BOE Regular Meeting - February 25, 2025

001we're live all right good evening I would like to call this regular meeting of the Board of Education to order the next Board of Education meeting is on Wednesday March 12th at 7:30 pm. in the Board of Education meeting room in lie of any other remarks this evening I would like to recognize the life of um Kevin Newman who is a former member of the Darian Board of Education he died January 29th 2025 I'd like to thank Clara Sartori for organizing every ready to get some remarks and Dennis who isn't here this evening but who put all of the disperate remarks together into um something that I'll read now to honor Kevin Kevin served on the board during the turn of the century in which education changed dramatically there were unheard of names and phrases

002such as Internet email and digital data storage all of which permanently and profoundly changed concepts of knowledge and learning Kevin was a Vietnam War veteran who worked in finance for his career and he used that Acumen to assist Aran for years serving on the big three boards the Board of Education Board of finance and board of Selectmen Kevin as a member of the Board of Ed was steadfast in his support of darianne students and strove to make sure that education was provided in a steadfast and fiscally responsible manner Kevin served as Vice chair finance committee chair and also served on the high school building committee so thank you for that Kevin Kevin was also responsible for taking the first steps towards making girls ice hockey a team sport he proposed the first budget that included

003$5,000 for the group and the next year they became a team which Dave personally has uh populated Kevin Newman was a man of Wonder wit and wisdom when sharing news with him his eyes reflected a sincere interest in sense of wonder his quick wit and Superior use of the English language left people searching for words in response drawing upon his intellect and wisdom he held roomfuls of people in the palm of his hand it was is outspoken in his drive for excellence among his board colleagues and the administration he apparently had zero tolerance for sloppy presentations or inaccurate Financial reports we offer condolences to Kevin's wife jany his son and his son two son-in-law two daughters and daughter-in-law as well as four grandchildren Kevin was a uniquely talented individual whose dedication and blue W pride

004and spirit will be valued by Generations please join me in a moment of silence to honor Kevin thank you all Switching gears a little bit just one uh item of business we have in our um calendar a April 3rd as the date on which the board of finance will vote on their budget but it's an error they actually are planning to vote on April 8th which is also uh we also have a meeting currently scheduled for that night I've had been in com thank you to the C cdsp who uncovered it but um I have had a couple of conversations with the board of Finance chair they are planning to vote on the 8th they leave themselves a little room they statutorily have to submit the budget on the 15th they could go as late

005as the 10th um I will be in regular contact with Jim if we need to move our meeting back a night to the 9th so that we can attend the board of Finance vote we can do that um we don't need to make any decisions this evening but I just wanted to alert you all to the fact that there is a um conflict on the night of the 8th okay and we can figure out specifics going forward right with that I'll turn it to you Alan public comment public comment thank you Sarah good evening if anybody in person or online would like to participate in public comment please approach 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

006that you have up to three minutes to comment we have no raised hands at this time okay superintendent report Allan uh thank you I'll be brief the um uh yesterday we had our professional learning day and there's a variety of topics uh that were all buil in base either from examples included AP exams and a digital uh platform uh the performance-based assessments mtss restorative practices uh ngss assessment review and variety of other uh topics of the elementary and middle and high schools congratulations to Maria uh colan who represent the Daran High School uh in the science research program at the junior science and Humanities Symposium at Ukon um I I read a we bit of the the script and honestly it would just blew my mind I just I'll just I'll just say it was

007about sell research and uh just was just I honestly couldn't understand it it just was um uh just amazing representative of work that they do uh we had uh 13 students who traveled to Grace over the break and believe that they uh have a lot of experiences and memories made during that time the Lou of the annual wathon the home school participated in a ra around the world uh because obviously they couldn't walk around the uh the school uh this particular year we will be celebrating read Across America day uh on March uh 3rd the quiz bll continued at the medal school at too impressed at the sixth grade level seventh grade and eighth grade uh they were down in New Jersey and uh they placed silver Golden Bronze um uh and those different uh

008grade level groups individual kids kids had edital honors along the way uh the state legislature as you may have heard um it looks like it's going to go through that $40 million uh addition to ECR uh for this year right uh so they're going to put it looks like they're going to put $40 million in that uh it was short I think about $136 million uh if our percentage would put us over over think it's about 72% or so maybe Rich we'll talk a we bit later U about that but um but cover the deficit for this year nothing it doesn't impact the following year but uh should we get that uh the chunk of that uh is projected to cover the deficit that we had uh du to unseen uh circumstances you know we

009have the superintendent Community conversation coming up on Thursday evening our facilitator has uh taken ill uh so we're going to try and schedule that from March 10th Monday March 10th uh just s there's not much we can do about it from the uh ADL so I intend that's just late Baker news and I intend to share that first thing in the morning with our with our community members and um I had a we opportunity to sit and watch a we bit of uh the practice after school today for Le Miz and uh I would encourage you to get your tickets early for that particular show and Madame chair has uh spoken about the April 88th uh board meeting versus the U budget discussion at the board of Finance thank you student representative reports Brena and

010Ryan good evening we had a very successful first day back from February recess and we want to reiterate that now is the time to get tickets to Li Miz production opens in about uh two weeks or so and we will also have our DHS J stury this Friday at 3M wish everyone the best luck and best performances yeah I think Bren covered it all hope our students enjoyed their extended break especially with that new Monday being off and uh wish the best coming to the rest of the year thank you very much approval of the minutes may have a motion to approve the following minutes of the regular meeting held on February 11th 2025 Sarah just one one uh change thank you to Joanna's eagle eyes her motion um for the minutes to add back

011the campus monitor it said decrease it should say increase so I will change the minutes and send it back over okay so may I have a motion to approve the minutes of the regular meeting held on February 11th as amended uh Robin seconded by Joanna all those in favor that is unanimous thank you board committee reports anybody have anything John uh two Thursdays ago we had a finance committee meeting we talked a bit about the deficit that Allen is now highlighted might be uh it was diminishing now might be gone away for this current fiscal year there's no transfers uh discussed anyone else okay winter update on District strategic plan and board goals Dr adley and Dr P uh so this is our trimester sort of a review of where we are with board goals

012and the Strategic plan uh we did come to an agreement on sort of we format at the start of the year so that that's been helpful uh the green yellow and red dots are just um completed in progress not started um I won't go over I won't read every single one of these you can see what we did with the the update in blue was what the fall update was and the winter update is in sort of pink uh color and uh We've made those uh addition so if you want to just go through them in order Madam chair but unless the board has uh I'll just talk generally the the metrics we're underway with that and uh we're going to have we walk through this evening of what that what that actually looks like

013okay uh the metrics for the Technologies included a lot of that's actually included in the uh Communications uh plan meaning you added technology usage to the communications plan yes because um it'll be tracked separately but it's also tracked in the communications plan okay any questions on goal one goal two goal two we um we we said that the evidence of teach and learning topics including curriculum agendas they'll be ongoing but that's basically the Bally being planned out so that's relatively completed and the work on the literacy and so on so forth they best learning uh teacher learning opportunities we have we started the aspiran leadership academy that was very well attended for staff uh PK uh through 12 the rest and bringing kindergarten teachers and AP C teachers together um but that that that's been

014very well received questions on go to Robin um so understandably there's a a big focus on the K through three literacy in terms of the um alignment of curriculum Etc to kind of make sure we're taking steps and I I guess the question I have is um for grades four through 12 for instance in the ELA area it would be really helpful to also see action plans or items that are being addressed um to to help students particularly in the later grades of elementary school middle school and also the early high school students who were in middle school during covid and what we're doing within our existing Ela curriculum to address those learning needs and I'm not talking about the kind of um special education or um srbi mtss group I'm talking about general education

015students in particular you know and um I don't know if this would reside more in a curriculum committee ongoing update format Pro potentially because we hear about new curriculum items but we don't really talk about as much what are we doing within existing curriculum in areas where we've identified a need which kind of gets to looking at data making revisions Based on data and that's kind of where I'm going with that if I can thank you for pointing that out Robin so the urgency is certainly around the K3 piece because um we need to be thinking about foundational literacy um teaching and learning as pointed out by the state in some some areas of our work that we know we wanted to um seek Improvement in and we've talked about those throughout um I'm really

016proud of the fact that we've engaged our district in a k a prek through 12 steering committee so that was not something that was required by the state but definitely a need that um I felt we had and and so did our administrators and teachers in the district so exactly what you're pointing out any shifts we make in K3 we need to be relatively thinking about what is the alignment preschool through grade 12 we certainly know our preschool kiddos have preliteracy skills so they should be included in that group and we want the articulation to follow up all the way through grade 12 um Kristen colonies we have a core review literacy team meeting tomorrow actually and Kristen colonies who is our 612 department chair she'll be participating in that and so I anticipate that

017the next Focus area of our work will be to think about some of the sh that were're making K3 and how does that impact the 612 experience and also the students that are currently in those upper grades who may have um not had some of the same opportunities that our students will have now that we're making some of these adjustments what will we do with that c if that makes sense and and just in terms of ongoing curriculum committee updates um because I know we talk about we're in you know stage one of a curriculum revision process now we're in stage two but how can we make that a little more tangible for board memb that might have specific questions within specific discipline areas I'm really looking forward to the opportunity when we have this

018part of our work settled K3 literacy because there is so much more to talk about so that is certainly will the standing item on curriculum committee where we can look at other content areas and other grade levels uh to talk about gaps in in the work improvements that we've seen and next steps next level of work so you can anticipate that will'll be coming thank you right goal three any questions not much to highlight no it um we follow the budget process um from the calendar as we have described all for I think everybody kind of understands it it's getting off this a good start this year but was uh really helpful um that's an exciting thing for for our community with the the new resources it's U it's easy to say it's easy to

019overlook and yet that's physically so big I could you overlook it but uh it's something that's going extremely well questions about goal five I just made a night U just made the February 27th I just wanted to point out that I I very much appreciated the participation of staff at our curriculum committee meetings and I think that that's been really helpful and um hearing straight from boots on the ground has been excellent so hopefully we can continue that so thank you T both for doing that we will plan on that for sure Danna um yes so uh you have listed in here the final Nas report um have we actually gotten that we have we have we've think just received or just last week received the the report from the draft report was sent to

020you can't releas a draft report U so we'll have a report to the board okay so it's on its way thank you he and Amy will if the board's okay with those we'll we'll move through the Strategic plan with teach and learn okay um so I'll give a high level overview goal area one is enhancing teaching and learning Dr adley already referred to the progress updates um the color-coded bullets as far as teaching and learning some of the work that we're very proud of is the implementation of our state approved a csde state approved um evaluation plan for teachers and administrators um with regard to play based learning we've had a group of very committed prek and K teachers actually I met with them again um this morning at 8:00 who really come in um

021several times a month sometimes a couple of times a week to talk about play-based learning to engage in curriculum writing work and to design professional learning and we have come up with a shared understanding of play based learning and we're really excited to come before the board on March 5th that will be a curriculum committee um item and so Robin you'll actually be able to see as will everybody um will be able to see some play based units that were developed for prek and K that are play based in nature so that's a very exciting update you bring in toys we will actually there just might be an appearance of Legos at some point um we we have just ordered those um so that there's a we're really actually looking forward to not only having

022teachers before the board um but also engaging the board with kind of how to make curriculum more tangible how to make the learning experiences that our kids are um having in classrooms more more tangible and also um probably involv children at some point um I think that there is a lot of power in that as well I'm having the board see what our kids can do firsthand um as far as um the ongoing communication to the board we're trying to keep current with curriculum topics that the board would be especially interested in and also we had recently the transition night and I attended that for um the students that are coming from fifth grade to sixth grade and the department shairs really shared powerful um kind of introduction to how the course and of study

023would change for our kids as they move from elementary school to Middle School the elementary progress reports the committee actually met again this afternoon and they'll be forthcoming soon um to the curriculum committee level and board level what the proposed draft is of that work and remember part of the bargaining unit agreement was to have um DEA members membership help lead that work and that has been happening um we have H held midyear conferences to discuss Educators goals in alignment with our teaching and learning principles and um again the work with the literacy pilot has uh been really time consuming but I feel that it's really valuable work because we've engaged more than a year now of discussion on best practice in the area of literacy and really involved teacher voice in that work and

024I think it's been really powerful that the board has heard from teachers as um Sarah mentioned each step along the way and we'll plan on having our teachers continue um to be for uh forward with Administration as we come to an eventual recommendation to the superintendent um another update that we wanted to provide is our our district mtss plan we have a districtwide mtss committee that is helping to determine protocols for use in District remember that that is a general education um framework that is not a special education framework it's a general education framework and we'll look forward to bringing that to the board so that the board can see very concretely the Continuum of the general classroom tier one core instru ruction intervention all the way through the continue of special education and support

025services and that's something that Shirley and I will continue to work on together um I I will not exhaust you with the updates on curriculum development but I know we often talk about um percents and so there is a linked document there that you should have been able to access on your own and I think I think Mrs philpop may actually have it to pull up um the point of this is where you'll see the update is previously even in this fall we we didn't have curriculum overviews and I'm sorry that the font is is small but there's a lot of information there we didn't have curriculum overviews for example for the elementary level in the area of mathematics they just they weren't in existence so the first um blue tab is the actual curriculum

026overview that's a high level description of a course or a subject area and a grade level high level so that um parents go on to edge of planet can see big picture what kids are learning and then stage one if you recall is the big picture of the unit alignment to the standards alignment to vision of The Graduate um and really desired outcomes for student learning and so you'll be able to see that the percentages are are changing on that and I can certainly um provide I think more information as we come forward as Robin indicated at curriculum committee meetings with individual Department chairs to talk about that work at stages one two and three but we've made pretty significant improvements um and you know typically most of the curriculum work in District happens in

027the summer and I would say that um with regard to our curriculum projects this year we have about 40% of the projects completed that we budgeted for and I think that it's better for us to be doing it that way because then we can progress monitor the quality of the curriculum and provide feedback as it's being developed that's really important instead of cramming it in as many districts do in the month of June that needs to be progress monitored along the way so um those are kind of the highlights there um and you can see that we've included some portfolio options for vision of the grad Gru just some examples of that work that's happened in the science department um onec has to do with job embedded professional learning um pek is still um working

028on the primary focus of pedc was implementing our new plan and we have a lot of work to do in the area still of acquiring feedback from um professional learning and needs assessment of what our staff is really interested in what they feel like they need to focus on to grow their capacity so that's work that um still needs to to take place um the last thing I would say about this goal area is instructional rounds have been completed most schools have completed instructional rounds at least two sets of them and they're entirely um teacher directed and teacher driven so that is goll one I think I saw a question Joanna um so I've question about 1B and a question about 1 c um just I'm not sure if I missed this in all the

029discussion about Ed Planet but what is available for parents right now and what is going to be available and when will that be so if you go to um I think we had an earlier presentation regarding edup planet and the requested expansion if you go to our district website the teaching and learning tab um you can go to departments and you can see curriculum blueprint the curriculum blueprint is edup planet and if you go there you can see by Department each of the Departments each grade level and what we're doing is as we revise curriculum and right C curriculum were populating it there so for example there was not established Health curriculum that was viewable for parents um at the high school level and I worked with one of our administrators this past couple of

030weeks to align the healthy and balanced living framework with stage one you know course overview in stage one because that's an area that we really want to be transparent about and have parents see so I reviewed those I went to review the documents personally before they go live um I've helped with that and those you can see right now I believe we posted before break um grades nine and 10 we could have also 11 I'm not sure if that's still something I'm reviewing but that's an example so those are there and if you recall Joanna what um is really important for parents to be able to see is the course description which is the broad overview of what kids will experience and what they're expected to know um at the you know with a grade

031level maybe within a subject area for example math at the elementary level and then stage one provides more detail with regard to the standards alignment to vision of The Graduate desired learning outcomes there's a greater level of De detail there for parents and that's a process and it's a cyclical process and we um time it out by you know when new standards are developed um or that new resources are required we talked about the you know the impetus for change in the curriculum cycle so you you can see you can see quite a bit there and you should be um paying attention to Future curriculum committee updates because as other department chairs come forward we'll be able to talk really specifically and show case and highlight those developments as they're happening throughout the year and

032will all three stages eventually be public or just St so you would only districts not just are on public schools but districts only publish really stage one because stage two and three have more Assessments in them so those are things that you would want to not have accessible um for obvious and maybe not so obvious reasons but the important point is is everything's aligned to the standards and so it should be very clear to families what are the standards that we're addressing and what are the desired learning outcomes that's that's very public and should be I just had a question you mentioned that the Ed Planet like when the curriculum's going in you're tying it back to the vision of The Graduate just is is a lot of time being spent on that by the

033teachers it seems like that's something that wouldn't really exist previously well the reason why it's important to do that right is is I just read a great article recently maybe it's something I can share uh with the board through the curriculum committee around theide a that knowledge is you know not static things change things that you can look up today may change tomorrow right and so the skills that we really need to have children develop and we know this with University and and you know career um the career orientation that kids will have future job employers are looking for kids to be able to be critical thinkers to be able to be problem solvers so we want to make sure that those higher order skills are reflected in the curriculum and it's not just the

034content standards and math for example there are content standards that are really concrete about you know children will add and subtract within 10 in kindergarten that's important that fluency needs to be there because it takes off the cognitive load right of more complex problem solving and kids need to be able to function and think critically about problems and persevere in solving them so those would be the math practice standards that we would address and those are reflective a vision of graduate uh Dave then Robin thanks Amy um I know we had discussion here years and years ago about publishing uh syllabus for different courses things like that and so when I I think of educ planet in this different stages one two and three I can appreciate step two we don't really want to publish

035the teachers addition probably not good but um thinking a little bit of what's in between of say a university syllabus or um you know sort of the teachers addition I know in a usual syllabus you see things like what the dates are or what the actual reading materials are or the books or the resources that to be used is that do we envision making that available at some point if you can remind me for parents to be able to see or so I think that you said that conversation happened years ago so that must pre that prates me half the room yeah okay so um thank you for bringing that up one thing I would say is edup planet should replace a course um a course handbook like a course catalog I know I'm in

036that process right now with my own high schoolers at home it's course selection time educ Planet should replace that because there should be enough detail in there that parents can work alongside their children to plan a program with studies so that's one one piece the next piece with regard to the syllabus that's continued work that we need to do right so the department chairs and I will have to work together and ensure that the syllabus and and um experience that children have especially with regard to assessment is consistent within a department like regardless of the teachers that they have right so everybody that's in Algebra 2 should be having the the same experience with regard to assessment right um we always want our teachers to be able to select resources and to be able to

037shape their instruction to meet the needs of the children right before them that kind of responsive instruction is something we know our Educators do well and expected to do so I guess if we take that thought of sort of horizontal alignment and flip that to what a parent might be interested in and what you may see in a syllabus versus what we're proposing now as you know we've had a lot of question in this District about what resources or books or materials are being used maybe there's a list of 10 books that might be appropriate for a class and obviously there would be some flexibility in by that teacher to maybe choose seven of them or six of them or whatever but are we going to get to that level specificity of like we're reading

038um you know Young Goodman Brown and we're reading you know catching the Ry and we're reading and like see that and these are the classes that might be selected for that particular course horizontally so parents will be able to have disability into that so what I would say is anything that are like core novels for example if you give you know if you're thinking about English language arts those are something that parents should naturally be able to ask teachers anyway and is something that we would want to talk about with regard to other resources that teachers might pull in based on their own judgment and professional expertise that that kind of autonomy is really important and something that we would want to um really celebrate our staff and doing no totally get that but I

039think you know part of what we're looking for in the edgey planet is to get sort of of self-service so parents can go in and see and they can actively look in and have an idea what that is instead of going to the teacher what's the reading list this week what are we doing which you know so um and again if teachers want to bring in other resources and we've had conversations here over the years about how is that evaluated how is that reviewed how do we keep that consistent across different teachers and have visibility in that for parents as well so you know maybe this is a work in progress it would be great if we could explore some of that as this rolls out yeah there is a section um actually in stage

040one where resources are named and so um I would expect again that core re resources are there but again a resource that a teacher might pull based on the needs of her particular class might not be included but the the the core resources are are listed there and I think highlighting that issue that's where there have been concerns or consternation where elements are introduced and people aren't aware of those and you know we we've seen that come up from time to time not that you know not to bmer anybody judgment there have been instances where there's been disagreement between the Educator's perspective and that of a parent and so anything we could do to like put that out there and have that be known and take the temperature down I think would be certainly beneficial

041yeah so hopefully it will help having very transparent resources listed in stage one that are the core resources and really having you know active ongoing engagement and strong communication between Educators and the public Educators and parents is really I think critical and no no software no platform can resolve that completely I think it's probably a little bit of both thank you you're welcome just on that note I think it also would be helpful if a teacher at the open house could actually talk about the books or just the list if it's an English class because I in the past years they haven't necessarily done that and they used to do that and so I think that would also be helpful I'm more at the middle school or High School level for instance but um I

042had a different question um related to pek um and this is teaching learning 1A area um you were talking about in the most recent notes about midyear conferences with department shairs for the teachers and the question I had was whether um Department shairs are then giving feedback to the Educators on how they can or and how they are helping achieve growth in student achievement when does this type of feedback happen to ens sure that the teachers are you know either looking at data or getting instructional feedback is that part of the pek midyear evaluation process and is that done disciplined specific by Department chairs I just curious how that works so the department chairs do the bulk of goal setting feedback is given then right feedback is given at the time where educators are setting

043goals and kind of planning out what they're going to focus on for the year um there are also observations of practice that are formal observations of practice and reviews of practice there's formal feedback offered there um the midyear conference is another opportunity for Progress monitoring feedback happens there uh feedback happens at the end of your conference and I would say feedback and less formalized even coaching happens throughout the year at various other times like mtss meetings or could be you know other professional learning sessions grade level meetings so there are formal opportunities and less formal for feedback okay and then another um question about pedu it in area 1C it's it notes that we're still developing PLC practices to include analysis of student work and data um and the question I have is wasn't this

044kind of analysis and work done in the past and why are we needing to develop it now so one of the things I would say is um when you implement something in a district for example like PLC right or or our um srbi as it used to be called RTI now we're making a shift to mtss in the beginning sometimes of a systemic change There's real Clarity on what the expectation is and what procedures are and then over time maybe there's a a little erosion of that we talked a little bit about that right like the PLC time has kind of been diluted in some areas and maybe the teachers are looking to use that time um in a maybe a different way we have to I think recalibrate what our expectation is for PLC

045time how do we Define that what are the outcomes that we're looking for because it is really it's one of the biggest drivers of not only growing educator capacity but student learning outcomes so over time you you just when those things are eroded a bit it's you have to recalibrate with the expectation is and be very clear on that and you know you should be we should have consistent protocols that are established and documented and that's something that um pedc should have some influence over and um that just that needs to I think be clarified I and the reason I'm bring this up is I think later in the Strategic plan there's a mention about how the budget the plc's didn't get approved and we are going to have to reprioritize you know to bridge

046what we want to do this year versus next year and so the question the reason I was asking about this is because to your point it is so important for the teachers to have the time to analyze the student data you know think about their instruction strategies um and so I'm I I was hoping that you know within our existing PLC time that we have that we would be able to kind of fit that in and possibly shift time that might be spent on some State mandates that might not require as much time for example or things that you know just to kind of prioritized so we're really focusing on the student achievement and learning so we've especially been focusing on revision to the PS PLC process at the elementary level so that is happening

047regardless of the funding of the additional requested time or not you know we know that we do have time available that it's that currently exists for our staff so we these protocols need to be developed anyway and then what about at middle school and high school I think Middle School still has it in the team structure right but what about high school so our Focus this year is on prek they have a there's a different Staffing availability at the elementary middle school level that positions us to do that work and we don't quite have that at the high school level I guess my question then is what will we be doing at the high school level to ensure that we also are having the teachers look at the you know the data are the children

048learning the writing or the different skills they need so there isn't a focus area on 9 through 12 specifically um for PLC now PLC function a little bit differently at the high school however um there are systems in place where where staff uses time together to Department time for example to look at student work samples and provide interventions for students um and there you know there's the student support center so there are just different supports there okay thank Rena thank you um my apologies just circling back to the discussion on uh required text in core readings I wouldn't say that I have confidence that Daran high school has a set of four texts that every student who comes through the the school will read but in terms of texts for each class for English and

049history those are distributed through the syllabus syllabi um on the first day and you know perhaps that document could be crumpled in the backpack and lost some way that parents can't read it so maybe teachers could upload that document to this platform but um each text is made abundantly clear what students will be reading maybe not when they're reading it but I think the challenge for opting for a centralized lists of text is that not every uh class even at the same level 300 level 400 level reads the same exact set of uh novels and short stories so um like I said teachers do publicize that information on day one the first homework assignment is go home read the syllabus have your parents sign it but you know that might not be checked as diligently

050so I understand the lack of parency there but perhaps they could upload it thank you any other just one other quick follow up on the Ed plan and stuff that that other uh it seemed like a a very good update in terms of like where things stand is there is there I can remind me is there a set of Milestones or dates or deadlines coming up for Ed plan in terms of like where we're going to get to for each of the different steps along the way well sure um when the budget is approved we listed out this the specific spefic courses departments and actually um write down to the right the course level so that's our mile marker and so we've we've accomplished about 40% of that curriculum writing um I'm not sure it's

051hard to say a goal in front of the board if I don't know if I'll meet it but transparency is important um we i' really like to have the staff be at like 60% before April that's unusual most districts do the bulk of the curriculum writing in the month of June I don't think that's best practice because it's really important important for the administrators myself included to be able to review the curriculum for Quality um and to provide feedback as it's being developed and to have final approval so I'm pleased at the mile markers of where we are now we've got a bit to do to stay on track I'm confident that we will stay on track and um you would know what we're working on based on what's published in the budget book there

052again might be some adjustments I had an adjustment in mathematics today and uh the department chair Ronnie r reached out to me and she had very strong rationale for why she's going to have a shift in who is teaching some of the courses next year do to a staffing you know shift and so she reprioritized um a different course and a different area of the course for the curriculum to be written and so that's something that the department chair would seek my approval for there's a shift great thank you you're welcome Joanna um just about uh instructional rounds Could you um is there a way to understand how much time the teachers are out of the clustering when they're on their rounds like or the idea is like um rounds in in hospitals right like

053you go and you watch someone else and you discuss it um so how what is the coverage like in that those kinds of situations so that is exactly it it's built off of the medical model and um typically there is the principal would conduct um an opening where they would talk about an inquiry um or a challenge that the school is having or an area of inquiry that they want to study um they after the overview they would talk about protocols for visiting the classroom that would take some time and then each of the classroom visits is very it's very brief actually um it's about 15 minutes I believe um typically and then they'll probably attend four classes or so they'll come back in deep brief all in all it's probably about you know a

054morning it's maybe a two and a half hour experience thank you and the return on investment there is really hard to describe I think if you're not an educator and if you haven't been in a classroom because a lot of professional learning for educators happens ironically outside of the classroom and what we really need is our Educators to be able to see their colleagues in action with students and then to be able to debrief and talk about decision making intentionality um their instructional moves with children how they're assessing children we need our Educators to be able to see that real real time that's why that's a very important investment and for it to be teacher directed thank you all for the questions go two okay goal two um to speak I guess at a higher

055level here there's one of the goal areas is around the progress reports I've already mentioned that um we did issue as everyone knows the school climate survey which is a state mandated um it's an expectation that school districts do that and now what all of the staff is working on is they've submitted to Dr dad what their school climate plans are based on that data and she's reviewing those and those plans need to be posted also on the website um for public consumption so those will soon be there and I know that we have an upcoming report from Dr dad uh an update for her so I'm sure that she will weave that as well into her report so that's um that and the mtss work that I've already talked about is the big highlight

056there another big highlight is the prek through eight personal device guidelines and the shift to 912 and I know that um Tim Maguire and uh Ellen Dunn have continued to work on with that committee they've broken up into smaller groups now that they're handling things like you know how will we engage in educating students and staff about this what might a plan for a day away look like or or more a week away what would an implementation plan look like for next year how do we do um kind of a launch for our 12th graders and maybe the second half of 11th graders who are preparing for post-secondary experiences what should that look like so the implementation piece is something that they're still alienating so those are the highlights I would say for the main

057highlights for um go area 2 Greg I've made this comment before but I think be it's worth repeating is that I think that we need to be very very careful about drawing conclusions from these surveys that are taken from young kids that may or may not be taking them seriously and we're taking them as gospel and I don't think that that's appropriate so um I would say to what I would agree with is any data point any singular data point should not be taken as gospel I think um most probably all of Administrators would agree you need to triangulate data um before you make any kind of conclusions so um what we do is we look for themes and you also want to look at data you want to look at climate in classrooms you

058want to look at climate of you know schools and climate at the district level so it's just one source of information um that we'll use to kind of inform our steps going forward but thank you for pointing that out to what extent are we are we actually required by the state to implement anything it's a it's legislation that we have surve I don't is it specific in terms of the extent of implementation well yes you have to you have to have a plan and a plan for implementation and the plan must be posted on the website right but the extent of that plan like how how extensive does that plan actually have to be what what if the takeway from the CL the climate survey is everything is great and and then like once we

059have this plan to the point that we've been talking about what metrics are we looking at to determine whether we've you know mission accomplished you want me to continue to respond so the state largely does not the state for example doesn't provide a template or metrics just like they have't for how you approach the K3 literacy work so that is this is not the only area that the state largely leaves this up to local school districts and so this is something that again we're working I would think as Administration and the board um to figure out exactly how we want to use um the information that we get and how we want to kind of shape that over time we also have um uh we're conscious of not over assassing the kids for one thing

060but also surveying them to death really in terms of like just how a number uh right now I'll just be honest I have a CDC survey we are required to complete um and I'm doing everything I can not to complete it U because a of what's in it to some degree and also be um our students have been surveyed on these topics a number of times so uh just we we're conscious of not doing that us even ping Back Robin then Dave um a couple questions first of all when will the Board of Ed get a report on the results of the school climate survey and will we see the school Plan before it is posted on the website that's my first question uh so I think through the um clearin house we had a

061presentation here prior uh some members might remember that in terms of uh the actual format of the actual plans and so on they don't come to the board first of all if the board wants to see them certainly they can see them uh but those committees involve staff parents uh teachers some cases students are on those committees and it's it's a state mandate to actually come up with the commit come up with the results um or sorry have the committee in the first place and come up with the plan there're certainly available to the board if they want to see them but but there's not an approval of them beforehand well I guess usually I think we did have a report from Dr dad on the results of the school climate survey I think it

062was last September would that mean that we would get this year's climate survey update in September or do we have an update from her I think sometime this spring we have an update coming up here sometime in the spring in the spring okay and would she also be talking about what the school climate plan would Encompass because I just think there are board members that are interested in yeah sort of surpris that the board's not going to have any purview over this that's that's shocking to me um certainly the board certainly the board can look at the the each school's uh climate plan that that's uh certainly they can do that that's but there's no approval process with the board to review the plan and no really I would think that would be operational they

063they exist they exist just at the school level Greg but isn't that I mean effectively a curriculum question what's happening in the school school is curriculum I don't know how that's doesn't come into the board perw it's not a curriculum question but Amy should handle that so um it is not a curriculum question um really there are you know questions that would speak to you know children having a sense of belonging in the school um the parents understanding what instructional outcomes are in the school part of it might speak to curriculum but it also speaks to um safety in the school the actual physical infrastructure of the school so it's more broad it's more broad-based than that and it also came out of the legisl originally it committed the legislation of bullan legislation it accompanied

064uh those policies it's actually right that's where it exists within the legislation but if the board wants to see like a what a typical plan looks like for many schools it's happy to provide that and would you just send us the reference to the legislation so we can familiarize sure please um Brena and then I think Dave did you have your hand up okay and then Robin oh just wondering did the board and uh School climate survey committee have a chance to uh examine the administration like in terms of the if we're going to do it in a different time frame or if we're going to do it at a different time of the year did they get a chance to explore any of those changes possibly Brandon what what are you talking about explicitly

065like when you when it's being administered you talking about your reference last year that we were giving you some surveys in the middle of APs or something like that yeah I mean I it might just be something worth worth your time worth considering if if we look at are we giving this for longer than 30 minutes so people don't feel like they have to rush and things like are we giving this nod at 8 in the morning on a Tuesday things like that well if you have any suggestion let us know because we do work with your Administration um in near case at the high school but we work with through all administrators as to when when's the best time to give this uh they're the people who know the best about what's actually going

066on in classrooms and the school the school activities and so on so forth mean it just like I I've seen the survey it like a lot of the questions in the survey are about stuff that doesn't happen in school so it's just weird to me that we're gonna have some plan that's based on a bunch of stuff that happens outside of school that the board's not going to be be able to see beforehand and have a view of just seems very strange to me you're talking about the school climate survey so there's two I mean I've read through all the questions it's I gotta I had to approve it which I did not I'm just clarifying whether you meant that or the um driving you survey or both well there's a survey right and we're

067using the data from the survey there are two surveys yeah there's the surveys right I just was clarifying which one okay thank you Dave I guess so what I was going to ask you know we do have the thriving youth survey we do have um the other survey Alan I think you mentioned that there's other ones used in Amy you said there's no state issued one there's no standard like do we have a samples like who's out there what other versions are out there and we see what other people maybe the dur or Statewide use or is there something that's more common or is this the common one I have no idea but just the n one one's uh pretty common Dave um especially notk especially in our Turk same we're using uh uh the

068same reason and probably a reason for that also standardize um uh what happens if if you end up deicing your own then that's then that's open for complete scrutiny and bias and right and so I guess the followup question to that um just kind of going with where questioning seems to be going is so we have the national one that's a standard does somebody I know does grandby have one that's like maybe five questions we could borrow and like make this a little more efficient or is there somebody who has like a more economized it doesn't focus on things that happen outside of school um it maybe just focus on the building that maybe would be more appropriate we should consider using versus the national um so just just a thought on sort of the

069vendor selection what other people are using maybe not just in the Dirk but other other towns I for Grammy because you've been there not okay so so the Nuance to this is originally for many districts it was attached to teacher valuation because back on the old system you had to have surveys right so therefore some of the districts uh work with some organizations to come up with their own that both covered the teacher valuation but also covered these other topics since then there's been a lot of transition away from that because there been transition away from that for Teacher evaluation and now now there more likely that people are doing the national survey yeah I guess I'm just just as a general sense I mean it's fairly over Brad it's a lot of stuff that

070has nothing to do with the climate in the building which it's climate in places we can't control I'm not sure why we're measuring for that so if somebody has a more focused or version that really gets down to things that we should be in control of that might be something we should be using I think Robin is up um I I had a question about the the progress reports and why they are being revised why what is the need for that so um one of the things that I I try to um remind us of is that when we make shifts in curriculum or instruction we make shifts in assessment and progress reports are how we communicate out how we're assessing student learning outcomes and so um in some areas like there are new social

071study standards uh we have K3 literacy right that's happening right now so those those shifts alone would require a look at the report cards it was also the last outstanding issue in the teacher negotiations that we would sit down and do this so it's an one of the last outstanding things to do in that contract but but are they being vised away from certain ways of measuring students or just that the standards are being adjusted just the standards that are oh okay Dave was there a change to any like comments or anything like that being included you mean for Middle School yeah um I am waiting to actually see what the outcome of that committee work has okay I think they met actually even today they met this afternoon yeah yeah so we don't have

072a final recommendation thanks cority to that I think this is talked about a little later in the Strategic plan but there was also something about how we're evaluating or changing how we're grading how we're doing other things along with the progress reports it's like the grading maybe I'll wait for it until we cover it no that's okay let's just wait till we get there okay B area three so um this just Brenda had one more things to say oh thank you go ahead Brenda sorry just a point of information last one it's okay I just think an important connection for us to make between uh the value of the school climate survey that might be asking additional information um is that we're we might we think of school as a collection of individuals coming from

073all different places all different Living Spaces all different uh lives and stories and so I think that the reason why this uh survey incorporating uh that additional or unnecessary information I think is um so that we can meet students and we can meet everyone where they're at and we can provide them with the most care that we can because I think that uh as officials it's our responsibility to provide equal uh care and support for everyone and I think that's what this survey does thank you okay on to goal area three um one of um the things again that I'd like the the board to be thinking about is as we're revising curriculum that's where we should see um in stage one alignment to vision of The Graduate and also um in how students are

074being assessed so that we're again asking students to practice those higher order skills Beyond just straight content knowledge so I've shared some examples in the area of science um we've also had continued professional learning and restorative practices as aign to vision of The Graduate competencies the um there's legislation for restorative practices that's um something that we are required to do and provide professional learning on annually um one of the things that we're looking forward to is uh conducting focus groups um in the spring of students who are recent graduates who have moved on to Life Beyond darant high school and the school district experience to see how they were prepared and some things that we might want to consider um with regard to programming and how we're preparing our young people for their next steps

075um we're still exploring Tech tools that we might use um with regard to storing the information for vision of The Graduate again I think it would be really neat my kids are Beyond this point now but if I had little ones and I could see how they're um they were mastering some of those competencies and vision of The Graduate along the way from prek all the way up to grade 12 um that could be something that I think would be really neat for educators and parents to see uh together um and then I would say uh surely I she has any other comments about the options for the transition programming I know that's something that was discussed in the in the budget process and that's the last piece of um this goal goal 3C uh

076thanks Amy I just said we're going to continue to look at our students and needs for transition programs um although um we can go forward for this year we're hoping we'll have information to consider for next year in terms of and we look at students and their needs um we're doing um we mentioned in the last presentation actually PD day yesterday some of our uh staff members in the high school did some workshops on transition programs and supporting all students and Learners so it's part of our professional learning that will continue this year in next year thank you any questions on this goal goal three no okay goal four hey goal four we've referenced the um aspiring leader Academy I think we have close to 30 staff members participating in that from um the elementary

077middle and high school level and across departments so that's really great there are some of the the candidates in there that are I should say participants that are currently in 092 programs others that are just curious and wondering what it's like you know behind the screen um we've had really great conversation there our upcoming session is on supporting educator growth so we talking about a lot to do with supervision and evaluation there and upcoming in the spring each of these um participants will have an opportunity to Shadow a district administrator and then reflect on that experience together and I think in the spring we will be providing awarding certificates and um Marg and I are looking forward to I'm sure sharing more of a comprehensive review of the successes and opportunities for next level of

078work with that we had Ed Camp um on Monday which is a lot of um it's really driven by Educators designing PD for their colleagues and so there were a variety of really neat um areas of interest and expertise where our Educators at the elementary level planned professional learning sessions for their colleagues so that's um again one of our goals and and something that we're focusing on in stre plan is to ensure that we have teacher voice and PD and teacher leadership um in preparing that and again I've already referenced the ongoing work of pek I think we have a meeting next week Marge um next with our group we've again conducted observations for all of cohort one and implemented observations for cohort 2 which are the um cohort one is the uh Educators that

079require more observations of practice based on where they are in their cycle um non- tenard staff and uh we've had continued calibration exercises at leadership meetings I believe next week we also have two level meetings for elementary and secondary that's the focus really calibrating our lens for instructional practice um and um I think that is it for this goal unless Marge you had anything to add okay any questions on this goal okay thank you goal five okay goal five um enhancing systems to promote efficiency coherence and communication one of the things that we're looking at is using technology to increase the efficiency of Staff um we'll be talking soon I'm sure Marge and I with the board about we discussed this actually a little bit even during the budget process a more efficient um software

080to be using for educator evaluation in Li of the temple system that we've had now and so we're looking at uh will be a Google option that will be free of cost not really free nothing's free we're already we already have a group in charge but something that um would be no additional cost and um in addition we are aligning District um curriculum to uh the oh I'm thinking not sorry analyzing prek-12 student progress reports I've already mentioned that I'm trying to go quickly the policy audit is nearly complete and I know that there are other policies that are being brought back again tonight I think field trip I don't know Marge if you have anything about policies okay and just to highlight on the first bullet that we were looking to operationalize some of

081the communications work and that's what you have here is coming in March yes yes okay any questions on this call Robin um so what I was asking previously was in 5B in the action column it says prek through 12 student performance reports including grades and grade reporting and analyzing these to align them to District guiding documents and that's why I was wondering what is changing in terms of grades and grade reporting there is nothing changing at this point um that was a that's a two-year goal and I think that's something that um would require uh much more discussion I I think that many districts this was I think um drafted in the original strategic plan so what that is is getting at is kind of Mastery based learning and um we want to make sure

082that we're also having standards aligned learning and progress reporting in District so that's just not a focus of our work right now um we have traditional grading happening and we're not making any shifts okay there are no proportions okay other questions on five goal area six goal area six improving school facilities um there was the MMS facility study in the FY 26 budget there's some information there about radon results we've recently had a security update um from Mr kakowski the phasing of HHR is on schedule and the current budget reflects a facility study only for MMS with DHS token and Central Services um being moved out to potentially FY 27 those are the highlights there other questions on six goal seven okay last but not least improving technology to support teaching and learning um we've

083already discussed through the budget process the use of learn platform to analyze um software utilization in District ELP and K science-based curricular units are um have been developed three units we're looking forward to sharing those with the board actually on March 5th um again with some play opportunity built in I think that that will be something that uh the board and parents will be really excited to see um providing professional learning to staff regarding Edge Planet so we have sessions coming up I think four sessions the first two weeks of March for staff to understand how the edge of Planet platform works and then we also have additional sessions that we've planned for April and May regarding ubd and udl so that as our staff continues um to become for ulum writers in District we're

084keeping them really current and understanding the framework that we use I should say Frameworks for curriculum writing and so um those were very well attended last year we had like 100 staff members across the district attend and um there was actually a request to offer them again this spring and it's good practice to offer them again in the spring um we're working on a draft of AI guidance actually this afternoon I um read the most recent guidance that staff worked on not only in the um District Technology Council a meeting that happened in the last week but also during the professional learning yesterday so that will be forthcoming to the board that's very exciting and transformative work and work that is it's changing as we're doing it right um and we have identified training um

085for Aspen in the FY 26 budget actually there was a prepare to build training that took place this morning that Administration took part in for the middle school schedule builds um we are also looking at um the infrastructure including network connections and wireless access and the data is reported to be successfully being collected there by Mr Adams those are the highlights in technology goal pleased to see AI guns um Katie thank you um Amy I just wanted to ask uh for clarification on that last part with 7B um it mentions in the infrastructure about Hardware is that encompassing some of the things that we talked about during the budget season like um desktops and laptops vionics versus monitors all of those kind of pieces of the kind of physical devices and Hardware is that included

086in this piece so I'm going to actually defer a little bit more to Rich because he oversees um that department but there as far as I know has been no further discussion other than what was most recently discussed at the board table during the budget process yep that's correct great these these if you're saying 7B that's more that's more for in inventory purposes the usage reports those usages for inventory not not just the equipment inventory yes two different bullets yes um yes but for inventory and also usage of that yeah yeah yeah yeah so the the usage is for software so we do use learn platform that analyzes how many uh users have for a variety of different software programs and the inventory is for you know usonic monitors Chromebooks computers laptop so we're not

087monitoring usage of Hardware basically right thank you is there a way to do that uh for certain products probably not um it depends on the product that we have um things like the bonics we know are used often and there is there isn't we talked about this during the budget there isn't a replacement for vonic for a monitor they don't have the same functionality um for certain laptops and Chromebooks I mean we do have certain softwares that we can use to see how often they're open but not necessarily how when they're used and then um Apple products it's a little more difficult that's not something that we have the ability to track how often they used Robin um just one comment on The View Sonics I I did note in some documents I was looking

088at a couple days ago that there was a grant that was made to the district for interactive LED I believe it might have been the view Sonic screens a number of years ago so there might be available options within the community that that was Federal grant dollars that we received was it yes it it was our profund grant so we haven't uh there's nothing available at this point uh that would uh that we're aware of that we could use uh I about Community organizations that usually give technology oriented grants we always reach the community they' be very kind to this point any other questions on that go right thank you for the uh time and effort was into that thank you welc I will say on the My Board for the conversation s of talk

089mentioned it before um but just on the Strategic plan there's one more year of the Strategic plan so in the next year's version minimally there should be some reference of agreed developing modifying replacing as we move forward thank you okay data dashboard update uh so the board uh want us to bring this back for discussion has been on the master agenda here um we did we did uh roll it out in uh September uh uh so a just a couple of things that are in the memo that uh we did for the board uh one is we're also look at this it is plausible that under the current goals that we have that we could develop uh metrics for each of those things we give some examples in the memorandum just as a just just

090to give you some examples that it could be done that's not the purpose of tonight's discussion but we just put that in as to uh it was a board discuss question at some point like would would would there be other things we we approved the board approved for this particular uh this particular year goal area one and and the metrics for them there was a we subcommittee of this this board who met to go over and sort of review with with Administration what that might be so a couple of things I'm working backward probably in ubd design there's a couple of guiding questions at the end that I really need to bring to closure a little bit um some of them are very basic is there consensus on the the use of metrics for for

091for strategic goal one we left s of we been up the hour at the last meeting so just whether we close them out tonight or not but these are just some questions is there agreement to complete and publish the teach learning metrics by the end of the year do you want us to do that or do you not uh will the dashb we can give you our opinion but will the dashboard be visible to the public where should the dice board be heest again we can share this with you but is it their desire to expand the use of metrics to the other goal areas so these are just some whether they're closed out tonight or whether they're not um those are just some guiding questions that would be helpful as we sort of move

092forward tonight I would just mentioned Amy's going to walk you through uh and in response to Robin's question we sent just some sort of Snapchats to the board um we're going to walk you through it's a we bit of proprietary the actual uh website design itself but we're going to just sort of walk you through what it might look like um what it currently looks like it's relatively ready to be published at this particular Point uh for the U goer the teaching and learning and I use this as a sort of like occasionally you got a look at the scoreboard right um and it's also very public it's it's available to the community should the board decide that uh we want to make it uh to the community so uh and just going to sort

093of just walk you through each one it's just important tonight that there's a there could be a tendency to go start to compare the data that's not the purpose of tonight's meeting right um not say like why are we at 67 versus whatever that's not really the focus of tonight it's really is this the format is that what you want to it to look like and you have questions about it or otherwise with that then meaning that if we agreed to the format then going forward this would accompany our our review of goal area one correct so they would we would be able to actually compare the data oh yes yeah yes but just for tonight I'm talking about no no I understand I'm just clarifying that that the purpose of it is to be

094able to discuss the data in the future yes before we start just one question would would this be on an annual basis that we would get an update is it basically a yearly yes dashboard okay yeah and the timing um ideally I would well we can we can talk about this but I mean well it depends it com from the state so on four it would be updated immediately we we have the information the only reason I was mentioning that is that it would be helpful if we had the latest update I don't know if this is possible but prior to our summer Retreat and discussion of like goal setting strategic planning Etc so but we should see it first obviously yeah all right KN D um and at any rate the state rather than

095the state data comes out over the summer but it's embargoed until typically closer to when school opens um so we've we've actually navigated this website before together um but we've started with the smarter balance assessment so remember that's assessment that uh that focuses on literacy and numeracy in grades three through eight the first um chart that you see is grade three students meeting or exceeding goal and that's all students every student in grade three um the chart next to it is the students that are identified as high needs so those are the students that receive special education services or ml services or students who might be um receiving free or reduced lunch it's important to note that we have included three years uh 23 and 24 because they're the most current years in 2018 and

09619 because that is um the closest pre-co year and if you um go over Mrs Philpot to the right with the arrow you can just see uh again students that are meeting or exceeding in the goal in mathematics the same thing for students who are identified as high needs if there isn't a bar there it's because the data is suppressed because the population of students in that group that cohort is too small it would be ident personally identifiable um we can't have growth data for grade three because this is the first year of implementation students don't take the smarter balance assessment in grade two so the smarter balance assessment um you can see that we focused on grades three and 53 because it's initial first year five because it's a transitional year before children are

097going into the middle school and eight because it's the summit of year of that Middle School kind of prek experience before kids transition to the high school um Mrs Phila if you click on the first chart on where it's uh grade three Arrow back to the left um if you click on that you'll see in the top left corner just click on the chart there you go on the top left corner it says open glossery so this is where um parents or any stakeholders could see what is the smarter balance assessment what are the overall achievement levels to kind of help people understand what is a student growth Target and what is growth rate so that um parents get this information also when they get their students their child's individual achievement report from the smarter

098Balan assessment but this is again so parents can understand what or any viewers can understand what that that assessment is about you just click on that first please thank you so you just click and to show in the top left hand corner please so there'll be an explanation of what this assessment's about okay it's hard to read so that's why I was saying it's overall achievement level student growth Target and growth rate um because remember the smarter balance assessment is really um assessing to the standards but also there are individual targets that every child is um expected to meet and that's reported year-over-year by the state and parents can view that on their child's individual report the Next Generation science standard um I'm sorry assessment that assessment is issued not in third grade it's beginning

099beginning in grade five so that's why you see fifth grade is the first um assessment and data set there again the same years and just like the chart above we have state and um durgen State average and then you would see that this assessment is um administered in grades 8 58 and 11 and the same if if you click on the chart you would see um and if you Arrow over to the left you would see the option again for the glossery where you can have a description of what the Next Generation science uh standard assessment is okay sat um again it's important to recognize that our students in Darian Public Schools take the SAT a number of times but what this is reporting out is the state's required sat school day assessment um that

100students take in the 11th grade and so again durg scores State scores and then going across you can see students are identified as high needs average score and the same thing there is a glossery uh definition or description of what this assessment is okay college board AP um we have identified the number of students that took an AP exam and the number of exams taken by students those are important data points because it's really important to open up access for students and it be encouraging our students to take AP exams so they have that experience of taking an AP or ECE a college level a rigorous course while they're still with us in the school system and then the final chart is students who are earning a level three four or five on the exam

101and again you have a description of um the assessment and again the AP exams are are discipline based so um the assessments vary quite a bit depart depending upon the department the Seal of biliteracy is a fairly new assessment in the state of Connecticut that we're issuing and we have included the number of students represented and the number of languages represented which is just another interesting data point um I did see that there's potential legislation that's being considered around a civic's seal of by literacy today I read so that's something um that I'll certainly be keeping our ey on with uh Dennis Cabrera our department chair for social studies and then the final assessment is the account ility index and remember this is what the state reports uh to school districts there are 12 indicators

102that include things such as Ela achievement Ela growth over time that's based on the smarter balance assessment mathematics the same growth growth over time they we also get um you get more points it's a a points based system you get more points for the growth that students are identified as high needs are demonstrating within there within their scores and their their achievement results um this accountability index also includes um information about for example the Connecticut physical fitness assessment um it includes access to the Arts on track for graduation post-secondary Readiness those are some of the other indicators that would be measured there and you can see that Daran is the yellow bar the the orange kind of bar is our D our neighbors and the blue bar is the state and so that's the uh

103percentage of available points earned and that's something that um I will review with the administrators as we get the feedback that's something something I look at with Mr manfredonia when we're looking at the Connecticut physical fitness assessment and how that's being implemented in the district and what our scores are looking like so it's a very that's a very comprehensive measure okay and as Dr adley mentioned there are guiding questions um that that we've issued in the memorandum for the board uh and administration to discuss and for the board to consider with regard to moving forward okay let's start with questions specific to the charts that we see and then let's move to the guiding questions yes Joanna I have like a bigger okay I wasn't on the board when we first had this presentation September

104although we rushed it today and I would say it's very very similar the one we just had and it looks like there's a lot of work that went into this I just am having trouble understanding how this dashboard helps the Board do its own work better these are for instance these are numbers that are updated once a year and always get presentations on them so we know what's going on um what is the goal of having the administration do this work and maybe even more work if we continue to to add to it so can you tie IM me specifically this work that we just looked at to the evaluation of goal one well as I mentioned before this these are um separately each you know One Singular data point so um we wouldn't be

105drawing you know this is kind of what they refer to as satellite data it's not Street data we wouldn't be drawing huge sweeping conclusions um we should be looking at this data to though inform curriculum adjustments for example we're talking about adjustments in the literacy curriculum in the area of writing and grammar so you would use it for something like that um so it's they're just again singular data points the other thing that I would would mention is I think there was some discussion of using this as and I can't remember which board member said it if it was maybe John or Dave or Greg was talking about like a PR measure so really just trying to make transparent and public what the um year-over-year kind of big picture achievement data of the district looks

106like if I recall that was part of the conversation so ultimately we support it but but ultimately the board wanted and has a goal to do metrics and to come up with metrics for uh potentially each of these goals um I'm happy to support it um as long as it's kept within context and and I think we will keep it within context but uh Dave so I had a picture question so at the bottom uh the last one where we're showing we had or I guess any of them where it has deran and then the durg and then the state so I know just pick yeah so that perfect so where I see those numbers and I see that 71 is the state average but 88 I think it's 88 whatever it is is the

107deran average does that state average everyone accept the dur and accept Darian or is that we're we're baked into that that's us bringing the state average up okay that's what I thought thanks you're welcome and then just one other followup question in terms of how much work like did you code all this I'm sorry did I did you code all this or like some thirdparty vendor just makes this for us I did not personally code all of okay I would be very impressed if I did so is this a ton of work for the admin or like we have somebody we have a source that we've contracted with that pumps us out so we so we have uh someone who works with our what we call our RTI Studio it's also the same person who

108uh does the teacher uh evaluation uh platform uh which we have sort of discussed transition away from that right um but uh currently he does this and um would be able to continue to do it no if we let him go right that but but I think I also saw when you clicked into this there's some other screens there that we're not looking at today there's other information that's available for management reporting correct yes to the admin and the staff so you guys basically you guys are doing this anyway for yourselves it's just question we choose to put it out uh it's helpful to get it corelated right um so this this is helpful both to us and and board and members of the community and I would say um really what we are doing

109is um the data that we would see there that's not the satellite like the big picture data more of the street data would be data that we would use to inform the mtss processes so for example as students maybe are struggling with core tier one literacy instruction um then we would want to be looking at multiple data points for those students in planning instruction in response to that right and I I don't think anybody's asking for drill down access and I think everyone's pretty happy having it aggregated yeah so this this we weren't doing anyway but the the other uses that I just described we were so this is just a roll up of that data yeah right yeah John so just to be clear this data I mean much of it's familiar to the

110board it just comes in different pieces and moral throughout the year so you know to Joanna's question I think when we first discussed this and created this strategy I mean it's a can't tell you how much time I waste trying to figure out where this memo was where this data point was and this is going to be a great source document not only for board members but for the community and staff members as well so um and it also fits with brilliantly with our uh board goal in the action steps so Katie thank you um so I also went back and watched the um the discussion and the presentation in September um Amy what is new and when you say what is new what do you mean like from from today what you guys are

111presenting us what what has changed changed what has been developed what has evolved from September with regard to this data dashboard um I would say there's more information I think there were some additional data points with regard to the dur averages that were included um and the the glossery definitions are new um and I think those are globally what the changes were thank you so um I think that the the glossery thing is nice um that's very help for context especially you know with all the acronyms um however I would encourage all board members to go back and watch and I'm happy to share the time stamps too to simplify in the link but the discussion last time had so many more questions about the limitations and about how you know this almost flies in

112the face of um modern educational philosophy Dr adley said in that discussion that educ today is really moving away from standardized testing you know we talked about um Shirley I had asked about this this category of high needs and it is just lumping everyone together and arbitrarily assigning a label to it um there I the discussion really identified more limitations than than what I think it's providing and one of the problems with that is that for us to put this out it it's really making uh it look as if our students are one-dimensional and that standardized testing is what we care about and that is how we measure their success and we talked about this before you know that it doesn't include things like model you it doesn't include things like being you know president

113of your class about you know um academic well not academic but um yes academic but also like string per form all of these other things that that you know and I went back and I looked at the vision of the graduate too trying to be like what are we trying to measure what are we going on and I couldn't find a single piece in the vision of The Graduate that mentions standardized testing and yet here we are calling this a dashboard saying that this is it and you know I mean I'm taking an a performance measurement and management class at NYU right now and the thing that we talk about all the time is that what gets measured gets managed and it almost looks like by just putting up these standardized testing scores this is

114how we're managing our students is to just rate on these scores so personally I have a big problem with us only doing this and it's troubling to me that in six months time we're now coming back for a second read and we haven't done any of those things that we talked about in terms of you know going Beyond a snapshot in time looking at the whole child soft skills um you know all of those other things um so I'm I'm curious to hear how other board members feel about this and you know I I am concerned about the resources that we that we put into this in in some ways I think metrics are helpful and it really can move us away from some of the really kind of subjective and nebulous conversations that we

115just had about those lengthy board goals however I really think we have to be so careful not to flatten our students into this one dimension I think um fundamentally I'm in agree with in agreement with a lot of what you're saying Katie and so far is I think that we do want to broaden our scope of what we're looking at in terms of how we talk about student achievement and we certainly want it to be a lot bigger than what this is what this came from was what we identified as the key performance indicators that're all listed on that goal area one and we did start with standardized tests as a place to begin the conversation this should absolutely be considered just the beginning um because your point is well taken um so I think

116you know this is it Consolidated in one spot and our the work in front of us is is to then agree to um moving forward what are other types we want other things we want to look at because what gets measured gets managed so I think we limited ourselves in the beginning just to provide a fairly discreet scope we did identify that kpos and that that makes sense to me except for the fact fact that six months has gone by and all we've added are a glossery and some dir comparisons so you know at that pace like how long are we looking before we can actually roll out what we would consider a robust well when when we go back to our goal areas for the following year we need to take a much more

117robust look at what we are calling kpis because we only identified these as the kpis and we were specifically limited um and again I agree with you that this is this is merely the starting point um and frankly the fact that we're seeing the dashboard again is really isn't that necessary it's just board members wanted it back um because there hasn't been a lot of we haven't shifted what we want to measure and there hasn't been a lot of additional work um it's helpful to see it's helpful to know it's helpful for us to be having a long longer term discussion about what we want to measure um but that is the work in front of us as we move forward and discuss what the kpis are underneath the different goals and which goal we

118want to Target next so maybe I'm sorry maybe I'm missing where the the direct link of the kpis is is that in this memo here that's this is the goal area one in the kpis right here but does so I'm sorry there I I have the materials but um thank you so so this is where we find it yeah okay so then like for example I I guess then I would say that perhaps partially in addition and to all the things that I said um I think that the kpis might be missing things too like for example you know there's nothing in here about grade point average there's nothing in here about the rigor of our classes and maybe even how they relate to other ones right how many students are taking honors classes there

119was something that said the number of AP exams that students sat for but we didn't even talk about how they scored on them right or how many students might be taking five in one year like that's an important measure as well right so I guess I would just say that I think with the incredible amount of work that both our staff and our students do I don't think that this you know scratches the surface I think we're all in agreement on that it it doesn't this was this was merely meant to begin the conversation it it has to continue from here go ahead Greg yeah I would just add I think that this was intended of being the starting point so this was like we need a framework that the board can look at you

120using the least amount of resources as possible to get that framework in place so these are like very readily available information that that the administration already has so was like all right let's see if we actually like what it looks like and see if the product is something that we actually think is important there's a totally separate conversation that you're talking about which I think I had actually circulated to the whole board a list of potential kpis soliciting feedback from the board to say what are what am I missing I'm not the expert in this but let's get everybody's you know in input into this things like what you're talking about I mean participation in theater participation in sports turnover for teachers there's all different metrics that we can think about that we as a

121board I would think would care about to be measuring how the district is doing and then as we're monitoring those it's not just about test taking it's about like what do we actually care about and we're paying attention to that we can identify oh wait something's going wrong here let's now you know hone in on that and focus so what so I guess my question then is when does that work happen because you know right now we've we've been six months have gone by and we're we're at the same place right and how how do we make that plan it it it happens as we de as we develop the next iteration of of it it's okay hold on it just it happens so when we go back to you're being so rude every meeting

122to everyone okay okay no it needs to be managed Jill my point is so do you then so stop it okay stop it my point is there's no plan though because k not understanding the plan we defined the plan it's goal area one we set up the kpis when we return to this goal next year we want to expand the kpis we might go into other goals and and add additional kpis so it's going to take us 10 years before we have no it is not we just what Greg just said we created a framework we now have a dashboard and then we go into next year and we start to build this out and so everyone is having a lot of patience right now and we need to continue to have it I'm going

123to take a breath it's not going to take us 10 years we just needed to get it started so I think the goal of this here is to tonight are we interested in a framework that involves data that is relatively public I would say yes this is a great starting point we move on from here yes Robin um I I agree with a lot of the points you're making Katie I think my what I had always thought was going to happen and the reason it didn't happen in the past six months was because the board decided that we still needed to discuss this one piece further and we did not ask the administration to expand into all other goals of the Strategic plan and come up with metrics at that point in time otherwise we

124could have looked at that expanded version today but I think that they've already put together a lot of work even in the memo about suggested kpis for the rest of the goals and what I would highlight is the goal three metrics about the showing a balanced definition of Student Success which is really the vision of The Graduate and how we can also highlight other aspects of our students and what they are achieving you know whether that's music or Arts highlights or athletic or clubs and stem participation and um citizenship and service aspects that all are part of vision of The Graduate comp competencies which could include students that are attending military acmy or OTC percentage of college attendance you know there are many different metrics that we can use to expand a bigger picture of

125student achievement which also goes hand inhand with what we as a board of education are being trying to evaluate ourselves on in terms of Effectiveness in showing growth and student achievement and so I think I personally think that having something like this in a central location which would have that kind of um basically a database or a highlights of all of those different things that coordinates specifically with our strategic planed goals is an effective way to at least show a snapshot and Trends in comparison to the dur if we have it over time to make sure that we are actually doing what we're trying to do and meeting our strategic goals um and we have work to do obviously because it it's not a test score and that's not a full version of what our

126students are so and I don't think this will take 10 years I've done exercises before like this and it took a year and it's very doable it it just comes down to what you agree on are the most important metrics and we want to make it manageable but most of this is already being generated anyway for our Board of Ed meetings by the you know in much more levels of detail so that's sort of my next question is this is low hanging fruit and that's why you pick these kpis um everything else seems a lot more involved how many more man hours does that take are you getting you know the counselors and the counseling office and putting that uh formative assessments are done and the teachers keep them like in their own books in

127their room right to see that it's not really formalized or is it put in a big database somewhere that they can just um scrub so how much more time and effort of Staff does it take to expand this outwards it depends on what we decide we want to do so that would be a question for the board to determine working with staff what do we want the kpis to be how manageable are they how achievable are they what kind of effort would it take to get there and that's a conversation we'll need to have as we go into developing the next year um setting the right parameters and so then the other part of this is that after this discussion we're not really doing any work on it until we go back to the board

128goals for the next school year unless it correct unless we decide I me I think probably it makes sense pretty quickly for people to start looking at kpis um in preparation for writing the next strategic plan I don't think we want to put the plan in front of us and then say Oh wait what do we want the kpis to be so um but we need to figure out really that should come from Administration first I think John and then Dave yeah I mean it I think it's pretty simple I'm answering your question Katie um I do want to see this these are data points we get throughout the year participation rates in sports and the Arts and you know and to put it in one spot and be able to then dissect and get

129into the underlying data I think is hugely valuable to not only us uh but also the community and I see you Sarah I think I said Dave and then Sarah I just want to say I like this okay Sarah um I I don't necessarily have a problem with the with the general idea I do feel like I want to be very cognizant of our our um staff's time um I also want to be sure that what we are identifying as our kpis which I don't like that term with education but whatever um I think we have to be cognizant also to think about what is helpful to you all and what identifying what you what data points you think would be helpful to you for you to help growth uh it's not the nine of

130Us coming up with ideas it's it's I I would like that conversation to come from you all personally so so clearly um we would drill down and do drill down Beyond This and like we left out grade four right um because we wanted to do the start of this Pro process and then the ending of the educational experience I want to make sure our young people at the end of the table here and we represent all the kids that that they be valued for more than their academic performance and that they the culture and the climate that actually promotes that and they actually feel that however the fundamental purpose of Education in our country right the fundamental purpose is for teaching and learning and for students to learn this is just one I would be

131the first person to go crazy about that's like it's too much okay um now this is going to you can go to most districts in our dark and you won't see any of this right so you're sort of this is a new sort of territory a little bit I don't mind it in this context for this particular goal teaching lard there are other ones that you said Robin that I think we can and need to capture some other things maybe um and I think we can do that but so I think for us it's reasonable um this is our response back and just we didn't really change and I think you said that too because I didn't think we we needed to change it until we had this open discussion like and had the time

132to have this discussion uh but I most certainly and evaluating the performance of the district and our students and our staff would be uh recommending we we we do all this stuff okay yes Greg that I would just follow with a few comments I think um number one like I agree with some of the things Dr Ali said in terms of um like where this is headed where we want it to be from a timing perspective I think that like we definitely don't want the administration to do a ton of work on this so not just in terms of like putting it together so if we all come up with kpi and the nomenclature can be whatever we want if we want to call it a teaching and learning dashboard we can change the nomenclature

133I think I came up with that because that's what I use in business um we can do that but I think that we really need feedback from the administration on those as hey this piece of data is going to take us three weeks to or four weeks to come up with okay well maybe we just cut it from from the dashboard right I think that's where we can give them feedback and I think that rather than having them guess of what we think is important we should provide some of that perspective and I think I took a first cut at that so that will also help cut to the chase in terms of not making them uh spin their wheels um but I do think we do absolutely need their input into this of what

134they think is important um to make sure that we're capturing everything yeah and I I also think it looks great okay okay so is there consensus on the use of metrics for strategic goal one that this is based on what we've defined I think that's a a yes okay when you say complete and publish what do you where do you mean publish on our website yes yes okay is this actually ready to publish does it have updated data yeah the data is updated yes it's ready relatively ready to go y okay is anybody uncomfortable publishing it I I disagree with this exercise in general as it stands so I'm basically a no to all of this okay thank you uh it will be published and anyone else disagree no is your question whether the current

135dashboard will be published or the general concept of the dashboard being published we agree with current well this these guiding questions are specific to the current dashboard Alan if I read this right the question is are we going to put a link to this on the Arian Public School web District website right we it also may be may be incorporated actually in goal one Strate the teach and learning goal and strategic plan may also be linked there you can go to it right you know when you H the but this is just a question it's going to go somewhere in the DPS website and that's as we saw it tonight I I do think there's a question of whether it it should be published like now as it currently stands or after we actually go

136through the exercise of finalizing with the KP with the whatever you want to call I'm sorry sorry you mean for all of them from all the other areas or for just well um like I take Katie's point if we just published this does that present the wrong picture versus getting some additional things in here before it's published I also think that there's going to be additional things that may not we may not want to have published so it's not necessarily like everything needs to be published versus not okay Robin I I just one question I mean do we want this to be a public yeah thing on our website that anyone Across the Nation could pull up because I'm just saying private schools have a portal where parents log into a portal to see data

137that's involving students and that's the reason I'm asking it it's public already we put we put it all it depends depends what the the need data being broken out is one question that I do have because I don't know if that's generally um publicly available I don't know it's all on Ed site yeah that information is on Ed site okay as well but I think what I hear Sarah saying is that depending upon the kpis that are determined some of that information might not be public right because that might be more specific to daring in public schools right I I guess my question is would it me in the near- term maybe be more appropriate to have this as a something that's generated in the context of a normal annual board meeting meeting uh I

138I don't know until we flush it out more fully and I maybe I'm in the minority here I I don't know that's just a question Dave so slightly different take is I'd kind of like to see this put up there and see how people react to it see what the reaction is and I don't want to let Perfection be the enemy of the good and again I see this as being an iterative process between one of the resources the district has to work on this what are the data sets available where do our goals change as we work through our process next year so this is a starting point it's not perfect it's a little snapshot let's put it up and see how people react and we may get feedback from the community that helps

139inform us and we have a better process going forward I think to that point the the word snapshot stuck stuck out to me like I think if if you if it's public which I all this information is public you can go on edite and find it um but I would like there to be some sort of you know der and Public Schools is very you know understands that this is a snapshot that we do not you know something to the point of making it one dimensional position it the right way and it would be received differently than correct like if we just like look at how great we are and this is the only measure like but if there's a way to you know y but eventually it could it could be a tool right

140it can be a tool for you know getting teachers to come to the district for other things I mean there's a lot of upside benefit that I could see once this thing is fully okay so it sounds like we are at consensus with publicizing in some capacity but with with the with the disclaimer that this of some sort partial some context okay uh so it would be visible to the public hous on the website is it a link inside of the Strategic plan or is it does it have its own I I would probably consider both actually just because it's attached to the teaching and learning so if you're in there you could just hyperlink it to go right to the website and you can also have it as a separate link to the website

141okay okay and then I think we've covered that there is a desire to expand the use of metrics to other goal areas uh going into next year do you want board members to provide thoughts or ideas on some of those metcs in addition um no not n if you ask me honestly right unless the board wants to timeline this for so um I think this is enough for goal area one to start with and maybe go to Katie's question I don't the pace of it may but it's it's a spring we're rolling into the spring uh just what we have in front of us I'm not so sure that so next fall is kind of what you target well we could do we could certainly do work over the summer summer got okay I was

142just talking about list of symmetrics for the goals two through seven well if the board wants to send me some with the understanding we can make uh we can collect that information and use that that's okay um did just so that you can make a decision about can you please resend me your email I'll I'll just recirculate just resend it send to the board and then um people are welcome to send direct feedback and it's just it's just information for you guys to have when you actually craft Greg is that is that the one for um uh the orinal one or is this for the other areas you're talking about I don't think it's changed since I mean there was it was September I I can't remember it was a while ago when I sent

143it it was I had gotten actually feedback from sub members already so I I put it out there that's that's that one but but if there's any if you can expand that into the other areas some of those we get spiced into the other areas but if you look at the other areas now and think that okay there's data that f it that's fine all right thank you all discussion on January 2025 financial report and possible action on proposed budget transfers Rich uh so this is financial report through January uh we are forecasting a deficit of 47,6 198 uh with general education RC's forecasted at a positive 15331 and the special education RC is forecasted at a deficit of 63,0 29 um as Dr rley mentioned um the house and the Senate did vote to

144approve today uh adding $40 million to the fiscal year 25 excess cost um budget however the governor still needs to support that um early indications are that he might be it however there um it was passed with such support it could be the veto could be overridden if that does go through uh the reimbursement rate would go from 59.96 to 72.8 which is a swing of $53,000 and so the deficit would go from 47,6 198 to a surplus of $456,000 goes through uh moving forward to salaries salaries are forecasted at a positive 13,956 um we do have slight salary savings of 3600 some Savings in clubs and councils of just over 7,800 uh moving to operating at a district tuition is forecasted at a positive balance of 22427 um moving forward to fix we do

145have a slight positive balance of 1,377 and that is uh payroll taxes associated with some turnover and salary savings uh Revenue um currently at the 59.96 uh it would be a deficit of $287,700 legislation does pass um that would end up turning into a positive balance um that money would be only for fiscal year 25 there is no allocation for fiscal year 26 the governor's budget does propose an allocation though for fiscal year 27 um and then as mentioned earlier there are no transfers for the month of January any questions on the financial report Katie thank you um I did watch the finance subcommittee meeting but I don't believe that this um component was discussed which I wanted to ask about the food service financial statement so I know you had listed in the line

146item that there was um around like a $2,000 deficit but that that included a transfer of $67,000 and and the year is ongoing so um in the financial statement which I think is page 99 of the packet um first I want to confirm that this that the last column should say fiscal year 25 year to date right that that's our current year okay so then my question for you is what is can you can you just can you just I guess walk us through the transfer on the operating and then also um the the impact and plans for the fund balance sure um so as part of the board's fiscal year 25 budget uh they board did vote to take any profits from that fund this year as a revenue offset to the board's operating

147budget um so the first transfer was done in January is that's when the fund became relatively cash flow positive um that's funding things like lunch Bonners at the elementary school and then a a roughly $200,000 facilities offset um so the goal for this year is to operate at a zero balance um typically you do want to have a fund balance within the Food Service account in order to fund things like startup costs equipment if it goes down if you recall earlier in the year we did have a freezer go down at token um you don't have the ability with food service to you know wait for an appropriation process to you know get a freezer or refrigerator whatever those might be so you do want to have to carry a fund balance um we are

148at the point where the fund balance has grown to approximately $600,000 which is a good place um and so we're trying to manage having a fund balance in that 500 to 600,000 range and the reason for um the transfer exceeding um like taking essentially into a loss that number is estimated to net out by the end of the year or correct so uh we always start the year in the Food Service account at a deficit we have to pay the pension costs for the historical employees that have been here um you know startup cost food cost uh we start to become cash flow positive in January and then typically March is when we actually have our biggest month because there are no holidays in March we have full serving days typically you don't have any

149inclement weather days um and so you'll start to see slow transfers going forward and the hope is to be in that roughly zero range at the end of the year and then for next year the plan with the profit so it's the same thing as fiscal year 25 so the budget for fiscal year 26 calls for that profit to come back to the board's budget and that's an annual decision correct R um if if we did end up with a over a $500,000 Surplus at the end of the year is there any opportunity for us to for example purchase some technology equipment with that Surplus so new this year uh the state legislature did pass um a that allows Board of EDS to create what's called a non-aps account before you could create a non-aps

150account but you had to have the fiscal Authority sign off on it so in this case the board of finance and the RTM if the board of Ved has to essentially have two steps one is you're going to have to vote sometime in the spring whether or not you want to establish a non-aps account um and then when the yearend financials happen um you vote to actually deposit money into that non-aps account whatever that money is if there is money um the alternative is if you don't want to have a decide let's say in May or June that it looks like we're going to have a balance and maybe we want to spend some of it on vionics or laptops or whatever it might be uh you could vote to have a transfer buy those

151items and then whatever the balance is you could still return to the town if you choose not to have a non and what would the benefit of be do doing a non-aps account so the non-aps account gives you the uh the benefit of time um so when you do a transfer for the end of the year you have to have everything obligated by June 30th right so um you could have some small swings in June whether it be like electricity or overtime things like that that could change the forecast um having a non-aps account can maybe give you a little bit more time to give a little bit more thought in terms of what you want that money to go to maybe it is a you Sonics maybe it's a reading program maybe it's PD

152whatever the options are typically if you're going to have a non-aps account what you don't want to fund is reoccurring expenses so typically Personnel because it's nonapical educa you might keep that as a reserve for special educ maybe you have a swing in out of District tuition and then you can draw on that account to fund that um but typically you'll want to use that for non-reacting but it would not have an exploration this is a bigger discussion we should have um in this rink we just could go for a while yeah go Katie um so rich my understanding was that the um the fund balance from the Food Service were um earmarked to be used for for food service projects um and there's been discussion at facilities in particular about using those Monies to

153um transition our other cafeterias and the six buildings back to a sustainable model uh is is that no longer the case that so what what we talked about in facilities um was there would be reoccurring costs associated with moving to sustainable uh project because we would have to hire chart Wells would have to hire dishwashers uh so right now token and oxridge have that model but the other five schools do not um so what we talked about in facilities was if the board chose to go in that direction you would likely have to raise food price food cost sales um that we charge students and then if you wanted to do that that revenue generated would then pay for the dishwasher the employee not the physical equipment um and the fund balance would be used

154to purchase the actual equipment where it's like the dishwasher and the plumbing and the piping and the electrical Etc um some of the schools like Kinley we did talk about are not really designed to have that structure in place and so at some point if the board wants to go in that direction uh the board's going to have to decide whether or not they want to raise the price of meals right that that all is um is consistent with my understanding my question though was I thought that there was some sort of stipulation about the monies from Food Service being reinvested back into that so you can use uh the money for anything that's associated with the cafeteria so what we're using these excess profits for are lunch monitors cuz there uh in the cafeteria

155and it's in the facilities budget because it's cleaning of the caet so that doesn't prevent those monies from potentially being swept into a non-line account though to be used for any purpose no so when we move the money from the Food Service account into the board's budget we're earmarking it against the expenditure so what you see here is the payments to the lunch monitors as the expense and then we've moved the essentially the payments the the equal revenue of what the lunch monitors no I understand that it's just that going forward it would still be the same thing it would oh correct yeah so the money would stay in the Food Service account what thank y just point for clarification Robin you were talking about the general um Surplus yeah yes if thecr $40 million

156gets approved that was all I was asking about okay uh there are no transfers so we will uh move on thank you all uh this is a second read further discussion and possible action on proposed revisions to Board of Education policies 5075 recess and play based learning 6710 field trips and 1330 Community Partnership March so I didn't re I hav't received any comments either yes okay so there were no questions on the um on the first policy um 5075 but I did rewatch the meeting about the field trip policy so I'm a little unclear what direction we want to go on that policy yeah we haven't taken it up or had any further discussions at the subcommittee level so there's nothing really new to add so it's a second read I'm not sure hopefully we

157should have a meeting between now and it comes up again well this is the second read though right so we said the gift policy is going back to policy but that this one if we don't have any comments then I guess it stands as is for Action got yes it does stand for Action tonight unless somebody disagrees all right with that may I have a motion to approve the proposed revisions to board policies policy 5075 recess and play based learning policy 6710 field trips policy 1330 Community Partnership as presented Sarah seconded by Dave all those in favor that's unanimous okay uh followup action items so Greg's going to resend his email from tonight I think that's the only action item from here any questions on this what email the one with metrics oh right yeah

158okay uh public comment good evening if anybody in person or online would like to participate in public comment please approach 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 we have no raised hands at this time okay may I please have a motion to adjourn that's Joanna