001yes we're all set thank you good evening everyone I'd like to call this special meeting of the Board of Education to order the next Board of Education meeting is on Tuesday June 27th at 7 30 PM in the Board of Education meeting room good evening everyone we've got a full house hello Michelle can we see Zoom here or in front of me you seem to be out you know as far as when people speak okay good oh all right good thank you so good evening everyone thanks for joining us in person and I'm Zoom we have a full agenda hard to believe graduation is upon us congratulations to all upcoming graduates those moving up from elementary school those moving up from Middlesex middle school and those graduating from Darien High School looks like the weather
002might be with us congratulations to all eight Award winners who are here this evening at the superintendent citizens award it was a great ceremony celebrating our students and all that they do day in and day out in our schools and in our communities we recognize those students and it was just an incredible celebration of their success at their various stages of being in the darien school system so congratulate congratulations again to all eight winners a big thank you to all those teachers and staff that are retiring this year thank you for your time and dedication to our students and the districts a healthy and happy and best wishes in your retirement or your next Journey wherever that may take you thank you for all the staff across the district for the hard work and focus
003this year to make it another successful year for all our students thank you to our parents for all the hard work behind the scenes and for your continued engagement with the board and the district we work as a community and to continue to be that high performing district and one that is one of the best districts in the state in the nation we need your feedback and we are listening as a board and as a district we keep the focus on our children their safety security and education each day this is a guiding principle for the work we do as a dedicated volunteer board while we may always have challenges and differences we must realize that the world continues to change each day at a fast pace and while we may not always agree we
004must continue to support needs of all students across the district life will continue to make us uncomfortable with change but we must work through that change as a community to support each other and our students we continue to be recognized as a high performing District in the state and the nation teachers and staff from across the state and the metro area continue to look for opportunities to be part of the district that speaks to the focus and Investments we have made in education in our community thank you also to all those that participated in this survey while headlines sell newspapers your continued engagement in feedback as parents is what is important negative headlines social media posts websites email campaigns and posted information out of context all feed misinformation and add Stress and Anxiety across the
005district and to our students as a leading District we are much better than that we must continue to focus on the needs of our students thank you for staying connected through our board meetings and through direct email to the board and administration we appreciate all the participation over the last school year from our parents and we will continue to listen and learn our students in school and graduating are faced with a fast-paced and changing World each day thank you also to all those in the district supporting our great summer programs and to all those parents who will continue to be part of the drop-off lines all summer long I hope you take some time this summer to spend with family and friends and as my daughters would tell me dad be in the moment put
006the phone down iPad down and close the computer create a memory and be in the moment with your family so thank you and have a great summer we'll move on to Michelle public comment if anyone in person would like to participate please wait for the chair to recognize you we will do people in person first please thank you Mr Dunn good evening everyone John Dunn 175 Raymond I've been a member of the Dei team since its Inception and just wanted to share some personal Thoughts with you tonight I've enjoyed getting to know so many of the wonderful members who are involved throughout this year and last they're lucky to have something absolutely fantastic students teachers parents and principals in the district however as we discuss the findings it's important to mention consultant Mr Ken Schultz
007who co-facilitated multiple meanings in the spring of 2022. Mr Solomon turned out to be a divisive figure within the community blocking many parents including deit members on a professional social media accounts approximately 1 000 parents and community members voice their opposition to him and a petition and despite this feedback the administration was adamant that Mr Shelton was the only consultant to do this work we all know how that it's a board to Justice its findings tonight I would encourage them to observe the lack of quantifiable recommendations in it while qualitative advice can be additive we need to understand how we could evaluate these recommendations on a defined frequency after they are potentially impingent specifics for that are missed additionally I hope the report would have spent more time on what is working in our schools
008rather than just keep seeking to identify problems when no school system is perfect our teachers and students should be commended for what they're doing right we should be learning from our best practices within town as a tokening dad the passport around the world event is a perfect example of highlighting the Abundant cultural diversity in our schools and would be easy to replicate across all elementary schools get that one on mentioned finally ask the board to consider if the 14 meetings over more than 40 hours with the best use of our teachers students administrators and parents time and the district's resources for this final report especially in light of our districts declining test scores it's disappointing that Dr tranberg departs his legacy will be won that prioritizes Equity over accidents in my view it's very unfortunate
009that Dr tramberg leaves his role with the district in worse shape than he found it we are in a challenging position one right for dissension friction and in dire need of a true administrative leadership to help restore unity and our academic excellence Darian deserves better thanks for speaking Mr Dunn anyone else in person hi Diane Urban 10 Crane Road as a CD SPD Dei chair part of my role is to speak up for the right of all students to a safe and inclusive learning environment related to tonight's Equity team presentation I am sharing a small sample of powerful comments from students to remind us that they have been asking and waiting for change in June 2020 a change.org petition with over 2 000 signatures Astorian schools to provide resources and training from groups and perspectives
010that are underrepresented in Darien a group of current and former DPS students wrote to the Boe calling for an inclusive curriculum annual Dei training for all staff and teachers including coaches age-appropriate resources to further education outside the classroom and a sustainable method to hold all accountable there were dozens of written testimonies many sharing sentiments like quote GTS DHS alumni are so prepared for the Collegiate Experience in regards to academic rigor yet so ill-prepared for social and cultural diversity end quote other students shared how it is difficult to be different in Darien including lack of representation in the student body the staff the administrators and the town they note lack of knowledge and sensitivities bullying microaggressions and racist slurs on October 12 2021 following a threatening misogynistic and anti-lgbtq plus vandalism event at DHS community members
011stood before the board asking for change among many disturbing incidents one student talked about slurs and McCann that was hurled at her face she said quote previously I did not go to anyone to report these issues because I thought it was hopeless and that nothing would change but now I am asking you to please hear us out and give us hope back end quote a black and Native American bisexual alumna shared that she had been victim to countless racist sexist and homophobic slurs and actions she stated quote now it is time for all of us to step up as a community and change the way the town interacts with anything it deems as different end quote on June 14 2022 several students spoke up at the Boe about mental health and a need for culture
012change one student asked for social change in Darien to normalize mental health needs and said quote the only way to spark this change is by implementing curriculum directly into the schools in addition to these high school students elementary students have shared with the board how they have faced racial insults from peers with a first grader asking to quote help kids learn that it's wrong to make kids feel bad just because of their race end quote there are more but I'll end with the student quote from October 2021. this is human rights this is feeling safe at school when I'm trying to learn that one of the best schools in the country students shouldn't feel harassed and threatened because they're just trying to learn she goes on you're almost that time I hope that you can
013hear the own voices tonight and show us that you care and show us the change that we are looking for I hope you listen to the presentation tonight with their comments in mind thank you for speaking to see me thank you anyone else in person sorry thank you Michelle anyone on Zoom if anyone on Zoom would like to participate please use the raised hand icon Carolina magui you are recognized and unmuted hi can you hear me yes go ahead thank you hi I just wanted to take two seconds to say thank you so much to uh Chris tramberg for everything he's done for the school I'm so sorry that he's leaving us and very very sorry and apologetic about what was said about him in the survey but Chris I wish you the best thank
014you so much for your participation and your uh work at the Darien High School and that sorry at the DPS and I wish you the best are Mel Jacobs you are unmuted and recognized Armel can you hear us yeah can you guys hear me can you see me go ahead um thank you Chris um I just I want to thank you I want to thank you for um the way that you tried um I I see it I see so clearly how hard you tried here I'm sorry I'm I'm really sorry that we couldn't get it together as a community to help and I'm sorry that this board did not Rally behind you in the way that I think all of you should have I think it's not right that you started a committee you
015tried to answer this man tried to answer the call of the students we let people come in and Bully we let people bully this board I'm talking to the board you let people bully your hires your Consultants your students I think you need to be stronger when you see people coming into your house with pitchforks you say not in my house you can't come in here with that dagger you need to protect your people when you don't we lose them and when we lose them we lose our integrity and we lose our ability to show this community that we're moving forward not backward you're letting all these people come in here grab the headlines and tell everyone Darian Silla backward place we're not we're changing I know that certain people don't like that we're changing
016but tough noogies we're changing we need the board to step up I know that you can do it I'm so sorry Chris I'm sorry to see you go we're gonna try we're gonna keep trying and I want to leave just the community with one quote here this is about Pride because it's pride month pride is important because somewhere out there there's a confused teenager who still thinks maybe being dead is better than being gay I want people to take that to heart when you see the yucky stuff in our headlines when you see what people are speaking out against I want you to understand knowing what we've been through as a community you need to protect these kids from these people who are attacking Pride who are attacking the Dei measures that those of us
017are trying to push forward it's on you to protect them and thank you thanks for speaking Armel anyone else on Zoom Michelle there are no more race hands at this time all right thank you all for participating a hand popped up sure go ahead Krista Carnes you are unmuted and recognized foreign hi I'm in my car um go ahead Krista thanks Krista Collins 45th Avenue um I just wanted to say that um I appreciate what everybody just said and as a member of the Dei District team I want you to know that a few voices that had predetermined what they wanted to take out of it and convey and shut this down from the beginning is not the full representation of the people who participated and that the overwhelming majority of parents teachers administrators that
018participated in the committee really do want to do go forward so if we didn't make the strides that we made that we might have wanted to make it does not it does not negate work and the call that we have been asked to do and we have to keep moving forward bit by bit so that we can make a difference for the kids that are coming next so just keep that in mind please you are unmuted and recognized hi Theresa vote 22 Circle Road um I just want to make one comment um I read the results of the communication survey and while I definitely agree with some of it namely Aspen um I saw some comments on there that I found really disturbing in relation to um Chris schramberg and I've lived in this town
01921 years I know the words there do not speak for the majority of people from darianne but I will say what made me sad is that people thought it was okay to actually put those words down in black and white and submit them um I just want people to know that's not the Darian I know um and Chris I wish you really I wish you I wish you well good luck thanks Teresa for speaking anyone else on Zoom Michelle there are no more raised hands at this time hello can you can you hear me hello we can hear you your name hi I'm sorry yes for some reason I cannot find my hand razor I've used it before but it's disappeared go ahead please thank you uh Karen Cummins 19 point of Woods Road South
020um I was on the Dei committee um I too want to thank uh Chris tramberg for um his Herculean uh effort and Leadership um it is no small task um it's very complicated and I think he did an amazing job I also just want to voice how important I think it is uh that we have um a diversity equity and inclusion program um I think uh it's critical that we continue the program uh in the future years we only scratch the surface um it's not easy to do and to do right I would certainly advocate for out an outside uh expert to come in uh to help guide these conversations and I I really do appreciate all of the parents and the students and the administrators and teachers who participated um and their Devotion to
021it but I I just want to express my uh deep deep desire for this to continue and for the board to support a Dei program going forward thank you very much thanks for speaking Karen anyone else on Zoom Michelle I'm going to give it a second there are no more to raise hands at this time thank you Michelle thank you for all those experts we'll move on to the superintendent's report uh good evening everyone thank you for coming out this evening or in person and online uh just and I'll just reiterate a couple of things uh Mr chairman uh remarked on uh only because we are live and it's also being recorded here I'll just name uh the recipients this evening real quickly just one more time of the superintendo's awards just for the record
022and the Henley School uh summer Erickson in The Homeschool Emma house and the arch Ridge School Emma Wang in the Royal School Julie graziasa in the tokenix school Jack Stricker and Middlesex Jack Nolan and at the high school Sophie Shu and shafa Salman so we congratulate all of those recipients who you see uh before you this evening Mr Sherman also recognized the retirees and they do so be a little bit repetitive also you can see uh the names real quickly here will be coming up of all of our retirees this particular year uh this year we we pause to salivate that significant accomplishments of faculty and staff members you see before you and to recognize and thank the 17 retirees for their significant contributions to our children and to our special Community uh collectively over
023the years our special group of retirees have served and nurtured generations of students served in countless committees participated in a variety of clubs activities lived through building projects accreditation visits work with many administrators and just as many educational reform initiatives and educational acronyms some of which have come around again and who would have known in their final years gave everything and help in the district navigate a global pandemic and finally the smoke in his book learning by hard Rule and Barth suggests that most of us become Educators because we want to use our hearts as well as our minds in order to promote young people's learning because we believe deeply that learning is one of the most noblest and most profound Endeavors of The Human Experience and because we're firmly committed to the value of
024learning in the Democratic community our honorees are representative of these beliefs they say that return is never easy a decision to make now maybe the words of a 13 year old from New York May provide some words of comfort and appreciation to our retirees when they look back in their times in our schools people tell us not to look back said but sometimes we have to this is so we can see how beautiful a canvas of our life has become remember all the little splotches and smears of paint all the little mistakes we made they really won't matter in the end not when you see the whole big beautiful picture a special thank you to all our Ataris for the color texture and form that you have brought to the darien public schools and if
025I may say on a personal loan as you leave May the road always rise to meet you May the wind be always at your back may the sun shine warmly upon your face and the rains fall softly upon your field until we meet again may God called you in the palm of his hands farewell colleagues you will be fondly remembered please join me in a warm Round of Applause and appreciation of our retirees dedication to Darien public schools and most importantly for the current love for our students okay [Music] the things come full circle if you haven't seen the the I'll call them the kids today John no disrespect the kids um our senior class members of our senior class going down into kindergarten and visiting the schools thank you to the members of the
026high school for organizing that event and the high school administration and for all the students uh as they process through the schools or maybe a couple of pictures here scrolling for you in a moment or two uh we have the Royal homes and Oxbridge School uh they're moving up is tomorrow Fitch Academy is tomorrow morning at 9 00 a.m at the wheat Beach we have a Middle School uh tomorrow evening and also we look forward to the high school weather permittent across our fingers for uh good weather uh on June 14th at five o'clock it was just wonderful to see the teacher's got such a kick out of it our students did our senior class and like the lesson look at them there um and and our staff did too it was just a wonderful
027event so thank you for starting a new tradition in the schools I also want to recognize our quiz Bowl uh it has passed but the last Memorial Day uh the high school Chris Paul team under Dan's records uh supervision another a few other staff members give up their memorial wet weekend and went to Atlanta uh they placed eighth place congratulations to them out of over 300 teams we also had a ninth grader naive uh Chicago earned a rising star individual award I just placed fourth highest scoring freshman entire field uh this Builds on the on the recognition of our young people at the middle school and it's just wonderful to see that continue to grow because kids be recognized staff giving up such weekends to actually go so thank you Darian summer school and extended
028school year is about to start on June 26th uh we will have for esy for those eligible for Transportation uh those notifications were quite uh this week directly to the families if you still want to register you still May register online uh still available congratulations to our Performing Arts 308 at the 308 Halo awards that recognizes the Performing Arts of students and schools across uh Connecticut my understanding is best that uh we had for best Chorus for Newsies and best performers by a support and actor in a play Aidan Kennedy as Calvin in the Tempest uh congratulations again one more time for 308. our spring Athletics is also up and running and including and uh we congratulate the darianne boys volleyball for fcic and state championships uh the girls tennis for the SEC championships the
029girls lacrosse for scic championships and I believe we have a game tomorrow evening so we wish them good luck there too a special thank you to John he sits on the board of a Schwab for the significant contributions to the board this year we look forward to schwanaha returning in the Fallen as we have done before and as the board has recognized we wish John well as a heads off uh to Yale in the fall congratulations John uh upcoming board meetings uh June 22nd we have a finance subcommittee uh the 23rd a Communications committee there is a regular board meeting currently scheduled for June 27th and I have dates for the board retreat and the rescheduling of the uh July 25th meeting I'll send that Under Shepherd cover at this particular point I did say
030I would share a little uh notice just on behalf of the time a little bit if you don't happen to be at graduation and you're looking for something to do uh the Flag Day ceremony is being held at the veterans Circle in front of a Darien Town Hall at 4 30 on Wednesday this afternoon and since it is the last meeting um before the last day of school I do wait Mr tramberg all the best wishing well and thank them for all of his contributions and I also want to thank the community for supporting the students and staff again through what has been a challenging couple of years and we very much appreciate everybody's efforts and as the board chair said I hope you get a chance to relax us this summer make some special
031memories so it's with much gratitude and appreciation for your Collective efforts and support of our students and staff this year thank you very much thank you we'll move on to student representative reports John raskoff making sure we sure Yale is ready for you we'll see about it I'm currently in Communications about something that's wrong with their system so see what happens um yeah you're on your way never doll but um um so this is a rather brief one this is just some end of year announcements um again congratulations to all of the sports congratulations to 308 congratulations to all of the class of 2023. um current uh today actually the senior says Dr Bradley mentioned went to the elementary schools we enjoyed it a lot I think the teachers enjoyed it more than the students
032if you can believe that um uh the seniors also just had their senior Symposium presentations today at 1 30 which culminates their internships so um in the event that those all go well that is the official end of their all their graduation requirements um the underclassmen can pick up their yearbooks starting tomorrow and also on Wednesday considering tomorrow is a special circumstance school day it's a makeup day so they don't they don't technically have to go in for that that's for all the parents who are watching um uh tomorrow is also a senior picnic mandatory actually because immediately afterward is the graduation rehearsal um should be fun um Wednesday is the last day of school really short classes um make sure you're all there to send your yearbooks um graduation seniors have to be there
033at 4 15 p.m and know later please um send in good weather Omens because if there is bad weather only two people per senior can go and seniors should have tickets so please make sure they distribute those um that's all I have thank you very much thank you John appreciate it we'll move on to approval of the minutes I have a motion to approve the following minutes the minutes of the special meeting held on May 23rd 2023 minutes of the regular meeting held on May 23 2023 and minutes of the special meeting held on May 30th 2023. we have a motion Julie second by John all those in favor unanimous with all Press thank you we will move on to board committee reports Sarah the curriculum committee met last Thursday we talked um about the
034transition between eight and nine and some potential changes to forces which we will hopefully come see our way some of them if not all of them in the fall so stay tuned for that if you have not watched our meeting please do so because there's some good information Julie thank you uh Communications committee met June 1st we reviewed the results of the community and staff survey as mentioned and our next meeting I believe is June 23rd at 8 30 a.m thank you Jules the policy subcommittee met on June the 9th uh we had an update on four student five uh sort of edits to various policies around the existence the next policy base to be determined I am very pleased to announce that all three schools for Henley homes and Royal are out to bid
035um so we are waiting for those to come back the first set of bids will come back actually later this week and we'll be looking at that there'll be an iterative process so we won't have final numbers for a while yet um but um you know we are certainly looking carefully at the numbers we have had a couple things including some requirements from other boards some unforeseen conditions like soil that wasn't good for building on some design refinements and some scope adjustments so we are looking at a pretty tight budget and the possibility that we may need to go back to replenish some of our contingency funds but that's all we're waiting to see if the bids come in I'm just telling you that for information but you know for the time being it's more
036important to see what the actual bits are the plan is to have shovels in the ground in mid-august that's still the plan uh and just so you know the board members may get questions and just so the community is aware the general schedule is to start construction on the new parts of all the buildings with the idea that those will be ready for the following school year so that when we do Renovations there's additional swing space that we can use that's the general schedule um so anyway very exciting thank you Joe thank you and thank you to the HHR committee the time and energy spent on these buildings committees is just extraordinary again it's all volunteer um the exciting news too oxridge is drawing to a close Luke is probably incredibly happy about that he's
037done an incredible job of managing the school and the physical plant up there while phase two comes to a close um we will be having an Oxbridge building committee meeting on site uh Thursday the 15th at 10 o'clock so it'll be exciting to be in that school with the building committee as we March toward closure of that project so thank you Luke for all that you're done around that all right we will move on to presentations and discussions uh report on high school college acceptances and awards internships profile on High School class of 2023 and post high school plans so this is always exciting to hear where all our students are headed so thank you thank you and good evening I'll do my annual disclaimer that I'm really bad at clicking and talking at the
038same time John I'm gonna put you in charge of reminding me if I don't okay awesome thank you good evening my name is Megan Emmanuel so I'm a very proud director of guidance in grade 6 through 12 here in the district I am so happy to be here this evening to share with you the exciting plans of our graduating class amazing and talents at class of 2023. we have had a front row seat to watch our seniors play Laugh work dance compete paint act sing and dream over the past four years and we have loved being a part of their Journeys as we present the plans for the class of 2023 I'd also like to take a brief moment to acknowledge and celebrate the hard work of the school counseling department and our administrative support
039staff we are so fortunate to have such a hard-working and committed passionate group of Educators helping families to navigate the post-high school planning process especially the constantly changing landscape of college admissions I know there's a very full agenda this evening so I will keep my remarks as brief as possible but I'm so grateful for the opportunity to celebrate this special class we're ready okay um so the class of 2023 has 343 seniors more than 96 are pursuing higher education in the fall we have five students entering trade school or training including welding electrical and auto mechanics we also have five students who will be studying overseas uh we have students pursuing Gap years students who are still undecided or exploring their options and students continuing Beyond a fourth year of high school or participating in
040other educational programs this year our office sent materials for a grand total of 3576 applications considering a slightly smaller size of this class this is proportionally similar to pastures this represents a total number of transcript requests we received and does not reflect the applications that were withdrawn or incomplete by students after we have sent materials once we figure those numbers in we have a net total of just over 2 700 apps or an average of 7.9 completed applications per student and the number of average completed applications is also consistent with the past four years our students will be enrolling at 135 different institutions in the fall foreign we did very well in the early decision pools about 51 percent of the students applied under a binding early decision plan which is similar to previous years
04153 percent of the students who applied at the early decision were accepted and overall as you can see the early decision data has remained relatively consistent over the past four years you will notice in your packet that the total number of Ed apps 209 versus the number of students applying early decision 174 is different the difference is the number reflects also early decision two applications as you may know early decision two is a binding decision plan that's usually later in January designed to capture students who did not already commit to an ed in the fall in some cases a student may have been deferred or denied by their ed1 school and then submitted an egdc to application uh so this is where we had the most applications both this year and over the last four
042years there's not a lot of big huge surprises or changes this are here this list remains fairly consistent over time Maybe there we go um so this is the most attended again a few new schools on this list we expect a little fluctuation um but no big huge surprises here either um in terms of geography geography remains fairly stable as well we have about a quarter of our students who will remain in the New England area um and as I mentioned we have five students who are going overseas to study in Egypt England Scotland and Ireland um in your packet looking at chart number seven you have a list of schools by a percentage of acceptances over the past four years each year we look at the schools with more selective rates of Acceptance in
043most cases our acceptance rates are actually higher than the national average it is important to consider even when comparing to National acceptance rates that the sample size is fairly small in many cases we look at these numbers every year to see if there's anything surprising we reach out to schools um when we're maybe perhaps not seeing the results we would expect to open the conversations and further understand um how we can better advise our families we do continue our practice of meeting individually with over 200 schools that visit our school every fall we have been told that this is a really unique practice we have a school counselor meet with every representative that comes through to help them understand a little bit more about our programs and our students and certainly to build those relationships
044we feel it's imperative to the work we do so we're really proud of that this is our state school application data this also remained fairly consistent this year with about 127 completed applications we did see an increase in the enrollment at both UConn Stanford and NCC both of these institutions offer really wonderful and unique opportunities so we were happy to see the increased enrollment there um chart number nine in your packet shows our IV analysis we're always very proud of how our kids do and the very competitive IV process we had 90 at four applications to IVs this year with 3.8 percent of the class enrolling in an IV um this year we saw increases in percentages of acceptances at a number of schools including Dartmouth and Princeton with the overall percentage of acceptances staying
045relatively consistent with past years it's also important to note that we still have some apps that are still on an IB waitlist or with unknown results and once again we look at these numbers every year and do Outreach as appropriate there we go um so this is um a look at a longitudinal four-year look at GPA and SAT and ACT scores and as you can see it's really consistent over time one note on chart 11 in your packet which is the summary of school-based school um just to help with the interpretation the net apply reflects the total number of transcript requests less the incompletes and withdrawn applications and if you go from right to left um when you add the acceptances to nice and wait lists it may not add up to the netapply because
046it does not include applications that are still listed as deferments or unknowns the numbers may also include students who perhaps were on a waitlist and then accepted or on a wait list and denied so they may be listed in two places but we did just want to represent the data that we thought might be most valued by the public so Gathering some additional information from our students and the results were interesting so these were we always want to know about special programs so 33 of our students reported that they were admitted or will be participating in special programs and you can see a list of examples of the kinds of things they'll be doing including honors programs audition only programs dual degree or accelerated programs first year study abroad opportunities ROTC and other prestigious programs
047specific to the college such as selective engineering or business school programs here's a little bit of information on wait lists as you can see uh just a small handful of students that they would change their their plans if admitted off a wait list and then these were um career clusters the top two clear the numbers represent the top two career um clusters it's always interesting and valuable to learn what our students interested in studying um the um you can see that there's a wide variety and we are so excited to see where the journey takes them so thank you for the opportunity to share the impressive accomplishments of this class and I'm happy to take any board questions at this time thank you Megan thanks for continuing to compile all this good information so it's
048always exciting to see at the end of the school year thank you it sure is well done board questions Dave sorry Dennis isn't here so I'm going to try and jump in um he's always nice to me babe [Laughter] what are we doing together metrics for people what's Elite district and if anything's changed so far he's here Dave could you just yeah yeah sorry that is his annual question thank you yes okay so we are continuing uh We Gather personal email addresses from our students um as part of our senior survey and we do continue to um to email them we are we're trying to start to email them after freshman year to to see whether they're remaining whether they're transferring because I know there's always questions about transfer and also as they're ending their
049fourth year in terms of what their their plans are are they graduating in four years did they find that they needed to say a fifth year are they going to graduate school are they going to the the world of work so we're trying to do that survey at the end of their freshman year their first year and their fourth year thank you thank you for the question John uh thanks for compiling the information and just to the public that there's a lot more detailed information within our information package if you want to go crunch some numbers and check them out um and it is enlightening I mean it's enlightening that you know the results over the last four years data are relatively consistent um and you know visually graduate is pretty much playing out for
050us I think over these years even postcoded if you will one anecdotal story we often hear is the wait list um and I was surprised to see actually a number of applications remain stable because I hear about the 22 errors you know and so if you can kind of the Common App phenomenon and weave that through what's going on with the waitlist are kids hearing late or students hearing later um in the acceptance process so um there was a few things yeah um I would Echo I'm always kind of waiting to see that like our average applications are up to 25 because we're hearing of these record number of applications that these schools are receiving and so it's very interesting that our um that our numbers are are remaining fairly the same and I would
051say in terms of as an average a reasonable number like our average you know eight applications I think is a super reasonable number I would always say six to eight as a counselor so um I think there has been not to dive too deep into the covet things but I know that there was a little bit of a coveted Panic that happened that I do think we're starting to see die down a little bit I think um in Darien specifically one of the anecdotally the hypotheses we have is that these kids are really well supported in this process they're really well supported at home they're very well supported at school um I think they have the opportunity to to do a really meaningful College search um they have the opportunity to do the visits and
052to really compile a list of schools that um that they can be excited about so common app has made it easier to apply it's just optional has made it easier to apply um but I think that we're just continuing to do what we've always done I think both at home and at school um and just really want kids to have a meaningful process and so I I we just think that kids are super well supported and that's showing out in the numbers without the you know the Panic that we might be seeing elsewhere how about the wait list is are we hearing later um we are I think that has also gotten a little bit better um the wait list in um 21 for the class of 21 like we still had kids July August
053that were on the waitlist I think colleges are starting to get their algorithm back a little bit um and are starting to to use the wait list a little bit differently I think we are still seeing much higher than pre-covered numbers of wait lists but um I do think that we're hearing kids hearing back about the wait list much sooner than we were saying 21 and in 22. um so this year it seemed like a little less of of an issue um and again it's always I think once what we're finding finding as you can see there's about 13 kids I think that said that that waitlist would change their outcome I think that once kids have just kind of made that decision that they're they're good and comfortable and set with that decision which
054again I think speaks to that meaningful process and um that they've they've compiled a list of schools that they can be excited about can I grab one more dude um I'm going through the process the last time yeah it's kind of interesting congratulations yeah thanks um I guess test optional is also a new phenomenon my first two boys didn't get to I guess enjoy yeah that's the right or the optionality of it if you will and do you get a view on how many applications go in with tests and without so um oh pretty much because especially because Connecticut uses the SAT all of our kids have test scores and um and anecdotally we actually couldn't ask that question on our survey this year that's a different thing but um anecdotally pretty much kids when
055they had them many submitted um or submitted to some I don't you know we didn't have a ton of kids that didn't submit at all um because as you've seen our test scores are pretty strong and it's just an additional data point for most kids so um because they all have test scores many of them were still submitting thank you Julie thank you thank you uh just a quick question if if about a third of our students are getting in Ed that kind of means they submitted one application correct so does that mean that that skews are average so they can only submit one Ed application but they could have submitted um other non-binding plans like then you start getting into like restrictive early action and things like that so certainly there were some students
056like we had a we had students submit one we had students submit 20. um so there were certainly you know outliers on both sides of that but um they can only submit one Ed app but we do have a lot of students that will submit one Ed app and other forms of applications at the same time so they might put in eight or ten um you know I think students are starting to say a little bit more of like I'm just going to see what happens with my Ed and maybe I don't have to write all those essays um so I think kids are also again pausing um and and waiting a little bit which is a good thing we think that they're doing a meaningful search and really planning appropriate system sure Jill do
057my annual I thought I got your slide yes um I have two things one is um you know we see that IV chart every year which really represents I think partly the fact that we used to be all going in the Northeast and we don't anymore so I continue to feel that there's probably a more representative set of schools I think we should sure look at IVs but I think you know there are other schools in the South and the Midwest in the California where I'd love to for us to explicitly think about what placement looks like um so that's my first statement um my second is can we talk through students in transition the transition program the 19 to 22 year olds um I'd love to I see some things in here but I'd
058love to understand more explicitly um starting from the beginning the number is 3 43 graduates but it's 331 are the transition students just not on that slide is that where the Delta is um yeah so you would see um that reflected a little bit I believe let me just get the right number for you I believe it's in the summary um chart I believe that's chart number one yes so it's 331 and then 343 students class yep so if you look on this some on on chart one which is a summary information for the class so you'll see um some of the students that are going to transition programs captured in the the others undecided Gap so there's a small um handful of students um and and sometimes in the unknown it really depends on
059where they are in that planning okay so on your first chart then you also have your students going to trade school yeah there okay and so when we say 135 institutions that encompasses the whole universe of um trade schools maybe a transition plan in an Institutional setting and colleges or 135 is traditional to be honest I believe that refers to four-year schools okay and probably and for for your into your schools I'm happy to try and gather the data of how many other educational opportunities are in addition to the 135 if that's helpful okay and then can you talk about that special program slide in more detail please um and then before I leave office and I'll be quiet um we heard from us uh we as important heard from a member of the public
060and then I heard as I walked in the door from another about our transition programming and I think this is always touches on it um but I think we really do need to at some point as a board really thoroughly talk about what our transition plan looks like what's the strategy what's the so this is a formal request to get that on an agenda item uh in the near future please okay thank you so specific so this is student reported so we always um want to put that caveat in there so we basically have just asked you know if you're going to be participating in any programs and these were some of the specific ones that they that they outlined so um honors programs are usually based on um on GPA or other you know
061academic performances where a student would be invited to participate in an honors program at different schools that looks a little bit different um it could be different registration it could be different housing there's usually like you know there could be a a learning Living Community that's associated with an honors program um first year study abroad programs we're seeing this a little bit come up a little bit more where students are offered admission but they're offered admission on a campus abroad for their first semester so um instead of coming to the Stateside University campus they would do a semester at the University's program overseas and then join the U.S branch the U.S campus um in the spring so we are seeing that come up a little bit it more so that is actually being used almost
062as an admission tool that if you would like to come here this is an opportunity so it's usually an offer to a student not necessarily a request by a student to do that um we've had again living learning communities that's usually specifically based on a specific interest or area of study so you might have a stem living Learning Community where they're sharing a major or an area of study and living in the same dorms that often comes with guest speakers and workshops and maybe an extra class so students are invited to be or can apply to be a part of that research fellowships are just some really unique opportunities as you know um at the high school we have our ASR program which allows students to have a really unique um and unusual opportunity to
063do really high level research from throughout High School which is creating some of these opportunities for them to continue on at the University level we have students who are applying for and receiving ROTC scholarships or participating in the program and so um that is they'll they part of their responsibility at school is to um train with a branch of the military and usually involves a service commitment afterwards um we had students this year that were actually really excited that they had applied to special programs at schools for academic support um so sometimes this is just a general a general support sometimes it's specific to a student who might have ADHD or a student who might have dyslexia and so they're receiving different levels of academic support programs and that's usually also by application and we
064had several students in the survey expressed that they were really feeling that that was going to really help with their transition to school and getting off on a strong foot academically um as you know we have magical theater and music and students at our school and so oftentimes if you're going to major or minor in those programs that requires an audition it's usually a very rigorous audition process and so we have students who were participating in that and have gained entrance to those programs which is not an easy thing to do keeping with the ambition of our students our dual degree and accelerated programs so the three plus one programs we have a number of students and six-year Pharmacy programs or six-year Med programs um so really you know looking to get through their graduate
065work um at a little bit of a speedy race um I think I mentioned the first year I look I put that in there twice um cool we already got over that and then um and then lots of students that are gaining admission to um you know very specific business programs or engineering programs that are all by application again based on their performance in high school and their intended major so Megan just as a follow-up to what Joe was saying yeah I think there's some good questions and some information we got from constituents but you look at all these great schools and I think what I'd like to see on a go forward basis is this is great but we've got a whole group of kids in transition we've got a group of kids with
066IEPs 504s we have kids with disabilities so you've got all these Great Schools listed um but what type of programs do they have for those students and what are we doing to introduce those students to those programs yeah there's a reference made here that Clemson University is known for their Clemson life programs regarded as one of the top college programs and life skill programs for students with intellectual disabilities we have students in town that are part of the ableist program we have students in town that are doing a work study up at Fairfield or sacred heart so I think the board would like to see more information around that absolutely this is great ivy league is great all these continuous schools that our students get into I I will go back no disrespect and quote
067Dr Brenner years ago he said there's a school for everyone in this country and I think I'd like to see data that approaches that and looks at that sure the kids that are transitioning how are we helping them transition I do think surely we need a kind of a deep dive and then we as a board need to support what we think the district needs in terms of a transition program I hear great things about new canaan's transition program well if New Canaan has a really good strong transition program there's no reason we should not have one this is not about Financial Resources this is about what's doing right for all our students we sit up here and we preach all our students are General ed students but I think we need to make sure
068that we see the data and that I know you are but I think we need to see it working with those students and looking at and making sure parents in particular understand the breadth of programs that are out there for students their the transition program is great but I think it leaves a lot of parents hanging as to what's next I completely agree with you and and I'm sure Shirley and I are more than happy to to work on that and I think there is a lot of great work going on and a lot of of conversations and support that's happening I know Shirley and I have extensive conversations about what this school counselors would need in order to because that's also an evolving landscape in terms of transition programs and and the way that
069that colleges are becoming you know more accessible and more inclusive um and I think they are the school the colleges are working to really provide different levels of support so um we're continually trying just like a traditional four-year plan we're also trying to keep up with that changing landscape as well and so I know we have Shirley School support and Dr at least we'll support in in giving the school counselors and our school psychologists and our special education staff whatever they need to to support families in this process because there's a lot there's a lot of options so we need a formalized program sure happy to happy to have the discussion with Shirley and I don't know if Shirley wants to add anything to that happy to work on that happy to present to the
070board um and you're right and we're in total agreement as we've worked on training and working with our school counselors working with parents and understanding transition programs but clearly we're in agreement to have an explicit presentation and looking at our programs and what we can do is something that has been asked for before and we will make that happen um as soon as we can hopefully in the fall we won't wait till later on in the year so if that's okay we'll prepare to have that in terms of our planning what it involves the cohort of students that we have um that it would be appropriate for moving into 23 24 and we'll um we'll certainly present it thank you any other board questions thank you I just wanted to say I was encouraged by
071the board discussion on this topic and I'm fully in support I just wanted to add one other just consideration that um you know the the sort of overview of where students are going when they leave the darien Public Schools is really a wonderful measure of the success of our success department and would be wonderful to hear you know a lot of the supports that our students receive are really about teaching them how to unlock their own potential which is what we really hope for our students is that they're all able to reach their own potential and it would just be a wonderful way to see um the way that we have been successful in Darien and supporting those kids from elementary all the way until 8th thank you Megan okay my pleasure and I will
072turn it over to Paul Ribeiro to talk about our wonderful senior internship program [Music] thank you Megan um I have a couple of seniors who are going to be participating um by sharing their internship experience uh with us towards the um end so I will be brief with my remarks uh with the slides about the internship uh before I get started um we would not be able to have the internship without our two faculty advisors and branca and Matt buchta uh they start all the way back in August in trying to Corral 330 plus seniors to get what they're supposed to do in order to participate in internships so I do want to thank Ann and Matt for all their leadership for it I also want to thank and you'll see in this slide coming
073up uh the dozens and dozens of businesses that accept our students and um you know it's often looked at as um sometimes a one-way Street where our kids are just benefiting from learning from these uh places of business but the reality is they obviously get a lot of it to a lot of benefit too of having our students there so I do want to thank them and lastly I want to thank our faculty who serve as faculty mentors in order to help ensure that our students are having positive experiences and are safe while they do their internship so just as a quick summary our internship starts right after AP exams around this year was May 15th it lasts up until today as John mentioned before with the senior Symposium uh interns will go for about
07430 hours a week uh taking any information that they're learning and having journals daily journals that they are able to share with their faculty mentors and collecting information as they go along it culminates in a senior Symposium which we had today and again it was about over 330 students we did have a handful of students that selected that to be part of the internship and they stay back in school and went to classes and also worked on a senior project individually with faculty mentors helping with that too uh the next two slides talk briefly about the again the dozens of businesses that we have uh both Ann and Matt and and Matt uh keep track of this from year to year and uh we make sure that we try to keep very positive relationships with
075these uh areas of business in the tri-state area and also try to cultivate future ones too moving forward I think the clicker needs a new battery uh why don't I ask uh chafe and Sophie to come on up and start sharing some of your experiences while I try to get the Clipper to go to the last one so so if you want to go first hi so I'm Sophie and I did my senior internship at the law offices of Stacy ta where I specialized in special education law and I chose this internship because I have often been told that because I like to argue I would make a great lawyer and I couldn't be sure of the statement because I obviously have not um had anything to do with law and my high school experience
076so I thought this would be kind of a make or break it experience where I could decide for sure if I want to become a lawyer that has not been the case but I have learned a lot about law about the differences between advocacy and actually being an attorney as well as a lot about special education which I actually found that I'm very interested and have quite a passion for and at the same time I want to thank my internship supervisors the CCTA because I think on top of all the things about social education about law um giving me all of this great filing work to do but also giving me new bills are passing through and having me read them and discuss them with her she also taught me to really be an active
077member of the community we have other discussions about that and the same time she taught me that as important as work is it's also very important to be taking physical emotional and mental breaks and as a certified workaholic I think that this was a very important lesson to me and I actually found that I enjoyed my work better after taking walks with her dog or going out for lunch with her so I think that internship has not only taught me a lot of Professional Knowledge it also taught me to become a better more involved Citizen and be a better worker in general approach goody everyone um so these past four weeks I interned at a place called Mirador they specialize in financial reporting for you know Family Assets of all backgrounds um and you know
078I helped the financial reporting team with several of their tasks whether it be you know the financial reporting itself and I worked in several of their financial reporting websites as well as Excel um you know I learned a lot about the field of Finance um I chose to do this because my father Works in finance as well I wanted to learn more about what he did as well as you know pursue a passion of mine um so you know I gained a lot of experience a lot of experience and you know finance using the different financial reporting platforms Excel but I've also learned a lot of skills and you know organization time management as well as workplace etiquette um you know I also made several great elastic connections I'm here to work um I met
079a lot of people with interest similar to mine you know very bright uh intelligent individuals um and you know everybody was very nice it was a great work with this environment um you know I'm going to chair associations for the rest of my life I'm very grateful for this internship program that DHS offers um and uh yeah so yeah thank you [Applause] about two what was the song This is not quite loud enough I'll be loud um it was on it's good it's on okay like there we go um so I interned at Middlesex Middle School teaching choir which is uh since music is the field that I will be entering into I thought it was useful to learn how to because I I eventually we plan to go into music education at probably the
080Collegiate level so I thought you know learning how different people learn and you know because I've been at the high school in the middle school was a long time ago I thought I would refresh myself and I definitely gained a new respect for for teaching at the middle school especially in this new environment and also you know I gained an additional perspective and wanted you know what it means to be a student um what I did primarily was I was the rehearsal accompanist for all of their songs because I came in right before their Spring Concert which was the first Thursday of the internships so um at that Thursday concert I was there pianist for several songs um and then immediately afterwards we were doing concert evaluations and I helped a lot with coordination I
081I still continue to run warm-up pianos I produced a lot of documentation for example I notated all of their warm-ups in a giant packet that they could now give students at the beginning of the year um in addition I also notated the song they'll be singing tomorrow evening at the Step Up ceremony or whatever they're calling it now I think it's called promotion um promotion okay cool um and I'll be accompanying them tomorrow as well that's the best camerata um in addition to that I did a lot of organizational work with their music library which I was just been mutably alphabetized um through this internship I learned a lot about the kind of interpersonal nature of what it means to enter aquarium music because um I've always been very much kind of away from that
082aspect I've always been in the kind of production aspect of it and it was interesting because especially now going into an environment that is all about human connection and patience and you know things it I think it was really a good experience for me especially because it helped me to learn how to communicate with a lot of different types of people so I'm very grateful that this program gave that to me and I wish all the students who I'm now good friends with best of luck as they enter DHS foreign we reflect on this every year you know the internship program at the high school started about 13 14 years ago with maybe only a couple of dozen students that participated in it and over the years it's really manifested into some different formats and
083it's gotten to the point now where we have over 330 seniors that will participate in this so we're really looking back at its infancy to where it is today and and hearing some of the things that the kids do as an administrative team it always amazes us and always makes us scratch our heads sometimes when we hear about the kid that was in the OR with the surgeon while the body was open or um or just a variety of things that they're allowed to do and the real benefit that they get from it so it's really worthwhile hearing the stories directly from the students which is why we always try to invite a couple of students here tonight to share some of their stories um I'm welcome to take any questions if you have any
084about the program word questions Sarah thank you I stepped out I'm sorry if this was answered um is there do you ever struggle to find places for for anybody so sometimes students will and that's when we encourage them to either work with uh if they have identified a faculty Mentor that they know they want to work with in the building to help them with something outside or or they're the two um uh advisors for the program Matt and Ann will oftentimes will help them too so um oftentimes people find things out either through um friends of a friend or word of mouth or sometimes they just do some cold calling and they know something somewhat that they want to do and they'll reach out and they're able to get it that way too we start
085the process in the fall when the seniors meet with um their school counselors and their guidance seminar and we get them on to the internship program and start getting to think about that and what steps to do and how to reach out and then it carries on throughout the throughout the year thanks I was just going to say what an awesome and unique program it is and you know I'm saying again to go through it and looking forward to my third doing it I mean it's just pretty remarkable the list of businesses also and how the community buys into this is just phenomenal yeah I mean it's really cool and again the uh just today we were talking to two seniors that unfortunately couldn't come on the walkthroughs with us at the elementary school because
086their internship sites required them to come in today because they had work to do and they were telling us about the experiences they had and how what they were doing this year was setting them up for jobs not just this summer but next summer also when they come back from college next year so it really helps you know for for many of our seniors uh with that experience to build those type of relationships moving forward that we all understand as adults is important um sometimes when going into the real world and just saying sometimes they can pave the way for a college internship yeah for those out there absolutely thanks Paul yeah so if I understand you correctly it was less than 15 students who chose not to participate is that about that yeah a
087little bit less than that but yeah about that we have some other students with other circumstances that that we're participating either one for their own individual reasons but it was about a handful that stayed behind okay um so circumstances permitting you to answer the question what did they do and then my second piece of that is I know the answer is yes but I still want to hear it um that a lot of our children or students with more significant needs are also able to participate in the program so the second question yes they they are and um sometimes it's a modified version of it you know maybe it's not the full 30 hours a week depending on what some of their needs are but all of our students who want to participate are welcome
088to and we're able to modify it for them do we have a high degree of participation I mean for that population of students I would say yes I mean we we do again it varies depending on what their needs are but we definitely do it's against a very small number of students that we're talking about but yes it is um students are able to participate that in a varying uh degree um regarding your first question again I'm sorry just what the kids do so for the most part you know it's often um misperception is that um our classes are exclusive to a certain grade level we have a couple that are like that but many of our classes are very mixed where it's a mixture of 11th periods 10th grades so forth so for those
089classes students are expected to go and and continue to go with the underclassmen that are still participating and let's say their pre-calculus class or their physics class things like that for classes that are predominantly or 100 seniors like a senior English or a long government class which is a senior requirement those classes look a little bit differently where students might be participating more independently or working with their teachers one-on-one in some cases those students also did a project this year where they spent time working independently on a subject that they wanted to learn more about with a faculty Mentor so for example uh two students that participated in that one um found a genre of music that he had never heard of before and not only researched it but then also created Music in that
090genre based on what he was learning and that was his independent project another student learned how to read and uh or learn how to learn how to read the numbers of a dead language basically that of I think it was Sanskrit is what he did I can't remember exactly what it was but and did that as his independent project so it really varies we want students to kind of pursue things that they're interested in themselves okay thank you may I add one thing to that um Paul just to add to Joe's question if we have students who are participating in the internship that require a level of support we're able to provide them we designed that internship with son of mind and it's very successful thank you I mentioned it at the last meeting but
091I will mention it again thank you Shirley my daughter participated in it and Luke now she wants to be a teacher in the ELP program at your school so you've got yourself some trouble on your hands but all she she actually said she wanted to do this um do the senior internship program um Ellen and team went to work and she wound up at Luke's school and now she wants to be as an ELP teacher so mission accomplished thank you thank you very much have a good night yes I just wanted to recognize that um both of these staff members have have been integral to the counseling program from its Inception essentially Paul LED that off and handed over the Baton in good shape to Megan and Megan has has run with that and I
092want to recognize that this is the last time I edit them will be standing in this capacity we wish Paul well as he goes to be assistant principal of a Newton High School me thank you Paul for your leadership Megan wherever you are back there um uh we thank you for for all your leadership I will say um particularly over this um the last couple of years you've LED with a steady hand and a Caring Heart both of you and I have seen you both sacrifice your own family time and everything for our students uh so as we both stand together we both we I'm sure the board will join me and congratulate you thank you for all of your contributions in that department we're glad that you're staying as a counselor uh we're still
093with that uh but thank you for everything that you have done and you continue to do for our kids thank you thank you [Applause] thank you no thank you about leaving really she can do this presentation over and over again if you wanted to I'm just saying thank you very much everyone you'll be lured into it next year man well thank you very much thank you both thank you both all right we'll move on to presentation and discussion on Department chairs Dr tranberg [Music] we're turning the heat the cool air off a little bit the new system works thank you foreign [Music] good evening everyone uh we are presenting tonight on the role of the department chair this is an abbreviated version of a presentation that occurred during the main meeting of the curriculum committee
094that meeting lasted about 90 minutes as we've shaved off a few minutes for you this evening there is a q a document that has 40 questions and those were the questions that were discussed during that meeting so instead of all five Department chairs presenting uh tonight they are here because this is the presentation representing that last presentation we are going to ask Mr janasco and Mr Keeler to take on the bulk of that presentation and if you could Advance this live for me that'd be great so this is just a quick overview of what we will be speaking about this evening and as always just making connections to our mission and vision as these roles are important and working closely with teachers to make sure the mission and vision happened for our students and uh
095one more for me uh this is just a framework that we used uh even though we have five Department chairs presenting tonight there are seven because we have two special education department chair roles as well I think Mr Keeley will talk about that in one of his slides uh but the basic idea of teaching and learning hiring supervising and evaluation and students and families uh and how those three important things overlap in order to support our students and with that I will turn it over to Mr janasco to get us started it's great to be here this evening and I am Francis janoska the department chair for English for the Middle School in the high school um we have already heard that we're going to be representing our colleagues in this presentation but I would
096be remiss if I didn't just call their names out which is Mr dockam who is our department chair for science Christina Mauricio who is our department chair for World Language and Dr Bellows who is our department chair for math you all know them we've seen them many times but you know have to make sure that I give them their their due diligence and their shout out um okay good evening everyone um so I had the uh I have the ability to to serve in both of the roles uh that we we presented on the other day I I started off being the curriculum coordinator the department head for the high school and then transition to the 6 through 12 social studies Department chairperson um this the change that we undertook in the first model it
097was really a job that was a teaching job that had some administrative duties that took place at different times during the year the job that we have now is one that allows us to work closely with all of the teachers in our two departments which is approximately 30 uh 30 teachers in the two buildings it allows us to be an invaluable resource for those teachers and ultimately help to make their their work that much better that right hand column there highlights some of what we'll talk about as we move through this presentation that's also really the impetus for where this position came from accomplishing some of those goals okay moving right along um so this chart represents one of the biggest reasons for the evolution from the curriculum coordinator role to the department share role
098in this chart you can see the growth of student enrollment numbers over the last 25 years or so obviously there are even bigger enrollment gains at the high school during that time and there has also been a subsequent growth in teachers hired because of that and because of that there was a greater need for increased supervision and evaluation of monitoring of the curriculum and of a curriculum alignment um just as a quick aside throughout the slide deck you're going to see some of these small tables with numbers and it will call say by the Numbers these don't capture every facet of what we do but we have included them to help round out a picture of the types of areas that we are responsible for in terms of teaching and learning as content experts one
099of our goals is to provide our students with Rich and engaging educational experiences um experiences that meet their needs and also reflect our District's vision and Mission we do this through providing our teachers with coaching and with PD we do this by guiding our teachers when they are creating standards-based units courses and assessments that are also vertically aligned across grade levels and we support our teachers with instructional materials one of the things that if you have been following over the past couple of years of our presentations to the board of Ed's curriculum committee you've heard the term understanding by Design or ubd fairly frequently ubd is our District's research-based framework that we use for developing our curriculum it's one of the most widely used curriculum Frameworks in the world and it's very popular because it's
100very effective it's effective because it requires curriculum development teams to begin with desired standards-based student learning outcomes in mind once that's established we work backwards through a course or unit in order to plan learning experiences that will yield those outcomes foreign factor in a student's learning than the person who's charged with teaching them and for that reason we take our duty as the hiring chairperson very very seriously um we review candidates we reach out to candidates we coordinate basically every facet of this hiring process we organize our fellow administrators to do screening interviews with us we organize administrators and teachers to observe demo lessons to have committee interviews we work closely with building administrators and Central Services as well as HR as we get into the reference check and the final interview rounds we take
101this work really seriously because we hire for excellence and it's something that we we put a huge amount of effort into whether it's hiring for a long-term position or even a short stint that a teacher has to be out and we need long-term Subs it's something that we're we're always having to to work on at different times of the year sometimes it also includes bringing students in over the summer to serve as our classes when we have demo lessons since everyone has everyone has demo lessons once we have hired the important work of onboarding that new teacher comes and we do this through orienting them to the different processes that the district uses the different programs the district uses and really acclimating them to what it means to teach and learn here in the Town
102of Darien and also to unders understand what those expectations are going to look like we are also a primary evaluator for each of the roughly 30 teachers in our departments in both the middle school and the high school we work with them closely in observations we have the added benefit of being able to talk with them as content experts that expertise that we have adds a level of nuance to our discussions as we can talk about the layers of the content the layers of the curriculum how small ideas that are used in an early lesson may be used in later lessons how early skills work May May grow into a larger process or a larger project at a later point in the curriculum so we are a big part of both hiring getting teachers acclimated
103and then supervising and evaluating them once they are on our teams uh so uh this is a visual depiction of the teacher meetings that we or that are required by our District's teacher evaluation plan um except for new t-shirt orientation at the beginning which obviously is for you teachers um all of our teachers meet with us for all of these meetings and all of these events throughout the process these events are designed to improve teacher Effectiveness and this is obviously something we spend a lot of time on but this is only the formal process we have many many more informal meetings with teachers over the course of the Year through which we shape and influence their practices our goal is to push our teachers to constantly improve their practice which of course is a benefit
104for our students [Music] um so in terms of our focus on students and families no work that we do is more important than we are communicating directly with students and parents we are the main liaison between parents students and teachers and we spend a great deal of our time counseling parents and students about courses sometimes issues with courses and with course placements um I'm going to give you an example of how this works and it's going to be derived from a recent or most recent presentation to the board of ed curriculum committee just last Thursday um so the purpose of that meeting was to share with the Board of Ed curriculum committee that next year we will be proposing an expansion of the number of Grade 9 honors courses that we currently offer at the
105high school at the very end of that presentation one of the board members provided us with a very Illuminating and useful comment about the role of our communication in trying to balance student learning opportunities with student wellness we all have been talking about that since it was it's kind of something that has persisted in our minds it's very important and one of the ways we have been thinking about doing that is by having some some parent workshops and some parent presentations that we do next year in conjunction with making those proposals because it's going to be important that we put ourselves in a position to speak directly to parents to explain our rationale for the changes the benefits for the students based upon those changes but maybe more importantly it's to equip parents with the
106kinds of questions and conversations that we have directly with kids all the time when we are giving them counsel when they're making course decisions so we're hoping to bring that same spirit and share that with parents one of the things that we also do is work hard to support all of our students in the SEC at the secondary level at both the middle school and the high school we do this by talking with our regular Ed Department colleagues in those conversations we may help them to understand an accommodation that may be listed on a student's plan so that it can be fully implemented we sometimes will be reaching out to case managers on behalf or with our department teachers to again ensure that students needs are being met sometimes we work with our special education
107department chair colleagues again we're ensuring that students are accessing the curriculum appropriately making sure that they have the resources that they need in order for students to be successful sometimes it means reaching out to special education co-teachers who teach within our discipline so that they can have feedback and coaching on how they're doing sometimes it means reaching out to special education teachers who are teaching comprehensive classes in our discipline so that we can support them with help with the content or resources or the approach that they're taking just like we would anyone else in our departments the point of all this this web that's here in front of you is to say that there's a lot of personnel that we interact with to ensure that all the students we have in our classes are having
108their their needs met that extensiveness of our interaction with others is also captured here with a list of some of the different circles that we work with them we work within a building administrative team we work within a secondary administrative team a district level administrative team we also serve on a variety of District committees and building level committees again to support the mission the vision the plans and the Strategic plans that we have we also are keeping ourselves abreast of changes that take place at the state level and also keeping current with changes in our various disciplines that comes through our participation in local Regional councils devoted to our art discipline specific work or in larger National organizations that again give us that ability to stay current with what's happening in our fields okay and
109then finally looking ahead um so you know one thing that I'd like to talk about is that right now one of the maybe the maybe the primary thing that department chairs are working on that's a future step that will enhance teaching and learning within our departments um it's the transition that we're making from our department curriculum to the edge of Planet 21 digital curriculum warehousing platform now the process of doing this involves much more than simply replicating what it is that we're currently doing and putting it into a new format it's an opportunity to review and revise our assessments our units our projects and our readings and it also allows us to identify important other teaching and learning elements that are not represented in the current curriculum templates that we have been using students are
110already benefiting from that transition because we have finished units we have finished finished courses already and once the process is complete the entire uh Darian Public School Community will benefit from greater levels of clarity transparency and student outcomes based design foreign just one final uh note about our our looking ahead which is the work that we've done uh have done started to do this year and are going to continue to do which is to help to bring the vision of The Graduate to life this is an important District document which gives shape to what we want students to be able to do when they graduate from our our school system and as an example we did work with our teachers this year in using it for goal setting talking through how they might bring some
111of these these big ideas to life and how it might actually play out in their classroom and so those are some of the examples of the type of work that we look to continue to do as we move forward we thank you for the questions that were previously asked that we've gotten I would encourage you again there is a a long q a document that follows this presentation if that is helpful to anyone and we are here to develop we are available to answer any questions you might have thank you for the follow-up to the presentation both of you thank you for all being here this evening and for doing all the work behind the scenes um a lot of questions were answered from the original meeting around this so I appreciate that so I
112think from a board perspective definitely we can open it up to additional questions while we have the crew here I think part of what we wanted to do is gather as much information as we can educate ourselves so that we can continue to have further conversations and see what more we will what more we we want to learn or what other questions we we may have or suggestions as to how we want to see these roles work so I'll pause there and I'll open it up for some additional board questions John um thank you I watched the original presentation that went into great detail and really appreciate all the data you guys have provided um you know I look at the student enrollment chart and it brought me back to a question I think Mr
113Brown asked during this budget season regarding number of Administrators uh past administration like the administrator account so if we do further this discussion into the summer you know um one of the things I'd like to see is a chart that kind of mirrors the time frame and the number of Administrators that the district has through throughout the student enrollment graph I think I would add to I would add to that the teachers oh yeah sure I mean to have another another one while we're at it maybe just uh total employees as well rich I see your head down writing but you understand what we're looking for I'm surprised you can't answer right now give them a minute give them a minute he'll put a slide up thank you I appreciate that good Sarah thank you
114all for I mean the Q a is wonderful I think it answers a lot of questions I just want a quick question about um question number 25 is how you can be more effective right like our role is to figure out you know is are all these positions that we have being used properly are they being used being used in the best way possible um you know you you mentioned the scheduling aspects of how you how that any changing in scheduling would make you more effective and make the role more effective it's what I don't know if we can answer this right now but where do we stand in the potential change in the middle school schedule when could we expect that could happen I don't know that's your answer but um so as far
115as making our roles more effective I think we would all agree that more time with our colleagues in the building during the school day would be great and in particular at the middle school the middle school is looking to make a change to the schedule as we know um I am on just so having to be on the scheduling committee um at the middle school but we are not yet ready to make a recommendation and I'm not going to steal uh Dr dahlstrom's Thunder on that one but um that is part of the conversation and and how um not just for Department chairs but just for the efficacy of the whole building and providing choice for students um in so doing it would enhance our ability to meet with our colleagues during the school day
116um during a a pre a pre-established time we already do do that during plc's but it's one you know 45 minute session per week so um in order to meet with them more we would have to make a change too on the schedule and not just with grade level teams but with with vertical teams yeah good kitty thank you um just following up on that in terms of um the effectiveness of the role and and really just compliance were all of the evaluations and observations completed this year um even with the scheduling challenges were we able to get 100 compliance in evaluating all teachers I mean I can I can always speak for the caseload that we have been given but to my knowledge um in my department all teachers haven't seen the requisite number
117of times yes thanks Julian thank you thank you all um and I'll make a plug again there's a tremendous amount of good information both in the curriculum committee meeting of a month or so ago um and this this extra document that makes fine reading um one thing that I know is something you're working on in the looking ahead area that I look forward to hearing more about is evaluation system for teachers um and you stayed here create new systems of feedback for teachers but I would imagine also we want feedback from teachers right as we help to make sure that the give and take or that this these relationships are as supportive and instructive as they can possibly be so that's just as we move along that's something I'm looking to hear more of and
118and you know the department chairs are well represented on the pdet committee which is charged for the task of taking whatever the state is going to pass out to us and making it into our teacher evaluation system here in the district so um one thing I'd like to hear more about thank you for the presentation is that bullet point on purposeful integration of technology I think that's a really critical part of you know we somewhat stepped into it on purpose and then somewhat jumped into it because we had to so I would really love to understand better how you guys liaise with central office staff your building Administration where you get your thoughts and sort of how you see the department chair role uh taking a leadership role in in that purposeful integration um I
119have a question about the special education department chairs I'd love to understand if those roles if you really have sort of seven comparable rules or if you have five department chair roles and then two that are really function differently I'm not sure we have seen them in different contexts so that's my first question are they do we really have seven comical roles or do we have are they slightly different um and then um I'm also curious about how again from a sort of a planning and frameworking perspective special education gets integrated with um general education I'm specifically looking at you know you have ubd and then how does that for example align with udl or Universal Design for Learning how are the remaking those connections um and ensuring that the Frameworks actually work together in
120an effective way and that we are doing that work from a framework perspective um so I'd like to hear more about those things please now we're going to follow it well if there are answers now I'd certainly accept them but um I'm also happy for follow-up picture probably surely or anyone want you want to add to it but it sounds like some follow-up is in order I can't do a fine job unexplained but I perhaps both things are true I can add a little bit of color through now and then we can certainly follow up with it I think the difference between the two chairpersons for special education role one in middle school and high school is that it's not a Content driven area um they support access to the curriculum and the other domains
121so it's not that we're developing especially a special curriculum it's how to access the curriculum with the exception of some of our programs that we have in our more specialized programs where we do have a curriculum that's really about life skills and different kinds of access to the community I think the real role is the interconnection and and the collaboration between the chairpersons for special education and the disciplined chairpersons it's really working as Keith said together and looking at ways to access the curriculum so it might be with technology it might be a learning ally it might be books on tape it might be with just Universal Design and looking at how we structure those lessons and look at them perhaps in a more scaffolding way or breaking it down into different segments that are
122much more manageable for learning differences so I think it's about the specially designed instruction and not just limited to the co-talk classes as as he focused on but to the other classes that don't have code taught opportunities and how we look at that in some team taught ideas and some lab experiences for our other subjects in both in Western Civ and in math and I think it's that collaboration that's the difference it's taking the specially designed instruction into the disciplines and the artifacts that we use for it and and the strategies and methodologies and they think just to add to that I think some of what you're describing is probably programmatic level work um where you might be looking at a comprehensive solution for a cohort of students or you might be looking at a
123co-taught class but there's also individual work and we've got some differences in how the department shares end up having to liaise because for example there is no special education in um in Spanish you just go into a general education environment or in its foreign language excuse me um and you take it so I it would be helpful to understand some differences in how that looks and works between the the disciplines and I think we can do that at the next conversation because there are specific of working with um Christina and working with the World Language Department of how we do it with accommodations and again or with different artifacts of opportunities for students so we can certainly give more examples of that and more understanding of it thank you you also asked some other questions
124uh one was about technology and some of them we can easily address right now if you'd like or we can do follow-ups but you know I mentioned um edu Planet 21 and the work that we're doing there just you know one of the interesting things about it is it's not just sort of National State uh standards that are specific to our individual disciplines but there are other standards that we're becoming more familiar with and teachers are encountering through that process and one of them is technology standards but there's six areas of Technology standards and we're choosing from among the sub standards in order to identify um which of those are going to be represented on a given assessment so it's a part of the process um I I mentioned this when we had our previous
125presentation to the board of educational curriculum committee but um I I hope that you can all know just as a as an aside um the effect that some of the um uh generative artificial intelligence models are having currently on our classes it's been a slow and steady climb and it's hitting us pretty hard at the end of the year and it's pretty clear that in terms of obviously there's going to be an integration part of that that has to happen but there's a lot of different dimensions to that particular technology that we are wrestling with it right now we have committees in our department that is talking about how we're going to teach writing in in light of this new arrival so there's a lot of a lot of interesting opportunities that it presents and
126a lot of really tough questions and conversations that we have to have to make sure that our kids are well positioned to be learning like the skills that they're going to need when it when it comes to writing let's say so we are working on all of that I I think that in and of itself I think we would love to hear more about because that starts to change the Frameworks that we're using to to design instruction right so but that's probably not this specific discussion um point taken that said that's helpful to hear but I would love to know more about because there's the different layers right there's the way that that technology comes and influences us but there's the technology that we put into the classroom and why we put it there and
127how that's a part of your evaluation and how it's a part of your design um when you come back please the it's kind of following up on that point that Jill Rays with the new edge of planet 21. is that providing any generative tools or guidance I know Chris you mentioned everything kind of lives in Google now so this would be better but I hope we're not just cutting and pasting or their actual software tools in the development which we'll take what we have and do that integration perform that to give you efficiencies in that transition so um not exactly sure so some of the standards so for example the technology standards are international standards that are just uh pulled into that particular platform because we requested it um we have some other standards that
128we have been working on developing such as our vision of The Graduate that's embedded within it but it's something that they tailored for our particular District based upon our needs um is that exactly is that what you're looking for in terms of I'm not sure who's they that's doing the tailoring Association the people who provide edger Planet 21 I mean the I mean it's a business so we have a representative that we work with in terms of tailoring it so it works for our particular District got it okay so I didn't know if we were doing that work perhaps taking something in Google and saying hey look at this framework and rewrite it for us but if they're doing that on our behalf that sounds like more efficient thanks um I had a couple bigger
129picture follow-ups and I went down the rabbit hole a little bit on that one but I appreciate all the information that's been given here I think there's a couple high level points I think the initial motivation here at least for me and asking these questions was just wondering what that change was and why we went to taking some of our most skilled Educators out of a classroom and we've had a lot of information given as to why that was a good idea I have to say that you know when I look at the different roles that are being performed whether that be HR whether that be recruiting whether that be evaluation I still don't see where you know the great talent and experience you guys have in education is coming through there I mean you
130can possibly make an argument that and we need to give March a recruiter and they do it's free up with an enormous amount of your time it seems to be spent on these meetings and on this interaction so that's number one but then when I you know start looking at that role and think about what happens sort of you know top of the house in general and how things are structured and what business roles are whether you know assistant principal is doing what are the principal's doing why is the this being done you know some of our best teachers are playing HR um and I think it's answered it's it's raised in me more questions than it's actually answered and I think that um probably this this needs to go forward I think we maybe
131should consider as a board looking at just sort of the overall org structure in terms of scope in terms of skills in terms of who's doing what um and I think all this information presented to your role really kind of leads to some more questions uh maybe we should think about where the efficiencies are following up on Katie's questions with the meetings I see a large count of meetings and I say that well documented and Quantified but I don't know what happens in those things I know what the outcomes are and what the effect so should you be having twice as many meetings should you have in half the meetings I don't know and I heard it mentioned here the collaboration with the teachers in the building is one of the best touch points you
132guys can have and you don't have time for that so how do we get you more of that and then how do we measure what efficiencies come out of that and I'm not sure um that I really know the answer one small technical point is I think we'd ask for the contract and figure out what our options would be if we were going to try and figure out a model to return people to the classroom I haven't seen that contract yet so I don't know where options are there but but I think for me I thank you guys all for providing all this um but I think this really kind of gives us somebody to come back with as a board and discuss further uh which I think we will really think about where who's
133doing what in the buildings and is that really is efficient and you know maybe some there's some bigger questions like why do we have a six day schedule but you know a couple things like that that we could consider so I thank you thanks Dave may I may I respond to Janine just not to all those questions but to Mr Brown's question just one piece and I I probably speak for the other departments also um I know I speak to the other departments also but the notion to your question of why take one of your best teachers out of a classroom and put them in this position it's because then you take one of your best teachers and you make 10 others your best and the notion of really coaching and having that opportunity to
134have your best exemplars and and your most skilled teachers do that kind of professional development coaching supporting in real time also and and I recognize that there's not always time to do that but that really is the notion of how you really improve teaching and learning and when we take one of our I'll speak to our special education chairpersons when you have someone with extraordinary skills and literacy and special ed and specially designed instruction and they're an outstanding teacher and I can tell you they both are in our cases um you you now have 16 other teachers who get to learn from them and our chairpersons go into those classes and help those 16 other teachers learn so I think if you really want to improve teaching and learning when you have a design like
135chairpersons it really gives you that opportunity and that's the value-added piece and I think that's A Great Notion I think we should strive for that but I heard conversation about the importance of hiring quality teachers and we put all the time we do into that recruiting to make sure we get the best so I would think that they come with a high level already so hopefully we're topping off more than we're starting from scratch the problem sitting here with the board trying to do our role in governance is how do I know we're doing any of that I don't have any data in here that provides that I love the notion I love professional development I want to have the best teachers and possibly can in this district and I'm happy to do whatever we
136can do and work on a Model that supports that I don't know if that's happening basically what we've got we've got a lot of information and so for me that's where the challenge comes in Australia I totally agree that's a great vision I'd love to get there but for the governance perspective it's that's where the challenges that I have to disconnect thanks Charlie any other board questions thank you all for taking time this evening I appreciate it thank you everyone we'll move on to presentation and discussion on diversity Equity inclusion Dei recommendations Dr tranberg thank you good evening again I want to start by thanking the very large audience that we have most of the people here are members of the diversity equity and inclusion team and they are the group that spent about 40
137hours over the past year and a half which I think is time very well spent and it's also not a lot of time to do all of the work that they did and produce this report so quick overview I'm going to provide some of the basic setup of what the team went through and then we have members of the committee who will step up and talk about the recommendations for each of the groups connecting to the vision especially my my favorite Vision I think we have a better Vision than any other place preparing all students today to thrive in a changing world tomorrow we did hear and it's also included in the report about uh a change.org petition back in 2020 that had over 2 000 signatures of current and former students really charging the
138board the admins and the teachers to prepare them more in the area of diversity equity and inclusion and I did have a conversation with the authors of that petition when I first arrived so that's that's used as some of our evidence with our core values these are the Board of Education adopted core values these are very important to point to because we use these as an anchor in all of our meetings throughout the year as you are well aware the words diversity equity and inclusion have become rather divisive in our world so it's important that we go back to what do we Act actually mean according to how we defined it so when we say Equity we mean advocating for advancing opportunities and outcomes for all and diversity and inclusion is creating a community that
139welcomes and Embraces the full range of human differences there are other definitions but when we talk about our our diversity equity and inclusion team this is what we mean this is a common graphic or version of it uh specifically equality uh and I hate saying versus Equity but that's that's pretty much what the discourse has been this shows uh as a picture it's certainly an oversimplification of it but it tells the story of equality is giving all students the same thing despite what their needs are and Equity shows making appropriate accommodations to give others what they need in order to be successful so that is the anchor of our definition as well we spent a lot of time focusing on The Power of Words Clarity Awards and words matter so the equity statement took several
140months and that came from our own work that we were doing looking at our guiding documents as a district looking at Equity statements from major companies because most companies have one now and we took a best of and went through many iterations until we arrived and largely agreed at this Equity statement and while I'm saying largely agree I do want to be clear that this report does reflect the recommendations of most of the people that were on the team and I think many of the bodies in the room are supporting that but definitely not all and the reason I'm mentioning that now is when we think about how did this all start and how did we bring the people together of students teachers parents Board of Education members community members there was a request by
141the board to make sure we are welcoming people who are Divergent of thought and we did that with the one request in the memo that I sent where they expressed when they had to respond and uh Express their interest it read we do ask that interested participants commit to realizing the district mission and vision and share the core beliefs articulated in the Strategic plan while there's always space for our strategic planning document to evolve it is our current roadmap as we launch this important work and that's before we got started in January of 2022. the other thing we did in the beginning was spent time on our team agreement so if you've been part of a group sometimes they have Norms we didn't want to go the Norms route but we did want to make
142sure we were tapping into what are the assets or the gifts or the talents that people bring to the room and what do you need in order to be successful a successful and positive contributor to the group and as a result we came up with this team agreement and so between our Mission Vision core values Equity statement and team agreement because clearly we love language and education that's how we opened our meetings to make sure we were level setting for what the work was about and also anchoring us was the Strategic plan forming the Dei team was specifically a strategy that came from goal two and it was as I included in the conclusion of this report a year one and year two strategy so we are finishing up here too and so there will
143be decisions to be made by the forward as to how we'd like to move forward and I've certainly made some recommendations with the team at the end the overall charge highlighted the verbs because I love the verbs but we were developing our own capacity in order to do the work so one of the challenges when you're bringing a team together of Educators and students and parents they're all looking at the same information but they have a very different point of entry as to what it means and one specific area is looking at data so there are some Educators that look at data constantly and can make some conclusions in a second there are other people that we're looking at disaggregated data sets for the first time so it took a lot of time and understanding
144and conversation in order to make sense of what we were actually looking at so this was our basic improvement process and the one thing we had to do was identify the Improvement areas so it goes back to well why are we even doing this in the first place so it's being in a strategic plan isn't the the best reason it's like well why was it in the Strategic plan so you do some time working to uncover that and the building capacity for change is really building the capacity of the members of the people that are in the group and so we spent a lot of time having uh conversations about challenging topics and there was homework in between meetings so every member of the team had to form a network and with their Network they
145had a a task an assignment to go through and practice having a conversation related to a Dei topic as time went on we practiced different Frameworks of how do you have challenging and difficult conversations uh most specifically about how do you stand up when you feel that there's an injustice for someone else so when you're an uncom in an uncomfortable situation what does it take for you to stand up and support someone else who might seem like they're a victim in the moment whether or not they are you need to make that decision and we've worked a lot on well what's your go-to line if you're going to say something and not want to interfere because it's not always a safe thing to interfere with what's going on what can you say just to let
146someone else know that what that person just said is not okay and that's the that was the point of entry into how do you build capacity for others and then the data dive which was the least favorite part of some people in the group and maybe the favorite part of of some people in the group looking at data is challenging and looking at Dei data in with a demographic like darianne can be even more challenging so when you look through our data sets there were times that the N was so small the number of students in a population that you really couldn't draw a conclusion that was a a strong quantitative data point so when that happened we looked more longitudinally so we would have an appropriate number of students typically you have to have
147is this happening for 20 students that fit in this demographic then it's solid enough that you can make a recommendation and also doesn't align with the National Data Trends that's another point that we used if it did then we felt like we could use that as a reasonable point of data if we couldn't do that we didn't include it and there are plenty of times when the and the number of students was less than 10 and when it was less than 10 we actually didn't look at it at all because it could become identifiable data so that's that's our basic approach to how we looked at the data um just because there was a question of could the recommendations be more data Rich well absolutely they could be but the group ended at the recommending
148the strategies for improvement the data points really come with well what are the strategies going to be to evaluate those recommendations uh so it stops short of that intentionally because the work of the Dei team ends at recommending the strategies and we call them considerations to be consistent with what we did in the uh gifted and talented uh report so we can follow the similar format because that was relatively well received and clear the other piece as far as Clarity and transparency we do have this diversity equity and inclusion website if I could give you the number one thing that I get called on by complete strangers who I've never spoken with or other administrators in the state it is thank you and questions about what we are doing with the Dei team mostly because
149the transparency that's there there's every agenda every bit of meeting notes every slide deck that we've used so everything is there that we've done and it's been helpful and I I bet you can find similar slide decks and the iTunes across the state because many administrators have called and asked uh the other piece I wanted to point out was the the intersection of Dei and SEL because SEL similar to the word Equity is another word that's just kind of bogged us down in education uh but there is uh to still Australia's word like every time I say the word nexus for the rest of my life I will think of Shirley Klein but there is a Nexus between Dei and SEL and the the anchor of this is really about just how we know ourselves
150how we manage ourselves uh are we aware can we build relationships and can we make responsible decisions so there's nothing more complex about SEL other than that this has always been a part of the education lexicon it's just never been in the spotlight this work with SEL is if you look at Maslow's hierarchy like why are we talking about SEL so much because students can access their learning if they're not ready to learn and that is why this is important and that's why it keeps coming up so that was a very quick overview of just what the team did and I'm going to turn it over to Catherine to get us started with some of the accommodations and considerations hey good evening um hi my name is Catherine takovich I'm a math specialist at hindley
151elementary and I'm here representing achievement group one from the Dei committee the focused question we developed was why are there differences between subgroups of students as readers this was determined after analyzing assessment data of students over several years during our examination we observed several subgroups of students who consistently fell below the Benchmark on assessments such as the smarter balance assessment and Aidan's web recognizing The crucial role that strong reading skills play in a student's lifelong journey and overall academic success we became particularly interested in understanding the disparities between the General Ed populations and those with learning differences across the district we recognize that while the district has many strengths there are always ways there are always areas to grow and enrich all students practices we currently have in place include a robust instructional support system
152for all Learners a multitude of resources made available to teachers to meet their Learners needs and professional development active opportunities for all staff in their ongoing professional growth one of our recommendations is to proactively embed performative assessment and Progressive progress monitoring tools to provide timely interventions and real-time instructional adjustments in order to meet student learning needs our other recommendation is to assess and determine appropriate Staffing levels to adequately support multilingual Learners and Implement individualized learning plans to guide their instruction we appreciate your time and attention to our findings and recommendations hi everyone for those I haven't met yet I'm Katie Russ the interim assistant principal at Royal for special education I'll be representing achievement group two for tonight our group analyzed smarter balanced data and noticed that students who receive special education and related Services
153have scores that fall below that of their peers we discussed how growth is captured in addition to Performance and how we wanted to think about what was either helping or impeding Student Success as well as ways we can further support at several points we took a step back and wanted to balance achievement data with the testimonies and statements that students have shared and focused not only on academic achievement but also students positive sense of self and social emotional Wellness this is what led us to our Focus question of how may we support students of all abilities and learning differences in developing a positive sense of self Foster social and emotional wellness and demonstrate academic excellence and a highly competitive environment a highlighted strength we wanted to point out is our robust srbi process one which
154I've seen evolve over my seven years here we also wanted to highlight the district 's concerted effect efforts and prioritization of Student Health and Wellness areas we'd like to consider our analyzation of additional data including Student Activities as well as District climate level survey data this will help us highlight strengths and areas for improvement in order to synthesize and strengthen the work of teacher and provider teams we would like to also strengthen the opportunities for general education professional learning to increase our opportunities for special education providers additionally we'd like to recommend increased built-in professional learning and collaboration time between general education special education teachers and related service providers so my name is Sarah Brown and I'm a parent of a rising 11th grade student at DHS and I serve on the special education parent advisory
155committee and I'm the achievement three representative so our focused question is how can we learn more from strong achievement data to support the success of all students um based on the achievement data that our group reviewed we decided not to use a deficit approach to understand reasons behind achievement gaps between populations of students instead we examine students assets to understand how we can learn from what is going well by identifying bright spots and replicating good practices wherever possible and so our recommendations are to convene an alumni focus group of students and or surveys to collect feedback from recent graduates to iterate on and improve upon School experience for future students we'd also recommend developing Communications and presentations to educate students and families around a portfolio development that is tied to the vision of The Graduate
156um hello I'm a part 10 of our car I am a junior at DHS I'm here to represent the climate subgroup um so for most of the subgroups length um we've been gathering information from student Representatives like me um about what it feels like to be a teen at Darien um we address the question what steps can we take to ensure we have school climates that are safe and welcoming for all students um in our discussions we as students we shared situations and moments from school environments that were troubling or upsetting some of that included and I'll be a little bit vague to not expose the other Representatives but that included for girls being objectified by boys being subjected to things like toxic masculinity marginalized students Feeling stereotyped by represented by members of the community
157and the sheer amount of work especially in the high school getting in the way of having vulnerable conversations with teachers and that includes not having enough time in class to implement all these initiatives meant for mental health like class Charters or the ruler system um another topic we talked about a lot was competition how it's fostered at a young age in Darien and especially between peers it's hard not to compete with each other um so off of that we came up with some um accommodations and considerations one to highlight is that we have these committees especially Dei which I want to say is a real privilege and pleasure to be on that creates space to better understand and address these challenges that students face in the climate as a student it's really important to feel
158heard and before I came here and I figured out all this behind the scenes stuff that was happening I hadn't really realized how much you all really care so it's very important to have these committees such as this team for a consideration um the hardest part in coming up with the recommendation was the fact that we don't really have all this information like dishonest stuff that comes from students and families so based on that our recommendation our consideration is to get some honest review from students families and staff in a annual climate survey that would take into account areas like academic rigor student expectations student teacher relationships and a general sense of belonging in the community it would provide a more rounded look as all members of the community would take part in it including
159students staff and families it's very important to have representation of who actually makes up our school system and to get honest feedback um so overall our subgroup discussed how to have students feel more comfortable at school and how to gather honest feedback and information my recommendation is this feedback leads to action plans to address these areas of concern monitor progress we hope that in the future we continue this effort to understand and improve the climate for schools and students hi I'm Colleen Thompson a K-12 director of Music uh the question that the program participation group explored is why are there racial disparities between groups of students who are identified for special education services and those identified as gifted We examined the process for how the district's screens for gifted identification we also examined the makeup
160of students who are identified as gifted at DPS and those who receive special education services we learned that there are currently no black students or multilingual Learners in the DPS gifted program we also learned that black students in DPS are overrepresented in special education as this data represents a relatively small subset of students We examined the data historically and determined that the data was similar in previous years based on this information the program participation group made the following commendations and considerations a strength is that there are systems in place that support the identification of gifted students that provide opportunities for multiple points of access another strength is that is our ongoing partnership with the Anti-Defamation League for student and staff education some recommendations or considerations include reviewing the gifted identification criteria and address potential biases
161that exist within the process also develop a clear communication plan for families and continue to implement the related recommendations outlined in the gifted education program evaluation from 2021. another consideration is to develop curriculum and provide resources across grade levels and content areas to ensure that all students are represented and portrayed and also to engage all staff in implicit bias training to ensure their approach to referrals is appropriately responsive to students needs okay [Music] good evening my name is Abby Shiner I am a sixth grade English a teacher at Middlesex middle school as well as a lifelong Darian resident and a product of the Darian Public Schools I am representing the professional capacity subcommittee our focused question was how can we create time and space for ongoing staff development in the area of Dei as you
162can imagine we focus particularly on the need for consistent relevant and focused professional development for all stakeholders in the district we believe that there needs to be systemic change within our community in order to truly Foster a culture that promotes Wellness diversity and inclusion our committee thought that our staff has been attempting in good faith to recruit and retain a diverse Workforce as well as create a strategic plan that emphasizes the importance of building the professional capacity of the staff we would like to propose the following for your consideration one more consistent time for professional development to accommodate the ever-growing amount of learning needs among all stakeholders across the district admin teachers staff Central Services as well as the Board of Education perhaps provide late starts or half days specifically devoted to eipd Across The
163District for consistency two provide specific and focused Dei PD that targets individual teacher needs as related to specific Dei topics this could be an opportunity to tap into the expertise of Educators in the district Who currently have more training and expertise we as a community need the appropriate knowledge to best be able to help our students in their ever-changing and developing world thank you so of course the challenge is there are so many recommendations that came with this report and this is the paired down version of where the group started over about two months of just getting it down to trying to get to three per area at the most so the the next level of work is I mean that this is simply said is to adopt Implement and monitor right but there's so
164much more that goes with that because there needs to be some decisions I I would guess on the part of the administration of where do these things fit in school Improvement plans Department Improvement plans because that's where the work is going to happen and how we monitor that that's where we go back to well what are the data points we're going to look at so it's easy to say we want to see an increase in or a decrease in the gap between s-pac scores between certain populations but that's not necessarily the the best way to know if you're making progress because you're always waiting for an in number one you're waiting for an entire year to know if you're making a difference but what are the formative assessments so group one uh group one yes
165commented on the importance of formative assessments so we can actually have regular check-in points along the way to know that we're making that progress so clearly 40 things cannot be done and when you look at this list I hope you're also asking well these sound like things that schools should just be doing like how is this Dei versus good instructional practices there is an overlap between those things and that's what you want it to be so that's that's okay that's appropriate and it's also hopeful because it makes it more manageable and it means that we do have a lot of the skills in training and capacity with our staff to to do that work and there also is some space for additional professional learning so with that this is the presentation on behalf of this
166amazing amazing group of people who uh outside of the regular school day uh gave their time for mere compensation of some baked goods often homemade but that still wasn't that still wasn't enough but most importantly it's about the shared care for students and uh Mr danine you said it best um best in the state and Nation that's yes we can be best in the state nation and this work is probably the hardest part of of making that happen but all the capacity is here the talent is here uh the care is clearly here so thank you for your commitment and including this in your strategic plan and this is a as Dr Bradley will say it's a year one and two and so technically the Dei team has done its work and the next decision
167will be is the work done just go to Administration or does some type of a team continue and that would be for you to decide thank you Dr Tran American thank you all that presented tonight and thank you for all behind the scenes I know it's been a labor of love for a lot of folks that have participated so thank you very much a lot of data here so with that I'll open it up to some board questions comments John ayoko uh Mr Means remarks oops remarks um I guess you know what I it's this is a very comprehensive report probably do five meetings going through each one of the uh Focus questions um but as I analyzed it I was missing that data um that informed the group um and then I went to
168the district profile and performance report that were required to file with the state and I was able to get some picture about the student populations you were talking about the numbers and you know for but some are so small a state puts an asterisk in those categories and puts in a footnote to ensure that statistics based on a very small sample size are not interpreted equally representative to those based on a sufficiently large sample size so I look at a school district with 4 600 students and look at some of these subsets of groups as students I guess the challenge I'm having is trying to find statistical significance in some of these fine findings versus qualitative judgment and so I mean looks like we got a lot more work to do from the analytics standpoint
169as a board and as Administration so I guess is the question is you know maybe comment on that and the struggles and you kind of touched upon that but two um you know can we see that data so in all of the slide decks from the Dei team one of the slides actually it reads access to data and this is a big shout out to Katie risk who created a document that has by Focus question all of the different data sources that are associated with what each team looked at so it that is all there for sure the we've looked at the data it is there uh it was strategic and what we included and didn't include uh in part because of how the district typically sets goals so historically we do not set goals
170on raising aspect scores that hasn't been the approach uh we haven't been in the practice of highlighting the disparities that exist between certain populations they're there we looked at them but we felt that this was a more responsible way to make our recommendations in order to position the administration as they're building their school Improvement plans to set those goals that are appropriate for them we were careful as a group not to user the board and the administration even though there's representation of the board in the administration um in that group um we're not here to tell you what to do and that's why their considerations and not and not recommendations they're they're things to think about and there are many levers which can be fooled as you can see and then there needs to be
171strategic decisions as well what is going to give us the most return to benefit students but I can get all the data I can share the link with you all uh tomorrow so you can see it and if I could just you know one follow-up going forward I mean we're at the unique situation where you're stepping up to be a superintendent another school district so you're not going to be available for follow-ups how are you going to transition this to your successor well I know the talent that you're getting and she is well equipped well prepared we've had several transition meetings already and we have a couple more uh coming up so we will talk about this at length thank you and she will be able to get her pet around it very quickly Joe
172a couple of questions um one I'd like to know how you arrived at the set of categories I'll use a specific example so if I look at achievement one and it says why are there differences between subgroups of students as readers does that mean that there are not differences between subgroups of students as mathematicians or as foreign language students yeah that's a great question so the four big buckets of achievement professional capacity School climate and program participation that's the common framework that you use when you're doing an equity audit so to speak then the messiest part is everyone gets all of the data to start and then they migrated to well where are you the most interested so people were interested in achievement they kind of went to the achievement tables on the first night
173program participation went over there and they looked at all of the data that was available for those categories and then they identified where the biggest disparities were so it doesn't mean there wasn't a difference in math because there was but they saw literacy as a more imperative Focus area in part because it might be there wasn't just one measure that we had it wasn't just s back but it could be S back and it could be Ames web as well so when they saw multiple data points that showed that difference it seemed to be a more important area of focus so they started big with everything and then funneled to where they thought the the attention was the most needed I just want to make sure I understand the last part I get I get
174the funneling so but but basically what you're saying is that if we take reading versus for example math um that the data was more compelling or you had more pieces of data a little bit of both so it was definitely more compelling that would be the most important thing it was also consistent over several sources and there's also very commonly that especially literacy people will argue that in order to access the map you need to be able to have access to language because math is so text driven now okay I have more but thank you um so Chris would you say then and I I had the opportunity to be part of this committee for the first year so I was part of a lot of this work but that this work is exhaustive did
175you find everything have you uncovered any discrepancies and can you talk to that a little bit well it's uh it's the importance of a cycle so you make recommendations based on where you have a degree of confidence that it's a focus area and then you Circle back and see if that happens again and then as you ask me that question and I know all of these people in the room there are so many people that are sitting there that can answer these questions just as well as I can the reason I am saying that right now is I want to go back to Mr senior your point about the transition um and they're just the comments that were made about me and the work tonight I am not this work this this is the work
176the work goes on without me I'm the person that happened to be facilitating it um a lot of the people sitting right there could have been amazing facilitators of the work just as well so I have just was my job part of my job description uh not because I necessarily brought anything special to it I don't think thank you Shirley did you want us to get your attention just to add Chris to that to miss best's um question I think on the example of a day to dive is a really good example of that because um you know having the data itself there was for example an example would be that students would learn differences scored lower on their aspects so that gives us a very simple aspect of what that means um our group
177and our group really want to know what's the year-to-year growth what's the growth measuring on their goals and objectives are there goals and objectives measured or designed to really tap into some of the areas not to Christmas point to teach you the test because that's not what we're doing but looking at other progress also when did children enter the system so if we have students that we're looking at scores that um they take in eighth grade and they just came to our program in seventh grade that's another variable so there were so many variables in terms of data dive that having what we had was um not to say superficial but on one level where we'd want to know more depth about that and that would inform instruction that would inform formative and summative assessments
178Jill okay staying on achievement one for the moment please um so is the way I'm to read this slide is that you believe that we have the right structures in place it's just assessments that are lacking that that's the difference for The Gap how can I go first yes that assessments are the first step in providing the next level of information that we need so if we have more for a stronger formative assessment structure in place that's consistent then we'll be able to make the next recommendation hence going back to the cycle Dave sorry just a quick follow-up uh surely a moment you mentioned um be able to keep tabs and measure and the idea of not just teaching to a test and you know having simple metrics how do you control for that that
179the content of Education doesn't vary year over year so you can measure over a timeline what's actually being conveyed versus just looking at say test scores where if you were to simplify the content of the curriculum then presumably every score would rise so how do you control for making sure what's actually provided there foreign I think the answer is one um the philosophy of our district is that we don't case to the test that's not what our value-added piece is we don't we don't hold that as a philosophy of of best practice so we understand that all assessments are a one one point if not um one of a part of different points that really measures Student Success and student achievement I think the notion is we can assume and I'll just use in terms
180of equity we can assume that students who have learning differences in the area of literacy may not perform as well as their counterparts who don't have those same challenges that said how we measure our students who are receiving services and special design instruction is that what what benchmarks are we doing that and how are we doing that so we really need to to quizzes but we need to look at what our assessments look like and are we really assessing students and is that informing instruction I think that's the most essential piece so we assess and then what do we do with those error analysis and what we're looking at is does that inform our instruction and that's for all students all learners I add to that Mr Brown yeah sure just just because I think
181one of the more bizarre things we say in education is we're not teaching to the test when we actually design assessments based on the learning plan it's it's just gotten this um so it's just a weird dichotomy of teaching to the test sounds like this bad thing because it really speaks to Preparing students for high-stakes testing and that's where that language came from but all of the time we're thinking about when we design a lesson design a unit what do we want students to be able to know and the first thing that we kind of do is say well how are we going to ask students to show their learning so the entire plan the entire path we go through a unit of study is guiding those students to to show Mastery of that learning
182well there's the three-step process we saw exactly so it's just I didn't see the fourth step to Loop it back but um you know they just been out of that slide I guess I wasn't really challenging surely they're like we're slouching off for teaching to the test it was really more of a probably going down the rabbit hole a little bit but when you look at that information from an education perspective how do you control that over X number of years if all of a sudden everyone in the district is getting AIDS did everyone really get better or did we just not challenge them and so how do you control for the content of curriculum to make sure that stays constant and uh you know I was just following up on that and maybe that's
183a different discussion but it's really just trying to understand how that's measured well one one Mr Brown one's really based on criteria reference tasks where everybody could get a name and one's based on a normal reference test where there are going to be people who by definition of a norm reference test for a long letter term fail or be below the 50th percentile or otherwise so there's nothing wrong with criteria for tests in terms of we're delivering a curriculum are we executing on that curriculum and whether 90 of the kids do that or whether it's 70 um they could all for one of a better term pass or exhibit the proficiencies in those areas thank you that's a question actually just I've obviously read Destiny comment later but just on only because our kids can
184excel in every aspect that they can right so participation rates sometimes I would think all of our students participate in uh clubs activities represented in athletics and engaged in that capacity it's silent on that I think I know why I think um it's not it's not a lead-in question to you um but it's but I think in a way uh you focus on this but um I just want to do it on the table a way better why we why did that not come out as anything around participation either as a commendation because I kind of think it is a bit that our students are so engaged in all these activities um I think Katie risk actually spoke to it in our subgroup also that part of what we were looking at is that involvement
185in other curricular activities um looking at social emotional learning and other aspects of achievement for students it did come up in our subgroup your hypothesis of there is a high level of participation students most students tend to participate in at least one sport or one club or activity um that could easily have been a recommendation we just didn't track it with a clear data point that's a wise recommendation can I follow up on that one I mean did you look outside of you know District extracurriculars I mean we have post 53 right somebody might not do this work because they're the number of hours is enormous in terms of what they have to do or scouting you know an eagle scout another example of the tremendous amount of involvement that might not get picked up
186by the data yeah we didn't do that just because there's this there's a theory that most students in darium participate in an activity so to in order to do that we'd have to survey all the students and we survey all the students and we weren't confident that we were going to find out there's this whole group of students that don't have a thing and so that could be a worthwhile activity in the future but which is something we did want to ponder in our group I'm sorry something you we did want we do want to ponder in our group or whatever the format will be yeah I want to talk about program participation um I'd like to start where you are um what are the lenses through which we've looked at program participation and specifically
187did we look at extracurricular with any sort of identifying characteristics so for example you know and anything demographic anything in terms of ability did we even do that review we didn't have a strong enough mechanism for to cut we'd have to collect the data as step one okay so we didn't look at it okay um again in terms of prioritizing what we looked at looked at in program participation did we look at specifically for our students with needs their participation in things like foreign language or electives and other areas where we know they are typically underrepresented that was part of the initial when we had all of the data that was looked at yes okay and uh and access to honors classes AP classes yep and there's nothing here because it wasn't a high enough
188priority or yes and there's there were many priorities so when you see the data you're like okay there's lots of things to do but if you think about how many recommendations we had just based on these things um you can go for a long time okay so let's use that example what makes what's here a higher priority than than that again I know I'm asking the same question with math and reading but part of it was what was going to impact the most not the largest number of students okay Sarah that was building on that so there's a tremendous amount of information in this report and I thank you all for participating in this I think it's a Well worthwhile Endeavor but now we have this huge chunk of work and how do we prioritize
189going forward what's what's looking forward what do we do I mean how do we how do we move this forward um is it the administration going to come back with suggestions are we going to come is this going to be in our four goals um you know how do we move this work forward that has been identified and how do we prioritize where to start that is a very fair question that has been on my mind so one of the things we wanted to do was to meet this deadline um and these people sitting here I just want to say to you thank you so much for staying the course um there's so much flat around the periphery of these discussions it's extremely difficult thank you to the board members for empowering the group to
190do the work um I think for our young people who are here and uh who are not here um they see that this group is going forward and and making recommendations on their behalf of being their voice on their behalf thank you specifically to our children and students who are on this committee um I couldn't be more prior of the work that you've done and the recommendations that you've brought forward uh I would say just we we met this deadline and witnessed deadline which is right at the end of the year um and you may say well you chose an airline well yes but I tried to make sure it was completed for this year um uh first of all my administer the administrative team hasn't completely reviewed this either so we need to leave
191at a time administratively to reflect on the same regular I've been involved at some level the whole way through this right um but at the same time my principals haven't settled uh the whole team essentially most of them have been on it but we need a reflective time uh just to advise the board or make recommendations of what a how we think we should move that should move forward whether into goals directly or otherwise um and the Board needs to reflect on does it need more information or not but uh that I mean I said I'm not trying to pass it off um we would do that rather quickly but we just need to be better reflective time Julie as you all reflect uh Chris could share with us the the data deck so to
192speak and and those who want to dig intelligence to to get a little more of a complete picture I think that might be valuable time spent for board members to feel like we know a little more about what's behind it all um and the other thing I want to reflect on um a little more is kind of going back to where we began and we did have a speaker a public comment this evening who I thought did a really good job of reminding us of where a lot of this had started from so I just think I I I want to reflect some more too I guess is all I'm saying thank you Joe um so back in program participation we note that we have black male students in particular who are overrepresented in special
193education the end is probably fairly small but I see the number so um did we do any additional work to validate that that's the case and we reviewed those IEPs to say yes we actually believe that that's valid [Music] that would be the next data dive to look at we did not go into that detail of it I'm not saying that there is a research bias I just want to understand the methodology um when we say that it's similar in previous years how many years did we actually look back look back five and the the number of students is usually around 40 for for that population okay um okay um I want to talk on I'm just going to talk about climate um can you two things I want to ask can you touch quickly
194on the relationship between what you're talking about is climate and what we do for the at the state level because we have we do our own climate assessment that's required by the state and so I wanted this sounds like this is in more detail but I want to understand the relationship between those two things the second thing I wanted to talk about that it goes in the category of climate that I don't see in here is um sort of how we talk as a school district when something happens um you know we had a couple of incidents that kicked this off I don't see a lot of language in here about uh whether you call it remediation or you know restoration um what was the conversation around that is it not in here for a
195reason the first would be um yes this could be this the climate survey could fulfill the state obligation I know that Dr Dad is working with the team to look at some options for the best tool in order to capture the data in a way that it was articulated here um to the other question I don't believe because I couldn't be in six places at once that was not at the center of the conversation and again step one was can we get the information that we need in order to make the recommendations for those next steps and I shouldn't say it wasn't there because when I'm thinking about the conversations I had with a few people in the room it is the idea of well what do we do right now for the reporting and
196the response um that was not it just didn't work its way in because the of what was prioritized thank you I want to back up and explain why I'm asking the the bias question I'm asking it because I think it's important I do believe children should be in their students should be in the least restrictive environment if they can be I also believe a childhood needs to be identified should be identified so I just think that if we think there's a potential issue that we need to do that work to make sure that our students are getting what they need can I ask just one more big picture question I mean clearly Mr chairman that we got a lot of questions around this report and uh you know look forward to having opportunities to ask
197more but um I guess I go to the achievement group number three and you talk about teams often take the deficit approach versus the asset approach or do you call it student asset approach and on this one you kind of flipped it um I guess taking the deficit approach it helped me understand why we go in with a deficit approach instead of looking at an asset approach especially in a district like this I think it's not only a district like this I think it's the way that we see the world it's easier for us to see what's wrong rather than what's right uh and when you do reports like this um those disparities pretty much jump out at you very quickly what was interesting and our look is there were places where um Darian did
198not profile like many other districts do with an audit like this so I said if we're not profiling like this can we actually look at what's different what's good can we take an asset approach and say how do we learn from the good work that's going so this was an opportunity and I've never seen another report like this that actually had a focus question that way and I know I think Dr forsaw is over here I don't know if you have anything to add to is that okay if I asked him I know that was his group absolutely it just has to get in front of him like that sorry sorry you stayed so late so we thought that this was an opportunity particularly when looking at sat performance for high performing students to understand
199their stories to think about portfolios I think they came across the recommendations there's a lot of good that's happening and so we wanted to take that from an equity standpoint make the access point for for the Learners who are performing at that level more accessible for all so that was basically in a nutshell take what's good try to scale it thank you this is it um there's a discrepancy between the number of recommendations in the report and the number on the slides I'm assuming that's in part just to make it fit on the side but is is there an actual prioritization embedded there so the a couple of the groups um got to work on their slides after the deadline so they might have changed the priorities but all of those whether they're in the
200packet or on the slide that you saw they're all included in the actual report itself so it's so it's the report that we should be looking at for what the actual recommendations are not the slides they're the same but there's more of them in the report yep but they're not recommendations yes just to be clear is this the Hyatt prefer each of the groups is this uh the priority considerations everything that made it into the report was prioritized from a list that was much longer than yes what was included on the slide deck like the slide deck we have those considerations of the prioritize considerations from the report we call them highlights but I guess you can call them priorities but now I guess Dr Bradley to that question is when you and your the
201rest of your team go through this those priorities may change I don't think we're going to write and completely left field um from it but that we had questions from it and uh follow-up questions or or the excuse you had to pursue then we would do that I guess my you know again thank you for all the work and there's a lot of data I think for the board to look into and review and I think we need more updates and more conversation I know Chris you'll transition to Amy I know she's been in District working um so I think it's good I wish just kind of a lesson learned I think as all this work was going on I think on a go forward basis as this work continues there needs to be more
202regular updates to the board so a lot of information to look at and digest a year later and it just gives me pause the whole process of prioritization so I think they would have been good conversations to at least have along the way with the board I think that would have helped even with some of the questions in the thought process tonight but I guess I think that's what we have to think about on a line is goals and objectives with the Strategic plan and how some of this stuff does fit from a prioritization standpoint cute John I'm recognized this is slightly not this is suddenly moving away into more of a kind of cumulative thing because I noticing connection between this presentation and the one that was made about the department chairs but one
203of the things that I and this is also my last opportunity to ever talk to the board so I thought I might use my time well I I hope you'll come back come back to public comment but I thought I would make this now just because they pop into my head but um one of the things I'm I'm wondering is I know the district is very focused on making sure that students all their all their diversity of needs are met but when we look at teachers and how how their different teaching styles are are being considered it it does seem as though when I'm looking at this in two different categories both from this meeting and also from what I've experienced because I do talk with lots of teachers at the school that it it
204does seem kind of like uh or I guess my question would be is the board um is it the board's opinion that you know while students have uh well well you know the breadth of student needs is trying to be met and facilitated that different teaching styles should be kind of streamlined that would kind of provide a unified approach to teaching all students because what I what I'm noticing the reason I ask that is um on on the side about professional capacity one of the things that was proposed was providing quote focused and differentiated professional development targeting teachers individual needs to deeply explore different di topics and when I read that what I immediately think of is um looking at different teachers approaches to how they address certain Dei topics in their classroom settings and
205saying I mean by some you know measurement we think that you need to you know work on this need on this individual need and so I'm wondering what that really means in terms of you know evaluating a a certain teaching style or a certain way that the teacher communicates with their their students and and whether those and whether there is some districts identified objective way that a teacher should be I should should be addressing these di Topics in their classes and also um along the lines of talking about different ways that teachers teach one of the things that anecdotally I've heard a lot about um and I failed to comment on this during the conversation about the the department uh chairs but one of the things I've heard is that um having when when teachers
206have have a a meeting with a department chair who for example in these are one of the benefits of having a teacher of having a department chair who once taught the subject and is still an active teacher in some regard was that they can they can offer comments on a more you know subject basis as opposed to having a having a school principal come in who was maybe a math teacher evaluating an English teacher and there's a different level of of analysis going on there but one of the things that teachers have been saying you know in you know kind of private conversations with me because I stay after class because I'm interested is um you know uh if if a certain teacher teaches in in some way that the department chair would not like
207recommend or maybe that's just their personal preference of you know different different things you know what what objective measures are in place to ensure that for example like at Department chairs you know personal preference and teaching style or I guess in any sort of any individual District um employee at the higher level at the administrative level any personal preference is not being used as some objective measure of of like the way a teacher should be teaching or or you know some some kind of metric that they're supposed to achieve because I know that our teachers come from from a very wide breadth of you know backgrounds and you know since they're the ones interacting with our students then you know maybe maybe there should be some some you know investigation into into what what that
208means I'm not sure if I'm not sure if you see what I mean yeah so I I feel like um there I feel like there's just a a difference in the way the district is approaching students and their and all the different ways that they learn versus teachers and all the different ways that they want to and know how to and have been teaching so I don't know if that's just a comment that's separate from this thing that can be kind of interesting I think your last your last sentence there kind of pulled it all together and I think it's a good comment I think actually it plays a little bit into Mr Brown as to as you're teaching the question to Shirley like and you're looking for those results how do you know that
209teaching is consistent and what is actually driving those results exactly you've got Learners and you've got Educators so I think that's a component of the the ongoing discussion so I think it was a good good thought process and good question you went through you want to add anything to that no uh well I would say that we one of the uh greatest attributes we have in the quality of the teachers and the individuality and we depend on that but there is a guaranteed and a viable curriculum that we want uh all students to experience those are they're not mutually explosive uh concepts of individuality and bringing to the table we're not going to quite there are learning principles that we're agreeing upon um that's going to PDF committee you like to hear that another couple
210of minutes um that we'd like to to uh have some agreement on but we're certainly not taking away the individuality of our teachers because that's that exactly what we depend on I think the only thing I would add John and because it's it's an interesting point you bring up is that I think in in my experience as a parent in the district I think from the elementary through the middle school through the high school I think there's a lot of time spent when classes are organized and as kids go through Elementary School and into Middlesex I think the administration and the teachers all invite all involved in those children's learnings really take time to understand where they would fit in a classroom with a teacher where they would fit in a um a team at
211Middlesex and I think where they fit in in terms of what they want to do in terms of extracurriculars clubs and councils and stuff like that at the high school so I think there's a component of that that takes place with a lot of hard work good all right so uh thank you all again a lot of data a lot of information I think we'll follow up and circle back as to how this looks from an agenda standpoint I think Dr adley I would ask that you come back to the board and just give us kind of a timeline as to what you're looking for in terms of your team kind of digesting this working with whether it's a team of the department chairs or the principals I think and I think the board would
212like to understand a little more around the prioritization of this and then I will tell you my my concern is uh to the point of the conversation around everything tonight time energy and resources is how do you execute you know how do you execute my my fear and my honest opinion is I'm not sure where everyone has the time so that really has to be thought through there was a comment in here about resources and Professional Resources so I think we'd like to understand that because I think again our role is to understand and support and and fund but I think we have to understand how you execute it all good thank you thank you thank you everyone thank you thank you very much everyone for your time let's see yeah thank you thanks for
213staying late on a school night it was moving right along update on strategic plan and board goals Dr adley so with your understanding um I've shared them with you we're at the end of the year so I'm just going to keep this at a very very high level for the moment uh if you uh don't mind and they would I would I will I would say is there anyone that has any questions around this because we've all done our homework and read through it so is there any conversation or questions we want to have on this right now I think we'll have further discussions as we go into Retreat and um around goals and strategic work but anything specific to the document Dr adley has in front of us in the updates yes Julie two
214I think quick ones sure uh board goal one um the status talked about tabletop exercises I don't know what those are uh board goal number one yes made reference to tabletop exercises all right the safety drills are you talking about where are you yes yeah the tables are off exercises that's just um uh you come together and you have a scenario on the table and you execute at the table as opposed to having to go to schools or it's a um it's a simulation of a drug thank you [Music] thank you for listening hang on one sec I'm getting there um it says presentation nope presentation to various Town organizations but it doesn't say on what is that uh just um down below is it just District stuff oh that's the point in the end
215of your update oh uh mental health issues security issues so a variety of topics yes okay thank you good thank you I will think that there are a couple things you know we have we have to still do as well Point those at a later point because you know we didn't get it we didn't get everything um that we would like to do at the extent we would like to do it and if we even should do it any other word questions good thanks yes go ahead sure that teaching and learning principles are waiting where are you looking uh strategically playing for one great learning principles helping develop and they're going to the pdac committee uh because that has to be those will have to be embedded in the actual pdac process for developing the
216teacher evaluation plan and so on and so forth so we want to make sure that they have seen it before it comes back that's why I'm significant to highlight in the development of those no just waiting on the time the new framework for Teacher evaluation I should even call it a framework because they're not giving a framework so we want to see how much space there is because you really want to make sure you're teaching and learning principles are going to guide what that work is um so we're just waiting to see what does this look like it sounds a little bit like a blank check at the moment look where it's coming from thank you all right good thank you Dr Bradley um further discussion and possible action on the 2024-2025 District school calendar
217uh so where we left it off was the first Raiden um Katie you did share with me I couldn't make it for to include it as part of this package just given to the time frame of it um but I did look at the I guess if Community Schools of Frankfurt which is in the Indianapolis um uh it sort of did if you remember what Katie had suggested that take a couple of days throughout the year I'll put in a couple of days where you may be able to make them up um so that is one scenario um I would say just in general that um I think this will be a better recipe this currently what you have like our current plan will be better received by our staff per se one of the
218things for that is it was predicated I think on taking a couple of I don't think January and say between if there's a snow day between the first of January or 12th of January you would make it up on the 15th of January if not then there's no school that day um that if that doesn't play a personal then you're end up once at the end of the year a longer school year uh technically so I think it the development yeah would there be contract um no there would be contract consternation probably um they have to work a certain amount of days uh but you don't pick tip the certainly the teachers don't say what those things are but uh start it's a reasonable idea and um one we can explore further we want to
219have a deeper a more Fuller discussion on that you're going to defer this or consider that for next year type thing I just I I personally don't think it's really well received by our teaching staff yeah it's nothing I would do this year but we can put it on the table for further discussion any other questions comments this is the following year right this is 24. yeah yeah all right may have a motion to approve the 2024-2025 District school calendar Sarah second by Tara all those in favor that is unanimous very impressive all right good thank you um discussion and possible action on relocation of Oxford's playground and equipment to Italy so we're not sure who uh so this is happening uh outside of our normal financial report um one of the main reasons is
220there's a little bit of a time crunch um since we have multiple building projects kind of converging at once we do have a playground at Oxford that has to be moved whether it is either moved to Henley or demolished it does have to go uh it is a relatively new playground at only about nine years old and in very good shape um with another building project going on at Henley the current playground structure does have to be removed and they will be down uh multiple playscapes uh so the recommendation is to move the playground at Oxbridge this 2014 playground to Henley um so that they can have that playscape in place uh the cost from the vendor is 64 890 to move this playground which is in very good shape and is actually better than
221the current playground that exists that has to go at hinley um if you recall from our previous financial report uh we are running a relatively strong balance if approved we bring that balance down to about 761 thousand dollars we would wreck recommend taking the funds from the unused student interns that have been unused as we've tracked the financials for basically the entire year and then some savings thank you yes John um so 2014 I think they raised 80 000 for it um so I just want to make sure we're being financially smart so what's the useful life once it gets moved to Henley it it should at least get more than 10 years okay um and that 80 000 didn't include the uh site work it was right yeah so it provides much more than
222um if we were to not do this you would probably need about fifteen thousand dollars to demo the existing playground at oxfordage and probably close to a hundred thousand dollars to build a new playground at him okay and then from a building standpoint they're perfectly fine with the equipment so Henley is uh very much uh in favor of receiving the equipment okay well that's an awesome playground yeah Julie and just to confirm oxrich is getting it completely new yes which is why this one is going on a slide sorry I'm sorry would you say sorry in a slide um just just the line in the memo it says there's given there are no funds available in the HHR budget I don't know if that's exactly true it just makes more sense for it to be
223down at the board level it wasn't a planned expense as part of HHR yeah um so if you weren't having any building um projects going on and um you know Oxford's raised eighty thousand dollars to have a new playground um you could do this normally as part of your operating budget if you wanted to move it to whether it be Henley or but okay well again can you be great sorry you raised a question I mean why isn't part of the building of budget or maybe I'm asking you but uh like we have contingencies right well that's what I'm saying earlier okay okay but uh we don't have the bids in but there's not a lot of flexibility in the budgets it doesn't really make sense for us to take it on in terms of
224how much flexibility we're carrying at this stage but also it sort of Falls in between the the building committees it's not really something we were planning to do but it's silly not to got it okay I've been in great shape could we have a motion to approve a transfer from the Board of Education FY 23 budget in the amount of 64 890 to fund the relocation of the Oxbridge School playground equipment to Henley School John Cena second by Joe all those in favor is unanimous by everyone present thank you we will move on to a discussion and possible action on the renaming of the Darien High School oval Road Alan do you want to talk through this yes sir um thank you and I recognize that this is an unusual uh request um and uh
225uh sort of the timeliness of it uh given that the graduations around the corner I want to thank the wave strong do I have the way of some of the very strong parents here I don't think so no I don't think so okay because I'll just mention MMA there's a couple a particular Laura Bremer Kim Swift Amy finger okay all right so those couple of parents um are certainly highly involved as are some coaches students uh community members and essentially uh yes sort of late in the process but they came with the idea of could we could we um not even rename the oval doesn't have a name right um but name uh the oval wave strong way in three particular areas and like the three entrances uh this organization as you know has been
226instrumental in supporting our students collaborating with our administrators and our high school in particular um through the last couple of years and the challenges that we've faced I have put down there uh that why it exists uh and I think it's important that any organization wants to suggest something you should you should understand why it exists and this is in their own words to break down stigmas around mental health um we have strongly been a partner with the school is important all of our students and so uh preliminary online discussions with uh PNG the police department tournament uh just individual uh request on the first selectment seem to think that this would be we could do this but that being said uh what I'm coming for is to say essentially can the board vote to
227initiate the intention of moving forward with this proposal with the understanding you've got to go through uh the whatever processes we got to go through whether we know what they are now or whether we don't know where they are now uh the the this would be dedicated to all the high school students and that's the intent of it um if the board does go through with it they are going to like the only two days of graduation so that there will be a PR thing tomorrow it'll be notif a notice tomorrow there'll be a photograph of it tomorrow um so they're ready to go um and I I maybe we presumptions in this and the way I'm putting it forward but there's no way to make it happen quicker uh with Fighters doing it in
228this particular way I think the the group understands kind of or was educated in that there's a process around this and we don't necessarily have the right policies in place I reached immediate immediately out to our first selectman Chief Anderson and chairman of Planning and Zoning none of them had an issue with it the Chiefs you know uh stressed that the um the roads and the first selectment the roads are under our care control and custody the oval it's not changing the address for mailing or emergency service purposes or anything so everyone um Town Hall The Darien Police Department and planning and zoning was very supportive of it um I think originally this came I think Dr adley to us as a gift from the class of 2023 Alan I think in a great idea
229went out and you know spoke to them about being you know for everyone so I think in the interest of getting things done and with graduation right around the corner so I said to Alan let's push this up to the board I know a lot of individual conversations we made sure everyone understood kind of what we were trying to do here so they understand we're going to go through our process but I don't see any issue in putting three signs up that describe it as you know wave strong way so questions comments sure my only question is how do we have student are we certainly a student buy-in um you know well they're not do we have input from students I guess it's a question um I understand that the input from the student would
230be the input from the student tree are part of the way of strong group but I I couldn't quantify that to be honest with you and then the other one is if we do rename it it's not nothing is inter perpetuity I mean it could be changed 20 years from now to something else so yeah okay perfect um I would say that you'll see a wee bit of advertising since I'm sent is dedicated to all the students you'll see a wee bit about occasion that or perhaps would uh use words in recognition of the leadership of 2023 but the whole thing would be dedicated to all the students in the school perfect good right so I think what I what I think would make sense is to get a sense of the board that we're
231okay with this understanding that we're going to go through our policy around naming in general um and advertising um buildings and Fields and stuff like that so um does that mean that we're we're saying we're okay with it provided that when we go through the policy exercise it's in keeping with what we decide yes okay well not really did we talk about this was kind of grandfathered in and whatever we create in the future this would be outside of whatever policy we create if we're talking about a naming Paul this is neither advertising nor right no but this would fall and I I don't see any reason why this shouldn't fall into the policy we are going to work on and come to an agreement on but are we moving forward on this and we're
232working on the policy or we're going to move forward to work on the policy and then we'll see if and try to make this work this will work with whatever policy we work on all right let's not make it complicated we're putting up three signs my God would make things complicated over anything thank you all right I get a sense of the board that we're in support of renaming the Darien High School oval road to wave strong way subject to working through any Border Town approval process which we have there's no indication that there is any Border Town approval process but it will be in line with um the work that we do on our policy uh around naming rights for buildings roads fields Sarah second by Tara all those in favor good thank you
233that's exciting I think that's a good thing as we end the school year um we'll move on to First reading and discussion of the proposed revisions to the Board of Education policies and we'll turn that over to Marge and Dave [Music] essentially these are that are worse described as cleanup edits from our attorneys based on different changes to statutory language in various different statues as cited for everyone's first read assuming that's people dropping off of you yeah losing power oh okay we're losing power all right so a lot of um work done by Marge and Dave and the board policy committee here so this is a first reading and discussion um to these policies in a board comments or questions as they stand right now all right so we'll bring them back again for any
234further discussion and possible action so um Marge anything on the Personnel report or your recruiting efforts still good so as a as of tonight we've been able to hire and fill a lot of positions our administrators are working quickly to get you know positions filled we haven't had as many resignations which and I were talking about as we have haven't had as many resignations and retirements as we have in the past years sometimes in a good District they come late but we'll see okay I know this is a wide spectrum of experience too yes great thank you for all the work around that I having been part of the process on on Chris's replacement um it's a lot of work between scanning through the resumes um kind of doing an initial read and then the
235interview process um a lot of time and energy is put into that so thank you I know there's a team of people behind you that out March but thank you um we will move on to our last action item which is an action to rescind the non-renewal of Catherine Perez Antone um Dr adley if you want to give a quick update on that yes on the last April meeting April 25th the board took action to non-renew Catherine Perez Antoine um and light of receiving subsequently Mrs Perez's uh resignation I have a motion that the board rescind the April 25th action to non-renewed Catherine Perez Antoine good in light of receiving miss Catherine Perez Anton's resignation may have a motion to rescind the April 25th 2023 Board of Education action to non-renew Catherine Perez Anton motion
236Dave second by um John all those in favor that is unanimous great thank you very much thank you um we will move back to Michelle public comment if anyone in person would like to participate please wait for the chair to recognize her you will have the three minutes to come and you can state your name and address for the record yeah Tiffany O'Connor 48 leewarden Road I didn't expect to be back at a board of ed meeting after my youngest graduated um it's a strange feeling I um wasn't part of the Dei team but was somewhat involved with the Dei initiatives through the ptos and wanted to come back to hear the considerations and recommendations tonight I vividly remember the students asking for change in 2021 and um I'm extremely impressed with the committee's thoughtful
237recommendations and I look forward to hearing your next steps um I also wanted to thank Dr tramberg personally for leading and facilitating um such important work despite the challenges and even hostility unfortunately thank you for standing up for what is right no matter what Come What May and thank you for standing up for those who needed it most we have so many extremely intelligent well-spoken people in leadership positions in this town but I personally think that we could really use more people like you standing up for what's right even if it means you may not remain in that position that you're in so I want to thank you for the example that you've set in addition to All You've Done wish you all the best thank you thank you for speaking this evening anyone else
238in the audience Michelle anyone online if anyone online would like to participate please use the raised hand option there are no raised hands at this time thank you may have a motion to adjourn uh Jill second by John colors in favor