Board of Education Meeting - October 26, 2021

001at 7 30 p.m in the board meeting room move on to the chairperson's report um again thank you all of those of you that have come out um in person on this evening and follow those on zoom i wanted to start out with some recognition for two of our board members leaving our board this being their last meeting while both wanted no comments i feel that it would not be in the spirit of the way our board does business their work and tenure also speaks for the both of them deb richie four years of dedicated service to our students the board the district and our community i know you've been a volunteer for almost 15 years through various parent organizations rtms and subcommittees and even more your focus has always been on the students and

002providing a safe environment and education for them dad always did her homework and brought the right questions to the discussion while you will be met while you will be missed i hope you enjoy tuesday night's off playing paddle more college tours and family time and visits with your daughter in school so thank you dad for being part of the board and for all i've done for the board appreciate it [Laughter] yeah okay good is that you yes moving on to katie stein he signed nine years on the board of ed you think you were brunette when you started dedicated service and you can blame katie for her encouragement uh for me to get involved in the board of education many years ago a conversation i think in our kitchen um katie was a leader on

003the superintendent's search committees and has served i think on all subcommittees over her tenure and brought each to and brought each um and brought it to each meeting a full understanding of the facts the issues ideas and solutions always focused on the students with their legal knowledge and sharp intellect katie laid many led many conversations on the board table the truth is katie likes to set the table and without her and four forks we would have been very hungry at our long superintendent search meetings union negotiations and retreat meetings while you will be missed katie enjoy the ability to be at the remaining high school games for cc and visiting liv in matthew as a personal friend for a long time thank you katie and thank you dad but thank you both very much yes

004i i just like also to pass along my words of congratulations and appreciation uh to to both the members deb and katie uh they have given themselves uh they've exhibited unconditional love and devotion to the children of darian and their hard work and devotion during the times that they've been on the board on a personal and professional note uh you're the members of the superintendent search committee i'm forever grateful uh for bringing me to this special place and for your support on the board uh during uh my transition to the district so again but more than anything thank you for all that you've done for uh the students and the staff here thank you so much um i will move on to some comments um well not the end of the school year um i

005feel it's a good reflection point for this board that is as it is the last meeting before our organization meeting on november 9th i want to thank this board for the hard work that has been done over the course of the last year and for allowing me to be chair over the course of the last year when i think back no playbook and an ongoing pandemic the wind and rain always seemed to be in front of us much like tonight that's okay we're hardy new englanders we can weather any storm working together as a district as students as parents and as a board as i've said many times we've kept our motion going forward when you think of all that we've accomplished over the last year while there are comments social media letters and public

006comments about the board and how we work together we have listened we will continue to listen and we will have the conversation at the board table as professionals respecting each other as we go forward i want to thank the board for working on that all year more work to be done yes was it easy no hard work is never easy was the conversation difficult yes at times but conversation keeps me moving forward did we listen as a board i say yes was what we heard difficult at times from parents students and teachers yes but listening makes sure everyone has a voice and listening in forms from listening we continue to move forward do we disagree yes who doesn't disagree we are individuals with ideas thoughts and experiences do we agree to disagree and work towards

007the right solution for our students as a board yes with your continued support we will only move forward as one community with many diverse thoughts and ideas that's what makes us a high-performing district and a place place where teachers want to come and teach this week it's only tuesday has been challenging with swastikas again at the middle school and investigations around bullying at dhs while not easy words for me or anyone to say swastika and bullying i feel at this point they have to continue to be said until everyone hears it and rejects it we will continue to work on the education community dialogue and i know we'll all work at the dinner table conversation that we need to help those that need help while consequences come from these actions understanding what people need and

008how we can help them takes priority also we are a caring community i say that after speaking with teachers administrators students parents in this past week pastors and leaders in our town along with our first selectman jamie stevenson and state rep terry wood and as one community we can help educate heal empathize lead the way always agree to listen and have the tough conversations this is what we do if you need help anyone just like being in a class raise your hand as a community as a district as a board we're here to help thank you for listening and let's continue to do the good work for our students as we move forward we will move on michelle to public comment good evening if you would like to speak during public comment please click the

009participants icon on the bottom of your zoom screen next click the raised hand option the facilitator will identify you and announce that you are unmuted for public comment once recognized and unmuted please state your name and address you will have up to three minutes to comment yeah we'll start in person first we'll start with zoomer in person first in person okay thank you hello my name is joanna walsh and i live at 17 pleasant street this is something like the fourth or fifth version of what i was going to say tonight and it keeps changing not because i'm wordsmithing but because every day something else happens that worries and scares and disgusts me i moved to town in june of 2014. shortly thereafter a new friend upon hearing that i was jewish said don't let

010anyone else in town know that he was kidding that that joke is indicative of the environment we now find ourselves in the fact is that jews in this town in our school don't feel safe people of color don't feel safe the lgbtq plus community doesn't feel safe people children with disabilities don't feel safe they have told you this themselves as stewards of our collective children's education you all know that darian believes that schools exist for children the philosophy of the darian public schools is to quote work cooperatively with families and the community to provide for students a safe supportive respectful and intellectually challenging learning environment safe supportive respectful our most vulnerable students certainly don't feel that way and i would venture to guess that many of our least vulnerable students even feel that way safe

011supported respectful this is not about politics it is about children and this learning environment is untenable we must do better we must take immediate action and signal to our entire community that hate has no home here because right now we say those words but our children don't believe us why should they as i said earlier they have told you themselves how unsafe unsupported and disrespected they feel and our only response has been to talk about it and then wait until the next incident thank you for your comments good evening john dunn 175 raymond over the past several weeks we've heard both concerns and confusion from parents teachers and students over the future of our wonderful public school system the only constant amidst this turmoil has been the administration's unrelenting drive to implement their strategic plan

012no matter what this is exemplified in tonight's presentation as the administration embraces hartford's open choice program and facilitates the regionalization of our schools at the cost of local control it is time to take a pause tonight i call upon the board to temporarily halt the implementation of the strategic plan to allow all stakeholders parents students teachers administrators and board members time to come together to address these important issues the only way forward should be as united as a united community and to get to that point there is much work to be done recently in nearby cities and towns we have witnessed dramatic changes to curriculums and schools ap classes canceled in stanford gifted programs cancelled in nyc midterms and finals done away within greenwich is this a harbinger of future events for darian so many

013of us have chosen to raise our children in town because of the exceptional school system however as the administration goes full steam ahead there are simply too many outstanding questions we need clarity we need a pause a key refrain from many concerned parents at recent meetings has been the desire for curriculum transparency and nonpartisan parental involvement regardless of one's political affiliation increased transparency should be welcomed by all we love our children and need to know what is being taught to them however of the six parents listed as members of the strategic plan committee in tonight's presentation four are registered democrats one is a republican and one is unaffiliated that means that two-thirds of the parents represent a single political party and of those four democrats half are running for the board of ed this is

014the antithesis of a representative and bipartisan group of parents parents involved in the process should have no political ambitions or agenda wanting what's best for their children should be their only driver and for all this administration's discussion of diversity and the need for varying points of view why then does the committee have no parental gender diversity we need transparency we need apolitical and diverse parental involvement we need a pause as we take this much needed pause our students parents and teachers can turn to the plethora of sel and diversity programs currently available through multiple community organizations negating the need for the administration's rushed efforts to implement them in our public schools let's take our time to do this right with the whole community on board and united we need a pause thank you thank you

015mr dunn kathleen thompson good wives river road the administration and board of education thank you for letting me have this opportunity to speak mr brown we are sorry you have been a victim of a slanderous character attack no one deserves the to be treated like you have been to darien residents i think you all know and would agree this is an amazing community so it's hard to understand why the darian democrats thought it okay to create such create such a slanderous narrative for a sitting board of ed member rather than take time to communicate their grievance directly with him their willingness to turn to social media without bothering to engage is wrong and shows a clear lack of faith in each other their willingness to tarnish not only a man's reputation [Music] madam i'm going

016to ask you to pause this is way too political in mentioning democrats and it's not appropriate this is school focused in terms of your conversation all right okay so if you have something else to add that's not political or calling out democrats or republicans you can't i'm not calling out i i that you've mentioned the word several times it's not the time or the place to have a political conversation okay so attacking somebody in this room is not okay i would you agree with that because that's what happened last week at last board member meeting and no one you didn't stop that so i think in all due respect to mr brown i think he deserves the opportunity to have the respect of a sitting board member he's a neighbor he's a parent and he's

017been under attack and it's not okay thank you just i don't disagree with that but you're also attacking the democrats so which is not the time for political conversation thank you good evening melissa zablocki raleigh and wrote as one of the concerned parents that have been mentioned in past meetings i want to clarify we are not opposed to sel programs and believe these programs have true merit however we do feel they can be best fulfilled outside the schools and based in the community where everyone is included parents children grandparents educators and churches the school administration is acting above and beyond the jurisdiction to insert themselves into a role of a parent furthermore there are radical national efforts to overhaul schools happening right here in darian the dps implementation of a new strategic plan and vision

018of a graduate is full speed ahead but parents and taxpayers are not fully informed when speaking to community members there is a huge lack of awareness on the changes occurring in our schools the drastic curriculum revamp is a result of a select group of chosen parents who are now running for office and bringing with them radical national efforts into our schools we as parents got complacent we were snowballed and we need to be engaged curriculum transparency will be vital for success as you implement new and untested programs into our schools as social experiments the current path of our boe and curriculum committee to implement these excludes parents while you march forward i also want to add i have a disability and i understand some of the challenges that that special population faces and i think

019it's really vital that i advocate on their behalf their clarity into the agenda for them as well is crucial to their overall success and well-being slow down bring us all on board with your vision share the agenda this will dictate everything going forward from curriculum to gender identification this is where the parents have been excluded this is where we're asking for a pause in the name of equity new york city eliminated their gifted and talented programs other towns around us are eliminating ap courses finals midterms this is not just changing curriculum but lowering standards this should be rejected by all families the gifted program the darian are also being recessed reassessed are we next parents can all agree that any form of racism racist sentiments negative judgment or exclusion of any kind is simply intolerable

020under any circumstance we are part of a great humanity a greater humanitarian effort it's a community effort wanting to be informed and potentially about potentially in sweeping changes to our children's curriculum is in no way contradictory to supporting our teachers we want inclusion to collaborate not to challenge and impede we've been mischaracterized let us have a seat at the table it's time for all sides to come together you're excluding parents as you march forward a body of people we have rights by federal law that are being denied regardless of political party no parent should support that and i just want to leave you with one thing that resonates with me this is from the darien parents coach training program before you can be a parent coach in the community and that message is exclusion is

021a form of bullying thank you and be well thank you for your comments kate bates 33 ridgely street good evening excellence in education i have many friends that have grown up in darien and that is the motto they all remember excellence in education it seems we have achieved it darien high school was named the number one school in connecticut according to u.s news this year amazing it is the reason my clients move here it is the reason i moved here 20 years ago so the question is why why would we begin to upend our curriculum and introduce sweeping changes when our system is currently working very well the six indicators on which darien was measured to be named number one in the state and number 100 for stem in the country are as follows college

022readiness college curriculum math and reading performance math and reading proficiency underserved student performance graduation rate our ap participation rate is 69 percent our nearby towns and cities are eliminating ap and gifted programs because they are not equitable they are doing this without parents knowledge will that be happening in darien next no midterms or finals as well we have all these programs now and we are number one in connecticut these are the reasons we are now asking for curriculum transparency before these changes are made and the parents are left out many of the parents in town have no idea about the drive for a new strategic plan or how the strategic plan committee was chosen it was written during covid when parents were underwater and focused on simply surviving we all just received the vision of

023the graduate and i would also like to know how the stakeholders who wrote it were chosen back in march of 2020 when we were headed for lockdown how were none of us aware was this written by the stakeholders or an outside group that we paid to write it the vision of a graduate is not a core curriculum it reads as a lesson in raising our children to become kind socially aware citizens which is our job as parents to teach them i certainly do the larger question is how are we fitting all of this new curriculum into an already exhausting seven hour school day what core subjects are we cutting short how will that affect our children's education in the traditional core curriculum which has proven to be critical in raising a successful graduate i rely

024on the brilliance of our incredible teachers in darien who have helped us get to number one in connecticut to teach my children what i cannot the core fundamentals of math science language arts social studies and history among others i think we need a pause to better understand why we are rushing to make changes to a system that is already proven to be highly successful clearly when we were being told there's a new strategic plan heading our way to change and educate an education just fake you're at time okay i hope we get a great deal of clarity tonight thank you very much thank you thank you for your comments my name is natasha tomai i live at 6 mclaren road south i want to echo the sentiment of concern about what will be removed from

025the curriculum in order to um make space for so much new curriculum there is a very very comprehensive plan i don't know exactly how we're going to fit all of that into the school day i also want to express concern for the group who was the organization who was engaged to develop the dei curriculum changes the connecticut center for school change on their website and their mission statement which you can go to says america is a racist and classist society classist society and by default schools replicate the racism and classism that has deep roots bound into our national history culture systems and structures it goes on to say educational inequities are caused by racism prejudice and bias that disadvantage marginalized groups so to me it sounds like equity which the definition is equitable outcomes is

026to lower the standards to equalize results we are seeing this in new york city with the elimination of the gifted and talented programs ap classes were cancelled in stanford without the teachers knowing without the parents knowing parents and teachers did not know nap classes were canceled i'm very concerned about this group that mr tramberg has ties to and was very involved with who brought into this it seems to me like their core values are in line with crt we are full steam ahead we don't know where i mean if this is the core beliefs that are posted on their website i am very concerned about the current administration's core beliefs and what they are willing to push down into our curriculum as the head of curriculum we need to take a much closer look at

027this as parents we need to take a much closer look at this i am also very concerned about the national cancel culture that's going on for parents being termed domestic terrorists by speaking publicly at these meetings the national school board or nsba has recanted that statement but the department of justice and the fbi have not been called off from investigating parents like myself who are speaking at these meetings i do not believe that all of the teachers in this district feel the way that the three people who put their names on a letter to the editor feel using the words broken battered ambushed vilified scared casualties destroyed dragging through the mud am i going to be accosted weapon war raging protect ourselves i do not believe that the teachers feel that the parents who are

028here expressing concern about our children being for lack of better words guinea pigs in new curriculum are are threatening the teachers we're simply wanting transparency we want to pause we want to be a part of this and if an organization is hired to develop such a drastic sweeping curriculum change i think we should vet them better thank you for your comments good evening i'm linda rowe of behringer road a resident of darien for over nine years with children elementary middle schools this is the first time i have addressed the board and i thank you for the opportunity to do so given this town's historical public school excellence which is one of the best districts in the country and one of the main reasons we moved here perhaps like many i grew complacent with the board

029of education activities until this year i never had a reason to doubt the board's activities and the direction of our children's education however recent events have compelled me here tonight to advocate for more transparency and parent inclusion in the implementation of what appears to be a new curriculum for our kids going forward trying to understand the trend i learned that the board is in the process of implementing a completely new untested curriculum that was passed under what seems like the cover of darkness at the height of the kova pandemic i also learned that this new program appears to have been pushed through by a few individuals from the administration how will it change the already proven curriculum please tell us the specifics of the new curriculum the often repeated words of diversity equity and inclusion

030sound nice and uncontroversial but they are in fact generic words and tell us nothing about the actual curriculum changes what is the cost of this program what are we going to have to eliminate i began to do my research and i don't like what i'm seeing with the way dei has been introduced and integrated into the curriculum and the other tasks for example after implementing dei nearby school districts have cut ap classes midterm and finals cancelled mind you at the surprise of not only parents and students but teachers as well gifted programs taken away and differentiated levels in math gone at a sixth grade level all in the furtherance of their dei curriculum if time is being spent to re-educate our teachers and money spent to implement dei what is being cut from the budget

031and in the classroom for it when my children reach high school will ap classes different levels of subject matters and other programs be cut like was done in the communities around us so all i can do is question are we next this cannot be allowed to happen here lowering our standards is not acceptable i want to know we all want to know and we want a continued voice in the education of our children so i asked the board to allow us the parents of our children a chance to collaborate with the administration on your new strategy we want a seat at the table and a representative collection of the community to have a voice not a select group of people hand-picked by the very individuals that push this new program through in the first place

032please consider that these are our children and while you have a responsibility for their education we have a much bigger responsibility as their parents we all moved to darien for the great school systems but parents please wake up i urge you to demand a voice in this process we are responsible for what comes next and how our town stays a place where future generations want to live thank you thank you for your comments anyone else from the public hello my name is nicole orr i reside in half mile road we transitioned our daughter to the oxford school for fourth grade just before the start of the pandemic what an absolute blessing for her and our family most impressionable was the attention her teachers gave to her as a student a person and a child it's

033really hard for me to put into words how much i respect appreciate support and revere her teachers i've heard testimonies at prior board of ed meetings from parents and seniors who shared similar sentiments of gratitude graduates of the class of 2020 after an amazing education which took place approximately between 2006 and 2009 shared heartwarming pride for their education and opportunities to articulate into prestigious colleges i'm also so impressed by their insight into the importance of knowing how to adapt to a changing world where previously accepted actions phrases literature are now thankfully being re-evaluated and questioned as a community we need to celebrate the progress of this education but we need to do better i have been gravely disturbed by hearing about some recent sentiments shared by some students in this community fortunately the people i

034have met personally in darien share one unifying sentiment that racism sexism judgment just plain mean behavior should be condemned and not tolerated not responded to by letters of the community not responded to with op-eds but with education and strict discipline i am sharing that i wholeheartedly as a parent support our teachers i wholeheartedly stand against any form of intolerance and at the same time i wholeheartedly stand for curriculum transparency i reiterate i stand for all of these things they are not mutually exclusive the curriculum is changing we have no longitudinal data data to conclude if the current implementations are beneficial or detriment it's too new changes are dynamic evolving unvetted we don't know if it's good we don't know if it's bad we don't know if it's going to be just as beneficial as those

035parents who shared how proud they were of the education from 2007 to 2019. we only know that it's new i've heard the sentiments leave it to the experts i know what i have expertise in it's not childhood education and it's precisely because i do not have expertise in this novel unvetted curriculum that i want to know details not just in the form of an online publication with details buried in page 210 of 380 released during the summer months when we're on vacation during a pandemic but details shared at every meeting with every parent with multiple people informed to the prior mothers who have suggested from after their graduates that they support the school and teachers perhaps more than i do you're at time thank you lori olson 16 little brook road um before i start

036i want to start with um something that my family went through in 2012 when we moved here from seattle i had a fourth grader a fifth grader and a first grader and had a bully i went to the teacher i went to the principal i went to everybody i thought i could go to and it went on and on and on and on and i'm saying this today because things have to change here because i have emails from 2013 begging for change begging for someone to help my son because he would get in my car and he would cry all the way home and it wasn't until my fifth grader his brother decided to step into things change and i was told over and over that things would and i have all of my emails

037i have an email from chris bogart saying i wanted to let you know that i sent a letter to dr falcone with some suggestions i have an email here saying to me to the principal saying please please for fifth grade do not put my son with that other child i have i mean i have all of them and i put i i printed all of these out because i want you to see that this is not a political thing these are from nine years ago i blacked out things and then i have an email that i found searching for these from 2015 where my older son was on a basketball team in town and he played he was 12 years old at the time and the 12 year olds all hit hands afterward and the

038other team called my 12 year old a un called for and i emailed joe marzano and that's my email to him saying this cannot happen here i'm appalled i'm offended so i want to talk about the continuing acts of hate and discrimination that keep happening at our schools almost every week we hear about another hurtful incident graffiti in the bathroom posting on social media slurs on our athletic fields and just today we learned of yet another swastika found in the middle school i'm not here to place blaine but i believe we need to acknowledge that darian is caught up in the national trend of rising acts of hate just this morning i read a news story about acts of vandalism and houses of faith of all kinds jewish muslim christian being on the rise everywhere

0392020 was the highest year on record and 2021 is off to an even higher rate and we've seen higher amounts of this activity in our town i am here to plead with the board and the administration to engage in some real practical problem solving this isn't about pointing fingers or a political agenda in a particularly heated campaign season this isn't about pretending we don't have a serious problem or pretending that the current strategies and consequences are working this is about making real change of course there isn't one tangible solution but there but the one thing that could obstruct this much needed change would be the removal or watering down of the school's diversity initiatives and programs that address intolerance of all kinds i just came back from parents weekend at my eldest son's college because

040the people i refer to there are freshmen and sophomore in college it's been nine years and my son goes to a large big ten university in a conservative state and the emphasis placed on the school's diversity program is extensive you're at time mrs olsen thank you guys i'd like to finish for lorielson i'm tiffany o'connor at 48 warden road she was explaining that she just came back from her parents weekend at her eldest son's college it's a large big ten university in a conservative state and the emphasis placed on the school's diversity programs is extensive additional course requirements to graduate sexual harassment training for all fraternities or loss of their charter signage and announcements at football games significant initiatives are happening at other schools big corporations are instituting similar programs requiring employee training as well

041all of our children will be receiving this type of training it's just a matter when the bottom line is that this growing intolerance is an enormous problem and the darien public schools need to take action ignoring or underestimating it will only make it worse and the last thing we want is to be a town with a reputation for tolerating hateful behavior that reputation will drive businesses away and dissuade new residents from moving here but most importantly many of our students will leave darian complacent dejected or hopeless and they may never want to come back proactive steps need to be taken now before the situation becomes completely out of control thank you anyone else in the room public comment michelle do you want to move to zoom is there anyone outside there people outside [Music] okay

042thank you thanks michelle of course barry palmer you are unmuted and recognized thank you and good evening i'm barry palmer i live 17 putnam lane danbury connecticut i'm the president of the darien education association and i do speak on behalf of the teachers of this community while there are many stakeholders in darien public schools the most important ones are the students i was disappointed this week to see that the same website that was created to publicly humiliate teachers and then accused us of being bullies when we asked them to stop has now shifted its focus to criticizing the district's strategic plan and vision of the graduate more specifically their criticism centered on dei no surprise the same criticisms were given tonight a public comment based on the outpouring of support for teachers from parents over

043the last two weeks we do not believe this website is representative of the vast majority of parents in barian and for the record the teacher lessens and activities humiliated for public shame this year have been used for years in the school community helping us to earn the number one ranking we have a purposely misleading attempt to conflate diversity equity and inclusion with critical race theory and marxism by this anonymous group is unacceptable this effort not only shows a severe lack of kindness and empathy for those brave students who have shared their stories but is also dangerous to the well-being of all our students we owe it to our students to create a safe and supportive learning environment regardless of their learning differences race gender identity religion or sexuality i refuse to believe that this ideal

044is simply an educational trend as said by a member of the board this week and i would ask those same critics that if the community does not value this ideal what exactly do we value diversity equity and inclusion are not political to tie to try to politicize dei is damaging to our students and intentionally diminishes the quality of education this district provides the dea supports the strategic plan and the vision of the graduate and thanks all of those parents who put the needs of our students i would like to end tonight by thanking the countless parents who have reached out to teachers in the last few weeks your words and actions are making a difference and i would also like to thank katie stein and deb ritchie for their advocacy to our students we can

045only hope future board members follow your lead thank you thank you barry jeff thompson you are unmuted and recognized jeff looks like you're not muted you're on you're muted still no there we go great sorry about that um good evening thank you my name is jeff thompson on good wise river road i'm here tonight as a concerned parent daring parents love and appreciate the darian public schools and are wonderful educators and we wholeheartedly support teachers educating our children durian public school system has the best academic as one of the best academic reputations in the country is why we and many other families have moved here a great concern is the school administration some teachers agendas seem to be changing in profound ways from what we as parents know understand or choose as parents we have

046a duty obligation and frankly the right to review any potential radical changes that could affect our school's curriculum as parents are the primary stakeholders in our children's education tonight we're here to ask i'm here to ask the administration board of education to pause on implementing the darien public school's new strategic plan this new plan hasn't been fully vetted hasn't been socialized appearance and critical details remain unknown it is anchored in a diversity equity and inclusion approach which in spirit has great merit yet there are many unknowns regarding its implementation and its potentially negative impacts in our school systems let's pause so everyone understands the impacts intent and the intent of new and untested curriculum that's being added throughout our school system which begs the question what programs or academics may potentially be eliminated to accommodate

047the new strategic plan i bring this up tonight as as i have other parents as there are concerning trends occurring in the neighboring public school systems of greenwich rye stanford and new york city that are eliminating or diluting gifted programs ap courses midterm and final exams all the name of dei curriculum i hope this is not an omen for darien i hope we remain focused on academic and excellence and not replace academic merit with political agendas let's pause and learn how uh the curriculum could be the curriculum play that proposed uh this plan was selected and to more broadly evaluate whether this plan truly incorporates all voices of the daring community and not just a selected few let's pause and craft a commitment where we can transparently and through civil and collaborative discourse discuss the

048merits and intents of any new strategic plans and its curriculum without sacrificing academic rigor or reflecting toxic political agendas thank you for your time tonight thank you very much for your comments kristy mccarthy you are unmuted and recognized chrissy can you hear us yes i can hear you can you see me we can't see you but we can hear you so please continue thank you wonderful here we go good evening everyone i am another concerned parent and agree with the statements made here tonight on transparency from the school administration and the board of education and the inclusion of parents in the curriculum committee and in general in the education of our children please pause and allow us to collaborate with administration and our outstanding teachers on the new strategy before it is implemented we want

049to know the specifics of this strategic plan we do not want to be excluded regardless of political party this is something all parents want and it is within our legal rights thank you and be well thank you for your comments do may i have her address please excuse me her address please oh chrissy do you have your address there you could provide us 25 hillside avenue thank you susie you are unmuted and recognized i know well does this scene this cut this all went on during um i couldn't even hear when parents had to get up hey there's someone that has their mic open and we're waiting to hear from susie susie why don't you call me betty yes thank you okay hi uh susie flaherty lake drive darian um does anybody have bingo yet

050because i've got full speed ahead complacent pause um sweeping change um the fear that is being portrayed by the people who i'm getting whiplash because last week or two weeks ago it was hating on the teachers and hating on the curriculum and wanting to change the curriculum and now the schools are great and the curriculum is great and the teachers are great and now we're attacking the administration and the board i i i'm i'm just a little whoa my neck um i'm just really i've grown up in this town i've been here for 51 years and i have been defending this town for 51 years by people who call us racist and call us classes and call us bigots and call us snobby and all i'm seeing lately is that these people that i've been

051arguing with are kind of right and i'm worried and um this information has been out there and because you were complacent um read the information and and hopefully you will be involved and and i hope that you'll go through the proper channels to be involved but in the meantime i've read the i've read the strategic plan and i've read the vision of the graduate and and this is about creating human beings in addition to creating academic successes and that's what colleges are looking for these days i just get back from a weekend of looking at colleges with my son and everybody is talking about diversity and and citizens of the world and being able to converse with someone and understand and want to learn more and that's all that these plans are trying to do

052is to create kids who understand that there's more out there than just being an academic success we are really good at that and i'm sure that i trust i trust the committee and i trust the teachers to implement certain aspects of the strategic plan and the vision of the graduate to create even better and more worldly kids who will succeed in life beyond darien right now the kids in darian are leaving this town thinking that they are powerless to create change in their school and i don't blame the administration for that i understand that there's a process and i understand that things have to to happen in a certain order but the reality of it is is that kids are giving up on being able to affect change in their community and that's terrible for

053our kids to be leaving dairy in high school thinking that no matter what you do the same stuff is going to happen over and over and over again so i'm not saying that we you are right thank you for having me thank you very much paul michelski you are recognized and unmuted paul can you hear us oh yep i had to hit those buttons thank you hi my name is paul michalski and i live at 371 middlesex road and i'm one of the neighbors party the lights agreement included in your agenda for discussion tonight as you consider how you would like to move forward with the high school neighbors i would ask you to keep in mind two things the history and the teaching opportunity the history of lights at the high school is a

054storied one the first effort to get lights approved was denied by pnz in 1994. the lights debate resurfaced in 2006 with a new proposal to the board by third parties the effort to get lights approved resulted in a two-year battle that consumed huge amounts of board time destroyed relations between the board and high school neighbors and ultimately resulted in a disapproval by p and z in 2008. the next eight years were characterized by tension and distrust neighbors felt they had to be on guard constantly for lights proposals limited temporary lights were approved without neighbor opposition but just four years later lights creep light creep began with 10 years of animosity tension and distrust characterizing the relationship between neighbors and the board in april 2016 a group of neighbors publicly proposed a compromise for permanent lights

055rather than continue the lights no lights battle we wanted to suggest a third way forward that could restore the relationship between the high school and its neighbors permanent lights for the high school athletes on a reasonable basis that respected neighbors in the residential neighborhood a compromise was worked out with then superintendent brenner and approved by the board a permanent lights application went through pnz without neighbor objection because the fear of light streak remained a reality a compromise included a five-year stand still this gave neighbors a period of peace not having to worry about new proposals for expanded light usage it also gave the board an administration a period of peace not having to spend time addressing new proposals from youth sports leagues the peace plan has been working i hope the board will honor the

056third way compromise and extend the stand still to give everyone at least an additional five years of peace good relations and trust the second thing i'd like to ask the board to consider is the teaching opportunity provided by this situation i believe in life we can take either a can we or should we approach the decisions can we ask can we get away with it can we get more can we win and this is all too common approach in our hard-driving high-achieving fairfield county i remember one school official lamenting publicly the golden rule around here is whoever has the most gold makes the rules i ask you to consider us should we approach should we ask is this the right thing to do is it consistent with the real golden rule should we require this

057requires much more courage and moral fortitude i believe extending the standstill is the right thing to do it's the right thing to do because it allows neighbors to go on with their lives not constantly worrying about lightscreen it's the right thing to do because it frees the board from spending time considering proposals and then fighting for them it frees you to spend your time on the most important priority the education of our children it's the right thing to do because in a small town like darien it matters between neighbors should we is the right approach and it's also the right thing to do because the current compromise is working for neighbors and seems to be working for high school athletics it represents a real compromise that was worked out in good faith to end 10

058years of poor neighbor relations i believe the teaching opportunity comes from the example you will set for our youth by the approach you choose i hope you'll choose the real golden rule you're at time thank you very much thanks jackie you are unmuted and recognized uh good evening this is uh good evening this is bill leonich from jackie's phone i live in silenoid road um i stand with many of the parents that have already spoken tonight about the need for transparency and accountability and frankly if i could repeat everything that tasha said i would but she's a lot smarter than i am so i'm going to go with my talking points i also feel strongly that david brown has owed many apologies perhaps he was given them at previous meetings or privately he deserves our

059sincere apologies and gratitude for this for serving the role he is what happened to him and his family is shameful was reckless act was has serious consequences that's the kindest way i can describe it as parents and members of this community we expect in fact we demand better than that the most sacred trust one can impart is a leap that we as parents make in sending our children to unsupervised environment in school as parents we are partners with the faculty in school of this town that partnership requires accountability we deserve input on this curriculum disagreements are bound to happen and that's totally acceptable how we work through any disagreements about the curriculum and the transparency of what is being taught and why it's being taught will define the future of the school system entrenched individuals

060must welcome disagreement and respect those who are asserting it work towards a curriculum that reflects the principles we need to instill in our children you do this by being specific about what you mean by transformative what you mean by equity what you mean by inclusivity i haven't heard any specifics yet any curriculum devoid of parents input is not teaching it's aggressively counter to the functioning school and community i hope that this school board recognizes this gap and rectifies it immediately thank you very much your comments alicia skinner you are unmuted and recognized hi alicia skinner from cliff avenue over the last few meetings i've heard a lot of concerned parents speak up and request a curriculum committee from this board parents are asking for transparency because they are seeing significant changes occurring to the curriculum

061in our town and the towns around us in a recent article in the advocate i read that stanford high school decided to cancel certain ap classes and that parents were not even informed as parents we do not want a surprise like that in our community and so i'm asking that before a new strategy is implemented by this board that parents are allowed to review and comment on that strategy before not after most of us moved here because of how highly rated our public school system is because darien high school students are amongst the best and brightest and go on to our nation's top universities and that is why we care about the changes you're trying to implement because it directly impacts our kids and directly impacts the reasons why we move to darien we want

062to be in the future you do not want to be surprised we want to be included we do not want to be surprised like the parents were in stanford so please be transparent with us on these non-trivial issues if there is a desire to take oap classes in darien we should be involved in that decision if there is a desire to take away the gifted and talented programs we should be involved in that decision too if there is a desire to teach divisive ideologies that confuse children or may not be age appropriate we deserve to know in advance we want to know we want to have a say before it is implemented and not after thank you thank you for your comments julia gison you are unmuted and recognized julia can you hear us hi

063i can hear you thank you sorry about that audio problems first of all i do want to um say thank you to the board for allowing all of us as a community to get together and hear everybody's um comments um before i go to my prepared speech i just wanted to say that there is a truth to everyone that had spoke tonight and my goal right is for us to come together as a community so we understand each other's ability to parent and come to a common understanding um i'm at one womsley i'm a parent of a fifth grader at henley school and i'm very interested in understanding what is being taught within our darien schools i ask that you kindly reflect on how the board's vision of the graduate strategy was rolled out by

064the school board to our wider parent population it is imperative that we work on a collective strategy before it is officially implemented as parents we have the right to know the extent of all changes made within the darien schools i never received any information from the board that these proposed changes were put into motion in the spirit of diversity i would have hoped that the board had included all parents so that diversity of thought was also brought to the table i want to include in this i want to be included in this journey and i want all parents to be included as well regardless of political affiliation we're better than that this is something that all parents need to be included in please be transparent and include parents this is all that we ask thank

065you thank you for your comments amy zurb you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us amy yeah yes i can can you hear me okay thank you my name is amy zurby and i live at nine more house drive my pronouns are she her hers over the past few months there has been a rising backlash against the district's strategic plan and vision of the graduate which is surprising because we've been discussing them for almost two years from what i can gather the strategic plan and vision of the graduate have been discussed during at least nine board of ed meetings since november 12 on that date the board of ed unanimously approved the controversial connecticut center for school change to develop the strategic plan at that time not one board of ed member or any

066member of the public took issue with the connecticut center for school change throughout almost two years of multiple discussions presentations and communications to parents there was not a murmur of dissatisfaction now just in time for our local election people all of a sudden oppose this plan and a sitting board member is withdrawing his support even suggesting we scrap the strategic plan despite the board events involvement over the past 23 months i could talk at length about the merits of the strategic plan but it wouldn't do any good because most of the people who oppose the plan are either complicit in spreading misinformation or are being led astray through a propagandistic website which is undermining our schools websites like this have popped up all over the country to scare people into believing that crt is being

067taught in the schools and to spread lies about dei this board unanimously approved the strategic plan a few months ago and to criticize the plan now would be an indication of incompetence and people would lose confidence in you it is your job to have conversations with parents explaining why you support the strategic plan and the vision of the graduate do the right thing thank you thank you very much for your comments caroline carolina maguire you are unmuted and recognized hi good evening my name is carolina magowie and i am in 28 canset lane um first of all i want to thank mrs ritchie and mrs stein for their service in the board of ed they have been invaluable members to our board of education and uh truly uh supporting all our children without any hidden

068agenda so i thank you for that and i'm sorry to see you leave the ways you're the way you're some of you are leaving um amy zurby just kind of say what i wanted to say but i just wanted to make sure that the people that think that there has no been been no transparency regarding the strategic planning process or uh the vision of the graduate i would like to mention the following dates so you can go into the website and find the meetings december 16 19 2019 is where the discussion of the strategic planning process started january 13th 2020 was the first meeting with a strategic planning committee january 28 2020 was the strategic planning committee meeting february 2nd 2020 strategic planning committee committee february 25 2020 the strategic planning update to the board

069of ed all these meetings happened before kovit i've been to each meeting of the board of ed in person as an rtm education committee person and they're all there for you to see so if you want more information it's all out there for you to find it i just gave you all the dates so you can go see it i thank you all for the incredible work you're doing i am in total support of the dei initiative and the vision of the graduate and i do hope we move forward and implement what we need to implement to make our schools much better for every kid in school we are fantastic academically we are failing our kids in terms of being real humans being people with um heart with acceptance and with an open mind to

070face the world that we are living in thank you have a good night thank you very much for your comments nicole lyons you are unmuted and recognized hey guys i'm nicole lyons 63 religion wrote um i just wanted to uh finish up uh for one of the statements one of our earlier parents was saying nicole orr um it was really important for her to express that uh and i think it's actually i would echo the importance of this um we are not opposed to diversity equity inclusion we are not trying to interrupt anything we are simply asking to be involved we're simply asking that our younger children who have not quite gotten through the system that many of these other parents children have gotten through to date be allowed the opportunity to experience and benefit

071from the same academic excellence that we had before and i think it doesn't really matter that decisions have been made it is certainly still our right to become involved moving forward and i just want to clarify that we want to collaborate we want to be partners we want to be involved moving forward in how this rolls out and thank you very much thank you very much for your comments theresa vol you are unmuted and recognized hi teresa vote 22 circle road i actually was not planning to speak tonight but i just have to say as uh as a co-chair of one of the pto's cbsp representative for one of the schools member of the rtm education committee i have been coming to board of ed meetings religiously every other week for about six years there

072is no other board in this town more transparent than the board of education let me repeat that there is no other board more transparent than the board of education between their subcommittee meetings between the every other week meetings the information is out there there is on the website you can see everything that can't be said for every other board in this town so for parents who think that this has all been done in the cover of darkness during a pandemic you just haven't been going to the meetings that have been happening they are out there read read your newsletters they go out every week that are telling you about what is going on in the schools follow your pto's online on social media they will tell you what is going on and for those of

073you who are worried about colleges i have a sophomore in college she is at what is considered a top 10 liberal arts college in the country i don't think that's important but some people do and let me tell you she's had to defend who she is as a person because when people hear she's from darien connecticut they assume the worst of her we need to change that thank you thank you very much for your comments louise fate waylett you are unmuted and recognized louise can you hear us uh yes i can you can have to speak up a little louder please thank you thank you okay can you hear me now uh we cannot uh okay well my volume is up it's a little better keep trying all right i'll try that's good i'll try

074to shout thank you go ahead there are three parts to my comments firstly i'm very concerned for the students at derrien high school who are feeling marginalized right now our black student union and our lgbtq students so i would like to ask the ball to be very clear in its messaging around this adults if you are not a teacher or an administrator you do not have the right to challenge these teens for their thoughts feelings and beliefs it's their first amendment right to disagree with your beliefs i have heard that there are adults seeking to silence them out of a fear of what exactly our teachers and admin must be struggling to keep up to best support all dhs students because so much of their day is spent dealing with non-curriculum issues and parents who

075refuse to make their kids accountable for their behavior we must create safe space for students to speak their thoughts and i'd like the board to have a discussion specifically on this topic my second comment and do please hear me out my second comment is for mr brown it is not political it's humanitarian mr brown i sincerely want you to listen to my words many of us live in derriene with white privilege how we choose to carry that white privilege directly impacts our home life how we raise our children life on our street in our schools and our wider town community mr brown i believe your unwillingness to clarify where you stand on white power symbols or even the lack of them demonstrates a lack of humility and i honestly white privilege without humility is something

076so awful it is hard for me to describe so i'm begging you to clarify where you stand because it's impacting the board you are working on it's impacting our community and the whole student population you are supposedly representing to all those who defend a lack of human humility and i'm almost done to all those who defend a lack of humility i resort to simply asking you to consider this top college admissions departments around the country observe very closely the top school districts like ours full of smart white privilege and they carefully select students to complement their existing student population on a scale of one to ten how attractive do you think colleges find students from a community where a lack of racial humility is tolerated to those parents who think we've been denied they have

077been denied a seat at a decision-making table around dei and the vision of the graduate i suggest to you the opportunity was there for the taking it's called stepping up to attend every board meeting it's called serve on parent committees and valentine your tu and volunteer your time in schools i am very grateful to those who've put in hundreds of unpaid hours thanks to deb richie you're at your time louise thank you i'd just like to thank deb richie and katie stein for their time on the board for their steady leadership and for voting on the issues thank you very much thank you i need her address please duke excuse me her dress could you just give your address again please you're on mute i think sorry dude 102 colony road thank you debbie mcgaren

078you are unmuted and recognized hi good evening my name is debbie mcgaren of 60 holly lane i'm calling in as a concerned parent and i wanted to follow up on a statement from a prior speaker that was cut off while addressing the thoughtless attack launched against one of our current contributing board of education members all the board members who serve on this board are our neighbors parents public service servants in this town and any sort of disputes that may arise should always be resolved by talking to one another and not taking them online right and wrong do still exist and we are constantly trying to instill this into our children as we've seen in the past weeks there's been problems not only with adults and children with online bullying etc so we need to be

079the role models in the room we need to support one another in our community and we need to do better kindness does matter and let's all be better thank you very much for your comments greg grambling you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us greg greg can you hear us his audio is connecting okay can you hear us greg looks like you're connected but you're on mute you're still on mute if you can hear us anything to do on our side michelle no i can only ask him to there we go let's see greg can we hear you we still can't hear you greg we'll we'll um move on and then we'll come back to you thank you scott witton you are unmuted and recognized scott can you hear us hi yeah can you

080hear us yes we can thank you please continue sure so i'm armelle this is scott we're at 12 fitch uh again i was not gonna say anything um but um here we are and i promise you won't see me at every single one of these i have no desire to be out there like that um but i do feel compelled to say something again because there's so much of this you know are we moving too fast are you next is darien next like energy and like at the end of the day like the people of this town are very smart if you want more information you can probably find it you can dig it up or ask miss mcgoway she clearly is you know dialed in on this stuff you can find the information if

081you want more clarity and people are just i mean nothing that anybody says here tonight is gonna really in my opinion impact how people vote it's it's 20 21 people are going to vote the way they vote so i'm not here to talk about that i want to talk about the kids and the messages that our kids are getting from the administrators and the town leaders you can't control other people right this is something i've learned in my life people are going to say awful things to you they're going to be incidents of hate it's america it's going to happen what you can control is your response and i think that the response something is really broken in this town because people seem uh very reluctant to say anything other than we condemn and i

082guess what i want to say is that it's it's really not enough to say you condemn it you need to actually condemn it i i i cannot for the life of me understand why there hasn't been like us an assembly or a series of assemblies get the kids together have the administrators have the teachers have the leaders stand up and say we condemn this behavior we will not tolerate this swastika we will not tolerate this racist bullying i don't understand what is so broken that we can't even seem to do that i think we all agree that some behavior is worthy of condemnation so i i'm calling on you guys our leaders get together if you if we can get everybody together to watch a football game we can get everybody together to listen to

083the leader saying to them we won't tolerate this here that's that's my message i just i really hope that we can be stronger on communicating to the kids themselves this is not who we are thank you you're right time thank you very much for your comments greg grambling you are unmuted and recognized should we try again greg let's try this around jesus we can hear you thank you all right great um so you know my first question is and you know mr dineen i can't help but ask why you cut off one member of our community for speaking out for another board member mr brown but not cut off another bad mouthing him who clearly missed his public statement that seems inappropriate and not consistent regarding the strategic plan materials that are going to be

084discussed tonight by dr adley mr tranberg i would like to hear dr adley and mr tranberg specifically discuss any significant or transformative curriculum changes that they have discussed or which they think may occur as a result of the implementation of the strategic plan including but not limited to the following specific potential changes in literature or textbooks including books or resources used by students for various academic subjects or in the library one of these changes already occurred with the removal of history books at dhs unbeknownst to parents specific potential changes to classes or programs available to students including for example elimination of apa classes or the gifted program any potential changes in the teachings of historical events that occur in the united states any potential changes to testing requirements for students any potential segregation of students

085by race gender or otherwise which students in other schools around the country have been subjected to in the name of dei will equity which i understand is subjected to be equal outcomes for all participants and therefore the elimination of outstanding performance be incorporated into sports theater arts music and other non-academic areas as well any potential new materials or surveys that could be deemed as political in nature in addition i would like to understand what percentage of students teachers and faculty time will be taken away from academics for purposes of implementing curriculum changes related to the strategic plan how will potential changes be specifically communicated to parents in advance of implementation dr adley i appreciate your response my email request regarding these items in which you indicated any significant or curriculum changes would be discussed at

086the board curriculum committee i would like you and mr tranberg to confirm you agree the listed items are significant and that the board and curriculum committee wouldn't just discuss these but seek board approval in advance of implementing them given the board's critical role in improving the curriculum and therefore any significant changes to the curriculum which i think all parents would agree the list i just walked through all classified significant i would also like to hear the board's view of each proposed curriculum change and understand how parents in our community will be involved in overseeing and approving any potential changes i agree with other comments made this evening from other parents as and as stated in darien's own public school policies have recommended in the recent cade literature sent by dr adley himself that parents should

087be involved in the curriculum leadership team which is not to be confused with the recently formed board of ed curriculum oversight committee until these important answers you're at time thank you very much thank you i would just like to say in response to mr grambling michelle anyone else all right sorry yes louise no sorry luis we we've got to move on and make sure we get all public comment and it's not a forum to discuss other people's things i read the statement and nowhere thank you announcement there are no more raised hands at this time there's one person in the back at two and a half minutes left tiffany o'connor i wasn't planning to speak tonight either um but listening to um all that i've heard tonight i guess first i'd like to address um

088the talk about uh what's happening in neighboring towns and changes such as the elimination of aps um i haven't heard anything about this i've attended board of ed meetings for years i was the co-chair one of the co-chairs of the dhsp last year dhspa sorry um and i've never heard a word about this if this if this is happening um would you please address it but i don't think it is and i don't believe those dire warnings that these sweeping changes are happening my quote under the cover of darkness but just to clarify with the administration please clarify at some point um whether any of these changes are actually happening that would be great and if they're not please clarify that also i was on the vision of the graduate i know that um that's

089gonna be talked about more tonight so i won't go into too many details but i will say i i can't believe that um anybody would have an issue with this um i'm gonna pull up um this was a collaboration that started in march of 2020 um i guess i'm especially offended on behalf of the students because there was a lot of student input and they had great insights um i worked with i was in uh with dennis moroney on um in different uh breakout rooms and different discussions um this was a really thoughtful process and um we had focus groups there were so many opportunities for people to give input but i i just especially want people to realize that i thought the most important input came from the students um and i don't see

090how curiosity creativity independence empathy um integrity that's the other one i'm missing anyway there's six of them i don't see how that could be harmful in any way i want to say what these are communication creativity curiosity empathy independence and integrity um i will say that integrity and empathy um happen to me my favorites i really like discussing those a lot and right now with all that's happening in our town um i think this vision um is just desperately needed now more than ever um and lastly i just wanted to echo my good friend lori um you know and thank her for sharing experiences from years back and to point out um how things just really haven't changed enough um and so many of us parents students are asking for help um i also plead

091with the administration for real thank you very much you're at time now thank you can i just say one more thing you're at time now thank you though okay i'd love to see real change for the students michelle there are no more raised hands at this time thank you everyone um in the room and thank you everyone on zoom there's also a public comment toward the end of the meeting [Music] we'll move on to the superintendent's report dr adley good evening everyone uh those people who are zooming in and those who are present with us um for my note as many of you have noted tonight uh regrettably we did have another incident yesterday of the swastika being drawn in a middle school's boys bathroom stall [Music] we do recognize that this pattern of behavior

092has occurred too many times and that is negatively affecting the schools community and the students educational experiences i also recognize and very much respect those who believe our responses to these incidents are not enough are not addressed expeditiously no we're acting with deliberate intention on interventions and actions that will make a long-term difference growing up going to school and teaching in northern ireland i acutely am aware of the challenges associated with hate prejudice and religious discrimination but i also know there are many more marginalized groups here and it is critical we hear from everyone and listen to everyone i am confident our community has the will to stay the course together and address the issues through education contrition personal responsibility and yes discipline but also thereafter and only thereafter i believe we must also learn

093to forgive our children working together and empowering our students voices we can better understand deter and try to eradicate these behaviors we must for the benefit of our children our schools and our community our young people are leaving us to be participants and from there and leaders in a diverse world doing this type of diversity work is undeniably difficult and requires a collective time-wide community effort involving the adults as well as the children we are pleased this evening to share elements of an intervention plan for the middle school and high school that helps us continue to address the issues and provides a sustainable model moving forward i do want to recognize that there's no easy transition from that so you'll forgive me but um i do want to recognize everybody who put together the homecoming

094events uh that uh occurred last two weekend with two weekends ago there was a tremendous community spirit in darien around those activities it was nice it was nice to see everybody participate thank you especially to our parents and uh volunteers who make these special events uh happen do you want to congratulate one of our kindergarten teachers fiona heath i don't know if we have a wee fee on it a picture fiona but we only got married this past weekend and i share that because uh she had a lot of her kindergarten class with her and it was it was nice to see the kid there supporting her admitted a very special time and that that picture says a lot um of what's good by the time thanks also to our parents and uh volunteers who

095are putting together the big first a lot of those are up and running and the rest will be completed soon at the elementary schools uh it's also nice to say that our kids will get all the kids up and down the system will have the opportunity participate then at some level um in halloween uh celebration uh this year they may have different opinions about that but it's nice to see them all participate and have the opportunity budget season is well underway and uh next week we start to have meetings with department chairs on their submitted budgets and we have obviously election day uh on tuesday that's a professional development day for staff elementary staff will be working with their collaborative teams and mathematics secondary will be working within their departments and building based uh building-based

096uh professional development which will include uh ruler and also ken shelton that we will talk about a wee bit later from our knights from pastor truman thank you dr adley we'll move to the approval of minutes it is requested that the board approve the following minutes of the regular meeting held on october 12th 2021 may have a motion this parent second by mrs ritchie all those in favor that is unanimous thank you board committee reports any board committee reports no excuse me okay thank you mr zod and we had a policy committee meeting and that'll be on the agenda this evening also so thank you everyone we'll move on to presentations and discussions durian public school status update dr adley well this is getting uh less and less every week uh primarily because the metrics

097are getting better and better every week so there's a couple of items i had to share with the board one is it is the metrics themselves the second one is just to talk about the clinics for our schoolia's children uh five to eleven and then a very quick comment on on parent conferences in this covered environment uh so we had uh this gallery of we have a couple of kids a week and that's really really the the height of the covert cases per se uh we did have a couple uh this week at the middle school heist at the middle school and elementary school and that really came from some of that came from the actual pool test in itself uh those students were not symptomatic and the i believe it was 10 students who

098were quarantined also were not symptomatic i happened to have a meeting with the state department of education on sunday and they wanted to know from superintendents where are you seeing the uh quarantine and being needed where is that actually happening and um honestly districts were all over the place someone was on the buses some were in the cafeteria some of them were in the classroom somewhere from pool testing and it's really hard to compare because everybody is doing everything a little bit different some districts have got rows and columns and some districts are trying to get back into a normal sort of scenario the one common theme as they look as they look for common themes the one that was so evident that really wasn't mentioned um that they didn't want to mention really was

099that people primarily were not seeing people getting sick from having the quarantine right uh there was no evidence that that was the case or necessarily that was a spread in their schools uh so that was the main thing i uh they were they were looking for areas where you could perhaps give a wee bit of relief to quarantine the students perhaps that could be something like it's three food only in the classrooms maybe it's that three food is extended to all other situations perhaps that's just an example type thing but um honestly i wish they they would move a little bit on the quarantine because it just doesn't seem to be impacting uh quite as much uh but with that being said uh our rates are reducing here you see as of 10 21 i

100didn't update it for today but again relatively no numbers and that's very quickly the immunizations uh they are set up with the time for november 13th and and 20th and then the second dose for december 4 and 11 so we did send out a survey just to get the uh a read on what we would need so we thank the town and the health director for for coordinating us with us in the school system to help uh our parent community current conferences uh there will be a choice in parent conference in person or remote that's the basic update on that topic i'm happy to entertain any other questions dr bradley i think we ask it at every meeting if those students that are those students and staff that are quarantined have any of them been

101symptomatic now oster said no okay if you said that sorry question board questions comments this is parent just curious if you have any data when you set those surveys out do you know how many of what percentage of the five to 11 year olds said that they would be willing to vaccinate i don't have that off the top of my head we answered and uh i don't think alicia's not together you know they're bought yet mr c just two questions one on the on the line of the quarantine this was the second week that durian fell into that grave zone which is basically stopped measuring us because we're so low below five cases per hundred thousand is there any discussion around the change in masking and not high schools or anything like that so we

102did make the point that that uh the we're not seeing the students symptomatic um and that's where we need relief but i honestly don't think that there's a desire by the department of public health to move in that particular topic okay and then the second question how many students have signed up for the weekly testing in the elementary schools how many students um i have john ivey okay sorry i didn't have anything okay thank you it changes we can make but it was it started at over 200. okay thank you good mr brown mr moroney going back to the vaccine do we have any ability to change the vaccine policy those are the the quarantine policy do we have an ability to change that not really no no we have guidelines that we have to

103go that we have to adhere to any other questions around this from the board all right good thank you was on the phone and as always does an incredible job talking us through these great presentations but i'd like to with the boards okay move to any questions or comments around the field mr brown i was just going to make a motion to approve the two field trips as presented on the forms f2 in bracket do i have a second on that mrs stein all those in favor that is unanimous thank you everyone for moving that along christina we love to hear from you and thank you for all the hard work thank you we're very excited by all that you're doing with these trips for our students so thank you very much it's much appreciated

104my pleasure thank you you're welcome presentation and discussion and possible action on proposed district field trips mrs allen dunn this is colleen thompson again i will move over to the board if they have any specific questions about the field trips that have been presented in the packets i will open it up to public question mrs ritchie i'm just confirming because i reviewed the packet there is no besides the substitutes needed there is no financial impact to these with these trips correct correct thank you any other additional questions from the board around these field trips everyone is good uh mrs dunn and uh ms thompson thank you for participating uh as always nice job a lot of these are standard every year so thanks for all that you do behind the scenes and organizing it's much

105appreciated thank you thank you very much for supporting them thank you yes we are deb um may i have a motion uh to approve the following proposed during high school field trips model u.n conference uh model congress quiz bowl national championships dec international career development conference the national technology student association conference and the darian high school band trip mrs ritchie second by mrs stein all those in favor that is unanimous uh again thank you for all the hard work behind those um we'll move along to presentation of student distribution class size reports for the high school in middlesex uh mr ribario and miss elise thank you good evening everyone how are you tonight good how are you paul doing well thank you very much i appreciate the opportunity tonight mary's going to be controlling the

106uh the presentation here for us um before i get started i just want to thank um as many other people have already tonight katie stein that richie for all their leadership and for all the the work and it's been a pleasure these past couple of years working both so thank you to both of you and look forward to seeing you um so the the distribution report um is similar to what we've had in previous years mary if you don't mind moving to the next slide please um the the first slide is just a summary of the overall uh mean class size um it's it's similar to previous years um uh you know i want to just acknowledge the fact that last year under covid conditions um there were certain steps that we took to to

107help with spreading students out and creating smaller class sizes um such as last year our science labs um did not run um so that's what takes into account some of the fluctuation that we see here uh but for the most part the the numbers are very similar uh where our average class size this year is uh 18. mary next slide please this slide shows the average uh teacher student load which again in comparison to previous years is fairly similar it hasn't seen any real substantial changes mary again the following slide looks at the percentage of classes and what size uh they fall under certain categories um again uh it the that middle category that 16 to 20 um is the the category that is the highest percentage-wise um which we view as a as a

108positive um so you know we are definitely trying to to be consistent with that um mary again um the following is some of the um class a summary of the classes that we have that were uh under 10 students these are a variety of classes whether it's certain classes like ap music theory class that we run because it's the culminating activity for our students that are in that or for some of our lab classes that we offer for students for support in some of our content areas so this accounts for the the majority of these classes that are listed here mary again this accounts for the classes that uh fall into the category of um what we consider larger classes um this year for the fall we have four classes uh three in um science

109and one in our social studies department that are at 25 students um we obviously don't um look to do that uh but sometimes in order to meet the needs of the kids uh in changing schedules this is kind of how it plays out we definitely try to avoid that uh when possible and that's something that we'll continue to look at as we go on to the spring and mary last slide and this is our counselor load for the the high school our school counselors we're currently 178 as an average um which looking over the other high schools in ardurg we're exactly at the average the average for the durg is 178 which is exactly where we are so obviously this went up a little bit based on the number of students that we currently have

110at the high school compared to last year and speaking to our high school counselors this is obviously a very good number very manageable and and something that we find that our allows our counselors to still be very productive effective and reactive to our students when need be for the high school that concludes that portion of it um mary the is gonna review the portions for middlesex next um as she goes to her paul let's pause for a moment and focus on any questions from a high school standpoint absolutely great so i'll open it up to the board for any comments or questions thank you paul for the presentation good information any comments or questions from the board all right thank you oh yeah sorry mr parent thank you mr roberto for the presentation i'm just

111looking forward towards next year do you see any reason to change anything or do you wish for anything um are you happy with the way things are going um yeah i mean things are going very well i mean obviously when the budget comes around you know we'll have some uh i anticipate having some proposals first for certain things but as far as our class sizes listen we're very appreciative of the support that the board has given to the high school and the community in general um it's because of the support that you've all given us that we're able to have our class sizes as they are which again we're very happy with and are thrilled thank you thank you mr parent uh we will move on to middlesex middle school thank you thank you um

112good evening everyone um i'm going to to walk us through our presentation of the class distribution for middlesex um this first slide takes into account the average class size the top part of the chart are our core content area classes again we're seeing a similar trend from last year the bottom half are our special area elective classes again class sizes still remaining pretty similar to last year just want to draw your attention to the number of sections on the left english is slightly larger as we have two english classes in sixth grade so that's why the number of sections there is large larger the next slide looks at the number of large and small classes again we have two academic classes less than two students we have one section of advanced math six and one

113section of algebra one in eighth grade um that are at nine students we have two sections of mathematics that are at 25 one section of accelerated geometry and one section of accelerated pre-algebra we had some movement of students moving up into those courses as we sometimes see at the beginning of the school year with students doing summer work or being able to move up to that level class in terms of special area classes we do have two sections of orchestra with less than ten students one in grade six and one in grade seven we typically run one section of orchestra per team in seventh grade we have one art class with nine students in grade six um and we have one section of music exploration with less than ten students when we added an additional

114section to sixth grade based on student requests and new enrollments the next slide represents the teacher average class load again we're seeing a similar trend to last year the math average class load is slightly lower based on the number of math teachers we have and teachers who are assigned to teach five classes and our last slide is representative of our counselors again counselors one and two are our current grade seven counselors counselors three and four are our current grade eight counselors and counselors five and six are our current grade six counselors and if you are comparing to last year um counselors five and six were our counselors um for the eighth graders who are now freshmen at dhs again um we're very grateful to the board for uh having the sixth counselor added to middlesex

115and so that we are able to have the two counselors at each grade level to support students um on the floor in real time when does that needed student load look like compared to the dirt um it's it's very similar um i don't have all of that that data with me but if if you wanted me to to share that out with with the board i could do that yeah if it if it's in line with the dirk that's good thank you i would just ask i think going forward it's kind of nice to see how we compare to the dirk it gives us a good view as to how we're doing and we may have to make adjustments sure thank you thank you board questions or comments on middlesex middle school i asked my

116same question of miss police do you think are you comfortable with the way things are going in the future do you see any anything changing um we're very comfortable with the class sizes again we have some flexibility with um you know running sections whether whether we need to to open up another section um we have we have some flexibility with teachers being able to teach an additional class um and hopefully as the year goes on that we may have some presentations to bring bring some new opportunities for students at middlesex as well thank you great any other further board questions or comments thank you both for taking the time to see uh this evening and uh for putting together all these numbers much appreciated thank you paul thank you mary we will move on to

117a social emotional learning update uh this is shirley klein this is julie droller and dr scott mccarthy good evening to the board members thank you for this opportunity on behalf of mr tranberg and stroller myself we're here this evening for an update to the board of education on social emotional learning um it's my privilege to introduce um dr scott mccarthy our program director for secondary special education dr grandma principal of royal elementary school and miss megan madison our director of school counselors this evening to present you our update also just to inform the board we have three psychologists present as well one from the elementary level this evening one from middlesex and one of the high for any questions you might have as a follow-up thank you [Music] whoever's going to start um dr mccarthy

118just um understand the board has had the package and we've read through it so anything you want to highlight as you go through the deck and then i think it's important that we open up to board questions and comments and i know the board has you know asked a lot about how we're doing with this especially around the pandemic so i want to make sure we have the right amount of time for the the board questions over and above the great information that you put together so thank you who starts [Music] megan i'll just share my screen now thanks okay thank you thanks michelle of course all right great all right thank you to the board of education the cabinet uh faculty and staff and the community for allowing us to discuss this important topic

119tonight my name is scott mccarthy i'm the secondary program director for special education here in darien i'm also a psychologist and the district safe school climate corridor and as such i know firsthand the importance of this conversation i think the board for its commitment through policy the budget process and your collaboration with our administration towards ensuring social and emotional learning is valued by all our goal as we're as a representative group of administrators supporting social and emotional learning across the district is to update you on a number of topics related to social social and emotional learning including current staffing models staff perceptions of the increase in the number of school psychologists at the elementary level provide an overview of school counseling support at the secondary level professional learning initiatives our partnership with families in the

120community and how our building-based and district-based committees collaborate toward accomplishing these goals to begin i'll orient us with a definition from the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning or castle castle defines social emotional learning as a process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals feel and show empathy for others establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions i think it's important here to highlight the word process in the definition and share with you too that this process is one that is active and requires instruction modeling opportunities for practice and opportunities for learning when mistakes are made the strategic planning and vision of the graduate planning processes yielded a mission and vision

121for the district and a vision for what a graduate community from our schools will have accomplished both academically and with respect to their character our social and emotional learning framework aligns closely with the core values established through these processes and will work to complement those frameworks i'd like to share with you a graphic that we found informative when thinking about the current challenges we face as educators here in darien and around our country anecdotally we have noticed disruptions to routines at home school and home separation challenges from adults and peer and small small peer groups stamina and exhaustion from sustained work new challenges learning to collaborate navigating social settings being challenging navigating the physical environment independently being challenging anxiety with the unknown and grief and loss it's obvious that our students and our staff are

122being faced with challenges not faced before and we are committed to supporting them toward that success our implementation of social emotional learning support is supported by the staffing supported by the board including adding an additional school psychologist at each elementary school adding an additional assistant principle of special education and student services at each elementary school the additional assistant uh additional school psychologist at darien high school through the covert relief grant continued consultation with cbc for dbt implementation and collaborative and proactive solutions proficiency training with lives in in the balance which dr mullen will speak more to in just a moment just to reiterate our current overall current staffing models inclusive of updates i just shared at our elp and elementary level we have an elp school psychologist and two school psychologists at each elementary level

123at middlesex middle school we have six school counselors three school psychologists one social worker and one resource officer and at darien high school we have eight school counselors a director of guidance four school psychologists at therian high school and one school is a college stuff pitch part-time connections counselor focus on substance use one school social worker and one school resource or resource officer and now i want to turn it over to dr mullen principal royal who's going to share with you the impact of the additional school psychologist at each elementary level hi everyone thank you so much for having us tonight um i just want to draw your attention on the next couple of slides we've done some updated work for you when we had the addition of the elementary school psychologist two years ago

124we presented some information on that impact to students so all of this is just updated information in the same manner that we presented it two years ago to you um as you can see from this first pie chart um this is exactly what we wanted to accomplish our school psychologists are spending the vast majority of their time working directly with students as you can see sixty percent of their time is working with direct hours to students um and ten percent is in evaluations which is also work directly with students this includes counseling designated through a program an iep or 504 check-ins with students dbt skills groups that they're running different types of counseling groups that students have access to crisis intervention and whole class sel lessons and you can see that the remainder of the

125time is spent doing teacher and parent consultation and training as well as in meetings scott can you move to the next slide so this again is an updated chart for you we asked our elementary teachers again their perception of the increased support or availability of a school psychologist now that we have two in each building and over 82 percent of elementary teachers have seen increased or significantly increased support available from the school psychologist so again very positive impact from that additional school psychologist at each elementary school and our final chart that we have for you today is again an updated chart from the information we presented two years ago scott can you go to the next chart for me this shows the teacher reported areas of impact so we asked our elementary teachers to again

126rank the three greatest areas of impact in having that second school psychologist and teachers found that the most significant impact areas um were around proactive supports for students and access to a school psychologist for crisis intervention we also were pleased to see that they reported increased access for faculty consultation and development of behavioral strategies as well as support for working with families at this point i'm going to turn it over to my colleague megan emanuelson another school counselor so she can talk a little bit about the school counselor supports available six through 12. thank you dr mullen so it is always my great pleasure to share the wonderful work that our school counselors are doing particularly as it relates to supporting students social emotional wellness we are incredibly fortunate with district and board support to

127have 14 committed and talented school counselors six at middlesex and eight at the high school it is a very unique role in that they stay with the student for their time in the building counselors usually also keep siblings so that each family establishes a long-term relationship with one professional councils are a significant source of support and advocacy for students this slide shows some of the ways in which school counselors support students it is far from an exhaustive list of what they do during the day but it does give a sampling of the important work that they are doing counselors are often the first contact a student or a family or a teacher will have about a concern they maintain an open door policy encouraging students and families to stop by call email or contact them

128at any time for any reason well i know we do not have time to go into each of these bullet points in depth i do want to highlight the work in flex at middle socks and in guidance seminar at zaryan high school as the counselor involvement at this level is fairly unusual in secondary schools at middlesex the school counselors have created weekly lessons focused on a variety of sel topics to be shared through all the flex periods in addition the counselors are each assigned to and partner with a teacher in a flex group making them very visible to kids through this common experience at the high school all students are scheduled for guidance seminar for one quarter not only does this allow us to deliver relevant content to students but since students are usually scheduled

129with their own counselor it has helped students and counselors to develop rapport and relationships in a classroom setting it has really changed the ways in amazing ways that we get to know kids well i could certainly go on and on about the incredible work the school counselors do each day i will be respectful of our time this evening and say that the school counselor's role is quite literally anything that will assist a student or a family with their school journey we are involved in every facet of student success academic personal and social and we truly love our daily work and i'll turn it back over to dr mullen thanks megan i think you perfectly highlighted why being a school counselor was such a fantastic job that i had the privilege of doing for so many

130years so it in moving forward i'm going to talk a little bit about the professional learning experiences that our staff have had this year i'll start with ruler we i wanted to highlight for you the work that our staff has been doing and we'll continue to engage in this past summer each building sent a team for virtual training in ruler these implementation teams are now responsible for rolling this training out to the staff in each building over the course of this year this process allows staff to learn the ruler model and methods and become comfortable prior to rolling this out with students we're also continuing our work in dbt along with cbc and training was completed in september for any new mental health staff and administrators in the district cbc continues to provide consultation and

131supervision by level for our psychologists counselors and social workers engaged in using these strategies finally the royal staff has begun in-depth work this year with a model called collaborative proactive solutions or cps this model is something i've engaged in professional development and learning in over many past years and i'm very excited that we're piloting this work at royal this year i was able to provide some professional learning and choice sessions to elementary staff last year on different pd days and now i'm proud to say that 12 royal staff members have received advanced training in this method a group of eight royal staff members including myself are working with the lead trainer at lives in the balance the organization for this model we're working with them weekly to receive proficiency training to tell you a bit

132more about this this basic philosophy of cps is simply put kids do well if they can this model allows us to identify lagging skills kids may have that cause unsolved problems often these unsolved problems result in challenging behavior but this model encourages implementers to look for the unsolved problem not at the behavior as an issue similar to ruler and dbt we're looking upstream when working with students it's not the behavior itself that we need to focus on it is the vulnerability the lagging skill the unsolved problem we need to identify then through this model we can engage in collaborative problem solving with kids to solve problems and as a result decrease challenging behavior a lot of demands and expectations are placed on kids every day when the expectations placed on a child outstrips the skills

133they have to adaptively meet those demands challenging behavior can occur by focusing on the behavior we're only seeing the signal that there's a problem and not solving the problem itself this model allows us to directly engage in collaborative problem solving with students and increase their skills to solve problems i'd also like to tell you a little bit more about ruler scott can you give me the next slide so similarly i thought i'd speak a little bit about this ruler is an evidence-based program from dr mark brackett through the yale center of emotional intelligence and this program helps staff and students recognize understand label express and regulate emotions as well as create and maintain a positive school climate one ruler tool that i've included on this slide is the mood meter this helps us accurately identify

134and label our emotions by considering the level of energy and degree of pleasantness we're feeling i usually rank right up there in the yellow zone high energy high pleasantness by accurately labeling our emotions we can then express and regulate our emotions more effectively and there are ruler tools for that too so how do we put this all together well i thought it might be helpful to show you what it looks like across the spectrum of learning here pre-k through 12. so as you can see in pre-k through 5 the models that we're using in our classroom to respond to social and emotional learning needs of students are responsive classroom and cps at royal at the 6 through 8 and nine through twelve at our middle school and high school levels were involved in advisory type

135models flex at the middle school connecting each student with an adult and the similar similarly guidance seminar and advisory at the high school which also connects students with adults for their entire high school experience one of the things that we know about social emotional learning and kids well-being is that having just one student one adult that students are connected to can make all the difference in the world pre-k through 12 were engaged in both dbt and ruler and ruler again will be rolled out to students in coming years after staff has the chance to do training lastly i wanted to highlight for you how we're partnering with our families in this work many of you have probably come to some of our parent presentations or coffees in person or virtual on social and emotional wellness

136cbc has run some parent workshops regarding dbt and our ptos have been phenomenal in getting guest speakers at various school levels to join us to talk about social and emotional learning and wellness i personally have run some parent and faculty book clubs using books like raising human beings and permission to feel and royal parents if you're out there you'll be getting some more communication from me about upcoming ones so look out for those if you'd like to join for some more fun book clubs we also we also have our extracurricular participation meetings at dhs and our cdsp has sponsored programs for many parent school connections in this area i'm going to turn it over to dr mccarthy to finish up our presentation great so as you heard earlier from me and then from dr mullen

137and mrs manuelson social emotional learning is an integrative active process that pervades all of our work as educators as such we are establishing a district social emotional learning steering committee to work with the building-based dei committees the safe school climate committees the ruler implementation teams the curriculum leadership teams and the proficiency teams to collaborate toward the implementation of the initiatives of the board and the administration through professional learning and teaching and learning we've invited dr williamson dhs school psychologist ms rudolf mms school psychologist and dr williams henley school psychologist to join us to answer some questions about our presentation and thank you for your time again thank you all for that presentation and all the work that goes on behind it um much appreciated so i will open it to board questions and comments mr

138ceni um i'd like to ask you know one of you uh the the acute challenges that you're seeing resulting from the pandemic and the disruption in our students lives that that grid just showed about all the grades and the number of years and some not ever seeing a normal school year and how that quarantines illness mass remote learning how that has come into play and what you're noticing over the last this semester maybe in the last semester in terms of you know either cases or students that you're having to intervene with sure yeah i think i think anecdotally we're hearing a lot of stories about the impact of students uh not having typical years for two years so uh uh dr mullin was sharing me with with me earlier um how uh the impact of

139uh second graders not having really been on a carpet getting instruction since before march of their kindergarten year and how that's a significant portion of their educational time that they have not had those expectations and the structure and learned how to turn and talk with each other and what those expectations are and they're quite different people now two years later um and so as we put those expectations back in place we're finding that typically in second grade we might not need to redirect that behavior so frequently and we're finding that our teachers are saying to us uh i'm having to teach things i typically don't have to teach with respect to behavioral expectations and social emotional functioning because students haven't haven't had those expectations uh in quite a quite a bit so we're seeing that

140same thing play out at the middle school we've had a number of situations on on our buses um just students haven't been on the bus in two years um or many students haven't been on the bus in two years um and we're seeing the same thing play out at high school in those unstructured times where students haven't had the opportunity to practice those skills we're finding that students aren't um are requiring more support to be successful in those those situations i don't know if any of our our school psychologists uh at the building level have any have any other and total pieces to share but that that's sort of been experienced from the administrative level i'd love to hear from the psychologists if especially maybe at the high school or middle school levels sure good

141evening this is kate williamson thank you so much for this opportunity to participate in the board meeting um and speaking to more recently what we're seeing i think that in general um we saw the transition from the summer to the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year uh be very challenging um and that makes sense when we think about it transitions are always a period of vulnerability for emotional distress and emotional dysregulation for all people um but especially our adolescents um and in this particular transition there were so many factors that we have never seen before um and i think that we even um we anticipated this maybe more so last fall um and we really we it came this fall um because school is looking more normal than it has been in in almost two

142years uh the expectations are very different from the last time students were expected to uh maintain a full in-person five-day uh school day we have of course this balance of rigor and relationships which we've been talking about a lot throughout the pandemic and there's still no of course perfect playbook for how to navigate that balance on a day-to-day basis um and we also have um you know the fact that there is still is uh the pandemic ongoing um to varying levels of impact for each student and each family so all of these combined i think we saw an increase in in student support needed to support students and families throughout the first quarter i think that um with the consistent uh full-time you know in person being together safely um that has really helped um

143stabilize student concerns as they've come up and i do feel that there's a perception in the building speaking for myself that students are getting their feet under themselves a little bit as we finish up the first quarter here um and you know consistency predictability routine those are all things that do promote um strong functioning as well as you know caring and supportive adults and i may be a little biased but i think that we we have those uh in spades up at the high school thank you mrs stein um hi everyone thank you for the presentation um alan correct me if i'm wrong i don't think the board um we knew about the pilot at royal the cps it sounds really interesting but can you just speak a little bit about budgetary impact and then

144garen assuming it's a pilot what is the plan going forward if it's successful what is the rollout for the district thank you so that has been that has been incorporated into the budget um as part of our budget for this year and as garen says it really it really is around that kids will will do well if they can and you focus on the skills that uh that they're lacking in and so they are they are piling it and garen is actually leaving that pilot and we've uh we would expect and hope if there's if there's interest and there's a success in it which which there is there's great success in it uh that that uh potentially would uh go into the other schools and be part of the other schools so there would be

145a budgetary consideration if we're going to have to do that to be additional training for people if that's the case okay do you think you'll see it in this year's budget or you would potentially yes okay thank you any other questions mr maroney yeah so kind of building on mr ceni's question is is more of just you have on the slide um sorry i need to pull it back up across it the anxiety and the unknown and and to me it's kind of a double entendre is that the the anxiety of the unknown or is it the anxiety that we don't know and and our kids slipping through the cracks all right i guess my question is how comfortable are we that we're reaching all kids who are in not even in crisis but just

146are crying out for help and are we addressing that and and can you and to echo something mrs parent was asking the the the principles before are you do you have everything you need or can we provide more so i'll jump in a little bit um mr murray like i was describing i have a high school senior in my house and um if you'd asked me two and a half years ago if his graduation or his senior prom would be in question you know i i would have said no like of course not and he's asking me those questions now like he's like do you think i'm gonna have a graduation do you think i'm gonna actually get to have a prom and and so i think when so there is the anxiety of the

147unknown in some way i think there's anxiety um but there certainly is i think our students have questions they don't know if this is going to continue to to you know trend in a positive direction or if we're going to you know kind of head backwards a little bit and so and and the fear of the loss that they've already experienced right that all of these students have have experienced loss and so is there more of that coming or are we really going to trend upward i think we're definitely hearing that um you know we hear it a lot at the high school level you know the our our seniors is our is my first year of college going to look quote normal um you know and i think everyone was hoping and expecting that

148we'd you know kind of not be in masks and that things would be back to normal and that some of their traditions and their rights of passage weren't wouldn't be at risk and so i think that's one of the things that we refer to when we talk about anxiety of the unknown and i'm sure garen can speak the little ones i'm sure there's lots of questions that they have for for both school staff and their parents yeah absolutely i mean i would echo what what miss manuelson said and for for the little ones you know as you saw on that chart some of these kiddos have never had a normal school experience and so you know a lot of the things that um you know my counterparts and and dr williams could speak to this

149as well is that we're trying to to create as much of a normal environment as we can um while keeping a laser focused uh mr moroney exactly on on what you're saying on making sure that we're seeing all of the kids for whom that anxiety is externalized and and for whom that anxiety is internalized as well and we know that anxiety in kids can manifest in in many different ways um as it does in adults and so one of the things that our school psychologists and our administrators are are talking with our classroom teachers our school staff with about is um is what to recognize is what to look for is to reach out if they have questions about kids sometimes it's nothing and a teacher has a concern and brings it to us and

150and you know our school psychologists are able to do those check-ins with kids and and send kids on their way um and sometimes there is more anxiety there and sometimes there is more of that sense of grief or loss or or the unknown that we really need to attend to mrs achman um so i first would just like to say a big thank you i think we've heard a lot about curriculum and we'll continue to this evening but the real answer is is kids don't learn kids don't do curriculum unless their base needs are met and if you're anxious or you're in a heightened emotional state you're not reading your math textbook or your history textbook or any of it so i think so much has fallen on our psychologists our guidance counselors our support

151staff and i just think a big thank you as much as we have added um professionals to this i'm sure your workload has been incredibly high to say the least and i'm sure difficult at times so a big thank you because you're handling a lot of our kids base needs so they can even attempt to look at this curriculum which is often so highly debated just a big thank you for all of your work and i think people really need to understand how foundational it is sel isn't trendy anxiety isn't trendy these are things that kids are experiencing and if you want them to learn you need to take care of it so thank you very much thank you mrs mrs mccammon thank you for their presentation and i'm particularly focusing on the family partnerships

152slide which we know you know the home school connection is really critical for everything but particularly for for social emotional health um can you talk a little bit about whether or not your relationships with and how you're working with families has has changed are you having to do anything differently in terms of communication back and forth um with with parents in particular as part of managing uh the environment and the students hi miss mccammon i can uh i can start um and i would say uh yes is probably the easy quick answer um you know i i'm the when you asked that question i recalled a conversation that i had with a parent um in march of 2020 right when we had shut down and and you know the parent was so upset and and

153we're just trying to get the kid online that was what it was really all about and you know we hung up and it wasn't a good phone call and then i called back a little while later and the parents said i'm so sorry we ran out of toilet paper and that's all i'm thinking about um and that conversation to me as probably sounds silly i think it's guided um almost every single conversation i've had since then because the way that we're partnering with families is different there's different needs that we're attending to um there's different ways that we have to communicate i think as as principals as as administrators as teachers one of the things that we're trying to do is just be super clear in our communication to make sure that everyone has the

154information access to information because you guys know there's a hundred things coming at us every second and it's just really hard the past i don't know how long has cove had been going on 100 years at this point it's really hard to keep track of everything so i i think anecdotally that conversation that i had with that parent in march of 2020 has has guided the philosophy that i've tried to have in terms of communicating and partnering with families which is um sometimes things are really tough and it's sometimes because you ran out of toilet paper um you know in the past uh our partnerships around our parent coffees at the building levels with cdsp you know the ptos at the building level have really focused on on delivering content and information for them and

155what we were hearing from our building based committees is uh we're overwhelmed and we're stressed and right now we we don't really need another presentation or another resume meeting um to hear more content from you we need support and so we've shifted our focus sort of to what dr melanie was saying you know what do you need right now what do you need from us how can we support you uh you know to ms aquin's point too if you're not if you're not meeting your base level needs and and and we can't support you with that uh your children and your families may not be successful so i think we've seen an increased focus on our social workers connecting families with agency work um and making sure that communities have those families have those uh

156base level needs that they're able to be supported and successful you know i would say at the secondary level the answer is sort of yes and no like it hasn't changed in a sense that we've we've always worked really closely with families we've always had very frequent you know various modalities of communication with families um you know our counselors and our support staff were we're in constant communication via email and phone and in-person meetings with families um so so i feel like that's absolutely we've always been really i think great communicators and i think that's all still happening but absolutely agree with garen that the nature of those conversations has shifted and evolved and you know many of us you know are kind of come from a systems a systems focus that that families are

157systems and the system impacts each other um but but really hearing a lot more about you know unique circumstances that are impacting families and therefore children um and really having to to shift to support um not just children but whole families um and so we're we're very much prepared for that work um but i think it is um we're seeing the nature of the communication and um and the needs changing a bit thank you mrs parent just quickly building on the idea of family i'm just curious if you have seen the number of parents initiating conversations about the wellness of their child increasing because of covid or if it's just anecdotally you're seeing i just feel like parents are more aware of wellness and mental health because of povid and i'm wondering if that's translating

158into being asked more of by parents yeah i'm watching all of us nod as you're adding that question mrs parent thank you yeah i think um the answer is absolutely yes and you know we've all been home with our families for a very long time at this point so i think there is a you know there is that laser focus and we're seeing uh we're seeing things that that we didn't you know maybe ordinarily or pre-covered times um i think certainly one of the things that that makes me proud of is that we've established trusting relationships with our families so they do reach out and i think that's a great indicator of those partnerships i know that at the elementary schools um having two different school psychologists has been so helpful to be able to

159have you know somebody really focused on different grade levels parents know who their go-to person is um and i know that that's the same thing at both mms and at dhs and the fitch academy so i think having parents know what that who their go-to person is when when they're having those moments of of wonderings and doubts and concerns and questions um it it takes that stress off even if those concerns are big because having someone answer the phone on the other end and say listen i i got you let's talk about this um has really been helpful for for many of the families that we've talked to and i see my colleagues nodding megan i don't know if you want to add anything for the secondary level yeah i think um you know part

160of it too just we talked about the anxiety of the unknown i think adults and parents are experiencing that too um and so that's you know what some of what we hear too and you know especially at the secondary level like is the college process different do they care about the test score like there's a lot of you know the anxiety of the unknown even from the parents who are you know concerned for their children and and what's going to happen and how they can support them and and and there's a lot more like i think i feel like our answer is more like we're not sure yet like we're not we're not really sure how that's going to play out and so we're just really linking arms with families and and being in it

161with them and being in it you know within in their concerns with them and on that journey um and and it's harder because we don't have a lot of the answers that i feel would be reassuring to families and so there is that again that unknown factor for for the adults as well thank you sorry i'm just going to add to that ms parent that i think too uh families are coming to us this is some sometimes identifying a problem but the process to identify um the causes of the problem are are far more complicated right now than they've been in the past and so uh just to make an analogy to academics when the ninth grade teacher gives the the pretest for algebra and the student doesn't do well we now have to ask

162the question what was your team quarantined a number of times last year did you were you a remote learner did you have trouble accessing construction as a remote learner we didn't have to ask those questions before and similarly when we're having a student having challenges returning to school we we now need to ask that question what did last year look like for you were you home last year and there are questions that both our families and our school staff have to explore differently than they did in the past and so it just creates um an increased layer of complication in that analysis process thank you all so much the only one sorry the one comment i would add to that is just you know when i walk through middle sex and i walk to the

163halls of darien high school the kids are just so happy to be there like they genuinely are just so happy to be back in school and i just every day i just celebrate their resilience and you know their joy of learning and their joy of being you know in school and on their sports teams and in their clubs and um and so i do there's as much as we talk about all the hard stuff i really do want to celebrate you know the resiliency of our kids and our staff um who are just really i think truly genuinely enjoying just being in person with a more normal school year than we've seen in some time thank you for that megan any other board questions or comments good well thank you all um i can see

164you all i'm not gonna go through all your names again but thank you shirley and team uh for this update i think we'd like continued updates on this it's an important topic garen thanks for all the hard work at royal it looks like some really neat results that we should make sure we're doing across the district to provide all the help that our that our students may need so thank you all very much we'll move along to an update on the implementation of the district's strategic plan [Music] so uh this is this is the first in the series that the board had requested um i'll just mention that we're barely two months into it so the way this is framed the memorandum shares essentially each of the the seven goals uh the strategies are the

165strategies to go along with them and the actions are really the actions that are pulled out for year one if they're year two or three we're not we're not there yet um clearly uh any of the goals themselves are um are also fluid and it'll be a living document as we go forward so um hopefully the memorandum is a little bit simpler than than wading your way through the actual strategic plan itself so the way we have sort of set it up for just for feedback and i'm certainly happy enough to reconsider how that looks or otherwise but it just seemed the simplest just to uh list the strategy and the actions that were pertinent to happening in year one or year one to two or that way and sort of uh prioritize them so

166with that um i'll be happy to lead off with um perhaps talking about goal one what the the major big things i'm not going to read all this right i will pull out a couple of things we'll pause there and then go to the next one would that be okay for the board yes thank you uh with that chris i'll let you sort of like uh just touch on the highlights of uh each of the actions all right thank you everyone and good evening just to level set a little bit diversity equity and inclusion come up throughout the strategic plan um i had the opportunity to be part of this committee and it was already in progress when i was hired so i joined the group in i think april was the first meeting that

167is from the time that i was hired and they welcomed me and i appreciate that but something the group was very aware of was the importance and clarity of language and what you see in the core values and beliefs specifically is diversity active inclusion and we were very thoughtful and reflective of but what does it mean when we say that because we know those words can be interpreted in lots of ways uh so equity this is page 89 of the strategic plan if you're looking at that equity is advocating for and advancing opportunities and outcomes for all and diversity and inclusion is creating a community that welcomes and embraces the full range of human differences so when we say ddi that's what we need and it's just important that that's clear as we talk through

168this i'll highlight a few things from goal one um the first is this is another uh it really emphasizes the importance and clarity of language because there's a goal to talk about what do we actually mean in their hand when we talk about high quality instruction because we love to talk about how great things are how wonderful the instruction is and that's true but when we say that we actually mean the same thing so our professional development and evaluation committee which we affectionately refer to as pdec they are regularly charged with looking at not only the professional development that we offer to support uh teaching and learning but also the teacher evaluation and feedback system and as you know there's been a waiver for the past couple of years so that's been a little bit

169on hold and we're anticipating that change um so this year when we meet on the ninth they are also going to be charged with uh developing the process for how are we going to develop that common language for high quality instruction which i have a feeling we will effectively refer to as hqi because we love to have an acronym so so get ready for hqi um the other piece is uh just like students up to one of our big focuses with students is we learn how to work with each other in groups but we're doing the same thing with adults so when we talk about professional learning communities how are we working together in the same room now that we have the opportunity to do that again so we're really spending a lot of time

170talking about what the professional learning communities mean what do they do and how can we achieve the best results for students i'm also under 1a i do want to point out the procedures for the collaborative learning experiences for partner work and small group instruction because again that's not only about adults this is one of the challenges that we just heard out of it in the presentation that that's a really challenging part when you look at second grade especially um you may have seen that that graphic before but our current second graders have not had an uneffective school experience and that's really important that we remain conscious of that throughout for years to come i would anticipate under 1d revise and create the curricula that are designed to responsibly represent diverse perspectives so what that means

171again diverse perspectives is trying to represent everyone so in with the work of the strategic planning committee what we try to include in that language is make sure we are encompassing the needs of students with learning differences and also encompassing the needs of students in the technology program so that was the range that we were talking about it's all students no matter what the program is no matter what the identification is so for the professional learning focus this year and we are continuing our partnership with dr marilyn's friend who is working with our elementary teachers this year regarding specially designed instruction and we also had the gifted program evaluation last year which was intended to give us all feedback and that was very well received last year and it's really looking at how can we

172provide access to this program for as many students that should be in the program that's the idea so it's not about removing a program it's potentially expanding it if that's what is best for students um the other piece with um one of my favorite quotes i've been quoted in the paper many times as a school administrator but i think the darian times two weeks ago quoted me as saying um curriculum is not a secret and so i'll take that one to my tombstone curriculum is not a secret um so with our ubd framework that we have understanding by design i think i talked about the three stages of that last time the importance is yes we have a common framework but it looks a little bit different depending on the grade level it might look

173a little bit different depending on the content area and that makes things confusing and so we are definitely working and you'll see it in the budget proposal of a plan to make sure we can be more clear about the curriculum being transparent very specifically how can the stage one of what we're expecting across all grade levels all content areas be available uh with ease and with ease being the important piece because as we work to provide information we can get it but it takes sometimes more steps than we wanted to but again it takes time to standardize that practice under the third area of 1c um the focus on establishing the best practices for plcs this again is related to this is really a professional capacity of staff but the goal one area that team

174was very focused on part one priority and language two what are we expecting teachers to teach and part three how can we make sure we're supporting them what we're asking them to do so that's the clear patterns and the conversation we have for one a1b1c so that focus on plcs as i mentioned the plan opportunities for diversity equity inclusion and we also have the additional 25 literacy specialists that was part of the grant those positions have been important this year especially when we look at k2 and the importance of early literacy moving forward so i'll press pause after goal 1. word questions or comments around goal 1 yes mrs ivan so we heard a lot tonight about concerns about the idea that we might be stopping aps or getting rid of finals or midterms and

175what i'm seeing in a strategic plan is actually the enhancement when we really looked and we've heard parents ask for for years is much more differentiation um diversifying how we learn and i feel like the concern that we heard in the public tonight is the opposite of this goal am i am i understanding this goal correctly and i know mrs mccammon and mrs stein were on the committee along with mr tramberg so tell me if i'm missing something because i i would like to address those parents concerns and make sure i'm understanding this correctly no i think that that's a good interpretation and the idea of the strategic plan this is over the next five years where we want to go it's not about what decisions have already been made for the district and when

176are you going to tell us what we're doing the importance is we have goals that we're going to work together to accomplish it's not about the work that's already been done chris is your microphone on yes okay sorry it made it we just couldn't hear you um the other piece uh what was the first part of your question well i look at this in sitting in this room and being here for a long time i've heard parents say we need more differentiated learning we need to make sure it's happening we need to make sure our kids who are high achieving academically are being served and our kids who need support are being served and the middle's being served so i read this goal as an attempt to really do that to differentiate and to diversify

177our learning and yet i hear the concern is that maybe we were rolling back rigor or we we weren't we were cutting back on what we were doing i see this as doing it better and having a plan to how to do it better for each learner and i think maybe if that's the case and that's how i've always understood this goal then we should explain that to address these parents concerns yes and the other part to that is this and i don't want to believe too much into the other goals and into the dei but moving with intention and at an appropriate speed is important and if if ideas were already made and decisions were already made they would have been brought to the board as a planned curriculum change this is all about

178making sure the people who are closest to the work are doing the work i don't write the curriculum our teachers are the actual creators of the curriculum and the teachers don't make up curriculum out of nowhere they're using the standards and frameworks that the state requires us to use in order to prepare our students so that's the process that we go through and when we talk about well words like well what does representation mean sometimes that means okay when we look at our classroom library do we have books with students of different colors of skin do we have students with learning differences represented when we look at a book do we have all of the students who are the antagonist antagonistic character our students of color these have been real problems in children's literature so

179that's something that you do to make sure you're representing and portraying accurately it's not about anything other than that it's making sure we are fairly representing the students that are in front of us and making sure we're aware of different perspectives and a great example the other day uh someone was looking at a map and said the map is wrong to me like what are you talking about the map is wrong and the person said there are seven continents and there are only five uh there are seven consonants on this map but there's only five continents like what are you talking about there's seven continents i've always learned there are seven continents but when you look at global perspectives much of the world looks at the world other than the united states as there are

180five continents not seven it doesn't mean i have to change my thinking and knowledge that there are seven continents but it's helpful to know that much of the rest of the world sees five continents uh and that's about perspective and i don't need to change my world view based on someone else's perspective but it's helpful that i know it and that's the idea of perspective in our curriculum thank you mr zucken thank you mr tranberg mrs ritchie it's not really a question just a statement i just i some and i don't remember where i read it but someone said something windows and mirrors so the way we should look at it is it's a window in a mirror you're looking at yourself you're reflecting yourself but you're also looking through a window and seeing what

181else exists out there and i thought that was really profound and important and i think embedded in this work and i will tell you if i thought ap classes were going away or midterms and exams were going away i never would have supported this strategic plan i've been calling for a more robust gifted program in this school practically since i got on this board so i just want to make that clear and i think maybe there is confusion about what this plan is the plan has been discussed for two years now and it hasn't been a secret it's been spoken about in public multiple times it's been very transparent so i think maybe we can give um a primer to parents so they understand in a more simplistic form what the goals are because maybe

182this is a lot of information and people aren't digesting it all but and i believe there's an update on gifted education in november because we did launch the the steering committee uh last week or two weeks ago okay fantastic thank you any other questions or comments from the board i think it's important to also clarify too because we had this discussion in public and at some other meetings too about the organization that we used in dr lemon and that yes we all noticed and we were all made aware of stuff that was on those websites and those websites changed over time but dr lemon was used as a facilitator to develop the strategic plan and the strategic plan was really developed with his help in facilitating how do you how do you build a strategic

183plan mechanically and what time frame do you need and how do you set up all the meetings but the work the values the mission everything was done with our students our teachers our parents our board members our superintendent and was reviewed at the board level on a regular basis and was reviewed and questioned you know at various meetings throughout the strategic planning process so i think we need to disconnect and we had that discussion dr alan dr adley you know reached out to to dr lemon who he knows very well and there was a discussion about that it was brought up at various meetings i attended too and i thought it was explained pretty thoroughly i don't know if you want to add anything to that doctor [Music] yeah yeah mr gene since that's come

184up again i think we now have three board members at the time we had two we now have three board members who sat in every one of those meetings even during a pandemic so thank the three of you very much because they know they were long can any of the three speak to you did you have any concerns that what was quoted there um and was on the website and we found out after the fact that was was impactful or in any way affected our strategic planning process i will speak for myself i would say that what mr jeanine said about dr london's involvement in the development of the strategic plan was exactly that he was he was the mediator and he was the one that helped us to organize our thoughts um he did

185not in my opinion did not share he did not drive any of what is in our strategic plan it came from the 27 people that were in the room there were multiple parents from multiple different organizations in town with multiple perspectives we all shared our our views openly and honestly um the two students that were there were incredibly helpful and incredibly impactful in that experience um you know i think mrs simone was very vocal mrs mccamell was very vocal um in in supporting it and i think we i have no concerns whatsoever of what this document is uh i would just i i'm not going to reiterate what was said i agree with all i would also say remember as a board we then took ownership of it right and we put our stamp on

186it we some of us helped ward smith the mission and vision statements like we had multiple meetings where as a board we vetted and made sure it was what we wanted outside of that committee so i think all nine of us are you know equally responsible for for its um production and now it's on us to make sure it's implemented properly um you know i would say to the community members our meetings can be long and they can be not so exciting but they are transparent and this has been we've talked about a strategic plan more than just two years we had talked about it with dr brenner we have talked about it for years dr adley came in and actually put it into action as a board we had been asking for it so

187to the members who feel that they were left behind of our community get on board now here are the goals here's how it's going to roll out speak up you still have a say and a part in the process thank you mr stein i will add to that too and i think it's it's said in any number of these documents that it is a fluid document and things are going to change over time and we'll continue to listen the parents will continue to participate the students will continue to possibly participate but it is a fluid living document yeah i'm sorry i think we just cut off mrs mckenna okay sorry okay actually i i agree with with what you just said and what mr trenberg said which is that what is actually most important is

188going forward we've set a framework up with you know some work to be done but there is it's just beginning so um you know i think it's really important that we all be really actively engaged at this point going forward so part of that will be what does the conversation need to look like you know when when do we you know we've got our actions we'll start talking about measures we'll start talking about next steps and so um i think i think it's it's it's i'm i'm late but i i think it's a framework and we're moving forward from here thank you mrs mccabe mr ceni okay i called you luke it's getting late um i want to look forward at this point not reflect back what might have might not happen i mean throughout

189this document we talk about partnering with pto committees community partnerships we have a whole section on developing enhancing systems promote effective communication i mean maybe we could have done a better job communicating but i think from what we've heard tonight hopefully our parent teacher organizations can reflect on some of what they also heard tonight from people that typically don't get up and speak and we can reflect on all of our parents and try to strive for these goals to communicate because i think it's what's going to happen is exciting and the more people we engage the better this plan is going to be and then the better the product's going to be thank you mr c if i may say that this is the this is what i'm most proud of the work of the

190board in many ways um and it's it's it's already starting to guide the district the work of the the 27 members uh the support of the board at the time that that was critical and uh that this is bringing beginning now to bring coherence and they'll all all the things that we value traditions are not that we built upon those we value those we celebrate those um there was a comment this evening about um uh sorry i just lost my tweeting episode but uh there was a there was a comment this evening uh that talked about uh this being not inclusive and so on so forth or as miss aqua said doing away with aps and so on i don't know where that's coming from i do in the sense of it's out there in

191the media but that's not uh that's not what this is there was excitement at the start of the year when this was rolled out with the staff and community uh the the staff is supporting this when i go around the district i see little po i went to like an elementary school in the classroom and you see the mission statement up on the wall and the kids are talking about it and what does it mean uh so these things are beginning to come alive and uh this is the work and yes it will be revised and modified as we go but i'm particularly proud of the work that the board has uh has engaged in and we'll engage with other people along the way but i'm excited about this and that this will guide our

192work over the next five years and the idea of content just because we are as good as we are right and the performance level that doesn't mean to say we're not an organization of continuous improvement that's all this is um and some of the priorities that the board had uh are have been rolled into this anyway i'll stop there thank you doctor any other board comments or questions and we'll let mr tranberg continue i'll move on to goal 2 fostering a culture that promotes wellness diversity and inclusion i'll be very brief on 2a because you just have a full presentation uh on social emotional learning um the only point that i'll add and i mentioned this last year too there's kind of two lanes for social emotional learning sometimes you're stopping everything you're doing to

193have this moment of learning about uh a social emotional topic like how do i have this conversation how do i work with a peer but the bulk of social emotional learning is about what's happening every day in every class as students are reflecting themselves and working with others in small groups that's what social emotional learning is all about and that's one of the challenges we faced as a result of coming out of the pandemic because not only um were people very isolated even when students were in school they were isolated it was hard to have them working in groups so that's been a challenge the other part is the dei work we are preparing to launch the dei committee late in november uh establishing that committee and also as i believe you're all aware the

194ptos and cdsp have dei co-chairs at each school so i've been in touch with them uh kind of keeping them aware of what we're doing and they have consulted with me a bit about the work that they're they're trying to do again just because i want to make sure we're moving at the same pace with the same messaging wherever possible any questions or comments on gold too chris okay with 3a developing a balanced definition of student success through the portrait of the graduate i'm going to i'll state the obvious first so in the strategic plan it is called the portrait of the graduate and uh then we later the board approved the high school's presentation i think it was our last meeting in june perhaps and it's the vision of the graduate it's like okay

195so why are there two different names so number one both names are relatively interchangeable out in education and so the portrait of the graduate was the approved language at the time that this plan was approved as the vision of the graduate committee was working they realized that the vision of the graduate is the niask language and we have our niask accreditation coming next year it was important that that language aligned so even though it's the portrait of the graduate the way that the high school has expressed and reflected the portrait of the graduate is through a document that was approved called the vision of the graduate and this is i keep saying the high school and i know ellen dunn is listening and she's cringing right now because it's not the high schools it's the

196district's vision of the graduate and so we're working uh one of the things that we have to do as a district that's the expectation of niask is we embed um the vision of the graduate pk through 12 because it's you can't expect that all of a sudden in grades 9 through 12 these six pillars are magically going to manifest themselves and be the vision of the graduate it's something you work toward along the way so the one of the main goals of that was to complete it and that was done at the end of the year and the other was in 3b uh the conversations regarding the post-graduation survey so there was a large interest and this did come from the board conversations can we do a better job hearing from the postgraduates to know

197how we actually did so we started those conversations of trying to find a system to do that and this is all coupling nicely with the nes work obviously because it's an expectation for our decennial accreditation anything on goal three mrs achman mr turnburg correct me if i'm if i'm wrong but i believe a vision of the graduate or a portrait of the graduate was required by the state so if people are saying well we didn't have one before it's because it's now a new requirement that we do the work and that is why we did the work um am i correct yes i will say that it's a good if you remember the era of 21st century skills it kind of evolved from 21st century skills talk to vision of the graduate and it was

198that was also a requirement of knee ask so niask has been a big driver uh in making sure that and again it's about common language these things exist so when we talk about what expectations are we're talking about them in the same way yeah i mean i wasn't putting a value judgment i think mr maroney and i have both been clear that we really valued this work i can speak for my colleague we valued it very much but it was also a requirement so when people say well you didn't have one before it's it was great work i believed in it it i think a lot happened that was really strong and our students we served with it but we also needed to do it and that's why you're seeing it now when you didn't

199see it five years ago yes just a point of clarification did you say it was a knee ask or a state or both it's a standard it's a standard for knee ask so we have to have evidence of a vision of the graduate okay but not a state requirement not to my knowledge but i can confirm that thank you but did they they need the need i'm sorry no can you clarify that [Music] i'm just going to say the need the neos requirement um stating the obvious for accreditation i mean not that's tied to colleges not everything else that goes with that i'm just trying to get the right definition right wrong word no i i just echo what you said i mean we we were in full agreement on the value i think mrs

200o'connor mentioned it in in public comment of the value of the students and and how rewarding that was and the dialogue between the parents students alumni was was brilliant and it was very rewarding to be on the committee thank you trenberg we want to move on to goal four so our goal four is expanding the professional capacity of the staff and i touched quite a bit on 4a and 4b so i'll focus on 4c regarding attracting and retaining diverse educators um this is part of state legislation regarding minority teacher recruitment and one of the uh big steps the board supported last year were the the partnership with craic and we have two interning teachers this year who will be certified through the program at the end of next year and it's something that we hope

201to continue uh in the fy 23 budget uh we're continuing our partnership with our rests and there is eventually going to be a required plan for districts to submit what are you doing for minority teacher and recruitment and the other under 4d is initiating discussions with the d with dea mostly about mentoring so we have a pretty firm state required process for it's the team program for mentoring new teachers but if you're a new teacher to the district who's not new to the profession you're not necessarily required to have a mentor so we're looking at some uh opportunities to make sure they're feeling as connected through the onboarding process as well thank you any questions on goal four move on chris to go strategy so for goal five related to communication we're continuing to have

202our board meetings uh in this form that we're in right now where we have a hybrid setting so we can hear feedback we've also revised our website for ada compliance so uh that work is continuing but you probably noticed some changes to our website as well and we are using the google platform more in our day-to-day with so for example our administrative meetings this year they're all run through google classroom so the administrators are experiencing how many students are experiencing accessing materials and meetings um so they're able to support teachers in that way and regarding the guiding documents um i'll state the obvious again the published document which is in the packet and is now on the website uh was one of our goals for year one and also the language again i'm sorry to

203be so repetitive about it but it's words matter we're seeing that and i'm sure you've noticed in our board presentations this year you keep seeing the core values the mission and the vision and that's happening in schools as well uh as well as school improvement plans so every principal and our department leaders are creating their goals and their plans this year to make sure they're aligned with making these goals happen questions comments go fine this is richie um evan is this um that beautiful book that you've created on the strategic plan how are we are we disseminating that to parents how are they going to get that in their hands so that they can easily access it so right now if you go to the it's the board of education tab and strategic plan it's

204an interactive michelle might actually be able to bring it up and i will give a shout out to michelle because all of the layout and design does fall in the hands of michelle and she's gonna be mad that i'm calling her out on that but she has a she has a great eye for it so this is a feature it's called flipping book so when you go on the website and you click on those arrows to the right you actually can uh flip through like it's a book when you're when you're printing something in color it can be very expensive i'm certainly willing to have a conversation to do that it's just a matter of of how many copies do we print in order to do that but um since we are pushing a digital

205platform for our students i'm hoping we can uh maybe feature this in a communication make sure everyone's aware that it's on the website i don't mean physical copies have to be in everyone's hands just how they can get that and easily access it so if there's some way to communicate to the parents and the community this is on the website here it is please read it please engage in it in the process and get to know the strategic plan and be part of its um future development okay because if you told me you wanted thousands of something printed i wouldn't recognize you no that's not yeah yeah like i guess i didn't mean physically in their hands i'll send that on friday that's part of my communication the copy center is closed [Laughter] [Music] this

206is the cabinet um chris the audit is mentioned in the memo is somewhere between year one and year two do we have a more precise date for when the audit of communication modes is planned not yet okay but it'll happen because it's in there thank you move on to goal six goal six is regarding facilities uh so the big and obvious one here is northeast collaboratives completed the architectural evaluation and we're moving forward with our building projects and we're also working on the implementation of alert us and we are still waiting on completion for that and our old system is still in place until that comes to completion questions oh you're going oh sorry goal seven sorry you're ahead of me uh so goal seven is regarding technology and it's broken down 7a regarding instructional

207technology and 7b uh is really uh the systems technology and infrastructure uh so there's so many things that have happened with technology one was the development of the comprehensive technology plan which you saw last spring which was actually the first plan developed that aligns with this strategic plan because the strategic plan was approved at that time also establishing a district technology council so that committee met as well as the subgroups we're trying to make sure we have functioning groups that are handling some of the challenges we face so we can answer questions quickly as possible and get answers to teachers and we have the transition of those chromebooks that are the chrome tablets for k12 this year so we are working through that transition as well uh and under 70 i'll point out the a

208focus has been on the internet access and security and just faster connectivity and that's been underway questions comments mr tranberg thank you everyone um you have nobody on the video right thank you everyone who's worked on that um we will move on to update on diversity equity and inclusion dr adley and mr tranberg so uh this is another update that was that was requested on our sort of regular basis uh you'll see in the master again that i've sort of put it on every other month uh just as the update i hope that that's okay because there's a lot of there's just a lot of monthly updates uh that we're doing so uh this is this is a a response to our intervention our intro sorry our intervention plan and there were a variety of

209services outside agencies from adl uh nccj another firm uh social change in boston and there were other programs that were looked at and reviewed by in particular the high school administration the middle school administration the central services administration and we ended up falling on uh this particular model and um i'll let chris talk just about the nature of it but this this starts starting on next week a series of interventions uh at the uh school level at the time level and also with our uh di committee level and so chris can talk about uh we didn't set out to have one person to be honest with you uh but that's the way it played out in terms of uh what this person could actually bring so christopher you want to sort of just talk about

210that we'll talk about mr shelton kim sure so this proposal is suggesting ken shelton from elevated education be our primary support to work with us this year for diversity equity inclusion a few just a few things about ken without reading his bio ken has been an educator for many years and he spent years in the classroom before he moved outside into consultancy and his consultancy is not only for schools but it's also for boards of education for universities and as well as corporate some of his recent he's worked for districts as large as la unified parkland pa clark county schools which is one of the largest counties in the country chicago public and as well as many suburban district similar to ours he's also on the google educational equity board he's been working with the

211california emerging technology fund microsoft education and several states departments of education as well as the canadian provincial ministries of education he was one of our keynote speakers last year so when we had those extra professional development days to open last school year we started each morning with a keynote and he did a keynote he has a session on technology equity which he calls tequity uh and he did the windows mirrors and sliding glass doors uh and he combined those two um as the opening session and it was very well received by our staff since then he's just been someone who can call when you're dealing with the situation and i've stayed in touch with so when these situations came up he made a proposal and when additional situations came up he made more proposals so

212initially we had asked him to come and work with our diversity equity and inclusion committee but we also wanted to take an approach that was i would say the big word for me is sustainability when you're working when you're trying to do this work it is about making sure the work will last no matter who's in charge uh so you want to make a shift in culture not a shift in a moment of time and so the the first way to do that and the most important way that we can do that is through the leadership of our students so the program is described briefly here but it's identifying student leadership teams at the middle school and the high school and he would work with them over the course of one day each and have

213some remote interactions and then some school-based leaders and teachers would sustain that work over the course of the year and he would come in and continue to to support that moving forward the other pieces to that in addition to the students and it's also not only those student leadership groups but also thinking about athletics i know it's a strange trivia fact that is in the memo but he played football and track for ucla as a college athlete and that perspective is unique and important in the work that we're trying to do because a lot of what we've heard about the challenges we're facing um athletics is not absent from from that there's also professional development planned for staff in order to do this and also the work with the community so we talked about those

214community conversations as well as some guided conversations for parents specifically related to dei over the course of the year so this is the plan uh as of right now um initially we were planning on a 23 000 expenditure to support the dei work over the course of the year and with the amount that we've increased obviously there's there's going to be a greater expense so it doesn't preclude other things so for instance uh the adl have been working with us and our going to come into the middle school to do asap right i'll call it an assembly type thing it may not be in the fullest hour maybe split a little bit but particularly around recent events and they they may well have a holocaust survivor or the the son or daughter of a holocaust

215survivor and uh so they're working on that and that's the recommendation that they would give at this particular point so it's not going to stop other things uh being implemented simultaneously because we we also have we're also working with the triangle and norwalk in terms of training and so on for for staff so those are other things that we're going to be doing but this is a big overall sort of um system to try and move us forward and while it wasn't set out like this there is a benefit of someone who's working with the town the parent groups the staff and the kids knowing each other um and knowing and knowing what we're about and what what uh what we're trying to accomplish together and actually knowing people and relationships we'll open up to

216board questions and comments mr ceni i i would encourage anybody and everybody who's interested to search beyond his bio to go on youtube and watch one of his uh presentations a pretty fascinating view of how he approaches this subject equity but from a from a view that i have not seen before um so i yeah again i spent an hour and a half today doing some due diligence but it was is well worth that time i'll just uh if i can add to mr cena's comment that that's one of the unique approaches with working with someone like ken is he's working with us as a consultant to support our goals he's not coming in with a program that has its own goals he's helped he's saying what are you trying to do what's the work

217and that's what he's going to help us do as a board as a leadership team as staff and as students further board questions or comments mrs parent my island over here sure sorry um so while i appreciate that this framework is it seems well-rounded and we're touching all the members of the community because this is this is a community culture issue this is not just a problem within our schools this is a community issue and i appreciate that this seems to be talking to everybody what i am most concerned about right now is that our schools particularly our secondary levels are in crisis mode right now and i'm glad to hear you say that this does not preclude the adl coming in because i think that right we need people in those schools now tomorrow

218next week um so i would just love to hear his plans what is what is the immediate plan to address some of these issues that are happening in our schools well the immediate plan the adl have been in the middle school before the currently the media plan is for the adl to come in and do some sort of type of a calling assembly or group it may not just sit by by each grade level but but also that particular nature around uh the holocaust and the offensive uh defensiveness of the symbols that are being done and someone to talk to the kids uh from that particular perspective that right now that that's that's the next thing that we're trying to do the most immediate thing we're trying to do at the middle school and then

219this kicks in next week with kids that post at the high school in middle school mrs stein um i i read the proposal and it sounds like you vetted a bunch of other options i think i would encourage this board this is a big investment it's a big undertaking to not meet with and have a conversation with this consultant prior to implementing i think i i just don't support it to be honest with you i think it's too big of a challenge right now in our district we have a lot going on and we need to understand if this person is capable of working in our district with our current issues he's in california which is not necessarily an issue but does he understand lower fairfield county understand what's going on here in our district

220um i i did some research i found very little dei but mr ceni sent me a video which i i am going to listen to i think the board members should as well but i would encourage you to really vet this person because we have major work to do i would also ask why is the adl not going into the high school too there's as much crisis up there as at the middle school and that needs to be addressed too thank you mr stein this is ahmad um so my question would be to try to understand i do think this is an important investment and i do think we need to find the right people coming in to help us and i feel like i've been very clear about that so i appreciate the administration

221steps here my question would be can you tell us more about um and i don't know if this is bringing the consultant in to talk to the board border if you can help with that you know where has he completed this process and how how did it work does this plan similar to where he's completed that he's worked in these districts can we understand a little bit more and i i want it to be unique and i don't want it to be pre-planned but i also understand what's the process you come in you talk to us what outcomes do we look to measure if there's success um i just don't feel like i have enough other than it sounds like he's done good work but but how do i know that he's the right person

222seeing that he's the only person to do this work here so i i i'd be quite happy and i think uh what mr stein says bring him bring him here and have a discussion that's fine um i think that would be a useful thing for the board because in all honesty i got the board needs to approve the expenditure because that's not that's not enough that's my second question that's not in the budget but um uh i haven't intended if the board uh in many ways the board's going to approve the person through the expenditure one way or the other right um so i'd be happy for the person to come here but it's important that that we feel comfortable uh but we also have to we also have to approve the expenditure so in

223november i would be bringing forward a proposal to approve this particular expenditure uh through either the finance subcommittee and then the whole board so uh we can we can certainly provide an opportunity for ken to um talk to the board early on just to follow up sorry um just to follow up on that because let me tell you i think if if this gets the job done it's money well spent so i don't mean this from a um let's make a you know too tight of a fiscal decision but just to be clear we are looking for an additional if this is the plan sorry my computer fifty six thousand yes that's correct we're not budgeted for so correct we would have to vote on this higher correct okay so if we're gonna vote i

224wanna interview that's gonna be my advice just like we do for for any other consultant that we hire and that's no mr shell may be wonderful that's not a despair you know much disparaging him thank you mrs zachman this is richie i just want to echo and share the comments that have already been made and and reiterate that the secondary the high school level needs intervention sooner rather than later i sent along a greenwich program that the adl runs called namesday and the people that i know down there have i think they've done it for 20 years and it's been a great program for them and it's really worked so i hope that's something you're also looking into there's a lot of good stuff out there and i think we need the high school taking

225care of sooner rather than later as well thank you and i do appreciate people's programs and on that particular program i uh i had a discussion uh last evening with uh the executive director of adl and actually well actually he just left actually this past week um we have christopher's had experience i haven't experienced different experiences in schools with that program as as has the high school uh so uh there are scenarios where that works under scenarios where that's very difficult and causes other other potential issues so i i really respect people passing along the programs and and i would encourage you to continue to do that but believe me they're being reflected on and discussed as to their individual merits and whether they're appropriate for what we need or not um there is a

226worldliness and sophistication here both from our teachers our parents the board and our children um [Music] there are there are some that just that just don't just don't match uh for different reasons and but anyway i reiterated that i very much appreciate the the pass along and the resources and i would encourage you to continue to do that the other board questions or comments around this mrs mccammon um so i agree with a lot of what's been said in terms of interviewing i think procedurally we have to vote to hire them anyway plus we have to vote for the budget um so i certainly agree with that that process um but just to clarify you outlined when we met at the end of september that there are sort of three phases that we need in

227terms of response it was immediately strategically and timeline so this really addresses the strategically in the town wide um but that you have other plans for immediately and i i think the board probably would like to hear that in a well this is this is also starting immediately next week right with november 2nd with the staff and third with the kids at the middle school in high school and he'll also be meeting with [Music] the coaches so that's that's immediate in that regard and we had already contracted him to support some pd and the dei work so if he's not the person that the board wants to support after that we can make a shift sorry i just want to be clear it's not that i'm um not supportive of his work it's just if

228the board's being asked to approve an additional expenditure i would just like to meet the person i'm spending money on or i'm approving the expenditure and verbally if it's not this person is another organization or we're gonna have to have some sort of expenditure but which i think we would understand so so go ahead mr senior mr chairman i suggest we try to have a special meeting on this uh in between um this and the next and because i don't want to get the board in the way of progress here and yeah yeah in a perfect world i'd love to interview three or four people but i want to use our you know professionals expertise in selecting somebody by giving us the opportunity to interview this person but if it's like i heard like we

229should yeah i appreciate it's late in the hour and this is important stuff so if we could move in that direction i would i would support that i think to mrs mccammon and a couple of other comments here um immediate stretch strategic and with the town i i would like to see something i'm sorry to say this but i'd like to see something tomorrow about the immediate um i heard from parents this week that the commitment meetings were same old same old and kind of rushed through to get through them we've got crisis going on at the middle school we've got crisis going on at the high school there's an immediate need and there are immediate action steps that i would like to see and then holistically and i think you know this is this

230happens and i think we've talked about it in the past with other projects and stuff like that you're talking about adl you're talking about currently working with triangle i forwarded a name that i think mrs stein forwarded to me deb's got a program there i i need a bigger picture i need a diagram of all these other organizations and how they can fit into the bigger picture and what they can do and how they can benefit the district all right it honestly it's feeling piecemeal to me which is okay but the piecemeal has to come together and i there's some immediate needs that have to be addressed so so i recognize the immediate needs mr chairman um some of those things may may fit that or they may not this is this is an attempt

231to i understand they're not mutually exclusive so we have to continue to do immediate things but this is an attempt to try and get out of this sort of like having to bring people in and try to get into a strategic way of dealing with it uh so that we're not in this mode all the time and i know that's anyway that's the attempt of this this plan sorry thank you thank you any other questions comments i just think mr suny has a good idea we could have a special meeting have a conversation and make a decision and move forward good thank you all anything else mrs again no sorry one more chance thank you everyone um moving along update on open choice so there was a bit of a discussion uh this evening about

232open choice that was mentioned and this serves two purposes one the board did want to see this early on in the process because it potentially would become a budget budgetary discussion and since there's at least a revenue discussion it it does become a budget discussion um i want to recognize that um dr chiptomay executive director of ces is has been patiently i think he's i don't know i don't know if he's on an idea i think he is um and i think eric is with them um i will say that on on on this issue of diversity equity inclusion there are certain signals that we do and we can talk around a wee bit like what you're saying to me i'll you're talking about some of this stuff get get it done this is the

233same with this but this this issue or something like this issue what we do versus what we say indicate what we value in many ways right and this to me is one of those examples the same way as the board uh supported the teaching residence program which which by the way i wish you could come with me and meet these people and what they're doing it's just a and the support that our staff has given to these particular staff it's just a phenomenal thing that they watch um and the excitement from from the teachers but this is another one for me where this is a this is a this is an action or a policy or a small p practice uh that i would encourage the board uh to participate in we shared this last

234year we advocated for the state department uh up to this point we weren't part of the particular process i'm going to go through back to you know what i'm not going to really i think you know you've had this okay i will i will go out to the board and think that everyone has looked through this you've discussed it at the board table i think we're very supportive of it i'm excited about it um eric and charles thank you for joining us but i will turn it over to the board for board questions and comments mr ceni the the concept of filling classes in the kindergarten level walk me like walk through that is how that the mechanics work and then are they with us day through 12. the most the most successful way once

235they enter your door that they are once the students enter uh the schoolhouse then they become our students okay uh so that's essentially the best way to for largely the best way to do it is for the children to be here as early as possible so they can be successful as possible so so kindergarten would be primarily uh the grade that we'd be looking up in and that would depend on the right right now we were talking about 18 to 20 uh students uh depending on the kindergarten enrollment i mean that's kind of what we would have to sort of look at and just so just to be clear if we have to stretch a new teacher in third or fourth grade there there are students at that point it's not like sorry we don't

236have any room you have to go back i appreciate you sending them because yes okay thank you i appreciate that point of view yes thanks mr cena any other report mr maroney yeah you said primarily kindergarten again i think i asked this question i don't recall the answer are we if if we accept a kindergarten student are we then taking on siblings if they if they're first or second grade of those students are we only taking on kindergarten well that's that's a good question because of in open choice and and i'll let charles and eric chip talk talk about this moment um but another urge where this is implemented it wouldn't be unusual where a family would say hey um i've got a first grader or someone else is coming behind or ahead uh could

237they go that would be a decision i think we'd have to sort of do honestly i would encourage the board to at least adapt a small key policy in terms of how we want to do this or how we might do this so that we address issues like that chip do you want to say anything about that sure uh in general the uh after the initial uh participation by a student siblings who follow are given preference but for the initial one i think you're you're safe to say that starting a kidney garden would not obligate you to first or second graders to also participate thank you mrs zachman i i just feel compelled to correct a couple facts that were said tonight open choice is not hartford forced regionalization it just isn't it's been in

238the state of connecticut for 50 years correct there's been other voluntary attempts to do this i participated in one myself it was excellent it is not busing busing has also proven to not work so like let's know what we're talking about open choice was supported in concept by this whole board our first selectmen was supportive of it in multiple meetings so this has also been talked about for a year it's it's it's not hartford it's darien deciding what darian wants to do and to dr adley's point what we do says a lot more about says a lot more about sorry you said it better but i i are who we are than what we say so let's just have the right facts on the table when we make a decision and let's not just put

239jargon on top of it if someone doesn't know ask a question but let's not label things especially a program that has been successful in connecticut for 50 years something that it is not thank you this is stein um hi chip and eric thank you for sticking with us so late um one question and i asked this question when we discuss this as a board but would love your perspective on it how it's one thing to have kids come in and go to school but you know darien is a very tight-knit community where kids participate in a lot of extracurriculars outside of the school day it's part of the social fabric of our community how have other communities handled integrating these students if they want into you know soccer or theater or whatever it is extracurricularly

240is that something that you guys have dealt with eric go ahead and yes absolutely and we encourage that we we want them to as was just said recently we we want them to be darien students uh fully participating in all of the great opportunities that uh your programs offer um we do and it is why you haven't been able to participate so far because a trip from bridgeport to darien is is untenable it's unsustainable especially with extracurriculars but as the program is now expanding i think it's a great opportunity for students in norwalk to be able to participate in the full opportunities that darien offers okay i guess i should clarify with dr adley a lot of our extracurriculars particularly in the elementary and middle school are not school-based they're town-based so could we have

241engage in some conversations with the local youth groups um the more you know popular extracurriculars to get them on board and make them understand like this is something we're investing in as a school and we'd love your support as well i appreciate that advocacy man thank you makes a lot of sense i will also just uh if i could just jump in with one more thing we're in the process of hiring a family and community outreach person uh coordinator that that would be a perfect opportunity for that person to engage with the community and encourage this so it's not just a darien public schools enterprise but it's a darien town enterprise i think that's a great idea tremendous great thank you thank you mr just uh easy question how do they get back and forth

242from their community in order to darien does the district provide transportation or is it is it family oriented the state provides transportation to their homes is it for kindergarten yes primarily thank you actually transportation k-12 is pretty close to home to school because of the number of students coming from uh communities thank you mr dumay could you could you just share with the board just really the final commitment process timeline or just just so we're aware like i'm aware but i just wanna like certainly um i think we're at a point right now where there's a critical mass for norwalk so we will be moving forward with this we communicate to families right at the beginning of the new year in january regarding the application the the drop dead date for having a firm number

243would be later in the spring so we need a pretty good framework going into december um so we know what kind of community supports to put into place and we need to drop dead date numbers by uh eric i would say april or may um we have it down our our dream date is march 25th but that's a that's a dream um many of our communities down here in the bridgeport area are still finalizing numbers and don't let us know until after that but let's say april 1st would be a target date thank you mrs mccammon this is related to an earlier question um but given that kindergarten numbers are notoriously so difficult for us to predict alan um how do we do effective planning for each year well uh certainly the enrollment report is

244is effectively the basis for this for next year i would actually be looking at uh what burns actually projected for next year in the report they did first just over a year ago so um that would be the main thing because the one that is most volatile in all honesty is is kindergarten in many ways right so so we just have to do that thoughtfully and collectively together thank you as best as we can anything else all right we good i want to thank eric and jeff for hanging in there i don't know what you heard what you didn't but thank you for staying up soon thank you thank you both good night everybody thank you we're excited to be part of this and move it forward and thank you for the board comments around

245this program thank you for having us tonight sure we will move quickly um through some great contemplated gifts so i will ask the board any questions or comments about the discussion and possible acceptance of kind of playing a gift for the district music department this looks like it is a generous gift of a piano that will go to hinley school with an appraised value of two thousand dollars um mrs oga tenerenko um i apologize um if i said your naming correctly is generously offered to donate a baldwin console upright to the darian music department any questions comments mr brown just thank you so much for the generous gift i'd like to make mokshu accept thank you mr brown i appreciate that yes um just on behalf of the board um please extend uh a big

246thank you um and we appreciate it and um miss thompson thank you anything you add to that um only that uh this is really needed and uh will help us uh delay needing to purchase additional pianos uh for the district so this was uh very helpful and very welcomed terrific thank you so much second thank you mr ceni all those in favor that is unanimous thank you um we will move along to discussion and possible acceptance of contemplated gifts for the high school football team you know mr manfredonia is on hold um this looks like it is a gift of 25 000 um 25 195 in the memo it clearly outlines um where all the dollars are going to so i'll open it up for any questions or comments this is actually just a quick

247question because it's such a large gift um i want to be clear that the athletic director the director of finance and the superintendent have reviewed this and feel it appropriate yes we did yes we did okay thank you mrs um anything you wanted to add dr ali or mr manfredonia no it came forward because the cumulative value is over so that you know because that's the reason why it's before the board but i appreciate the support as always okay mrs richie just to clarify there's nothing that's being donated that would have any budget implications in other words save the district money down the road good question no these are all nice to haves the uh to enhance the program okay thank you mr manfredonian you have a motion to move this forward or go ahead

248mr i was just going to say remember this is a team that didn't have a season last year so they missed a fundraiser great point great point thank you um mr brown would you like to make a motion i would like to say thank you so much to the parents for this generous donation to make a motion to accept thank you mr brown i would say thank you to the list of parents and business that is listed thank you very much for the generosity and um for enhancing um our students on the football team second this is parent all those in favor that is unanimous what's your gentleman who would stand from that one okay mrs mccammon is abstaining thank you mr cenius thank you again um chris and um thank you everyone that might

249be listening that's a donor much appreciated thank you we will move along to discussion on september financial report and possible action get a budget committee a budget a meeting a budget meeting budget committee meeting on monday i will turn it over um quickly to uh mr rudel for help [Music] uh uh since the report through september as you can see we are forecasting a year and positive balance of 170 401 uh general education rc is a positive 242 000 special education rc's flight deficit of 62 000. and then the covert rsc is a slight deficit of 9 000. um covered expenditures as i mentioned are about 9008 we do have grants total just over a million uh so we anticipate spending being just over a million and a million thirty four thousand dollars uh salaries

250are a positive variance of 144 000 uh primarily from uh savings and turnover of 25 000 ymca overtime of 34 000 and a portion of budget control that remains unused at 43 000. operating costs have a slight negative variance of 14 377. uh the negative variance is primarily due to contract and speech with negative uh variants of 78 000 which we do have some transfers for the board's consideration and then the cova transportation cost of 9008 which is a deficit fixed costs are showing a positive 57 000. uh it's primarily from utilities which are forecasted out of positive 41 000 uh property insurance workers comp and general liability insurance also small positive savings as well revenue is a slight uh negative balance sixteen thousand seven hundred and forty seven dollars and that is primarily from

251elp tuition uh so as i mentioned we do have three transfers for consideration uh the first is for nine thousand eight dollars this would extinguish the deficit in the covert rc budget uh this is from mandatory cleaning from our out of district transportation providers and the funding would come from a favorable kermer uh renewal and property insurance uh the second uh transfer is thirty seven thousand one hundred and twenty five dollars to contracted speech uh we did see a price increase from one of our speech providers of twelve and a half percent uh so we are recommending taking savings from uh the ymca over time and some teaching supplies and then finally forty-one thousand dollars from uh contracting speech as well we do have a speech provider who is out on a long-term leave of

252absence uh we were not able to fill that with the long-term substitute and instead are filling that with the contract and speech provider you mr rudel um there were some good questions at the finance committee table that were answered any additional questions or comments this is richie i just want to thank rich and dr adley for the renegotiation of the agreement with the y because obviously those cost savings that we realized are helping to offset some unexpected price increases and we should look forward to another little bit of savings because the boys and girls club is no longer needed so they'll be another 4 500 and so thank you for that good work mrs so i just um would like the board to keep an eye on that long term sub account last year we

253doubled that account right now we're being asked and i'm not saying it's inappropriate now but i think it's an account we should watch we're asking to be transferred out of that account so i do think that it's unusual this time of year to be doing so um that account generally can be stressed um so if we're moving money out now we should keep an eye on that account throughout the year thank you mrs zachman i will also note there was a conversation and as usual rich has good spreadsheets in here there were some questions from our friends at the rtm f and b but rich has done a good job of tracking in great detail uh damage to equipment and property for storm elsa and storm ida we've already been through the board of finance

254once on replacement of chucks that we desperately need that's in process but all of this is in process from an insurance standpoint and we have to submit our claims along with the town since we're a joint policyholder on the insurance so just an update on that mrs achman sorry one other thing just for the board to note um as the finances go forward we moved um some services into our grant accounts so as we go forward and we're looking at predicting excess cost you can't ask for excess cost reimbursement and have those services in the grant we talked about it at the finance meeting and the district said they are tracking that carefully to make sure that that is not happening but as we go along with our conversations about excess costs reimbursement and budgeting

255i think the board should be aware of what's in the grant what services are in the grant and what is an excess cost thank you all right may i have a motion to approve the september budget transfers mrs stein second by mr ceni all those in favor that is unanimous thank you um moving along to discussion and possible action on the ed specifications for the royal school roof replacement project mike um thank you for staying with us um do you want to give just a quick update on this this is kind of a standard process we go through on these larger capital um improvements and renovations sure this is uh do you speak up a little louder mike let me see if i can buff my audio there you go thank you sir the um

256it's a standard form from the uh the state department of education for uh roof projects and it uh takes the place of the big book uh ad specs that we do for the larger projects and uh it's identical to the form we used at hindley and holmes and uh as part of the grant process the board of education has to uh approve the ed specs and then this will go on to the board of selectmen for them to uh pass a motion approving the ed specs thank you mr lynch questions comments from the board it may have a motion to approve the ed specs for the royal school roof replacement project uh mrs achman second by mr moroney all those in favor that is unanimous thank you um we'll move next to the discussion and

257possible action on capital budget transfers to complete the copy center project this was also a discussion at the finance committee meeting um dr adley do you want to give a quick update well the the essence of it is that the the quote come in significantly over budget from 135 to 322 and the proposal here was to uh take the balances of the capital projects that we're not doing and including the the carpets at the various schools uh to make up that balance to actually uh execute on the project itself and there was there was there was discussion at the finance committee where it might make more sense not to do this project upon upon reflection so i'll leave it there and let other members of them thank you dr adley i think there was good

258conversation and i think um if there's no immediate need i think in some ways waiting to see where the market comes down in terms of product and supply stuff not getting caught up in starting the project and not being able to finish it and then i think looking at a bigger picture of we move the copier downstairs we have this back room there's a room there that is not really utilized we need to do a better job with our video conferencing so is there a bigger project that we can have the facilities committee look at and not just move the copier center down rich also knew that you know overall copying is decreasing um so that's good um but that was kind of the conversation at the finance committee meeting i'll open it up to

259further questions mrs ashman so i agree i would just say at this time given that the scope of this project has grown um i'm not sure that i'd use up all these leftover capital funds on this project it sounds like we might need to rescue it and understand really how to go um at 117 000 which is what we budgeted i think that um or sorry that's the balance of that but but we're almost doubling the project and so i would say that it would be good to pause at this point thank you mrs mrs richardson i think that was the sense of the committee that um and for the board as a whole to consider that we're not putting the kibosh on the project but given the price tag came in so much higher

260than we anticipated it might be a good opportunity to rethink the project and perhaps get more space to the technology people that are stuck in that closet and just rethink a little bit of other things that are going on so it might be an opportunity and given the way supplies are right now it might be aggressive to think that we could finish finish the project before fiscal year end anyway so it might be better to to just maybe push it down to facilities and have them thank you mrs richie i would recommend that we move it to the facilities committee for next month all right any other further conversation discussion all right great um we'll move forward uh discussion possible action on board master agenda for august 2021 through february 2022 um i will open

261it up for any questions or comments the only comment i make mr chairman is is the dei and i just want to be very clear that the updates on those i moved to every other month just just every month just seems a lot okay and if need be we can always do a special meeting mr ceni the the topic that jill and i brought up last week about adding thinking about adding a week for the ad cut discussion after the public comment i mean again it's it's a ways off but yeah i don't know how it fits the calendar there [Music] yeah i think we should incorporate that in i don't know where the 15th or the where uh february so i'll work with dr adley and you know get board feedback on how that

262budget calendar works well you want to incorporate the discussion to make the decision correct i want to add a we i think what jill and i brought up we want to add a week between february 1 and february 8th so i'll i'll look at the agendas going out we'll see if we can add a discussion around it just so we all understand and we're all clear with the budget calendar and if need be we can have the discussion and possible action of incorporating that in there all right good just don't want to run into the same issue yeah understood good um do we want to move forward in a motion to approve the board master agenda for august 2021 2022 mrs ackman second by mrs parent all those in favor thank you very much um

263further discussion and action on the adjustment to the 2021-2022 calendar for hindley school makeup days i think we had this discussion um any further discussion around that if not i'll move to motion um to use two professional development days friday january 14th and friday february 18th is half days for students and half day professional development days for staff motion to accept that mr moroney second by mrs parent all those in favor thank you um we'll move on to discussion on the high school stadium lights agreement um dr allen mr ceni brought up that this was coming to its expiration um it's really to put it on the table for further discussion um i would suggest everyone reads through the agreement we had one of the neighbors speak this evening which i appreciate but i think

264there's some discussion to be had there's possibly some decisions to be made so the agreement is there and we'll put it on for further discussion um shortly um so we can have that dialogue before it expires mrs ritchie are you leaving us thank you so much take care thank you um if everyone's in agreement with that or if anyone wants some discussion around it now or additional information i'll open it up mr seaney just real quick dude um i i think it's important that we have a discussion with council on this as well yes you know uh there's unfortunately the stancil agreement that you know we should fully understand yes if we do want to move forward and make changes right now so i'll everyone read it come back with their questions and then we'll

265actually look for the right council to be present to kind of go over what can can't potentially what conversations can be had so the good news i don't know if you quick update alan you reached out which is part of the agreement had conversations with the neighbors which we appreciate i think paul is still still on the line there they have been they have been good neighbors and being very cooperative and very uh also supportive of the program i think it's probably fair to say that ideally our neighbors would like the security of another whatever they agree whatever it is whether it's the same modified another five-year period so it gives them the the not the unexpectancy of any given time has changed so thank you all right we will move on to um personal

266items appointments resignations and retirements marge the two teachers are the ones i mentioned at the last meeting in an additional special education for our professional design great thank you motion to approve the par mrs stein secretary mrs zachman all in favor that is unanimous we will move back to public comment anyone in person mr burke very uh very quickly thank you mr burke i wanted to uh come here and officially welcome katie stein and deborah richie to the newly formed board of education alumni association uh which they'll be joining in a very few moments thank goodness they're coming because we can certainly use all the help we can get but seriously i did want to honor uh come here and honor their extraordinary service darian owes them a great debt of thanks it was my

267privilege to serve with both of them for a period i can tell you from personal experience that their votes were never influenced by party or ideology but rather their sole principle uh was what was in the best interest of all of our children their energy faith and devotion which they brought to their volunteer roles brought educational excellence and hope to thousands of our children for katie and deb creative thought was always what mattered most though this is a public school setting i don't think anyone will mind if i finish by paraphrasing saint paul and say if katie and deb they have fought the good fight they have kept the faith they have finished their course thanks thank you mr burke mr burke i hate to ask for your address after that lovely third [Music] i

268was going to say 1313 mockingbird lane it's almost halloween right laurie olson 16 little brook road north i am not going to cry i am just going to say thank you for speaking tonight about the urgency at the middle school and the high school the community thanks you we look forward to hearing more but i also just want to remind everybody that maybe we include parents and we have some tools and resources to continue the conversation at home thank you mrs olson anyone else in our current presence then we'll thank you we'll move over to um zoom in our virtual presence we have one raised hand miss diane urban who are unmuted and recognized thank you i'm sorry to keep you later um i appreciate all of you weathering through but i just wanted to

269comment that i hope that many of the parents who voiced their concerns at the beginning of the meeting did stay on to hear how clearly it was articulated that you all put so much plan planning and thought and effort into the strategic plan and the vision of the graduate and the students and the parents that have been involved and will continue to be involved um i hope that that allays some of the fears that this is something that is to be hidden and i appreciate the continued transparency and then i just wanted to comment on the general idea of a pause because for many in the community it's been paused for too long and i appreciate mr janine's comments that there's a need for an immediate action um these instances keep happening um every time

270i have a conversation with my kids and the fact that i have to say every time is really a pretty scary thought so um the kids if if you need to go back and listen anyone to the last board of ed meeting when kids were asking pleading with us to do something um you know it's just it reiterates that we as a community need to say that we do not tolerate hate and we need to start acting so that's it but thanks again thank you very much for your comments have a good evening oh diane could you just give us your address again please 10 crane road 10 crane crane thank you michelle any other guests there are no more raised hands at this time great thank you all for the board conversation thank you

271the public in person and on zoom for the conversation much appreciated get home safe thank you board members thank you katie i know deb's listening in her car so