Board of Education Meeting - September 26, 2023

001foreign [Music] great thank you good evening everyone thank you for joining us this evening thank you for those in person and thank you for those folks on Zoom I would like to call this regular meeting of the Board of Education to order the next regular Board of Education meeting is on Tuesday October 10th at 7 30 pm and the Board of Education meeting room I want to thank you again all for coming this evening the board just finished our board interviews with seven candidates uh thank you for all uh for stepping up and looking to stay involved and in some instances to get involved in the district I will say that it was a great group of candidates they were great interviews people that are committed to the passion and dedication of continuing to drive

002an incredible educational system in the district the candidates that were interviewed were Brittany Erickson Adrian Kelly Niti Larson Jeff Machi Peter McGinnis Robin Nelson and Bill verdenberg as I've always said this town is a leader in volunteerism and we cannot do all the hard work on these boards without people stepping up with their time and knowledge that enable us to have a high performing leading District in the state usually number one and in the top 150 nationally this is all backed by a well-run town with a sound fiscal approach focused on investing in education and our facilities in terms of the process around this I've read at a previous meeting in the opening of the special session board policy series 9100 legal status of board policy 9160 filling vacancies on the board which outlines the

003responsibilities of the board also over the course of the last week there were Communications with the newspaper with the website at the district level PTO cdsp and the Republican Town committee I want to thank them for all our help through this process and through the communication channels where we wanted to make sure we connected with the parents and the community all this was reviewed and guidance given by our town by our board attorney who deemed this all to be a best practice and fully transparent we accepted applications through Monday spoke to each candidate and outlined the process confirmed the interview schedule and next steps for the appointed candidate all candidates were confirmed through town hall to be registered Republicans and residents of Darien registered Republicans to fill a seat that was a republican seat these

004applicants all decided to interview an executive session which was their choice and following the close of the special meeting now that we're in a regularly scheduled meeting we'll move to a point of person to fill the current board vacancy this person will then get sworn in a town hall over the course of the next few days and will be seated at the regular Board of Education meeting on Tuesday October 10th at 7 30 pm this outlines the process and the hard work that the board has done in fulfilling its Board of Ed responsibilities for our policy and state statute and again I want to thank you for all the candidates I think through the interviews um the one theme that I thought was fascinating was there was a generational component to the people that stepped

005up and that they're here because their husband grew up here or their wife grew up here or their parents were here so it was fun to hear that generational component of it and then folks that just want to get involved so we encourage them to continue to stay involved we're always looking for good volunteers and as I said this town is driven by volunteers so with that I will move to a point Robin Nelson to serve the term ending November 2024 vacated by Tara worm do I have a second Dennis all those of Fate all those in favor of that appointment raise their hand that is brown uh Loveland Maroney parent and Julie best incini that is unanimous with board current board members thank you very much again thank you everyone that participated in the

006interview process it was enlightening uh it actually was energized I think in terms of their people and their passion congratulations Robin she's been a die-hard volunteer um in her volunteer career here in Darien and we welcome her to the board in short order and I think she will become a very productive member of this very productive board so thank you and quick congratulations to Robin [Music] [Applause] we will move over over to the chairperson's report um I think I said a lot of what I was going to say teeing up to the process here um the only thing I'll continue to say is we continue to appreciate the parents that have reached out to us and allowing the board to respond to the policy that I've gone over through this process it's important that we

007continue to educate as many people as possible so we appreciate that the nice recurring theme we heard from interview candidates was continue to work on communication which we are we've got a great commercial communication team and that's what we'll continue to do um I also want to thank um those folks that have emailed the board recently around looking at earlier start times for Darien High School our neighbors in New Canaan have implemented this and I think it's an important um thing to look at I think when the new board is seated in November it would be nice to hear from the administration when they're ready to start the conversation around what that looks like um I think it is a uh it's a big project I would say it's something that we have to think

008of what we need from a staffing standpoint to even look at the process I would say it's more than a year but maybe not two years I think it's always fair to try and set expectations the good news is we have our neighbors next door that we can work with and understand what they did looks like they pushed back by 30 minutes their start time so I think it's important to look at and I appreciate all the information and probably some people speaking tonight look our goal is to always look out for our students their health their safety their well-being anxiety and stress so it's something that the board will try and look at with the overall agenda but I think initially to get some guidance from the administration just some things to think about

009as you go down as we go down this path um in looking at something like this it really does start to impact all the contracts um so that's something to keep in mind we're finishing up negotiations of one contract right now but changing times has the potential to impact contracts we'd have to look at the change of Elementary School times it affects the bus contract it affects busing there's one estimate this has been looked at um over the years that I've been on the board if we did nothing but change the timing of the high school and did nothing with the other schools we would need nine additional buses to the tune of a million dollars a year just to accommodate that change in the high school change in time so stuff that we have

010to think about and stuff we have to look at there's not a lot of bus drivers out there there's short two bus drivers and getting buses is a whole other situation you have to look at after school activities Sports art music clubs they're all affected and someone actually said to me too you know students that work after school that starts to change I think these are all points that we need to think about and consider as the administration and the board potentially look at these earlier start times I think it's important to set the right expectations around staff contracts schedules and the capacity for the administration and the board to take on the work but thank you again for participating in these meetings emailing and being part of the process um it's important for the

011board as we move forward so with that Michelle um we'll move on to public comment we'll start with people that are in the audience here Michelle if you want to go over good evening if you would like to participate in public comments you'll have up to three minutes to comment please state your name and address for the record uh my name is Crystal Hill I am the co-chair of cbsp this year and I live at 300 Brookside Road we would like to address the recent inclusion of cbsp in the proposed policy 6220 regarding challenges to instructional materials cvsp is not nor has ever been a political organization while we appreciate the board and administration recognizing that we are impartial the proposed appointment of cbsp to place parents on the superintendent's Review Committee must be respectfully

012declined cdsp is focused on the health and well-being of our students which in turn extends to us supporting our teachers and administrators in all Southern buildings and central office identifying parents for this particular function does not help us support students and has the potential to turn neighbor versus neighbor we feel this responsibility would deter our organization from its stated purpose and objectives whether to place any parents on the Review Committee is a matter for the board to decide but cdsp will not be involved in the committee of or the decisions on who sits on the committee should parents be included thank you thank you for speaking this evening anyone else in the audience sure please step up to the podium thank you Facebook if you just make sure that microphone is we have some folks

013on a lot of folks on Zoom thank you uh can everyone hear me all right hi everyone uh my name is Andrew turiago I'm wearing my Darien Library hat uh I teach sixth grade English at Middlesex middle school and I've been teaching in Darien since 2016. uh first time caller long time listener uh I'm here to ask the board for any help they can offer with an ongoing initiative that I know will help our students for decades to come as of next year every incoming sixth grader at MMS will have the opportunity to be automatically enrolled for and receive a Darian library card for the past four years it was MIA orobona of the Darien Library and the other Librarians have generously and patiently helped the sixth grade students and teachers with a library card

014signups our work would never have been possible without them the built-in inefficiency of this process multiple forms for students and adults to keep track of large amounts of data entry that must be done by hand was frustrating and best and labor intensive at worst we plan to put this automatic system into practice as a single item on our new student intake forms for new sixth graders so that even at the start of the year just the name of a student in the darien Public Schools will allow them to check out books importantly parents with privacy concerns could easily opt out on that same form imagine every single student having access to thousands of books audiobooks ebooks and other Learning Materials all from their Chromebook for free from day one to me that sounds like a

015fantastic way to better use our Town's resources school districts like Boston Chicago and New York City have already switched to automatic enrollment in the last few years and they found tremendous secondary benefits to that arrangement in places as far flung as test scores reading as a protective factor for kids against depression and Community Building putting it into place here would ensure that the partnership between MMS and the Darien Library never ever expires implementing automatic enrollment will remove barriers to much needed resources save time and will be an incredibly wise investment in all of our students futures I'm happy to say that I've already seen and heard pretty wide support for this from Carolyn and our Administration and our goal again is to have this ready for the next school year I want to thank the

016board for the help they've already offered and getting this rolling and for the future administrative support I know that any Endeavor of this size needs to happen thank you thank you for speaking thank you for keeping the focus on reading Mr tariago do you have just a a town that you're from for the minutes uh yeah thank you thank you good evening [Music] 's techwin Collins and I live at three Circle Road my husband and I have three children in the darien School System One in high school one in middle school and one in elementary I appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening to speak with you and I thank you for your service for our youth and our community I'm here to request a later school start time of 8 30. we implemented

017at Darien High School ideally for the 24-25 school year in high and that topic be added as an agenda item before the end of this year prior to this meeting I submitted a one-page document to each of you outlining key facts that support a later school start time this include links to the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for a school start of 8 30 or later and other relevant research like other parents my priority is the health and well-being of my children with the current Mental Health crisis among our youth preventative and supportive actions are critical I commend you all for the work that you have done in taking Swift action to hire the director of mental health to help raise awareness of mental health and to implement programs that will help give kids in

018crisis the support they need but what if there was a policy we could Implement that would measurably reduce the number of kids who feel sad depressed or even contemplate suicide in the first place as they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and what if that same single policy would reduce the number of teen driving accidents and teen substance use and what if that's saying single policy would also lead to improved academic performance I can't think of a parent who wouldn't support a policy that would offer all those benefits to their children in fact in just three weeks of Grassroots Outreach by a few individuals more than 164 parents have expressed their support for a later school start time that's 15 more than when I emailed my comments yesterday the evidence

019is clear that a later school start time is the right choice sometimes the right choice is the hard Choice as I appreciate the logistical challenges of buses Sports and school activities good news is that many other districts including Wilton Westport Greenwich and New Canaan have made this change we know it's possible and we can benefit from their experience in figuring out how to make it happen in Darien when it's a question of the health and safety of our children we have seen our Board of Education Act quickly and demonstrate creativity collaboration and solutions oriented thinking to make the right choice with the later school start time we have an opportunity to make a policy change that will benefit every team in our school district we also have the opportunity to role model the skills highlighted

020in the vision of The Graduate and show our youth what creative problem-solving leadership looks like when the right choice is the hard choice but we act with integrity and do it anyway because it is the right thing to do thank you thank you for speaking this evening anyone else in the audience thank you Michelle anyone on Zoom if anyone on Zoom would like to participate in public comment please use the raised hand icon no race fans at this time okay thank you public comment at the end again thank you again for all those that spoke we will move on to the superintendent's report Dr adley hi good evening everyone thank you for those who are in attendance in person and those who are participating online I just want to congratulate four of our publicly congratulations

021four of our DHS students who are recognized as semi-finalists in the National Merit Scholarship program they are Grant wine Sydney Sydney Guth [Music] this represents uh their success as representative less than one percent of the high school seniors across the country in the background of the of the photograph uh we have Darren high school counselors uh Caitlin Stanton and branca and Peter Trombley so we wish our students uh good luck as they progress to the National Merit Scholarship finalists uh process I'd also like to recognize three members of the high school World Language Department who have been selected uh to present at the acpfl conference in Chicago in November this is a World Language conference uh Veronica Lima Christina Donegan um and Christina Mauricio the topics are for which they're presented on are interested on

022the football pitch host the World Cup and the other one is uh break the fourth wall instructional rounds in the language arts program uh moving on to uh our student representative we have a junior uh finalist for the open Student representative position I'll be interviewing on Thursday assuming that all goes well uh the chairman and I will meet and provide an orientation for the student uh prior to the next board meeting want to thank all the parents who participated uh the one house of this nation not only just to open this year regularly in a regular process but open the doors to our parents it was just wonderful to see so many people uh in the schools uh I think it was good for the parents to get together again and see each other again

023in that particular set but thank you for your partnership with the school administration the school teachers and support staff uh update on the track uh we expect to be finished in about a week if not earlier if not a wee bit earlier than that so uh weather permitting we're in good shape back to the board thank you uh begin to get uh feedback on the cave camps convention if you're interested in tendon November 17th and 18th I just left with Nadine or I I know the Ox Ridge grand opening ribbon cutting uh publicly is for Saturday uh October 7th at 10 A.M with a variety of China facials media students and members of the community who will be attending just a reminder that they'll be participating with the time and supporting Saturday October 22nd which

024is the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention out of the darkness walk in Westport and two more open houses this week and so we've got middle uh Middlesex on Wednesday and Thursday we get Middlesex grade set grade seven and do we have you to thank for the weather Dr Bradley were you missing home and decided to send Irish weather our way over the last four or five days there you go that's right that's right in terms of getting the track complete those guys are worth seven days a week to get that done so all good thank you we will move on to the student representative reports Spa it's so good to see you as always good to see you too maybe by the next meeting you'll have a partner in crime now sitting next to you

025good um so not much has changed at Darien High School since our last meeting but we had our open house last Thursday uh during which uh students in the National Honor Society had a chance to volunteer and show our parents around the school um and the Darien High School Club fair is tomorrow during our lunch blog and this is just for students to kind of explore what different clubs are available to them and what they want to join and um the students were obviously extremely appreciative of the wellness weekend slash reading weekend we had this past um extended weekend and so we got a break from homework and studying so which was nice good thank you I always appreciate it we'll move on to approval of the minutes um they have a motion to approve

026the minute to the special meeting and regular meeting held on September 12 Dennis Maroney second by uh Julie best all those in favor that is unanimous it's all present thank you we'll move on to board committee reports uh John so last Thursday the finance committee uh met and we closed out uh with Richard's help uh the fiscal year 23 um books in uh ritual highlight a large sum of money that was returned to the talent out of that budget and then we reviewed our August 20 August September um fiscal year um I'm sorry our fiscal August 23 Financial update for the fiscal year 24. um unfortunately we're starting the year out with a bit of a deficit ritual also run us through and then we have some recommended transfers uh that we need to uh

027take this evening good thank you John another board for me reports Dave policy subcommittee that on Friday September 15th and later tonight you'll be hearing on the first reading of three policies from that meeting thank you Dave anyways good all right thank you um we'll move on to presentations and discussions we'll start out with the presentation on thriving use youth survey Miss Georgia Harrison from thriving youth thank you and welcome good evening everyone um thank you to the board thank you Dr adley for having us here today my name is Georgette Harrison I am a child psychotherapist by training and I have a I'm the director of clinical and Community Partnerships at the Child Guidance Center of Southern Connecticut I also have a private practice in New Canaan but more importantly I'm the survey committee

028co-chair for thriving youth area and alongside Amy Daniels who's here today with me so again thank you so much for uh having us here so that we can share with you the results of the student survey um that we conducted in 2023 so for those of you who are not aware just really briefly I realize we have a full agenda today so I will be I'll keep it very brief but uh thriving you Australian is a volunteer Coalition that convenes local community organizations to support and Empower positive Youth Development with the ultimate goal of reducing substance use it was founded in 2008 and this is now our ninth year of grant funding focused on substance use prevention and reduction and in 2021 we were awarded a five-year drug-free Community Grant by the CDC that brings

029in 125 000 each year to continue our prevention work so the youth survey was completed for the first time in 2008 and this is now our sixth iteration and this year we surveyed 6 to 12th graders all surveys were Anonymous parents had the option to review the questions beforehand and opt out if they wanted to and what's new this year is that we selected questions from the regional youth survey question Data Bank which allows us to be able to compare our results to other local towns that also were using the questions from that data Bank um we also included additional demographic questions including whether gender identity as well as sexual orientation which allowed us to both follow best practices but also allow us to really fine tune and take a look at the data to

030see how we can support every single child in Darien we also added risk and protective Factor questions so things like how were kids committing their time their knowledge about mental health and substance use resources were they ever to need it their sense of connectedness to others and we also asked questions around risk factors so things like gambling social media use disordered eating and suicidal ideation as you can see from the the data here and I'll just sort of briefly tell you more themes since you have the data in front of you we had a pretty good response rate we're always really happy when we can approach 80 percent we had approximately 79 response rate with 11th and 12th graders having the lowest response rates but we were actually quite happy that our 11th and 12th

031graders were actually had higher response rates than surrounding towns so we're really happy about the data um there was an equal distribution among male and females and then 1.5 percent of the youth that responded to the survey identified as either non-binary or something else and nine percent of the youth identified as being part of the lgbtq plus community so you can see the vast majority of uh the respondents identified as white eight percent is multiracial then in lower numbers Asian or Asian American black or African-American native Hawaiian Pacific Islander and about 10 of the youth identified as Hispanic or latinx so in terms of the individual protective factors we were very happy to see it but the amount of strengths um that our youth have in town um they are feeling very connected to trusted

032adults they're developing a sense of purpose in life um very importantly they know where to get help where they can need it or if someone that they know needs it so they 75 or 71 said that they knew where to go if they were struggling with a mental health issue or with a substance use issue they're also engaged in productive activities what was what we were really happy about in terms of the individual protective factors is that the 80 percent that are reporting having a connection to a trusted adult that went up from two years ago where 68 said that they had a connection to a trusted adult so we're we were very very happy about that in terms of community protective factors um the the vast majority of the youth that responded to the

033survey are feeling safe in the spaces where they move around so things like um they feel safe in the community they feel safe at school uh the vast majority of them reported high levels of Love support and acceptance from their family and um but they felt like the their peers in school cared about them now I do want to know and I'll go over the data a little bit later that there is a group of students for whom this is not a protective factor for them yeah we also have um some risk factors right and so the reason why we want to take a look at both protective factors and risk factors is because we're really focused on trying to help our children Thrive and be resilient and we can't do that um by if

034we don't consider both all the good things that are going on in their life but also all the sort of Adverse Events or risk factors that are in their community so some of the ones that were identified and that we asked about this year were um you know some reported that they were feeling badly about themselves after the use of social media uh the negative consequences due to gaming um uh some reported engaging in gambling activities mostly online betting and I'll walk you through our two major risk factors which are the mental health concerns and substance use so this is a chart that shows alcohol use in the past 30 days as you can see there was not much that was reported at the sixth grade and then we see a little bit um we

035start to see some use in seventh and eighth grade where we see the biggest jumps are when they're going from middle school into high school so ninth grade and then the second biggest jump is at the 12th grade so again this in terms of us being able to think as a community about what are some really critical periods to uh really double down on messages around teen drinking we know that we have to start early and talk often with our kids about substance use now we also wanted to show Trends over the years so here you see 2018 2021 and 2023 same question asked on all three surveys anyone reporting a 30-day alcohol use so as you can see in 2021 the numbers dropped and then in 2023 the numbers went back up we hypothesized

036the last time that we did this that a lot of the drop in substance use reporting was due to um social distancing requirements and you know things related to the covet so you know not a lot of parties going on not a lot of opportunities or access to alcohol so nationally we have seen this same Trend that in 2023 alcohol use went back up as sort of you know teens started to go around and you know have more parties and socialize as they used to but I do want to call your attention to really comparing 2018 to 2023 and you see that we're starting to move the needle in the right direction so for example at the 12th grade in 2018 61 of them were reporting 30-day alcohol use but this time around 50 percent

037were reporting 30-day alcohol use and we see that every single grade the numbers went down this year compared to 2018. so we also want to know how what are our sort of therian's uh Norms around drinking and how how do we compare it to other towns so I do want to note that here all of these are all towns who have surveyed this year except for Trumbull who's getting ready the survey this year in November but trumbull's data is from 2021. so you can see that at the high school level where that our rates are pretty comparable to other towns um and but if we take a look for example at the 12th grade our rates of 30-day alcohol use are higher than other towns around us so we really want to use this data

038point to really dispel the myth that you know drinking is just sort of a normative part of development and that this is just what seniors are going to do we see that that's not necessarily the case in every town can I just ask you real quick where on that slide this new Kanan participated in a similar type survey no New Canaan has opted not to participate in a similar survey good thank you much so in terms of a 30-day uh past substance use we are also really happy to see marijuana marijuana rates go down tobacco rates go down prescription drug use go down and particularly nicotine vaping has gone down this is also a trend that we've seen nationally particularly around all the education that has um been delivered around the dangers of uh vaping

039nicotine true I mean that that drop is just like precipitous yes or is there any read through on the marijuana nicotine is there a read through from what caused that from 2018 to 2021 I mean it's just and you said it was nationally we've seen it is there any insight there well um I think for Vaping in particular I mean if you think back to 2018 it was all the rage right I mean you couldn't go anywhere without um seeing someone with a vape I think the amount of Education that has gone out in terms of vaping not being safer than smoking cigarettes has really made an impact where um you know I think some people think that really the teams that are still vaping nowadays are really teams who are now addicted to nicotine

040um and that that's why we can we've seen that drop but not necessarily you know we haven't been able to move the needle as much to get it down to zero um but I think it's the amount of Education that's gone around and I think that the average team can can tell you that no it's not as safe as um um you know smoking a cigarette so in terms of what the youth uh shared the top three reasons why they're drinking were to have fun peer pressure and because alcohol was readily available and interestingly the older they got the more likely they were to say that they were drinking in order to have fun or because of peer pressure so I think that gives us a lot of information about how we can really arm

041our teens as they go out and even as they become older and we think that maybe we've had these conversations enough times we know that we need to really arm them with more strategies to combat things like peer pressure or find alternative ways to have fun that don't include alcohol the top three places that they said that they were drinking or at a party or friends at their home or at my home or at home with a parent present and then 58 of uh you said that they thought that alcohol would be really easy to get so again another area where we can really focus uh education now for kids who reported that they are not drinking um in the middle school there were some more external factors things like you know I'm too young

042or I you know it's against the law in the high school the number one reason was I don't want to or my friend group doesn't drink so I don't want to drink and then the parents are strict right um so we just really want that um emphasize the message that teens are listening to their parents when their parents are talking about not um not having a family Norm where drinking teen drinking underage drinking is not allowed um and we actually saw that teens and Darien who's who didn't believe that their parents disapproved them from drinking or nine times more likely to report that they were drinking on the weekends than um Darian teens who said that they they knew that their parents disapproved of them drinking so they're listening even though they they're pretending like

043they're not they're listening so we're gonna now move on to the mental health section so on the left hand side you see that approximately one in four high schoolers and one in five middle schoolers are reporting persistent sadness and hopelessness in the past year right we're talking about 25 at least of our Darien middle schoolers high schoolers reporting signs of depression similar very similar rates for anxiety where we see much higher rates of anxiety though is in the 11th period And I think we can sort of hypothesize that a lot of that has to do with college applications feeling like there's a lot of um decisions that are being made at that stage that can really impact the entire trajectory of their life and so they're really feeling the pressure now if we take a

044look and we'll talk about um any the gender differences that we saw but we also saw that teens who identified as non-binary or who chose something else or not sure options were also significantly more likely to report signs of depression and the same thing held true for teens who identify it as Latino or multiracial so these are the self-reported depression rates in our region um as you can see in Therian we're at around 21 percent um and we're pretty comparable in terms of Greenwich Norwalk and Stratford um Fairfield again has uh slightly higher numbers and then Trumbull again we would interpret that data with caution because that's from 2021. compared to um the the youth risk behavior survey which is a national uh survey that's administered the high schoolers at the last time it was

045or it's been administered in 2023 but the data hasn't come out yet the data that has come out or is the data from 2021 we've all heard about the child Mental Health crisis we knew that there was a mental health crisis before the pandemic but it's really come to the Forefront now in 2021 the yrbs survey showed that 42 of national uh uh of kids nationally were reporting signs of depression in Connecticut that rate was 36 percent and here in Darien it's um 21 percent just like the last time that we administered the survey we saw some gender differences uh males uh reported lower levels of sadness anxiety pretty much across all grades higher levels of self-image they also reported more consequences of gaming so not getting enough sleep not completing homework opting not to

046socialize with peers or hearing things that were not age appropriate while they were gaming they were also more likely to report bullying someone um youth were identified as female also reported higher rates of sadness anxiety and loneliness across all grades particularly in 10th to 12th grade they also reported higher rates of restricted eating self-harm and suicidal ideation higher levels of stress and also both positive and negative impact of social media use on the one hand they feel more connected to their peers on the other hand they feel worse about themselves due to social media use but they also report more commitments in the community so that was an area of strength so remember how earlier I said you know we have as a community a lot of really strong Community protective factors for teens who

047identify as being part of the lgbtq community they're reporting much more risk factors and on the left hand side you'll see these same data points but for non-lgbtq Youth and so you can see the difference so for example non-lgbtq students reported that only 14 of them reported being bullied versus 34 of that of lgbtq teens reported being bullied um 86 of non-lgbtq uh teens reported feeling valued and appreciated versus only 57 percent of our lgbtq themes so I think that as a town we can really think about how do we support every single team in town we also this year asked about suicide and um suicidal ideation plan intent about 21 of the student surveys said that they reported feeling so sad or hopeless almost every day that they stopped doing their usual activities again

048sort of that's the Hallmark as as a clinician that's a Hallmark for depression same thing with anxiety 24 reported that they felt so anxious almost every day for two weeks or more that they stopped doing their usual activities so at this point we're starting to see impairment in the things that they're supposed to be doing 163 respondents reported that they seriously considered suicide in um during that time period so for um comparison what we've been thinking about is if we think of the community room in the Darien Library we could practically fill it with students who reported having seriously considered attempting suicide two-thirds of that room would be full of kids that reported having made a plan on how they would attempt suicide and 46 students said that they had attempted suicide what was the

049total number of respondents I can check but I if I am correct I think it's 1907. yeah 1907. Georgette um those are silver numbers by any but is there a context of the time frame for this like in terms of uh the recency or otherwise it the time frame that was asked yeah I would have to take a look to see exactly how the question was asked if it was like you know in the past 30 days or if it was in the past couple of weeks but I I can get back to you on the exact question um now I know that for my first reaction when I saw the date I was like whoa that's you know 46 respondents or 46 children essentially we call it respondents but they're kids they reported that

050they attempted suicide there's no way that that number is that high but if you actually take a look at the National Data in 2021 the yrbs um it's at that 10 of the youth that had been surveyed had attempted suicide right and in Connecticut same thing it was six percent here in Darien it's two percent so there's no reason to believe that there's that the numbers aren't accurate even though I think it's really difficult to see these numbers foreign so that's definitely something that as a community I think we can all sort of pull together and really think about what do we do um to help support every single teen in town and then also how do we as a community sort of um get together to support the school to do what they do

051best which is to nurture Scholars right but that this isn't something that can only be done at home or only be done at the school level or only be done at the community this is really about us as a community coming together so there's some key takeaways right we're definitely moving the needle in the right direction in terms of substance use but we know that we still need to help parents you know remember that they have to talk early and talk often to their kids about substance use um helping them set clear family Rules and that those conversations can't stop as they get older and that while we have a tremendous amount of strengths in town they're a particular group of teens that are in significant distress so um uh teens who identify as being

052part of the lgbtq plus Community who are latinx or multiracial they're reporting much higher rates of depression and anxiety but again we have an entire community room with kids that are really really struggling um so you know we really want to make sure that in the following year we think about how do we help parents have those difficult conversations so that the kids feel supported and if you want to hear more uh details about the survey we're going to be giving our community presentation on October 12th at 7 pm at the Darien Library and then we also have an upcoming program with Dr heitner talking about how parents can support their teens when every single part of their life is documented on social media thank you thank you for having me Georgette thank you very

053much it's a great presentation thank you for all the work behind the scenes that goes on it's much appreciated it you know sheds a light on the important work we've done and the important work we have to continue to do for our students as a community so thank you very much thank you um I'll open up to board questions or comments um very very sobering uh you know pun intended of discussion but so I have a couple questions but one I think I'm most concerned about is the depression and suicide you had six to twelve is that equally distributed amongst that age group or is it higher in in high school lower in middle school or how do we determine um we can um we know that the depression rates are pretty equivalent across the

054uh the grades so um it's one in four high schoolers sorry one in four middle schoolers one in five high schoolers are showing signs of depression in terms of being able to break it down by like suicide um ideation and attempts we can take a look at the data and get back to you on that and a follow-up question with that are we seeing differences between male female non-binary lgbtq as well yes different different ratios are they equal across all different groups yeah so lgbtq plus um teens are much more likely to report depression suicidal ideation and intent and plan but that is also the national Norm we know that they have much more um risk factors that they report um and so we have to be really intentional about how it is that we

055are um supporting them one last question on the depression do we have depression rates from you had the alcohol Rate rates if that's the right term from 2018 2021 do we have the same for depression yes and no um we asked about depression in Prior years but it was asked in a slightly different way just because there was we were using a different survey and so in a way we're we're not quite comparing Apples to Apples and the way that we at the data analysis had been done in Prior years um it had been done so that there were like clusters of kids that you know who are the ones that are experiencing both sadness and anxiety who are the ones that are just experiencing one or the other and to what levels whereas here

056we're taking more at like um uh sort of correlations so we can't quite compare um but we're happy that now that we're using the this particular Data Bank we'll be able to follow we have not asked suicide um questions whether ideation intent or plan in Prior years so we don't have prior data for that sure um I see a couple of programs planned and certainly talking to us is part of next steps but what are your overall next steps in terms of you know that that your your talk about the importance of community what are what are the thoughts coming out of the thriving you task force in terms of other things you're planning to do now that we have the data yeah so we have a programming committee um that isn't and uh I

057think all of you now also have a handout that shows what we've done in the past in terms of the data points that came out in 2021 and the programming that um uh was developed as a result our plan is to do the same is to really be data driven and take a look at what are the needs of the teens and the parents so things like how to have that conversation with your sixth grader about um a teen substance use but also how to have it with your 12th grader and how to um for teens how to arm them with strategies to counteract peer pressure because we know that it's not just about fitting in and middle school and that's why you're drinking again the more the older they got the more likely they

058were to say that peer pressure was one of the reasons why they were drinking um so we need to really arm them with specific strategies so we want to there's also some other risk factors that we we think would be in um interesting and good for the community to hear about um the programming committee will probably kill me if I commit to anything right now but um but things like disordered eating things like talking to parents about how to talk to I know we are there was already a lot of programming around suicide um in in the last year or so but best practices was also to um focus on resilience during the first year after a community suicide and now that we're past that period now we can think about programming around things like

059Mental Health First Aid question persuade refer that I know um I think those are going on in the town now but I I think on a community level we need to really coordinate so that um everyone everyone can collaborate as opposed to working in silos in terms of um as a town what do you want your sort of um mental health support and risk prevention look like they have a plan so that it's not reactive and you have the data this data is available for everyone to take a look at the pour through so that that can inform their data or their programming as well I think the important part is is that you know as a child therapist I always tell parents like the most important in teachers the most important thing for your

060child is to see their grown-ups working together that is the best thing for them that they can set aside any differences and work together that it's not about like why didn't you do this or that falls on you not on me that the kids can't afford to have anyone do that I think as a community we can all sort of pull together and think about how do we set aside our differences because this is what's best for our kids Dennis sorry [Music] um you have uh 32 percent of lgbtq plus students don't feel safe at school 16 of all students don't feel safe at school do we have more information on what specifically they're not they're not feeling safe at because that's kind of our role to handle to get that number much higher now

061we so um it's not like there was uh like a short answer section for them to be able to talk about what is it that you know they didn't feel safe at school at um but what we do know that again at the national level in general lgbtq plus Community um teams don't feel safe pretty much in any space where they're walking right whether it's in their Community whether it's in school it's not necessarily something that's happening in school it's just that um they just don't feel safe anywhere where they go unless they're in a in a space that's dedicated and very intentional about being inclusive and supportive and so I think that's where we need we could really um think about what are our Community Partners that really specialize in in supporting lgbtq plus

062um teens so that they can help teach us right like what is it that we need to do to make sure that every single team in town feels safe On and On Your Chart about uh student drinking I noticed norwalk's numbers were like half the rest of the towns what is Norwalk doing that everyone else is not I asked the same question we want to reach out to see what is going on but the one thing that I want to say is that they used a slightly different survey um they used um they didn't use the the same Data Bank that all the other towns used so while um I don't know what effect that might have had I think it's worth having that conversation with them and saying are they doing something that um

063that we can learn from right we gotta um what's that uh phrase I think it's uh share relentlessly and steal shamelessly and that I think this is where the importance of every town doing this survey and the fact that darianne has been doing this this for the sixth time now I think really helps us as you know Fairfield County really sort of learned from each other and with Darian having sort of gotten on on board really early on so I think it's it's been great that we've had the kind of support that we've had over the years to do it but this is why we do it because we want to know what are the differences what are other towns doing that seems to be working and and how do we borrow um so that

064we our kids can thrive thank you yes I just want to thank um Georgette from your leadership of the Child Guidance Center uh working with our school and our students and our staff over the past couple of years in particular uh your guidance and thoughtfulness have been the current passion have been very much appreciated I also want to mention that the rest of the thriving news they have been thoughtful Partners collaborative Partners trusts and partners uh in the design of of this and the implementation of it and the follow-up order so I want to thank them for that because it it has been a critical component since the issues we're dealing are very sensitive related Asia so thank you for the iterations the time you put into it um and your thoughtfulness is much appreciated

065that's over the years so thank you very much appreciate it um I know the next presentation is mental health and wellness update by Dr dad but I will say I think um you know when I think back over my time on the board in the last couple of years and and you know I think we continue to lead as a board and as a district when I talk to and see what other towns are doing or get involved in a Chairman's email thread you know I think there's always more work to do and you can never be done but I think of what we've done as a board as a district as a community you know over the last year especially year and a half in terms of focusing on Mental Health the wellness center

066up at the high school bringing on board you know Dr dad and creating a director of of mental health and wellness for students um it it speaks volumes to the focus we have but you know the data speaks volumes of the the direction we need to continue to go down so but thank you thank you okay not to put you on the spot doctor dad mental health and wellness update Dr Alicia Dad thank you for being here this evening first of all I want to thank Georgia and the thriving youth team because I think this work is so important and I also want to thank all of you and the community for participating because I think having the data to inform what we do is so important and as hard as it may be having

067it and looking it in the face and figuring out what steps to do next is vital so thank you you're fine so I just wanted to give a little bit of context I know last time we met um we were talking about our kind of core values and how I was going to kind of really look at how we can put wellness and student wellness at the at the top of our kind of agenda and along with it all the core values that support Wellness when we think about things like diversity and inclusion and collaboration respect and civility all of those things tie into physical social emotional mental wellness and academic Wellness so I think everything that we have put forth in terms of our Mental Health Mission um really aligns with some of the

068needs that even Georgia just identified so we have a lot of work to do and I think we've done a lot of work so just to go back to where we were at the end of last year um the first time I spoke to this group I had I was here for 25 working days and that the focus was on listening and learning kind of getting a sense of what the culture and climate were for students staff and families um I then came back at the end of June I was 69 working days into my 60-day plan and the focus was also about aligning with the mission and the values and the goals of the district today actually not including summer and weekends it is my 98th day here so I just went past the

069engaging and implementing which I think is a continuing goal so along with that engaging and implementing is really looking at what resources we have where there might be gaps and how we can continue to even do better for our students and our families um so this year I want to focus continue to focus on the professional development internal trainings external resources really looking at Recruitment and Retention of really high caliber well-trained mental health staff and support staff uh student well-being we want to create a comprehensive multi-tiered system of support for the social emotional and behavioral needs of students I think what we really heard was the other side of the fulfum from for risk is also building resilience so there's this if you have some risk the more you can build some skills around resilience

070then that helps offset some of those risks so what can we do for every student in the district at that Universal level family and school Partnerships I think another thing we heard was how much messaging matters when it's across the board from families from schools with our students and how we can continue to convey the messages we need to our students about Wellness about speaking up when you're not feeling well or not doing well giving parents tools that they may need to have those difficult conversations and then also continuing our school and Community Partnerships as I had mentioned when I was here last there is a tremendous amount of compassion and resources available to our students I think we have to also work so that we normalize asking for help and being involved in those

071Community Partnerships for our students another thing that was really important was also looking at because we know the mental health epidemic that's hitting our youth transcends across what town we live in is really the collaboration across the county with other schools maybe even in New York and really looking at what are some models that we can really innovate in and be leaders in so that County and Statewide collaboration was another area of focus so now that we're past the 90 days I'm still working on those things and I want to talk about it a little bit more in the frame of our multi-year strategic plan so I'm going to go through each area and kind of what we've been doing with regards to mental health in those areas so versus enhancing teaching and learning we

072know that we're all here to educate children that is important and actually when a student feels like they have a life worth living goal and feels fulfilled in their educational Pursuit that actually helps build resilience as well um fostering a culture that promotes Wellness diversity and inclusion I will spend the most time talking about this because it's a natural fit between my work and the work that's being done across the schools and with Administration developing a balanced definition of Student Success Through vision of The Graduate when we think about those characteristics of curiosity and collaboration and integrity those transcend whatever academic class or discipline you're in and really speaks to the factors that impact our resilience right the more creative we can be the more Curious the more engaged we are and connection is something

073that Fosters resilience and then expanding professional capacity I'll talk a little bit more about some of the things that we're doing to not only recruit mental health support and staff but also maintain and support our current staff because one of the things that we know that is a protective factor is that relationship with someone there's a significant decrease in suicidal ideation and thought when individuals feel connected it's so important and they spend the majority of their day in the school system and then developing enhancing systems for efficiency coherence and communication improving school facilities I'll talk a little bit about safety and then finally improving technology to support teaching and learning I'll talk a little bit less about this we have um a new member with Tim on board to really look at technology and I'm

074hoping to work with him I know he just started uh September 14th so in terms of enhancing teaching and learning some of the things that we've done I heard a lot about like coping strategies how do we help teach kids where is the mechanism where we can teach students some um coping skills so over the summer I worked with the advisory team at the high school to create lessons such as the contrast between the joy of missing out and the fear of missing out we heard that that social media can both be a positive and it can also cause some negative emotions so just some psycho-education on what that feels like to balance and notice when I'm on social media am I leaving feeling better or am I noticing a decrease in my mood and

075increasing their awareness around that effective communication and reducing negative self-talk and judgment I had the opportunity to present a mini lesson of this with our girls volleyball team which I know we had talked a lot about athletes and kind of that resilience and noticing when we start to negatively judge ourselves because those are the things that when they're consistent lead to things like anxiety and depression and lack of self-efficacy um also been providing some consultation to Educators on strategies to increase learning Readiness right if we know that our students are struggling with anxious thoughts and feeling unsuccessful it is very difficult to maintain Focus to to learn there has to be a Readiness to learn by noticing where you are and bringing yourself back to the academic task so goal area two which really focuses

076on Wellness diversity and inclusion has been a focus of a lot of the work that we're doing around mental health in order to do a lot of that work you need funding so I'm happy that we received two grants at the end of last year one to support summer mental health services including professional development for staff around supporting individuals in the classroom creating kind of a welcoming validating environment so we got some funding for that over the next three years and we also did for personnel so mental health specialist Grant which was approximately 127 000 over three years will help with supporting the wellness center coordinator um and I'm really excited about that because there's an opportunity there that I think that we can maximize with that extra funding too um I've also worked with

077um Amy barge looking at things regarding employee Wellness programs some of our neighboring districts have a focus on employee wellness and one of the things that in the work that we've been doing is we found that 80 of prospective employees want to know that their uh their Administration cares about their own mental health so when we're trying to attract and retain individuals it is important obviously we know there are other factors such as salary but but what might set people apart in terms of where they decide to work is also how they're going to be treated and how mental health is perceived um also updating procedures for risk assessment I have a Consortium of other interdistrict mental health administrators and one of the things that we've noticed is collectively you know how do we really

078create best practices that are kind of universal and consistent not only across K through 12 but even across districts around the the most effective way to assess risk when we're looking at risk factors like I said there's the resilience and there's risk factors I think right now we're doing a really good job and bringing together other people to look at things like are there any other questions is there any research that you know we want to integrate into what we're already doing um this little photo is just from our Wellness Center uh we did ask these kind of questions and now that we have a coordinator survey what does Wellness mean to you um it's been The kids are wonderful you'll see pictures throughout here about them kind of engaging in different activities to get

079a sense from the Educators in the district how they felt comfortable in terms of addressing either mental health not not directly but the culture and the climate so one of the things I surveyed was whether or not they would like professional development around kind of Behavioral social emotional needs and I would say that um the two primary things that individuals want in professional development were behavioral principles in the classroom and managing behavior and how they can help with in-class emotion regulation so when a kid is getting distressed how that they can kind of help tamper that down a little bit in the moment overall it was interesting they preferred individual consultation or small group when we think about our professional learning communities uh they mentioned that that was the most ideal for learning or 60

080to 90 minute brief workshops so the summer Wellness pilot for educators um thankfully I can run it again over the summer with this grant but was really with the mindset that in order for if you think about the the flying analogy right before before we can take care of others we have to put on our oxygen mask first and when we think about Educators they have tremendous compassion for their kids and their social and emotional gas tank can get depleted so it's really important that while we ask our teachers to feel that connection be with their students be present that they're also aware of things that they can do for themselves to take care of themselves both physically and emotionally so the pilot over the summer was a succession series that really looked at things

081like how do you find your passion of why you got into education and lean into that what do you do to actually take care of yourself what does it feel like to ask for help and who would you ask for help so I had put out the survey and overall I had gotten um about 192 respondents of those keeping in mind this was the summer and I was going to do a sixth session Series so coordinating time was a little bit difficult I think one of the things when we think about Wellness going on vacation is actually like part of Wellness so a lot of people couldn't do it but we had 50 people who were interested in doing it over the summer and many more that said if you continue to do this throughout

082the year I would really like to be a part of it from there we went down to a group of about six and there were representatives from every level except for Middle School somebody had a change in plans and couldn't come and what we noticed I did some pre and post assessment was that scores went down specifically in depersonalization so when we think about depersonalization it's when you get further away from the goals and values that brought you into your profession when you feel defeated or having difficulty kind of motivating to do the work so even in that six week session they felt more committed to the work more invigorated so I thought that was a good sign even with the small group I know a group of six is not statistically significant and I

083thought it was helpful um one of the other things um in light of a follow-up around um why kids don't feel safe we put together a small Committee of Administrators to look at a school climate survey um we we know that this is really important this kind of gathers some of the data in regards to safety environment Wellness security and that survey would go to not only students but also parents and Educators so the committee got together and looked at a couple different options for the survey and really looked at what were the pros and cons and what were the needs of the district um there'll be more information forthcoming on that so we also are the Dessa which is a universal screening for students k through eight really is a strength focused survey where

084teachers will again this year look at what are some of the strengths in the social awareness and the behavioral regulation that our students show and then uh so I was able to attend the fall coaches meeting one of the targets when I first came in here was really looking at the connection between mental health and our athletes it was great I uh subsequent to that I had some consultation with some coaches around how they may be able to kind of more effectively communicate with their students to validate where they are but also help them with kind of this mental toughness and not being so hard on themselves as I mentioned I went to the uh the volleyball team I also consulted with the trainers one of the things that I think that sometimes we forget

085is a lot of times when individuals experience anxiety depression they internalize and have a lot of psychosomatic um needs and they might be recurrent at a trainer or a nurse and so I was pleased the trainers actually after I had done a presentation reached out to me and said hey can we talk about a few things and I think this is really when we talk about normalizing some of those conversations and and the reach of one person versus the reach of a community that is equipped to have these conversations with individuals I think is helpful um again sticking with goal area two this year we're working on our ruler anchor of tools I was in a school uh classroom uh last week and they were working on their Charter and then as they were doing

086the work they were talking about does this make me feel included am I respecting others referencing the culture and climate within the classrooms that they wanted to create and the associated behaviors I had the pleasure of um moderating a wonderful conversation with some of our graduates if anyone was at the high school extracurricular participation meetings there was four wonderful graduates that Ellen Dunn had a wonderful connection with and they talked about what life is like once they leave Darien High School things like I really had to learn how to manage my own time because I had a lot more free time one actually said I leave my phone in my dorm and I don't know how many times as a parent I might say no why don't you put your phone away but when you

087have a recent graduate who said one of the most effective things that I can do is put my phone away or have lunch with a friend or have someone said grocery shopping but it was such Pearls of Wisdom to have both parents and students there I was very grateful we have one more on October 2nd but they were well attended and I think it's a springboard to have some conversations further um also met with the cdsp um Dei chairs and talking about continuing the work after the presentation at the end of last year I mentioned about consultation we're also considering when we um when we look at kind of all of the programming that we have I think one of the things we were lucky enough to have student representation thank you um when we

088did some interviews for teen talk and for um The Wellness Center coordinator and there's been a consistent theme of oftentimes youth go to one another which is typical right they rely on their peers and can we help equip our kids with the tools to notice this might be a little bit beyond just me as a friend I might need to connect them with someone else so we're looking at last year there were some conversations with the group that really focus on peer-to-peer strength Focus use Mental Health so how do we help those students help each other and get the support that they need this is a little bit of an aside but I know that I'm coming back to you later in the year with recommendations around teen talk and Wellness Center so it's still

089connected to goal area too obviously Wellness Center and T talk I'm happy to announce that we have our Teen Talk counselor Ashley Lopez she started at the beginning of the year um she's been meeting with students integrating in with the counseling department really making herself visible through the Wellness Center she's attended additional trainings and supports that we might offer and then this week later on uh uh Miss Dunn myself and then some other uh director of guidance Kathy are going to meet with kids in crisis to discuss how the beginning of the year and the launch has been the question that was raised last year was also does this make sense for Middlesex is this something that we might need so in the first week of October a team of Administrators including psychologist counselor are

090also meeting with kids in crisis to hear a little bit more about what the program would look like at at the middle school level Wellness Center um it's been fantastic we had an amazing group of candidates that we interviewed really well qualified and we're really happy we had to Phillips join us and she's really been able to increase the access of the wellness center by keeping it open all day we're averaging about 150 students that visit per day and what we see is there continues to be a flux in the lunch hours but there's equally on either side there's students coming in the beginning of the day the end of the day that last year without having her there they would not be there so um I think already we've seen that it really has

091increased exposure she's also pushed into Health classes and will continue to do so to just talk about some of the offerings at the health center it's three weeks in so she's still navigating kind of how to set it up if there's anything else we might need um setting expectations but overall we've had an increase in the number of visits and students connecting so in terms of goal area three the vision of The Graduate um I had the uh the opportunity to work with our administrative staff and really look at how we can integrate this not only at the high school level but thinking about what this looks like at every different grade level from an early age so there was a team that presented both at new teacher orientation and at the end opening days

092of school professional development days and then I have scheduled ongoing departmental consultations for smaller groups to talk about what this might actually look like when you're teaching a high school history lesson how do you integrate that um or English um goal for expanding professional capacity of staff one of the things um when we talk about DBT DBT dialectical behavior therapy and I've mentioned before and it's been present at the high school and middle school level um I want to keep in mind that we use it as a proactive and preventative set of skills to teach kids because we know resilience really lies in the ability of someone to cope and at the same time it is the most well-researched evidence-based treatment for anybody who has any suicidal ideation or thoughts so it can be done

093both in a proactive way and when we think about some of the typical information we just heard I think it again points to we're very active in in that kind of addressing those needs so this uh in October November all of our new staff and anyone who wants to including administrators will have four days of DBT training um our professional learning communities we now have a professional Learning Community for psychologists and social workers which allows them the opportunity to consult when there's a challenge to ask for help get additional supervision also have some didactic time I was able to present at the administrator's Retreat we did some mindfulness activities I won't do any here maybe at a later date but a mindfulness activity really just kind of noticing where our own emotions are when we're

094about to participate fully in an activity I wasn't very good at that but I wasn't going to bring any evidence but it's um one of the things I also know is that there is a shortage of mental health providers both in schools and outside of schools so I know through Dr McCarthy um we've really focused on uh how do we create relationships and our goal for this year is to create relationships with our Alma maters and reach out to more universities and recruit individuals so that they can have an internship here and really feel committed and understand our culture and climate with the hope of um either we're sending them out in the world with really great training or they're sticking around here and and we really create kind of a really strong mental health

095step to grow on the ones that we already have so um right now I am uh supervising one intern and then also offering supervision for some of our staff that have their doctorates and are working through their licensing process so we're hoping to continue to grow that um in terms of communication I've been able to interact with student and teacher focus groups um through professional development I'd offered up the opportunity if anybody has something they're noticing within School climate or they just want to talk about their own experience and thankfully several have reached out and I've been able to without this hard School climate survey data have the focus groups that provide some information regarding everyone's experience so parenting Workshop series I mentioned this at the end of last year beginning at the end of

096October and beginning of November I'm doing a series of kind of parenting in the 21st century toolkit the first one is really about how do you have difficult conversations with your students and it will be offered at the elementary middle and high school level so when we talk about the need to ask your kids difficult situations asking them if they're struggling and and the wording and what you can do um that's it's a set of four that's the first one it's also about managing your own emotions as a parent because we know emotions that others give we absorb and vice versa continued collaboration with the organizations including thriving youth the mental health task force and really creating kind of that coherence of services and then expanding our Mental Health Resources including website um goal area

097six around improving school facilities for student safety so I'm working in conjunction with Leon to really look at our threat assessment protocol and also helping with this uh with participation Anonymous alerts which really allows any individual who might feel unsafe or has information that might help keep the school safe it's Anonymous way to report that to Administration and then the school climate survey asks very specific questions about safety and environment so continued work um first of all I know the technology end I will work on the technology end as well to really look at things I think some of the things that parents have asked for is tools and how to talk to their students or their children around appropriate social media guidelines use of social media limits based on age and then the school

098climate survey memo I think we're at a point right now we're in the fourth in the upcoming weeks you will receive a memo outlining the process that we've gotten to this point with regards to looking at which climate surveys might meet our needs the best um the deaths of the universal screening Administration will start November 1st our mental health staff training and professional development is ongoing but we will have two days in November and two days in um December as well for our mental health staff there's also training for our nurses on how to respond to an individual who might express some suicidal thoughts or just significant depression and anxiety we're going to continue to work on employee Wellness programming parenting Workshop series and then hopefully by the next time I meet you depending on

099when that falls we're going to really look at teen talk and middle at the Middlesex um in their counseling department and really look at if Teen Talk is a good fit now that they have the staff that they need in terms of psychologists and social workers and that's all set yes thank you Dr Dad thank you a lot of information a lot going on thank you very much not to put um who's done on the spot [Laughter] anything you wanted to add you're you're up in the high school you're living and breathing it every day with our students anything you wanted to add about the wellness center and some of the stuff to the start of the new year yeah would you would you mind Alan thank you so much appreciate it and thank you

100for coming and staying tonight it's a school night my pleasure I I you know I I can't say enough about Alicia I guess it's the best thing for me to say uh in terms of partnering with us um as we've moved through some very difficult times and uh I think our students have a swaz here um have have um responded and and care for one another very deeply and I think that um as a school Community we heard as as you heard before some very concerning um information about our young people and so um it's it's it's a healthy conversation though it's difficult as it is when we first looked at the data from the thriving youth um survey we you know the breath comes out of you a little bit and so we um

101you know continue to partner with Alicia and with our community members and we're so grateful at the school for um the concern of so many of our organizations in town to support our students um so we we appreciate Alicia especially um and we're trying to continue to reinforce with our students what's most important you know um and and they have a lot of concerns and they have a lot of heavy weight um thinking about their Futures and all of those things and so continuing to remind them um how much we care for them and how much our the community loves them is is probably the most important work we're doing so thank you thank you Alan really appreciate that thank you very much I'll open up to board questions or thoughts okay um thank you

102um Dr dad that was incredible um the level of detail and the amount of work that you've done in such a short time is really amazing from meeting with specific sports teams to supervising interns so that we can grow our capacity um you know I would love to hear um more about a couple of aspects and I'm not even going to get close to complimenting you and all the great things that were in there but it's it's really wonderful to see such a resource um in our district um so thank you for that um just two quick questions um when you were talking about goal for expanding a professional capacity of this staff who runs those staff trainings like the DBT and some of those are those done by you are you bringing outside Consultants

103so um the DBT one has been easier to schedule I I used to be the outside consultant usually we would spend send a certain number of people who were new to my previous program and they would spend four days there so now I'm bringing it in-house so that I could do the same exact training just in-house for that one and then I've reached out to some colleagues for example in the professional Learning Community some of the psychologists and social workers have identified some areas where they might not see a lot of individuals with a particular presentation but they could really use some extra support with specific kind of either diagnoses or an approach so I have some colleagues and people that have presented New York State Suicide Prevention convention things like that that I've reached

104out to to meet like during that professional learning community just like it and then I wouldn't expect an answer on this but just want to say that I'm looking forward to hearing more I remember you saying this when you first came to the district but um and you mentioned it tonight about developing you know kind of that Wellness Plan within the district um I appreciate your comments on how teacher burnout is not just about retaining academic but also about retaining relationships with students so I hope to hear more about your thoughts on how we can continue to develop that and then also just interested and again I appreciate you did comment on this as well about how we look at the vision of The Graduate at all building levels um but interested to hear some

105more specifics about the elementary schools it was timely that your report followed the survey results but since that starts at sixth grade and we do know that elementary school children experience School avoidance and some of those things it would be great to hear some of your experience about within District of our youngest Learners too um I will say I think some of the things the thing that I do like about ruler is it's it sets the stage for kids to start finding the language to express how they're feeling and even having a culture within the classroom that it's okay to talk about how you're feeling and how that might impact your urges and your actions um and then that goes with them up until middle school I think typically what we see in schools is

106the most visible need tends to be the high school and then things kind of trickle down I think the fact that they have ruler also helps that by the time they get to high school they already have the framework and the language to discuss how they're feeling and it becomes normalized which is is the goal because even though kids know that they might have someone to talk to we have to normalize having those conversations for us Community home and school and continue Dennis and so the the school climate survey is that just for DHS or would that be for Middlesex as well because the middle middle school students are experiencing anxiety and unsafe condition or feeling unsafe and is that would that be both schools or just to high school um it actually is K

107through 12. awesome um third grade is when they start with the self-report and it's more around school safety and climate it's it's a short survey um but it really starts even earlier so I think and the fact that there's input from parents from uh students from staff you get a little bit more um when we're hearing this data I think there's a lot of questions of why where what can we do so I think that that will help give us even additional information about where we can kind of Target we'll have the ability to drill down and see if it's a male female that LG different groups and so on and so forth it's still not identified to the individual but we can add demographic data John I want to go back to the last

108comment before Denny's question and he said or you know it's okay for our youngest Learners to talk about their feelings um some of the push back or anecdotal comments I've heard from elementary school parents is sometimes the kids don't want to share their feelings and and you don't feel it's an appropriate time to tell people how they truly feel so maybe if you could help educate us the community and a couple sound bites of course um you know what your reaction to that sort of uh you know concern is from parents and using the mood meter as well I mean that that's come up in a number of conversations with Elementary School parents yeah I just had a company could I just could I just could I just piggyback on that so we got all

109out there in in feedback that I get particularly at the elementary school levels it's how do you keep that fresh or how do you keep it focused if it's every day gets to the point I'm fine let me get into the classroom and get to my work like I think at some point these kids lose the ability to realize you know what we're trying to ask of them and how that can help I think it just becomes so routine and so monotonous it loses its point and that's the feedback I'm getting you know there the kids are tight they're tired of being asked how they feel so I think that plays into part of John's customer a lot of feedback coming out of the elementary school parents around that and I know we don't find

110you don't want to give your your feeling fine let's go in and let's start the school day but I I think there's a balancing there where are we getting the right information we want or is it just becoming this monotonous routine and kids are just going to react to it that way I appreciate that feedback and I think there's you know every school has a ruler committee I think that's didn't really meet since I came at the end of the year I haven't sat in on every single one of those um I also think that this year we're also introducing the other two tools of ruler which are like the meta moment what do you do when you're feeling that way and the blueprint like what does my best self look like so I think

111it might be that kind of here's where I am in the moment and now what do I do with it so you might see when you're asking like it kind of feels like we're doing the same thing I think the other two components of ruler which will be introduced this year will also help make that connection of what we do and I think there's also those conversations about and it's okay not not to say in that moment just reflect and kind of notice where you are and how that might impact how you proceed so I think part of that is our ongoing kind of ruler teams meeting and talking about how it's going but also the idea of adding two more tools I think will help create the connection of what do I do next

112so just one follow-up because I don't want it out there so there are moments where kids are taught to reflect and they can reflect on their own feelings without having to tell people how they're feeling right yeah I mean I think like I said I'm not in every classroom but I know when I was doing the wellness program someone said I had kids who might Journal about or make a little come like something so it's more individualized and they don't have to share out so I can't speak what's happening in every classroom but I do know that there's an opportunity for students in different classes okay Jason also please hear that's been a concern that's come our way so you know as you work through these meetings thank you and I would just add to

113that um as you roll out the next two components of that think about I'd almost like to hear it at the board level what is the parent communication look like around that I think the feedback we get is we can do better in terms of communicating to the parents while we're rolling out what we're talking about you know whether we do it to our partners at the ptos you know and and individual parent coffees or something like that but I think because that helps then the parents buy into it it enables the parents to help when the kids get home why they're not feeling well or what kind of mood they're in or something like that I think we've gotta do a better job of rounding out the circle in terms of the parents understanding

114what is this constant you know how are you feeling today and if you're adding two more components to that which seem to make sense and be logical I think we really have to focus on the parental the parent communication out you know to them as to all they hear is these kids just have to go in and constantly say how they're feeling and you know a lot of folks are like they're there to learn you know so it's a balancing act uh Julie at least you're busy um but I say that for a reason so as I listened to talk about all these different meetings talking to the volleyball team meeting with a group of six faculty members through the summer a variety of small groups here and there which is amazing and all I

115think is there a way to give this scale right to scale it up and institutionalize it but at the same time I hear you saying that we're trying to normalize these conversations and we're trying to get people used to this so I'm curious what the balance is or how deliberate it is to be talking to small pockets of people maybe especially at the secondary levels um to kind of get used to having these discussions and and build comfort in this area or is it just a function of this is just how it happens like I think it's both okay um I know I've done I'm slated to do some larger group work for example at the middle school I've already been at their entire faculty meeting and then on Election Day I'm breaking into three

116smaller groups to reinforce and go deeper in some of it so it's definitely not a one and done I think it's a balance of you know larger presentations but then also having the opportunity to then reflect what does this look like for my teaching and I would use some consultation around how to do that so I think it's it's kind of that balance of both that's great thank you that that answers my question um and then I just had one quick um question about where were we on Anonymous alerts did we decide we were moving forward on that we had one present one conversation about it right yeah uh we are moving forward on it but what we said is we would bring back the whole rollout package and everything to the board first before

117and Alicia has been part of that working on that we wanted to see it as a bigger component that's what I thought sorry summer brain fit into the bigger scheme okay thank you thank you recognizing the tremendous amount of work that this represents and with great thanks for you coming on board and undertaking all of this one of the other concerns that I hear regularly from parents has to do with privacy so I don't know that tonight is the night to break it down totally but I hear anything from I'm concerned about my child sharing their feelings in the classroom to someone to appear who uses it for fifth grade version of Nefarious purposes um to how are you warehousing my child's data um and you know what what protections are in place Etc so

118I think it's fairly critical at some point that we come back and talk about privacy and what it looks like from the very you know smallest individual to the larger District system please of course that makes total sense and as a parent I would want to know that information as well so happy to do that thank you good talk to Dad thank you so much Georgette again thank you I think these played off well with each other in terms of the data and the information a lot of work's been done thank you very much a lot more work to do let's keep the focus as a community on our students and I know we've done a lot of work with the town and a lot of other organizations throughout the town so we'll continue to

119do that and this is Dunn thank you as always for being here and giving us a little you know call around the high school that you live and breathe every day much appreciated but thank you Dr dad and thank you all for being so supportive and having this conversation having the the survey for many years it just speaks volumes too how much we value our children in their mental health physical health and education so thank you and I would just say too also continue to you know the board is more and more metric driven and likes to see results as to what is 150 kids showing up the wellness center equate to in terms of what they're looking for what they're doing again within the world of privacy and really helping them but you know

120I couch that in saying the board is here to continue to support the investment we've made in mental in the in the mental health and wellness of our students so you know as you continue to go through this process sooner than later understanding what the needs are from a budgetary standpoint are important because we're here to continue to support the efforts sure thank you thank you I think it's obvious for the board Mr chairman that and the community actually that Alicia's expertise her presence and her care have been welcomed attributes to the district an influential one so thank you Dr Doug thank you thank you again as we're going Beyond bedtime for some folks and the board's been here since almost four o'clock March how quickly can you we're looking at an update on District

121teacher Administration administrator evaluation plans and flexibilities right and so really Dr pettigan should also be presenting sure because she and I am very Palmer co-chair the teacher evaluation so the short version is ever since the pandemic there have been some flexibilities in teacher and administrator evaluation um shorter observations goals focused on student wealth family engagement the Connecticut State Department of Education is encouraging boards and unions to just adopt the flexibilities for this year because next year there's going to be a whole new teacher evaluation plan Amy and I have been in contact with the state we have some materials and our pdec committee will start to revise it so just by extending the flexibilities for one more year it'll give us time to implement a new plan and I was going to say that both

122the teachers and admin unions have agreed to extend them as they've all left but I'll thank them publicly for all staying here on this school night um there's a lot of people here especially from the high school so thank you all right Dr fettigan any to add to that I'm in this current school year and it will be a big lift um therapeutic team to try and take a look at what the state is looking Beyond compliance perspective and thinking about the Strategic plan and the area of supporting growing capacity staff so we'll look forward to providing important update on that as we look forward great thank you both uh questions Joe um thank you for the update are we in any position are we providing feedback to the state already about what we feel

123works and doesn't are we being asked and or are we volunteering the information forward with regard to our work with the state as Peta continues to work together to develop a plan we'll be working back and forth with members at the State Department of Education to ensure that we're in compliance but we're moving beyond compliance I think there's a great opportunity here to encourage really having a culture of learning world for our staff obviously this is a very high performing District so I don't anticipate that you know a state approved plan would be stamped within approval by our Board of Education our Administration or our staff who really needs to work and think about what are the needs of our students and our staff and make sure the home is responsive um relationships with members

124of the State Department of Education so I anticipate that they'll provide us some feedback thank you any other board questions good all right thank you both for that update we'll move on to the discussion of the fiscal year and two any 23 year-end financial report Mr rudel I'll just wait for it to come up [Music] yep how do you want us all to sit rich like this filter head uh so this is the uh year-end on audited financial statements for fiscal year 23. uh we did end the year with a positive balance of 810 367 uh the general education RCS were just over a hundred thousand dollars on the special education RCS were just over 700 000. uh we did want to highlight where the Surplus really came from uh 734 000 of the 810

125related to excess costs uh this was money that was generated not because we spent more money uh but in part because the reimbursement rate was higher than anticipated at 73.71 and our threshold was about fifty six hundred dollars lower so if we strip out the excess cost reimbursement we spent 99.93 of our budget uh so we sent all but 75 000 of our budget when you add in the additional Revenue that we were uh given by the state for those two factors we spent 99.27 of the budget so we really did spend the majority of the funds that were appropriated to us while they were different than what was initially anticipated um the board did approve changes to things like security and mental health we really did uh expand pretty much everything that we were

126given um salaries end of the year at a positive 42 451 uh this was primarily through some clubs and councils that did not run at 11 308 and some salary Savings of just over twenty one thousand dollars uh the operating accounts ended up a favorable 24 401 some of the smaller operating accounts like textbooks and consumables and resource materials accumulated savings about just over thirteen thousand dollars uh tuition reimbursement was under budget by just under 8 800 and then The Adult Educational Cooperative that we have at the Stanford Public Schools came in on the budget uh fixed costs were uh under budget by 38 483 uh the bulk of this is health insurance and that was primarily true to census changes and dental insurance uh and then we had some savings and utility which include

127heat electricity uh and uh diesel Revenue was better by a little over 700 000 and again the both of that was the additional access cost revenue of seven hundred and thirty four thousand uh we did have some additional Revenue in Medicaid uh reimbursements gate receipts and parking fees and then we were short in building and field rentals as along with ELP tushes uh and that is it for fiscal year 23. thank you questions on that recap John I just want to underscore something we said uh during our finance committee meeting and and something that I tried to convey to the rtan uh finance and budget committee is that when you look back at fiscal year 23 we had a lot of flexibility in the budget because we had vacancies because we had so much turnover

128and it was uh you know still in the week of covid and that gave us the flexibility uh with what what rich said security and mental health to add new initiatives within within though I think the general education RC I think you know we kept it pretty pure got to get rich credit for that pretty pure even though it's one budget you know showing that we were using um those funds as a general education RC not the revenues excess revenues that are delivered versus expected um on excess cost so I think it's really important because that's we're gonna hear now uh you know we're in a much different financial situation um than we were last year in the week of covid in this current fiscal year and I don't mean because of the deficit but

129from a lot of the adjustments we made um you know to the budget uh you know one being glaringly uh removing budget control for the first time so I'll kind hand it over to Richard that's anybody else has questions any other questions on the 2023 recap then we'll move on to discussion on July August 23 24 financial report and possible actions on budget transfers Mr riddle actually so this is the first financial report official year 24 through August uh we are forecasting a deficit currently of 605 670 uh the general education RCS are forecasted at a deficit of 67 304. the special education RCS are forecasted at a deficit 538 366. uh so while nobody likes to see uh red ink in front of you I will say it is still relatively early and we

130do have a number of months ahead of us where things can change that we did discuss at finance committee uh but we are still forecasting a deficit to start the year um primarily in the general education RCS you'll see that salary forecasts are a deficit of 127 thousand dollars turnover did fall short of expectations of 369 141 while we did have more staff turnover than anticipated the savings between uh those who left and those who are hired much lower than in the past uh just over about five thousand dollars per head uh we have salary savings at 58 941 we did one highlight that salary savings are different than turnover because salary savings are one-time savings it's usually a product of the person that's starting on time whereas turnover are permanent savings we do have

131a vacant athletic trainer which is a transfer we'll discuss in a minute we did have one Elementary section at homes that was lower than anticipated which saved a little over sixty thousand dollars Elementary intramurals we are only running at homes which is saving a little over eight thousand and then contract support does have a favorable balance of just over fifty two thousand dollars um the operating account is primarily where the deficit is and it's a deficit of 870 252. uh the special education Contract Services is forecasted currently at a deficit of 112 184 and that is a product that would need for seven additional contracted RBT uh support staff um DSS consultant Services is a deficit of twenty five thousand dollars however there's an offset for Revenue which is a transfer for the board we

132are recommending Contracting out the second athletic trainer uh and so that is another transfer that is before the board we did see a 20 fee hike and ice rink rental time and so that is another transfer for its consideration and then another Big Driver of projected special education tuition of just over 623 thousand dollars we did have seven changes in terms of either IEP placements unit or Auto placements or a change in the law the law does require us to have a service students until 22 as opposed to 21 and that was a change that happened towards the end of the year and that is about a third of that deficit that you see in tuition a fixed cost is a positive 146 000 bulk of that comes from health insurance we did have some

133census changes including a number of vacant positions which include the athletic trainer and then the position at homes uh Elementary School due to enrollment and then some small savings and student accident insurance uh revenue is uh better than budget by 244 000 uh this is primarily due to excess cost of 194 000. unlike the previous year where they've uh it was a result of a higher reimbursement rate and a lower threshold this is more of a product of us anticipating to spend more money and thus if we're spending more money on access plus students we should get more reimbursement and then DSS Revenue did exceed expectation by forty seven thousand dollars we actually collected more Revenue with DSS than ever before um so there are three transfers for consideration for the board uh the first

134one is for nine thousand five hundred and ninety four dollars this is to cover the increase in the ice hockey uh rank time uh we did uh reach out to a couple other neighboring uh areas that have a hockey breaks to see if those prices were lower they were not uh so we are recommending taking the savings from the uh uh Elementary intramurals and then the small savings from student accident Insurance uh the second transfer is for a hundred thousand dollars uh this is to contract out the second athletic trainer and we would take the cost savings from the pieces of the vacant position which includes the salary for the athletic trainer the payroll taxes associated with that athletic trainer and the health insurance associated with that that athletic trainer and the third transfer is

135really just an accounting adjustment but it does cross-bought broad categories uh we needed an additional 25 381 dollars for contract expenditures related to DSS and that is because we had additional Revenue that exceeded expectations for DSS and so it's taking that revenue and then just offsetting those expenses Rich you might have said this and I missed it what hockey rank is are we is this associated with twin ranks he priced it out and yeah no no I just want to make sure yeah that's uh you know [ __ ] great time is get more expensive absolutely board questions administrative questions that's not a question someone had one piece of detail too which is report the difference in the law was that last year it was students can receive um support until 22 years old the day before

136they turned 22. the law changed that it's the end of the school year that they're 22. right thank you so just to give you some some you mentioned that before but I think it's worth continuing to mention so that's used to be important last year it was the day before right and that they would have to end their tuition or whatever support they were receiving and now it's the end of the school year in which they happen to turn 22. so if they turn 22 on September 1st they get to stay till June 16th it used to be they would get to stay of June 2nd yeah so just good thank you thanks yeah we called an um funded mandate yes um yeah good Dr Adam yeah I would just note that uh we're returning

137over 700 000 in special education fund and access costs uh and this year right now we're projected in special education we were 500 000 to 30 days um but I'm just noting those two packs thank you it's followed excuse me it's volatile based on the revenues that were from the state basically and excess costs good all right rich thank you as always for the work and the good reporting we have a motion to approve the August budget transfers Dennis second by Katie all those in favor and it's unanimous with all presidents thank you very much we'll move on to the first reading and discussion to propose revisions to Board of Education policies 4400 social media 6210 program of instruction curriculum textbooks and other instructional materials 62-20 challenges to instructional materials and advertising policy Mr Brown

138and Messiah so I would just note that these are only for a first reading tonight and then turn it over to March great thank you um I know this isn't in order but I would like to apologize for some in-artville drafting in policy 6220 in my memo um when I re-watched the meeting and I I knew this before I just didn't write it down the policy committee wants the board to decide whether parents should be included on the committee for challenge to instructional materials what they did ask Jessica Richmond Smith to give advice on is how those parents would be chosen her advice was cvsp wouldn't I you don't need to force anyone to do it but that was instead of either the superintendent or the board choosing parent participants cdsb she felt was a

139representative it was just a recommendation she made as part of the conversation right of how to choose the parents if the board decides they want parasite all right I don't know are we going to start with the social media policy sure um it's been revised to um give some clarification on tagging to um outside links and what a closed group and an open group the one thing that I'll say is as Jessica and I spoke to get ready for this for the board to consider these policies we determined that one of the reasons we're having trouble is because Shipman's model policy on social media is meant to be for internal Communications and so if we want to have a policy on somebody in the district running social media platforms for outside consumption we would need

140to probably work with shipment on a different policy hmm can I just clarify sure it's not necessarily March so for internal Communications but we're talking about social media so does that mean a closed group yes and that's why closed group is defined in shipment's model policy because it really isn't you know she did add language about having a small public portion of any platforms but she was so concerned about perhaps sharing FERPA protected information that it's really not a great carve out so so so just to jump sorry you know um so just to clarify this is for as I'm reading this my uh first read of this policy this is for internal social media pages and web pages okay for the team to communicate among themselves or teach a classroom teacher to communicate among

141themselves not necessarily pushing it out so where does this where does like the Darien High School senior social media page fall in that in there so who's running who runs that page it's not I think a student-run but that's but right so this applies to employees um what is the recommendation like to me I think because we've seen stuff on some of those social media pages that we need to understand if the seniors traditionally set up the social media page to talk about you know it's a whiteout or it's a blackout at the Friday Night Lights and stuff like that and it's just senior type stuff you know what's the policy around that who controls that who monitors it well it sounds I mean the only thing we would really monitor are district sponsored and

142so there is language in there that we would identify either through and and it's not in the policy it was suggested that we adopt that in a regulation either with an Insignia or DPS after the name whatever so student accounts wouldn't have that because we I don't think we can monitor student accounts yeah that's helpful okay guess so then what you're saying Marge is if we're talking about now DPS sites that are not closed we would have to develop a whole different policy yes okay so we have to also give them Direction yeah you'd like to pursue something like that so yes I think we would I would Julie yes I would think we should look at that yes yes all right do you think we would like to see some model policy so there

143are no models so I think that Mr SUNY is Right shipment will need some direction are you talking about employee pushing out to the public hit you know what I mean just what kinds of things are you looking for I don't think that Jessica is sure go ahead John so yeah I would basically say any DPS sponsored site right and I'll I'll speak from uh personal experience I run the football social media that's not a DHS sponsored site maybe we should have require also disclaimer this is not DHS right but anyway any DHS sponsored site that is also you know that has uh public uh viewing that should be covered by this policy right is that where we're going with this right so for example if I can throw out an idea like DHS Athletics

144or blue blue will be perfect something that that is run by the athletic department but it's public you know I think one of the concerns that came up last year Marge was um there's a middle sex social middle school middle sex social media site and a PTO parent or something posted it on there and the school was like well we really are not responsible for that so like who's monitoring that site because when you drill down into the site it had Middlesex middle school and it had the phone number to the Middlesex middle school but they really had no insight into what had been posted onto that site so it's it's a control thing and I don't know whether we tie it to John's points everything that says DPS dot org associated with it but

145then have built in a disclosure on all those others that this is not a site monitored reviewed or associated with Darien Public Schools that's just kind of one thought yeah and I guess thinking about that in the scope of where that is if it's just sites that are DPS one of the complaints I heard frequently was a um for our assistant super not occur taking pictures and posting on personal social media of kids on new days and events and parents were not too happy about that would that be captured here that's not allowed under this policy okay so we're capturing it then with the current draft end so it doesn't there's a variety of staff members who have informal accounts any personal online account it's prohibited I think the language still says without the prior

146written approval of the parent okay and the prior written approval of the parent it doesn't count that they said to the school it's okay to post some information they have to go separately yeah it's an affirmative not just the opt-out so this might be a big ask but is there anywhere to get an inventory yeah sort of well comprehensive I don't know where there is to get an inventory we could do a uh unofficial search and try to capture as much as possible so one of the problems of adapting a policy like this mid-year is that there's no real way I mean I think if I asked student they would tell us not to even implement it until the following year because then we would be able to say this is now the rule right

147you can't have a site the way you've had them now and then we count on self that's right I want to make sure to go for look there's stuff that'll pop up and we'll have to monitor and deal with it like we've had in the past but I think we just need to set the standard but we need an inventory and then we need communication to all those sites that are associated with the school whether it's booster sites or fundraising sites and all that type of stuff but the clear to me it's a clear disclosure on those sites that this is not monitored reviewed or associated with the darien Public School Systems great and I agree with the idea of a disclaimer but the problem there is how do we enforce it I imagine people

148like football you know good partners and put that up willingly but doesn't mean somebody does it well then it comes into I don't know is there a maybe a Jeff Adams question is there a way to monitor this stuff but yeah John but uh yes you're totally right yeah and but I would start with yeah to your point DHS Athletics yeah all the sites we know are sponsored sites we definitely put the DPS logo or something on it to ensure that those are sponsored I think this is a better First Step than worrying about every Edge case exactly I think you have to go after what you can control versus what you can't start right yeah it's because it's just an impossible party cats situation I would suggest if we have a little time that

149we actually send it to Communications to create an inventory of the types of sites that we have I don't think we have to capture every single instance but if we can capture the six eight buckets of sites then at least that would be a good input to the policy committee to understand what the universe is that we're trying to govern and where the boundaries are because I am hearing from Mr rudel right here that there's no real way for Jeff Adams um to monitor this is this is all done by self-reporting right for people reporting on other cells yeah right what I think I'm hearing is that the internal one fine but for the just the site that we that we have ownership for we'll we'll be concerned about what the message or policy is

150around that yes is that fair yeah I must recognized and I said we're not going to be able to monitor even ones that are well-meaning or otherwise no but I think where we have a situation where we have we have a lot of quasi quasi-related insights where an individual has a site where they're representing school information and so there needs to be a mechanism for either a parent or student is uncomfortable or you know they're just I just hear I've heard multiple times over several years now increasing concern because social media is growing and people are growing their personal professional sites I understand that we can't regulate it but I think we can require certain things but but not I'm just pushing back for clarification but not if they're not our sites well we can

151require things like you may not post student data without getting permission you know or you may not I think they're probably things that we can things that we own okay look it might be it might be a communication from a community standpoint at the beginning of each year you know sites that are set up that are not controlled these are our guidelines I mean just recover ourselves with that disclosure out there again there's so much we can only control right yeah but I think for the most part we have really good partners out there that would help us Katie just one comment on um the the very preliminary conversations with shipping and demand I would just think that it makes sense to establish the scope um early on just in that you know when we

152were talking about social media we are not going to be able neither are they to draft a policy that covers every instance and every so I would I would just urge us to kind of look again at like where can we kind of get to the heart of making sure that things are safe and appropriate without thinking that we're going to cover everything good point [Music] do you have what you need mark I think so okay [Music] so policy 6210 is the proposed policy for the adoption of curriculum and purchase of textbooks and other instructional materials if the board chooses to adopt this we would need to repeal 60 to 10 and 6610 okay John and just collaborate question I also saw that we could include 62 20 in there as well as regulations it's

153just stylistic whatever you prefer separate or as a regular Dave did your committee have a view on that combining like stylistic uh not one that I'm recalling at the moment I don't think yeah this is the first read this yeah all right and again sorry just to clarify this policy was the result that people want to see more clarity of how our curriculum is chosen and I think I have a cop or the copy of the old policies in here I mean it's like two lines okay and so just the meat of this was just more clarity um in terms of How It's selected more transparency who's participating in the district committee is that is the next one yeah the board some time ago once we put the uh uh claims to uh instructional practices

154or for someone who wants to have a concern and register that then the discussion model should be not discussed what the curriculum is up front first of all or who's writing it or that's where I came from okay thank you apologize if this is going backwards a little but um just clarifying the last point that that's social media only like I'm just thinking about teacher websites and Google classrooms and some of those internal and closed groups those are not subject to these things or because they're not social media or they are it includes the website I'm just asking you know for those types of like curricular academic things like a teacher website or I mean maybe they're all just kind of Google Classroom now like the you know the homework pages those kind of things

155are they not covered buttons okay because that's a website not social media okay thank you good question all right okay then 60. I'm sorry yes right is that because it's a website not social media or because it's internal I think it's because it's internal and there are other limits on access you need to log in and things like that to get there okay as we're saying is for internal The 4400 we're saying is for internal social media so what's social media but that we're talking about teacher pages on Google and whatever okay so it's not social there are other guidelines that govern that but not this policy thank you questions thank you very much okay challenges to instructional materials so the initial question is does the board want right parents on the committee and if

156so then how do they choose can I sorry can I miss something 62 that's 62 10. so we just talked about 6210 the district the district trick membership team discussion thank you further board conversation on that so I'll jump in on 6220 um I I'm not in support of having parents on the committee there's been some discussion about how many it should be or shouldn't be personally to me that's taking individuals who have no expertise who are only sitting there to make a decision with their personal values and beliefs um and they're deciding if if a peer another parent is right or wrong with only that as their tools and I don't think that's helpful I think it creates more fracture and divisiveness quite honestly than anything else I do understand I think that there

157is a desire to have some sort of mechanism to improve transparency or help people feel that they have that there is a role um and I don't think that's it and I think if that's what we're going for I would challenge us to come up with another way to make the process more transparent or more inclusive but I truly believe that the experts and the educators are the best ones suited to determine whether or not instructional materials are appropriate and being well used in the circumstance thank you Joe happy to respectfully disagree um one of the ways that I first got involved was in the wake of the what we call the special ed crisis there were a number of work groups and at the time it was cdsp it doesn't have to be but

158um that that organization sent out uh descriptions to parents and asked them to volunteer if they had relevant skill sets so we had people who worked in data warehousing who worked on summer programs who worked on um I think there were five of them it was actually a great way to reach out and find out who in the community had relevant skill sets it wasn't just you know come on come all you got you got placed according to what you brought to the table um and so I do think we probably have people in the community who might have experience in child development or child psychology or reading materials who might be willing to volunteer their time and their expertise and I think it's a great way to involve them I think there are a

159variety of reasons why parents were solicited at the time one of them was that you could get expertise from the community and another was because that was another period of profound uh distrust where we were working to rebuild relationships between the community and the public school system and it was actually a very effective tool in rebuilding some of those relationships so I recognize we might need to figure out how the mechanism works and I recognize that slating a parent isn't isn't a Panacea to to um you know issues of trust and and curricular selection but I do think that this is an important involving parents is actually an important and can be a very effective uh tool if used correctly John I'm gonna agree with Jill and not reiterate everything she said but I do

160think um you know it is a way of transparency but that's not the only uh mechanism that this achieves and so I wholeheartedly support um adding parents I think the board can take responsibility for choosing parents we actually learned a lot this evening how well we can work together and choose uh you know somebody that we appoint um so maybe we can write a policy that includes board involvement in terms of appointing those number of parents I'm not going to choose a number but with certainly with administrative guidance Dave uh I'll Echo that sentiment I think the idea and the main flaw in this model has been the same people that chose the books then reviewed and made decisions so I think parental involvement is key you stole my thunder John I think we had

161a great example tonight of people coming in from various backgrounds of interest to want to get involved and um so what exactly that formulation is who those people are I think is important and again I made this point at the subcommittee meeting at some point you know we do have a political role we do have a different role in the administration and that is also a reflective use of our constituency and this is a process to facilitate those views and get the involvement mixtape Dennis yeah I think I I agree with having parents on the committee but I think Mrs best brought up this point of transparency to me we need to be this this group needs to meet in public and have these meetings shown on tapes so others can watch and see the

162verdict and maybe have discussion I'm not sure how we work that process but for me it needs to be in public that people can view and attend and or watch later on watch the process have the process done in public so that they see how the government conclusion whether it's parents or not and how many parents the review the Review Committee itself that process not the process of selecting the reviews well that should be in public too but but the process of the Review Committee if something is challenged you get to see how the challenge operates John I'm just going to say can we is this fit I don't know I see faces and does this fit within contracts and can this be done in public I guess uh well if you put parents on

163and I think it would have to be okay perfect you'd have to notice it okay good Katie no wait I'm sorry notice it but what did also the staff be would the staff be able to participate in their public meeting okay thank you John Katie um I want to start by saying that I have immense respect for our parent volunteers and all that they contribute to the schools and um I've been a long time advocate for their involvement in in many ways um I am not supportive of putting parents in this review capacity I also think it's telling that um you know the umbrella parent organization in town did not want to be part of this as well um I think that it is a slippery slope in in many ways um it does not

164make sense to me why we hire um educational experts and then we bring in an additional oversight that is not elected that is not um tasked with that it doesn't make sense to me why we wouldn't be trusting our own in-house people I almost see it as a vote of um of of a lack of confidence in them um so this troubles me and um I would feel better with Mr moroney's point about it being in public I think that that would be helpful um but it doesn't sit well with me thank you Julie and I understand this is the first read so we'll we'll sit on this and think further I I agree uh with Mr moroney that um in public would provide transparency to me it goes a lot further toward providing transparency

165than having three or five or seven parents picked by the board or the administration sitting on the committee personally um I do also I just have to push back respectfully of course the idea that we are in another period of profound mistrust because I think that's an overstatement of our present situation I think there are definitely those who have trust issues presently I don't think that as a community we are in a state a profound mistrust sometimes I'm a little optimistic and maybe I'm not capturing that moment but I don't I don't believe we're there this feels to me like we're operating as though we are and I think we had some discussion earlier this evening about this need to make sure that we're creating processes that are fit for the long term and that

166we're not overreacting situations as they pop up and I want to make sure that we're not doing that here too so just a few more things to consider thank you just if I could qualify I take your point but there is some data out Nationwide that there have been efforts to reduce public trust in public institutions and that's more what I'm referring to than any sort of micro level so if I'm going to hearing from the board is go back to kind of the policy committee to do or get some guidance from the administration uh I would say Mr chairman just from my own point of view I I don't know how we sit here at the table honestly uh haven't gone through what we've gone through and not have some apparent representation if we

167can discuss these issues we should be able to discuss them I'm actually more concerned about actually having to do this live because you talk about a trust factor in that regard once you've done any of the process the process and you have trust in that process that people are going to follow through with it but actually like honestly I would like to see the SP be actually be involved um I think it's a missed opportunity but if it's not them it could we'll come up with some other uh some other uh opportunity but I just can't see how this board without months we've been gone through this month's people have been writing to us most people uh transparency participation I'm not handsome about our staff talking to parents about about materials and hopefully we can

168come to a good position on it I mean we're not the number of them is is I think a relatively Fair number in representation but anyway that's that's my personal information John so how would you think about no hearing that then the selection then becomes the hot button issue how do we select would you would you feel comfortable with the board uh you coming with um suggestions and uh then the board making the final decision on that front I don't think that's necessary but if that's what the board would want to do um we could come up with some sort of process um yeah you know yeah the three entities are either the parents pick themselves the administration picks them or the board picks them so the parents have said no right well one group

169appearances don't they represent all parents members yes there I guess so yes so they've deferred so let's take that um let's take the responsibilities at this point what's the process we did on the appearance on the Dei committee uh we reached out to the Dei committee we reached out for uh all all we tried to cover all constituents and all groups that we had I don't think I I was like that's why I put down CSP how do I get into the politics of this group that group the cbsp runs and represents the whole thing that was what I thought we would do but that's the biggest Point Let's Take it we'll take the that's why we get paid so much for this position exactly when I throw darts the phone book if you still

170have phone books I like to see people who are I have something I know you're teasing but I'd like to see people with with relevant professional experience yeah and I think that's how we pose it when we look for folks to raise their hand and come absolutely yeah okay all right yes can I ask to clarify Jessica suggested three and suggested that they have children that overall cover elementary middle and high school I don't I usually agree with Jessica I'm not sure I did um that a parent who has an oldest child in first grade really can weigh in on some of the books at the high school but I think that if we're going to adopt this at the next meeting we need to know how many parents and if there are any specific

171qualifications just to protect whoever's choosing them and then the other thing that pops in my head is there a term is it's an annual so I've lived with this policy in another district and it was convened anytime something was challenged but how long do those people sit on that until they read the book and had the meeting and then the committee and then you have to find new people so then you convenience I like the idea of a term personally but yeah you can do it that way but so it's interesting it depends on what the qualifications are right if you're going to Target the qualifications to a particular level it might not work for every book but it's just something to consider no we probably have some retirees who don't have or their children

172are out they're still working to phrase that wrong but their children are no longer in districts who've been here and have some wisdom to offer so so the language right now says three parents of current students so if we want to encourage that so can I yes Marge surely I think I know TP sorry Marge Shirley Amy Allen if you've had parents in your districts how are they selected what qualifications did they have well in this policy in Westport the superintendent um chose them and it caused much heartache which is why Jessica suggested cdsg another way to do it okay so can Jessica you've seen it Amy how long have you seen it yeah we have we have the super kind of just reached out to the various parent groups um the only thing I

173would say is that nearly prefer the board to come up with a direction if the board wants to do that I'd nearly prefer you to come up with the direction that you give give to me because all the ways we're going to get the wheels of bureaucracy are going to show up um in selection and so on so forth and whatever the criteria is or whatever um if you give me that's what I would recommend you give us a guideline as to is there anything out there Marge that or Jessica has anything that shows that so this is what she suggested was parents who who overall had children in all three levels elementary middle and high school and she did think that it should be parents of current students but okay that's just her advice

174it doesn't it's not legal good job I just want to make the point that if we're not requiring people to have students then they are not parents they are community members okay so where I was going was let's just call parents of students as a board kind of direct okay but I do think we should take it on our shoulders if uh if others are unwilling okay just one more point it looks like this is moving forward so I would say that if I think it needs to we definitely need to think through all the things if there's going to be a term established there should also be parameters on what would constitute a removal of a person and sorry I would just say that if this is going forward it needs to be kind

175of well thought out yes so can we get some guidance along those lines from so we want to go with this as an appointment for a year okay Julie John when you say parents of students human parents of current or DPS students well the only thing about a term is so I guess depends on there you might have different types of books so somebody who's willing to come in and opine on a picture book may not be excited to read the War and Peace equivalent but you know well I just mean you could run it you could run it as needed or you can run it as a term that's my only point and if it's as needed you might get a different volunteer set because that's what you did Alan right yeah just just

176you ran it as needed and then you you picked the parents yes okay you did the same in Westport because one would hope that there wouldn't be 20 of these skin every year in a year what was your range what was your experience up there so I think it's been like 15 years since they challenged one book but last year there were three challenges and each time different parents were stood up for that challenge okay Dave I just thinking of the removal point I think spinning it up when necessary if you have somebody who's not a good team member you're not stuck with them for a year you have to go down that road so they make sense to stand up if necessary I can be persuade to that point as well okay but I

177I but I think Mr Brown's point of that why does it have to be apparent versus someone who's had a student go through and has qualifications to sit and is willing to read War and Peace or the equivalent may may have a valuable opinion of that right I don't disagree with that I think it should be focused on the parents and are we staying with three parents yes okay and qualifications I heard that's if we're involved right I mean I mean like being a jury right you don't necessarily have to have the expertise hope because the both sides do get to present at the hearing on the books and then what's the so it's three parents and then what's the makeup of the well that's why that's why I'm hoping that this won't feel insulting

178to our administrative leaders because we have the assistant superintendent the president of the DEA the president of the daa three teachers with expertise in the area that's for being but Marge the language here says not more than three teachers so is that is is it always three though like just in in terms of thinking like essentially that would be nine votes is that right teachers teachers will want to be on this committee so I would think we would have no problem with three so you would expect nine people so just just show the people that understand too that the actual complaintant themselves do not have to be parents understand that that the way it's written just I'm just pointing that out that they could be a Community member oh as it's currently correct I would

179want it to be parents well I understand the person so so a Community member cannot bring a complaint about a book that's I would say this is educational focused it's parent-focused student Focus but you're talking about Point number one I'm just talking about Point number one they actually complained to him and herself uh can a taxpayer bring forward a complaint about a book the way this I just want to point out the way this is written they can or an employee well I just wanted to point that right that's all right I think that's an important clarification I don't that doesn't sit well with me either I feel like the reason for complaining would be that you're worried about your child you're not making a moral judgment on the The World At Large Dave um

180I'd be remiss not to ask this I think Margie says about seven people from the admin up to three teachers and then three okay six so we're talking about three parents just throwing out the consideration of having an equal number of parents in admin if there's any appetite for that I think when it gets total and wild you know just too many people the only thing I would say is well all right Julie um just to point out Dr Ali to your point that well as this reads they just have to be a resident at the Town of Darien or an employee of the Darian board of education but they do also have to go through the chain of communication so the first step if you have a problem with it with a um instructional

181material is to speak to the classroom teacher and if you don't get resolution there then you have to go to the building principle so you know as someone who lives on Main Street who doesn't who heard something about something being taught in a ninth grade class at DHS it would be an interesting process for them to follow that all the way through to get to the to the official challenge correct so can we go back and have some consensus on this should we come up through a parent of an existing student or an employee okay yes just one more thing to that um curious if there's ever been language in here to sort of demonstrate that the chain of communication has been followed um and before a complaint before a committee such as this is

182convened is is that sort of a prerequisite that yes but that's good that's important okay um large white why did whoever start with a resident of the town area I'm employee one I understand I'm not sure I understand the employee one but I think just that was um something that the board could choose Jessica didn't have a strong feeling whether it needed to be apparent or just a resident so it's just a political decision so thank you for staying this late thank you if you need a note for showing up late to school tomorrow call Dr Alex all right so so I had I had I had received some of the receive requests from time residents and so I and full disclosure to the board I was open it up to you do you want

183to look at that or do we not want to look at that I want parents I don't want Town residents I'm happy with that specific to students it's specific to parents it's specific to teachers and staff I mean that's how it feels yeah and if the idea is to reinforce that we believe in the partnership between the schools and the parents and we're talking about parents okay is that guidance enough to draft and update that for further discussion and possible action at the next meeting the last piece is that sort of public environment to to post what is decided I think that's one of the other pieces how does folks reach a certain Community resonance how is the how are the results of the uh findings communicated out so the policy says the disposition in

184writing to the complainant the members of the committee and the board right so we could add something but I don't know you just post it post it on the website you want to understand some guidance as to how that would work from a public meeting and a warning so once you put parents on a once you have staff and parents it's a public meeting okay so you'd post an agenda okay all right we're all publish the findings so we could is that that then includes Channel 79 video minutes okay we should be thinking about how we communicate when a decision is made whether again whether it's posted I'm sorry I see that we've thought about it I just think we may want to consider a broader communication than just simply to the um we have

185finished that thought sorry well you know we have reap we have had to eat now uh pieces of literature that have been identified that people are talking about sometimes at the national level most of most things are at the national level um so I'm what I'm trying to get to is how do we maximize our transparency again in order to build the relationships well I think I think of what's happening I think it should be posted and then is it does it come if that particular decision is made that particular week it comes out through the superintendent Communications certainly if we go through this process we support the process of a book or select some material go through it and it's adapted or not adapted we can we can be very open about that and

186communicate to other people yes Ponder but that submitting it to be cautious of what then you know you're opening yourself why aren't you communicating this why aren't you communicating that I mean like I think it should be posted on the website I think it could be part of the weekly superintendent communication and I think it should be communication to the committee and then if necessary reviewed at a board meeting or from Genesis but we have time before the next reading so all right good okay sure let me keep that thought okay sorry advertising excuse me advertising advertising we have a lot of questions okay they're in the memo [Music] some of the questions um Jessica Richmond Smith suggested that we ask and then I did get some feedback about what the overall goal was in

187advertising whether there are other ways to generate Revenue I don't know that's appropriate for tonight but go ahead John I was at the policy meeting and this is one of the issues I've raised as a board member so I guess what what I was trying to achieve with this is to generate some Revenue but I I guess what I'd love the board to consider is if we could find a way to kind of crawl before we run I mean we have a video board we we have indications from the Blue Wave booster club that they're ready willing and able to solicit advertisements and manage those monies and then set up a special account and donate it to the school as a 501c3 I guess you know my my goal would be to again take a

188baby step here see how it works and then if it works well and it's already working I just saw baywater advertisement supporting one team I've posted stuff about Mama Carmela's you know there is advertising out in social media already uh maybe not explicit but calling out businesses but if we could just work like with the video board and see if that model works and look to expand it the reason I want to do this I think we have a perfect example our costs are going up you know hockey went up 20 you know I don't mean to call it a hockey um but you know the facilities so it's a way of generating Revenue what we heard during that meeting um from from Doug Blue Wave boosters but we have people willing to you know

189increase their stature if you just stuck that you know give it a kind of a try or a beta test with local businesses on the video board that'd be a good place to start further questions comments Katie um I appreciate your comments John about about starting small and and looking at this I would maybe even ask to go back a little bit things have come in front of us a little in terms of conversations around participation fees and advertising and I feel like we haven't yet at the table had a conversation about what our end goal is why are we looking to potentially increase revenues is it is it because we can't pay for things is it because there are other things out there I think it would be helpful to establish what we want

190to get out of it and also understand how the monies would be used before we kind of go down you know either a small or a big Endeavor um I have a million questions about things and I think you know just the scale of all of it it does matter and you wonder how far it's going to go are we talking mom and pop local businesses are we talking you know reading corporate type things um so so I would like to start the conversation with with why do we feel that this might be important and where would it go Julie I'll jump in um yeah I appreciate what everyone's saying um if we have opportunities let's explore using them um let's start small let's be thoughtful and careful I guess where I'm coming at it

191is I don't know that we're at the place yet where it's these are policy decisions I still feel like we need to decide as a board what our objectives are philosophically what we have an appetite for I don't know if that's philosophical but bear with me it's late um and and have some discussion as a full board around what we're trying to do what we're trying to generate how we envision using it and then crafting policy that supports and protects Us in doing that um but I think to start and pause and again I appreciate that we we I believe it went to policy to get the ball rolling and get the conversation started so I'm not arguing with that step in the process but I think we we do need to discuss um some

192objectives and some bigger picture um pieces to this Initiative for these ideas before we can chill because I see this as as being a part of or the discussions we had about looking at alternative Revenue sources so I think this is one component of of looking for them the reason being that um you know we're always looking for um you know it's certainly there is there are tax dollars but there's I think we always want to be looking at the universe of of uh spending we certainly have precedent for advertisements if we look at the 308 you know program their advertisements in there I understand those dollars get used in it you know they go through a different path but we do use School advertising already um so I think this is again I think

193it's in line with a long-term goal for looking at alternate sources of revenue and so the question was what could we possibly generate and what would it look like uh if we tried to do this um so you know I for me that that is the larger context um I I um I think from there I guess the question would be kind of to the point of starting small what does that mean what would we be willing to take on and what sort of will we be looking at trying to generate from a revenue perspective short and longer Dave uh I think that starting from a high level goal and working back is always when we do better work um for me I'd like to learn more about it I mean I heard a suggestion

194about us being at what I would describe a competitive disadvantage to other towns that do participate in this but I have no idea what that scope is or the magnitude or the economics of all the terms so I look forward to learning more data about this and being able to uh you know hopefully inform what we're looking at and what we could do so rich how fast can you put together some finances so it would be difficult so the few districts that that do do this like Wilton uh in Richfield all the money goes to the booster clubs and then the booster clubs spend the money so we don't have access to what the booster clubs are collecting because they're not donating it necessarily back to the school district they might you know sell ads

195raise a bunch of money and then use that money to buy either like different jerseys or different pieces of equipment so that money goes to nice to haves in some ways correct yeah so it's not as if like the Board of Ed let's say Wilton is issuing like an RFP to solicit uh companies in town that will then donate money to put signs up on their stadiums or their auditoriums it's all kind of done outside of the school but it supports the system itself Julie so then so then I would ask the question are we looking for revenue streams to apply to our bottom line and if so maybe advertising isn't it is there a separate objective to engage the community in ways like via advertise I don't know if there's a secondary objective potentially

196to advertising that should be considered separately um but it sounds like it would be a new thing to be running advertising for the Board of Ed to put the revenue toward their line bottom line pardon me I mean John it's getting late in the hour and we're not going to solve this this evening but again we have the ability to engage a again Doug Wilson said they've done it um and used it for the senior uh send-off they've raised money put in a special account and donate it to what the Student Activity account pitch is that how that happened correct and then it goes to purchase whatever okay so there's the model they act as a financial sponsor that's called because they are 501c3 they help manage it you know Mr Wilson also said he

197engages with a number of businesses because we have the posters throughout town that have sponsorships on it so guys where we actually are advertising through separate or people are using are like this image and raising money and distributing it 308 but it's not it's not going against our bottom line I understand so this is a little different it's much more like it did go against the bottom line on the senior standoff because it was a Student Activity account so that is the way it would work uh the the financial sponsor we collect the monies maybe even manage it of course policies aboard approval and then distribute the monies directly to Darien public schools which I actually just did through a Fidelity charitable account it's a charitable not for profit except checks so there's ways you

198do it there's ways to figure out there's ways to start small I don't want to get in the minutia 10 to 15 after we've been here since okay to be continued yeah I'm just going to say maybe you know I don't know where we discussed this in a smaller group maybe some subcommittee but I think there's a way to do this yeah I think there's also there's also a way to test it there's also a way to Pilot it I think a lot of the infrastructure is set up already if it's specific to the scoreboard and the video up there I mean you've got programs like 308 that do advertising so I think all the questions are valid questions what are we trying to do from a revenue standpoint look broadly we should always be

199looking at sources of revenue we've asked Alan to look at sources of revenue we've asked Alan to look for sources of funding for Robotics and different things like that so I think that's how we have to couch it in the big picture of are there venues out there that can generate Revenue how we spend it or where we direct it I think that's we have to decide as a board I don't know it's a good point I wrote down theater you know that booklet there's advertisements how does that all work there's a process in place that works and funds something within the 308 program so let's have the conversation continued anyone that wants to bump up thoughts and maybe we'll have a more organized thought process and get it on the agenda again all right

200okay it's a good conversation um Marge real quickly we we agreed on a regular basis to review the foil log anything um is there a slide or um okay keep rolling in okay oh that's anything yeah is there any detail on what's this costing us really just my loss my time because everything's electronic now did you log your time that you spend on voice would that be difficult for you to do going forward so when it's busy the advice from Council was a half an hour a day but I could do I could do the total I mean some of these were a lot of emails as you can see and I did only really know the ones that were an excessive number of emails like some of them are easy the transportation contracts I

201mean it's silly to count Pages because Richard just attaches it to an email so this first one was 12 000 pages that you had to review so I did not hand over 12 000 pages but I reviewed 12 000. okay and that's 12 000 items so it's more than 12 000 Pages emails wow go ahead John there seems to be a recurring name here um is this do we know if it's business related is it are we allowed to ask that or is there a way that we can kind of streamline what this person is looking for through Communications I'm not sure the foia process we don't I don't believe we have the right to ask okay anybody can well I know in conversations with a board attorney we have the right to go back

202and ask if they can narrow their request or the definition is what they're looking for when stuff comes up when you're looking for everything from A to Z and you've got 12 000 Pages or 12 000 items it's like what's what's the fishing Expedition all about I mean so you can ask and I did but they don't have to agree so then you just agree to turn over on a rolling basis instead of waiting for all twelve thousand right okay is there another page yeah Jill sorry there's a couple um organizations that are asking us for information I don't remember seeing that certainly not three of them or more in one year is this new now you know somebody decides that they want to you know be more competitive in a bid coming up so

203they'll ask the bridge for contracts we get a lot of organizations that ask for the name and address of our employees never really sure yeah if you know why that is but maybe it's a couple more this year than in the past and the lawyer from old Melody admires so clearly for a student right thank you there's no one here for 9 000 emails these are resources coming out of the districts yeah there's a better way please ask yeah 4 500 you seriously have to wonder what some of these fishing Expeditions are all about I mean I appreciate it Marge I would you know I don't know rich or Marge you know this is time and energy and resources that are taken away from your day jobs that are taken away from student time and

204energy so um you know it's part of the process that we have to go through but um you know I think if these things continue to get out of control we should just kind of review it on a regular basis because it almost becomes abusive so years ago when there was a RTM member who was playing two three four times it was so much more than this and even then shipment if Goodwin said we weren't quite ready to file a nuisance complaint with it has to be really bad okay but that is an option to file a nuisance complaint yeah this is not this one and again when I get busy I do a half an hour a day and Rich if you can't get into contracts he gets them when he can right but

205there's a responsibility and a timeline to respond when they write four days you just have to acknowledge that you've received their their request you don't have to give them documents in four days they all write that okay it's just it's I don't know it's I don't necessarily understand when you read what some of the requests are I don't necessarily understand what the goal is it just seems to yeah become a weapon all right thank you Marge um further discussion and possible action on proposed board Master agenda for August 2023 2024 quickly Dr Adler yep on September 26th I made the changes that uh you saw this evening um a couple just one I'll call it was a significant change just um I didn't want it to be fly by the board uh I was asked

206to look at cease reduce some of some things that we could take out of some of these meetings so the update in the district's plan uh strategic plan board goals instead of every quarter which is really like just over a month right when you think about it I I moved out to November and did it the three times a year because you're like even tonight you're getting updates on mental health and so on I think of that and realistically we've only been in school like a month or so to speak um so that's a change I made and uh Board of insurance certainly talk about that uh president on team talk and wellness uh that has been addressed here uh this evening so you'll see those in November 28th um I moved up the annual

207special education update I moved from December uh to November 28th you'll see that again the Strategic plan knowledge moves in November and the goals in November 28th uh January 9th that didn't change anything I left that that's that's always been off since we look at a calendar for the budget calendar and then in January 20 23rd we took off the Foy log uh because it was moved forward till tonight that's that represents the changes what questions or comments Julie thank you um on October 24th Allen did you mean to cross out update on implementation of District strategic plan aboard yes uh just checking on that and then on the change in the timing for the special education update does that give us the time we needed remember the conversation last time of asking Rich if

208that would be sufficient to be able to address Budget concerns and I checked with Rich confirmed okay great what will we have on these discussions anyway right I'm sure we will but I know we wanted to make sure that we have that conversation in enough time for that to inform discussion and decisions thank you yes John just quickly I mean that unfunded mandate now it becomes part of the budget forecast for next year already so it could all right any other further questions do I have a motion to approve the board Master agenda for August 2023 to February 2024 as amended Dave second by Dennis all those in favor unanimous with everyone at the table thank you Marge anything on the Personnel report well I'll preface it by saying Barry don't text me but it's

209just very disconcerting that people are resigning in September people are resigning in September the teachers who resigned and their shortage areas so okay don't worry about that is your inflow of recruiting and resumes continuing or to be strong so these positions library media Specialists and Elementary World Language are particularly difficult okay let us know if there's anything you need or how we can help John where are they moving to do you know um in it's going to Westchester so for another job okay okay thank you thanks Katie katius thank you um just a clarification on the tpd for the appointment he's checking with his district to see how long they're going to hold him do you have any sense so it's 30 days normally but sometimes if they hire someone early they'll let them go

210okay so 30 days would be the most thank you good question thank you Michelle good evening any public comment in person sure please to the podium please state your name and address you'll have up to three minutes to comments Dan guller 10 Walmsley road I was uh kind of floored by some of the numbers from the uh uh from the the first presentation that we saw from the thriving task force and uh I wanted to add a little bit of extra color to that that the uh the Trevor Project uh has done studies that have said that lgbtq plus youth are four times more likely than their peers to attempt suicide and so that would mean that nine percent of our teens are four times more likely to attempt to take their lives and uh

211Dennis you had asked you know why they don't feel safe why you know why are our kids especially our lgbtq plus kids not feeling safe and it made me think of a lyric from into the woods uh careful the things you say children will listen and our kids are listening and they hear what's going on in Florida and how queer youth are being attacked and silenced they hear what's going on with anti-trans bills and legislation throughout the country and bills that were presented here in Connecticut that didn't pass they they hear about uh curriculum challenges and challenges to books in school and they know what books are on these lists and last year's American Library Association list of the most banned books half of those books had queer things books aren't the anime and these

212kids are seeing this they know that this is an attack and they're being stigmatized so that may be one reason why they don't feel safe books should be magical a second grader who doesn't feel like every other kid in that school sitting down and and teachers reading them a book and suddenly they see themselves that's Magic books aren't going to make anyone gay books aren't going to change who someone fundamentally is books can make us open our minds books can make us uh appreciate other people in other cultures so I hope that you will consider this as you apparently are moving forward with this challenge because our kids are watching us nine percent of our teens are four times more likely to attempt suicide and I think it's time that we showed them we had

213their backs thanks thank you for speaking this evening point of clarification we're not we didn't talk about banning any books to see correct okay thank you [Music] um thank you um Michelle anyone online anyone else in person uh we have one raised hand Miss Armel Jacobs with him you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us Armel yeah can you hear me yep go ahead thank you um thanks to all of you uh for all that you're doing and also for you know hanging in there late I'll be brief um I want to thank Dan for those words I think it's very easy to get lost in numbers and presentations and no offense to anybody droning meetings I'm sure we've all felt it in some capacity at some point um but like honestly you do

214need to remember that human element there is a lot more at stake than sometimes it feels at you know 10 o'clock at night um when you want to go home um I want to Peg piggyback on that and say I don't know if it's a done deal about the parents on the panel for the um the books the book panel um if it's not a done deal I really would urge you not to do that I don't I can't think of any reason why someone would be on there but for a political purpose and I don't know if you had fun with everything that happened you know around the Mermaid book and the circus that that created but I'm wagering that you really didn't I don't think you want that to be an ongoing thing

215there's only one reason for someone to eagerly want to be on that committee and it's because they want to control what books the kids have access to and people need to understand that not every space is a space for you okay not every space is a space for you some space is a space for experts an operating surgeon doesn't allow anybody in their or some spaces are not for everyone and you as the people in control do not need to bend you don't need to give access to people who do not belong in those spaces and in fact I would say that it's your job to protect the children in that capacity you have a higher Mission than just being liable to your constituents that is how I feel and honestly I'm not sure the

216whole committee was is being created for political purpose or it's Uprising from a political Fiasco so you know to continue the bending and the cowering I just don't think you're going to get anything than more of the same circus you're trying to avoid so that's just my two cents thank you and have a good night thank you I may have missed it but would you please repeat your address 12 fish thank you Michelle anyone else there are no more raised hands at this time okay I just want to uh thank everyone that participated this evening but also another big thank you to the board uh the board has officially been here six hours now working taking time off of work and time away from families but it is a group of volunteers that puts an

217incredible amount of time thank you for everyone that emails us and we're listening to everyone but um you know we've just spent six hours working you know for the students and for the district and it's much appreciative and thank you for all the work at the board level around the appointment of Robin Nelson with that I'll ask for a motion to adjourn this meeting John Cena second by Julie while I was in favor of those unanimous thank you everyone have a good rest of the evening