001good evening everyone thank you for joining us i would like to call this regular meeting of the board of education to order the next regular board of educating meeting is on tuesday um tuesday one this does not happen what's that 28th um at 7 30 in the board meeting room so thank you um good evening everyone thank you all for joining us this evening uh in person and on zoom we have a full house here and we have a full house online and we have some folks outside that when it comes time for public comment we'll work those people in we just have to be cognizant of um spacing and distancing in the boardroom so i want to thank all those parents and community members that have sent emails and letters to the board providing
002comments and thoughts all those emails are shared with the full board and the administration i want to thank everyone for being engaged and thank you for those that are going to speak this evening we continue to be a district that is recognized for our commitment to in-person learning and working together to have the right protocols in place for a safe learning environment for our students teachers and staff we are going to stay focused on that safe learning environment for our teachers students and staff and as previously mentioned we are operating under the governor's executive mandate which includes a mask mandate this executive order unless extended expires on september 30th we will continue to monitor that and keep the community informed as things change we appreciate all the communities thoughts around masks and will continue to
003work with the state and local health professionals as this potentially changes the agenda tonight includes topics of curriculum and also diversity equity and inclusion very important topics that are and continue to be part of the district and the board's work these topics are worked on and discussed daily and have been part of the great work done by the strategic plan committee that includes people from across our community the board and the administration is appreciative of the recent parent concerns related to curriculum this is not just a local but state and national issue and there's a heightened awareness around a lot of these topics am i almost eight years on the board the board has always been involved and plays a role in the oversight of curriculum we ensure the district the state mandates and balances
004our community values in educating our students we are provided regular updates on our curriculum and it is available online our professional team uses the curriculum test textbooks and online resources that work with the curriculum we'll hear more all about that this evening from dr adley and mr tranberg we value the incredible administration and teachers that dedicate their careers with incredible passion especially during this pandemic to making sure we create an environment of educated critical thinkers that are prepared for college a profession and to be influential members of our society i do think it's critical that this board and the community see the value of our professional educators day-to-day day-to-day and having them have their creativity and autonomy in reaching the district's educational goals we are a high-performing district recognized not just at the state level
005but nationally almost on an annual basis we are doing so many things right there is always room for discussion and we always want to hear from our students parent and community tonight we'll begin the discussion with the administration on curriculum as part of a normal board update but also to educate and listen to the community we'll also start to hear about the administration's work on diversity equity and inclusion these discussions will continue at a regular or at additional special board meetings our goal is to listen learn help educate work with the community and make sure we all feel and see the transparency in our educational process i would end with two requests one is understanding and helping everyone to understand the chain of command in our schools i think it's important that people understand the
006incredible administrators that are in our elementary schools our middle school and our high school there's assistant principals there's teachers there's principals there's psychologists there are so many people to speak to and understanding the chain of command we will help do a better job of communicating that but please understand that as you have challenges with your child you have questions it's the teacher it's the school it's the assistant principal it's the principal you always have the opportunity to reach out board members to reach out to the administration but it really should start with your students teacher and work up from there the other ask is while social media is part of our lives having the facts the context and asking the questions of the professionals will make sure we all stay on the same page we
007have an incredible administration and team of teachers and a dedicated group of nine volunteers on this board working to ensure we continue to be a high performing district preparing our students for the real world and its challenges i want to thank you again for always participating for all the feedback we do this as a community keeping our kids in school safe and healthy so thank you very much uh moving on we will move on to public comment so michelle we will work public comment with the folks in the audience first and then once we are finished with the folks in the audience our gentleman outside will tag the next person in line that can come in and speak and we'll have people come through that way i think it's the most efficient way to do
008it and then we'll move to our friends on zoom so um we're good michelle so i'll ask the first person that wants public comment please step up to that chair and that microphone and michelle you'll go over the rules of engagement for public comment good evening if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon on the bottom of your zoom screen if you're joining us via zoom next click the raised hand option you will notice a blue hand icon appear on the upper corner of your screen where your face name and 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
009three minutes to comment thank you sir go ahead um this is for alan uh what restrictions do teachers have on polling our students about their so sir i'm not sure we'll we can educate everyone on public public comments we just hear your public comments it's not a question and answer session so if you could also just start out with your name and your address and joe martin i live at 13 little brook road thank you okay then my comment is that i'm sick and tired of my daughters crying every night after homework assignments and in class assignments because they're being outed as conservatives okay i'm conservative my wife's conservative i'm proud conservative i'm sick and tired it ends now simple as that okay enough's enough we will not stand by as a free country my
010father escaped communism fascism to come here for free speech and build his own free life and my my maternal grandparents are the same from italy so i'm done i'm sick and tired this is not education it's indoctrinate indoctrination simple as that there's no other way you can spin it it's going to end now thank you thank you mr martin next person from the audience thank you just please yeah adjust the mic as you see fit thank you i'm amy zerby and i live at nine more house drive i'm coming to speak to you tonight to tell you about my children's experience at the darien public schools i currently have a sophomore and senior and my kids have been attending the darien public school since kindergarten i showed my senior the recent facebook post of a
011board of ed candidate and asked them if they ever experienced what the candidate was alleging and their response was lol no the history teachers were very insistent on not telling the students their political ideology last year one of my children as well as a few of yours was lucky enough to take american history during one of the most turbulent and exciting times in recent history my child was excited to tell me about what they were working on in class they had open-ended projects on 2020 events as well as world war ii topics and discuss the january 6 siege on the capitol building opinions ranged from the far left to the far right with no jeering from the students nor criticism from the teacher since a few of your children took this class last year i
012am certain that you would have shared your concerns with us this year a number of parents have complained about the way race and politics are being taught is this a 180 from how these topics were previously discussed or is there something else at play like politics politicians have been playing on people's fears on topics such as critical race theory gender identity and indoctrination in order to pass legislation that limits what can be taught in schools across connecticut i see prospective board of ed candidates using this method in hopes of getting elected which is the case here in darian parents are being conditioned to scrutinize class materials for any hint of critical race theory and diversity equity and inclusion last friday i heard that there was a group of people gathered at a board of ed
013building this board of ed building so i went down to check it out i approached a group of people and asked them what was going on they didn't know but said that someone texted them asking them to show up i was able to glean that there was a parent who wanted to speak with the administration about how crt is being taught in the schools however it is unclear if that was the case it is apparent that these people were asked to show up purely for the appearance of support smoke and mirrors political theater the schools need to prepare our children for life after they leave the darian schools and bubble the board of ed recently unanimously passed the darian public school strategic plan for 2021-2026 as you know this plan includes the portrait of the
014graduate and a vision of core values including wellness collaboration diversity inclusion equity excellence innovation respect and civility i strongly support this strategic plan and agree that the implementation will prepare our students for a successful life after high school i am concerned that the vocal minority of frightened parents will have a negative impact on the outcomes of our children's education and i urge you to rise above politics and not be swayed amy i didn't catch the street address nine more house drive thank you mr zurby do i have anyone else from the audience thank you [Music] teresa vote 22 circle road explore interests outside of my comfort zone i use perspective taking inquiry and synthesis skills to better understand others i engage respectfully with individuals in groups whose thinking is different from my own i courageously
015seek to move beyond personal bias and social constructs these are just a few of the tenants stated in our vision of the graduate a vision that was voted on and approved on june 22nd by those board members present that day with the lone descent from david brown i am the parent of a dhs graduate and a current dhs senior my college sophomore spoke to me the year she took ap long gov about a pew survey the class took that showed where you currently land on the political spectrum the survey is given as a way to teach the students about how one's views of the world are most often informed by their personal bias and experiences no judgments no shame no discomfort it was simply a lesson my current high school senior told me that last
016year he too received the graphic that many seem so upset about tonight according to him the graphic is used as a resource to help inform a more balanced and well-rounded view of a current or historical event that he and his peers were encouraged and often required to cite primary sources from every point of view no judgments no shame no discomfort simply a lesson [Music] that said there will be times that children will be made to feel uncomfortable they will be presented with points of view that may differ from what they learn at home they may find that they have vastly differing points of view and values from their friends but this is what their education is all about because ultimately it is about learning to think critically and learning to question understand and accept it
017is about becoming responsible and thoughtful global citizens when they enter the next stage of their lives it is the vision of our graduate friday's protests and the outcry on social media from parents are actually the antithesis of that vision if anything these protests border on censorship and they are a part of a larger strategy nationwide that uses the education of our children as a political pawn i have seen emails from friday's protesters who are questioning the discussions around pronouns and religion these are the topics that are relevant to what is happening in the world around us and very much in the lives of our students in fact every college i am currently looking at with my son asks what parent pronouns do you use and how do you identify yourself our schools are the success
018that they are because of the professionals who research and implement curriculum because they push our kids to think critically and accept all views i am speaking tonight because i cannot idly sit by as others seek to undermine those professionals and instill fear in others for their own political gain thank you mrs vogt anyone else from the audience [Music] kate bates 33 ridgely street in darien um hello everybody i know many of you here and i finally found my way to the boe building so clearly i don't come here often um dr adley and members of the board thank you for taking the time to hear us tonight as many of you are aware i met with dr adley and mr tramberg on friday to discuss an incident that happened in my daughter's 11th grade history
019class in the early days of this school year i am grateful to dr adley mr tranberg for taking the meeting and i am also grateful to the more than 70 parents who showed up at the board of education building to show their support and concern that morning there were no protests it was literally women having a cup of coffee and being there that's it so misinformation i want to start tonight by saying that i firmly believe no one in this district has ill intentions for our children i believe everyone involved is trying to do the right thing we all want our children to be open-minded to respect others and to think for themselves i believe we are all striving to create an educational environment that feels safe for everyone is rooted in inclusivity and tolerance
020and i feel confident that if we can maintain an open dialogue between parents teachers the administration and the board the best possible outcome will be achieved for our students i have raised a stepdaughter who has gone through darien high school i have a junior and i also have a seventh grader and i have the utmost respect for this school for their teachers and i have never raised my hand to complain about anything i send them to school and truly believe they are in safe hands this is the first time i have seen something that really raised a red flag and i i knew that i needed to say something and uh i i definitely went through it with my family with my parents we looked at it and we just felt no something's wrong my
021daughter came home from school upset confused she was told to stand up and write after taking a pew survey that was then sent to the pew research center and she was given a diagram that none of it even she didn't understand any of it it was so completely skewed now if they were handed this as satire and told to look at it in that way okay that's fine but they weren't they were clearly given a red and blue diagram that said left and right and i don't think it was flattering to either side so to me this is a bipartisan discussion i'm curious how the curriculum got into her hands i'm curious why they were told to take a binary survey that i couldn't answer i challenge all of you to answer it i challenge
022you by the end of this board meeting to take a look at it read it answer all the questions and then go up on the board and write whether you're a dare a democrat or a republican you're you're at time mr speaker oh so to to finish up ultimately if 16 year olds are forced to do this and we don't want to do this it really shouldn't be there and i hope we can have um some a chain of communication and protocol and some oversight on the curriculum and that's all i'm asking and i appreciate your time thank you hello my name is nancy herget and i'm at 30 tower lane all curriculum-based education should have checks and balances transparency a point of reference to evaluate to always improve more than a few complaints justify
023this action to resolve when repetition occurs repetition of unwarranted situations it requires a discussion an action and an evaluation many complaints have been brought to teachers over the years we have been in the darien school system since 2001. we're almost hitting 20 years and i still have a 7th grade so we have quite a vast experience of interacting with many teachers department chairs and things like that some issues get resolved by teachers most do that i have personally had with my kids teachers complaints to department heads department chairperson superintendent even board of ed and as of late i haven't seen or heard any plan to resolve and change what is happening on a daily basis weekly basis monthly whatever it is in the classrooms if anything it seems like more problems are escalating biased leading
024opinionated teaching is inexcusable inappropriate and wrong you might say oh we don't want that or condone that kind of teaching we all don't want that and i realize that but i'm telling you it's happening and it's out there and it's in classrooms not in every classroom but it's there and when you are told what happens to the teacher or instruction that's given to the department heads what what happens what's to be done all good educators know that it is possible to be a great teacher while eliminating your opinion specifically on politics religion voting money income unless that class was specifically selected by the student which usually occurs in the older high school grades it's not anyone's business at this level age for schooling it says on your website which i value tremendously under rules and
025responsibilities of the board of ed quote you are the foundation of accountability close quote i honor this we teach our kids to honor this to be accountable for your choices and your actions how come i am not seeing this happen regularly accountability for teachers for anybody that might do something small that's wrong but there's not been much accountability accountability is justified when an issue is resolved the state of connecticut education curriculum for middlesex and high school levels is clear i couldn't find anywhere where it says to eliminate textbooks for us history in our classrooms nor can i find anywhere where it says pick a prominent person you're almost at pick a prominent person in u.s history pick him apart only use two references of information to prove that that said individual was a bad person
026any young 11 and 14 year old who is given negative resources will conclude that that invitation that that individual was bad this is you're at time thank you thank you thank you for listening my name is natasha tomai i live at 6 mclaren road south and i was part of the group of 60 or 70 parents who gathered here outside of the building on friday morning there was not one of us who did not know the reason we were here the reason we were here is that there was exposure to very polarizing material in the high school there were questions asked of 11 11 year old girls to identify their gender there's discussions about religion and each one of us had a concern of having politics religion sexual preference or identity kept out of the
027classroom if at some point these um if politics come into the classroom my recommendation would be make it an elective um you know in the 11th grade and 12th grade there is a reason um and and the age sensitivity is a big piece here an 11 year old being asked to identify as a he she is a very difficult question to answer um at 11 i mean imagine going home and your parents having to figure out how to explain why that question was asked i think as parents we need resources so that we're prepared to answer those types of questions um so the age sensitivity sensitivity piece is something the elective piece there should be non-partisan material introduced into the classroom we should have some oversight again the accountability piece where does the buck stop
028i read the letter in response dr adley's letter responding to our questions he did not answer the question of whether or not there was booing going on in the classroom which i've been told that there was what kind of teacher allows kids to be booed for declaring a political party who are actually underage minors who don't have a political party there is a reason that our children cannot vote drink die for the country until they're 18 their brains are simply not developed enough to make those types of decisions so introducing inflammatory material framing it in a certain way and then asking them to publicly declare their positions on those topics is incredibly inappropriate there needs to be accountability we need and i don't know if it's through freedom of information or what to be able
029to see the material like that diagram that was handed out i want to see those types of things before they go out the parents should be prepared to field these questions when they come home and politics quite frankly should be kept out of the classroom if kids want to talk about current events outside of their homes and their peer group they can take that as elective i can turn my tv off i can choose what i read in the morning i can choose what i listen to i can walk away my boss never asked me what my party i belong to okay if he did i would be shocked he never asked me what religion i was either or what my sexual preferences were but if i'm in an 11th grade classroom i have to
030listen to that i can't turn my tv off i can't turn the radio off so don't expose our kids to things that that they don't need to be listening to at this age that that responsibility lies within the parents thank you thank you very much good evening my name is todd herget i live at 30 tower lane i'm going to pick up where my wife left off the state of connecticut education curriculum for middle school and high school levels is clear i couldn't find anywhere where it says eliminate textbooks for u.s history nor can i find anywhere where it says pick a prominent person in u.s history pick him apart or her apart use only two references of information to prove that said individual was a bad person any young 11 to 14 year old
031who is given negative resources will conclude that the individual was bad speaking specifically about the history curriculum it is about learning facts people places events in the past you cannot change what was already happened what has already happened you can learn from it about it personal choices that affected history this is called a foundation when you're old enough age-appropriate discussions debates can occur only if you have a solid foundation of knowledge if you present an idea a topic a person when there is no foundational knowledge secured and you ask students to dig deeper be more critical thinkers of of sorts by reading bias leading resources then you are actually grooming the students in an abusive educational way this kind of teaching has no good intentions but to form opinions and lead them down a groomed
032path this has no place in our school system nor should it be left in place in our curriculum to continually distract bully plant dark ideas negativity pessimism of thoughts and ideas even images from photos or movies when using these resources or by allowing teachers to continue to teach in this manner and not take appropriate action on the curriculum we all need more goodness in our lives our kids need more positivity and light while they are young and impressionable through high school we all do let me just reiterate that we've lived in this community for over 20 years and we've had six children go through the public school systems one of the reasons why we sought out this community was for the exceptionality of the schools and that begins here and that continues as well in
033the homes the two most important groups in education are parents and educators and there's a real need that there be clear transparency and accountability and maybe now is one of those times where that needs to be stressed more than ever more than ever we're grateful for the service that you render on behalf of our students and thank you for your time thank you mr god anyone else in the audience like to speak can we see who's alan who's checking the door see if there's anyone outside who would like to come in thank you yes [Music] nobody outside okay there are people outside great okay no i just want to check and there'll be public comment toward the end thank you everyone that's in the audience for speaking michelle i'll turn it over to you in
034our world of zoom john dunn you are unmuted and recognized good evening my name is john dunn and i live at 175 raymond street it was upsetting to hear that within days of our time mr dunn could you just speak up a little louder please yes of course my apologies so much my name is john dunn i live at 175 raymond street it was upsetting to hear that within days of returning to the classroom darien high schoolers were being subjected to divisive teaching material in an american studies course as a parent i found it heartbreaking as an 11th grader was brought to tears after being booed simply for expressing her political beliefs to her fellow classmates is this type of inflammatory teaching and behavior occurring on a regular basis in our classrooms in addition to
035this the unempathetic and tone-deaf response from superintendent adley was equally troubling in his closing comments in his response to the parents and i would encourage all those listening to read his entire email superintendent adley stated quote i would hope during these challenging times that we will be respectful in our discourse to one another end quote if the very graphic that started all of this was far from respectable and at best place to untrue biased and ignorant stereotypes and how is a respectful discourse when a student leaves the classroom in tears in my view that sounds more like school-approved bullying the only bright spot in all this were the dozens and dozens and dozens of concerned parents that showed up at the board of ed friday morning to support the mother of the aforementioned student and
036tell their own concerning stories of what is happening in our schools parents are rightfully upset our children deserve an unbiased education we do not want political and partisan activism in our classrooms hidden under the guise of critical thinking darien students parents and taxpayers need curriculum transparency and oversight now thank you for the time thank you mr dunn katrina o'connor you are unmuted and recognized hi can you hear me yes we can mr o'connor thank you hi sorry i'm multi i was going to try to be there in person but i'm multitasking attending a another college zoom uh for my my uh senior so i'll just keep it quick um i had sent my comments ahead just provide us your address also mrs o'connor yes 15 highland avenue in darien thank you um my husband and
037i have lived in town and raised our children here we've been here about almost 20 years um i have a son and eighth grader at middlesex middle school a senior at a private jesuit high school in the bronx and a college sophomore who also attended the same high school in new york where they both took advanced placement law and government so different school different state they participated in the same pew research exercise as was described by this small group of parents at their which i thought was a rally but now i'm learning it's a coffee um the survey in question at our school at least and what i understand is part of the advanced placement law and government curriculum which is a college board advanced class is designed to introduce students to the concept of
038a political spectrum and how it informs policy law and government it is designed to help students understand diversity of thought as well as common ground in belief systems as they affect the political landscape if in fact that there was booing and cheering as students checked off their results then i think that speaks less about the exercise and the curriculum and volumes about the students in that classroom analyzing political cartoons has been around as long as textbooks i think most of us can remember doing these exercises with old world war ii uh you know old newspapers and these teachers use this method to offer visual representations of the events that are happening around them complex issues to draw students healthy debate and honing their critical skills those parents that are concluding that this instructional method is
039some sort of attempt at indoctrination likely missed out on the benefits of a really good rigorous debate in an advanced history class middle schoolers like mine are bombarded by images every day on social media and on the news the images of black lives matter protests and the attack on the nation's capital on january 6 were widely circulated in their facebook snapchat and instagram feeds their parents are watching it on tv at home why wouldn't the teachers at this at one of the state's top middle schools engage their students in critical discussion of real you're almost at time okay of real historical events why would parents want to prevent their kids from listening to a viewpoint different from their own in a safe educational environment what are they so afraid of and my last point members
040of board members of the board of education and board of finance who help promote division hysteria misinformation through social media email blasts and fear tactics and rallies not only fail the community they are mandated to serve but also render their boards antiquated and irrelevant in a world that is today becoming more inclusive diverse and forward thinking consider stepping aside if you are unwilling to support the darian public schools administration thank you thank you very much dan maguie you are unmuted and recognized hi i'm obviously not dan magooy i'm carolina magowie if you could speak up a little bit it would help thank you so much okay um i'll try um carolina magoi 28 can set the world is no longer the world we were raised in as much as many people would like to contain
041the rapid pace that our world is changing at we can't our children who mostly have devices provided by us parents have access to that same world with someone somehow want to shelter them from they see their news in instagram snapchat and tick tock and whatever social media accounts they have they follow people who use pronouns that might not be what you or i identify with or the ones we were used to see they go to class with other children that might have two dads or two moms they see a lot of graphic content through these devices that we gave them and we might not be aware about that the news and the tv shows are also different to what we grew up with but like it or not we need to adapt and we need
042to prepare them from the for that world that they will go to darien as a community is like a bubble a very similar people i know that first hand because i'm part of the different in town the world is not darien real things are happening out there that our kids are aware of trust me they know what is going on out there i want our schools to prepare my children to face that world i wanted to prepare them to think critically about everything i want them to provide them with tools that will make them succeed in life and by that i don't mean to get a big paycheck i want my child to be a productive member of the society that we live in which is definitely more diverse more inclusive and more progressive that
043might make some people uncomfortable but it is a fact that we can avoid i've had conversations with my current freshman in the high school that have been eye-openers because they know a lot more than we think they do and what i see is a young lady who is much more open to ideas to acceptance to knowledge and to debate that i ever was at 14. but that is the world that we live in it's 2021 and not 1950 and i want a curriculum that reflects that thank you thank you mrs maguire julie punish you are unmuted and recognized thank you julie punishal 23 fitch avenue i use the title of miz please today i'm reading a letter on behalf of henry canlion of 9 mclaren road therian high school class of 21 this letter was
044emailed to all of the members of the board dear doc we at dr adley and members of the board i graduated in june of this year from darien high school i attended darien high school in the public schools of darien for my entire primary school education without a doubt the most important skill that darien high school taught me was my ability to think critically as i go forward into the world and meet countless new and educated people i am still shocked how easily it is for people to be misled by false and biased information darian high school taught me and so many others how to sift through the false information that perforates our society darien high school is ranked consistently within the top three public high schools in the state the high test scores that
045we value so dearly are not a result of students being able to memorize and feedback bland information it is the direct result of creating an environment of higher and more critical thinking to challenge and question the curriculum of teachers to whom we call the best of the best would be preposterous the teaching staff of dhs has never led the students parents or the board wrong we owe them an incredible debt and a great degree of gratitude i hope that is as you are inundated with emails from angry parents who know little about the stellar teaching staff and curriculum at our schools that you remember that it is this very curriculum which makes us the community that you serve the brightest smartest and most educated group of young thinkers in the state do not fold to
046a small loud minority of misinformed parents but instead listen to the teachers and staff members who we should trust implicitly sincerely henry canlion nine mclaren road durian connecticut darian high school graduate class of twenty one mr pusha now thank you very much sophia tallwalker you are unmuted and recognized hi i'm sophia talwelker of 219 hollow tree ridge road i would just like to say that i graduated from darien high school in 2020 i attended the darien public schools for all of my primary education and i now attend northwestern university my education at darien high school was full and rich and prepared me well for the academic rigor of college we were taught to look at information from multiple perspectives and to thoroughly examine all sources for biased thinking we were taught to be free thinkers
047to form our own opinions based on the multitude of digital information we see on a daily basis we engaged in healthy debates or socratic seminars as we called them analyzed political cartoons as mrs o'connor said and examined political speeches from all areas of the political spectrum however the one area that i was not prepared in was diversity and inclusion i started my first year at northwestern university immediately with diversity and inclusion training along with sexual harassment and drug and alcohol abuse training and as i went through this program i realized that in the 18 years that i had lived in darien i had never once heard the terms diversity and inclusion training i had never once been taught that somebody could identify completely differently than me and although i had learned that from being on
048the internet all these years and learning about the black lives matter movement it had never been discussed in school and i thought that was very interesting because darien high school ranks so highly among all of the education systems across america so i urge students and parents today to support this movement towards diversity and inclusion training and to the parents i say whether you like it or not one day your student will go through this training at the prestigious college that you hope for them to attend one day at the six figure job that you hope they have they will go through this training why not start at the high school age why not start before they enter out into the real world before they have the chance to unknowingly offend somebody or unknowingly cause a
049microaggression and i ask the parents who are against this addition to the curriculum why why are you against diversity and inclusion training what is the harm in learning to respect pronouns learning to respect race learning to respect one another's identities this issue is not political the bottom line i don't understand why it is becoming political in our town this is not an attack on our school nor on this town to want to improve the curriculum and improve the experiences of all students regardless of how they identify also i would like to add that communism is an economic theory that has nothing to do with gender sexuality race or this discussion thank you very much for your time mr walker thank you very much username food ambargi you are unmuted and recognized hello everyone this is
050fuad on varji i'm at 40 tulip tree lane and i have three kids that have gone through the darian high school system the darien educational system i want to say just a couple of things uh first off uh obviously uh we want to create an environment where um we are creating a tolerant accepting uh inclusive environment and that means inclusive for everyone whether you're progressive or conservative religious not religious and so i appreciate uh some of the commentary from some of the parents who object to uh these materials um having said that you should all be aware that um that sensitivity applies both ways i'm a parent of three children my eldest child is a trans child uh who do who does have um a preference in terms of how they identify uh it's been
051a complex transition for them and for the whole family and um that's been our family's challenge and certainly one that we hope the school environment would make um simpler for those kids that are coming through that have gender identity issues there's also um i'm an arab american and my child has been called a terrorist on the bus in public schools uh my my daughter final uh final daughter um also has had many many issues given the color of her skin she has an asian mother uh an arab father and uh has been otherized in this environment and so while i appreciate the tears and concerns from some of these other students and there's no place for that there's no place for that kind of exclusion or discrimination either for people who don't identify with the
052majority in darien having said that i want to just end with a commentary on the quality of the school system i think the darian has proven to be an amazing amazing educational system i think what you're doing you're doing great and continue doing it i for one took that pew test did not find it that controversial i found it really intuitive and interesting to figure out where you fit along a political spectrum i for what has worked with someone in the middle i also saw that chart showing um how you align on a political spectrum this isn't about politics this is about teaching kids what the world is around them and in this polarized society where you might fit in not so as to become more polarized but so as to understand the other side
053i think darian's doing a fantastic job my senior my eldest as a graduate from u-pen my middle guy is a rower at bu and my last one is a current student at harvard and i'm just going to read her statement as a current freshman studying econ at harvard i am more than prepared due to my high school education thanks to dhs extensive social studies electives like ap economy philosophy i am able to stand up on section discussions and keep up with lectures excellent job thank you all keep doing what you're doing thank you very much mr ambargi jackie's iphone you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us jackie sorry it's actually her husband bill leonich we live at one silent road in darien did you just say your last name again sir lenach thank
054you so uh dr adley let's address your first remarks uh the chain of command you forgot the top and that's the parents we're the top of the pyramid when it comes to the education of our children you guys all work for us the taxpayers and it's our children that are in the classroom any teacher's lesson that applies their lessons to the home dynamic between parents and their children should be out of balance frankly the previous reference diagram was exactly this it said explicitly that some parents do so out of fear how life home life is a personal and private environment and is absolutely out of bounds for any teacher or school to boil this down i think it's actually simple i've heard the word equity and crt already tonight frankly crt curriculum is abhorrent if
055my children are subjugated to it we'll react accordingly and the condescension exhibited towards moms and dads gathering near the school board meeting is noted that was classy if you want partners or patients with regard to your relationships with parents or our children teaching crt and acting in such a way is the best way to destroy it it's been suggested to step aside by some parents here good luck with that as parents our primary goal is to protect and nurture our children and we will do exactly that thank you mr leonard duke can you repeat his statement excuse me you got that okay michelle username deb you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us deb deb you need to unmute can you hear me i just unmuted great did you hear me yes just your
056name and address thank you hi i'm definitely from 429 wake street i wasn't planning on speaking tonight um but after listening to many of the comments some which were like really super um others questionable i think we're forgetting like what probably the main issue is here it's that some children were booed for identifying with a certain political party and i think that's the big issue here and that says a lot about what's going on in this town with parents who have very strong political views on what they're teaching our kids and i think would a child be booed for not getting a good grade on an exam no would they be booed for um not making you know the final touchdown at the turkey ball no but they're being booed for identifying with a certain
057political view and i think that's like the biggest issue of all is that we need to support and accept our kids and our neighbors no matter where they side and come together as a community who cares what political party you follow we're one community and i think that's um the big issue here is that some kids were really made to feel like dirt because they were treated very poorly by their peers and that's it thank you thank you mr clayton are you on the phone see macarthur you are unmuted and recognized you're still muted ma'am mrs mccarthy you're still muted can you hear me now yes thank you just state your name and address please thank you christina mccarthy 25 hillside avenue go ahead thank you to the board for listening to us to all
058parents to all thoughts i agree with mr leonich we are here to nurture and guide our children we want partnership with the educators that is all we are here to ask as a parent of a new sixth grader my oldest child i have so many concerns of what i'm hearing between culture surveys different surveys what gender are you what religion are you age sensitivity has to play a factor i'd like to know who predicts age sensitivity and how does it end up in the classroom without minors parents being aware thank you and thank you for listening to me this is mccarthy thank you very much there are no more raised hands at this time okay thank you michelle thank you for all those folks in the audience thank you for the folks standing outside that
059maybe can hear me through the window and thank you for all those folks on zoom uh again we're listening we're hearing you we appreciate all the comments and and all the feedback thank you very much for participating and there'll be more public comment at the end um we'll move along to the superintendent's report dr adley ah good evening everybody and uh special welcome to people who are in front of us and again thank you to the parents who are participating in some ways it seems it's been school has just started but in other ways it seems like we've been back for over a month or so so much this has actually happened but i don't want to forget uh the start of school in many ways because it was a strong start to the school
060year given uh where we have been uh even though our school system our teachers and community has provided an excellent in-person education it's just wonderful to see all the kids come back through the school doors there was passion and excitement from our staff members from our students and also from our parents because i just thank all the members of the ptos and anyone who participated with giving a special welcome back to school balloons supplies decorations signs that's why we do what we do here and that's why this place is so special at the end of the day so thank you for that i can tell you that the seniors were just as excited about opening school as were our kindergarten students and our elt students buses for this year it always takes a little bit
061of time for those to settle down and i want to thank particularly those parents and community members and students on bus 25 and bus 5. those have been particularly problematic and it seems like we've finally uh been able to come to terms with some of the variables that we were dealing with and we've now got that those buses are able to arrive on time but again we appreciate both your feedback and also your your uh patients that have worked through those in fact i would like to thank the the management of first student we're very fortunate for the bus company that we have the management there the leadership that we have if you're not aware there are bus shortages across the state of connecticut uh there are several school systems that actually did not open
062on time because of that uh so the bus companies are struggling with uh drivers and we're struggling with the process to actually get that uh certified at motor vehicles and we're trying to uh various organizations are trying to speed that particular process up that has impacted some of our sports uh which i've communicated and again i thank the parents particularly from uh particularly from gulf and swimming they have made some accommodations and which is included taking a a bus being dropped off and all those uh we're relying on your transportation for now so we thank you uh for that i would like just one more mention of on friday and saturday our schools participated in different events uh which honored all those that lost their lives on september 11th on the 20th anniversary for all
063those who still grieve and for the heroic actions of first responders and citizens uh it was nice to see everyone again come together for that particular purpose and honor those particular groups of people our elementary students made cards and pictures and wrote letters to their firefighters police officers nurses doctors first responders and so we stand again another words of appreciation and gratitude to these special people thank you also to the henley community for accommodating we've had storms and closures even in the past week or so those two days will be made up most likely at the end of the school year but we'll come back with a definitive on that as half and i'm glad to report that we are fully staffed at this particular point um the last remaining vacancy was filled with about
06450 52 new teachers now we did receive word or sort of word through the grant system no official communication but the american rescue act ida grant we have received uh 199 000 and that's specifically for k-12 recovery services it has to go to recovery services and an additional about eighteen thousand dollars it has to go to recovery services uh for preschool and so you'll hear a little bit more about that uh this evening i want to also recognize chartwells uh our food company and not only did they do a super job last year and helping us navigate covert 19 but they've done a super job and sort of ratcheting up uh right this uh early in the year the offense particularly the middle school and high school for students but really right across the district
065and um there's physical improvements and there's also a lot of uh nutrition improvement ask your students ask your children they'll they'll tell you that it's a good service and also thank them for taking over the snack shack for us and the first event there this past weekend thank you to parents and staff for accommodating the virtual open houses hopefully those were well received and my senses that they were well received middlesex will be next week as well the high school will be on the 23rd now the seventh and eighth graders uh the mountain workshop is happening this week so people are getting to know each other again and the part of the orientation and sixth grade will participate on september 20th and 28th i do want to say a special thank you to the students
066at the high school the young people who helped out in the ninth grade orientation though those there's nothing more intimidating i don't think than going to the high school as a freshman and uh the young people who are there the older classmen helped out and made that a very successful experience for the for the ninth graders if there's no greater indicator of success of having a great uh having a successful ninth grade year and that will set you up well for for future uh success at the high school just a reminder there is a policy meeting on friday september 17th the materials will quite uh tomorrow oxford has a sunday funding uh up at highland farms uh we'll get outside a little bit enjoy some some fun games and with that that uh concludes my
067announcements and i'll say this um we certainly welcome uh sir honest discussion and understanding of the curriculum we certainly welcome that as a healthy endeavor thank you thank you dr adley um moving forward approval of minutes um he's requested the board approved the following minutes minutes of the regular meeting held on august 24th 2021 may have a motion by mrs ritchie second by mr moroney all those in favor that is unanimous thank you moving on to board committee reports any board committee reports mrs ackman september 28th um we reviewed the close out of the end of the year which i believe we'll hear about later and later this month we will review um from august first forward great thank you mrs zachman mrs stein the policy committee meeting is friday yeah at 8 30 just
068to confirm that with everyone all right the only thing i will um add is um we've got some oxford meetings this week um that continues to move along on schedule and under budget we'll also be moving forward with forming the building committee for the renovation of the henley homes and royal projects so stay tuned for for more good information around that um the only other thing i'll add is i was invited and attended the cdsp meeting this past week and i think alan covered it but i will just say a big thank you to them but a big thank you to the parents at all these schools in the pto organizations the the energy and what was done to kick off school around lunches and welcomes and stuff for kindergartens and new families the energy
069was just incredible so thank you that's truly what makes these schools neighborhood schools and and makes it a great community so thank you for all of that um we'll move along to presentations and discussions and we'll get an update on the summer school and the esy programs and i will turn that over to um there's a whole bunch of people on here so maybe i'll start with mr tranberg or mrs klein or whoever else is based based on the presentation that's on the screen i will gladly turn it over to caitlin stanton and great power who are joining us remotely thank you great thank you and at this time what i'll do is i'll move to a screen share just so i can have my presentation you're going to who is that mark uh yeah
070mark power mark you're going to have to try and speak up mark all right all right if you can michelle i don't know if we can enhance our communication here that would be jeff thank you see what you can do mark thank you there we go and are you able to hear me better now sort of lean yeah better lean in and i think we'll go from there all right i'll get as close as i can thank you mark so good evening um i'd like to start by thanking the board of education dr adley and all the darien public school staff who helped make 2021 another successful year for darien summer school and enrichment just to quickly review who we are therian summer school and enrichment is a comprehensive diversified learner-centered program which is available
071to all students grades kindergarten through 12. while the majority of our students are from here in darien registration is open to all interested families we typically draw from surrounding towns such as new canaan greenwich wilton as well as westchester county this year we had families register from as far north as vermont all the way down to vero beach florida we have over 200 offerings which include academic classes for credit as well as enrichment we've also expanded the amount of classes available by providing an option to sign up for some classes on a weekly basis as opposed to requiring the full five weeks every year we aim to provide as wide a range of classes as possible we are fortunate to have such a talented group of teachers here in darien who are always coming up
072with new ideas for classes based on student interests here we have the classes that were new to our 2021 catalog as you can see this year's new classes include academics the arts mindfulness and even a class on how to get rich quick on the stock stock market hello everyone this year we started a new volunteer program in which darien high school students were able to assist with various aspects of durian summer school and enrichment as well as the extended school year program the idea for this program arose from the planning our administrative team engaged in throughout the school year as we were unsure of what the kovid regulations would be during the summer such as potential restrictions on visitors in a building which would have meant that we would have needed additional staff interested students
073were asked to apply an interview and after a rigorous process 11 participants were chosen volunteers were asked to participate for at least three of the five weeks in order to allow for increased consistency for students at the end of the summer our volunteers reflected that they were grateful for the program and the learning experiences they had many of the participants entered the program aspiring to be educators in the future and had these goals confirmed after their experience with us this summer another opportunity we were able to provide to current dairy and high school students as well as our dhs alumni arose through the teen teachers program this new program provided the ability for participants to share topics of interest with younger students those interested in the program were asked to submit an application detailing their
074proposed class or classes and each applicant participated in an interview topics of classes range from coding to storytelling workshops debate neuroscience and art and for the classes that ran this summer each teen teacher received guidance from a darien public schools employee throughout the week of their class based on what the staff learned throughout the pandemic we were able to offer fully in-person hybrid and remote classes this summer after we surveyed the parents in the district we found that a majority preferred fully in-person classes so we did align our offerings for this summer accordingly and while most of our students did participate in person we had about 40 students who registered for the virtual learning options so as you can see by this graph we had a dip in the number of participants last year as
075we were fully remote but we had a strong 2021 season with 1565 students enrolled which was our highest enrollment since mark and i became involved in the program five years ago enrollments in active outdoor classes such as football field hockey and track and fields were particularly high this year and those 1565 participants enrolled in a total of 2589 courses this year showing that many students registered for multiple classes this year darien's summer school and enrichment programs generated a total of 694 and 979 000 which is a significant increase from last year's total of just over 120 000 it is our highest revenue in the past seven years the discounts you see noted include scholarships and employee discounts each year we ask families to complete a short survey to gather feedback on their experience you can
076see a sample of some of what was shared this year families really seem to enjoy our transition academic sports arts and theater programs looking forward to next year we are planning to provide suggested class pairings enhanced communication through our website which will allow parents to opt in for text messages in the event that we have to provide an emergency notification such as a delayed opening or school's cancellation and as always we'll look to expand on the variety of classes offered we also plan to continue to work towards our shift to the name darien summer school and enrichment which is more representative of our program offerings lastly i'd like to give a special thanks to our darien summer school staff who braved the elements on july 9th despite all the wind and rain brought by tropical
077storm elsa they managed to make it to work to make sure our students wouldn't miss a day of fun activities and learning and to close we'd like to share a clip of the summer strings program performing crocodile rock at the darien public library [Music] my [Music] all right mr power and mrs stanton thank you so much um just awesome thanks for that update and thanks for all you did over the summer it was an important summer and uh thank the team from the board nice job thank you okay we're also going to get a quick update on the esy programs for 2021. caitlyn and mark thanks again much appreciated all of your efforts particularly during this covert period thank you good evening mark thanks for mentioning that storm because when you look at our first
078slide we have our umbrellas behind there that we shared that morning um that came in handy um good evening to the board members and to the community and thanks for the opportunity this evening and we are excited to present our overview of the 2021 esi program in the spring we had the opportunity to present to you our anticipated esi program we shared with you the esy program overview and noted the considerations that we take in all our ppts and the criteria for making sure that we consider for all our eligible students we look at non-regression we look at regression we look at recruitment self-sufficiency and independence we look at addressing and differing behaviors and we also look at ability for students to be an included environment the one unique addition this year was we noted
079the importance of a criteria for recovery services we began early on in our planning at our ppts to make sure that we consider where our students were in response to the pandemic what services were interrupted and planned accordingly we added both in the budget and our grants recovery services that included consultant services speech and language otpt and with your approval of psychologists at the high school and a special education teacher with these additional resources robust staffing and a shared commitment to excellence in supporting our students we realized an exemplary summer school program for our esy students this year i'd like to turn the presentation over to christian o'reilly for those families and students who participated in our program christian was probably the first space they saw every morning at 7 30 they had to greet
080all the students um in supervision of the esy program kristen o'reilly is our elementary program director of special education here in darien and is here this evening to present the update and outcomes of our esy program thanks so much thank you um and and just to add to shirley's sentiments i think um just the fact that we were able to have our staff and students back in person with us this past summer was really just incredible everybody was so excited so we were so grateful to have that opportunity um in our spring pre-program presentation we provided you with a planning timeline that that sort of goes into our esy 2021 program that timeline highlights the year-long planning that goes into the preparation uh for esy each year here we have a similar timeline uh that
081captures what happens during the esy program so this diagram should look a little familiar to you the program began with an orientation and a move-in day for staff and providers on june 25th on this day teachers and related service providers organized their materials and classroom spaces for setup and preparation of student arrival on monday june 28th staff received important information regarding processes and procedures to include iep acknowledgement forms materials from sending providers student ieps and parent contact information as well as safety procedures attendance procedures and progress report due dates students arrived for their services on june 28th where they were welcomed by staff and providers communication with parents and students was ongoing through the months of june and july information regarding service delivery was more formally shared between providers and parents through the use of
082our esy progress report which was emailed home to parents following the completion of their child service on approximately july 30th august 2nd marks the beginning of bridge week 1 with students remaining at dhs in tokenik for bridge week 2 beginning august 9th staff from the high school moved over to topanik where all students received their bridge week 2 services this graph familiar from the spring pre-program presentation outlines not only the esy recommended student total but also reflects the actual number of students who attended the program this year out of the 435 students recommended we had a higher overall attendance this year at 361 which is 78 more students than in 2020 and 55 more students than in 2019 as discussed in in the spring pbt teams thoughtfully planned for student recovery services throughout the school
083year last year some of which were delivered during our esy 2021 program the next two slides will look familiar to you and these depict the number of certified and non-certified staff members for the 2021 esy program and these numbers did not change as we had staffing finalized by the time of our spring presentation so the values on both of these slides have not changed [Music] this year parents received the 2021 esy survey on august 3rd through aspen's messaging system 122 parents responded to the survey and shared their feedback regarding esy communication and logistics as well as their experience with transportation 87.9 percent of the respondents strongly agree or agreed with the effectiveness of esi communication and logistics which included questions surrounding communication with families on student schedules providers room locations etc 61.9 percent of parents
084who accessed esy transportation this year so a smaller group coordinated by the district's transportation coordinator strongly agreed agreed or were neutral toward the level of communication and support they received with regard to transportation during this year's program parents provided written feedback to include that the staff and teachers were wonderful the school was easy to navigate that they were happy with all the wonderful services their children received that communication and logistics were properly administered they appreciated the personal touches from both teachers as well as the executive staff via responsive emails and phone calls to address all concerns they think in the interest of time sure this is incredible stuff and again thank you for all that we've done i think everyone has gotten their board package and read through it so if there's anything you want
085to highlight or you want to move over to kind of what you're thinking about for next year i think that would be great of course so the parent and staff feedback which you have in your packet lead us to sort of this last um final slide here which is our outcomes and our goals uh for this upcoming esy program updates to the parent and staff survey to include more clarity around services and dairy and summer school opportunities as well as consistency in question categories to further support data comparison reporting for next year another goal of ours is the implementation of a transportation app used to facilitate communication between parents and the transportation company surrounding pickup and drop-off status the implementation of the electronic reporting system consistent with dss to organize student absences for communication with
086esy staff and lastly the implementation of an electronic system to maintain student and staff schedules including revisions and updates to facilitate communication among providers thank you so much we're happy to answer any questions no thank you so much again both presentations incredible amount of information and again thank you for you know what has been a challenging year being able to do that for all our students and i know my daughter participates in esy and it's an incredible program so thank you thank you i will yes mrs klein [Music] thank you majestic knowledge laura straighton is here on the screen as well as scott mccarthy all those by the way elp programs that we had at topanik just to acknowledge the success of that program and for dr mccarthy our secondary program middlesex in the high
087school as well terrific thanks i see them waving there so thank you as always thank you so much we'll also at this time open it up for any board questions or comments around these two great programs and the updates on those programs uh mrs mccammon uh just a quick comment that it's wonderful to see the program back in person it is such an important part of our community so that is something certainly to be celebrated and thank you for all the work this has been a lot of work over time building a lot of different aspects of the program it's exciting to see that we're down to talking about absences i think it's really important many of our students who have a lot of services have a lot of multiple touch points and it's it's
088very complex for students parents and staff to navigate when there are planned and unplanned absences so i'm very grateful to see this coming up thank you thank you mrs mckevin this is parent thank you and thank you for all for the presentation i think i will echo what mrs mccannon said that it's exciting to see the growth of this program and how success successful it was this year um quick question about the summer school with the volunteer program and the teen teachers is that something that you anticipate moving with ford it seems very that people enjoyed that is that something that you would like to do moving forward we certainly review all of our programming every single year and have discussions about what we would like to keep and what we would like to change
089so that is the planning stage that we will engage in over the next uh few months great thank you this is richie i just noticed on the survey that the transportation um seemed like the maybe there's some issues going on there with the esy program so i'm just curious what exactly those issues were and how we're going to work to resolve and improve the satisfaction of our parents and participants and teachers it looks like too [Music] um it was the first summer also we had new personnel on this end also working with kate barbara so we did the runs together this summer um in fact what we found out that when we um planned and what we can improve on is when we have some electronic access parents don't usually find out until two nights
090from the night before that goes the territory of bus transportation as you know but i think we can do better make sure we have that some of the actual routes that were established could have been more efficient um in terms of the number and the amount of time that kids were spending on the bus so we think we can improve that as well as well so i think we can do it electronically um kate was wonderful to work with i think she has some ideas moving forward also and i think we'll just do better next year and can i add up briefly too that so the number of or the percentage that was reflected in what was reported out let's say for example so 122 parents responded to the overall to the survey about 15
091parents responded to the portion specific to transportation so that percentage um is a little skewed in a sense as well we we tried to capture it to the best of our ability and then also incorporate some uh improvements to shirley's point using the app for next year i think will help further communication with families thank you [Laughter] um can i ask a little bit about esy and especially because we had recovery services included and i know that plans are individualized but did we see any trends of pockets of areas that were needed for recovery that we might anticipate i know we now have grant money for recovery funds so were there any big identifiable buckets that we should look to hear from a board that look there are recovery services maybe indicating that this will
092be an area we need to strengthen this coming school year [Music] um i think related services we saw that because i think we mentioned earlier we changed group size also because we went smaller and group size as well so i think speech and language is an area that we're looking at on that we had increased services i think ot and pt continue to kind of stay level but we know that there were many new referrals that happened also so as a result of the new referrals that we spoke about in the spring we anticipate we'll need more related services and and more instructional services okay thank you we'll also know our new number for cdf october 1 of where we are with our number of students and that will give us some broad understanding as
093well thank you and i was going to add um just briefly to that as well um i think when we were planning for uh recovery services to happen over the summer uh oftentimes the conversation was around increasing frequency and duration so that's sort of where we saw that play out over the summer i was going to say related services too so when we think about the things that were likely impacted perhaps the most in times when we were remote or hybrid um speech you know being being one of them and oftentimes are other related services i find that that's where um you know many of our recovery efforts are sort of focused focused on thank you thank you any other questions or comments great thank you very much for those presentations and for those updates
094and thanks for all the hard work that was put in over the summer we'll move on to the darian public schools update dr adler so i'll be quick about this it's been a great start to the year it has been a very healthy start to the year that's that is the main picture here um uh from the covert metrics and we've had literally a couple of cases uh each week thank you very much we've have a couple of cases each week uh this is the current uh covert tracking dashboard uh that's updated uh daily so you can see we have five cases at this point for the students who have been contact traced and had to quarantine that none of those cases actually were transmitted in school uh so those were outside of school so
095uh it has been again a very healthy uh start to the school year i think that's indicative of honestly the vaccination rate in this town is phenomenal it's our uh our young kid our young people is over 90 and it may well be over 90 for the majority of of the population so that that that speaks volumes um from that perspective so this no longer exists so i didn't just want to drop it out um but the state has no is no longer tracking it under this sort of uh system as of just a couple of weeks ago that was primarily for remote learning since they don't have remote learning as an option they're not really tracking it so you won't see that again you'll still continue to see uh this graph and the covert
096metrics from the time and you can see those those are dropping significantly i'll just go back to this page uh the mitigate the teaching uh the testing clinics we were just surprised that we will be working with progressive diagnostics i don't know about progressive diagnostics i know alicia's here but that's the company that we have been uh assigned to work with for the state the state still does not know exactly the way they are going to run we're going to have to be asking they won't know and won't tell the parents how that's going to run until now we solicit from them how many actually are going to sign up to do the volunteering so i apologize that this is a slow process but uh incrementally we get a bit of information this was the
097latest information this week actually and uh so we'll we'll pass that information along about sign ups and we'll see where we go from there uh the medication strategies we did go ahead and split up the middle school uh we split the lunches uh up into the small gym and that uh seemed to have worked out uh very well and then i just surprised you about the american rescue act i have over 200 thousand dollars for uh recovery services 18 of which are is for the elp so we've opened in a healthy capacity that is a very positive thing i don't want us to forget that all our children back in school things are going well from a health and safety point of view we'll continue to revise monitor as we go but that's that's honestly
098the big picture in terms of it it's uh it's a good it is a good picture here actually uh in darien in terms of what has happened and uh the the programs were able to provide the kids because we're in school so that that's that's basically the summary thank you dr adley i'll open it up to board questions or comments this is mr ceni [Music] just just so the idea grants are they incremental to what's been budgeted thus far this year they're they are over and above uh that the original grant that we got yes good thank you thank you mr c anyone else good all right thank you dr adley let's all try to continue to stay healthy mrs mccammon um in the finance committee meeting you mentioned that might be a two-year grant
099is is that do we have any clarity on that so we have to submit i think by november and we still have i think it's carrie over is it richard i think it is they haven't said yet but it's we're expecting it to be a two-year grant since the iba grant is a two-year grant um it is due in november but they have not specified all the years yet thank you mr kevin thank you mr rudolph all right moving along uh discussion and possible action on procedures for conducting meetings education so what's up dr adley well so i just we just want to put on the table of meetings going forward for the board in terms of we are now in a sort of hybrid scenario where we have members of the community in front
100of us do we want to continue in this particular model do you want to go back into full in-person model or do you want to go completely remote models so that's the first sort of question format wise and then uh really the distinction the the question about how we respond to mass or no mass so we have our community members in front of us have mass uh it's i think it's a question we need to just resolve as we sort of move forward type thing any of the models by the way for any of the models of a remote in person or a hybrid are permittable through next next next april uh we'll see what the governor does there was discussion today about him continuing it but we'll see what he does about the september
10130 uh whether we extend that beyond that in schools but as for here uh the question for the board is really how we would like to proceed in terms of uh mass warrant or not mass war in relation to the bigger picture and uh what's permissible and what's not permissible uh under the law so uh we have some options for us and i'll just put that question thank you questions so just to recap too in the document that we reviewed that we are in line with how we can conduct meetings that is correct yes i think at this point in time while i would love to have more people in person we are doing what i think is the right thing from a spacing standpoint i think we will as a board always look at
102and think about meetings and if possible we need to change a venue to accommodate more people we will do that it's difficult to do after a meeting has been warned um i think right now having the the ability to have people come first come first service in person and then continuing with the zoom um allows many people to participate probably more than we could accommodate so um i'll i'll start off with confirming that um yes and then i'll just open it up for board discussion thank you mrs achman i would just say given that um we have the option to either limited to full in person go full remote or do hybrid hybrid seems to be working it seems to allow people um the chance to speak or resume i think we've done it um
103actually one of the best of any communities that have kind of struggled with how to do this through kovid so at this point in time i would i would keep this model um given that we're not going to be able to go back to um the old model and have more more of the public in let's let people zoom in speak their mind um it seems to be working well i will just add to that the the emails or the chain i'm on with other board chairs um it continues to be a discussion and in some instances a challenge for them in terms of the structure of meetings having the right technology allowing people to zoom in you know allowing to have the public comment so again we continue to be highlighted as a district
104that seems to be organized and doing the right things so um dr ali would you just confirm i think it's important that we just have it all out on the table in terms of this building as an administrative building and can you just kind of go over kind of the rules around that or the guidelines around that yes um if you're in a school building you have to wear a mask this is not a school building and so so if uh in this building if you if you're not if you're a faction no vaccine if you're vaccinated and are six feet apart you don't have to wear your mask if you're vaccinated and less than that uh you should be should be wearing your mask still and if you're unvaccinated you absolutely have to be
105wearing a mask and if you're vaccinated and want to wear a mouse you can so depending what the board does here too will uh cause me for a bit of reflection for consistency or otherwise uh because i think i think it gets hard for people to at times follow somebody's doing something and you're doing something else so so the overall guidance in what we discussed is for mask wearing um as you can imagine it's a it's a lively group and everyone has their passions around masks i would prefer not to wear a mask just in terms of clarity and hearing people speak but i also feel we have to lead by example in terms of our students and our teachers and what we're asking them to do on a daily basis so with that said
106i'll open it up for further board conversation and then we can go down the path that coming to a consensus so mr ceni i i would just ask that we properly warn the next meeting so that we have members of the audience our staff ourselves properly prepared um and then dr adley maybe review your building standards so that there's some consistency um with that policy i'm not telling you what how to handle that but um just so that there's no confusion on that thank you thank you any other further conversation comment mrs mccammon um i'm not sure i don't know if alicia's here tonight or dr kennefeck i'm not sure it would be effective but one of the things that that you know it's been talked about is the difficulty with masks is that it's
107it's hard for us to hear one another sometimes and it's hard for the audience or people on zoom to hear us unless we're you know eating the microphone um so i i had asked the question again i don't know whether it would be efficacious from a uh whether but whether or not we should be pulling our masks down when we speak in honor of the fact that this particular board meeting has a very specific role in communication with one another and with the public thank you mr ken i appreciate that that has been brought up any number of times by board members and the public so you know i'd appreciate a little conversation around that mr brown thank you um just a point to make clear it was mentioned you know what our direction is
108the direction for our students where he matched is not coming from the sport at this time so i think that needs to be um understood if we're going to be sending signals to people letting them know where their guidance is coming from thank you mr brown yes you know as i mentioned at all board meetings and we've had that discussion we are under a mask mandate by the governor um that has been made perfectly clear i do think my opinion that in order to support um what the mandate that they are going through in the individual schools and teachers you know i would support wearing masks mrs achman um so mrs mccammon's suggestion you know i've thought about for as long as i've known about it which is a little longer than this meeting and
109i think it's a thoughtful suggestion um and one that the board could certainly take up but upon reflection i think that if what we are being told is that our kids can learn effectively in school and communicate effectively in school with their teachers and can learn effectively in school with masks which is currently what we are being told um then i think there's something to be said that we might as well live in and breathe it as a board right it might give us perspective it might help us understand both benefits and concerns um but i i think mr jeanine said it eloquently it also you know we're kind of in this together with our kids and our teachers so um i would be supportive of this time as long as a mass mandate remains
110in our schools that this group um models the same behavior and kind of endures the same situation that both our teachers and kids do thank you mrs zachman mr brown you demonstrated the model of perhaps removing your mask thank you um go for it yeah no i just would think that at this time um if we're going to be modeling behavior we should model the importance of local control and adults making decisions for themselves and i think that we have a top-down order coming from the government uh from the governor excuse me and i think it's important that we model that behavior that we would like to see in this town and the importance of that and i think locally since we're not required to as this board we should not be doing so in
111these meetings and that's the message we should be sending okay thank you mr brown any other comments just want to get consensus sir excuse me yes do you want to get consensus and i can say my opinion or you want to go okay i was i'm going to share mrs ackman's comments and that we are the leaders of this district and we need to be modeling um what is whether you agree with it or not what is being um what is being told to our students and our and our staff um i also think that i have a child who's not young enough to be vaccinated i am fully vaccinated i still wear a mask when i go out with her almost in solidarity in solidarity with her i think that's important there's almost half
112of our population is not available to be vaccinated right now so i am i am in favor of us wearing mass even though it's not necessarily the requirement for this building good thank you mrs zachman look all incredibly valid [Laughter] look all valid points mr brown very valid point in terms of how we want to you know um work with the district and work with our local health uh department so any other further comments or questions mrs richie um so i agree local control is important that's what we all want but until our children are no longer required to wear masks in school i am wearing a mask at every board meeting regardless of what this board decides to do tonight thank you mrs richie yeah can i just add i also think it's um
113there's a local responsibility and um we have a local responsibility to our children and teachers i think to um to to feel what they're feeling and do what they're doing we're here doing work for schools they're in schools doing work and if that changes or it becomes a matter of personal preference then i would support board members doing that but um you know we can find all the cute phrases for it but this is the reality that our kids are living um and communication is hard and i imagine it's hard for little people with masks on as well so um maybe that helps give us some perspective as we choose to advocate down the line just how difficult it might be thank you mrs zochman again all good points i would say um we're headed
114toward the end of the month um let's hope or let's make our voices continue to be heard up at the state level for uh some semblance of local control and working with our local health officials and having that choice and parental choice uh but we are in that place right now where there is a mass mandate till the end of the month so i appreciate the discussion we'll move forward um may have a motion to approve the wearing of masks at board of education meetings by board of education members and members of the community mrs ritchie made a motion mrs achman seconded it all in favor sorry i just have a procedural question so then if we move forward with that um at what point should we agree as a board at what point are
115we going to after september 30th how would we go about returning to normal well i think we can't do anything until we see what happens on september 30th so if you need me call a special meeting or um okay it's a great question i just got it mrs mccammon's point at this point we're saying that it's because it is a mandate as you know until it is the mandate is lifted and then we can revisit the conversation if there's a local concern one way or a local free but i think mr mckenna makes a good point we want to put an end date on this and it if it's in if it's in following the mandate we probably we should model the language that so puts an end date for us we'll put an end
116date on it yeah any further board discussion on this that's a motion to amend them well yeah go ahead mr cena like yes do we have to vote on this i mean if we're warning the meetings with mass use um you know i mean aren't we then dwelling into it or delving into a policy discussion which would need two weeks notice and i i think we can solidify this through consensus and then just warn the meetings i'm happy to do it from a consensus standpoint um and we continue to monitor the mandate and move forward it gives us flexibility if things change we don't have to meet and vote to undo it okay so just procedurally we do have emotion on the table let it fail all right all those in favor no so that
117motion fails so we have a consensus of the board that will move forward with board of ed members wearing masks and those in the community joining us looks like i have a consensus yes mr brown we'll make it effective at the next meeting we'll make it effective at the next meeting all right good thank you for that question all right we're all in agreement we'll move forward all right thank you all again for the the conversation um maybe we get a consensus from the board that we're all in agreement that the current meeting format works [Music] great thank you mrs ritchie all right good thank you again thank you all for the conversation all right um discussion and possible acceptance of contemplated gift for the music department as always we have an incredibly generous community
118so um that is dr adley and miss thompson i don't i don't know if i see colleen on there do i yes i'm here oh sure you're in the dark okay i am hey everyone colleen but go ahead sorry about that um so i was approached by a resident of darien named natalie venatos over the summer and she offered to donate an upright double bass to the district she brought it she had a neighbor bring it to the school and it looked like a very nice instrument we had it appraised by atelier strings and the value of the instrument with bow and cover has been appraised at 3 600 and we would greatly benefit from the instrument as it's difficult for students to transport large instruments to and from school we would be very appreciative
119to have the instrument to use for any of our string bassists at darien high school or middlesex middle school depending on where the need lies thank you miss thompson we appreciate that and i will shout out natalie benitos a big thank you for your incredible generosity uh for the incredible program that we do have around strings and music so thank you very much um any questions or thoughts terrific may have a motion to move forward with acceptance of the gift for the music department mrs ritchie mr moroney all those in favor that is unanimous thank you very much next conversation discussion on the fiscal 2021 year-end financial report and fiscal 2021 expenses related to reopening and possible action on the return of unused funds to the town as miss ackman mentioned we did have a
120finance committee meeting so i will turn it over to mr rudel to go over the numbers uh so we did end the year with the positive balance of 1.37 million or 1.31 percent of the appropriation plus the special appropriation uh the general education rcs did end up with positive 493 000 special education a positive 775 000 which is primarily excess cost and special education transportation and then reopening expenditures are a positive 100 000. we are recommending returning upon board approval the 1.37 million to the town's general fund uh we did include a graph just to highlight where those big areas of balances were 1.1 million of that 1.3 million was housed in the increase in excess cost reimbursement salary savings primarily attributed to the resignation to administrators transportation legal fees and then the coven rsync
121in total we did spend about 3.5 million dollars to reopen schools we got grants uh totaling just under 1.1 million and then the special appropriation of 1.78 million um change from reopening expenditures from the may report uh were pretty minimal uh the largest areas where had less substitute cost less lpn cost and then less needs for contact tracing so in total it went from a positive 85 to 101. the overall forecast changed from about 1.25 million to 1.37 uh the biggest for special education transportation of 56 000 athletic transportation at 33 000 district legal fees of 17 and then some small salary savings uh police fire and some small items as you see ahead salaries were positive of the year by about 500 000 the biggest again were salary savings and substitutes at 327 um
122operating was positive by 541 000 you'll see the biggest areas of savings for special education transportation at 235 000 legal fees at 149 000 and then athletic transportation sports officials of 33 000. fixed expenses were a positive 39 000. uh the biggest area savings was regular transportation and that was due to the hybrid more remote schedules that we had during the year um equipment was essentially flat at 297 dollars and it was just a small amount of savings and technology equipment in the kovid rc uh revenue was um higher by 281 000 and again that was primarily due to higher reimbursement rates for excess cost we were less in building rentals because we did not rent out our buildings that was largely offset by increased revenue from renting out our fields there are no transfers
123uh for approval to close out the year we do want to note that the audit has already started and they're well underway but as we said earlier we are recommending returning that one point three seven okay thank you mr rudel so um i looked into this a little bit there is um kind of a history of votes and no votes on returning funds to the town if we don't do anything it just happens automatically from an accounting perspective how it works so we don't necessarily have to vote on returning the funds to the town i think it would make sense to just have a consensus understanding that the financial report has been read to us and thank you mr rudel for all the detailed information and for the finance committee meeting as to um that
124we ended the year with a positive balance of a million 370 630 does that make sense for everyone at the board table mr chairman yes i've just just yes just from my clarification when i asked last week or two weeks ago the board told me that you just want to take a vote on this but i'm just saying that why it was prepared that way that's fine i'm recommending we don't take a vote on it and just move forward with the consensus understanding of the numbers and how it works with the town is that all right with everyone mr scene yeah i was just going to ask procedurally if we said no it would still go right i mean so yeah yeah i think it's important that we understand there's a memo there's a consensus
125it was brought up at the finance committee meeting and there's an understanding of it is everyone in agreement with that um there's a history of voting and part of that history of voting is so that the board affirms that it this is the amount because it's actually the financial report is from the administration and the return of funds is from the board to the town so there's a history of voting and not voting when we went back and looked at the votes over the course of five years i think so i don't disagree with you but i just think on a go forward basis i'm all right with the consensus unless someone objects to that i guess what's the issue with the vote i guess i'm just confused it's a vote and we're all going
126to support it we want to return the funds to the town we could have been done with the vote at this point in time already so we can do it either way but i i think procedurally i think it also shows that the board supports the information and supports sending the funds back to the town so i would prefer a vote but i'll go with mr obviously i'm just curious in the history um and i'm not sure why if it happens by operation law or whatever uh policy that's fine but what's the purpose of us voting on it we're giving an imprimatur is it for an auditor or what what really is the history of that if anybody knows i think to the point of the previous conversation it's just an acknowledgement and an acceptance
127that here's where the board event ended here's what's going back to the town it doesn't have anything to do with confirming or substantiating an order [Music] in any further questions or comments sure yeah well let's thank you mrs richie let's go back to all right let's pause a minute we'll go back to any board questions around uh the information that was presented um and i'm sorry rich that i didn't bring this up just popped into my head but so the grants that we have depicted here are all the monies are all received and these grants are closed out um going forward i would i would hope that we continue to present because we still have ongoing grants so i would just like to see this information continue to be presented in this format i think
128it's very helpful yep so we will continue the grand financial report every month that we've been doing uh and we'll report on the new grants whether it's the arp grant or the or the ida grant or any title grants for something else and will we do the same thing for covet expenses whatever it will keep if we have some that arise thank you mrs richie any other further comments or questions i would recommend we move forward with a consensus vote um that we all understand and we've all looked at the information are we all okay with that all right okay all right thank you mr rudel and um thank you for all the hard work um incredibly challenging year but i think thanks to a lot of support um from all the groups that support
129us and all the partners that we worked with we got through the years so thank you very much um moving on appropriation requests for replacement of trucks um so mr rudel i don't know um did you talk to jen this number has changed in terms of how the way the town wants to do this from accounting standpoint so we'll get that in a minute but do you just want to add some color around what we're asking for here in the line mr lynch here too excuse me mr lynch mr lynch is here hi mr lynch so mr lynch tell us why you want some new trucks [Laughter] we had three trucks that got flooded out and ruined in july with the original storm and they uh they had a value that was depreciated because of
130their years one was a 2013 was 2011 and one was the 2017. and uh there's a difference between what the insurance company is going to be giving us and what we've uh we've been uh we bid out the trucks to uh gauge a cost on what they would be and the prices are good for 45 days so the bids we opened them on august 18th so we we have time and this seemed a good time to ask the board of ed for the difference between what our insurance company is giving us and what uh what we need to purchase the equipment to make us all again thank you mr lynch i will give credit to mr lynch and his team they've been functioning uh down three trucks um and the maintenance team has stepped up
131in terms of getting done what we need to get done from a reopening standpoint so they're truly working hard over there i was actually over there the day after the storm it was an incredible mess we also are going to have um information coming back to us about potential loss of additional equipment from ida also so that is being worked on right now with the town and with kerma and the insurance companies so the latest conversation i had with town hall and with the board of finances they would like the request to come for the appropriation for the gross amount of the trucks which then gives you mr lynch the ability to go out and purchase or bid or say you have the funds in hand so their recommendation is for an appropriation request to
132round it up to 150 000 whatever the difference is of when you actually buy the trucks would just not be spent or go back to the town in terms of 150 000 versus the 147 862. unless you feel that 147 862 is is pretty clear um it was we did it we did a public bid and there were two separate vendors okay and and their prices are good for 45 days okay that's fine then we can amend the motion for the 147 862. um i have also um spoken to um seth morton jack davis clara clara cinderelli santoro sorry sorry it's hot in here and they're all aware the board of finance will figure out how they're going to pay for this um but they've all been warned and they had their discussion at their
133rules committee that this is something that's coming from uh the board of ed to them it just also should be noted there's just an incredible shortage and difficulty in procuring not just trucks but any and all type of equipment and maintenance equipment especially so um so any other further questions or comments mrs richard just given the fact that we now lost three trucks and we're not going to be able to obtain new ones until january what kind of position does that put us in in terms of facilities and maintenance are we able to use what we have and get by or is there some other temporary fix that we may need we're using what we have to get by we had just purchased a new truck in the capital budget we had not gotten rid
134of the old truck it was replacing so that got just put back in service we have a truck we replaced a couple years ago we sort of refurbished it and gave it to the i.t department we're going to put that into service for for plowing and and the foreman's truck um it's got a tool box in the back we're going to take that out and put one of the sanders in there that also is a spare plow truck that's now going to be a front line basically we don't have a spare truck for plowing but i do have a couple of vendors who have agreed to be able to step in on short notice and help us if we you know hit some breakdowns and stuff like that but we have we have 12 people
135to plow and we have 12 cloud trucks available thank you mr lynch thank you mr richie mr moroney are any of these trucks in like especially the 2011 would that be in the vehicle replacement program coming forward normally or what is our how and and secondly how is that going to affect the vehicle replacement program buying three vehicles in one year it's going to skew the program out a little um and you know the 2011 was not due to be replaced for another four years uh in 2013 there's going to be six years and the the 2017 is actually uh it's you know it's it's 10 years 12 years left of use um so yeah if there's going to be there's going to be an issue i think we're going to have to maybe stretch
136out some some of these new acquisitions we're getting they're going to have to last a year or two longer so we we get back you know i was trying to do something with one or two vehicles a year we just bought one and now we gotta buy three more so so some of them are gonna based on how they are wearing out in the next 10 15 years we're gonna have to see which ones can get stretched out longer to get us back in thank you mr orleans thank you mr maroney i've had that discussion with the board of finance they're aware it changes the whole vehicle replacement schedule they're not so concerned about it versus us having the right equipment that we need so i think we're at a good place thank you mr
137lynch any other questions great may have a motion to approve a supplemental appropriation request from the board of finance in the amount of to fund uh to replace the three tucks damaged in the town garage on ledge road by storm l7 uh this is parent second by mrs ritchie all those in favor that is unanimous thank you thank you very much thank you yes thanks mr lee thanks mr lynch all right moving along um dr adler and mr tranberg discussion on curriculum uh development and process so i'm pleased uh this evening the board has actually identified uh when we did the retreat uh could we do include updates on curriculum and a curriculum review process so that is somewhat coincidental um fortuitous or otherwise but they align and this gives us an opportunity actually in
138the first of the series you will see in the the calendar uh that's the agenda of item the last agenda item that there are regular curriculum updates built into the process because that's what the board wanted uh so that is in there and this gives us uh gives uh mr tramberg an opportunity to share what's going on curriculum and um and we'll play with there certainly will be opportunities to explore some of the issues that were on the table tonight a little bit and so that will be i think that will be helpful and again as i said earlier to welcome the opportunity for an honest discourse about curriculum and uh the process for it so with that um i'll turn it over to mr chamber for the first of his series of curriculum updates
139great thank you dr adley and it's my pleasure to present on this topic tonight as you know as assistant superintendent for victim and instruction it's definitely my area of passion and care and i do appreciate the comments uh that i heard this evening so this is sort of a funnel type of presentation starting as large as possible with our vision mission and core values i think it's important that we put them up there because we're hearing mission mission and core values and strategic plan used a lot these days and we have our vision statement which is our aspirational statement of preparing all students today to thrive in a changing world tomorrow and that's what we certainly aspire to do as we are developing curricula to challenge all students the core values are just a reminder
140the the commitments we have as adults that we're going to make to realize our vision and mission across the district i'm having the pleasure of uh serving on the strategic planning committee i was in goal area one and i actually think that mrs mccammon and his parent were in my goal area and so i pulled out all of the the strategies that directly aligned to curriculum and instruction to help frame this evening a little bit and being in that goal area one i can say that we spent many hours crafted picking every verb to be as as precise as we possibly could to to bring to the district what we thought it needed at that time the first being to develop a shared vision of teaching and learning that'll be the work of our professional
141development and evaluation committee finally referred to as pdec and that work will happen this year and these are intended to align that once we have defined what those are we are going to use that information to inform the revision of our process you might remember it also related to revising the template itself and that's relevant later and then making sure we're providing teachers with professional development that is going to support them in delivering the curriculum that we have darian is known for having a responsive curriculum so these are just some words and i know you've seen this this in the past this is actually taken from a prior presentation on what it means for a curriculum to be responsive which might beg the question of well what does it mean when a curriculum is not
142responsive so typically i shouldn't say typically but traditionally districts have a curriculum revision cycle and responsive means that you're always responding to the changes in not necessarily real time but on an annual basis so you're looking at what is working what is not working and from that you're not necessarily changing curriculum you're making revisions to learning plans as to how students are going to access that information in the future generally speaking we have three big drivers for curriculum and the strategic plan will be huge standards and frameworks and then our newly adopted vision of the graduate and as i was looking at this it also made me ask the question to myself well why does curriculum actually change what is the cause of curriculum changing and the first one is when the standards and frameworks
143actually change that is the that is a driver that when that happens we usually have federal and or state guidance that says you need to make changes in order to to align with these standards um as the governance of curriculum in the district the board when this happens you usually see some type of a presentation that here are the new standards and this is what we're going to do to align to those one of the more recent as i was looking up but there was a 2018-2019 presentation on social studies and that was when the shift went uh from being to be more inquiry focused and that's the result of the 2015 shift from the connecticut social studies framework so that's an idea of how that might work another reason that we make shifts is
144if we see from how students are performing that it's necessary to make changes into what we're teaching and then what we know about teaching and learning changes so that's the research that might guide the need for a curriculum change the actual process it starts with the development of a plan so every spring i'll work with the curriculum leadership team and they'll identify these are the things that i think we need to change and we make sure that there's out there's resources to allocate that because those are finite resources however the board has been incredibly generous in supporting the curriculum revision process and we have that we have adequate resources to do that on an annual basis and from there once the projects are approved and those are approved from my office if they need to
145make adjustments to units and they establish a curriculum team that's made up of teachers in those grade levels and or departments then they revise the curriculum they work with their curriculum leader in that area and then those changes are communicated to any teachers that teach that curriculum and then we provide professional development our plan for professional development as needed so that's pretty much the annual cycle of how we approach these i wouldn't say curriculum changes just updates to curriculum and the teaching that supports it we use curriculum very broadly so in education curriculum refers to the written curriculum the top curriculum and what for some time was called the assessed curriculum is now often referred to as the learned curriculum instead of the assessed curriculum and the curriculum itself the written part of it has
146three stages in an understanding by design framework so the third stage is the assessment in the middle is the learning plan how teachers get there and the first part is well what is this all about what are we actually learning in this unit of study what are the standards what are the essential questions what are the understandings we want students to have and that is the part that really gives an overview of of what a particular unit is all about to support a unit of study we have these instructional resources and not to be complicated and confusing but instructional resources have two lanes there's some formal instructional resources and so a formal instructional resource might be a textbook that is used for the course it might be our teachers college reading and writing units that
147support elementary literacy elementary writing it could be our math and focus books those are all primary instructional resources and when i say their primary that means they're guaranteed so no matter who is teaching the class the students are going to see those resources as part of the study teachers also have the professional responsibility and they use their professional judgment to have these secondary resources there are things that they think could help teach the unit it could help move it along and make the lesson stronger we do support some of those through technology like news newsela discovery education and many other platforms where teachers can go they're vetted resources and teachers can pick material but things as simple or complicated depending how you look at it like a newspaper a news clip any media story those
148are all things that might be used as a resource on on any day so in light of the board's request to hear more about the curriculum process this year um i've been reflecting on what are some things we want to do to really address the questions that you've asked me in my year and a half that i've been here so far and one piece that has been pretty clear to me is the desire for transparency i share that because i can tell you that curriculum work is not the secret we certainly want transparent curriculum we do have a website that has the information there but i think that we can be more consistent in what that looks like so if you're looking at a content area it might not look so different if you're looking
149at different grade levels it might not look so different that's that's one piece right off the bat and one way to do that is having some curriculum warehousing whether it's through software or just a more common approach of what does it look like how do we describe what students are experiencing making sure that that consistency is there across the board other ways that you have already supported curriculum is annually approving your courses which we have adjusted that timeline so that gets to you in a more timely process that's more aligned with the budget um i would like to share with you when i'm making the decision of the proposed updates what are what are the things that we're thinking about adjusting and changing on an annual basis and the professional development that we are using
150to support teachers in that as well so another presentation that i would anticipate in the curriculum updates this year is we do know that teachers college is going to have a significant change to their resources and so since that is such a huge part of our reading and writing program that would be a time when there'd be a board presentation and we would want to make sure that the support and governance is there because that would actually warrant a curriculum change not just an update to curriculum itself and i said a lot quickly but i'm glad to have this discussion secretly excuse me anything you want to add before we open up the board questions or we can do that and then we're going to certainly open up the board questions and the um cornerstone
151of this district has been two things that through my entry plan and i've reiterated in many different places the guaranteed viable rigorous curriculum that is provided and through the delivery of of the staff members right that tell the staff that we have we absolutely depend on as part of the process the selection the professional academic and expertise of the staff to allow them to select some of these resources to support the actual curriculum itself that is an intricate part of the process that we have depended on i can say that uh because anywhere you go you're dependent on that and the staff in this district has proven itself over many many years right that they are talented in that area they know what they're doing it's not a mutually exclusive process though that well everybody
152just does anything they want i mean that's not that's just a workout like that i actually i just want to reiterate the idea for the parents and so on who came this evening i do think it's a healthy thing to have an honest dialogue about curriculum i don't think it's a healthy dialogue or a healthy thing to have that misrepresented in any way i will say we have i really haven't had too many discussions about critical race theory we don't teach critical race theory and i would hope that we would if we enter into a discussion about curriculum about learning what it is how does it work how do you how do you know about it that we don't drag these other things into it and that we look at the issues as they stand
153in this case it was uh the most recent case it was a social studies class and i would ask people uh i think that that is what is happening and i haven't asked us to continue that in that vein but let's keep it within the context of the the matters on the table and that's let's not draw all these other things into it um certainly if we have to talk about those we will but i've asked for that i'm a sort of reflection of dialogue and certainly we are open and welcome uh to that so i'll frame out just like that and i will just reiterate that the chain of command command which is on the website clearly delineates where people go for questions pertaining to curriculum or instruction or any other matters uh for
154that matter that's not to say to anybody particularly didn't follow them just point tonight that it's there so i'll leave those comments and open up to the board for questions if you haven't thank you dr adley um mrs mccammon i have a couple of questions but picking up directly on where you are uh speaking dr adley we've had a couple of times in my tenure on the board where teaching materials have reached a level of resonance in the community uh there was several years ago we had a parent bring forward i think in the year before you were here a parent bring forward some materials that came from a i believe a pro-palestinian group um that we had a parent uh bring to our intent or bring to the attention of both the board and
155administration uh i think it was two years ago there was a display in the library that the black student union uh raised some concerns about so what i would like to know is when we do have a piece of curricular material that hits a a cord with the community what is your assuming the community follows the chain of command appropriately what is your internal process for taking a look at a piece of material so i'll turn it to chris in a second but fundamentally i'd be asking people to work through that particular process first of all which is with the teacher generally speaking thereafter it's with the department here then they're after that it's it's it's with uh the principal and i know that seems like you're giving everybody hurdles to to jump over well
156we're not trying to do that and hopefully through to the processor comes to an understanding both from perhaps the community member side and perhaps even our our employee side but building on that yes but um so that's that's a little bit the interaction between the community and and your staff what is your staff process for taking a look at a piece of material how do you all evaluate so i'll let chris talk about the department process for actually doing that so when when teachers are creating courses and materials there's often a shared bank of materials that they would use and go to and they vet that with each other if there's a question about a particular resource they might go to their department chair they might go to me to take a look at that
157however every item that a teacher uses every video clip every article that's not necessarily something that's going through a process to say yes this has a stamp and everyone says this is okay to use that's just i don't think it's possible first of all because there's almost an infinite there's thousands and hundreds of thousands of resources but when it comes to what we have in our documents and what i refer to as those those primary instructional resources those are things that are vetted together as teams and that they share if there's something that someone finds problematic it's what dr adley said when you can start with the teacher with the conversation they're the closest to it and able to establish the context with immediacy when it comes somewhere else along the chain of communication it
158often is literally going backwards in the chain of communication for the person that that you spoke with to to do that exact thing go ahead mrs mccann so just but to clarify when you're actually reviewing a piece of material that's been brought to your attention whoever that proverbial you is what is the framework you're using how do you how do you evaluate something that whether it's you know how a display is constructed or it's it's a graph yeah again i appreciate the the discussion about what the interaction looks like but what i love to understand is when you're asked to evaluate a piece of material what do you do the first thing that i would do is look at the standard slash framework that goes with that unit of study and then the next question
159i would have is if you need to use this instructional resource what what's the activity that students are going to do with it and ultimately how will this support their learning at the end of not necessarily the unit but it could be a lesson and it often is it's it's not part of a larger unit when something's questionable it often is this item this this one thing that was shared so that's how i would frame it with a question with the teacher and it's not something i would do independently either i would rely on a team to take a look and embed it thank you thank you mrs mckay we do have department chairs for that mechanic that a very reason and as part of a team and stuff it's not unusual that we would
160sit down and have that have have that discussion with those teams that's the listen these people are smart people right that's why you hired them that's why we've heard them and uh uh i'm confident that collectively people will come to the right decision uh when we have we have discussion before ourselves thank you um mr chamber could i throw a question out there that's come up and could you just give a little kind of insight as to textbooks no textbooks we've invested heavily in the district in um most people read on kindles or read on their ipads i'm sure the traditional textbook can be on our technology so i think we should be clear and when we say we're using a textbook whether it's hardcover or it's now on the technology i think we need
161some clarity around that um so textbooks very much depend on the content area so textbooks things to and these are general statements about textbooks not i'm not trying to attack any textbook but textbooks are written by publishers publishers are trying to sell textbooks and 20 states in the united states adopt textbooks by the state and in i would say the most competitive performing states in our nation they're not textbook adoption adopting states they're appealing to the largest amount of people that might buy it and those the states are texas florida and california are the largest uh states that have a textbook adoption by state so it's pub that's a it's a business in publishing is a business so that's that's just food for thought about textbooks um the other piece about textbooks is they're not
162primary sources so in 2009 when the common core standards came about and ultimately the state core standards we're supposed to be using primary sources and textbooks are often not even written by people that are scholars and in that content area they're people that write textbooks so that's why they can be problematic for sure when a textbook does the job and serves the curriculum and aligns to the standards appropriately and there are times that it does so for us like ancient civilizations we have a textbook that's still in use for that class also because ancient civilizations doesn't change so much um but our but our history book like our our us history books 20 years old and so it you might say well why don't you just ask for a new history book then um part
163of it was for many years we couldn't get past the vietnam war and that's not an epidemic in darien that's there's lots of u.s history and the framework says this is where you should start and you just can never get to this spot and at the same time the framework is saying how does all of this relate to right now and today um so the shifts that we're making are not changes to curriculum but how can we make some shifts to get to the things that are already in this framework that the board has supported and then work backwards to make it all make sense like i bird walk that a little bit and i'm not intending to no i appreciate that you know there's comments we've eliminated or we're not using a textbook and
164i think we need to be clear to your point of either age of textbooks the fact that they stopped at the vietnam war and we have to supplement what happened between now and then so i i think that's important information for everyone to understand yes and just to be clear our textbook didn't stop at the vietnam war the curriculum was so dense we couldn't get past it but for example 911 would not have been in our u.s history textbook and i would say that if you're in a u.s history course that's something that's critical that we want to get to over uh the course of over over the course over the year thank you mr transfer mrs parent thank you um thank you for explaining you know in layman's terms how curriculum gets created um
165i have a couple questions my first is can you talk a little bit about teacher autonomy and how the district deals with that how much leeway teachers have within the curriculum or with when they're delivering curriculum um and i'll just leave it like that so i i'm speaking on behalf of the many teachers that i've spoken with i i would say most teachers would like more autonomy most of the time so the the way that that has been i'll call it negotiated over time is how we really develop that first stage of learning that what are the guaranteed experiences what's the knowledge and skills that need to come from this unit and then also how will students be assessed i would say are the two places that we want to be as common and as
166tight as possible and autonomy comes as well what does the teacher bring to the thinking and the teaching and learning along the way that's what we call stage two where they can bring their own i'll call it the art of teaching and we really rely on those the other pieces around it to be the science of teaching of what are those clear standards and frameworks and how do we know that students have learned that so the autonomy lies in the middle um and then yeah i think that's a that's an accurate description for most teachers in the classroom thank you mr parent mrs stein i'm mike beck um hi chris uh you touched on it a little in your presentation but i think it's important for the public to have a clear understanding can you
167talk about the board's role in curriculum development so i would say the first big piece and that is adopting whatever the standards and framework are that are going to support a particular course so i'm sure there were many presentations that went in 2009-2010-11 as the core standards were adopted 2015 on you probably lived in social studies um so that's the the big one when there's those big changes the other is if there is a large scale change in a primary instructional resource so i would guess i wasn't here about math and focus there's no way math and focus happened without the board having presentations on math and focus tc units will not change without the board saying this is these are the new units this is how they're different so that would be the next
168the next level then the third is when there are updates and i'll say changes of significance and i do want to be clear that there have not been changes to curriculum that are dramatic changes um i arrived on march 30th i believe of the shutdown and we've been living in a pandemic ever since it hasn't been time to make a dramatic shift in what our curriculum is and i i do think that that is necessary to to state there's there's no sudden change thank you mr tramberg mr brown [Music] thank you hi chris let me just read this hello mr brown says that each local and regional board of education shall establish a school district curriculum the committee shall recommend develop review and approve all curriculum of the local or regional school district so when
169i read all and i hear we just see major could you explain that disconnect yes so a lot of it's in the how you're defining what curriculum is and the way that curriculum is defined and it's a shared adoption of the term is what are the standards knowledge skills of a unit of study that uh exist for any given course grade level and that's the part that has come to the board so when we are making i will call them updates to the it's complicated because we call everything curriculum and everything's not necessarily curriculum so when we're making updates to how we are delivering that stage one those agreements that the board has supported that's not a change that would in my opinion impact governance of the board got it um i mean i could
170see where you would read this and see all and think that means everything that we should do and i know a number of other boards of education you have standing boards of you know curriculum committees that meet where they source that out to a special subcommittee or there's different formal things i know we've always operated on sort of the board of all or the committee involved but you know i'm just that to me as a board member trump board member troubles me that we haven't had that committee standing is part of something we do here and that this has gone on for a long time without an adoption of that committee and i do read this it says shall and it says all and so that's something that concerns me as a board member that
171perhaps we can consider over time uh what our process is working with the admin the other thought i would have is um when you talked about the teachers and we're going to that second level and we're deferring to their professional judgment and they have autonomy and of course they always want more autonomy is there training that takes place around how that process happens then how they learn to maneuver in that autonomous space or in terms of their lesson plan development so i i would argue that most professional development is about that stage too you're we're always training teachers on um what is going to directly impact their instruction at least that's the aim because when professional development is valued most by teachers it's related to what we're actually asking that they do in the classroom
172got it so do we do we put guardrails or scopes or definitions around what's permissible and what's not and again more specifically do we have training that we provide to the teachers about how they should do the development um i would say the the best guard rails are there are ethical guidelines for teachers and we certainly consider those to be the guard rails and the standards and frameworks are are complex and not exciting to read but it's important to look then they're big and we we work with teachers and each other on interpreting them to make sure that we're doing justice to to bringing those to life for students and preparing them vegetarian has done incredibly well is that information public or could it be made public um so when i hear you asking that
173i'm hearing could the tens of hundreds of thousands of documents that might appear in a classroom be made available so i'm really talking about the teaching component that we provide the professional development to our teachers yeah something around really around that i'm not looking for all material so i could um because i have i have heard you with the the curriculum committee request um and so what i in the design of this year and bringing in those presentations that are more intentional and thinking of your responsibility as the committee of the whole i want to intentionally say this is when we're doing that and when those are happening that's when that is and i haven't i've had covert so it's been a strange phrase yes i just i haven't had the chance to do that
174with you yet right and i would hope to have that chance before we say then this isn't working let's do this no i'm fully aware and i appreciate all your efforts throughout the endemic so please don't don't think i don't have that fact the last question i would have is since we're a public institution obviously whatever messaging we're sending has to be non-political we have to have anything that's disseminated from us as a government entity has to be free of viewpoint discrimination either coerced communications or you know silencing ideas do we have training that happens around that to teachers as to what their legal obligations are in that uh in that realm as a public educator that specific i would say since i during my tenure no and i'll also say not yet it's certainly
175something that we need to do and it's not completely unrelated to um all of the challenges we're facing right now with i'll say other issues for now and it's i wouldn't disconnect it completely from dei uh we're always looking for what our teachers need and when we have like specific situations like the ones happening now our teachers might ask for for more support in that area as well and we'd respond yeah i wasn't asking you to put on a lawyer hat as well i think you get enough but i just you know that is something that could lead the district to liability if we do have errors there and start promoting a certain ideology as that's there's no so i just would like to make sure if there's training available there we can see it
176great if it doesn't exist that's something i think we need to make sure and again i don't mean to attach with the legal stuff we have to get counseling no i would say the way that it is important to know that while we're not we're not talking about political ideologies and teaching a political ideology that's desirable embedded in the standards in many courses at a pretty young age is understanding the political landscape and the continuous obligation of civic engagement for students because when they are 18 which most of them are when they are in high school they are going to register to vote and they may choose a political party affiliation and it is important to know that as a result of social studies those are the things that you encounter and try to understand
177to have an idea of what the local landscape is the the greater and the global but it's important for all of us to remember here at the board and of course the admin that this is a public institution this is government funded and so we have greater and different obligations in just the general community so certainly make sure that's under consideration as part of as we figure out autonomy and look at how we're going to you know set the guard rails that's something that's part of the framework we use to teach and teach in terms of professions for that thank you mr chamber thank you mr brown mrs achman so i mean i think mr brown is correct the government is control in control of a lot of this and set standards but i also
178think we need to understand that our teachers have master's degrees many of them and and that is training in itself it's not a master's degree and like how to play with kids it's a master's degree in education so it's like being a lawyer you go for professional development throughout your career in annual professional development but you were trained to be an attorney the people we are hiring in in our rigorous thing is we're hiring the best teachers right so so they're we're hiring people oftentimes with a master's degree with a very high degree um in education so these people these these employees these are our men and women who come to teach come knowing what they're doing knowing their obligations knowing what it is to teach in a public school they take standards and and
179tests in order to get licensed to do that so i think that the district professional development is always helpful but just like it is for doctors and lawyers these are professionals we're dealing with and and i don't want that to get lost i heard a lot from both sides of this debate a lot of respect for the expertise of our teachers and i appreciate that however people felt that they they acknowledge that our teachers are professionals and come with a high degree of training um on the curriculum committee we we can the board can choose to reinstate one or not it was a very um informative discussion because new canaan was having a similar type debate about whether to have a committee or a committee as a whole we invited in lots of people to
180talk about it um it was even before i was on the board maybe a year before i came on the board that it was disbanded and it was disbanded but we were in compliance with state statute because we were all reviewing um curriculum and outside of the year of covin which i think mrs stein and i were requesting during the retreat we'd like to see more curriculum because covet kind of you know didn't allow for that we had pressing immediate issues it was a little bit of a triage year um we have seen it we have seen changes in changes in teachers college we have seen units of studies seen change in history and kind of all those timelines you just laid out or when we really saw it we just saw the new science
181standards a few years back and how that was going to affect our curriculum so i think the board does a good job there are lots of ways to do it and a curriculum committee might now be the best way we choose to do it um but i think this board has done a good job i think what i'm hearing is that there are some concerns over the resources that were used in a class and um i think it is really important and maybe this is why this discussion is so important tonight to understand the frameworks the frameworks are available to review political landscapes civics this board talked a lot my last year as chair about civics and the importance of civics and was civic still in the classroom well civics involves looking at types of
182governmental engagement political engagement so i think we can't talk out of both sides of our mouths we have to be really clear but resources are in the tanks in the hands of teachers department chairs principals and our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction those questions are best served by going through what we have is called the chain of communication that command and i think sometimes people might feel put off by saying go to the department head but the answer is the department head has worked with the resources and can give you the best answers it's always been my understanding and my experience so maybe what would really help people who are concerned is to understand when we say go talk to a department header teacher that we're doing that because those people are making those
183decisions and can best inform you and then if you still the concern escalated um but i feel like somehow this one got out of line or out of line is the wrong term i don't mean that out of scope and it took off like wildfire on social media and we have to find a better way um to let people know that the people we're directing to them can give them the answers they can choose whether they're satisfied with those answers or not but it's not because no one wants to talk to them it's because they're we're giving them the person best equipped to answer them and i do feel like this is where we got far off field on this one um and probably created stress no matter where you felt on the debate over
184the resource thank you mr zachman mr maroney yes so i have a question on the resources so i'm a little if you could educate me on the the secondary resources selected by the teachers and and the shared bank that you were talking about so how does something go from a teacher selected resource into the shared bank does it is that when something succeeds in the classroom they share it or if something falls flat do they share or is it all everything is shared and and how is that determined as to what goes into the shared bank and and how that is then does that then become a primary resource over time and just try to understand the fluidity of that i would say there's no formal process of who uses a shared bank who doesn't
185use the shared bank um i will say that to formalize it that's that's why i'm proposing that we approach how we warehouse our curriculum a bit differently for that reason so we could know clearly what are the guaranteed resources everyone's going to use and what are are not it's really relying on we have a culture of plc and that's the professional learning community and that's the teachers working together as professionals and they share resources um [Music] a team of three people two of them might use it one might not it doesn't make a resource matter good but in the in relation to teacher autonomy a teacher can connect to that piece and and bring it to life in a way that another one might feel like they can't so it's not it is relatively fluid
186when it comes to um which resource am i going to use thank you mr maroney mr ceni so you know i might suggest that we we're not going to solve anything here tonight uh you know regarding a curriculum committee but i would ask that the chair consider adding an agenda item in a future meeting to discuss a curriculum committee the reason why i think it's important especially at this time there's admittedly a void created by kovitt covet and i think you know a focus of uh you know a subset of our group might might be good to work with the administration better understand um i deeply appreciate all the comments we heard this evening but it's clear that we didn't have the answers as board of education members not only specifically on the issue which
187i don't think we should but on on curriculum in general i think that'd be helpful to create the knowledge base for the board just on professional development i mean we're all i'm a professional i go through it every year i think it's important that again we learn as a board with the professional development again i give utmost you know credit to the teachers they are professionals i definitely don't want to be micromanaging curriculum that's not my role here but i do think it overview and ensuring that the values that our community desires in our education system are met and the standards of the state are met and the ability to communicate and create the transparency that i think we've heard a number of times um just one last question i think you know again we
188talked about content a lot but the implementation of that content i think was one of the big issues that came up and admittedly i think the administration said there might have been a mistake in how uh this instance was implemented so maybe we can you can talk about how that is governed or looked over by the administration and and how those implementation of curriculum might be be corrected and uh refined well i i won't speak specifically to this incident because i'm not sure that would be appropriate but i'll speak in general about how there's oversight of curriculum implementation and that's through the teacher evaluation plan so this year it's a we're in a little bit of a different year because all teachers are evaluated if they've been in the district they have two informal observations
189that means they are seen twice by an administrator um often by one building administrator and then whoever the curriculum specialist is in that area and then they have a professional review of practice and so that's where they would receive specific feedback related to performance it's not uncommon to get regular feedback from administrators on a regular basis um the i will say the teacher evaluation system in general once again is under a pretty big overhaul the state's partnered with learning forward and i would expect to see um a proposed change to that which would be another uh whole board presentation that we would do in the spring related to i would say connected to curriculum oversight thank you mr c good points i appreciate that um mrs perrin thank you i just want to echo a
190little bit of what mr senior said and also mr zachman said our teachers are professionals and i have a master's degree in curriculum so this is my this is near and dear to me these people are trained to identify sources and resources and i are trained to implement them the best that they can teachers are human teachers make mistakes that's why we have administrators that's why we have people to oversee how they are doing their jobs and if there is a breakdown somewhere that's where the chain of communication comes in and if i just i can't emphasize this enough if you have an issue with your child or a classroom go to the classroom teacher first they are the ones with the direct knowledge of what is happening um my other is a little bit
191of a tangent um we talked a little bit of we talked a lot about the teachers roles the administrators roles in curriculum we talked about the board's role in curriculum can you speak to the parents role in curriculum is there a role for parents in curriculum and developing curriculum i would i would say formally no the board has the board is the elective group of people that represent the parents in the community provide the governance over the curriculum um when we receive feedback which we do in lots of different ways so every time that there's a survey when parents are in buildings and letting us know how things are going that's and those are all informal ways but as far as a formal process i unless i'm missing something obvious i would say i don't
192they don't see that thank you also because we're obligated by the standards and the frameworks that's 100 that's what we have to teach that's the requirement thank you mrs perry mrs achman so i just want to keep the board in a good space and we're i keep hearing the word mistake to be clear the board has not been briefed on any incidents of a classroom situation because the board doesn't deal with the situations of individual children um i did hear some comments like why don't we hear what happens to a teacher people should know unless the teacher goes through a very formalized process teacher complaints don't come to the board so i don't know that the board has heard that there was a mistake or not a mistake what we have heard from the public
193was there was a concern about how curriculum was reviewed i just want to make sure that we're not commenting on what happened in the classroom or dinner because i haven't heard the administration say that nor have we been briefed on that we did hear the concern on curriculum we had been asking about it over the summer i appreciate you having it ready because it looks like we really needed it um and and some board members really want to to learn more if they haven't yet about how curriculum's approved so this is great i look forward i think what you're saying is that curriculum is coming but i just don't want it to sound like we're all planning on any one incident because at least i have a board member have not been briefed on a
194specific incident thank you mrs achman any other further mrs ritchie it's just really a thought that's in my mind right now just how we can work better with our parents i guess to communicate to them curriculum and standards i'm old fashioned i love a good syllabus and i don't i it seems to me that that isn't a common practice anymore and i do think that there is some value for parents being informed of at more more of the high school upper school level to inform parents what the curriculum will be over the course of the year so what they can understand the expectations what the students are going to hear and discuss um i don't micromanage my kids so much but i do i do like seeing a syllabus and understanding what that flow of
195educational work will be for the years i don't know if we've gotten away from using a syllabus but i think i think it would be good to communicate better with our parents we do try to give our students independence and help them advocate for themselves but parents want to be involved and they want to hear so i don't know if there's a is there a way that we can better communicate to them what the coursework will look like for their student over the course of the year thanks mrs i'll just add to that mr tranberg in my 20 plus years of having kids in the district um the one thing that i remember which was helpful and again it was different but some more details some not but the open houses you know many times
196the teachers really laid out what the year looked like um and kind of established you know what they would be doing in the dialogue with students so it might be something to think about because i know they've always been popular and well attended it's been challenging over the last two years but you know i think deb's uh point is important but i think that's also a mechanism that we can think of you get that many people in the school you get the teachers and the the parents in the classroom it's a good way to have some of that communication good doctor i do think that that's an important point because how we collaborate with parents particularly on this particular issue in an honest forthright way because there's going to be more provocative critical topics that
197are going to come up and we click because by design they're going to come up that's what we want to do for the kids that's what's in the strategic plan so there is an onus on us to work collaboratively with our parents and our community to try and understand some of the topics that you're discussing ms ritchie and some of the topics that the the uh community wants to discuss so we'll do that in an honest forthright uh collaborative way and uh if there's informational sessions or other things that we can provide um we'll try and do that as best as we possibly can but it's just important we do get it right because i don't want this to be the constant thing that we we deal with moving forward and the other thing that
198came up here a little bit the more time we can give our teachers to work together the better and we don't do enough in my opinion uh but that's not that's a whole other discussion um because the more time we they can get together to discuss these types of issues uh the better it will be for kids in the classroom but anyway that's a different discussion for another time mr brown all right just a quick follow-up alan i the strategic plan i don't remember a section on provocative so is there anything that comes to mind when you say that or could you highlight that or give us a heads up as to what that may be and if you can't do it now in the future that'd be great but i'm just curious for that
199comment interest and challenge and critical topics could you give examples of any of these well there they could be controversial topics or from contemporary issues that have to be addressed uh that that come up that that involve uh it could be of political nature right that need to be discussed as well i don't know that's the term you use i'm asking you samples so i can follow well i just i i don't want to play on my word a little bit but we want the kids to be thinking about uh significant topics i just i just had a discussion with the kid the other day that they were doing in the science research project which was all to do with cells and protein themselves and how that would uh [Music] how that could be used
200in terms of parasites and different uh different illnesses and to improve that and that's not maybe not controversial but uh but there are i just know that there's there's issues that are going to come up that are going to you're going to have to pick a side on something right you have to try to defend the position whether it's a position you want to defend or not perhaps and we just don't want to be in this position all the time we have to do that thank you mr brown are you you're looking for a specific example help me with a specific example chris because it's just not coming to my mind right now but that's fine i understand i'll put you in the spot but maybe some time appreciate it thank you thank you mr
201brown any other further questions or board comments all right again thank you for the board conversation thank you for the parent conversation and feedback mr tranberg thank you discussion to be continued discussion around curriculum committee to be continued um this is a topic we have been focused on we will stay focused on it has been a challenging two years but if you think of all the work that's been done and the fact that we transitioned most of our curriculum to the investment and technology we made and we're able to execute what we did last year in terms of hybrid in-person remote learning i mean we have to take a minute look back pause and realize all the good work that has been done especially around the last year and a half to two years so
202so thank you all um we will move along to uh discussion on diversity equity and inclusion um dr adley and mr tranberg i'm not going to say mr brenda this is a controversial topic but to some of it might be i'm not going to say this is a controversial topic but the summit might be i'm actually glad that we have the opportunity here to actually uh have an open discussion about this i will say i'm very proud of the way the district has approached this topic and has approached the actual improvement process in general the idea of doing that strategic plan in a thoughtful way in a measured way so that when we do start the process it it's got a thoughtful process behind it and uh so i'm very pleased that we've done that
203and we haven't gone out done something just like okay we're gonna do this or do that um it has been delineated and approved that we take these steps and this is the first step in the diversity act and inclusion and mr chambers was going to explain what some of these steps are yes i'll say this topic is provocative and provocative is usually just meaning thought-provoking so i think if we're saying this is thought-provoking no matter where what you're thinking is it'll be provocative um if you'll allow me i'm going to zip through these relatively quickly again and then we can focus more on the conversation side of it uh but just the overview of this purpose of diversity equity and inclusion and let me be clear even though there's a picture of the planet there
204i'm not talking about globally i'm talking about very locally some of the work that's happened so far the bulk of what tonight's about is building our own dei team and what that team will do and then part of that work is called experiences to explore equity again our vision and mission are our guiding forces on this and i did pull out these two core values um the first being equity i will say in in my experiences it's not uncommon to see equity as a core value um in a in a school district but you don't always see the diversity and inclusion piece separately they're often um put together so i i just think it's it just shines a light on the thought and care that went into the strategic plan and the approval of the
205process so the purpose here is to make to bring our mission vision to life and our core values we want to operationalize our strategic plan especially goal area 2. understanding the root cause of inequities that may exist within and across communities supporting the social emotional needs which has been a common goal not only recently but always and develop a plan and process to address those inequities as we see them as the result of what the committee finds so some of the work so far are rest workshops so that would be crack and ces have offered some workshops over time and teachers have participated in those last year one of our opening keynote addresses was ken shelton who we hope to continue working with he's out in california he is an expert in in this area
206and he was well received by our faculty for an opening keynote last year there's also been some book clubs and book studies that have been teacher-led and uh i ran one as well with a group of interested people last year and our cdsp there are uh there is a uh dei leadership team task force and i might not be using the most appropriate language that they have in each school so they have been doing work um with the parents and that community to to um just to educate themselves uh from a teaching and learning perspective uh when we talk about diversity equity inclusion and curriculum because we've just talked about curriculum and obviously there's investment in care um commonly like what does that mean for curriculum it means these things and this is similar to
207the new york framework it's about what are we doing in our teaching to make sure we have that positive learning environment how are we setting expectations for all learners no matter what they bring to the table and that's all differences that's learning differences that might be racial differences that might be anything that they might face that might give them a challenge that other students don't face developing curriculum that are inclusive the common language you hear about that is representative and portrayal so as a student with learning differences do i see myself in the materials do i see myself in the discussion am i represented in what we're doing and then again supporting staff and the professional learning with a team itself the team will look at um in year one the goal would be to
208first develop an equity statement and i do want to echo dr adley's statement of moving intentionally because i will say i've talked to plenty of people that might say they feel like i'm slowing them down i'm not trying to slow anyone down with any work but i feel like we have to do the work as a district and have a statement and a shared belief that we can use to guide us as we're doing this work because i don't think it's helpful when everyone is doing this work differently and we don't have a common language to talk about what does dei mean specifically what does dei mean for our community here so the equity statement will be uh phase one um an equity audit so equity audit means looking at different categories and our data
209itself how when we look at students by these different categories and i'll show you what those look like in a bit um do they perform differently based on perhaps their gender perhaps their race perhaps their financial need um and that is often telling information on how we need to develop a plan or not and then the last part is developing equity networks so that refers to the people that are actually on the dei team how are they relaying the information to people outside of the team because we don't want there's no point of having a team if that work seems like it's living here and and no one knows what's going on so the network helps i'll say diffuse some of that information i will flip through this quickly my slide kind of formatted in
210a funky way on this screen but these are just some sample equity statements for your reference um so when and i use there's a school there's ford there's google so most companies right now are developing some type of a statement of equity that is used to guide their decision making when it comes to diversity equity and inclusion it's just a helpful part of the process and it's how you share common language when you have a team working together to try to do that work for any organization the audit categories so these are typical research-based um the breakdown of what you would look at to try to understand where disparities might exist within a community or an organization so you look at the climate and the common things under climate are to look at discipline so
211are any groups of students receiving suspensions detentions more than any other group program means who is who are the students that are taking ap honors gifted are some groups overrepresented underrepresented and then the obvious one of achievement and those are some of the indicators we would look at and then professional capacity um it's often about the how are minorities represented in the staff of the organization and that goes to do students see themselves and the people that are leading and teaching them and these are not from anything other than the common the common things that you look at now when you're doing an audit of this nature and the equity audit itself the reason i put this up here is there's an extra there's an extra dive that happens in an equity audit that doesn't
212happen in most places so we look at the data and after we all look at the data you're going to see we will likely see disparities it's just what happens the group decides well what are the most important disparities that we as a guiding coalition for the district might be able to identify and do some more research to provide that information so they choose those key focus points but before just choosing them because they seem to be the outliers like the most oh my goodness we need to do something about this they learn more and they go to you might have saw the bullet on like root cause like what sort of cause this is where we talk about root cause it's like well why what's the story of that group can we understand that
213better in order to take the most appropriate actions so that's the working towards story identifying the root cause and then hopefully apply an intervention that removes that disparity and whatever that performance indicator is the network itself so that dei team is at the center and the goal is the dei team is providing some guidance to the administration and faculty and staff students parents and the larger community i remember hearing a comment this evening just about just education of how as parents can we do this and the dei team would be just a helpful network in order to help people do that exact type of thing and the last part of this is getting to story every one of us around this table everyone in the room has a different story related to diversity equity and
214inclusion and our experiences are all different um so the reason that we invest time in a dei group is to build some common experiences and some ways we build those common experiences we look at things together like art music dance current events and then we have conversation about something that we've shared as a group so we're not always bringing in all of the outside interference that we have with our own story to help understand and create that common language so that would be the work and the scope of the group and i should say the big point of the presentation tonight is we really want to get this group going because it's a year one goal of our our plan and we have people anxious to be part of the work thank you mr tranberg
215i will open it up to board questions and comments mr ceni who's part of that dei team is it is it all staff members is it community members is a uh appointed board member on that deity um there's no one yet because i haven't established it but it will be staff administration students are a very important part of that team ideally a board of education member and a community member that's not connected a community member without children in the school is also provides another perspective that is usually um helpful in diversifying how people uh see the school and and what the school portrays thank you chris could you just add and talk to a little bit because i think it goes to people understanding what we're doing here a lot of these groups have been
216formed in the elementary schools and they've started conversations and dialogue around this yeah so the there is a group at every elementary school and the middle school and the high school and the work that they're doing is primarily to support each other as parents at this point so in the parent community you might have received an email that there is going to be a walk on the beach to talk about a dei topic you might have received an invitation to be part of a book club those are the things that are out there i have i've met with them to say please let us do the district work so we can make sure we're making clear connections and it doesn't feel like we have seven different things happening at seven different schools and they've been
217wonderful and supportive and in that the group that participated in the cdsp meeting that came up they're very excited it's an energized group of parents so you know i think that will help the overall project as you kick it off thank you um mrs achman but to be clear those groups we we keep saying cdsp are pto driven they're not district german so correct so the district has not yet put together its vei no good point thank you mrs zach uh mrs mccammon so my question is in part that i'd like to hear more on another night for several reasons one which includes the time but um i'm having a hard time getting my hand around head around exactly what an equity audit is there are different ways that i can conceive of it certainly
218there's the academic impact and i think i understood there'd be multiple kpis where you're looking at you know the performance academic performance and different reasons for variability there um but it seems to me there's a second component where you're also looking at you know when you talk about looking at the arts um i'm not exactly sure i'm hoping what that might mean but i'm not exactly sure what you mean so um i'd love some clarification probably briefly but at some points a little a stronger understanding of what the audit is really intending to uh explore so the the initial audit attempt to cast the widest net possible at looking at all kinds of different indicators and when it's arts that's it's referred to as program participation so our are certain populations of students participating in
219so obvious ones ap courses honors courses more than others but there's also there's research tied to students who participate in arts students who participate in sports students who are so looking at and that might turn out nothing so those often don't turn out to you're probably not going to have a huge indicator that students who participate in art are is going to be the focus of the district because we're going to find something there but it's just part of all an initial wide cast of what we might find i don't i don't know if i'm answering your question yes can i just add a clarification so if you're looking at arts for example are you looking to find out if certain cohorts are participating effectively or are you looking to find out people who are
220not maybe you don't have access for some barriers yes so that can be an indicator so we have let's say students with learning differences only four percent of students with learning differences participate in arts courses and 85 percent of students who have who do not have learning differences do not then we would say well that's a disparity where students don't have access to something and then when we're doing that and we said that's something we're going to focus on if we do the deep dive we start going through the process and then we might find things like well students with learning differences have more required programming as part of their day but that's not okay and we want to figure out how can we give more arts experiences to them so then you have this
221coalition that would make a recommendation here are some ways that you can think about it and they don't the di committee isn't telling the administration telling the board what to do it's just saying based on what we learned these are the things that you might consider thank you mrs mckinnon mr brown um so thank you and again if you you don't have to give them to me tonight but just a couple questions from the review we just had on the slide with the teaching and learning and the four bullet points there i would just be curious to know how those are distinguished from what we do now that was number one number two when we're talking in the slide of the core values and equity and then we look at the scope and i think
222it's slide 9 of the community network obviously as that scoping increases some of these items are outside of the scope of school districts so i'm not sure how you equate those two how you would achieve that goal and some of the factors we've identified are not ones that we control so that would be the second question again doesn't have to be tonight okay and i'll hope thank you mr brown mrs stein i don't know why my microphone is fit to do tonight um i think it's important that we sort of address another concern that was raised tonight that is a change in practice in our district i believe from last year which is the use of pronouns students identifying themselves in classes with pronouns can you just talk about from a district level how that
223was related the start of the school year to teachers what is our sort of philosophy on it what are we telling teachers and how is it being implemented sure i can tell you my understanding of that was teachers were presented with an option at the beginning of the year of one of the ways that you might get to know think about one of the questions you may think about asking your students this year to get to know them included these four questions which what is your preferred name what pronouns do you prefer is it um okay if i use those pronouns with your parents there's one more that is escaping me at the moment those questions mirror the questions that students are asked on their common app and they mirror questions that students are asked
224very often when they go to any college website and ask for information so i i think the intent there was that readiness and getting them used to that being a question that they would ask in my conversations with the high school counseling department there have been more students that are coming with questions about gender expression and identity and this was their attempt to to try to start doing some of that work thank you mr stein mr maroney just going back to the to the review and and i'm wondering what you foresee the board's role in this process where are the touch points with the board on on this process and how do we how are we involved i would hope that there would be board representation on the committee itself um that would serve as
225a liaison between the committee and the board as well as board updates on uh dei in the past i've done annual presentations of what the committee itself of this is the work and this is what what we've done so those are the two ways that jump to the front thank you mr maroney mrs mccammon so in terms of process do you is there an audit that's basically ready to go and you just you just lift it and that's something that you kick off if so is that something that we could see so that we have a more concrete understanding of exactly what you're looking at yes absolutely i can show you the template and everything so chris and one thing that just pops into my head if i look at this community network and you've
226got community the larger community parents students faculty staff administration the dei team as part of all this work this comes up pretty much annually when we go through the budget process we talk about hiring i know ms scion and her team do an incredible job but where does something like how are we doing or what are we doing about hiring and diversity like we we supported the teacher in residency program this year um i know questions have been brought up through not just the board but other committees in town and what organizations do we reach out to to look to hire um and make the district more diverse in terms of our staff i'll certainly i'll invite marge to jump in if i miss something on this uh but last year we or do you
227just want to take it but how i guess i guess that's fine i'll take it from either of you but how does it fit into this work and is it is it a component as we look across the district and we want to do all this good work like does something where is something like that in this well i i just can't i just know that correctly it is anything the three of you should flip a coin okay decide who's going to speak i'm trying to cut it off as quick as i can um it's in the strategic plan on the profession building the professional kept so it's delineated there are the action steps that we're going to take it's maybe not in that part of it per se but it's in the it's got
228a it's got all work together yes it does okay yeah all right and the state is also asking for minority recruitment teacher plans and i did attend some professional development march we attended several sessions last year and obviously the board's investment and partnering with the interns through the correct program are directly connected to what that goal would be great thank you mrs ackman so the goal of this right is to meet our goals in the strategic plan to make sure that our district is welcoming and understanding of different viewpoints but i imagine through some of these processes we might i'm not saying we will but we might hit upon some hot button topics just like we're finding curriculum did i would just ask that maybe we think about how when we do that when we
229approach a subject that might engender heated debate or be uncomfortable or sometimes i find these things are generational right like the kids are fine the adults are not or the kids are not and the adults are maybe we think about it so that we can um we just find ways to preempt it or to talk about it or to say look we've done this audit and we've actually found some things that are really interesting maybe we should hold some sessions because i think again a lot of if we can communicate it out if we can help people understand our thinking your presentations tonight have been excellent i think a lot of the people had they had these maybe the temperature would have been a little lower um on the curriculum issue so i just asked
230as you go through this if we find some things that we think might jump up i think the idea of getting more kids into arts you're not going to find a fight of that right most people are going to say we'd love to do that but there may be some that that kind of engender some real tough conversations and if there are maybe we find a way or the administration finds a way to meet with parents at different levels and and talk through their findings um because i think that always helps i generally find dairy in a community willing to learn um just looking for information thank you mr zachman um mrs ritchie yes so thank you mrs zachman i i just building on that the parents are obviously a very important part of all
231of this process so i think having them on the committee and and getting perspective that way is is very good but again i go back to my syllabus but there wouldn't be a syllabus for something like this but just keeping the parent community as informed as possible because we absolutely need them to partner with this and be invested with us in this process because it's important work it's important to our schools it's important for our students and it's important for our community as a whole and i hope our larger community becomes part of it because it's important for everybody in their end so thank you mrs richie mr moroney i just wanted to echo what mrs richie said there was a comment made it public comment for me which really struck struck a nervous is
232it just parents just need to be prepared and i think your syllabus idea is brilliant and to me somehow you need a syllabus on this so parents aren't blindsided by their children coming with an uncomfortable topic where they're not prepared to have the discussion the more we can help parents be parents is beneficial to all so i will say i appreciate to i think mrs stein on the pronouns chris and i had a conversation with dr adley and i think you know there's some lessons learned from that in terms of the communication how it was rolled out there was um something to do with the app that required a response which was not the goal um it was to make kids if they wanted to supply it they could supply it so i mean i
233think the reality is pronouns are here to stay they're on linkedin they're on facebook they're in your corporate directory they're on the common act i've traveled recently and everywhere i've gone from a restaurant to an airline people have introduced themselves with their names and their pronouns so i think again it goes to how do we help the community how do we help the parents and how do we communicate effectively uh to everyone's points so good mrs parent hi um i just want to echo what everyone has said that this conversation is provocative for some and it is uncomfortable for all i mean i think at some point all of us will feel uncomfortable with some of these findings and i think we as a community need to recognize that and respect other people's viewpoints and
234un uncomfortable feelings but i think to your point communicating wisely and often will hopefully temper the community and help them to understand that this work is important it's important to every single person in this town thank you mr karen mrs mccammon as uh when you go to construct the committee it's just i was wondering if i see cdsp up there but if you're also planning to talk to cpac and dag just to capture a full spectrum of neurodiversity absolutely thank you thank you mrs mccown any other questions comments thoughts good all right uh to be continued i think we should also talk or hear from you as to the progress i think we should move forward um whatever you need from support from the board and then we would i would like to hear i
235think the board would like to hear what kind of progress or updates you know we're going to get throughout the process so um moving on presentation and discussion on board master agenda for august 2021 to february 2022. so this goes through uh february it does show the first week of march here i think um so a couple of things about this what i have included hopefully captures some of what the board has been asking for uh the school psychologist on es sel and the progress are often the needs that we've seen that that type of stuff a progress report on nesc the board goals curriculum updates strategic plans open choice talent and gifted what isn't in here is mcbroom's annual report because we cut that out of the budget um we have moved moved the
236grants earlier so that you see them before they're actually approved those are the big highlights of like things that has been structured so so first review no action this evening but i'll open it up for any board comments mrs mccammon this aren't sour grapes because i'm missing them alone in the broom report but i am could you could you say that again yes i don't know whether you need to move closer or further yes let me know when i pull the mask out a little bit um um historically when we haven't done there's no historical place one time when we didn't do the maloney mcgroom report we had just an approximation from administration just to make sure that we were there weren't any changes um i'm just asking that if we could please in november
237just take another look at we would be using our in-house enrollment model well i have to use something yeah but we have an intelligence so i can share that i can share it with you the uh the dr radley version of what we're coming up with yeah so thank you same thing are we now doing malona mcroom every year we'll know we cut it this year but no no i know but even prior to that we didn't do melona mcroom every year we had our in-house model but are we now paying them annually to do this for us well we would we would recommend that we had this discussion before i would recommend that we do but but but but you caught it anyway so there's nothing this year okay it's rich well no but
238but but rich's well let me put it this way the financial i'm not nothing against rich but the finance director greg really used to do that okay i was getting a little confused yeah so i just want to see it on the master agenda although under with the understanding though that it's an in-house model okay and sour grapes so that's okay i would say uh thank you mrs mccammon dr adley and uh mr rudel um you know we can have this as another agenda item or figure out if it's in a in a committee but you know based on where we landed with enrollment and the fact that everyone wants to move to oxford and have their kids in a brand new school which i get that's exciting but i think let's think about at
239what point do we go back out to our community partners and talk to and get a better understanding of these developments because without these developments without all these new apartments we're still up an incredible amount of students so i think we need and there's another potential 150 apartments up near select woods that's being proposed mr genovese's property has started federal is well on its way palmer's is moving forward from what i understand finally and i don't know what else may be down the path but as the town turns over and you see that type of increase in a specific district in terms of number of kids moving in i think this is something we have to spend a little more time on you'll for like you'll forgive me if i just say that that's what
240a demographer does right um and it's not what i do but nice job i'm just saying sorry yeah yeah well then room one takes into account many of those the plans for those have not changed and i would say we typically get an october first update in-house or not i went and this is my comment i would like to see i think it helps us as we start thinking about the budget yes thanks and i would say if for some reason you see a need to do that then they would expect you to come back to the board and request us to look at that and possibly allocate the resources to that do you think that's important that's what i read i did it's just reality all right so the master agenda will come back
241to us please read it any comments you know for them on uh we will move toward action items personal items uh miss scion [Music] looks like miss scion continues to do a little bit of work on a daily basis in terms of hiring we did have some last minute resignations which is always unsettling but okay this should be it we did have one additional teacher at homes who signed a contract after this was posted so she'll be on the agenda for next time okay great uh motion to just approve the par deb uh second by mrs parent all those in favor that is unanimous thank you we will move now to public comment michelle good evening if you would like to speak during public comment please click the participants icon in the bottom of your
242zoom screen next click the raised hand option the facilitator will identify you please state your name and or address you will have up to three minutes to comment liz reba you are unmuted and recognized okay hold on miss riva can you hear us yes hello can you hear me hi yes we can hear you thank you just take your name and address please so i'm liz reeva and i'm at 160 ridge acres road thank you um so thanks for letting me speak real quickly i know it's late um i have students in the middle school in the high school and i'm also a former elected official of the town of darien i volunteered as a member of the planning and zoning board and i know how much time and effort volunteering takes so i thank
243you all on the board of ed for your time i just want to go back because i was not able to join the meeting from the very beginning and i heard some speakers before and i wanted to speak tonight about back to the topic of these materials assuming that these are what i'm talking about the materials that were handed out to students in the middle school in high school that i found very offensive um and i heard some speakers talking about in diversity and inclusion which i i feel like i don't understand that had nothing to do with what people are protesting about today about these materials so i want to just say that these materials are really inappropriate and they were really offensive i'm appalled that teachers on our staff had such a lack
244of judgment to send these out to our students um i'm appalled that there were no oversight of these materials i watched the rest of your meeting and uh heard mr chamber with the plc with thousands of materials in it which would be difficult to go through well it needs to be gone through and i was reminded by um i forget who was who mentioned that a couple years ago there was some materials about the middle east and palestine my daughter was actually in that class and i wrote an email to the principal of the middle school about how offensive the materials she was assigned to read in sixth grade were so whatever this plc was it does need oversight and it needs to be gone through i don't want to debate that these materials are
245offensive and i don't want to talk about how wrong it was for teachers to have students apparently go up and write their names under their political affiliation we're going to go round and round if we do that what i want to state is that there should be no opinions in the classroom or biases in the classroom whatsoever there shouldn't be there's no room for it there's no room for preaching and for truly being not inclusive and being divisive to people and it's ironic to me that some of the speakers earlier i only saw the last i think four of them in the public comment we're discussing how you know diversity and inclusion must be um obviously presented within this our students and that protesters were against that absolutely not it's the opposite our objection is
246that there's been a lack of stop thank you your time is almost up go ahead well what i wanted to say was i think that yes there should be some consequences i think there should be clear policy to keep our curriculum fair and unbiased that's it policy stated that teachers and administrators need to know that materials cannot be biased and then i think absolutely there needs to be oversight your time is up thank you all right thanks jackie's iphone you are unmuted and recognized can you hear us jackie you need to unmute all right thanks i think we just did uh yeah i i want to echo the last i've been sir please state your name and address thank you bill leonidge won si wenoy road and we've been here for the whole call we've
247watched the whole meeting and we appreciate all your time and effort and all this but what we've really seen is just platitudes vagaries when it comes to curriculum it's really not about vagaries and platitudes it's about specifics and whoever that guy is who who's out there talking about what we need to do what we want to do it's quite frankly embarrassing and what happened what has to happen is clear curriculum clear guidelines and accountability that's all we're asking for thank you sir michelle there are no more raised hands at this time great thank you michelle again thank you everyone for coming in person thank you for everyone on zoom thank you for all the conversations um and all the questions from a board perspective thank you for all the presentations we'll continue to move this
248forward as a community with open dialogue thank you may i have a motion to adjourn the meeting mrs stein second by mr ceni all those in favor