Board of Education Meeting - October 12, 2021

001good evening everyone i would like to call this video [Music] i think you're right yep thank you thank you good evening everyone i would like to call this regular meeting of the board of education to order the next regular board of education meeting is on tuesday october 26th at 7 30 p.m in the board room thank you all for those that are you in person for those that are outside on a nice fall evening waiting to come in thank you um and thank you for all of those on uh on zoom land as always appreciate it um i want to make sure everyone understands that all the conversations and discussions that have gone on over the last several weeks that as a community the leaders dr adley myself first selectman stevenson other members of boards

002and committees have all been in discussions and talked with each other about what's going on and how we move forward as a community so it's not specific to the district or the schools but we're looking at it from a community standpoint and we'll continue to do that and all the input comments emails everything is important so we'll continue to listen and continue to work through it i really was not sure how to start this evening but i think my philosophy of keeping it simple works schools exist for children it's the best way to get back to the focus of the board of education work the role of the administration and the daily responsibilities of teachers and staff the mission of the darien public schools is to work cooperatively with families in the community to provide

003for its students a safe supportive respectful and intellectually challenging learning environment that promotes personal excellence excellence through active collaborative and creative thinking that stimulates individual development of the skills and integrity necessary to become productive members of society i think it's important we always chew up back to that for all of you in attendance tonight and specifically our students we want you to know that we hear you want to act with you and support you in every possible way your suggestions and words have meaning and will help create a safer environment in all our schools we want your voices thoughts concerns goals and anything else you want we want to hear it please do not hesitate to use your voices tonight and regularly make your school communities a safer more inclusive and creative space for all

004for the teachers in attendance tonight and listening in we hear you and thank you for your professional passionate letter it is important to listen and hear all viewpoints your opening sentence in paragraph two sums it up teachers into this profession for one simple reason children i believe that works with our district philosophy of schools exist for children we want you to be able to deliver creative engaging and collaborative environments in your classrooms so that you can bring the best to all students your words are incredibly valuable to our school community and we want you to know that you are heard and play a key role in the process of creating a safer more inclusive and creative environment in our schools i feel as important as we talk about our community in coming together i reference

005an almost immediate response on a facebook page to the teacher's letter the headline is teach your group bully's parents is this really how we want to move forward by not valuing or listening to another point of view so bullying replaces dialogue and agreeing to disagree discuss and do what's best for all to move forward as a community bullying by miriam webster someone we all know a blustering brow beating person one who is habitually cruel insulting or threatening to others so in the interest of our students in being role models do we really want to use the word bully bullies or bullying and reference our teachers who are the backbone of one of the highest rated school districts in the state and nationally it stops now is this really the new normal i warn us all

006as a community this is spread beyond our small town borders and if you think this will not impact hiring people thinking about retirement and people that want to come and have their career here you are wrong and without our teachers staff and administrators we become a community with beautiful homes and nice beaches on long island sound for our parents in attendance tonight your relationships with your children and life experiences you bring to the table are incredibly important to our school community thank you for the support and always investing in our district to be a leader in education we hear you see you and respect your input we want you to feel you have a collaborative relationship with your children their teachers are bored in the administration we do this together we need all parents to

007be present after school at the dinner table or might i say 10 20 on the weekends on the sports fields and in the auditorium for music and theater productions the role model responsibility moves between the classroom and the home every day all three groups students teachers and parents are important to us to get our education system and community to a place where everyone feels safe and included the environment must be diverse inclusive collaborative creative and effective in getting our students to be the best versions of themselves for our students to use their own minds to be creative and effective with their work for our students to not hesitate to be leaders in their community and treat others the way they want to be treated the administration board staff and community leaders are working on all

008this we're working through our strategic plan which includes diversity equity inclusion we're looking at resources within and professional organizations outside the district that can help us move forward as a community this is a work in progress and a joint effort with the community and we hope each and every one of you uses your voices to help us get to where we need to be at this point the constant question of how did we get here is over we don't need to talk about it anymore it's how we move forward everyone's voices need to be heard everyone's ideas need to be expressed all perspectives need to be seen goals need to be achieved we agree to disagree and continue the conversation and as a community we do this together thank you we will now move to

009public comment good evening if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon on the bottom of your zoom screen next click the raised hand option you will notice a blue hand icon appear in the upper corner of your screen where your face and or name or number appears when it is your turn to speak 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 thank you michelle um we'll organize this a little because we have people inside we have people outside we have students it's a school night it's so good that they're here and we have people on zoom but i just want to clarify and go

010over a little bit about public comment i understand a number of people wish to express and address the board this evening the board welcomes your comments and values the different perspectives that members of the public share in public comment on behalf of the board i wish to remind those offering comments to follow our guidelines for public comments speakers may speak for up to three minutes we expect comments to be respectful and civil in tone we do not permit name calling raised voices or vulgarities as it is our custom the board views public comment as an opportunity for members of the public to share your concerns with the board and board members board member discussion on any topic must be on the agenda for the meeting and information we receive from the public during public comment

011may be the basis for future agenda items i've said this repeatedly over the last several board meetings in these days of social media it is important to remember that we are responsible for statements we make inferences drawn or comments made on social media are at times incorrect and speakers must be careful not to repeat false accusations can be unfair harmful and even defamatory we strive to be accurate in our description of the facts and we ask that members of the public take care to assure that any factual assertions they make are fair and accurate as well i appreciate you all listening and again respect all the public comments and we welcome them all so we'll start with our students um first student if you'd like to come in you can all stand in the back

012there that's fine and michelle do you so how this works is you state your name and you state your address and then you have three minutes to speak okay thank you um i'm maggie ramsey and 229 long neck point road um thank you for your time tonight and for all that you do for our schools my name is maggie ramsey and i'm a senior at darien high school i'm a member of the national honor society co-president of the youth asset team captain of the varsity soccer and basketball teams a varsity starter on the wave girls lacrosse team and i'm committed to play at usc next year i'm not telling you these things to boast i'm telling you these things because i feel i'm about as involved as it gets in this dhs community and we

013need to see improvements but i'm here to talk to you today because i'm also a member of the lgbtq plus community and i can no longer just ignore what is happening in our in our school community i'm bisexual and have been out for about a year now and in many ways it has been the worst year of my life i want to share just a few of my experiences in this town that i've stayed quiet about up until now in these stories i'm going to tell i'll be using the slurs that i was called and i want to be very clear that it is never acceptable to use these words in any other context or by people outside of the queer community the first time i was slurred i was outside a friend's house and

014a group of dhs boys i had never met came up and started shouting mag ramsay is a dyke and the words and lesbian were also shouted they then hurled a can at my head and splashed their drink in my face i did nothing the next time i was walking through the cafeteria when i heard someone behind me say and point at me this is when i first started to feel unsafe in school but again i did nothing when one of my close friend's parents found out i was bisexual they told their daughter that i that they were no longer allowed to hang out with me because i would quote ruin her reputation i had experienced hate from kids but getting it from an adult was so much more concerning to see and shows that hate

015is taught i again did nothing the last example i will share although there are many many more was particularly hopeful hurtful i was at a social event with some friends from the lacrosse team when a dhs boy shouted at me what is the lesbian doing here i again did nothing i expected some of my friends to maybe say something or stand up to him but they only did when i asked them to this proves that of course not everyone at dhs is hateful but there is a culture where the people who are who are not hateful are too scared to stand up for what is right i am also very close with several girls of color at dhs and their experiences are similar or worst just in the last few weeks friends of mine have

016been told quote don't talk back to your master and why don't you go back where you came from and they've endured much much worse during their years at dhs given all my friends and i have experience the racist misogynistic and anti-lgbtq plus graffiti was horrifying but not surprising in the slightest it is a part of a pattern that has been allowed to develop just last week tesla was ordered to pay judgment of over 137 million for allowing a hostile work environment to develop in one of their factories this is exactly what we are allowing to form in our schools these are not individual incidents but evidence that that we are allowing to form this culture in our school previously i did not go to anyone to report any of these issues because i thought it

017was hopeless and nothing would really change but now i'm asking you to please hear us out and give us hope back i am so tired we are so tired school is a place where you're supposed to be able to escape hatred and not have to worry about being hate-grimed when you're just trying to learn darian needs to do better about dealing with events like this not just say the words we condemn hate but actually have a zero tolerance policy for any form of hate thank you for listening thank you very much for your public comment [Music] good evening everyone my name is gisele weiniger i live on 16 maple street and i am also a senior at darien high school i am here to discuss the changes that many members of the student body hope

018to be implemented in our school and community while there has been acknowledgments of issues of discrimination within darien schools more action is needed from parents administration and the board whether it was not addressing the issue at all or simply sugarcoating what happened and quickly moving on there have been little serious actions taken in the public eye to help us progress as a community one of the biggest steps that we can take is to have more open and honest conversations both at school and in the home it is my understanding that many parents do not believe it is the school's job to educate their children on these kinds of issues and while it is the parents right and responsibility to raise their children the community has proven that we cannot rely on them to solve these

019issues if they happen within the school they must be dealt with within the school leaving up to the parents is clearly not enough we must be more conscious about word choice the recent video released by administration addressing the vandalism in the boys bathroom had a light tone that many students felt did not address the severity of the situation in our discussions as a school and community we need to be more blunt about what is and what isn't we need to use the words as loaded as they are racism sexism homophobia anti-semitism bigotry and more call it what it is what was written on the bathroom stall was a felony and hate crime the incidences against marginalized groups at dhs should be actively referred to as discrimination to not do so allows the hateful members of

020our community to get away with what they do even if they are technically caught they appear to have no real perception of the consequences of their action on those they discriminate against unfortunately many teachers hesitate to speak out because they fear a lack of support defining what is too political or inappropriate to discuss in a classroom is certainly subjective and my peer will go into more detail about how we believe the education of teachers on these issues could be enhanced but there should never be an instance where a teacher gets in trouble for calling out an ignorant student for discrimination to the teachers that have stood up for what is right the student body applauds appreciates and loves you you may never know the impact some of you have had on us to help girls

021the lgbtq plus community and people of color feel safer but to the teachers who have stood by whether from lacking education or incentive to get involved we are begging for change and we need you it comes down to this human rights are not political the safety of your children is not political the well-being of our community is not political if we want this community to be uplifted and united we must take the actions towards change and progress ourselves the collaboration between students faculty and the administration is essential essential to win this battle against hatred it starts with me and it starts with you thank you for your time thank you very much for your public comment hi everyone my name is libby punisher and i live at 23 pitch avenue like my two peers who

022just spoke i'm a senior at darien high school and like maggie i am also a part of the lgbtqia plus community like both of my peers here i am also disappointed and disgusted by the pattern of discriminatory behavior i have witnessed in my time in darien i have seen students time and time again exhibit actions of blatant racism sexism homophobia and anti-semitism the board of education and the administration should both be doing more to protect students like me from these horrible experiences one of the most important steps that needs to be taken in our community is that hateful actions need to be met with real punishments both in the past and currently discriminatory words and actions have been met with minimal punishments such as a one or two in-day school suspension or a removal from

023a singular football game i've seen students be punished more severely for acts of plagiarism and vaping on campus there is no situation where our administration should consider hate speech a lesser offense than plagiarism but unfortunately they have our administration needs to begin giving students real consequences that will show them that their hate will not be tolerated the second action that needs to be taken is the implementation of adequate training for our staff members as my peers stated some teachers feel that they would not be supported were they to lead conversations surrounding identity issues and discrimination we spend the majority of our day in classes with these teachers and they need to be trained on how to appropriately lead educational discussions in their classrooms and also how to respond to acts of discrimination they witness in

024their classroom and in the halls our administration also needs to be trained because they are the ones responsible for responding to situations involving hateful actions and making it clear to students and teachers that they will be supported should they choose to report them administration needs to bring in an outside source to educate them on how to handle these issues because they do not have the perspective that is necessary to create this safe environment lastly and most importantly our athletic directors and coaches need to be trained on these same issues as an athlete myself i've seen how toxic and discriminatory the sports team environments at our school can be and incidents tend to go unreported because they happen outside of the classroom our coaches need to receive training so that when issues of discrimination arise on

025their teams they can recognize it know how to properly address it in that moment and understand that it is their responsibility to report these actions for the safety of their players students who actively engage in hateful speech or actions against the members of marginalized communities should be removed from their sports teams for a season to show them that they will not be allowed to partake in athletics if they are contributing to a hateful environment the school should never prioritize a strong athletic program over a student's feeling of safety and validity on their teams our school needs to do better we've consistently claimed that these actions do not respect our community values but i've seen nothing to prove that's true as far as i'm concerned concerned these are exactly the values that darien supports darien needs

026to be an environment where all students feel safe and valid in their identities and also feel like they have a support system that will appropriately respond if they become a victim of the hate that has been ingrained in this town for so many years right now our students feel alone please take action to show them that this is not the case thank you for your time thank you for your public comment hi um i'm emma degraff i live on 109 mansfield avenue i'm also a senior at this school um as you can see i'm a little bit emotional i love public speaking i'm fighting for what i have to believe in i'm disappointed that i feel the need to do so tonight and that others feel the need to do so tonight too this isn't

027standing up for what i believe in these are human rights this is feeling saved at school when i'm trying to learn i wish that one of the best schools in the country we hear that all the time i wish that i'm sorry i wish that at one of the best schools in the country students wouldn't feel threatened and harassed when they're just trying to learn i wish that the only thing that students would have to worry about at school is a test that they forgot about and not something about what something that they're born with about their identity something that they can't change i hope that you can hear the young voices speak tonight and that you can show us that you care and you can show us the change that we're looking for all

028of us are tired i'm feeling unheard and i know that that's not your intention i know you want to show us that you care so please too i don't want to keep this conversation at bay and call it something political because what i feel right now up here and what i felt listening to my friends over there that's not political that's fear and anger and sadness thank you for listening i hope it makes a difference thank you very much for speaking thank to all of you for coming in on a school night and speaking appreciate it all right michelle we will move to those folks that are joining us in the room and then we'll move to bringing people in from outside okay thank you anyone in the seats have public comments yes please anyone

029that wants to come up for a public comment in the room please step up to the podium name and address i know it's difficult with the masks but just in order for mrs mccammon to capture the name and the address um please speak as as loudly as you can i've already lectured in a room this size for 80 minutes today with no microphone beautiful thing i think i'm okay i'm dr abigail hornstein i live at 17 edmond street i think my time starts now so i'm dr abigail hornstein and i'm speaking tonight for my professional identity as the woodhouse cisco professor of economics at wesleyan university wesleyan is nicknamed diversity university yes we've been extraordinarily diverse student body it is well known that diversity strengthens educational outcomes for all students economics is now the largest

030department and each semester we teach more students than darien high school economics has profound problems with diversity and yet we know that a variety of changes to the academic environment can profoundly alter the level and composition of enrollments and resultant class atmosphere in my own classrooms i've seen that these changes have increased enrollments from underrepresented groups decrease the rate of withdrawals and low grades for all students while increasing the breadth and depth of learning for all of my students if this is the case for my students why do we have less going on here it is only because of your collective inaction as a board and that needs to change i'd like to talk about how darien can off-ramp from the toxic racism misogyny bigotry homophobia and anti-semitism that flourishes in the schools in this

031district first focusing on those incidents as they fit a long-standing pattern of incidents in this town the poor resolution has sent an unmistakable message to residents and especially the targeted students that they are on their own that is wrong there needs to be greater consequences for students who violate the social and educational mandates to do no harm to others in that light we need to stop expressing sympathy or concern for the perpetrators we need constructive actions to change things now second an extensive body of literature spanning multiple disciplines from sociology and government all the way to management education has shown consistently that students of all backgrounds benefit from more inclusive educational approaches and that these need to be nimble and flexible meaning they cannot be fixed in stone in the curriculum accordingly instructor autonomy in

032the classroom which i note is the ultimate in local control is pivotal to the successful implementation of curricular modifications on an as-needed basis please prioritize diversity equity and inclusion while giving teachers greater curricular independence thank you for this opportunity to speak and good night thank you dr hornstein susie flaherty six lake drive folks a serious threat to the quality of our education in darien isn't is risen a small but loud group of people with an antiquated agenda have decided that they are qualified to dictate what should be taught to our children not the administrators we vetted and hired not teachers with degrees in education and years in the classroom but parents with their own personal priorities an imaginary crisis has been manufactured by this small but loud group in order to weaponize the classroom for

033their own self-interests we don't have to imagine what muzzling our teachers is doing to them as professionals we can read about it in the darien times op-ed but let's imagine what's going to happen to our kids students will sit in a classroom trusting that they are learning all there is to know but instead they will be taught on a need to know basis partly determined by what a small group of parents want for their children the rest of it will be taught by the good people at youtube with no one to guide the kids through misinformation and bias because that lesson was flown thrown on the flyer by the curriculu curriculum police but let's talk about what's next if we don't stop this insanity teachers will leave us for a community that actually respects them

034the best educators will know that darian teachers who wish to prepare for their students for the real world need not apply and they will not apply our kids will be taught by whomever is left over parents got the email today niask the new england association of schools and colleges is coming to dhs niask works with schools to establish and maintain high standards for all levels of education and will be the ones that recommend darien as a high quality school system but will they this time around i'm worried and you should be too one of the many things niask will look for in darien classrooms is inquiry problem solving and higher order thinking skills that require learners to engage in some of the following activities that prioritize deep understanding analysis creative creativity making connections and understanding

035relationships critical and creative thinking dispositions such as independence flexibility and persistence this is already being done by and done well by our teachers there is no crisis the people who are qualified to keep darian at the leading edge of education are the teachers who have degrees in education are certified by the state and actually in the classroom my experience as a parent has shown me that the avenues for my input are already in place and they work if you want to see your child's curriculum materials make that phone call ask the teachers to see them decide what you're uncomfortable with your child learning and omit that part of that learning from your child but don't you dare try and censor what my child is going to learn thank you susie flaherty for your comments uh

036teresa vote 22 circle road i just want to make clear that i am on the rtm education committee but i am not speaking for the rtm education committee uh mr denny and i'd like to thank you if your opening remarks they were fantastic and i also want to say how powerful those girls were as we said tonight and we seem to say every time schools exist for children we say at the door action show it the last few years in the last month have been difficult ones for those members of our community who have often felt marginalized swastikas on buildings and desks homophobic and misogynistic graffiti i saw the snapshot of what was written on that bathroom wall i printed it out here imagine going to school every day knowing that there is a group

037of your peers who like to kill you because you're gay we as a community say all the right things this is not who we are we condemn these actions we as a district seek to educate our children on diversity equity and inclusion last week the students at dhs were shown videos about how they should stand up for each other and speak out about their experiences one group at dhs took to instagram to speak about how they feel about what has been going on in the last week i just lost my spot and how it made them feel rather than try to empathize or understand their feelings they were instead attacked by adults in a closed facebook group and i quote from one comment there absolutely sickening professional politicians poisoning the black student union at dhs

038as well another comment in that same closed group on another post stated he seems to only care about gays and jews these comments are dismissive of what our kids are feeling and experiencing is it any wonder they rarely come forward when they see something they not only have to worry about being gas-lit by their peers but they have to worry about being attacked by the adults we can teach our kids to be kind we caution them to watch what they do online and how they should treat others we ask them to be good digital citizens but then we have a member of the board of education take to social media and tweet at another volunteer in town man and anna or comment on a facebook post live scene from the dtc headquarters with a picture

039of a dumpster fire those are the kinds of comments and posts that would likely send one of our kids to this to the principal's office so i go back to the instagram page that had been attacked that high school group and it says we tell students to watch what they say but look at the adults they have to look up to so while we're in the business of guiding and teaching our children maybe we should take a moment to listen and learn from them instead these are the snapchats thank you theresa hi i'm justine stewart i live at 13 salmon street thank you for having me my pronouns are she her hers the last time i spoke here i was asking for stadium lights for my kids to play under and that was an easier

040conversation i've raised five children that graduated from darien high school rock baylor carson riley wren and maisie all graduating between 2016 and 2021. our family also hosted an abc daughter over the past few weeks hate has overwhelmed us in this community specifically race religion gender and one's sexuality have been targeted in our children's safe spaces their school communities i cannot imagine what it feels like to be part of a minority population in this town we are currently not protecting our minority students nor are we preparing all students for the real world darien is a historical sundown town and is now a caucasian bubble that our children grow up in in the real world outside of this bubble we call darien 60 of people identify themselves as white non-hispanic here in darien it's 91 in gen

041z one in six people identify as lgbtq plus that means approximately 240 of our dhs students are statistically lgbtq that means over half of our students were targeted on the bathroom wall because they are either female or lgbtq in the past couple weeks can you imagine being one of the nine percent of students that do not identify as white here one of the 240 lgbtq plus students a female in the school how would the events of the past few weeks look to you would you feel safe here evidently not listening to our students if you were one of the parents how would you feel about your community would you be scared would you be angry would you consider moving do we begin to fear our neighbors here or is our neighbor really our ally and

042just too afraid to speak up if you were an outsider would you even consider moving here these are the questions we need to ask ourselves children are to be forgiven and are often just repeating the messages they hear at home and i sincerely hope that the children at school that were part of any incidents learn because as we know better we do better as adults we know better and when we don't we should educate ourselves and apologize more in the wrong mr brown i genuinely hope your gestures last week were unintentional and that you fold your arms in an unfortunate way because there has been zero clarification other than you're angry that people caught this gesture it crosses one mind that you may have actually meant to send a dog whistle to any racists in

043darien after the incident children in our community were gaslighted by adults as they expressed their concerns over the unexplained gesture you have to understand that you hold power over these children as a board of ed member it is of their concern because you are in charge of the decisions of their lives this is not about how it was captured it is about making it right i have made mistakes in my life i do it all the time i apologize and i'm super quick to apologize if it was unintentional we are continuously learning as humans and i hope you now understand your power and the power of hopefully an unintended gesture mr brown it's time that you need to make a statement to this community and to the children that are living in fear here as

044to what the intent in that was i want our children as does everybody here to feel safe respected and cherished please do the right thing and make a statement so it's clear as to what your intentions were and how our town can become healing and combating the fear and hatred that seems to be growing by the day thank you justine stewart thank you for your comments i need to remind everyone to please try and stay within the three minutes we've got a lot of people that we want to hear i appreciate that thank you um good evening my name is melin gasserood and i live at 35 driftway lane i have two sons who graduated from darien high school and one daughter who is currently a junior nelson mandela famously said no one is born

045hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion people must learn to hate so i ask you members of the board of education leaders of the schools here in darien what are our children learning from you in the past month a high school student was reportedly bullied after identifying with a conservative ideology the board responded with an hour-long conversation during a meeting about curriculum development and how closely classroom materials are vetted there were many questions for the superintendent and strong points of view given by various board members the next week homosexuals were threatened with a message written at the high school and the resulting conversation at the board lasted maybe five minutes several members seemed more interested in looking at their phones than participating in the discussion it

046was also revealed that an anti-semitic message had been posted to a dhs football social media account and i don't think any questions were asked about that nobody wanted to hear from the athletic department about the climate on the dhs teams last week a sitting member of the board of education displayed a widely recognized symbol of hate during a televised event and there has been complete silence whether or not the symbol was intentionally displayed or was it an accident don't some of you want to hear an apology or an explanation i believe that we have reached a crossroads and it's time to rise above partisan disagreements and a misguided attempt to gain power or build coalitions on the board the hate that is raging through this town is not partisan it's simply hate this is a

047human issue not a political issue we have students who have been threatened and feel unsafe and others who simply feel that they cannot be the person they want to be we have teachers who feel attacked and others who feel unwelcome in our classrooms in darien we have community members who cannot look their neighbors in the eye after reading their posts on secret or even public websites about the ridiculousness of the diversity conversation or criticizing criticizing others for quote caring only for gays and jews this is a human issue nelson mandela also said if people can learn to hate they can be taught to love for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite it's time to put all of the children and really people of darien first not just like-minded people or

048those who have similar values it's time to address bullying and find a way to keep hate groups out of our schools it's time to advocate for those who feel offended and unsafe at school it's time to support the teachers who are doing their best to develop good global citizens it will take every one of you to figure a way out of this i believe that all of you can do better thank you good evening my name is antoinette coles and i live at five hillside court i am co-chair of the dhs pa i've lived in town for 16 years and my husband and i have three children who all have attended or attend durian public schools one is a 2021 grad and the others are at dhs and middle school like so many we chose

049darian as a town because of our excellent schools i have two thoughts tonight that i wanted to share and i will keep them brief but first given all that's been happening lately in our schools which is so heartbreaking to hear about it seems we need to remember what has been said more than once tonight but our schools exist for children all children in fact the opening words on the darian high school page state we the members of the darian high school community believe that learning best occurs in an environment that is safe supportive respectful and intellectually challenging for all students i hope we will continue to improve on truly being a community that is supportive and respectful of every single member of the community second what makes our schools so excellent the only answer to

050that is the teachers it is my hope that we can help our teachers once again feel the support and appreciation of the community for doing all they do for our kids they help them learn and thrive i believe our district hires only the best they are professionals and amazing at what they do they make a difference every single day and i have witnessed firsthand how their dedication and love of what they do has helped our children be lifelong learners who think like to discuss and follow their passions our teachers were not just heroes during a pandemic they are heroes each and every day thank you for your time internet cold thank you very much for your comments i'm amy zurby and i live at nine warehouse drive my pronouns are she her hers i'd like

051to start out by thanking mr dineen for his comments i truly did appreciate them many people including myself moved to darien because of the schools yet now parents do not like the schools as they prefer to censor our teachers and our curriculum does that make sense let's be clear although our children's education is a partnership between the schools and the community the greatest asset of our schools is our teachers i repeat the greatest asset of our schools is our teachers we are all aware of the recent open episodes of hate at dhs those responsible have been disciplined but the pain runs deep if any one of our students displayed racism they would be disciplined if any employee displayed racism they would be disciplined we expect our board members to be disciplined as well we hold

052you accountable and you need to hold each other accountable i grew up as one of the few jews in the small town of wilmington delaware i was not allowed into some people's homes simply because i was jewish we had incidents of hate as well and the town would brush these incidents under the rug my parents always told me to just ignore the hate stay quiet well i will not stay quiet when i see incidents of hate in our schools in our community and on our board can you believe that members of the community actually criticized our black student union i know that you can because you saw the comments too to all of the darian public school staff i support you to our students who have been bullied due to the color of their skin

053ethnicity religion ability gender identity and sexual identity i support you to anyone who feels like an outsider is the last to be chosen on a sports team or who sits alone at the lunch table i support you and i am not alone in my support thank you amy i think we might have a student that has joined us and i'd like to if the students want to speak because i know it's a school night please black don't crack that's what it is okay just if you could state your name and address thank you um kyla johns i live at 91 raymond street um today i would like to express the other importance of teaching and inclusive history in schools and comment on the recent occurrences of hate that have happened at darien high school i

054am a dhs alumna i coach darion junior league field hockey i serve on the ywca board i was a 2021 ywca women of distinction i have led protests all over connecticut and new york and i am the president of an education reform organization in darien called rage time i have been an active member of our community continuing to improve our community in every way that i can and now it is time for us to all step up as a community and change the way that our town interacts with anything that it deems as different i have always been different i'm a black and native american bisexual woman who has lived in darien since 2010. the things that have been said to me the things i have been called i won't give power by repeating them

055here i have had pencils put in my hair things thrown at me in the hallways i've had the cops called on me while i was walking my dog in the street i've been physically and mentally bullied and i've been put down by homophobia racism sexism and much more in this town yet i stand here today fighting for our community to step up and be better but it's not up to me it's up to each of us individually to choose to work towards dismantling oppression of all kinds it starts in each of our homes and in the school system learning about marginalized histories while providing teachers the proper resources to have appropriate conversations about diversity equity and inclusion if you are taught the history of a people when you're at a young age an age where

056your moral compass has not been altered by the society you are surrounded by it humanizes that group of people the most terrifying and detrimental thing for an oppressive society is when the people they discriminate against are eyes and the actions that have been taken against them become atrocities if we are looked at as animals without a valuable history we can be put in cages and treated as such if we are seen as savages acting out of rage and not mothers and fathers fighting for their children's right to live we can be shot down in the streets and have our communities bulldozed over to make room for gentrification this is why it has to be mandated that at all levels of schooling marginalized history is taught in the curriculum that includes all marginalized groups such as

057the indigenous latinx the lgbtqia plus community and immigrants and the disabled community as well as black histories we must now take responsibility in creating a cohesive student body and not one that is divided we as a community sit here and discuss such axes of hate and how they could occur at the high school when the answer is right in front of us because they haven't been taught a compassionate inclusive accurate history and in turn it has created a divide between what they consider to be normal and what they deem as different as a black woman who went to dhs i can tell you none of this hate speech is new it is a continuation of hate that has been spewed out without consequence for years i urge every person who is listening to understand dismantling

058racism is not an easy task it will take every single member of this board every single member of this community working together towards a brighter more welcoming and inclusive future thank you for speaking and thanks for coming back as an alumni anyone else in the room yes please come up to the podium thank you [Music] hi my name is natasha thomas i live at 6 mclaren road south and first i want to thank the students who spoke tonight each and every one of them it was an act of bravery that was unparalleled in the last couple of weeks i was deeply moved by their statements i had no idea and i think that the last speaker who talked about humanizing these events is exactly what needs to happen and that now we're really getting somewhere

059we need to hear exactly what's happening we need to know that and i believe that diversity equity and inclusion is going only going to happen if we all work together and we get to hear stuff like that so i want to thank them i mean they were so articulate i'm like oh my god i mean i their comments were better than a lot of the adults that i've heard so um i do want to say thank the board for putting together a curriculum review board the big question that we have is who will be on that board i think we should probably look at some of the women who spoke tonight the students and consider them um so if the board would ask the administration um i think it's uh mr tranberg who is in

060charge of putting that together um you know how that will be assembled and how we get uh viewpoints from everyone so that we can work together that we have teachers who are involved one of the things that the students said was that they really wanted for more professional development both with the teachers and with the athletic directors and coaches and so i think that that is that's a great start the teachers i read that letter from the teachers you know and if they're feeling like they're under attack we need to protect them by giving them a framework to work within right and so if we can work together to give them a framework of you know you're you're safe working within this then there's nothing to there's nothing to go after you know so i

061think if everybody has a voice here that's really vital and that the assembly of putting together this team is is critical it's important to have you know lots of different viewpoints but particularly from the marginalized communities we need to hear more about what's going on so we can address that specifically that's it thanks thank you very much i see people are coming in from the outside as seats become vacant so thank you please just step up to the podium thank you very much thank you good evening my name is lila bucktoon and i live at 12 dubois street and i am the co-chair of the ghsba thank you to the board and the administration for your time tonight i quote darien schools are the best of the best they hire only the best teachers excellence

062of education is why so many of us chose darien as a place to raise our families this excellence comes from the talented dedicated professionals educating our students from kindergarten through senior year our teachers should be celebrated and supported for what they do every day they go above and beyond for all of our students our teachers should feel safe to teach they should feel safe to be the exceptional teachers they are if they do they will continue to provide our children with the highest level of teaching preparing our children to thrive and succeed long after they have left darien thank you very much for your comments hi katrina o'connor 15 highland avenue um i had some prepared remarks but um i think mr janine you covered almost everything that i had to say so i'm just

063gonna um be a little bit more human tonight not that i'm saying you're not human but i'm saying personal story um uh some of you haven't seen me here since we were battling with the special ed crisis a few years ago and if some of you do remember that was a very tough time um for a lot of us parents who had children with disabilities and we worked through that crisis we worked with the state we worked with professionals we worked with our teachers we worked with our administrators and we worked with our board and we got through it and um i'm proud to say that i have a very happy eighth grade son at middlesex middle school who is accepted and loved and taught and hearing the stories that i heard tonight about the

064high school seeing the things i've seen over the last couple of weeks i have to say i am pretty terrified to send my son who does not see race does not see difference in people he just sees friends and i hope that you take some of the comments that you hear tonight and you put them into action and you teach our kids you help our kids you help our teachers you support our parents because i want my son to be proud to be at darren high school i want to be proud for my son to be darren high school it's important it's critical it's who we should be it's who we are and i thank you for your time thank you thank you very much for speaking there anyone else outside we have a couple

065empty chairs anyone else wants to speak while we're looking for people outside okay thanks michelle do you want to we can always go back and forth michelle do you want to look for our friends on zoom absolutely belinda fang you are unmuted and recognized belinda can you hear us i think you're muted belinda can you hear us now belinda fang 22 beach drive could you state your name and address again you came on through that please sure it's belinda fang 22 beach drive thank you if you could just speak a little louder we'd appreciate it thank you no problem good evening dr adley members of the board of ed and the darian education association who may be listening tonight tonight i'd like to recognize the sentiments felt by our educators as detailed in the darien

066times op-ed piece i'd like to encourage our teachers that in spite of all the noise to not be disheartened and to please press onward in educating our students in ways that spur decision making and incorporate the importance of having different points of view to use their expertise and teach in a way that connects different ideas and inspires creativity so that our children are rightfully prepared for life outside of darien and for life where they can identify racism and discrimination and be able to stand up for what's right there is a genuine need for deeper thinking especially as our society continues to evolve and in this town where we are lacking of almost nothing ironically there is a noticeable void of challenging our youth to participate in critical thinking to pinpoint issues and collect information to

067examine scrutinize and decide what's relevant to self-evaluate draw conclusions and then finally to explain their reasoning critical thinking requires deeper analysis and deeper analysis produces deeper understanding resulting in individuals who feel empowered to be independent innovative and successful not only in academics but in real life critical thinking blasts through the surface level of a topic and it is the pinnacle of all learning where information begets knowledge and knowledge begets wisdom and it can only be done if there is a mediator who is willing and unafraid to lead the classroom and facilitate these hard discussions i stand with the parents in this town who believe in the potential of our children who support the daily efforts in challenging them and ask that our educators continue to do so i'm grateful for the opportunities teachers are creating

068for our students because i recognize that if they are sheltered from hard topics at school then my efforts to educate them at home can only go so far i echo the sentiments of wanting our children to feel protected confident supported and loved to thrive regardless of their interests strengths weaknesses similarities and differences to that i would also add resilient because despite the divisiveness that our children obviously see amongst the adults it is evident that we are raising a generation that has expressed their relentless desire for a world that holds kindness compassion and empathy in the highest regards i seek to weave these values into the very walls of my home and i ask the educators of our schools to do the same there will be times where i will ask for clarity for no one

069can die that we even as adults need to grow but rest assured i will not be the one to stand in their way thank you linda thank you very much barry palmer you are unmuted and recognized thank you yup i can hear you thank you uh barry palmer 17 putnam lane in danbury um i'm not gonna go with my speech tonight i i just wanted to speak to the students who who were so brave to tell their story and i i think there are more students out there who have similar stories that they want to tell i can tell you just looking at my phone your teachers are devastated we are committed to making our school community a self a safe and welcoming environment for all of you i hope we can hear from each

070of the board members tonight to hear that you are committed to diversity equity and inclusion our students deserve to hear from you and they deserve better from all of us thank you barry thank you um barry if it's all right to note that you are the dea union president oh yeah that too yes [Music] thank you barry john dunn you are unmuted and recognized john can you hear us i sure can good evening everybody my name is john dunn and i live at 175 raymond street i wanted to begin my comments this evening by commending the board on the creation of the curriculum committee this is an important first step in promoting fact-based unbiased lessons in our schools our children deserve nothing less however the greatest challenge lies ahead as the implementation of the committee

071begins the curriculum committee needs to be non-partisan and independent of superintendent adley and his administration an effective and well implemented curriculum committee wouldn't just benefit students and parents it will also be beneficial to teachers like many other concerned parents in town i read the darien times op-ed from the dea leadership yesterday here is an excellent quote the reality is darien teachers don't feel safe every minute of the day we are now second guessing our teaching instincts wondering if years of training professional development relationship building and hard work will somehow be used as a weapon in the political war that is raging in this community we second guess what we say what we teach and how we teach it end quote despite the dea's leadership's insertion of violent descriptive language like war and weapon into a

072community discussion that has been animated but peaceful it is hard not to empathize with teachers in classrooms a strong curriculum committee will help provide clarity and transparency for all of darien public school stakeholders having grown up in town attending tokenique henley middlesex and dhs i have experienced firsthand how wonderful our public education system can be today's students deserve an unbiased education the curriculum committee is a positive development for increased transparency and i would ask the board to do it right thank you for listening thank you john carolina magooy you are unmuted and recognized good evening my name is carolina magowie and i am in 28 kansas lane and my pronouns are she her and hers before i read what i prepare i wanted to say thank you to mr dineen for his works tonight i

073really really appreciate them and i hope we follow through with them and i want to commend each and every student that stood up and spoke to us um it's heartbreaking and i want you all to know that you have a contingent of parents that are standing behind you and will support you no matter what here we go we say we are very proud of our schools we have one of the best school systems in the us and certainly in connecticut and many many people moved to varian for our public schools but you would not believe that from what i have seen happen in our town the last couple of weeks or what i've seen and have read about our students and teachers it's heartbreaking here we are today entrenched in what looks like a civil

074war that mirrors what we are seeing at the national level where decency and respect have gone out the window where we are allowing bullying where we are failing our kids and where it seems we are willing to sacrifice our own children's educations in order to make sure our personal agenda is supported but we are teaching by what we are teaching our at our schools we hire the best qualified teachers we hire the best superintendent and administration we could find for our public public school system but here we are trying to burn the house down how do we expect these people to continue to work under these conditions at first we demanded of them to teach our children during the pandemic at the cost of sacrificing their own families or mental health then we demanded for

075them to come teach our children in person even if many felt uncomfortable or not ready to do it then we wanted no more masks in schools even though it's literally what our governor under his executive order requires because local control do we know what our medical experts that have been advising the town and the school think why bother and ask i have yet to hear them actually say that not wearing mask is the way to go and now a small group of very loud parents are demanding to literally have teachers lessons plans shared with them because they might be indoctrinating our kids or teaching them not our values so what is next their heads yes i'm being somewhere hyperbolic but you all get my point if you're not happy with our school system with teaching

076our kids about diversity equity and inclusion about pronouns with preparing them for the real world outside of the invisible walls that surround our town to exposing them to the curriculum approved material prepared by experts in their field because it does not jive with your values or your personal belief with stronger consequences for those that hurt their fellow students whereas slap on the hand is not not enough you have a choice you can either homeschool your children or send them to a private school of your choice that would teach them what you would like but public schools do not work for a small group of loud parents they are for the benefit of all the kids that go to them and as far as i know we do have one of the best ones in the

077country i see it with my own eyes through my children we all repeat that agnostic we have the best schools our teachers are the best we have issues but we can do the hard things to fix them we can show our children from today on that we will do better we must do better so don't ruin our schools and i implore you to shut down the websites that are so damaging as well it is time to stop you do not speak for most of the parents in very end it doesn't matter what your email address is thank you thank you thank you carrie vomacka you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us carrie i can now hi my name is carrie valmaka and i live at 24 salt box lane i'm here tonight to

078speak to our teachers in response to the op-ed in the darien times i am sorry you don't feel safe i support you i know you are making personal and professional sacrifices every day to teach our children and to help them develop into thoughtful compassionate adults to do this i entrust you with exercising discretion and nuance when warranted to create an inclusive environment of learning where all children are treated fairly and with care from what i can tell most parents in this town feel similarly we support you and believe in the system that is in place today to ensure you are operating inside the lines of your job description while not being so prescriptive that you lose your passion for teaching i also want you to know that the fears you express about having your lessons

079be twisted or taken out of context are real i worry about this too i've watched the chatter on social media unfold over the past several weeks with bewilderment a virtual forum is not where productive conversation happens the best antidote to rhetoric is calm open and non-threatening conversation i'm sure you feel the same way which is why i feel strongly that our teachers must know they are supported controversy makes for effective politics when elections are near but we must recognize that what benefits a political campaign can do lasting damage to a community so i ask what parent actually wants to micromanage their child's courses i think we can all agree in the age of google classroom many of us want less responsibility for navigating our children's academic lives we must trust the system and each other

080parents talk to your children make sure the lines of communication are open so you are not surprised by what they are learning model tolerance and kindness take up your concerns directly with your teachers or start a conversation with your principal teachers and administrators you must hear parents out but we know you are not required to comply with everything asked nor should you be let discipline be swift and fair if necessary and use your judgment to adjust curriculum you should be allowed the discretion to teach and manage our schools in alignment with the expectations set out in our governing docs and strategic plan to our teachers we want to be your partners in education i have full confidence we will get there it will always be a journey and hard work but please know we are

081right here with you thank you carrie thank you very much kathleen thompson you are unmuted and recognized kathleen thompson 53 good white river road to the members of the board of education i'd like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak as a new family to this community i was saddened to read the op-ed written by the darian education association leadership i found the entire piece dripping with contempt for parents within this community and i have to ask is this really the voice of all the daring teachers or is the dea leadership utilizing a tactic to intimidate parents within this community who are vocalizing their legitimate concerns the dea states the reality is darien teachers don't feel safe and will somehow be used as a weapon of the political war that is raging

082within this community i have to ask who's propelling this political war i question the true intent of the dangers kathleen can you pause for a moment please jeff what's going on with i our off their mic okay thank you kathleen sorry we had someone else whose speaker was on i apologize please continue no worries thank you the dea states the reality of daring teachers don't feel safe i question the true intent of the dea when i think about their word choice used throughout the op-ed such as dragging through mud am i going to be accosted weapon war raging protect ourselves broken battered ambushed vilified scared casualties destroyed this language is not only aggressive but it's inflammatory and begs to question who's making this political the dea states daring educators did not become teachers to push

083our political ideologies on children this is fantastic and i and what i believe all parents want let's use this as our starting point to something we can all agree upon let's make it official and include it in the overall mission statement of the curriculum oversight committee let's ensure that this committee includes parents from both sides of the aisle your willingness to take this step will help restore the trust and support of parents in this community the dairy and parents i know love our teachers maybe this message has gotten lost in all the noise let's work to find a common ground let's start by doing what the dea suggests and remove political ideologies from school curriculum thank you kathleen thompson rosine beccarelli you are unmuted and recognized hi it's roshin and joe beccarelli here from 29

084bailey avenue our children are in elementary school but we are in awe of the senior students who spoke tonight and are fully in support of them and their calls for action we're also honored to have the opportunity to listen to kyla john's insights as an important leader in our community further we want to acknowledge the darien times op-ed titled we cannot let this divisiveness destroy the district it was deeply honest and powerful and sad because of how accurately it describes what we can see and feel happening we empathize with the stress and fear our teachers are expressing to our teachers and principles we can see you and your passion on behalf of our kids we know why you became educators we trust you and will continue to stand beside you we echo your call for

085all of us in the community to work together to disentangle you from political narratives so you can go back to being your dynamic and impassioned selves and so you can better help us support our kids ability to thrive in this increasingly complex world thank you for all that you do for us even in the toughest of times thanks thank you very much for your comments alex taylor you are unmuted and recognized alex taylor can you hear us yes i think so okay we can hear you thanks um i am alex taylor at four barringer road speaking on behalf of the darian special ed parent advisory committee i want to first say thank you to the board of ed and on a personal note thank you mr dineen and all the people who have spoken today

086it's really very moving um we wrote this statement after the formation of the curriculum committee so i wanted to just put that into context with the reinstatement of the curriculum committee of the board of ed we ask that the board of ed includes special ed goals methods materials assessments and the planning and oversight of the curriculum committee as a committee as a curriculum refers to the board broad educational and interactive system of instruction and learning we believe that special education falls within the scope of the committee's future work thank you very much and thank you for the hard work that you were all doing thank you for your comments this evening user last name club you are unmuted and recognized it looks like you're still on mute okay duffy's lane this is my work laptop

087and i'm known as mr cloud i work in the bridgeport public school as a restorative facilitator i mediate juvenile criminal cases in stafford as a diversionary and restorative uh practice i didn't we're preparing marks because uh typically i'm used to just listening to people speak and then trying to figure out uh what where they're coming from from their perspective which which means taking a deliberately neutral stance i'm not an unaffiliated voter i've been watching discussions um i've seen people struggle to make space for pains that they didn't share or they made them feel uncomfortable and this really goes for both sides um we are endeavoring to create a community but we're talking about rather than a community we're talking about different identities different policies um by its very nature social emotional learning is a relational

088concept by its very nature um dei is a relational concept you can't build them without having some sort of means to repair harm when harm is caused we heard a lot of harm being that was caused here tonight harm to the community to teachers to students to parents to to the entire community we have to look at it as as one community and wealth in the room is we are not talking about people who are doing harm we are discarding them we are dismissing them we are not listening to what their brokenness or their background might be and they might very well be struggling as well these are things that can be unearthed with restorative practices if instead of taking curative approaches and looking for quote unquote justice which really is a methodism for punishment

089if we dig deep and we try to figure out let people who've been harmed speak their peace and let them explain how they were harmed to the people who harm them and let the people who harm them do the same to the people they harmed we might actually grow as a community rather than just push these things aside we need to invest as a community in these practices um a good example was the test that was stolen the midterm test a lot of a lot of students had were harmed and they wanted to be heard there was no process for the people who harm them to address the people that they harmed and i think we failed our children when we didn't do that so um i guess that's probably my three minutes but i

090i really encourage us to look at restorative practices we do this in a violent community in bridgeport connecticut and it it actually brings results thank you very much louise waylett brown you are unmuted and recognized thank you louise can you hear us yes can you hear me you're gonna you're gonna have to speak loud or turn your microphone up we can barely hear you okay can you hear me now that's a little better just if you could speak as loud as possible we'd appreciate it thank you yeah okay um i'm so grateful for the leadership that duke dunnean has demonstrated tonight in his opening speech duke honestly i just have renewed faith in the border bed and it is just so critical at this time i'm glad you mentioned also the comment made about our

091teachers being bullied it couldn't be further from the truth it was disappointing and doesn't represent most of us in this town if the board truly believes in zero tolerance of hate and hate groups the board should investigate and potentially find a way to shut down any hate groups especially those that may be attached to positions who have uh who people who have positions within town government i'm also so very proud of the young women who have spoken tonight eloquent poised and powerful let's not let them down i hope they saw in their adult lives in reference to tolerance at dh intolerance at dhs i would like to add a note that oftentimes our school administrators their ties their hands are tied they face parents who lawyer up they are doing the best they can possibly

092do and we have the best we could find we know you care and we hope you too feel empowered tonight as the educational experts in the room to continue doing the great work that you do unmicromanaged by some of the members of the border bed thank you very much we thank you for your comments tonight there are no more raised hands at this time thank you michelle is there anyone else in the room i think we have everyone in from outside we have another raised hand okay great thank you michelle scott wittahan you are unmuted and recognized scott can you hear us oh we can hear you okay hi hi i'm armelle i thank you you're on just your your name and your address thank you sure um carmel this is scott we're 12 fitch

093um i wasn't planning on saying anything tonight uh but i'm so moved by the way that the students in particular and it's not lost on me that i believe the current students are all white standing up in defense of themselves and their classmates i also want to publicly voice my support for the black student union i'm glad to see that maybe the voices tonight are reaching people and people are hearing them and it sounds like some people are maybe surprised to hear some of this stuff personally i'm not surprised i think that there are kids of color going to school in our town who have been screaming about this stuff for quite some time and to hear that they have been um you know talked about let's let's put it that way talked about in

094some of these closed groups um instead of people listening to them and trying to hear what they have to say they're just actual people actual children who are just tennis balls in the volley i think somebody needs to go on record speaking up for them i'm so proud to see so many people saying it but i wanted to be acknowledged that they've been saying this they've been saying this for a long time for anyone who cared enough to listen so um hopefully we can continue listening and maybe bring a little more empathy into the discussion so to any kids of color who've been talking about this for a long time i support you i'm here too and i personally have also experienced um how would i put it i guess we'll just say racism some

095racist behavior here in this town um it's not fair that it's on our students to check us you know we're the adults in the room we need to support them and talk about what's happening so i'm grateful for the kids who spoke tonight i'm grateful for the kids who've been saying it for a while and i'm here and i've seen it too thanks well thank you very much for speaking tonight i'm giving them a second sure no more race hands at this time anyone i think we have everyone in from outside anyone here all right again thank you all thank you very much for speaking for those students and alumni for taking the time to come this evening thank you very much you're listening and we heard all your words thank you we'll move on

096to the superintendent's report dr adley good evening everyone and i thank you to everyone who spoke especially uh to our courageous young people um i think your your voice spoke volumes uh to your character and your advocacy and we are listening uh thank you mr janine for your uh comments this evening clearly as as relayed by our wonderful young people it's been a challenging a few weeks in the district on a variety of topics let's remember that despite being back in person returning to school this year has been particularly trying for our staff and our students as elegantly relayed this evening this is a time when the staff and children need our collective guidance and support the most let us resolve whatever differences we might have by living out our core values of respect and

097civility for each other but most of especially for our children thank you to those members of the high school climate committee the parents the students the teachers the administration who work to put together an intervention albeit what we heard of of how some people have received it or some of our children received it how some students may have received that intervention that initially tried to address issues of bigotry anti-semitism racism sexism and that all forms of discrimination as we've moved forward to look at intermediate programs we have reviewed a number of those this particular thursday the principles of the middle school and the high school and central services staff will review two in-depth proposals one from the national council of community and justice around things like student voice and restorative actions and also a secondary

098proposal from the consultant ken shelton who will be working with the district's dei committee um i am proud that the the community and the board has gone on record as saying that this is an important topic and they've done so through the adaption of the strategic the strategic plan we've also reached out to the interaction institute for social change in boston to help explore facilitating a community-wide discussion on this important topic thank you to everyone uh for your contributions during the past couple of weeks around these these issues uh just a cave capped convention there's no real easy way to transition from that so you'll forgive me uh trying to do so uh the caves caps convention is friday november 12th there are limited uh in-person participation uh for the convention it's only one day

099it used to be like two and a half days uh interestingly they've dropped out all the student participation uh which is an interesting thing just as we are increasing it uh but friday uh november 12th and i'll talk to the board in terms of your participation and those who people like to uh participate they'll either be in person or remote or a combination and uh this is a good opportunity for one of our actually one of the board goals to continue to participate in professional development uh the nia cells as we heard this even actually the nia self uh study uh for parents was sent out uh today and um that gives an opportunity for parents to participate on giving feedback to the committee's visitation i want to commend those people who participated the students

100who participated in the fall music concert we had every ensemble performer which i think was really the first time we've ever had in the fall every ensemble actually participate and it just was good and uplifting to to hear the school and the student body come together and voice and also with the performance i hope the kids at some level are joined the homecoming this week there's a variety of activities of dress blueway pride and prep rallies happening october 20th at the middle school the thriving news task force will be presenting the youth asset survey that was presented to the board uh at the last meeting good luck to the students who are doing psats tomorrow there is a special schedule for students uh but we we wish the students were participating uh the best of

101luck on this assessment and we are making a proposal tonight for the makeup the two makeup days uh so we'll hear that uh this evening there's a series of technology workshops uh developmentally designed for elementary middle school and high school everything from time on screens to tick-tock to uh digital portfolios it'll have so uh that will also be posted online so there's an opportunity to participate here in the boardroom but they'll also be posted online if you can't make it the facilities meeting for thursday has been cancelled uh the board will receive an update on those particular topics it's been cancelled because of the the topics themselves and and the agenda is limited we have summarized those agenda topics in a memorandum that you'll send out this even to the board and if there's any

102of those topics that need further discussion it can continue at either a board meeting or reschedule a facilities committee and those are all my natures thank you dr adley we will move on to approval of minutes uh may have a motion to approve the minutes of the regular meeting held on september 28 2021 mrs stein second by mrs ochman all those in favor that is unanimous thank you we'll move on to board committee reports uh mrs stein um the policy um committee is scheduled to meet again next friday at 8 30 um just to put on your calendars thank you mr stein i want to shout out uh from an ox ridge perspective to katie lublin and principal forshaw for a great presentation to the local oxford community as to kind of where things are

103at with the construction of the school and the timeline that has changed a little on the move so a lot of hard work has gone in to meeting with the community and talking to them and keeping them informed so thank you the next actress building committee meeting is thursday at uh 10 o'clock we'll move on to presentations and discussions uh dr adley update on schools [Music] so we'll talk a little bit about the metrics first and um the metrics can we this actually just increased slightly um from the last presentation so it's off a little bit from the times feedback because the state this the state does different time and actually uses occasionally different metrics so but the general idea is um that we have reduced number of cases actually i think this was as

104of can five and this is the most latest one which we have one case and twelve uh quarantine so the the the news is good in that capacity i want to thank our parents for their understanding i know the last thing you want to do is quarantine this your child the last thing we want to do is do that to you thank you to the schools because a lot of these are elementary level and we have been able to avoid quarantine and full classes so that that has been helpful i will say that um uh we have no evidence of of the spreading of schools and we have no evidence of those people who we have quarantined actually uh contracting uh covet so those are two statements that we've made at different levels and difficult

105passage over the last year or so but that's the case at the moment um i don't see i haven't been on a call this morning with the state department of education and the department of public health i see no movement on their desire to uh change that position on quarantine or otherwise um i just i just don't see that happening but we'll see on the testing the school-based uh school-based testing we had last week 226 students who were tested uh parents who volunteered and wanted to participate in that we actually have 250 coming up for this week and we have no everybody tested negative uh in that particular testing group uh students clinics for ages five to twelve it seems like we this is going to be opened up there will be news coming by

106the end of the month uh we have worked alicia has worked with uh david noff our health director and uh tim kenobi are our medical advisors so we're ready actually to go with a series of six saturdays uh for our students as soon as the green light is given uh we'll have that's already being set up so we're really ready to roll that out and that's the idea that was asked today does that mean that kids have to be quarantined to come to school no that's not the case but again this will be an opportunity for parents to participate and hopefully that will be an important step for us our staff vaccinations status with about 95 percent of our of our complete staff vaccinated everyone is participating either and haven't been vaccinated or in the

107uh testing weekly testing that's going on and that is being done by progressive diagnostics so they do that weekly for our staff in middle school and elementary schools for our high school uh we have to go locally and most likely to norwork to get tested but that has proved uh well we're in good shape that way also we've been out talking about ox ridge oxrange uh our workers at oxford technically do not have to uh submit to that process however it's actually changed because they're not in the buildings if that should change they are all ready to go um to comply so that their income plans even though they don't need to be in compliance at this particular point so the american rescue act the ida grants for their respective numbers as you see them

108we have submitted this and for not just contractor services so we haven't delineated beyond that and if we have to do if we have to resubmit in some other capacity we will do that but it's simply for contracted services for recovery services for students so that's the category um for ot and pt but we the category that it has to go under is contracted services so i said i was sure with you what we would submit that is what we're submitting details here that you've seen before you can see some of the numbers going down again and the weekly the numbers down again at the weekend so happy to address any of those questions thank you dr adley i'll open it up to board comments and questions mrs mccammon dr bradley on the ida grant

109where you talked about ot and pt um are those do we have incremental costs that are that are recuperative in in that volume or is it how is that working so so currently they are unidentified uh we haven't identified the actual services that are required at this particular point thank you mrs mccammon mrs ackman but they are anticipated needs correct yes but the money is there for whatever whatever makeup services we need to provide so to mrs mccammon's question we we anticipate the student need based on what we're seeing right now which is how we can apply for the grant uh we have not identified the student as a student needs right now as they are identified then that they'll be utilized you just anticipate the need we just we simply anticipate the need yes

110okay thank you mrs zach any other questions around school status update anything else driving no it's actually it's actually pretty good in that in that capacity um we're doing well and um and that's in large part by by the community's commitment to vaccinations okay moving along presentation and discussion on i'm sorry report on testing s-a-t a-c-t ap s-back n-g-s-s mr tranberg miss emmanuel singh mrs stroller and mr docker good evening everyone we have a a pretty dense comprehensive uh presentation for you tonight um as you'll see the data this year is a bit more complex than you've seen in the past because it's presented uh in in three different ways so we tried to make that as concise as possible i'm going to turn it over to uh julie droller to start who is our

111director of elementary education on the memo you might have noticed that uh it reads director of assessment k-12 she doesn't have a new title that was just part of her job description and then that's the capacity in which the memo was written so with that i will turn it over to julie uh megan emmanuelson will join and we do have mr.com mr genesco dr bellows on standby if we need them for any specific uh content questions after we make it through the presentation so we'll try to get through all of the deck and then uh do questions following that uh mr chamber you did say it but i just want to be again just in your facial new capacity uh welcome it's it's nice to see you in your new capacity trade thank you thank

112you very much good evening members of the board of education dr adley and the cabinet mrs emanuelson and i are very pleased to have the opportunity to share the results of our district-wide testing for the 2020-21 school year we're very proud of our talented students committed faculty and supportive school leaders despite a challenging year with unusual testing circumstances at times our students once again delivered impressive results certainly a reflection of the hard work of both students and staff it is important to note that the state of connecticut has stated that districts should not compare these result these scores to other districts there are simply too many inconsistencies and variables for any comparisons to be considered reliable for informing instruction or planning we have also been told not to compare 2021 results to 2019 or years

113prior while we will present the data from our durg schools this evening as well as historical data for context we will not be drawing any direct comparisons or inferences based on this data as we do in all years we'll we will examine our own results and determine appropriate next steps across curriculum areas this report will include the results from both the state mandated testing and all grades as well as optional testing that our high school students can use in their college admissions process we'll present this data in two parts working from elementary up through high school [Music] and these are this is a summative testing overview and i'm not going to spend too much time on this because i know that you can read it the smarter balanced is our annual standardized measure that provides

114a snapshot of student progress towards college and career readiness students receive a total score and then they receive one of four achievement levels so i want to start here with this slide this year data was presented um by data was disaggregated by student learning model so what you will see here again just for context these are our mathematics scores for three previous testing years we didn't test in 2020 and then this year for students fully or mostly in person and those hybrids what i want to point out a few things you'll notice that in grades three and four we were pretty consistent there was a slight dip in fifth grade in grade six you'll notice 35 of students fully mostly in person so that number actually represents 20 students and these are students who um

115had some significant learning needs and were recommended for in-school learning so there were only 20 students that were fully in person for most of the year the majority of our students in middle school or at least in six well all across sixth seventh and eighth grade were hybrid for most of the year the reason in grade eight that we do have great um a significant percentage of scores for students that were fully mostly in person and for hybrid is because our students in grade 8 returned to full in-person learning on january 25th and our students in seventh grade came back february 8th and then our students in sixth grade came back in march so fully in person is students who were in school 75 or more of the time hybrid represents students who are here

11625 to 75 of the time and mostly or fully remote is less than 25 and so we didn't have a significant number of students to report where you will see shaded in boxes that means that there were a few of 20 fewer than 20 students who took the test in person so it's too few um a subgroup for a score so i know that's complicated um this was from our preliminary data which we received this summer and i thought it was a good slide so that you could see that pretty you know well well everybody scores dipped in this year because of everything that we were living through we had less instructional time as a result of the pandemic social emotional learning we had the logistics of navigating kids zooming and logging on and hybrid

117and in person we really focused on math and and ela instruction in our middle schools and our high school as well we didn't have science labs so all of those things obviously impacted our scores but what you'll see is that from 2017 really to 2021 our scores did not change so significantly so these are the same two charts for ela and you'll notice the same pretty much the same trends and that same number in sixth grade and again for ela as well our scores are pretty much consistent a slight dip last year last spring so the next steps for us which is really the most important um these scores we we do analyze them we look for opportunities for program enhancement in terms of curriculum and professional development we identify specific students performing below goal

118for support in srbi we're utilizing our literacy interventionists for ins in class support for what we're calling boost groups and we're providing differentiated instruction particularly for those students that were approaching goal that that we want to um make sure that that we can move up their scores um we're prioritizing our professional development for mathematics in grade five if you will recall last year was the first year of our implementation of math and focus so our teachers were supposed to have professional learning in the spring of 2020 obviously that didn't happen um and and last year we had we had nobody coming in to our schools for professional learning so it just wasn't a focus we're also integrating interim assessment blocks as an essential component of our professional learning um so those are all of the

119things that are being done this year our next generation science assessment this is an online assessment for students in grades 5 8 and 11. there are 12 standalone items and six item clusters which is kind of a performance tasks students are answering a series of questions based on scientific phenomenon measure students performance across three dimensions disciplinary core ideas science and engineering practice and cross-cutting concepts again what you will notice here is that most of our students were fully mostly in person and then there were some students who were hybrid are too few students for anything to be scored on fully or mostly remote so this is fifth grade and these are students that have met or exceeded goal same with eighth grade and eleventh grade and then this chart represents each grade and the percentage

120of students that met or exceeded goal in 2019 which was the first year of the test and again last spring in 2021 so although our scores did dip as expected um they're they're still pretty strong considering the um shorter instructional time and the lack of labs in particular so i know that was a lot in a short amount of time i'm now going to turn this over to megan emanuelson our guidance counselor for 612. and then if you have any questions we'll take them at the end thank you julie can everybody hear me megan i think you'll need to speak just a little louder okay i will do my best mr jeanine is that better that is better thank you um thank you i'm so sorry i can't be there with you in person um

121and do appreciate the opportunity to present to you tonight and i will thank julie in advance for helping click through some of these slides we all know i'm not great at multitasking um so as we start to get into the high school data i do want to note that we're going to be talking about two different sets of sat data so first the connecticut sat school day which as you know is our state mandated test for juniors and then later in the presentation we're going to talk about national sat data this is an important note because it's actually reflective of two different cohorts of kids so the first being connecticut sat school day that will be presented is really our current seniors the class of 2022 who took the test this past spring the s.a.t

122data that will be presented later as part of the college admissions data is actually the class of 2021. so connecticut sat school day was given during the school day in march of 2021 the test assesses english and math there is no writing on the school day test it is a usable score for college admissions so that's been really helpful for our kids this year our juniors will take the test on march 30th of 2022. um julie next slide please so as julie mentioned the state of connecticut disaggregated the connecticut sat school day data as well based on our attendance records in psis so this slide shows you the different categories and the percentage of in-person days in each category julie described them earlier it also the numbers in parentheses are the numbers of our juniors

123who were classified in each of those um categories so as you can see the overwhelming number of our juniors 278 were considered in-person learners last year which is wonderful next slide please thank you um so this slide shows our derget districts across all three learning models so we were trying to do seven districts across three different learning models with two different scores so i'm hopeful that this is a concise way to represent the data but as you can see most districts did not have a comparable learning model to ours once again our juniors performed very well and the scores are consistent with past years next slide please thank you these are the percentages of students meeting level three or level four so level three is considered an adequate understanding level four is considered a thorough

124understanding this is in ela and once again you can see our students did extremely well next slide this is the same information for math okay next slide please um and then mr jeannie i'll pause here i don't know if you'd like to take board questions um at the end or just now for the state mandated before we move on to the college admissions so yeah i think that's a good time to pause and see what questions or comments the board has thank you both of you for the presentation and all the data thank you i'll open it up to board questions or comments mrs achman thank you mrs driller for the presentation i have a question i know that we can't use this data to to compare districts or to compare to last year but

125how is it helping us plan for the upcoming test taking what gaps are we seeing or or is there planned areas in which we know we need to help our kids um so where are we looking forward on this so so we don't get the actual we don't we don't see the tests we don't see how kids do but what really does help us is the interim block assessments that teachers can actually see students responses when they take the test we can analyze that we can see where the where the um strengths and weaknesses are and they're short there's two kinds there's there's um some that are about eight to ten questions and then there's focus um iabs so those are implemented this year throughout our curriculum um so that will help us along the

126way we they can be used as formative assessments or they can be used as teaching tools so we are embedding them in ela in right in mathematics and in our science instruction across all grades okay thank you thank you mrs just add to that these scores are actually serving as new baselines so when we first talked about the the testing cancellation the previous year and what testing was going to be this year they were the state was originally hoping they'd be able to use some predictive data to kind of insert a like a regression model to show this is how we think students whether performed this year and they were going to give us a growth target but they found that they were not able to do that with these scores because the data were

127so um saying volatile not in a bad way but just the way that you describe data that it just wasn't reliable enough in order to do what they hoped it would do so this is a fresh start for everyone with a new baseline that'll be used for a new growth target the following year thank you thanks chris this is karen thank you just before i ask my question i just want to say thank you to everybody who spoke tonight and we i heard i heard you and i pledged to do better and hope that we can work together to make a better safer environment for everybody moving on um i know that you said we don't get the data the individual data for each data point of you know comprehension listening for the the smarter

128balance is there a way that you can get a sense of what areas are most needing to be boosted or is there is there or just a lot more details right we can a little bit each content area is divided up into claims um and there are three claims for re for um ela three claims for math and we can look at whether students exceeded were near or at or were below so yes we can pull it out that way we can pull out subgroups so we do we do that kind of analysis and but but not specific targets right i'm just wondering if you see the you know where where our students tested maybe i also think it's really important that we acknowledge that these tests are a snapshot of a child's education and

129that this is not you know everyone really likes numbers but you can't really pin a number on a student and this is a snapchat and that's really important to remember especially at this point um i guess to again to mrs zachman's point is could you just give us a couple examples of where you think you might be you know what what is needed for professional development and what you think needs to be strengthened sure but differentiated instruction which is in our strategic plan is is an area of focus so um you know regardless of how kids scored we know that there are differences in some of the claims so that's something that we're providing targeted instruction and with the extra literacy interventionist that's been really helpful math in fifth grade is also another area for

130us as a science um we need to do some some professional learning on ngss and look at our units again and and think about you know how we are um addressing those three dimensions so that's that is all work that is ahead of us thank you thank you mr parent this is mccammon as a part of the review of the well first of all thank you for the data it was really interesting also to see how different learning environments impacted test scores for sure so thank you for disaggregating that um i'm curious to understand whether you've had to make any changes to your identification process i know this is just again a point in time as necessary a parent excuse me said um but are you finding that you have to be a little different

131about how you're identifying students who do need intervention that maybe you weren't expecting last year there are a few students who are not in srbi that that did not meet goal so yes those are students that we are are pulling um and again you know um we had less instructional time we were doing such a big focus on social emotional what kids were going through so we did anticipate that but those are the kids that are in our meets category and there's a there is a larger number okay so i'll just to be we're not casting a wider net to try to catch more students we have the same benchmarks and that we're using for entrance and exit criteria so while there might be more the way we're delivering the services so that the push

132in groups is one way where we're seeing students that are potentially on the cusp we want to make sure we're doing those pushing services before that they might qualify for pull out targeted instruction that way thank you thank you mrs mccammon mr ceni uh thank you for the data these are all averages um so and i'm pleased that there weren't large declines but when you look through the numbers was there any more variability if you will between the high and the low and if you looked at a medium versus average would you would you see anything different from these charts you know like i said there's certain grades that we notice certain things um but there are fluctuations every year so we pretty much remained remain steady except you know you can see the grades

133and the averages on the charts fifth grade math as i said eighth grade was another area but relative to other years you didn't see largely a lower level yeah thank you mr senior mrs stein um sorry my question is probably geared more towards mr dockham on the ngss particularly for 11th grade when you see the numbers anecdotally i know for a lot of high school students not being in a lab just the physically being remote was a barrier to learning so in terms of what you think about doing for this year is just being in person going to make a big difference do you think or you think it's more than that does that make sense i'm wondering if it's substantive or it's really just being remote not being able to do labs doing a

134lot of the science at home it seemed to me anecdotally was a lot more challenging than maybe some other subjects yeah yeah thank you um certainly the loss of lab time and the loss of our teachers abilities to provide some of those hands-on inquiry-based experiences last year uh would play a role um you know one of the science and engineering practices is planning and carrying out investigations and and so if students aren't able to do that um within the classroom in an assessment setting uh they may struggle with with that particular practice um it and also i think it it uh you know when we look at our testing window this particular assessment for our 11th graders came after three different rounds of ap assessments at the very end of uh an extremely trying year

135and uh and i i don't think we can um you know take that out of the equation uh you know especially for for our 11th graders but um certainly this year we're we're looking at science classes uh and when we go into science class we see a much more traditional um experience that our students are having right now thank you mr document thank you mr stein uh mrs achman um getting back to setting our new benchmarks if if we have new benchmarks being set this year and the state is okay with that and then we've talked as a board in terms of wanting to make sure that our rigor is still there are we really looking at still not identifying gaps and or remediation really into next year as well sorry we're changing the benchmarks

136we're not well you said they're going to be a new baseline right we're going to have a new baseline well this year's yes this year's are going to be our new baseline which we won't have that data till next year right correct and we are talking about increasing rigor rigor but we won't actually know if kids are meeting baseline until the experience of next year so do we anticipate some significant i won't put a claw front or some need for me remediation into next year i don't anticipate that the so while the test scores are baseline scores our benchmarks what we use for benchmark assessments those criteria are remaining consistent and the grade level standards are the grade level standards so our approach has been to stay on target with the standards and remediate for

137the lack of a a better description as we're going along but not just stop what we're doing with what the curriculum is to say okay we missed this we're going to do we're going to insert a unit here right now because that isn't the that isn't the experience that we're seeing that there's such a big gap in this one idea that we need to stop everything and remediate that idea so you'll remediate around the benchmarks take the test this year have new standards and then figure out if there's gaps in standards yeah so the benchmark assessments we use the targets are still the grade level targets um and that's that's when i meant when i said we're not casting a wider net we're not changing what a benchmark score is to determine if the student

138qualifies for intervention okay thank you so can i just get on to that we also throughout the year we have benchmark assessments we have our universal screeners we have formative assessments where we're seeing what kids are doing as they're learning and we can adjust right then and there so i would say that that is how we're ensuring that you know that kids are meeting the rigorous standards as opposed to what this is just is that the scale score for individual students is their benchmark which will be their individual growth target okay thank you thank you i think we can move to the next part two okay part two so we will shift gears away from the state mandated testing and talk about our college admissions testing as you likely know these tests are optional for

139students as they choose the exams that are the best reflection of their knowledge and their skills um so there certainly were some challenges with this type of testing last year the class of 2021 was not able to take the connecticut s.a.t school day as juniors in the spring of 2020 and all of the s.a.t and act tests from march through july of 2020 were canceled despite every nearly or maybe actually every college adopting a test optional policy last year we wanted to be sure that any of our seniors who wanted to take a standardized test were able to do so in advance of submitting their applications in the fall we were so pleased with district support to be able to arrange for an additional early fall act and sat available only to dhs seniors again

140in advance of those application deadlines so we were really proud to be able to give our students that opportunity next slide please so this is where on that shift in cohort that i referenced earlier happens so this slide is sat national data and is reflective of the class of 2021. so as you can see 60 percent of the class of 2021 took the sat at least one time and the way that college board reports this data is the data reflects the last score that a student took so not necessarily the best score or the average of the scores if a student took it multiple times so this is a three-year comparison and as you can see our students remain strong and consistent one small note whereas on the connecticut sat school day the english section

141is referred to as ela on the national data it is reported out as erw which means evidence-based reading and writing next slide please so as you can see dhs students continue to perform well above state and national averages and we will move on to advanced placement so ap exams are given in may of each year near the end of the ap courses they are designed to assess mastery of content in a subject-specific college-level curriculum the scores are reported on a one-to-five scale with a three being considered qualified to receive college credit most of these exams are two to three hours in length and a number of colleges have moved away from actually giving credit for these courses but many are still using them for placement purposes or to waive a requirement and the great news

142is recently the state of connecticut um anybody who's attending a connecticut state university and earns a three will receive college credit they've adopted that policy at the state level next slide please this is the list of 20 the 23 ap courses that we offered at the high school last year we also had students self-study for several additional exams in which we did not teach the courses being ap chinese ap psychology and ap physics 1 students do not need to be enrolled in an ap course in order to take the ap exam next slide please so as with all the other testing we referred to there were certainly some additional challenges to ap testing last year we were so proud our teachers and our students really rose to the occasion um instead of the traditional two-week

143testing window christian referenced college board offered exams over four separate administrations and i heard there was a secret fifth one spanning may through july this was intended we believe to give schools the flexibility in timing in terms of being able to increase instructional time if we felt we needed it and also to determine which format would be best suited for students so many of the exams were offered paper pencil but there were exams that were also offered in a digital format and um schools were able to to make the decisions um so we um schools were so in most cases the test would be paper or pencil the majority of our tests were administered paper pencil in administration one or two which really completed over the course of the month of may um we did

144complete a few tests digitally which you can see listed in that last bullet next slide please um this is our five year comparison um and as you can see the data has remained strong and consistent over time it is quite exceptional to have 89 of our tests receive at least a three um and and a large proportion of that being fours and fives um 2020 tests were were very different those were digital 45-minute tests so again a caution against direct comparisons with 2020. next slide please just a quick clarification on this slide and how to interpret it this is considered participation in ap exams so um if we take the 2021 column the row labeled black grad class indicates that in the class of 2021 61.9 percent of the class took an ap exam that

145scored a three or better sometime during their four years of high school the row that says four year um 12th grade indicates the percentage that scored a three on an exam during their senior year um the percentage that scored during the of our juniors that scored um and so and so on and so forth so that gives us a sense of really the percentage of the overall class that are earning a three on an exam next slide please moving on to act i had sincerely hoped to share the class of 2021 act score score profile with you but unfortunately that data is not yet available we did recently receive the class of 2020 results um and so we are including those and i'm happy to share the 21 profile with the board as soon as

146we receive them as you may know the att is scored on a 1-36 scale and has four sections english reading math and science with an optional writing section the composite score is the average of the four sections colleges and universities across the country standardly accept the act in place of the sat next slide please um so i did want to share with you the last five years of act data um from 2016 to 2020. um i think it shows how strong and consistent the scores have been over time i anticipate that the 2021 scores will follow a similar pattern and be just as strong next slide and finally these are our testing dates for 2021 2022 state mandated district-wide testing and we would love to extend a big thank you to our district and building

147teams for all of the hard work that they will do in successfully administering these tests to our students this year and finally i'm happy to take any questions about that data thank you so much everyone on the team here thank you so much that's a lot of data it's been a challenging year but thank you for uh a great presentation so i'll open up for board questions and comments are we good see what a great job you did thank you all thank you very much we'll look forward to additional data as it comes in and uh thank you again for the presentation much appreciated thank you good night thank you everyone thank you for all of you online appreciate it um we will move on to presentation and discussion on international field trip proposal for

1482022-2023 school year ms christina maurizio i will let you know that everyone on the board has their passports ready they're happy and thank you for continuing to kick it up a notch in terms of the opportunities that you're looking at for our students so um i appreciate all the detail that you go into in these presentations i think you've been here before and given us good detail as to how you approach this and what you do so we'd love to hear from you but also want to recognize the late hour uh of everyone that's here so but i'll turn it over to you for the exciting next phase of all the hard work you're doing okay thank you michelle should i share my screen or will you click through it we can do both okay

149let me just share my screen here one second [Music] and okay here we go um thank you so much uh good evening members of the board of education dr adley mr tramberg and members of our community my name is christina vasquez mauricio and i am chair of world languages for grade 6 through 12 for the darien public schools i'd like to start by commending the students that spoke this evening and thank you for your words and your bravery tonight thank you all for welcoming me to your meeting this evening i'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support of the world language department's global education and international travel program at durian high school i'm here this evening to present our trips for the spring of 2023 namely our language immersion trip to

150the uh to ecuador and the galapagos islands in april and the global leader summit to rome florence and bologna in the summer here's an overview of the agenda for my presentation as you mentioned most of the logistical points on here such as information about our partnership with ef safety on tour and accommodations and meals is the exact same as what i shared last spring when i presented our trips to spain and switzerland of the school year i felt it important to include this so that you can review it again at your leisure however to be respectful of your time i will spend most of our time together highlighting how we develop this phase of our program share the itineraries and take your questions the global education and international travel program aligns with our district's strategic

151plan and vision of the graduate in providing diverse learning experiences and exposing students to new perspectives by offering two types of trips we're able to open these experiences to all dhs students and give them an opportunity to have safe academic travel experiences that allow them to practice their language skills and their leadership skills with this in mind we conducted a travel interest survey of all 9th 10th and 11th grade families at the beginning of this school year and over 200 families responded 97 percent of respondent of respondents said they were very likely or likely to allow their child to travel next school year by beginning to plan now we as a department will have more time to plan the logistics of the trip and encourage our students to travel with us our families will have

152more time to consider these opportunities enroll in the trips and spread payments over a longer period of time which will make these experiences accessible to more members of the community as you know from my previous presentation perhaps through your own travels with your family when young people travel they come back changed and with a greater worldview educational travel experiences offer students the opportunity to make what they've been learning in class applicable in the real world and i will talk more about this and what it means when i go over the itineraries for our excursions for our trips to the galapagos and italy we have also partnered with education first the world leader in educational travel if you recall they're the same organization with which we are planning our language immersion trip to spain and our

153global leaders summit to switzerland this school year as you know the safety of our students is our number one priority while abroad ef safety and security protocols are one of the main reasons we have partnered with them again to help us plan our trips all the safety protocols reviewed in my previous presentation also apply to this trip i would like to draw your attention once more to ef's piece of my program and global travel protection this gives our program the flexibility to change the dates and destination of tours and uncertain times following guidelines from the department of state and the centers for disease control this will allow us to still travel even if we have to change the destination or the dates now for the fun part everyone's favorite part um our language immersion trip

154is a nine-day trip to ecuador and galapagos islands during the next school year's spring recess in april ecuador and galapagos received the highest number of votes on the survey we conducted in september upon our arrival we will spend two days touring quito ecuador's capital and visiting the equator and for the next four days we will visit the galapagos islands and explore the many wonders of the archipelago and we will spend two days in quito at the end and also visit otavalo a city nestled in the indian mountains and known for its artisan community before returning home oops before returning home here are some of our trip highlights not only will our students experience this region in spanish but they will also get to refine their inquiry-based science research skills and explore the diversity of this

155region while being led by an expert guide we will explore the colonial and modern parts of quito and literally be in two places at once when visiting the equator when we make our way to the galapagos islands themselves we will visit the charles darwin research station and learn about how the scientists there are saving the world famous galapagos tortoise from extinction the region is known for its lush and colorful flora and fauna and our students will have the opportunity to see the region's diverse species up close we will also visit the obama market and see the rich artistry of the region up close and learn the craft of local indigenous artists the second excursion i'm presenting this evening is ef's summer global leadership summit in july the global leaders summit is more than just the

156summit it is a week-long trek through italy where students will be spending a lot of time outdoors exploring and learning about sustainable environmental practices farm to table and how local ingredients are used and some of the most loved dishes in the world then students convene at the leadership summit itself and in the survey we conducted in september there were two tours to italy and this one received the highest number of votes in 2023 the summit's focus is sustainability but you will notice the strong interdisciplinary ties to history science and the study of latin dhs students will have the opportunity to travel through northern italy exploring food sustainability practices before eventually arriving in berlin while they will present their findings after an overnight flight to rome we will spend four days in the eternal city and

157in the vatican and then move on to florence bologna and milan before eventually arriving in berlin to attend the leader summit and at the summit students will meet up with other students their age that have been traveling through other parts of the world on their own research trips and present their findings there will be many keynote speakers who are world leaders in the sustainability space that students will have the opportunity to meet and network with as well some of the highlights we will see on our trip through northern italy uh aside from eating delicious food we will take an in-depth guided tour of rome's monuments and a walking tour of the vatican city which will include a privately guided tour of the sistine chapel while in florence in addition to visiting the city highlights we

158will take a traditional tuscan cooking class and tour the florentine markets we will then move on to the beautiful city of bologna and visit the university the oldest institution of higher learning in the world and tour the rest of the amelia romagna region to learn about their sustainable agriculture practices and of course visit the feco italy world which if you've ever been to the italy near the flat iron in manhattan this one is about 10 times bigger better and has an expositional focus that highlights how how italy is preserving its culinary history while also leading the way in combating world hunger through sustainability accommodations and meals the accommodations and meal arrangements that i presented at our previous meeting are the same for our time in ecuador and italy all of our hotel accommodations are centrally

159located in the cities we will be visiting and in safe areas they all meet ef's very high standards for safety quality and cleanliness and each hotel is at least three stars and each room has an ensuite bathroom and free wi-fi for guests because ef has local in-person staff in each destination country they are able to inspect hotel properties regularly to ensure that they continue to meet these safety standards season after season our meals on tour are designed to give our students an authentic and immersive culinary experience basically we eat how locals eat and in italy i don't mind that the price of the trip also includes all breakfast and dinners and while we do encourage students to partake in local cuisine we will of course accommodate any dietary restrictions or individual dietary needs and as

160mentioned in my previous presentations and in the field trip request forms christina i don't i don't want to interrupt a great presentation i think we have seen a lot of this uh this is the last slide yep thank you and this is the last one our board members have done their homework and reading through the package so is there anything you wanted to highlight here and then we'll we'll move to some questions questions thank you for a great presentation as always yeah uh thank you um the not really i mean i think i highlighted this in the last uh two presentations i did but for us the most important thing is obviously safety and we have an ef tour director that is actually with us 24 7. this is a person that meets us in

161the airport um at the location when we finally get there and they stay with us throughout the remainder of the trip they travel with us they're taking the same modes of transportation as we are and this is one of the greatest benefits of of traveling with them is this dedicated person that is with us the entire time um and the nature of these trips um especially to the galapagos islands and because the summer leadership summit has the summit in itself in berlin that educational programming which involves you know visiting the science centers taking those excursions taking classes those are all included as well great thank you so much uh really great job on organizing this and uh and presenting it and thanks for all the hard work you're doing behind the scenes you've taken this

162to the next level thank you so much um to uh board members that want to be chaperones and then [Laughter] this is richie i will definitely be a chaperone um i just wanted to thank you christina i thank you for expanding our children's classroom beyond the borders of darien it's very important for our learners to realize that there was a there's a world beyond our borders and bringing them to these interesting and different communities and worlds is very important to that so i thank you and thank you for all the work that you put into the presentation thank you thank you this is richie any other board comments or questions terrific well thank you so much um again just appreciate the detail and all that you're doing for this program thank you chris thank you

163christina thank you dr emily thank you all i mean the same thing obviously these are phenomenal programs and just just absolutely in line with the district mission and vision and all the discussion we had tonight actually this is the cabin do they want to vote to go on the trip it's not after action [Music] i did not have it presentation and discussions that's okay that doesn't mean it can go through the normal process it can come back again that's that's fine yeah that's fine i don't see any need to vote all right good thank you again thanks mrs mccann um we'll move along to discussion and possible action on the 2022-2023 federal consolidated grants mr tranberg and mr rudel good evening again everyone there is a brief memo in the packet that provides an overview

164of the consolidated federal grant allocations for titles one two three and four these funds are based on the census poverty data estimates each year titles one two three and four are being used similarly as they have been in the past um the only piece of note that is a bit different is in title four there's some funds earmarked to support the implementation of any support we might need with the gifted education program review and potential consulting services to support moving network forward but other than that you're seeing similar similar items that have been in the grant like there's a staffing interventionist that is tied to title one title two is professional development also some of our tc partnership is in there and title three is related to supporting our english learners thank you mr tranberg

165questions or comments from the board you're right may have a motion to approve the allocation of the expenditures in title one two three and four uh mrs achman second by mrs stein all in favor that is unanimous thank you thank you for that presentation um we'll move on to presentation and uh preliminary discussion of regular board of education meetings for the 2022 calendar year dr adley yep so the calendar is as before you the january date through the june date on the left-hand side we have previously approved those so you're really looking to approve on the right-hand side july 26 through december any questions or comments on a preliminary discussion on the board calendar all right mrs parent just my only comment is if election day is the eighth and then the the that would

166be the organizational meeting would be on the ninth is that close is that i don't know it's just the organizational day doesn't have to be on the ninth if you're it doesn't happen today or it wasn't ready but okay it typically is but it doesn't happen right okay no but good point thank you thank you mr all right any further conversation on that we'll move along preliminary discussion of the 2022-2023 budget meeting calendar dr adley so again um it's been a revised accordingly and i'm happy to listen to board input as to there's any suggestions or otherwise i think this is an initial look at it um we've got to work with our partners on other boards and committees i know we've had some discussion over the course of the year making sure these dates

167work making sure that is the right amount of time in between our discussions and discussions that other boards and committees have to make and making sure there's time to get questions answered so we can take any questions or thoughts this evening but i would like to the board to spend some time on making sure everyone feels good about this budget calendar and any other feedback or comment that we need to get from our partners on board of finance and the rtm subcommittees also mrs achman so the only thing i would say is historically um our board of educa our regular board of education meeting seems to fall on the same tuesday as the board of finances discussion and so we always end up changing our schedule last minute or asking them to do it maybe

168this year if we can just make sure that we're on opposite tuesdays for everyone's ease that would be better doing it in advance good point thank you okay good um we will move along before you yes sorry mr c i'm sorry the 27th sorry the february 1st tuesday the 27th we have a public hearing that's our and then it says final budget review is needed so it's not just going to be a public hearing close the meeting we're going to have an ability to react to the problem yes okay thank you good good point thank you so to clarify you typically have a hearing then we have a meeting on our budget yes so i mean i guess there could be something that in that meeting you could react but you'd have to warn your

169agenda that way yes okay good point yep good i understood okay thank you both yes this is the cameron on the question of the hearing i know this is the schedule we traditionally use but again this year uh the the hearing was the same night as our final cut list um and so do we want to take a look at moving the hearing any earlier so that we have time to respond to ads or cuts from the parent community with a little more flexibility yes and i think any other comments like that i would appreciate if you all send them in to me and then we'll accumulate them for discussion at the next board meeting good thank you mrs mckenna um we will move along to further discussion and possible action on proposed revised board

170of education policies um i will not read through all of them now but when we do the motion i will i will open it up for any questions or comments i know this is sion and mrs stein have worked hard on this and i think we're at a good place but board questions or comments yeah barring any other questions i don't think marjora i've received any since the last meeting so i would say we're ready to vote okay anyone has any questions good luck yes mr ray i raised i raised the policy that said we had to be meet in person but i guess is that what you're meeting with on friday 95. so marge do you want to explain because i brought that up to marge and this policy is revised first we're then

171going to revise that that's in our next batch perfect thank you john raised a policy that needs to now be updated which is on our next batch so okay okay everyone on the board clear on that okay good they will move forward may have a motion to approve uh revised board of education policies uh policy 1075 green cleaning protocols policy 1200 use of school facilities policy 1225 visitors policy 1250 school volunteers student interns and other non-employees policy 5175 bullying prevention and intervention policy 5220 student discipline proposed new board policy 9280 student representation on the board of education policy 9310 meeting conduct and policy c-19-1 health and safety i have a motion to move those forward mrs ritchie second by mrs stein all those in favor that is unanimous thank you very much um moving along

172discussion and possible action on a request um for the board of selectmen to appoint is that right the board of selectmen yes that is right okay possible action and a request for the board of selecting to appoint the board of education okay to serve as building committee for the royal school roof replacement right okay um appoint sir the board of vacation all right well i'm just reading through this first appoint the board of education to serve as building committee for the royal school roof replacement project authorized the board of education to apply to the commission of education to accept or reject such a grant for the royal school of roof replacement and authorize at least the preparation of the schematic drawings and outline specifications for the proposed royal school roof replacement project so any questions

173or comments around that okay so may i have a motion request a motion to request the board of selectmen of the town of darian to authorize the darian board of education to apply to the commissioner of education to accept or reject such a grant for the royal school roof replacement project mr brown second by mrs ritchie all in favor thank you that is unanimous he did this little backwards i apologize may i have a motion to request the border selectment of the town of darien to appoint the board of education to serve as the building committee for royal school roof replacement um mr brown second by mrs ackman all those in favor that is unanimous and may have a motion to authorize uh for at least preparation of schematic drawings and outline specifications for the

174proposed royal school roof replacement project mrs stein second by mrs parent all in favor good thank you very much um dr adley adjustment to the 2021-2022 calendar for the hindley school makeup days mr lynch thank you by the way for being there appreciate it yes thank you mr lynch thanks for staying up with us no problem see you all later all right so this is a proposal to make up the two henley days and the proposal is we have two professional development days on january 14th and february 18th our inclination would be to split those days into two half days half days for students and have professional development days for our staff there is no requirement of how long a school day uh needs to be uh you need to make sure that you have

175900 hours in 108 days uh so the length of day we will work out um just basically be two half days for the most part and that's that that's the proposal that honestly we're just looking at those two half days for children during the year are gonna be much more productive than two half days at the end of the year in june just relatively as simple as that all right questions comments all right um may have emotion um [Music] nope no motion all right moving along review of foialog uh miss scion um we agreed some time ago on a regular basis to review the foia log so i will turn over to you miss siam um i have one correction uh to this um i got a request uh for 5 9 2019 uh for

176mr palin that the request was that it should dignify that he was part of the board of finance officially as he was requesting that i wasn't here during that time but a review of the correspondences back then suggested that that should have been made so i'm happy to make that adjustment accordingly thank you let ms scion present this and then we'll go to questions if that's all right good thank you mrs parent i mean i don't have really much to say except that from the time that we started this what you can see over the past year or so is more what you would expect in the ordinary course of business okay yes and also at some point maybe at the end of the discussion i'd like to get the feel from the board because

177it talks about an annual review of this and moving forward would you like an annual review of where we sort of left off this time um as opposed to the you know going the whole way back uh i the practice i wasn't sure of of what we've been doing to be honest with you and we haven't done an interview since i've been here uh given covert and whatnot you could review it annually then the next year it should be from there right definitely that seems i think what people are sorry about that okay all right mrs parents thank you i was just gonna clarify and this happens to me all the time that i am not the parent that says parent i had a couple people saying that you requested a lot and so just

178to clarify i did not request money for it good point thanks for clarifying that good point all right thank you um further discussion on the board of ed curriculum committee mr tranberg um i think dr eileen i touch base real quickly i think what we need to do is clarify what the board decided on uh during our conversation around curriculum as some of the things i heard this evening in public comment i want to make sure people fully understand that after a lot of discussion a lot of good feedback and comments from the public the board decided and voted on forming a curriculum committee which is a subcommittee of the board of ed and on that committee are board of ed members so that is what was decided on and that's what we're moving forward

179with at this point in time again we will continue to lessen we will continue to work with everyone to see how that goes we'll get that organized in short order mr tranberg has some updates for us here we're talking you know amongst the board as to what that looks like and who's on it um so we'll move forward but again if there's something else we need or something else we need to look at in terms of at the district level there was a conversation around that we'll look at it and we'll have that conversation but just to be clear a curriculum committee was agreed and voted on to be established which is a subcommittee of the board of ed that will be um people from the board of ed will be on that committee all

180right dr edward no i just uh we just delineated a little bit of uh what typically that might entail and i won't go over it you could certainly can read the main points of pleasure um we outline what a typical outline might look like that doesn't preclude board members uh and the subcommittee uh asking for for different presentations or otherwise and then we just took the liberty just to propose a schedule uh that we saved would start december i proposed january before but we could do it starting in december um it would have to check the dates and we'll we'll revisit it after the after the election and um but we just sort of like tried to outline a process i will open up to board questions comment this is stein um so um chris

181in looking at this with the subcommittment meetings are you envisioning every subsequent board of ed meeting that be brought and updated are you going to consolidate and bring them less frequently like how do you envision the subcommittee rolling up into the board presentations i would anticipate they'd be consolidated in the the proposed master calendar for this year there aren't as many um curriculum updates as there are curriculum subcommittee meetings so it is it looks more like um one curriculum update for every one board event presentation for every two subcommittee meetings about their they're about thank you thank you mrs stein any other questions or comments around this thank you mrs richie um thank you chris i really appreciate this work and i just wanted to mention that i support our teachers i support their autonomy

182and i support giving them everything that they need and uh making sure that we don't micromanage so i i'm fine that this committee is in place but i don't i want it to be a high level discussion i don't want to micromanage our teachers i don't want to ask them to give us their lesson plans so i just wanted to make that clear at this point i i'd like to see how diversity equity inclusion is being tied into our curriculum i don't know if that's happening at this curriculum committee level i think it should i denounce all acts of hatred and words of hatred and and i think we have a lot of work to do in this community and i think it doesn't have any place in our community it doesn't have any place

183in our schools and it doesn't have any place in our world so this is important work i hope this curriculum committee has diversity equity and inclusion as part of it and we need to start that work now i'm disappointed that we haven't done anything yet i don't know why we haven't done anything yet but i heard those students tonight i'm with you i support you and i will support you now and when i'm off the board and i think as a community we have to do better thank you mrs richie any other thoughts or comments i think this is a great first draft i think we all agree this is a living breathing document that we'll continue to adjust and build upon and once we get things up and running um in a couple of

184weeks uh it'll be important to continue to get feedback from the community also this is pam i was just just gonna say you know to one of the comments that we heard tonight just that whoever is on the subcommittee and i'm sure mr trump and dr adley will ensure that special education is built into each one of these uh topics thank you for that point mrs parent anything else board questions or comments good all right thank you very much um we'll move along to further discussion and possible action on board master agenda for august 2021 through february 2022 so the adjustments here have been uh i think we've included now the adjustments that the board wanted to see which is the enrollment report uh the effort of the foia log and the other items that

185were mentioned at the last board meeting mr j yes mrs ackman um given all we heard tonight and last board meetings um kind of question and back and forth on immediate midterm and long-term responses to diversity equity inclusion and what we've heard from our students tonight where on the master agenda will we hear updates on what actions are being taken in schools well unless unless i specifically said here it would only come through my announcements that's the only place it would be unless it came to come through curriculum discussions and so on but that that might be more isolated in many ways so unless there's a separate agenda item here we only come through the superintendent's announcements so so given what we heard tonight i would suggest um that the board consider making in some

186regular updates and benchmarks of where we are what we've done so far i mean we've done that i see one on september i mean we had one september 14th but i think what we've heard is why aren't you acting so as a board i believe the members up here would like to act and so we'd like to know what the administration is doing i would suggest on a more regular basis thank you mrs zachman mrs mccammon could that be incorporated is that already incorporated in the strategic plan and if if not could it be incorporated um since it is a discrete set of work oh would we answer that that would be definitely part of the strategic plan update yes my thought would maybe be more explicit given what we heard this evening thank you

187um mrs ritchie i agree i think it it needs to be more prominent on the master agenda it needs to be highlighted and discussed more and i don't want it stuck in the strategic plan discussion thank you mrs ritchie um i agree with all those comments i think based on what we heard and the conversation that's going on in the community i think we need to define it a little more throughout the course of the year i will tell you dr adley and i have had conversations about organizations that he's working with that i reached out to different things like that and what i asked dr adley to do in short order is also come to the board um and make a presentation in in terms of outlining what organizations were talking to and what

188those organizations would bring to the table and how that would look i honestly think we need some help outside of our district and our community and those are some of the things that the administration is looking at and researching right now we've also had those conversations with the first selectmen and and other leaders in town too so we'll get organized around that and i think that's a good kicking off point as to what we're looking at and how we're doing it and then that should build into kind of a calendar of events and how we're going to roll this out mrs stein can i just add to that can you in your sort of global look at this can you make sure you incorporate the extracurricular workshops at the high school in particular for athletes

189i i would like to express my dismay at the fact that fall athletes juniors and seniors are not even having the training until end of october which is two-thirds of the way through their season we heard from students tonight we've heard from parents athletics is part of this discussion too you have a captive audience there of parents and students and i think it needs to be more robust and it needs to be reviewed because it you know and for the winter athletes were given a date at the end of january i just don't think that's acceptable if it really is supposed to be part of your training pre-season it's it's not happening that way so thank you mr stein would the board like to see kind of an update at the next meeting where we

190incorporate at least some tentative dates of where we're gonna have more deeper dive on this discussion and not take action this evening on this calendar yes okay all right thank you everyone um we will move forward to action items personnel items uh miss scion so we continue to have some resignations and new hires of non-certified staff we did unfortunately have a resignation of a certified staff member that happened too late um to include in this report we'll put it next time and there's a rumor of another person because i think as we've been hearing education is not an easy business these days thank you very much um may have a motion to approve the personal item report as detailed um in the report dated october 12 2021 mr ceni uh second by mrs stein all

191those in favor that is unanimous thank you um michelle we will go back to your steady hand on public comment is there anyone in person that would like to make public comment before we move to our friends on zoom yes sure please thank you julie pottershield 23 fifth avenue i'm the mother of one of the speakers tonight try not to emotional but i really hope you did hear them today i hope that you know that we as parents will be holding you accountable for action and change now is the time for the culture to change it's it's unacceptable it's been happening as long as it has and i just really hope that you did hear them i can hear from what you're saying thank you for making sure that's being present on the master agenda

192i'm going to be addressed going forward so thank you for hearing them and julie thank you very much michelle we'll move over to zoom if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon on the bottom of your zoom screen next click the raised hand option the facilitator will identify you please state your name and address you will have up to three minutes to comment do we have anyone on zoom that would like to make public comments there are no race hands at this time okay thank you michelle thank you everyone uh in person thank you to the students and some of the alumni uh thank you to everyone on zoom again we're listening we heard a lot this evening thanks for the dialogue thanks for the conversation from a public

193perspective and also from the board table too appreciate it thank you um and have a good evening motion to adjourn mrs stein second by mr ceni all those in favor that's unanimous the