001Good evening. I would like to call this regular meeting of the board of education to order. The next board of education meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 27th at 7:30 p.m. in the board of education meeting room. Um I'll start the meeting by with a motion to amend the agenda. I'd like to add item 8 D, appointment of a superintendent search firm. Do I have a second? That's Sarah, seconded by Dennis. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Okay. All right. Um, we have a couple of items, so I'm going to just move past the chair's report and go directly to uh public comment. So, we can keep moving. Superintendent report, not public comment. My agenda says public comment. Is yours different? Yes. Oh, good. Go ahead. Sorry. Public comment, please. If anyone in person
002or online would like to participate in public comment, please come up to the podium or use the raised hand icon and wait to be recognized. Once recognized, please state your name and address for the record and note that you will have up to three minutes to comment. Please note the time with the chair. We have anyone online, Simone? No, there's nobody online. Okay. All right. With that, we will move to the superintendent's report. Sarah, uh, good evening everyone. It's nice to see people in person here for special reasons. And, uh, for people online, thank you. Uh thank you to the RTM last night, the members off the RTM that represent the entire community for their approval of our budget and in particular if I may say to the RTM FNB and RTM education. Uh this
003is a town that is very very supportive of uh education and uh we thank them uh for continuing to support our our budgets. Want to congratulate uh uh Lauren Jung who's a DHS senior. Uh Lauren was a recipient of the National Merit Scholarship and um was awarded $2,500. Um she's one out of 15,000 uh who applied for it and uh was recognized. Congratulations to our high school seniors uh who were also there's a number of them, so I won't go through them all, but they were recognized recently uh for our inaugural uh arts uh commitment ceremony. And that that's for for kids who were going off to study uh the arts at the various uh universities. Uh we we it's been a we since we've been together. So I just want to make sure that
004uh we we uh remember to set to recognize certain things that have taken place and that's the national uh teacher appreciation day that uh that took place last week. Uh we also had nurses day. So those were two very important groups uh in our community and we thank them uh for all that they do. It's it's a it's it's a professional privilege uh to work with such uh talented people. I want to mention to the board and just remind them just following our new policy uh that the high school has uh offering to EF educational tours uh sorry three uh field trips international field trips and thank uh thank the staff for uh giving of their time freely uh to take our kids on these international experiences that they will remember for lifetimes. Uh in
005April 26 there's a Spain trip. In April 26, there's a France trip and June 26, uh, there's a trip, uh, to Japan. Uh, the board has the general information on that. If you want any more information, be happy to pass that along. Uh, good luck to our seniors. Brena, um, you doing your internship starting next week, I believe. Right. Um, so they're all getting ready for that. The testing season is sort of winding down. Uh, Ryan is not with us. We wish him good luck as he uh crams and reviews for his uh AP exam tomorrow. There's a lot of uh events, wonderful exams going on right across from prek up through uh 12th grade uh from our musicians uh to artists, different clubs, uh performances. Um hope you get a chance to check one
006out here in in the spring season. Uh the high school cell phone pouch pilot uh is underway. We have a number of students uh participating about uh 65 students who are participating uh the high school that will be sending out or have sent out today. Uh just a notice to the parents and there'll be an update to the board at the next meeting. Henley happening was a huge success and we have a couple of Henley happenings tonight for that matter. Uh I want to thank this the community support and Mr. Cooper um creative heights I think he was but he got on the ferris wheel uh with our kids. There's a we picture of Mr. Cooper with the kids on Saturday and the rain held off for it. So, it's wonderful. This is mental health
007awareness uh month. Uh we were of the green ribbon this particular month and I just want to recognize since the last time we were together. We did have the the out of darkness walk that raised over $18,000 um for a high school walk campus. uh that's just from Waves to uh other organizations the sports teams clubs uh community members who participate in that it's just absolutely phenomenal that uh we can raise such funds in support of such an important um uh cause. Uh there's a few meetings coming up but uh with that uh that concludes my remarks. Thank you. Thank you very much. Student representative reports. Brena, good evening everyone. We wish Ryan the best of luck crimming for the AP English language and composition exam, which from our experience is not the easiest. So,
008we wish you all the very best. Um, as we reconvene, we come into our last few days of classes for seniors. We'll be having our senior breakfast this Friday at 7 a.m. to commemorate our um next chapters and the wonderful culminating experience of the past four years in this wonderful um education system. We also will be having a um scholarship and awards festivity night next Wednesday. Um and our junior prom will be on uh Saturday, May 31st. Save the date. Hopefully it's as phenomenal as the senior prom was. And um we wish everyone the best of luck on their exams which will continue through this week. And um again just to reiterate that um we support especially our seniors in this time coming into the last few days that was so crazy to think. Thank
009you. It is crazy indeed. Big transition. Um if I may just just uh just just speak to the obvious, right? Uh public service announcement, wear your sunscreen, right? and uh follow up with your doctor's appointment. So that's your public service announcement. Thank you. It's an important one, Alan. Thank you. Um with that, I'll move on to the approval of the minutes. We have a motion to approve the following minutes of the special and regular meetings held on April 22nd, 2025. That is Joanna, seconded by Dennis. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Board committee reports. Dennis, the the board has appointed the board as the the search committee, not to kind of preempt our ADA, but um for or to do a search firm to hire a search firm for the new superintendent search. Um
010we've have interviewed three search firms and we have chosen which will be our eight uh the sorry 8C that we just amended the agenda that we will move forward with school leadership LLC or hopefully with a vote. Great. Thank you. Any other board committee reports? the curriculum committee met um for our final meeting about K to3 literacy, but I will not steal Amy's thunder and we'll talk about it later this meeting. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, with that we'll move on to presentations, discussions, and possible action. So, we start with a big one, Alan. Uh the acceptance of the superintendent of schools. I'll have a lot more to say as we get closer to the actual time. you still have work to do. So, I'm not going to say much tonight because I don't
011want you to get you distracted. Um, but for the purpose of the committee, we'll go ahead Alan's resignation tonight and then we're shortly after that, we're going to um appoint the interim. Um, and then we have some other excite exciting appointments as well. But I'll start with um a motion to accept Dr. Alan Adi's resignation as superintendent of schools effective June 30th, 2025. That is Dave, seconded by Joanna. All those in favor, that is unanimous. Well, June 30th. June 30th. Okay. Um, thank you Alan for your service. Truly. Um, next we move on to appointment of the interim superintendent of schools. We have here tonight Dr. Eric Burn who has recently retired from the Ry School District and has agreed to come and serve uh with us for the next year. We are thrilled not
012only uh to be working with him but also that he would step up into this role. So he will be starting uh in July and um we are um like I said we're super excited that we get the opportunity to work with him. So with that I will take a motion to appoint Dr. Eric Burn as interim superintendent of schools effective July 1st 2025. That is um Robin seconded by Dave. All those in favor, that is unanimous. Dr. Burn, would you like to say a few words? Thank you very much to the board for this opportunity and your confidence. I look forward to collaborating with all of you in service of the children and families of Derenne. And also there's many administrators here and faculty. I look forward to working with the faculty, staff and
013administration also in service of the schools. And I'd like to thank already Dr. Adley for his uh helpful support uh over the last couple of weeks uh conversations and really spending some time and and setting some dates for transition. So, uh, I look forward to continuing to call you a lot, um, and relying on your incredible experience here in Darianne and also just supporting the board through this transition and through the search process. So, thank you again for this opportunity. Thank you. Welcome, Eric. Welcome. Okay. Um, next I would like a motion to appoint Miss Mary Beth Jennitasio as assistant principal for Henley Elementary School. That is Greg. Seconded by Joanna. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Hey. Hey. You don't get away that easy. Get up here and say something. I'd just like
014to say thank you so much. Um, I'm really excited to continue to serve Darien in this new role. Um, and I look forward to collaborating with the staff, the students, and the families at the Henley community. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And then next, may I have a motion to appoint Miss Christina Brass Taylor as the SCSS assistant principal of Henley Elementary School? That is Dennis Dennis, seconded by Joanna. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Thank you. Hello everyone. Thank you so much. Um after spending two months at Henley Elementary School last year, it'll feel like going home. It's an incredible community, incredible teachers, lovely families, and wonderful students. And I want to thank the board and the cabinet for the opportunity to continue to serve the Darian public schools. Thank you so
015much. Thanks. Okay, with that we'll move to the appointment of the superintendent search firm. Thank you all. We're really excited um to work with each and every one of you and thank you for stepping into these roles. Um may I have a motion to appoint School Leadership LLC as the superintendent search firm for the Darianne Public School District? That is Dennis, seconded by Robin. All those in favor, that is unanimous. Thank you. And we look forward to working with school leadership. We appreciate their uh willingness to step up to the plate. They're a leader in uh superintendent search firms in this in the tri-state area. And uh there'll be a lot more information for the community particularly in the fall as we kick off in earnest. So I'm not suggesting people are not interested in
016K3 reading at all. But if you if if you uh feel so inclined, you may step out at this point. This is a good opportunity or you can stay to listen. So I'm just I'm just in a courtesy you have you have spouses and other people with you. Thank you all for being here this evening. Okay, with that I'll actually move on to discussion and possible acceptance of the contemplated gift for the DHS music department. Um, she's here. Great. just pulling up Colleen. Oh, guess Colleen, we're looking to see if we can see Colleen. She's Oh, there she is. Okay. Hi, Colleen. I There we go. Can we hear you? Sorry, I'm struggling with technology. Oh, okay. Great. Can you see and hear me? We can see and hear you. If you need someone else
017to present on your behalf, I'm happy to volunteer. Amy and Alan. That's okay. I just can't see or hear you. Okay. Very well. All right. What do you have for us, Colleen? So, I have a contemplated gift of a baby grand piano that has been graciously offered by uh community members Jack and Stephanie Dvita. Uh we would love to accept this uh beautiful Yamaha baby grand piano to be used in the DHS orchestra room to replace a piano that is over 70 years old. Okay, that sounds wonderful. Are there any questions? No. Okay. Um, may I have a motion to accept the contemplated gift for the DHS music department? That is Robin, seconded by Dennis. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Thank you. Profound thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Dvita for the gift. What
018a treat. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Okay, with that, um, further discussion and possible action on the K through three literacy program, thank you very much. Um, is this working? This one does not. Can you all hear me? Yeah, just pull it closer. Pull it closer. I know this is the long awaited um discussion and possible action for K3 literacy. Um, I just want to just really start by thanking the great number of educators that were committed to really um a very thorough district study analysis of state feedback and resources that are available um to hopefully really improve teaching practice and learning outcomes for every single learner in Darian public schools. I also want to note that Paula Blekeley is in the audience with Ann Marie Galano. They've both been involved in this
019process. Uh the steering committee was also co-chared by Shirley Klene and myself, Julie Droller and Natasha Tore and um Jen Fischer originally from DEA and um we just are very pleased to have this recommendation for the superintendent and for the board to consider tonight. So we're just going to give a very high level overview because we did have a very robust discussion um on May 7th and I hope everyone had a chance to take a look at that. We've pulled some slides that we think are the most relevant for the general public to really tune into. Just a quick um history lesson, the Connecticut right to read legislation was passed in 2022. I remember at that time thinking 2025 seems like a long time away and then here we are. I'm very grateful that we
020have taken this opportunity to do a deep study of our performance in Darian public schools. a really a critical look at our curriculum and instructional practices and um you know authentic really reflection of what we might want to do to close some gaps in some areas. Um when Darian received the conditional waiver, the state provided feedback I think in December my first year here last year. There were only a very few short weeks to figure out how we would approach um the conditional waiver situation. And at the time I felt it was really important and discussed at great length with Dr. badly um that it's really an opportunity. This is an opportunity that we shouldn't let pass by. If we really believe in continuous improvement, this is an opportunity to take a look at our
021practices and consider um how we might move forward best for our staff and our children. The waiver decision is there just as a record. We've tried to keep everything linked to these presentations so that the board and public have easy very easy access and that there's great transparency as we move forward. The steering committee did create a rubric that was based on scientific research in the area of literacy based on the state's curate model and we also provided waiver feedback in the meeting we had with the state department of education. We partnered with the state throughout we invited them to come down to our core review team meetings to board of education meetings and we continue um to partner with them and we'll share with them what the decision is on of tonight's board action.
022before you get started and then I just want to just take just one me moment just to say that uh this process and the outcomes no matter where it lay um is a reflection of Amy's and uh Julie's leadership um yes we had all the team and we had all the all the teachers and so on but this wouldn't have happened as comprehensively as thoughtfully um and with as much expertise if you weren't tapping into uh our two ministers expertise themselves and I know they're not going to say that Um, but uh I need to say it because you should be very proud of those two people and the process that that they've went through and with that you can continue what you actually did. Thank you. I appreciate that and I know that Julie
023does as well. Um, one of the things that I know was a focus for us throughout this process was not only literacy and student data points, but also thinking about change management, thinking about how important it is to involve stakeholder voice and to think about teacher capacity, professional learning, and um, really again to use this as an opportunity for a continuous improvement cycle. So, the first thing we did was establish a pre-K12 district committee. While this legislation is K3 legislation, we've discussed all along that there needs to be a very tight articulation of um literacy expectations for learning, assessment for learning, and outcomes for learning. So, even after the board's action tonight, we will continue to look very closely at not only what's happening K3, but the direct the trajectory of grades four through 12.
024And Kristen Colonies is in the audience, and she knows that she's up next. Um there needs to be a very quick turn of attention to what's happening in grades 4 through 12. and we will be as intentional as we have with our K3 work um with grades 4 through 12. So, we did look at all of the resources that the state had on their CSD approved list. It was a very short list at first and then they expanded it a bit. Um we looked very critically at those resources. We engaged every single teacher at the elementary level through surveys um spending time out in classrooms, observations, and focus groups. And I think the focus groups really provided an opportunity for the staff to tell us what they're experiencing in the classrooms with our current resources,
025their current instructional practices, gaps they felt we might have, and also gave the opportunity for the pilot teachers to share a little bit more directly about their experience with the interreading um HM resource, which is the pilot program that we decided to try out this year. We had our regular board event curriculum committee meetings. I know you have all looked forward to those every month with a heavy focus on K3 literacy. I'm it's K3 literacy is the most important work we do and I'm excited to also talk about things beyond K3 literacy. I'm already dreaming up what should be some of those curriculum committee topics for next year. So the final review process committee and then a smaller core review team of K3 teachers. We had a committee of 12 teachers that were a subgroup
026that represented all of the schools. We had general education teachers, special education teachers, an ELP teacher in there, and some administrators. And we worked together to really examine the data, lots of data points, quantitative data points, qualitative data points, feedback from our staff uh in surveys and focus groups. And we developed an instructional framework. And the reason why this is important is because we've said all along, it's not the really the resource, right, or not adopting a boxed program. It's really about the magic of the teacher in the classroom and the capacity of the teacher in the classroom. And so when we're thinking about looking at a curriculum which will be written to meet the needs of our Darian public school students based on the standards, we want to make sure that we're clearly identifying
027what are the instructional practices that we expect to happen in every single classroom kindergarten through third grade. And that instructional framework um is is available. It's linked also to this presentation. And that will help us be very clear about how we um talk about a literacy block. There's a 120 minutes and we want to be really clear what goes into those 120 minutes so that every student has access to the same beginnings and every student is assessed to make sure that they're hitting those milestones. We then made a document so that we could compare the resources. And you could see that as you look down that document that again is linked there, it was clear that the interreading resource really met all of the expectations that the staff has set for a strong core resource
028for learning for our students. And so we did determine to go with into reading and I'm going to talk a little bit about he as we move forward. It was resounding from the committee of teachers and the teachers that engaged in the pilot that professional learning for implementation will be very important. Um we know that we have to support change management. We can't just provide a new resource. We really need to be talking about instructional practices as well. Not just handing handing a book to staff. Um and we when we did think about how we would come to this recommendation for Dr. Adley and for your consideration, we did use a consensus protocol. And so we've been very transparent about that. We did show a picture of what that was in in our last session.
029And really we're very proud that the staff had challenging conversations. We really pushed each other's thinking throughout these two years. And um and then as happens in the publishing industry, version two was um stated that that they would be phasing that out and coming up with version three. And so, of course, I had a little bit of a heart attack about that because of the timing of this two-year process and the board's consideration and possible action. The good news is is that version three, um, really the only change in version three from version two is that it's actually more organized. And instead of having just the structured literacy approach, um, they've updated it so that it's not just structured literacy and foundational skills at the upper grades. It's just structured literacy all the way across
030and everything comes in that one resource with regard to structured literacy. So when we talked to our staff about this that we really wouldn't want to adopt something that is not the best and most current, um, how different would version three be? when they looked at version three, they were really thrilled at some of those features that they thought will make the resource um they'll be able to implement it with more facility. So, that's exciting. The writing and grammar lessons are also included in the teachers guide. That's an area of our work that we know we want to focus on. We agreed with the state with that and some new text. And um there's also a comprehensive presentation platform for all teachers for K3 literacy to support their instruction. One other final note, there are
031decodable texts for grade three which were not a part of version two and those are really important for our emerging readers. Um so our recommendation in summary is that we would adopt into reading as a K3 primary resource version three that we would maintain heard in K1. Our staff is very comfortable with the Hegerty resource. So to be clear this will not be a supplement. The students will have in um instruction and phmic awareness from the interreading resource and they will have a second dose if you will like a boost with heity. It's only a 5 to seven minute routine. It's very tight and we know that that phmic awareness is absolutely foundational and um if we sometimes you don't notice until children are in the upper grades that they have some of those gaps
032in their learning. So we want to be really um discreet and careful um as we teach into that and assess when they're in those K1 grades. Um, we will look at developing a curriculum and I know that there's conversation about what's the curriculum, what's a program, what's a resource. So, I want to be clear that a program is like a a boxed set, right? Like set it and forget it. And we know that that won't necessarily meet the needs of our Darian students. We have a higher performing district than many districts throughout the state of Connecticut and and nationally. What we know is that we want to have the curriculum aligned to the standards and the resource is like a tool that we will use to get there. So in this case, our two tools
033will be interreing, HMH into reading and integrity based on the board's potential action tonight. And um what we'll do is make sure that we support the staff with curriculum guides to really support their implementation so that there's a more assured experience across all classrooms K through three throughout the district. We'll also be thinking about professional learning. We've begun to think about that and what type of um coaching that our staff will need as we move to implementation. I spoke very briefly about this before. This is critical. 120 minutes is a lot of time in a school day. K through literacy is our most impactful, most important work, but we want to be very clear what happens during those 120 minutes. So, we will teach into this with our staff. Um, what's wonderful is we have
034pilot teachers. So, we have kind of ground floor expertise from our pilot for the last year. and our pilot teachers have been very vocal about wanting to support this change pending the board's action and support professional learning for their colleagues. So what we would do is this spring we would begin to review that instructional framework really thinking about high quality instructional practices for literacy. We would talk about the literacy block and teach into that in the summer. We'll be planning really concretely for professional learning throughout the year ahead. Developing those curriculum guides so everyone has a solid start as we open the new year. And we also need to do an analysis of the battery of assessments. We know that we will continue to use Ames web as a universal screener that is part of
035the K to3 right to read legislation and it's an important assessment that we use and then we'll think about what are the other assessments that will help us really get to know our readers best so we can target um provide intervention uh as quickly as we need to in a very focused way and then we would have full implementation in 2526 with opportunities for professional learning our PLC grade level times um grade level meetings and MTSS uh process And Shirley's going to be talking about that next. This is kind of the perfect storm in a good way, I believe, to be talking about K3 literacy with this detail and with this much much attention and MTSS simultaneously, which really gets at not just what's happening with intervention, but what's happening in the core classroom for
036every student and then with an unbroken continuum through tier 2 and tier three when supports are more intense. So, it's good timing for that. What does this mean for fourth and fifth grade and beyond? Again, I mentioned we wouldn't approach any shift um or modification in grades four through five, four and beyond four through 12 without really having great intentionality as we have with this K3 work. That's really important and involving the staff. So for the year ahead, uh the resources that are implemented the rest of the elementary grades, grades four and five would remain the same as they have been in the past. We'll be looking at the curriculum to determine what those gaps are. And we know that we need to go into next year with a focus on writing. So we can't
037wait and say, do we need another resource? We need to focus on writing through curriculum revision and professional learning in the year ahead because time doesn't wait. Those kids are going to be in fourth grade, fifth, and moving into the middle school. So they need to be ready. We need to um provide some reinforcement there with some things they might not have had not having had this program. Closing thoughts. This reflects a two-year thoughtful review by our educators. Um, it's honestly work that I am most proud of in my entire career engaging in this process with them. We have really smart people who work here and I would say this even if I didn't think they were all listening tonight to see what the board's action will be. Really thoughtful, intentional, careful, committed people with
038a great level of expertise who are in it to win it and invested in doing the best we can and invested in improvement. Right? this needs to be schools need to be institutions of learning not only for our kids but for each and every one of us. So super proud of them for that. Um this recommendation does align with the K3 legislation. I I um think that that's important but it's not our entire why. Our entire why is we believe this is what's best for all children in our classrooms. And um we believe that this is going to strengthen our tier one. Actually one of our um APS at Henley just mentioned that as well. Something I want to point out, if you did not hear this at the curriculum committee meeting on the 7th,
039one of our special educators was at the table and she had mentioned to the board that what they've seen already at that particular school, it was token is that when a student was struggling in the core or any student um with the core curriculum and core instructional practices through into reading, it was much easier for the team to decide what the point of intervention was just by the design of the resource. So we're very hopeful that there will be a more seamless articulation between the core classroom all the way through special education services which is really critical for kids. Kids don't learn discreetly from one adult to the next. They learn in a very continuous way and what they experience as far as their goals and instructional practices has to be seamless to them to
040really accelerate their learning. So we're excited for that. We did link um the core review team. I would encourage you again to see who is on that and the PK-12 steering committee. Um and again extend gratitude to the very committed educators that have been a part of this and will continue to be um in the year and hopefully years ahead. And I'm happy to take any questions that the board may have. And I also thank you as a board for your commitment and your stamina uh for talking about this for two years and the thoughtful questions you've raised throughout the process. Um very much appreciate that. Thank you. Welcome. So I will build off of that if you don't mind. Um, so as chair of the the curriculum committee, again, we've had some stamina. It's
041been two long years of having this on our agenda every month, but I will echo what Dr. Bradley said. The way that Dr. Fedigan and Mrs. Droller took this opportunity for improvement and didn't was it disheartening when we got that labor the results? Yes. But it was also, you know, the way that we approached that as a district, um, I think was a great example for for our kids, for our staff. Um, that there we always have room to improve and and, um, I'm proud of everybody for for doing the work and doing the deep work that has been done. Um, we as a curriculum committee in the various forms of it over the past two years have asked a lot of great detailed questions. Um, so hopefully all of your questions have been answered
042and the curriculum committee is is in support of of the um the change and the adoption of the HMI to reading integrity. So um it's been a long process but thank you. I've learned a lot. It's been very enjoyable. So thank you all. Okay, I'll open it to board questions. Are there any Joanna? Um I'm Thank you so much for all the work. I'm also very excited about this. Um, there's been a lot of mentions of uh PD that's necessary, a lot of throwing in PLC, which you know, high school parents know what they are, but not necessarily elementary school parents. Um, and I'm wondering if you've already start to think about, you know, what that is going to look like and if that's going to cost extra money, that kind of stuff. Yes, we
043have thought about that. So uh we're actually uh for the next meeting we'd like to put together. Look this this is going ahead regardless right um with the time we have and the process we have uh we think that uh on it's important that the teachers continue to uh be the actors in shaping this curriculum right and using these resources and that needs to be an ongoing regular process. Uh so for the next meeting I'll be working with the uh the leadership team of the board uh to bring forward to the board a proposal that ties together the already PLC's that are happening at the high school um that addresses uh K to3 reading and also addresses the HHR needs because there's there's there's packing needs and so on. Uh so as we bring the
044calendars which is on the schedule for next I'd like to bring a comprehensive look at could is there a way of dealing with all this simultaneously and giving people a sense of what that calendar would be would be like and it'll be helpful certainly for HHR um and for the incoming superintendent and so on so forth to have a map out of what that might look like uh for the year and it'll also be helpful to um uh our reading teachers our teachers in general, right, to implement this program. They did on their own on their own. Not like like not not like like it wasn't framed by any our discussions that one of the recommendations was we need more time somehow to get additional time. Uh and I'm going to bring that proposal back
045that'll include all of those things. If I can just add one thing to that, um Shirley and I have been working together with with Julie Droller on a very exciting opportunity for our staff. That would begin this spring um for our staff um including general education teachers to receive OG training for OG associate training. Um and the following year, so that would start in the summer. The following year, we would go into the practicum because the desire would be to be having our teachers in the general ed setting also have that training and the discrete knowledge of how to support the reading development of of children um of all different types of profiles of readers. So, we're working collaboratively to do that. We're very excited about it. We've probed the interests of our staff and
046within an hour, I think, of the probe going out, 16 GenEd teachers had responded and counting and some special educators are also responding. So that could be a very powerful opportunity for us to have general educators and special educators learning together um and asking really important questions together about children and reading in one room. So we're excited for that and more to come for for sure on that. Will that be presented in concert with what Ellen has just described? Um no, that will probably not be described in great detail then. It all really depends on when we can finalize what we're working on um with the group. Uh but we certainly will be coming back to the board with information and I think it's something that I've heard the community for for quite a while.
047Y and we should know more about it in June. Just to Joan's question, the board did approve money for the OG training and program for the 202526 school year. So we have that as well. So between our um your RC and the RC 24, we should be able to support that. Fantastic. Great. Robin. Um, I just want to thank the entire committee and the process because I think it it was a fantastic outcome. I'm hoping um just but seeing it through every single month and the questions we were able to ask and seeing the process and the rubrics and the frameworks that had been developed by the teachers to really evaluate this using data and using all of their collective experiences during these pilots I think is really fantastic to help us move it forward
048and address any gaps that we might have. And I also look forward to um continuing to explore and delve into the um these resources assuming that this is voted um which I understand are very extensive and during the pilots some of the teachers did mention that they hadn't even really had a chance to further explore for for even for differentiation needs to you know and we can meet all of the learners needs. that's what we were told. But there is there's a huge amount of additional resources in embedded, I think, in in this resource, which I also think is really helpful for really making sure that we're meeting the needs of all of our students. So, thank you. With that, may I have a motion? Oh, sorry. I didn't see Greg. Yeah, just very quick,
049um, I'd echo, uh, Rob and Sarah's comments as it relates to the all the work that's been done here. There there's a link in in the material if board members have not looked at it that's I think very well done the instructional framework that people should look at. It breaks down the curriculum into the various areas uh core areas that you're going to be focused on how those are going to be attacked and I think it serves as a really good roadmap going forward for for what we're going to do as it relates to all the different areas within literacy and and uh you know other areas within this curriculum. So very well done. Great job to the whole team. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. And and what's really important I hope
050you will look at that because it talks about what the teacher is doing, what the student is doing, what the purpose is. So um clarity helps to build capacity and efficacy. So very hopeful for that. So thank you for that kind comment. Okay. Um thank you. May I have a motion to adopt um HMH into reading version 3 as the district's primary K3 literacy resource beginning in the 2526 school year. Joanna, seconded by um Dennis. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Well, I feel like giving you a clap. Thank you to our staff, Amy and and Shirley for Thank you. Um Okay. Uh presentation of the special education self-study. Thank you. Um, and Amy, thank you because I can't think of a better segue into what we've been doing. So, the timing is extraordinary,
051almost serendipitous of how that works. And I think, you know, the research before we begin, the research does show that um, when the question was first posed, I think by Mr. Garling at one of our prior meetings, which is can we can we add more and more insight and understanding into the classification rate and what may contribute to that? We also at the same time when we look at the research and the literature is that robust pre-intervention and pre- and interventions not only in within the core curriculum as you said but really in terms of tiered instruction RTI shows one of the most extraordinary and obvious um um percentage in the decline of referrals to special ed actually there's a study done in 2020 that says over a three-year period with a robust intervention that
052really does to your point also Robin differentiate include that have that opportunity for all learners they saw a 30% reduction in referral rate um for academic and literacy in particular they saw a 15% reduction in behavior so we know that and together and I think that's why the timing is just to go back you know um we've learned so much from Amy and from Julie during this process and also from the elementary um administrators of what happens in the classroom what we need to look at in terms of pre-referrals so thank you to Amy thank you to Julie thank you to the elementary school leadership teams also for all their work and contribution in self-study. Okay. Okay. And I think Dr. McCarthy is here this evening. If I can just though for anyone in terms
053of the community um who may recall back in November when we did our presentation on special education overview initiatives. What did come up from several board members um and many questions that were answered in memorandums also is um when we're looking at can you inform more about the variables that may go into classification and referrals and why is it that Darian seems to have a very high rate of of classification and can you look at some of the areas and I know we were asked questions such as can you find that there is no answer there's not a simple answer of aha this is why but we did find in our data review study of variables that contribute to referral rates and what we can look at and when we analyze the data one pre-referral
054and intervention and two looking at our practices of what are we currently doing or what could we do moving forward in recommendations so for this evening's presentation before Dr. McCarthy begins just an overview and I know you had a chance to see this prior to this evening's presentation. We looked at background information and in that information we looked at factors that impact identification rates. We reviewed local, state and national trends. We also looked at policy and regulation changes and how that may have contributed to referral rates. We looked at the methodology used. We also looked at our results. And in our results, what we found in the data analysis were some of our trends, how pre-referral process impacts that, how eligibility determinations in terms of different buildings and across the schools impact it. Thank you.
055We looked at our cohort analysis and also we looked at local trend comparisons and over the years as well. Uh what you'll see tonight also in looking and reviewing the data is consideration of case studies and staff interviews of um what we may have done for intervention or what maybe we could do for intervention in moving forward. And that's our final discussion on next steps. So I'm delighted to turn up Dr. Scott McCarthy. You may not all know how much Dr. McCarthy enjoys data analysis because even when you think that's the last question, Scott will come back to you and say, "Well, no, you didn't look at this piece." because if you would have looked at this piece, you would have seen the answer to that. So, I can't tell you how enthusiastic Scott is
056here tonight to talk to you about what we've learned, what we hope to be able to convey and share, and in moving steps forward, what we came back to, which is what the premise of all of our work has been, which is all students are students in general education. What can we do within general education to for pre-referral for intervention and for all students have the opportunity to access teaching and learning? So, I'll turn over to Scott. Great. Thank you, Shirley. And um you know, as Shelley said, um you know, it's it's not just that uh we continue to have questions, but also that all good research continues. And so this is the start of the work. Um but identification rates are a complex statistic and it has complex um factors that contribute to the
057statistic. And so this is the start of our work and that work will continue. And and part of this presentation is identifying those next steps. And so it was really great work for me as I started my role working in K5 this year as sort of an onboarding process to to engage in the study of this data. Um and so I thank the board for asking asking us to to complete this question uh complete this exercise in November because it's given me a really great opportunity to to learn the information and I think it it has really coincided with the work that that Amy and Julie are doing as well and and and will um really help us develop a robust uh unified system. So, as Shelley said, the the structure of the presentation is
058a little data heavy. And so, we'll we'll give some context to the data that comes from interviews that we completed with each of the elementary buildings um and with a number of other administrators, including Amy and Julie. Of course, we'll we'll give some factors and background related to national trends, state trends, as shared. We'll we'll talk about the methods of how we engage in this work, and then we'll talk about what what those results are and what are our next steps. So, so to give some context um to as I shared what contributes to an identification rate, we think about changes in student population needs. So, so an obvious one that we think about right now is COVID, right? Um but changes in technology, changes in culture and climate. Any changes in student population needs
059can adjust identification rates. the robustness of a tier one instructional model and how our tier one instructional model is both designed for curriculum and implemented for instruction in early intervention frameworks. So those would include SRBI frameworks, MTSS frameworks, any other inter early intervention frameworks that can exist um today. Some of the things that we think about is what did birth to three look like during COVID times and what did that look like as an early intervention framework and how how are students looking different than they may have looked um five years ago when they were arriving to us in preschool. We think about the calibration of our eligibility determination across different administrators and different buildings and think about are we using the diff the same frameworks for making eligibility determinations for students. And then of
060course regulations, policy, court decisions, those are things that that directly impact how we operate and and practice in this space. So we'll start off kind of high level and talk about some national trends that we've seen. The uh graph to your left shows that shows the number of students eligible for special education in the entire country over the past five years. And what you can see is there's been about a 10% increase about 700,000 more students have IEPs today than in the 1920 school year with a small dip in the 2021 school year. And the the Darian public schools sort of matches that exact trend line. We had a small dip in 2020 2021 and then we we had a precipitous incline right after. To the right you can see that broken down by state
061and you can see that the the darker the shade of blue the higher the identification rate of the state and that New England is a is a fairly high identification rate space. So states like New York, Pennsylvania, Maine are in that 21% space. Connecticut at that time is 17%. Connecticut has moved up into 18 and a half 19% since then. Um and and so you can see that that that we're sort of in line with our neighboring states and high for the country. So drilling down into some state trend data. The graph to your left shows the overall school enrollment K12 in Connecticut between the 20 2006 2007 school year and the 2024 2025 school year. So you can see there's about 70,000 fewer students that go to school in Connecticut overall in the state.
062During that same time period, the number of students with IEPs increased from 68,000 to 94,000 which is about a 38% increase in about 18 years when at the same time obviously the the overall enrollment was was decreasing. So this this this change in this 18-year period is 11.84% 84% identification rate to an 18.52% identification rate. When we look at our local trends uh within our DUI, we can see that um Darien's identification rate overall for all students is is the highest in the DUI. Over the last five years, it uh every district in the state or every every district in the Durk, sorry, has increased. Uh Darien has increased sort of in the middle of the pack in terms of the actual percentage increase. Um but you as you can see is the highest in
063the DUI. We also shared with you in the November presentation that that trend has actually existed every year since at least 2012 when we can see that DR comparison. So that's a long-standing trend. When we look at our actual numbers of students um to to give you some context for what that looks like in terms of actual numbers of students over the past five years we've increased from 822 students with IEPs to 975. So 173 student increase during that time. We also wanted to give you um a little bit of the story and the context behind those national and state and and um and local changes. And so we'll talk about those local changes for the most part, but but to give you some context at the state level, it's really important to understand how
064the evaluation processes and the regulations that guide those processes have changed over the past 15 to 20 years. So in 2008, the Connecticut State Department of Education released their SRVI guidance document. And in that document, um, which preceded the 2009 change from the Connecticut State Legislature, which um, removed the ability of school teams to use an IQ achievement discrepancy to identify a student with a disability. The guidance document required that districts must include students performance in the SRBI process to determine their eligibility for special education for a specific learning disability. So that was a stark change in district processes that just that stu school teams had to have students resp engage in SRBI intervention and then be able to document their either response or lack of response prior to determining their eligibility for special education.
065The reason for this change was that there was a concern that students who were vulnerable for having disabilities were being overidentified by the process in the eligibility process. And so there was sort of the swing towards provide a significant early intervention prior to identifying a student. This shifted in 2013 and when a um a hearing officer decision out of a case in Greenwich um in which Greenwich was uh did not identify a student with an IEP because this from their perspective the student was responding to intervention and they they lost that case and that was reaffirmed by the second circuit in 2016. That case generated a significant amount of conversation in the state at the time because the state department of education is telling us you must use this process to identify students and the
066courts are saying that process is in conflict with your child find responsibilities under IDA and it it created this tension between those two spaces for for um school districts. And so as all things do in education it swung the other way. Um the state department issued guidance that that IEES could be um permitted to be requested if districts refused to do evaluations and sort of everybody switched the other way of instead of requiring schools or students to go through the SRBI process if we got to an initial referral eligitial referral PPT meeting the teams were going to test students and so you see an increase in the number of students who are being evaluated by school districts and that increase is happening prior to students receiving that intervention. And so that also played a role
067in in the the um in the uh changes in the identification rates that we see. This graph will look familiar to you. It's actually the the graph in our 2000 or in our November presentation that generated the question of of the self study. when we looked at our um our middle school level rates and our high school level rates, they remained fairly flat. And the question was, well, what's happening at the elementary level? And so um that's the the drilled down most specific piece of information relative to Darianne. So we took all that information, all that background information, context, what's happening the national level, the state level, um what's happening in our DUR, and then we engaged in the self-study process, which had a heavy emphasis on data collection, looking at all the information that's
068happening in our district, in our schools, in our referral processes, in our SRVI processes, and analyzing that information. Um we identified case studies. So during the school year, we had 102 referrals to special education and we identified u referral processes and and specific students who um had unique processes and and went and reviewed their evaluations and reviewed their processes to understand more closely what happens in the context of specific students. We looked at those case studies in terms of age uh their age ranges, their disability classifications, what buildings they went to, what grades they were in to try to understand that context as well. And then we also interviewed and talked to many um our of our administrators. So we had interviews with each building administration um and a number of individual interviews as well
069to try to understand get context to the information that we were seeing at the building level. So in terms of our results, so to give an orientation, we'll first go through the data analysis and our district trends. We will talk about our pre-referral processes and the data that we collected there. We'll talk about eligibility determinations. We'll show you a cohort analysis of one specific cohort. We will look at our local districts um and look at what they're doing and what the trends they've seen. And then we'll um infuse the considerations from the case studies and the staff interviews into those to those data to give context. So when we start off and look at our K5 trends in Darianne, we can see that our overall enrollment, the blue line, has stayed fairly flat. K5, a
070slight increase. So we have a little bit of a difference in terms of the state which was declining in the in the last five years and and ours has stayed fairly flat. However, what is similar is that our identification rate for students with IEPs has increased over the last 5 years. So we have gone from 285 students with IEPs K5 to 376 students K5, which is an increase in identification rate about four percentage points from 13.83 to 17.73. We drilled down and took a look at um this school year and we we um mined the data for the number of uh students who had IEPs on October one of this year and the number of students who had IEPs on April one of this year in every grade for all for all buildings. And what
071we can see is that in each grade there is an increase in the number of students with IEPs as the year goes on except for in the fifth grade school year. And that the grade that had the most significant increase is the second grade which went from 17.7% identification rate to 21.83 uh% identification rate. We also took a look at the kindergarten class of sort of the COVID year and wanted to look at what happens to them over five years. And so we see that in their kindergarten year, they started off with 30 students with IEPs with a 9.62% identification rate. And by their fourth grade school year, which is this year, they have a 20.35% identification rate with 70 students with IEPs, increasing about 10 students per year. um this this overall class has
072also increased in size sort of minimally about 30 students but that's just of note as well as Shirley and Amy shared we also wanted to look together at our trends and referrals and so um I thank uh Amy and Julie for working with us to provide us a significant amount of information and context around our SRBI information which will will drive the next few slides. On the top table, you can see that we received, as I said before, 102 referrals to special education to date in Darianne. 67 of those referrals were parent referrals and 35 were school referrals. 49 of those students had already engaged in the SRBI process. Um, and of those 102, 50 were found eligible. Just to note as well, there are 19 evaluations that are still in progress and our eligibility
073rate in terms of our uh referrals is a 51% identification rate. We broke that down a little bit further to look at our uh referral sources and the percent eligible uh the number of students eligible by referral source. And so you can see that a significantly higher percentage of school referrals are found eligible for special education. Of those 102 referrals um or sorry of the of the 50 students who are found eligible for special education, 28 of them were identified as students with a specific learning disability or a specific learning disability dyslexia. Um which is of course not surprising. These are the the disabilities that we would be identifying over time, not disabilities that are um uh developmentally identified earlier. This one and then the final table shows the final tier of intervention prior to
074the the referral. So, prior to the referral to special education, of those students, those 49 students who had received SRBI, nine were in tier one, 24 were in tier 2, and 16 were in tier three. We broke that down further into literacy trends and math trends. And what we can see in our literacy trends is that the most common grade students are receiving tier two and tier three instruction is first grade, which is interesting when we think back to the data that we looked at before that second grade is the identification year. And so there's that, you know, that that sort of aligns. 116 students are currently receiving tier 2 and tier three that uh tier 2 and tier three intervention across the district. And in terms of outcomes, 65 of those students have remained
075in tier 2 or tier three since September. 32 have exited back to tier 1 and 19 of those students have qualified for an IEP. We also in talking with Julie and Amy also thought it was important to note here that the SRBI specialists serve another important function for our schools and support our multilingual learner instruct instruction and um wanted to provide you the case loads there as well. So in for the reading specialists, they're servicing 37 multilingual learners as of right now. And we look at that same information when it comes to math. It's again similar that our first grade has the highest number of students who are receiving tier 2 and tier three instruction. 47 of those students have been in tier 2 or tier three since September. 24 have exited to tier one
076and seven have qualified for an IEP. And in math, um, a much lower number of students are receiving ML instruction from our from our specialist, only three students. We also pulled local trend um or pulled the data that in terms of the last five years from our our local districts in our Durk. You can see that um the mean change in percentage points is 2.58% over these five years with every district going up. The highest increase is in Easton with a 5.87% 87% increase and the lowest increase is in Wilton with a 0.9% increase. We did take some time to initially start to look into can we understand some of these differences and and we don't have all of the information yet. But one of the things we did want to highlight for you that
077was just interesting is that we learned that the Wilton public schools um began a SRBI ESY program the year after COVID for all tier 2 and three students. Um and and that what that SRBI program provided was daily intervention in the summer for four weeks, four time four days a week for 45 minutes in either literacy and ma or math and the they found that that was so successful they've continued that and they still continue that today with the reading specialist and math specialist. So, just an interesting point. Again, not um we haven't looked into all of the information to understand it, but it was it was an interesting fact that we learned in consideration of that that number being the smallest. We also looked into the classifications to understand best um what what's accounting
078what what educational classifications are accounting for these increases. And what we can see is that about 80% of the increase can be accounted to specific learning disability and other health impairment about half and half. So of the 173 new IEPs we have in the district 65 of them are for specific learning disability and 72 are for other health impairment which of course includes ADHD. We also wanted to provide you some context for out of district placements to we want to look into whether whether there are any trends there and what we can see is both with respect to IP placements or un unilateral placements um we don't really see a trend of increase or de decrease that would significantly impact our identification rates and last wasn't something that we planned on looking into significantly when
079we embarked on the self study but it was something that came to us as an interesting um factor as we started to talk to people and and hear about their experiences of working with students. And so we looked at this chronic absentism. So chronic absenteeism means that a student is absent for more than 10% of the school year. So that means that they're missing 18 days or more of the school year. And so what we can see is in the 1819 school year for all students K5, we had 44 students who were chronically absent. And that number increased 61 students to 105 students in the 1920 school year. 2021 school year is inter was interrupted for all learners and measuring chronic absenteeism was almost impossible as students were coming in hybrid formats. And so we
080know that that was interrupted for all learners. So that's kind of um uh not really useful to look at. But it's interesting that in the NE 2122 school year, the number went up actually more and it's only started now to start to decrease. We're seeing that decreasing trend. This trend profile is the exact trend the state is seeing for all students that there's still an increase but that it's coming down. But we we felt like it was important information to think about because there's both both um the the individual student impact of the fact that you missed 10 days of the school year or more and there's also the classroom impact of catching students up who are coming into your class who are missing significant instruction and what that does for for the entire class.
081And so we looked at this for all students and we also wanted to provide some context as we're talking about early intervention and and SRBI processes. What does this look like for general education students? And what we we can see is that it's actually worse. So our percentage of students who are chronically absent who are general education students, meaning students do not have IEP or 504s tripled from 1819 to 1920. So we have tripled the number of general education students miss 10% of the school year or more in that school year. and we just we feel like that that that h that that um can't not play a role in in in uh the amount of students who are missing instruction um in our schools. So to give kind of a summary um we know
082that the K5 classification rate has increased about four percentage points over the last five years. The largest increase was in grade two. We've had 102 referrals to special education this year with 50 of those students becoming eligible. Prior to the referral, we had 16 students who were receiving tier three instruction, 24 receiving tier 2 instruction, and nine receiving tier one instruction. Every DUR a district experienced a classification increase. The mean was 2.58 and Darien's was 3.9. About 80% of the increase can be attributed to specific learning disability and other health impairment classifications. And that the chronic absenteeism rate for K5 students has increased significantly since 201920 suggesting students are missing uh missing instruction at higher rates. So we worked together with Julie and Amy in the carton department to think about looking at all this
083information, where do we go from here? Um so we had we we developed considerations for the special education department the cess department and considerations for the curriculum department for the so for the cess department we would like to look at our eligibility determination calibrations. So, we'd like to work with our administrators and understand better some differences that we see in eligibility determination um uh decision- making and provide professional learning, do case study review, and have administrators do some learning and observing of each other in these types of meetings to understand um their roles in those meetings. We'd like to increase our collaboration and professional learning with our MTSS team. So we we already know that we have representation on the MT MTSS committee, but really be able to bring this information to them and make
084sure that the MT MTSS committee is is is really part of guiding this process and that we're we're at the table. As well, we'd like to um in that process collaborate on the revision that's going to be occurring in in the MTSS documents and procedures. We'd also like to take the these data and um really bring them to the buildings and and do a little bit of a deeper dive into what does this look like in your own buildings, the case study review process that we embarked on, have the building based teams do that same type of review and really start to look at what are what are some trends you see individually in your buildings? What are grade level trends, teacher level trends? Um what are what types of of gaps might exist in
085processes that are building specific as well? And then we like to um refine and update our data collection process. So one thing we learned by doing the study is that um the state doesn't have simplistic um data dashboards for us to be able to pull information from. And so a lot of this is counting. And so, um, now that we've created it for the first time, we would like to create structures where there's ongoing updating so that we can continue to see, do these trends continue, um, or or do they adjust? And then in terms of the the tiered intervention processes, we'd like to um, have the MTSS team really look at tiered entrance timelines, movement timelines, meaning movement from tier one to tier two, tier two to tier three, and tier eligibility processes. So,
086so one of those pieces of information that obviously was very interesting to us all is that um not not a high number of students were in tier three prior to a referral and and might we need to look at that a little bit and make sure that we're were um our our tier movement processes are responsive to student needs. Um, we'd like to complete a further review of our referral and cohort data with the MTSS team to address any any potential gaps they see in the process as well. And then again, kind of increase that collaboration and professional development across the two teams to make sure that we're we're looking at and seeing the same information um and and that we're able to pivot and and be responsive to that information. So, a lot of
087information, but with that, I'm happy to answer any questions with Shirley as well. Scott, I want to hold you on the last slide before I open it to general questions and make sure I understand if I got an elevator that I could translate that. Um, I think what you're saying is you're looking at the consistency of our identification process through the district across buildings, across classrooms, etc. Yes. um you're doing a big focus on MTSS and that um includes process professional development again consistency across of implementation across the buildings and more deeply that's entrance and exit in terms of timelines and process and movement between the tiers. Um and then you're looking at sort of data collection and building out a more robust analytical uh database so that we can do more sophisticated analysis over
088time. Is that is that how you would summarize? Am I missing anything? No, I think that's perfect. I think just to to provide a little more detail too, the trends that we observed and and identified are district level trends. That next other piece is going into the building based trends and thinking about might there be something different at one building than another building with respect to a process and when we'd really like them to do that work together and analyze that work at a student level and a building grade level and building level um engaging in kind of the same process. So that's the only other addition. Okay. Okay. I'll open it to board questions. Joanna, um, thank you for this work. I think it starting to, um, answer a lot of questions that we've
089had that we haven't really been able to pin down. Um, and it's very exciting to see it come together at the same time as the new literacy. um the way that the these these two um parts of our district work really dovetail to each other and interact with each other I think is going to serve our students very well um going forward. Um I have a couple questions. Um just I found it very interesting um that you said when you look in the DUI and like Wilton has that ESY program. Um I was talking to someone who works in New Kanan and they also have a very aggressive um SRBI or RTI intervention program starting right away. Um and I think um those the the fact that you're um going back to MTSS is is
090very important. Um, and I'm just wondering, um, how while you're analyzing data, how do you start implementing um, without losing time between learning for yourself what's going on and bringing it back to the students? I'll just begin the conversation, Scott, and please jump in. Okay. I think we're looking at it for timelines also that not waiting six weeks or eight weeks or 12 weeks to look at it. I think when Scott was referring to having um real- time data to look at um meeting maybe bi-weekly looking at the data and not waiting that length of time. Great Robin. Um I some of the questions I have are actually on the memorandum that follows this presentation where you gave some of the more detailed data up for instance about the educational classifications for unilateral placements and
091just as it because it kind of bears on what I would think about in terms of next steps and I I wanted to highlight just one thing from um that memo which was the unilateral placements. So, specific learning disability dyslexia had 16 unilateral placements which was the highest of any of those educational classifications. So the question I have, which I think starts to get to what Shirley was talking about where you're thinking about, okay, before we even get into the MTSS process, are there things that we can do or think about as part of this discussion to try to preempt some of these referrals from taking place because we're doing maybe a better job of meeting some of these needs in house. And that that's kind of where I was and that's a longer term
092process and it's not necessarily to do with your internal operational kinds of improvements, but I think it's something that as a board I would love to start to use this data which is really helpful to kind of think about that as a longer term kind of a conversation or thoughts and concern. It's really thoughts, not an answer, Robin, but thoughts and I and I think again the timeliness of it and again and as I said earlier, whether it's serendipity, the idea of science of reading and what's going on, I think the feedback we had from the teachers and and Amy, please feel free to jump in also um and Julie had pointed out on on several conversations is that um all of us looked at the different resources and opportunities within the core instruction classroom
093and because I think with great thought the interreading was chosen because it had those those components in looking at we spoke before about phonology and morphology and looking at orthography but looking at those aspects was the idea that they could really go into small groupoup instruction they can look at tiered intervention in the classroom and um when Julie was speaking to the version three of it or or the new out um they've actually made the teachers addition um and resources easier to find because it's been kind of difficult to find and do that and they spoke to that also so I think the notion at the same time of adopting a new program um and and implementing it with fidelity professional learning to make sure that teachers are are aware of it to look at
094multiensory and Orton Gillingham practices. If you recall, we said we were going to focus on special education teachers for 2005, 2006 and and Julie and and Amy were very um diligent in in finding a ways let's get the general education teachers into and not postpone that. I think those are ways to start addressing it even prior to MTSS intervention or actually as part of MTSS in the classroom. Remember MTSS includes the core. It includes what was right and needed for every child. And I think what you had mentioned between MTS and SRBI the uh what you had talked about before this about the Ordin Gillingham and right seeing if teachers would be interested in that also is kind of along those lines. I think that would be a really exciting kind of an opportunity too.
095So thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to add this just a a quick note. Um, and we've we've shared versions of this before, but it's just really important to note when you're looking at at at data about the primary disability is that the team can only select one and they have 13 categories to select from. And so that and they changed them. So in 2017, the state passed legislation saying that districts must be able to recognize specific learning disability with dyslexia and they provided us certain parameters to do that. In 2022, they changed it and said you can you can use this for dyslexia, but it must be if the student has fol if it relates to the phological word reading processes of reading and if it includes other parts of reading, you can't
096select dyslexia anymore. And so looking at trends of that specific category is really hard because the the criteria has changed. Um but what might be sort of more accurate is to say specific learning disability and specific learning disability dyslexia are 14 and 16 that's 30 students and so that that group together is the largest group. Um but I just to caution it to say if in we looked at it in a year and it said 14 instead of 16 that might not be perfectly connected because students only go through the cycle every three years and the rules have changed. Um thank you for I understand the data is complex. Yeah. So, but that 30 piece I think you're correct to point out that that that is the largest set group, but the dyslexia part isn't
097always the way that we're thinking about it. Greg, then Greg, uh, yeah, thanks for the presentation and all the analysis. Um, I have a few questions. One is, um, I mean, it's interesting to see some of the trends, but have you dug into figuring out like what's driving those trends? I think like taking another level deeper and really understanding like what are some of the underlying drivers of the trends to figure out um you know what is the why in order to be able to create a plan to address what's happening. I think like that to me is like the critical part of this to really take that next step. That's my first question then I'll let you answer that and I'll move on next. Sure. Yeah. I think what we've tried to identify is
098the correlational information. The the why can be complicated. We're looking at small numbers. So even just the fact that we've we have 102 referrals this year, it's a small number to dig into and obviously we can't manipulate the data to to study the Y. We're really looking at correlational trends. So an example might be um of those 102 referrals, I think it was nine were in tier three, so before referral to to special education. So that's a question we have is that should is that number really right? It's not necessarily confirmed. that's a why, but I think we want to work with the teams to say, is that really the number we would want there before we go into a a special ed referral. So, we agree and that's that next level of work of
099going into the buildings and really looking at the wise on the individual student level. Okay. And then you mentioned tiers. That's kind of my second question is um do you how do you think about tier improvement to measure the effect effectiveness of the additional resources that we're providing to the students? And then related to that like how how do you consider implementing timelines related to improvement on those tiers to create accountability for the you know the resources that are being deployed right so if I understand your question correctly I think you're asking you know if a student's in tier 2 um how are we understanding correctly that they are closing the gap sufficiently such that they wouldn't if they're in tier whatever you know the worst tier and they just keep staying in the worst
100tier and we keep throwing more resources at them. What's the purpose of the resources if they're not improving? And so how do we make sure that they are improving? And how do we set a timeline to make sure they're improving so that the people who are the resources that we're actually deploying there's accountability for those resources to actually make improvements, right? And I I think that's that work with that next, you know, I don't want to step out of my lane, but I think that that's that next work with that MTSS team to say what are our current timelines and structures to evaluate how a student is making progress at the tier because I think our data are showing that not every student is getting the opportunity to be in the most intensive tier. And
101if they had been in the most intensive tier, maybe maybe there could have been a different outcome, but do we have the right structures and timelines? And so giving them that feedback to the MTSS team to say let's talk about this and think about you know we we're seeing this trend that students are getting to the referral process without having get gotten to the highest level of intervention and do we need to look at how the timelines for getting there and what information we're using to collect. Yeah. So I I think for for us as a board I think that's going to be a critical next step for us to understand like how you're doing that and how that accountability is coming into play. That goes to my last question which is have you done
102much work in terms of evaluating like what the district is spending on a special education student for these additional resources that we're providing and how does that compare versus the dur what additional resources the tiered resources so I think we need to separate out MTSS which is general ed from but you're saying what's our what's our cost comparison for what we spend per special special ed student so let's take a let's take a proxy student student A who has this cohort this this charact these characteristics how do we compare to Wilton so I I think that there's sort of a few inquiries there um overall if we were to look at the number of students you know per pupil expenditure for special education student across those you know two different districts that's one inquiry as
103it relates to the question of our eligibility classification I think that's a different inquiry Um, yeah. My question is overall like what do we like I mean there's different ways you could think about it like I would the way I would measure it is I would say like there's special education costs that are specific to special education students but they're also part of the general population. So the X, you know, the what's in our budget, X special education costs that also gets allocated to special education student to figure out like what's the actual cost that we're spending per student and then comparing that versus the DURG to see are we spending the same as the DUR, less than the DURG or more than the DUR and that is a measure of effect. Our report card,
104our annual report card from the state outlines our special education FTEES, our expenditures and our per pupil for special education costs. So, so that we could pull that easily to look at that across across. Have we seen that before? The the report card from the state. It's public. It's public, but it's public, but it hasn't been presented at a board meeting. Okay. So, it's a followup. That would be a nice thing to see. Yeah, please. And that was just remember it was embarcoded. It was just released um recently. So, we certainly can share that. Thank you. Great. That was it. Thank you, Dave. Yeah, just just piggybacking on what Greg was asking. Um, you know, we talk about other programs that exist in the DUIRG, it may be sort of intense early intervention and action
105taken versus something that happens over a long time. And to where Greg was going is what's our turnaround time? How long are people in? What's our return? If we adopted a lighter, quicker, more intense program as other districts have done, are we going to see a more expeditious return, better results? They get out of the program faster and in the long run, we're actually reducing costs. So that's going to be an interesting conversation as we move forward to look at the contrast for the way we've set up our program versus the way some other ones are and again what the return is on that. I think that's a good question and I think um we've seen some initial information to suggest that that could be the case. Um for example, our fifth grade that that
106table I showed was the only grade that's decreased this year. Um, and that is sort of our bubble of classification that occurred during COVID. And so thinking about did students need a lighter amount of intervention before they're decreasing and exiting out. And so it's one year of seeing that, but it's will be interesting to see both the sixth grade and the fifth grade this year. We didn't show six, but it's also true for six. The fourth, fifth, sixth is a bubble and fifth and sixth have decreased this year. Okay. Do you have a followup on? I do. I do. I just I mean that's that's been something that's been raised at this table many times is what happens with that COVID cohort and what do we need to do to get them to make sure
107that they don't become a you know further behind or become a greater cost to the district and then we're actually targeting that and taking actions quickly to make sure that they're where they need to be. Okay, Robin. Um, this is kind of a follow up on what Greg and Dave were just talking about, but you mentioned when we looked at the local trend analysis that you had started to look into the why of why are we so different versus Wilton, for instance, it I think it would be really helpful to the extent that you're able to maybe further analyze what some of those other districts are doing that make their decreases much lower, similar to what you started to do with Wilton. and you know are there things that we could learn or do differently
108potentially um that they are having success with and that would be really helpful to share as well. Joanna um I uh wanted to move on to um something else if that's okay. Yeah. Um so the um the overlap 65% of OI and uh specific learning disability um there's nothing here or I haven't seen very much um formalized in executive functioning in our programming. I know at Middle Sex they work with the kids to like go through their backpack. Um but uh you know ADHD and dyslexia are often very well co co-occurring um which is better than coorbid um and you know executive functioning is something that would really benefits those students and actually and it would benefit all students as well. So have you ever thought about bringing um a program more formally into the
109classroom? Um you know talking about you know the the competencies like you know task initiation, planning um even um focus you know emotional control like time management like all all all the things that make us productive adults just sort of planting little seeds earlier. Yeah. So we we've done a lot of that work in the CUS department with Peg Dawson's work um on executive functioning to in infuse those exact type of lessons. So task initiation, flexibility, um planning and organizing that type of lesson work into mini lessons into learning centers and resource rooms to support students towards their IEP goals and objectives. And that would be an interesting space as we work with the MTSS committee to think about is there a crossover there. I think it's pretty significant that one of the challenges of
110this discussion is that we're talking about they're not really they're saying they are one and the same but we are talking about kids having different experiences in the classroom because we're talking about a general ed class and so we've answered the question in terms of executive function from the special ed lens but I think we're interested also in uh executive function instruction across the board to all of our students um or we're talking about MTSS, which is the specifically identified cohort of general ed students and how that's affected. So I I and how that um sorry how that improves the the outcomes of our students. So I I think um as we move forward um we want to be careful to continue to talk about how we're impacting all of our students in all of
111those different ways. Um and and I and I would add to that Jill also to the question Joanna if I if we went into the classroom and asked the the teachers in the general education classes how are they um in how are they addressing executive functioning skills like initiation flexibility I think they take out of their pocket in many of their lessons of how they're doing it but I think you're asking can we find out explicitly how they do that um and I think that's a real question because I'm sure they would line up and they probably can give us an array of hundred ways they're doing it but I think knowing explicitly and sharing that would really be helpful. Um, and I think as Scott said, when we go back to the teams and
112we become a collaborative team and looking at that, we can identify that and see does more need to be done or if we're doing it, let's explicitly show how we're doing it. Yeah, exactly. And I think even naming it for the students so they can go back to these skills if they're in a moment of stress or, you know, if they're they're feeling totally disorganized or what have you also might serve them. If I can just add quickly to that from the general ed perspective, one of the things that we've been talking about even with play-based learning is the executive functioning side. So we've been talking about how we're um consciously and intentionally bringing those skills into our prek and K curriculum. I think when you look at some of the shifts that we'll have
113with the inter readading resource um and we think about children for example using planning to you know as an important part of prewriting. So, you're going to hear us talking about this um in context of certain areas of the curriculum because you want to make sure that when you're working on executive functioning that you're helping children apply, right? That that they're not just learning as an executive functioning time of the day. So, for example, when we have morning meeting, that's a time where teachers are working on some of those skills pretty discreetly. And then there will be times within the curriculum where we're actually watching children apply those skills and intervening when they're not. in the upper grades of middle school, there are many lessons during, um, that happen during the advisory period that are
114really around executive functioning. And so, um, that's something that I've asked the team to work on is really kind of developing that curricula a little bit more succinctly and clearly in a stage one format so that that can be posted on Etup Planet. So, that's some of the really intentional work we're doing also at the middle grades, but it's important to begin that work in preschool. Okay, so that sounds like a good follow-up. item for a curriculum committee meeting um when that's ready. Just one comment especially and we'll hear more about this I think on the 27th but when the phone policy um proposal you know when when they give us that presentation on the 27th specifically for high school students um many of whom I think currently might use their phones to help with
115executive function and planning and things like that. I think it will be even more critical for those 9th through 11th graders to understand and maybe spend some time in the high school helping them figure out planning processes, all of the scheduling and everything without using phones and maybe starting to set up those skills in middle school and you know and early high school because I think that gets to executive function as well um in the absence of being able to use that specific technology. I think that is true. But I think when it comes to curriculum, I'd like I think uh executive function PK through 12 is the Yeah. is the brief, not just elementary school, just like literacy thinking about a continual preschool through 12. That's how we need to be looking at we
116just going to be areas of our work. It's just going to be important that we're judicious in the connections and the through lines that we are assuming we're making or and be very clear about like if we're making a big commitment to do some of these things programs or otherwise we better be clear that it might look good or otherwise but we better be clear that it is making a difference right I mean and to Greg's point yeah we have to make a difference yeah sorry I and what professional learning is needed to support this practice in classrooms is another important question. Okay. Um, sorry, Dennis. Yeah, kind of switching to a different topic in this presentation. Thank you for all the data in in the chronic absenteeism is I'm assuming this data is difficult
117to obtain, but based on the curve, I'd be interested to go back a couple more years and understand is it really going up and kind of dipping down or is it was that just a blip year in 18 or 19? And then but my my my main focus of my question is are these chronic chronic absenteers? So is it the same kids over and over? Was there a flu outbreak in one specific school or to me I think it you you mentioned that we need to kind of dig deeper and understand the schools. But I I'm curious as to see how this is chronic and how much it goes on. And then even to build on that and and have Dr. Dodd and the mental health kind of study this and understand what what impact
118that has later in your career as well in schools. Sure. Yeah. So when you when you go backwards the trend is flat. Um the the first notable increase and and that's why we started 1819 that's the trend kind of backwards and then the 1920 is the jump. Um which makes sense right because the March of 2020 is when students stopped coming to school. um with regularity. So it just what was surprising to us is that in 2122 that chronic absenteeism maintained a and so there's a lot of people exploring and trying to understand these trends. The initial question you had which is are they the same students that's yes. So it is it is that 53 students. So in the last slide for general ed education students for example it is um 53 additional students
119who are general education students in K5 missed 18 days of school or more than our previous previous trend. Um and so when we think about that that that's sort of where we think about two things. We think about those 53 students if you're missing 10% of the school year are you mastering the content? How can we be confident of that? um one and two, what is the impact of that to the rest of the classroom? The teacher has another new duty to catch you up as you walk back in and re-enter. Um we know that to the extent that you develop executive functioning skills, the necessary component of that is routine. And so if you're missing 10% of the school year, are you staying in that routine? Is when you miss a day of school,
120we all know that that student is not always at their best the day they return, right? So there's lots of soft impacts of that that we're trying to understand. Um if you ask the principles when we interviewed them they will also tell you that this data does not include the number of uh coming in late leaving earlies trends that started during COVID and have kind of persisted um in that absenteeism has sort of a different you know um there's a different cultural expectation around absenteeism from school than there was before students sort of got used to I can learn from home and f many families are working from home and so the necessity to get a student out of the house to go to work has changed and so patterns have developed. So there's a
121lot of people looking at what are the factors but it is certainly something that I think we want to make sure we're addressing because we frequently get referrals to special education in fourth or fifth or sixth grade and when we look back at attendance we're saying 12 days missing in first 13 days in four and that's a lot of instruction that you're missing over time and what what does that do to your your um curriculum mastery? So this is this is certainly an area that we want to focus some attention and prevention work. And and just to follow up with that, is this data public for other other towns as well? And is it consistent across the DUR and everything? So when we looked at this, we looked through our DUI and it's consistent. Okay.
122Yeah. So it's it's the same and through the state. The state is much higher. Um the thing that was not consistent from us from the state is that our general education numbers are worse than our high need student numbers that was the opposite in the state that the students with IEPs had a higher percentage of chronic absenteeism and um uh our general education students K5 had a higher percentage. And just to be clear, we're calling chronic absenteeism could also be a student who gets the flu six times. So, we just have to be a little careful that there's not a value or or a child who's medically more fragile. Um, could I mean could it be like just their parents are just taking them out for vacations? It could be. It can be too. Yeah,
123there are a few different metrics the state uses. They use truency which is four times in a month or 10 days in the school year and they use chronic absenteeism which is 10% of the school year or more. And so, we decided to look at chronic absenteeism because the other is a little bit more complicated. you know, four days in a month could be for different things. Yeah. It's it's also important to think about um you know, in the 2020 2021 and 2122 school year, if that many students had an increase in their own absenteeism, as we know, their teachers also were taking 10 days off when they had COVID potentially twice. Um the impact on their instruction could be significant. So good. What's the Did you look at the secondary absenteeism? We we didn't
124for this, but we can provide that. Just curious if it's the same. Um, so I know you've been very careful not to draw I'll wait till you write that down. Not to draw too direct a line um to say that our identification rate is high because of our MTSS process. I understand that that's not embedded but I think I can say that if I understand this correctly um our identification rate is high and when that is the case it is appropriate to build up your MTSS program and also take a look at some of your areas of general instruction as we're doing with literacy. Is that correct? I I think that's correct and I think that that's that's really the spirit of MTSS is that we're not looking at students in silos anymore. We're not
125looking at literacy and we're not looking at math and we're not looking at social emotional learning. We're looking at the whole student. And so when we're looking at the whole student and whether we're addressing their needs in the most appropriate way prior to a referral, we want to look at all of those factors. So that's whether are you absent a lot and we need an absenteeism intervention to get you back to schools that we don't have you miss too much. Is that do you need more tiered instruction? Is it that we need our tiers to move differently? There could be multiple components to that, but I think that that's that spirit of looking at the whole student um and all of these factors that relate to a student's performance. Yes, I think that's accurate. Okay.
126So, given our work with literacy, given that we have I already identified some work with MTSS, given that you all will continue to follow a lot of this data, um how will you be working as a team because this is not a this is not a siloed issue. This is across this is the whole school. And and if I may just add to that, Jill, and what Scott was saying, just to add to that, um I don't think it's MTS and special education. I don't think they're two separate silos. And I think both Amy, Julie, and myself, and the other um building administrators all feel the same way. We're not looking at as a separate looking together, right? And we're looking as we go back to the schools with the data, looking that in a
127team structure, right? So there'll be representation of looking at when we review student progress, um whether it's bi-weekly or whatever our timelines are, we review students. Some students don't enter certain tiers because parents go to referral before that. There there are students who don't get to tier two or tier three because a parent and understandably are concerned about the length of time and say I want to go to referral. So I think we're going to look at that it's not separate that we to Amy and myself but just look at um I think all of us actually that we're looking at that MTSS and special education services and all of tiered MTSS instruction is all part of the same And that as we look at students performance, we look at it in the general education
128setting. We look at all of the interventions and pre-referral opportunities. We look at do we need more pre do we need more referral and opportunities within those classes as well because that might be something we come back with in terms of MTSS supports and and really monitor is it really impacting students being successful in the tiers prior to referral. And if the notion is that is true in in our in our um ongoing work not study but work of doing that um as we introduce a new reading program as we look at the MTSS structures as we look at intervention and how our interventions of time and what they're doing um we may come back to the board with recommendations of saying um that in this robust support of helping students be successful prior to
129referral what our outcomes far. Okay. What do you think an appropriate timeline to come back to the board would be? Well, we're beginning I'm looking at the school year and and I'll ask Amy would weigh in at, but I would think reasonably um just an update after the first quarter of where we are. I mean, I don't know that we'll have answers or solutions, but I think looking at a quarterly makes sense. It's when progress reports come out. It's when we looked at IEP progress reports. It's when we look at MTSS. Um we're going to look at our timelines for tier 1, tier 2, tier three. So, I would think the first quarter and I think the the first quarter usually happens somewhere in November. I don't want to say I'm not quite sure what
130the date is, but it's usually um prior to Thanksgiving, I believe. Okay. Would you agree with that? Um yes, I've started to do some coherence mapping and thinking about when does when are progress reports issued for students? Um when does professional learning happen in the district? Um when um do we have conferences in the district? when our board meetings, when our board of ed curriculum committee meetings so that we can be very intentional with what topics we prepare and help to um help the board and the general public to understand what some of the connections are in the work. Um I also want to say, you know, it obviously is a very um it's when you talk about something like this, it's it's important. We have to talk about continuous improvement. That's what we're about
131as learning communities. And there is definitely improvement to be made in our MTSS systems and protocols. something that we've called out in the strategic plan. Um that needs to be tightened up quite a bit and simultaneously our kids are performing at really high levels. When you look at the SAT data from across the state and AP scores like the exit ramp when kids are going off to colleges, they're performing really well. So, um I think it's it is complicated. You have to look at multiple factors. The most important outcome of this I think is the work that we'll be doing together and the fact that again MTSS while it's a general education initiative should provide a through line from the core general education experience all the way through the tiers and for special education services.
132Um, and you know, it's a fine line also for we have a principal and assistant principal in the room right now for teachers, general education teachers and administrators to be responsive to parents requests because when a child isn't meeting an expectation at the core, nobody wants to wait, right? But we also don't want to intervene to the point where where like when you go to a doctor, you're prescribed medication without some of those other interventions like exercise more, eat better, some of those things. It's complicated. Um but it's definitely work we're going to continue to engage in together. Okay. I do agree that um quarterly I was looking at the MTSS schedule and we'll be having um MTSS regular meetings at the buildings and then meetings probably four times a year at the district level.
133So there'll be connection to what's happening in the buildings and the district level and of course we would be reporting back to the board about that. Okay. Great. I would include those steps in the strategic plan for next year. Great. cuz if you can't talk about it there and describe when it's going to be done and manage when it be it's going to be done it's not it's not going to get done. Okay. Thank you. I think that's right. Okay. Anyone else on this topic to be continued. Thank you for Charlotte. Okay. We move on to um discussion of 504 f policies, practices and procedures. Thank you. And the board had asked um just for an update on 504 and um many of um we repeated but many new community members might be interested. So
134we've included in the self in the next in the section 504 practices and procedures just the background information about 504. Um and perhaps just before I begin for those um just to distinguish before we just go through a brief um summary of that um the difference if you want to know between 504 and I and IDA um when children um are receiving services um under IDA the notion is that they require specially designed instruction to really address their their needs and their learning needs. When students receive accommodations and modifications and supports under 504 the notion is that they do not require specially designed instruction. They require reasonable accommodations and modifications. They require annual review of those modifications and accommodations. Um, and they also do require every three years a minimum of reviewing that. Um, it's
135like a trienal but with a three-year review. So, I just wanted to open that so as we go through that we have an understanding the first slide. But I don't know what happened to the first slide. Thank you. The first slide really just gives the the overview of the section 504 rehabilitation act in 1973. It was actually the first time that um the ADA rehabilitation act happened. Um and the idea just provides that there there cannot be any um that access to all students or all adults and anyone who has quote a disability has to be able to have access to any public place um including um schools, public places, any public um arena. And that included when it began back in 1973 really barrierfree environments. There were not bathrooms. There were not ramps. There
136was nothing to be accessible to people participating whether they were going to a theater or they were going to a school. And the notion was that no one can be denied the benefit or be subjected to discrimination under any program activity that requires or that accepts federal financial assistance. Schools are one of those that get federal funding. And in that also they're also protected about discrimination. That happens for all students by the way under IDA and 504. and the overview just looking at barrier-free environments that um in addition to just having barrierfree physical environments, the notion is that students have access to the same activities and programs as their non-disabled peers. So students want to attend after school programs, they want to attend field trips, they want to attend any environment that they can be
137part of um that there'd have to be access for that. Um special busing and transportation was an example of that. um ability if they needed support by another pareducator, an adult, they had to have that opportunity so they can access the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers. It also looks at opportunities of to fully participate in programs within general education curriculum. So if you think about a student who is in a general education program and perhaps they need an adaptive device, they need an FM system or perhaps they need a specific kind of desk or perhaps they need wheelchair access um they need access to um get into a cafeteria. We have to provide all of that um under section 504 and also safeguards to disabilities against discrimination and retaliation. And that's an essential component
138of the 504 um bill to make sure that there are no students and they are free from discrimination and retaliation. Again, looking at the difference in 504 and IDA, section 504 looks at does the student have a physical or mental impairment that does limit or substantially limit one or more life activity activities. We'll show you some of those major life activities later on in the appendices. and also under IDA as I said earlier how does it affect the students educational performance and um do they require specially designed instruction in order to access learning and teaching or teaching and learning with their non-disabled peers. So, regarding eligibility for section 504, there is a coordinator. Um, I'm the coordinator actually. And each of our buildings have a section 504 chairperson. It's the assistant principles in in the
139um secondary schools as well as the elementary schools. Very often um they will convene a meeting. Parents will be informed when the meeting is being held. It actually is also monitored by Connecticut SESS now, which has changed some of the opportunities also for accessing information. Um and during that team they'll know make knowledge about the student. They'll talk about what data has to be referred. Um if it's medical data they may have a physician participate in it or they may have a report from a physician. If it's a child who may have a hearing impairment, a child who might be visually impaired, a child who might have medical reason um that information will be reviewed by the committee and determine what accommodations are reasonable. Um, sometimes accommodations may vary from a student has access to
140the nurse throughout the school day. Sometimes it might be that the student um is allowed to leave when there's exacerbation of um anxiety or different episodes that may occur, but it's really specific to that child's presentation and what they need in order to be supported. Under the evaluation procedures, um we look at school records. We also look at um someone who has knowledge. very often it may be the parent, it may be the nurse, it may be a teacher, um it may be a physician. And we also um often there might be testing that is needed. Um I'll give you an example. Um a student comes in and has a 504 because they've recently had a skiing accident and they happen to require someone to get I'll say from um class to class because they
141need um a wheelchair in order to access the building. At the same time, they heal and they're better, but they also might have some physical needs in terms of participating in gym or other activities and they may require a PT evaluation. Um, it might be that they need in order to access those activities that we provide a PT evaluation. So, the 504 team can recommend that. It might be a child who's experienced some significant clinical needs and might need a psychiatric evaluation in order to determine access what reasonable accommodations may be. And we would also provide that under 504 plans and meetings happen. There's an annual review similar to the IDA process where the team will meet um with the family and the student um when attending every at least once a year and every
1423 years at a minimum for rehab. and the district trends. We've done a comparison between 2024 and 2025. And as you can see, we'll go through the details of it, but you'll see the increase in different um schools, but you'll also see the increase or changes within the classifications under 504. And we'll start with elementary. Um, and as you can see, elementary went up um, in terms of students who are receiving 504 accommodations who have attention deficit disorders. You'll see they kind of stayed flat in terms of generalized anxiety disorder. And if you look at health impairment and also other disabilities, those often are interchangeable. And that's why you'll see it went from 154 to 110. But many of those students might have then been captured under other disabilities that went from 30 students to
14371 students. And if you look at the notation on the bottom of the district trend slide, it shows that food allergies, fine motor impairments, visual motor impairments, and other neurological impairments. And in the appendices, it does list all the different impairments that may. So the team might um under health impairment um for a student who has a medical um need might have it under other health impairment, but they also might include under other disabilities. So you may see a shift in terms of where students are identified. um that has really improved over the last few years. It used to be there you you might have seen a generic 504 which didn't really tell the team that's working with the student what that area was and why they had those accommodations. So now we have really
144specified and made sure that we identify what the disability is and what the accommodations are to support that student. You'll see that trend in middle school also when you look at other disabilities that went from 13 to 69 and 88 down to 45 again those other health impairments. And I did speak with um with our our head of nursing services Emily and just spoke with her about the idea that um it might have been that eating disorders or different areas were included in other health impairments and more appropriately now they should be in other disabilities. And you will see that same trend in our high school numbers as well. And we continue to stick um with we continue to uphold all the fidelity of the process. Also, all of our teachers are required to read
145the 504 plans at the beginning of the year to sign off that they have read them to make sure when there are changes in the high school for second semester that the new teachers read them and make sure because many of these accommodations are essential in terms of the safety of students also. Um, and we with fidelity ensure that everyone signs off on that. Any questions that you have? All right. Thank you for that. Are there board questions about how that works? No. Okay, that was thorough. Thank you so much, Shirley. Thank you. Okay. All right. Um follow-up action items. We have a couple of things from tonight. We just talked about um adding some information to the strategic plan. Um adding looking at the curriculum committee subcommittee meetings um for executive function and I
146think there's something else. Um I can't remember what it was earlier. We definitely going to talk about writing, but that was that was tonight. Um, I don't remember will MTSS um follow up in the fall. Okay. Yeah. And the MT. Okay. Follow up in the fall. Okay. So, those are the three action items that I had. Were Am I missing any? I know you want some followup. Oh, uh, Scott's going to There were two reports we asked for in special ed. We asked for the state report card and we asked for something else you were writing down Scott chronic absenteeism in the secondary level. Yes. Per pup people and that that's the one in the state report card. The per pupil expenditures by dur. Okay. like the followups like follow up holistically. Yeah, good question
147because on MTSS we're going to follow up and I think we're following up on all of it in the fall in the next Q. Yeah, around the November time frame on those first two questions that you that Scott referenced. We send that memorandum. The Yeah, the the state report card and the absenteeism will come in a in a Yes, John. If we have more granular questions just about the data in general is okay if we email them. Yes. And if we find that there's something else we want to understand, we can follow up too. Dennis, were you going to say something? No. Okay. All right. With that, um, I'll move to public comment, please. If anyone in person or online would like to participate in public comment, please come up to the podium or use
148the raised hand icon and wait to be recognized. Once recognized, please state your name and address for the record and note that you will have up to three minutes to comment. And please note the time with the chair. Okay, Marge, I skipped the personnel report. Was there anything? There you go. nor normal for this time of year. It's normal for this time of year. Um, every year we get five to eight teacher retirements and we send out that notification. Um, the piece of good news is that more than five par professionals have retired or resigned, so we will not need to lay anyone off. Okay, that's great news. Thank you. Um, thank you Simone for pitching in tonight. We appreciate it. No, there no raised hands. Okay. All right. With that, I'll take a motion
149to adjurnn. That is done as seconded by Greg. All those in favor? That is unanimous. Thank you all for the all the work tonight.