not take the time to look at it and so if now if you've had some time to see the action steps side by side with the goals and the strategies that we had in the previous uh board documents the board might have more questions and so I just invite everyone to take some times to include them and this the team and I can answer them throughout the week and be better prepared during the board meeting to make sure we can answer your questions fully um in public any event their follow-up questions and just a reminder in in the email I sent out this afternoon you there was a pdf version a booklet version and and um uh portrait that you you all
045received of the goals it didn't have all the survey information in it but it was certainly the the Strategic plan and the action step so you should all have that in your email great thank you that's helpful board members if if you can um just come prepared to our next meeting um and review and ask questions prior to that would be great and we will rescind with the um with this with the questions in the event so that they're side by side so we have to go searching for them okay but thanks again for being available for the presentation this evening and um look forward to any additional feedback the board might have next week great with that um we are going to go into executive session and I'll ask for a motion but before
046I do that we have a separate link um once we right okay and then um are we coming back to public session via the original link will it be still open Kevin Mike I think it will still be open if it's not I can work with Cara P to make sure it is okay so let's just plan to come right back to the Strategic plan link okay okay all right all right okay on the other side I will entertain a motion that the Board of Education can mean an executive session to present the tentative agreement with the National Education Association Nea Danbury with possible action in public session so moved by Kate seconded by Al faldo's in favor aye aye motion passes we are now in executive session see you on the flip side entertain
047a motion that the Board of Education ratify the agreement with the National Education Association Nea Danbury for the period July 1 2023 to June 30th 2026 as presented Gladys would you like to make that motion moved by Gladys please is there a second oh second yeah by Kate all those in favor any opposed any abstentions it's unanimous motion carries I will entertain a motion to adjourn exactly moved by Al negative by one second Julie second by Julie all those in favor aye