Policy and Instruction Subcommittee 3.2.2026

001for impact. >> Good afternoon. Um, it is the March meeting of the East Hatam policy and curriculum subcommittee. Um, we have a pretty full agenda. Um, truth and advertising. I think it is somewhere between slim and who are you kidding that we're actually going to finish anything on the third policy. I don't even think we're going to get to it. Um but I put it in there so it gets in the hopper. Um the other two policies shorter and they're easier, but we're going to do the curriculum stuff first. Um I'd like to start with the pledge of allegiance. Please to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Um, just a couple of quick

002remarks before we get started. Um, for those of you who work here who may not know me or about me much, um, if you include my board of ed times, I've been in this business now 36 years. I spent 32 years, um, I was an English teacher. I actually taught in this district and was heavily involved in the fight that got you a new high school that is now getting where it probably needs major renovation soon. >> Um, I hope I'm wrong, but I I suspect not. Pardon? >> Start saving your bottle caps. >> Don't spread that rumor. >> That That's how we built it. Bottle cap high. You remember that? Other people probably don't. Um I spent 20 years as a school administrator, some of which was as a high school assistant principal. The

003last five years um I spent in central office um managing curriculum development for art, music, and social studies. Um so I'm sure I'm not as up to-date as I might otherwise be. It has been five or six years since I retired, but I do tend to know a lot more about this stuff than most people coming in on a board of ed who are there because they want their kids to have good sports teams or because they want the budgets not to go up or any of the other reasons that people get on boards. Um, many of which are perfectly sincere and some of which have nothing to do with education. um for the sake of clarity that um we are fully aware and I'm going to make the point now we do not write

004curriculum. We're never going to write curriculum but under state law the board of ed is required to establish a curriculum committee in this district that got kind of sidelined quite a bit with the prior superintendent. Um not going to go into the war where's why fors and all that nonsense but it was in my view incorrect. Last year we rewrote policy including the a lot of policies upwards of 70 policies got rewritten. Some of them were just routine you know the laws changing got updated that sort of stuff. Some of it was much more targeted at addressing problems that existed, which is why I and Terry and others ran for the board of ed in the first place. Uh we have achieved a great deal in that two years doing that policy work. The next

005step from my perspective is curriculum development. And I I want to be clear, the fact that I say that does not mean that I have preconceived notions saying that the curriculum around here is not good. What it does mean is we don't know what's out there because none of it ever went through what I would consider a normal approval process. Under board of ed bylaws that were rewritten in the last two years, it now has to. And that's the way it should have been from the beginning. That is not and should not convey any disrespect to teachers or their work. Got nothing to do with that. This had to do with what I believe to be poor management from the top. Nothing against teachers and no criticism of teachers. Um, I don't think anything I'm

006going to be looking for or that the other members of the committee are going to be looking for are things that are going to be particularly odd or strange to you. My and and I've said this repeatedly to Teresa, my expectation is that there's a great deal of work that you guys have done which can probably in pretty short order get sent to the board for approval. I don't know that we're looking to rewrite anything. What what I'm looking to do is establish a pattern that says this is a professional organization that is run professionally. It is staffed by professionals. That much we know already and now we're going to take it through professional processes and when we do management work. Um that is not and should never be understood as a criticism or attack

007on teachers. You guys do the heavy lifting. I know that because I used to do it. And just like I made the joke when some people came in about bringing snacks for an afternoon meeting, it is hard and it is something I honor and respect and I think that that's important. So, you will have to bring curriculum for approval to the to this committee and then from there to the full board. In other districts, that's called Tuesday. It's just what you do. I never understood how that wasn't happening in this district, but there were so many things that were happening that needed to stop that that was really sort of low that that was low on the priority list. Now I've got two years left. It's unlikely that I'm going to run again. I might,

008but I doubt it. Um, and my goal is to get us to the next stage. And I've spoken with people on the committee about this. I've spoken with Teresa about it. Um, I I think we're all pretty much on the same page. Does anyone from the committee want to add any comments or anything before we get started? Steve, you got anything? >> Uh, no. I'm just thank you for welcoming me from a distance. Um, but uh yes, uh, you know, curriculum is always um, you know, a huge part of the continuity of of the classroom moving forward. And I know that, you know, I've been teaching for over 20 years. in the last five or six years of focused on curriculum development and writing and and it's an everchanging um curriculum's ever changing just the

009way that it's presented and I think it's very important to have that down um as a as a guide for us to go by rather than to um you know to say that it's not being done right but just make sure that we have it in in a way that is is done in in a guide moving forward that can be picked up someone could just pick it up and kind of go with it. Ann or Teresa? Anything? Terry? >> I have three different Terry's in my life. I get them all confused. >> I'm not a Terry. >> Yeah, but she is. >> Um, I would echo exactly what's already been said, so I'll keep my comments very brief. I mean, this is really about making um, you know, just ensuring that the process is

010there and having those extra checks and balances is only going to make everything tighter, cleaner, and better for the kids and that's really why we're all here. That's it. >> Nothing to add. >> Take it away, coach. >> Okay. >> Oh, one last thing. When you get hungry, don't be bashful or thirsty. Just get up. Go ahead. >> Thank you. Thanks for the snacks. That was very kind. I did get some orange juice because I didn't want you to feel bad that you brought something and nobody was enjoying it. Um so we have a team of colleagues here who um have been busy at work over the years and so they really did amongst themselves talk through who could be some lead folks to take us through presumably a presentation of what makes sense based

011on the request that came from the committee and then open to anyone else to contribute at any time. Um there might be some questions and we'll just want you to get started and really appreciate that you're all here this afternoon on a Monday. Thank you. >> Yeah, that's a lot to ask. >> The last thing I'll say is I don't tend to be very formal with things. Do what you need to whether it's ask a question, clarify something, go to the bathroom, just relax. So would love to have you introduce yourselves and then we will at some point introduce the rest of the audience but would love to start with you too if you're taking the lead. That would be great. >> Sure. So I'm Tina McKenzie and I'm the reading specialist at the middle

012school and I'm Kim Tol. I'm the math consultant at the middle school. >> We're also instructional facilitators. So I'm the English language arts instructional facilitator at the middle school and Kim is the math. And we did want to take a minute just to have the other instructional facilitators just introduce themsel. We're speaking on behalf of them. So, if we could just maybe go down starting with Kathy and just run through the IFS, that would be fabulous. >> I'm Kathy Marino. I'm the math specialist at the elementary school. >> Kayla Parsons, reading specialist at the elementary school. >> Me Deadmond, instructional facilitator at the high school for the English department. >> Rosemary Evans, instructional facilitator at the high school for CTEUA. >> Thanks. Uh, I'm Sean Bachelor. I'm the instructional facilitator at the middle school for

013social studies. Hi, Courtney Harris, instructional facilitator at the middle school for science. >> And Britney Fino. I am the instructional facilitator um at the elementary school for social studies. We also have with us administrators from Allison Shirley at the high school and Chris Eert. And then Megan Peterson from elementary and Bridget Erinson and Kelly Braz who's also a teacher is in the audience. Thank you for all. And so our purpose today is to give you an overview of our curriculum components so that as we come forward in the future to start presenting our units and our K12 um subject area content area curriculum you'll have an idea of the pieces that we put in and how we kind of prioritize how we create our units. So today's an overview in the future we'll be coming

014with our content areas and to present the specific um contents for each subject area. So we use Atlas as our curriculum platform. It's not our curriculum. It's just where we house it. It's how we organize it. It's so that um like Mr. Trojan said, if one of us leaves our position, another teacher can come in and they can see all of our pieces and have the materials and the resources and the assessments that they need. So, we use Atlas and we're going to go through our curriculum components through the lens of Atlas. >> Before you go on, I'm going to interrupt you. That was informal. >> When I taught the one year I taught in town, I was hired to teach English at the high school. There were a number of courses for which there

015was no curriculum because it had lived in the head of the man I replaced who, you know, retired and went his way justifiably. I swore that would never happen under my watch again. I survived it, but it weren't fun. >> No, prior to Atlas, that happened. I think those of us that have been around for a long time, that would happen. So, it's nice to have a central place where it's all located and we all know how to find what we need. if someone needed to be replaced. So, um we will go on and this is our definition of curriculum. I won't read it to you if everyone wants to just take a second. And I think we're going to move forward from there to start going over our components that we're going to be

016explaining. Um, so the sheet you're being provided right now um is going to be a handout that looks as this. I believe we're going to have enough to make it somewhere around that area, but um we can also certainly send this presentation out. So, we are going to um take notes, ask questions. This could be as you go through units of study in Atlas in the future. This is just going to be a nice little outline for you um that you will be able to reference back to as we explain each part of this and each component in detail today. Okay. So, at the very top of your handout, we always start with well above that would be our unit name and the weeks that we plan on covering it. So, that was the original

017on your title. We'd have the title of our unit, what weeks we plan to cover it, and it'll also show you, if you looked on the computer, when it was last updated, so you can see if anything's been revised or changed, but then right below that is the essential question or questions for the unit. So, these are open-ended questions. There's usually one or two per unit. There might be a possible third, but it's a big idea. It's a big question that throughout the unit, the kids will get lots of new knowledge that they'll always come back to that question. So, it's not a yes or no question. It's very broad. It also connects to a big idea or connects to real life. So, they can apply what they're learning in the unit to something bigger

018and outside to make connections. They're definitely designed to promote discussion, critical thinking, to have conversations, to be able to connect to other content areas in what they're learning. and we always come back to them throughout the unit like how does what we've learned now change what we thought. So our answers evolve as time goes on. So they're big examples of possible essential questions for a science unit. It might be how does the structure of something affect its function. So as they learn more about structures, they can change their answer and it become more in depth or how does where you live affect how you live in a possible social studies unit. So you can kind of look at geography and climate in all different aspects as you go on, but you keep coming back to

019that big idea and it kind of provides like a story or something that grounds the whole unit. So essential questions you'll see in all of our units. Next on the list um you'll see standards. So standards are probably um since about 2010 kind of a big um hot topic. So with the kind of the adoption of Connecticut or sorry the common core state standards um we will be using those typically in the math and ELA um areas and domains but we have them embedded into social studies as well with a C3 component that changed up the framework in about 2024. Uh science will use NGSS which is next generation. So standards are that big piece that we're looking at that go through those educational benchmarks um to define what students should know. So we can

020create uniform evidence-based and rigorous expectations um uniformly. So especially at the high school level when we have multiple teachers teaching the same course, you have that uniformity because everything goes back to those standards. um Atlas units only include standards that will be assessed in that specific unit. So there might be prerequisite knowledge that was addressed in that unit, but only um standards that will show up in Atlas or ones that are actually being assessed at the end of unit or midun assessment. So the next component are the learning outcomes. So standards give you what they need to know by the end of a grade level. The learning outcomes are what they need to know by the end of this unit. They're very specific. What will the students know and be able to do at the

021end of this study? They're measurable. They're observable. They relate back to the standards. So, they come right from the standards, but they might be pieces that by the end all build together in different units to get to that standard level. So, they're more specific to the unit. They're rigorous. So, we write them at the highest possible level of depth of knowledge. And on the next slide, I'll explain that. There's lots of skills taught throughout the unit, but our learning outcomes should be written with a high level of depth of knowledge, and I'll explain that. So, depth of knowledge one is a very basic recall level. We don't list our outcomes like that. Those are one-s sentence answers. You can give a one-word answer. Level two is more basic application. We don't write our outcomes there

022because we want our learning outcomes to be rigorous. So, they should be written at a DOK 3 or four. strategic thinking. A DK3 um should, you know, require kids to do a lot of critical thinking. Um they demand reasoning, planning, using evidence, solving complex problems. So your learning outcomes that you see in our units should require those high level skills. Do4 is um like synthesizing, using lots of complex reasoning, processing, investigating things. So they're higher level skills. It's extending their thinking. So when you look at our learning outcomes um you should see that level of rigor listed in those. The next um content category is going to be primary resources. So these are areas where teachers are going to um actually put out materials that are selected to support that implementation um within a unit.

023So it could be multimedia, it could be text. So there's a lot I know there's websites that are used um this day and age especially. So all of that that really enriches and also supports the curriculum will be put into that section just so again when and if there was another teacher who were to take on that course they would be able to have all of that at their fingertips um without having to rewrite the wheel and have to do all that digging and searching all over again. So all the materials um in terms of the actual instruction would be housed in there that enrich and support that that curriculum. So vocabulary is also listed in our curriculum and we teach vocabulary um throughout all of our subjects in all of our unified arts um

024in everything. But the the content vocabulary that you'll see listed on our units are considered tier three vocabulary words. We do lots of other vocabulary words, but tier three are very subject specific. They're the kind that don't just come up in conversation. They don't show up in other areas. There's other words like tier 2 words are words you'll find in all of our in every subject area. Words like investigate or just all your basic words that come up in all areas, but these words are very specific to the unit to the subject area. They're critical to demonstrate understanding as the kids are building knowledge. you have to explicitly teach them because most kids would not have heard of them unless they are really experts or they have a family member in the subject. Um they

025and again they build conceptual understanding for the unit. So they're essential to understanding the unit. So um you will see those listed. Again that doesn't mean we have so much we have a lot of other vocabulary built into our units but we would never be able to list all of those words that come up. But these ones we feel like um teachers coming in after us need to know which are the ones these kids have to absolutely understand to understand the content. Um and the final area is key assessment. So we have had many conversations I know since my time here um about kind of fine-tuning which ones we really want to use because I know that there's many names that we can give these assessments. So we adopted these umbrellas of formative, summitative and

026performance-based assessments. Um so we are looking at formative as being those ongoing assessments. Those are those quick checks. Um such as exit tickets, observation checklist, small group discussions, quizzes, draft writing. So anything in the process of the learning and summitive assessment would be that evaluation of student learning at the end of a unit. Um, so it would be a much broader base of instructional learning and that would be a unit test, final essay, project or presentation. And performancebased assessments would be that demonstration of knowledge or skill that a student would actually be able to perform in some way. So that would be a research project, a science experiment, debates, portfolios, um, anything that has more of a real context to it. So, those are the components. Um, we wanted to just kind of give you

027the outline of what you're looking at, how to look at it. But in the future, we're going to come back with our specific curriculums, and so that way you can kind of dig in further and see how they all come together to kind of make our quick tape story for each of our subject areas. Um, and we are here to answer any questions. Um, if you have any questions about what we've presented so far, >> folks, anything you actually answered something that I had on the first page subsequently, so that took care of it. >> Um, did you folks actually see the agenda for this meeting? That was a mistake. Um, and that's not meant as criticism anyone. I consider that my fault. I should have said make sure everybody sees the agenda. One of

028the items on the agenda is to formalize a curriculum template. >> Oh, they had that. I had already shared with everyone that there was this desire from the committee and that's why they were coming forward to share what they currently utilize. So, it's not going to be a surprise that that was okay. >> I was a little >> I didn't know if it meant something. >> No, no, no, no. I mean, I doubt that they care about the minutia of the policy stuff that we got to deal with. Um, most of what you're saying here sounds very very familiar to me. Um, I feel a little bit of a laugh when you're talking about depth of knowledge. We used to call that Bloom's taxonomy, but what the hell doesn't matter. Um that's just an understanding

029of how brain works in different levels and stuff. Um this looks to me like UBD. Am I correct? >> It is very much based off of Yes. >> Um I spent a lot of time with UBD. We're old friends, sometimes combatants. One never knows. Um where Well, I I've gone through some of the stuff on Atlas. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you I've spent a lot of time on it yet. I haven't. I've seen some things. There are things that I'm looking at that you're sort of discussing that I've never seen and I'm confused by that. I don't know if I just happen to have hit the units where it didn't exist or what's going on. For example, you list a variety of different um one second. Do you um Dan

030and Tara, do you understand the difference among the different kinds of assessments, formative and summitive and all that? >> Yes. >> Okay. Um you list a a variety of different procedures for formative assessment. None of them appear in the in the curriculum. >> Is that a public versus private? Like I think that the public form of the curriculum does not have every component for the public. I think >> don't list the the key assessments because then they would all be out there and so >> well I agree that the public can't get all the test answers and questions. Um but I need them. This committee needs them. We can't approve curriculum. We don't know your how you're assessing it. >> Well, that will be there in the curriculum present. >> Yeah, I think when we

031do our presentations, >> I don't want to wait for that. I want to see them. Uh, I I want to be able to get my work done in advance. Um, for me that's a concern. It's not a concern necessarily about you or any of you. Don't take it the wrong way. But for me in doing the work that I'm looking to do, I need to see that stuff. Um, here's another thing. You talk about different assessments. Where are the scoring criteria? >> We do have those. So we have but again they might not be out to the public yet but for every for every learning outcome we created um like learning progressions like what's meeting what would be so there's we have rubrics built in with learning progressions that may not have been shared yet

032but we >> we do have those created for all of our areas and >> all right that's um the other thing I don't see when I look in the curriculum templates or the atlas is I don't see a learning plan. I see stage one. You've got your um standards. I don't see graduation standards highlighted. And I don't know if that's just because it's behind the gate or whatever. Um that I find troubling. Um and again, that's not a reflection on teachers. It's just how do you have in this day and age? How do you have a high school graduating kids and you don't have graduation standards? I I don't get that. I don't even understand. I don't think NAS allows that. I don't unless things have changed and they might have and I understand that.

033Um >> yeah, >> I'm sorry. >> We had all graduation competencies. Our Easthead school district are graduation competencies. So there are 9 through 12 graduation competencies for every content area that are listed. >> Are they in the curriculum? >> Yep. >> They're linked to the standards. >> They're under the meet the standards. >> It's linked to core standards. Okay. State core standards. >> So as long as you're linking the unit to that. So am I to understand that the graduation standards are not generated in this community? You just sort of select from national and state standards. And that's not a criticism. I'm just trying to understand the process. >> We district created them. >> Well, that's what I'm familiar with. I'm trying to figure out what we >> Okay. All right. That stuff should be

034public. >> It is public. >> Okay. I I've got to I clearly need to spend more time on Atlas and figure out some more of how this works. Um I'm old school enough. So we actually used, you know, Google Docs. That was how we published our curriculum. It wasn't in a database like you guys have got. Um so that I have to get up to speed apparently. Um but I don't see, you know, I don't see the assessments. I don't see the scoring criteria. Makes perfect sense that that's not in a public-f facing thing. I didn't think that what I was looking at was public facing. Um, but I also know that state law has changed since I've retired and you got to publish curriculum in a way that we didn't have to do it.

035Um, what we called publishing curriculum was a joke and it was treated like a joke. Um, but I don't see a learning plan. Uh, I I don't see anything where it says, um, here's going to be the first thing we do to introduce this unit. This is what we're going to be looking for. I don't see any of that. It does it exist or is that stuff that teachers kind of manufacture as they go? Which was, by the way, almost my entire career as a teacher. It was my entire career as a teacher. attachments on mine. >> so I think too there's subject specific like math because there's a very specific like bridges at the elementary school I am at the middle school like there's very specific language arts is built off of the unit

036outcomes. So I think there is a little bit of variety in the depth of how much teachers input into but every new teacher would come in knowing these are exactly the words I need to teach. these are exactly the standards I need to teach. These are the materials I have to use to cover this. But again, some are a little more >> that's stage one. >> I'm talking about stage three. >> Yeah. like very specific lesson plans for everything like >> so I know I can speak to IM I mean it's open source so anyone in the public given the website which I know is linked every math teacher um at least at the middle school has linked that website that can go and be accessed by anyone um and to see lesson by lesson

037>> I'm I'm confused and that's my fault not yours um when you say the website are you talking about something that teachers have or are you talking about something in atlas? I'm not >> No. So this is this is the curriculum itself. So this is luster of mathematics. So >> well but you're saying that the curriculum is an atlas. >> So if it's the curriculum itself, it's got to be an atlas, right? Atlas houses what our actual plan of adopting something like illustrative mathematics into East Hatam in our day to in our much broader sense of our units. Whereas IM is all of your materials. It's all of your day-to-day lessons. It's your sequence and it shows a whole narrative. So it's the it's the actual materials that are being housed for that curriculum. We're

038gonna have to figure out a way to get that into Atlas so it's available for everybody. >> It it is there's a hyperlink or for the each unit >> is is what I'm trying to say. So you can access through atlas in the public domain to see lesson by lesson day by day. >> For science we link um we have a hyperlink to a story line that shows the progression of the unit from start to finish. And does that leave learning object list learning objectives in sequence? >> Okay. Um, one thing that concerns me about what I've seen, and I keep saying this because I don't want to be misunderstood and hurt people's feelings because this is not a criticism. As an English teacher, we never said when we wrote curriculum when we were going

039to teach stuff because it was all a question of who got to the books first. You know, if my across the hall neighbor got there first, I wasn't teaching that one cuz kids had the books already and we moved them around. Um, I think in other areas, science, math, stuff like that, it's probably by definition much more sequential and has to be Um, do you folks have flexibility within your less sequential curricula to move things around freely when you need to? >> At least at the middle school, I would say yes. I don't know if I want to speak for everybody, but language arts is not clearly as black and white and we do move things around as needed. And that's why I think we've never put like a dayto-day because there is some variable

040of but we need to make sure that all the kids achieve all the same standards and all the same learning outcomes and we do use the same materials but we do have to shuffle a little bit. >> That's um pretty much what I was accustomed to um except like I said and I wasn't doing math and science so that wasn't my concern. wouldn't want me doing all that damage. Um I um we didn't put dates. We put this is how many weeks it's going to be. >> This is how many lessons it's going to be. Um and even that obviously is flexible. Sometimes kids get things real quick and you blaze right through them and sometimes you're there two and a half weeks late wondering if you're ever going to finish. It's just the way

041things go. Um, >> does anybody have anything else they want to add or any other questions? >> I was just going to note too like year to year as we make those decisions to shuffle things around, we then go into atlas and shift it so for the next year they're in that. So we may have things in ABC D but we decide D needs to go after A. And so we'll make those adjustments as curriculum content teams at the building so that then it's the fresh perspective for the following year. So it's not it's put into Atlas and we never touch it again. We're always making revisions based on how we're changing our teaching practices. And as a platform, Atlas makes it very easy to do that. So, I just recently had to do adjustment

042with a math teacher and it was really a matter of stretching out or condensing a unit and then switching the order of a unit and we did it in literally that quick of a time. >> Yeah. >> Um, so it they don't make it this whole tedious process to have to appall everything. It's literally a drag and drop. >> Oh, that's good. Yeah, like would it help to see has >> Yeah, if you if you can and you want to >> actually trying to search it through while Sorry. While Kim is pulling that up, I will say language arts with science of reading implications has been shifting a lot. The elementary school has a lot of shifts that they're currently making because of the big shifts that they went through. Like we did the science

043of reading master classes last year. A lot of us are doing Readcon this year. So the implications of science of reading are shifting. So we are making a lot of adjustments right now in language arts based on what the state >> and the research is saying. >> Jump on that just to add one other thing. It is my firm belief that curriculum needs to be approved by the board of education. It is also my firm belief that curriculum has to be a living document, which means that I would expect that good teachers would be playing around with stuff as they go. Um, if it was anything major, yeah, you got to keep other people in the loop. You don't get to just rewrite the curriculum on your own. But I don't expect people to feel

044and I don't want them to feel like they're in a straight jacket. Um, I worked in a much larger district and we had, frankly, we had more people in the curriculum office, way more people than you have in the administrative staff in this whole district. Um, and that was just the curriculum office. Very different setup. We also had a routine where different subject matter would come up routinely every x number of years. Um, and then of course that would get thrown out when things change cuz that happens too. But there was a plan um to cycle through. I don't see this district ever having the resources to do that, although I'd love it if it did. Um, I don't want it to be that rigid. Um, so I would expect that teachers would periodically bringing

045be bringing stuff forward to the board long after I'm gone. um just to maintain the process. We've needed to make changes. Here's what we're doing and why and let's have that discussion and get the board support for it. Um but it shouldn't be something that hamstrings teachers. You can't do kids any good by making teachers miserable. Does not work. I've seen it. Um go ahead. So, I don't want to do too much shuffling because this is a another teacher's unit, but um these little toggles on the side on the left side right here. >> Yeah, >> the six dots. Um so, no, not >> I know. I know. They could see it can move. >> What are they telling you not to do? It sounds entertaining. I know Carl's gonna come back like what did

046I do to my um but I can drag that anywhere in that sequence and what's going to happen on the side. So again I don't want to mess around >> there's a drop down menu of stuff underneath those things. >> Um there is just a selection of options. Um but I can copy a unit. So, if I wanted to maybe move one to the bottom and say that this was there's options that if I wanted to make tweaks, but I didn't want to make permanent tweaks or I'm trying something out. Um, like what you were saying with the fluidity of of with the flexibility of the curriculum. Um, but I can also slide these over. So, I can extend the end date here. Again, I'm not going to do it. Um, I can move the

047whole thing. >> That was whole plan. I could I know >> he's going to get an email notification that was changed. Um >> so in this I can change the end date. I can move it around. I can as it moves vertically that will shift the timeline as well. So I would have to bump that over to when that would essentially resequence. But it's a very easy process for a teacher to go in and say that took longer than I thought. I can extend that a little bit. it's going to shift my other units after that. Um, but there is flexibility. >> Would the other units automatically shrink to shrink to account for it or you have to go in and figure that out? >> I don't remember that one off the top of my

048head. >> It doesn't shrink automatically. You have to say >> just curious. >> I thought I thought that was the case. >> Can you click on add new unit? >> Sure. >> We don't need to save it, but I think that would give us an idea of what categories there are. >> Yes. and how we build it. >> So, I can do unit name >> blah blah blah blah blah. >> Um um and then we're going to have and yeah, it would squish the weekend. I mean, that's a very very short unit. Um if I save it, >> it's going to show his >> Yeah, I think it's gonna >> somewhere. I'm Yeah, I think I would have to go in through the other and actually >> I don't want you to show >> I

049was hoping >> here. Yeah, I can I can go into a specific unit here. >> See this Jim when we talked about when you talk about like template this what's is what jumped into my brain is what currently lives on this page versus what we need to add. to enhance it. And that that's kind of where my brain went. >> To that end, here's one example. It's essential to have essential questions. Where are the enduring understandings? >> That's a gap. >> Okay. >> So, here's our standards that are aligned. Here's >> Can you show me in here where it shows the graduation standards that are related to it? >> So, this would be grade seven. This is grade seven. >> Yeah. >> Do you want me to open up a high school unit? >> No.

050>> Yeah. I mean, you can look at mine. Absolutely. Go for it. >> It's just it's some of them are in need. We've done some changes which I'm really >> I'm sorry I can't hear you. >> I was going to say we've done some changes. You can pull up one of mine. Um, so >> what would be >> um subject then she can select and look >> and high school. >> Yeah, >> on the left. Yeah, >> there we go. >> Right there. >> Which grade do you want? >> 11. >> Okay, hang on a second. Does that mean that the graduation standards are only connected to the high school? >> No. >> So they come down in bands. >> So we have what? K3. Who? >> Do you understand what I'm asking? >> How

051do you articulate it if you don't know where you're headed? >> 912. >> So you go on American literature specific unit. >> Um Let's do >> a funnel >> of mice and men. >> Um, >> so going into Oh, yeah. Here we go. >> So, at the top, so I have the graduation standards. I had two essential questions. >> Sorry, questions. >> Oh, there we are. At this point, we're still working with um transferable skills. I knew I should have just gone to the English teachers curriculum. I'd have understood it. >> Are you all set there? Do you want me to go ahead? Then we have the learning outcomes. Yep, you can keep going. Um, then we have that content vocabulary that they mentioned earlier. >> And I think show us the book talk quiz.

052>> This is fine. I just hope you like it. Okay, so >> so where are the scoring criteria at? >> Um, so for this this this doesn't have this isn't a schoolwide rubric that incorporates the standards. This is just a a student teacher developed rubric talking to them about and this is just for the book talk. um regarding the novel. So it it's really about expectations. So it's not built the same way as some of the major assessment rubrics. >> Most of our rubrics would have indicators for each of the levels, but this was for a special project. >> That's right. If you go to another um if we go further down and look at let's look at the um the OMA academic right there. All right. So I think my rubric might be attached

053to it. I hope. There we are. If you scroll down there it is. There it is. And so >> Oh, now I know what I'm looking at. That's better. Anyone wants to help me look at Don't Don't move for a moment. >> Sorry. >> No, it's okay. >> This girl happy. >> Well done. Okay, good. >> We do have these created for all subject areas across all of the competencies. So, we worked for probably a good year and a half or two years developing scoring criteria rubrics based on the competencies. So some of the assignments are going to have like this kind of rubric, right? And then for others there might be something different that's more along the lines of a participation rubric. And at with those sometimes I try to include the students as

054a development of those so that it we have like we have agreed upon shared language perception of what they should be doing. >> Makes perfect sense to me. Um, the only thing I might disagree with you on is that the the fact that it's being developed with kids does not mean you can't have the same specificity and growth in the different ideas. That's how you teach them to think that way. And you know that and I know that because you could see it here. Um but other this is for me I don't know what the other folks think. I it's very encouraging for me. >> Can I just add something? Um please 2017 we all worked and I know you're saying I haven't worked hard but we all have this kind of stuff on our

055atlas um looking pretty much just like that. So we put a ton of work in and we are revamping. has changed. My curriculum has changed since National History Day. It's a little bit different now. So, I just want you to know that this you've been doing this since 2017. >> And my instinct was that that was happening. >> But nothing ever went through anything that I would consider a normal approval process. Nothing was ever vetted in that regard. And you had a superintendent who refused to share the stuff. >> Um, >> I have social Did you go through the board of ed? We have new textbooks. >> I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I should explain. I I have hearing loss. I'm sorry. >> Uh, social studies went through the board of ed because we

056had new textbooks through TCI. So, I know our curriculum went through. >> I was never able to get any records that showed that. I was told that it happened. No one would ever share any of the information. It was irritating. I'll leave it at that. >> I would imagine. Yes. >> I think past practice was if it was a new course, it would be brought to the board of ed like so >> or new books or something like that. >> Yeah. >> But I thought you always had Atlas. I thought if you didn't >> I couldn't get at it and Mr. Reese got unhappy with me and suddenly he couldn't make it happen for me. It was transparent at best. Um, but that might have been because I beat him in an FOI to find

057out how much money he was wasting trying to beat up special needs families. Believer. >> Um, so >> you have all the scoring criteria for K through 12 in all content areas. If you would like to see the um, East School District standards, performance indicators, and scoring criteria, I can send all of that to you if you would like. >> We need to we need to have all of that. And yes, thank you very much. >> Wait a second here. You want it to be a part of the presentations, right? As opposed to just you getting this document, right? You want it to be a part of curriculum approval >> over time. Yes. But right now, I want to see what's out there and what exists. >> Okay. >> I want to know what's going

058on. If somebody had asked me previously, Jim, does the staff know anything about scoring criteria and how to create them? I would have said, I don't have a clue. I've seen no evidence of it. Doesn't mean they don't, but I've seen no evidence of it. Now, I've seen evidence of it. Yes, they know how to put scoring criteria together. It's good news. Hadn't seen it before. So, yeah, I want to see it. Um because teachers are no different than anybody else in the population. Some of them are going to be stars. Some of them are going to be journeymen that just keep going. Some of them will be less than that. The kids need the best everywhere they go. We can't manage that if we don't see it and we don't have access to it.

059You does that make sense? I mean, >> I just didn't expect that she was going to send all of that to you. I thought it was going to be a part of the whole um template. >> I think it will. I think it needs to be part of the template, but as we're moving forward, I would like to see more of what's out there now. I'd like to know better and be able to to discuss with the other committee members better what the state of play is right now. And and like I said, the best example for me is if somebody had asked me, does your staff know about scoring criteria? I would have said, "I have no evidence. I don't know." Now I have evidence that at least one skilled teacher knows what she's

060doing. Sure, there's a lot more than that. Any other comments or questions? Is there anything missing from what you've seen in Meg's example unit plan that um >> we can advise our teachers to beef up? >> I made some notes for myself actually because I knew myself well enough to know that I forget things otherwise. Um I I have a few extra copies here. I don't have a lot. Um, pass those around. I'm afraid that's what I've got left for copies. I had no idea how to made him big. >> Um, >> so this is UBD. >> Yeah, >> that's what you have here. >> Yeah, it's it's a UBD note. stage one, two, and three. >> Um, >> you seem to have national and state standards. Um, that seems okay. Local standards, um, they're

061not visible right now. For me, that's a problem. >> Um, I I believe you when you tell me you've got them. I I'm not questioning that. >> They were in the assessments, but you're saying to pull this out as its own bucket. I'm saying that graduation standards are part of what you're looking for in stage one and therefore should be in stage one >> because that's where >> we just saw where it was. Okay. Just as long as we're all in the same location. Um that's >> so just to clarify you would like to see standards as well as school district I think the first thing should be the east standards supported by state and national standards that's not important the sequence doesn't matter but they got to be there >> does that make sense

062Um, I saw on Meg's thing uh identified transferable skills. I haven't seen that on anything else I've looked at. And that may be the issue of what's public facing versus what's not. I have no idea if we're saying it's public facing and we are required by state law to share the curriculum why that wouldn't be there. >> So, everyone's undergoing now the vision of a learner. And so, those specific skills, if you will, like they're revising. >> That's fine. >> Okay, >> that's fine. >> Okay, >> like I said, it neither should nor can be static. >> Okay. >> Um, but it does mean that, you know, something that gets approved this year, uh, sometime next April, somebody might say, you know what, we've done a lot of work on this, we ought to go

063back. Doesn't have to be a G giant time suck for anybody. You may say it needs to go back, but we're going to wait another two years because we got more work to do and we know we're doing it and we're managing our time. That's normal. It's healthy. Um I think we have to have essential questions. It looks like you've got that. Um the enduring understandings. Um that's a big thing. I question depending on the length of the unit and by that I mean the amount of time devoted whether two or three essential qu two essential questions is appropriate. Seems to me you ought to be able to address more stuff and you would get more out of it over time. Again, do I expect that to happen tomorrow? Probably not. Over time, is it

064something that should be something folks are working toward and thinking about? Yeah. The reason that you see one, two, or three is that we had extensive PD about what essential questions were and we were to bear back because we had so many that it was overwhelming within the unit. And so that was the philosophy when we built this was to have one, two, or three. >> And if you've got too many, it gets pointless >> and the kids will you'll lose >> and they shut down. They can't keep it all. teachers can't even kid at all, let alone their kids. Um, but that doesn't mean I mean, if you've got a six-week unit, personally, if you're doing a six week unit in a literature class, you better be able to do more than two essential

065questions. There's just no reason not to. That's a lot of instructional time you're devoting to it. Um, >> it could depend on the the novel you're reading or the text, right? As you go deep, it might be a couple. >> It it always depends on the specific content. I I I'm trying to give a ballpark answer. I I don't I I'm not as rigid as it might otherwise sound. Um Chris, and answer your question, um there should be specific skills and specific knowledge called out in each curriculum. Um that to me is normal. U you've already got discipline specific vocabulary. That's good to see. Um, one thing that I would like to see is, and if you look at this outline that I've just shared, um, address teacher background needs. If the assumption is that

066this is there not simply to get the okey from the board, but to be a living document that somebody can use if they get jammed up and need to, then you need to be thinking about, hey teachers, this is how things are changing when you do this unit. What are the instructional shifts? where are the content shifts, you know, all of that stuff. What is the background information the teachers might need? Don't make them go crazy. Put it in the unit and get it approved. Um, plan for likely student misconceptions. This is a big pet peeve of mine. Um, and it was something that I added to the curriculum documents um where I worked and it it was treated like it was very wellreceived. It was treated like it was uh news. It's like you

067don't think your kids might misunderstand things you're saying and doing and you don't try to figure out what they might be or at least in reflection realize where it went wrong so you can avoid it next year. That's called teaching. It's just what you do. Um so I I would think I' you know we should see sort of some of that stuff. for us. Um, it seems like your assessment is in better shape, at least in some cases, than I had known. And like I said, it wasn't that I didn't think you were doing it. I didn't have anything to look at and go by. Um, we used a model called grasps where you assign a goal, a role, audience, situation, products, and scoring criteria for each assessment task. And by that I mean the

068the major summit of assessments. I'm not talking about, you know, did they get the last 20 minutes. That's not what I'm talking about. >> This is specific to a performance task. That's how you define those roles. >> What's that? all the roles you just that's only for a performance task that's not for like a summitative >> that is a performance task and yes and um we tried very hard to find appropriate useful ways to use performance tasks and not simply rely on paper and pencil. Um that didn't always work and there are times where it's sort of remarkably inappropriate. Um, so again, it's not rigid, but it was something we worked on doing. If nothing else, it should help, how do I say this? It it should help different students demonstrate their learning in the

069way that works for them. Because, you know, I was an English nerd and read like crazy when I was a kid. So, paper and pencil was just like I didn't even think about it. I was great. other people don't work that way. They shouldn't be disadvantaged because their brain works differently. Doesn't mean that they haven't learned. Um something which is not in here but which I would love to have added to to curriculum units as they go and have it be part of the template. Um, I would like to see consideration at least in the learning plan for UDL, universal design for learning. Um, and again, it's like anything else. There are some places where that's going to make sense and some places where it's sort of irrelevant, you know. But one thing it that

070we learned over time was that a whole lot of the accommodations and modifications provided to special needs students were basically just good teaching that worked for everybody. So if you know that upfront, you might as well include it in the curriculum when you write it because the assumption is that I think my assumption is that this isn't written for the brilliant teacher who's writing it. This is written for the one who's coming next. This is written for the one who's going to take over when that one goes out on medical leave or god forbid has an accident and disappears from the earth. This is I hope a tool that people use if that makes any sense. Um is there anything about what we've talked about that leaves anyone uncomfortable or concerned? teachers, I need to

071hear from you because this is this is going to go before the board and get approved and you're going to have to do it once that happens. So, if there's something about what we're suggesting that you don't think makes sense, it's kind of like a marriage. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Is there any possibility of you giving us what it is you're looking at and giving us a moment to discuss it and talk about it and understand it better? Or do you >> I have no problem going to the office, getting copies, handing them out, and we can work on policy stuff that you guys probably have no interest in and taking a look at it. I'm not looking to do this hidden. I didn't know how many people were coming. I called

072today to ask that when I was thinking about getting snacks. I I just didn't know how many copies to >> You're You're looking for an answer today. >> I'm sorry. >> You're looking for an answer today. >> We need to move. We need to move. We're We're As far as I'm concerned, we're months behind the eight-ball already. This should have started November 15th and it is now March. We are months behind schedule. Um, if someone were to look at me and say, "Jim, we really need more time." I'm not anxious to make enemies by putting people in a squeeze box. If you're telling me that we need this, I will honor that. Or I'll at least I'll suggest we honor it and get a motion out of the people here. I don't think we do

073because it sounds to me like we're in very close to full agreement on everything anyway. It seems like so over the course of my time here, you know, the curriculum, the time that we spend as a full faculty K through 12 talking about curriculum, it waxes and wanes like over the past 15 years. And I feel like I haven't I would love time and and I know Dr. Dr. Durrito has been supportive to kind revisit our units with like maybe a checklist that includes some of the things you're looking for in addition to what we already have so that before we go to presentations we actually have something that reflects like highquality work that we want to show you. >> I completely agree that's the push for the template so that we have a shared

074understanding of what we're all looking for. That's why I'm kind of pushing that a little bit. But if you look at me and say, "Jim, I'm a professional. I need some time to think and these folks are willing to support it." We can wait. It's not my favorite thing in the world to be doing. I'm not going to lie to you. But I'm not interested in putting you guys in a box. Part of why I'm pushing as hard as I am is because the more I see of what you're doing, the more I think we're already in alignment. Anyway, >> one question I had about one of the components you mentioned um would be the common misconceptions and I just and I'm and I'm not against putting it in. I think my concern with it

075is I feel like I think about that more as part of my lesson plan because it also depends on the kids and the lesson. So like that's always a common component of our lesson plan like before I teach this lesson, what are those misconceptions? So I'm thinking about that ahead of time and I'm planning and differentiating for my kids. But to think about it on a unit level, I feel like that would depend on which kids I have at which time in which year. And I feel like but it could be a global misconception on the unit. But I feel like be as helpful as I think there's a couple of things I I can respond to with that. >> One is yeah, you're right. >> Um two, that's called a learning plan. That's where

076all the objectives are listed. If you're writing a learning plan, which is stage three of UBD, and you're preparing to teach this unit, then you're going to be thinking about the misconceptions. That's just part of it. Now, if you look at me and say, and and as God is my witness, I've had this experience multiple times. I thought they were going to screw it up this way. They screwed it up that way. Yeah. And if it gets to where it's common or significant enough that you say, "We just should really rewrite this in the curriculum," then rewrite it in the curriculum and eventually bring it to the board and explain it. It's not You're not going to be in lock step. That's not the purpose for this. It's It's more than pointless to do that.

077It's counterproductive. It's against everything that works for kids. Kids needs now, and they needed it yesterday. and by the way, they needed it differently than you were giving it to them. That's called teaching. It's just the way it is. >> Um I I would say my the thing that's coming to my head right now is just timelinewise. Um so if we do motion there, these are accepted into what we need to be input into atlas and then we do these board presentations with the expectation that they'll be in there. That's going to take time. So teachers may be doing all of these things addressing misconceptions. um doing UDL, all these things, but to put it into words and writing into an input is a whole another level of time outside of the day-to-day of just

078doing it. >> Absolutely. >> So, I feel like that's all my concern is of just in terms of like a general timeline of of any of this because I know we need to push push but >> what I've said to Dr. Drito and keep in mind a lot of this has been focused on what I want or expect. There's other people on this committee. We haven't heard from them yet. And um I fully expect to hear their concerns and respond to them appropriately. I'm taking kind of a leadership role because it's an area of expertise and Steve shares that expertise, but Terry and Dan don't. Um I guess what I would say is what I had suggested to Dr. deburredo was I wanted to get the template approved by the committee as soon as possible.

079I wanted to then take it to the full board as soon as possible so that it would have the improtor of the board. It's intended to be general enough to fit everywhere and at every level and meaningful enough to actually guide what people do. If we can get some units rolling in at the end of the year, you know, May, June even, I would consider that victory on a massive scale. And what I've said to Dr. Breto repeatedly, there's got to be stuff out of there that's lowhanging fruit. If the only thing you need to do is port the graduation expectations in and uh write up some typical potential misconceptions and a few things like that. That shouldn't it will take time. I'm not disagreeing with that. But it's nowhere near what it takes when

080you actually have to rewrite curriculum. And what I'm seeing so far is less about revision and more about fine-tuning and just getting it into shape where it can be presented properly. Um like I said, what what I saw I find very encouraging. I I am grateful. >> I have a question >> please. um given everything that has been shared and the fact that this is technically my first time even coming close to any of this. So as a person who is learning this process along with with Dan um I have a question on on the UDL piece because to your point if time is needed I need to understand what exactly that the addition of a UDL um uh adding that component in what that might look like and the experience that I had um

081when I was doing the LEN fellowship at Yukon and if I'm understanding this correctly, it's no matter what level a student may be at in terms of their knowledge, if they're in that grade, they have the capability of learning alongside other students and having um uh components broken down in a different way, but it's still part of the same thing that the entire class is learning. Am I correct in my assumption? >> Okay. because that's it was just uh the way that I was taught and I was in a class as a parent learning neurodedevelopmental disability topics and doing research along students who were doctoral doctorate uh master's class and our input as parents because we live neurodedevelopmental disability on a daily basis was a huge part of the curriculum. So the fact that at

082the end of this thing I knew research and development and creating things that it's like great this is amazing. I'm doing this work right along. Where's my degree? You know anyway that's a whole another but >> we'll give you an honorary degree. >> Yeah. Um to your point, I want to make sure um that not only do I have a better understanding of that process, but that you all have the time that you need to develop it. That's my two cents. >> Um that that actually kind of raises something else that um I've been thinking about. It might be very untraditional but very appropriate in this situation to say go ahead and bring your units to us and say we've got X Y and Z all set. We still need to work on these things.

083So it's a tenative approval. It won't be final approval till you finish but you can notch some quick and easy wins. and I can live with that because I have good faith in teachers that they're going to follow through with what they say. Um, that's not normally what you do. Normally, you get something and it's a finished polished product. I can't tell you how many times I I watched board of ed members just ring people out because of spelling and punctuation errors in a in a unit that went to the board. Um, but I don't think this is a standard situation and I think we need to demonstrate more good faith and more and more consideration for the people doing hard labor, which is all of you and this lady right here. >> Um, probably

084very, >> you know, so to recap what you just said, >> you still want a template. >> Yes. But if we have to wait a month, we got to wait a month. I I don't like that idea, but we'll do it. >> If other folks are, you know, I don't know where where are you guys coming down? Are are you comfortable? Actually, wait a minute. You had the best idea. Let me go get copies of this and you guys can take it and take a look. >> Is this your proposal of a template? Now, >> it's less about being a proposal and it was more a set of notes for me to figure out what it was that I was hoping we were going to be including. Um, >> and I have a meeting with

085admins tomorrow. So, I think we can take all this input, just create the buckets, right? We already have what you presented today. And then just to take this input and then you all can talk through that and I can show it to you and see does this meet what you were hoping and try to do that as opposed to bringing everybody back again. Um >> let's do this if it works for the committee members. Um let's go ahead. These guys can take copies and leave. um you can do your admin meeting. If we come back with something that um I'm thinking is acceptable, I can share it with the other members of the committee >> and we could even schedule a 10-minute online meeting to formalize a vote if that's needed so that everybody doesn't

086have to come back here and waste time. Um, is that something that folks would find acceptable? >> And you have copies like so that you can distribute school and I have one. >> Sure. Does that sound okay? As opposed to trying to figure it all out right now. >> If I could just say just real quickly, you know, just coming from the uh, you know, the committee, but also from a teacher standpoint, I think it really is important that we do have a chance to reflect on this a little bit. And I think that does sound like a good idea. I do know at the end of the year is quite rigorous for for teachers and all that. I know a lot of our bulk of our curriculum writing is in that summertime and the

087bet is quicker that we can get together these templates is very important but let's just do it right. >> Agree. >> I think that's that's that's the most important part. >> All right. Um can I have a motion to turn the template temporarily over to the admin and teachers and get feedback from Dr. Drio afterwards? >> So move. Second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> Okay. Unanimous. >> Thank you all very much. >> Thank you. Thank you for all your work. >> Well done. And one last pitch. Take some of the darn cookies. Jeez. >> Yeah. >> Take all of them. If I bring them home, my wife's going to kill me. I don't mind taking the OJ home, but the cookies. >> Well, if you say it that way, I >> Good job.

088>> Nice job. Great job. >> To gain access to the pages on they were saying some of it's not as far as the individual assessment >> that Jeremy is doing well. Um, where's my >> Yeah, I know. I know. >> You did. You found where it is. >> Weird cuz it should have to teach. >> I had my studying every night to try and But he's a great guy. >> I'm pretty >> He's He's married. And if I could figure out where to put my phone, I'd show you a picture of my brand new granddaughter. So, we are still recording and we're still live. We still have a whole get back to the >> main update. We'll connect later because this meeting is still happening. So, >> I need something fun. >> All right. Um

089>> the next item. >> Thank you. Take care, folks. Thank you all very much. >> Thank you. >> I mean, you know, >> take the whole thing. Literally. >> Really? >> No, because I will eat it in the car on the way home. >> You deserve it. >> My wife won't hurt you if you eat it. >> No, I do. I forgot. >> Um, >> thank you. >> Under curriculum mapping, I need those links. >> Okay. So, um, the we have a couple of policies, um, that I was hoping we could get a look at. Um, for the record, the third policy, um, Dan did a yman's job running our policy stuff through um, some magical AI system he's figured out how to use. He doesn't know, but I'm going to snake him and make

090him teach me that stuff at some point. >> That's part of it. Yeah. Looking for overlap and like differences basically. >> And it's um it's much more complicated um than the other stuff we've done in the past. So we're it it's going to sit on the agenda for a while. We're never going to get to it today. There's more leg work that I need to do and I'm going to rope Dan into it because he's a nice guy and he lets me do that to him. Um but the the other two the first one um which is regarding school volunteers um this grows out of discussions that came regarding events um last fall um when u a former board of ed member ended up kind of dropping out of things a little bit. Um so

091uh she asked that uh we look at putting a policy in place to govern this stuff. Um Kira asked me to address it. Dr. Drio asked me to address it and I spoke to um uh Jody Golder who runs policy for CABE. um he did a little research and found a document he thought could be a good model policy, sent it forward, and that's what we've got to look at here. Um for those of you who are new, um the pol the policy docs are always colorcoded. Um if there's original language from a policy that exists that's part of it, it'll show up in black. If it's cape stuff, it shows up in blue and there's other codes for, you know, things get moved around and that kind of craziness. Um, in this case, the

092only things you've got are cave and then in green some things that I suggested we add, which I think was almost exclusively on the um regulations going with it. >> So, a couple of things. Um, anytime somebody comes in to volunteer, before that happens, we're wanting DCF and a federal criminal background check as if we were hiring them. That's what this is. Now, >> that's what their policy proposes. Now, >> if folks don't want to do that, it's like everything else. Um, Steve and Dan haven't done this with me, but I throw stuff out there and, you know, we see what folks actually want to do about it. Um, I did add language specifically to say that, you know, in a short-term situation, um, a principal could make a decision, let somebody volunteer without going

093through all of that because I could envision a situation arising where, you know, uh, there's a volunteer needed for a field day or something crazy like that and someone's sick and the person who was vetted is no longer available and you know, what are you going to do with field day and that kind of craziness. >> Um, What what about like someone like a guest reader coming in for a classroom or something like that too, you know, like coming in whether it's a parent or someone who's just coming in to, you know, for read across America to come in to read a book or or to read something to the to class. >> Well, actually I did that Friday. >> So, so putting people through the raptor system because if somebody has registered that immediately,

094>> right, that's what I thought. That should be that they have to go through the district current security protocols before being entered allowed into a building. And I would add um supervision of district certified staff >> that it's >> and that's kind of what I was asking. Yeah. >> Yes. Were you going to ask that, Steve? Okay. >> Yeah, that's kind of what I was asking. And that Yeah, exactly. but that they currently have to um have a purpose for being in the school and go through our current security protocols because we do run their license in the system to clear them into the building. >> Okay. Well, in in response to Steve's question, um I've been a guest reader. This is my third year in a row. Um, I've never been vetted that I'm

095aware of. >> Will you give your license to get a number? >> I probably did at some point. Um, I think I show it to him just as ID. >> Yeah. No, but they actually put it through the system. They scan it. >> Yes. >> Right. So, they do they scan it and >> didn't even know that was happening. >> But we've never sent your information to DCF or to the federal government for clearance. Well, you we can cut out whatever you want. I told her this is Jod's suggestion. I >> Yeah, I made it. >> Yeah, Jim, real quick. This is all model cave language, right? >> It's straight ADCape. >> Um not even sure what the DCF registry is. >> Yeah. >> So, I I know that they have records substantiated complaints against

096them, but >> there was any registry per se like that. So there's the sex offender registry that our current system flags. But if you in your own home have been accused of neglect, for example, and it was a sub like running that kind of a check that would pop up. We don't we don't do that for volunteers un >> do you want to delete stuff from this language? I mean, >> because they're always under the supervision of a certified staff member, as long as they're going through our raptor system to get clearance, that's okay because they're in there temporarily. There might be a room parent for a short amount of time there. We have field day and we get all kinds of volunteers who come in. >> Well, and that's why I was wondering about

097having short-term needs get met. Well, but um even when we know well because that one we know well in advance, right, >> to require this level of security. We just we would need to plan all that. >> I don't even know that we have the personnel to manage it. >> I didn't want to say that, but that's very true. >> Well, not central office anyway. in and in terms of this uh you know this uh sex offender and DCF thing this is just people who have been convicted not people who have been accused >> correct so if you're on the list I thought >> it's already going to pop up based on our screening process but it's the next >> like if you have I don't know some sort of a criminal record from years

098ago. Uh it should still be there, >> right? It will be there. But to manage that kind of clearance, >> well, >> it's and how would you document it? >> Well, we would get they would have to go get fingerprinted. It's just like when we hire somebody, you have to go get fingerprinted and then the report comes back to us. And it's very, you know, it's lengthy. It's time consuming if they're >> I'm afraid we would scare off all the volunteers. Frankly, >> no one's going to Yeah. Nobody would volunteer. So >> because you have to pay to be fingerprinted. >> So So just like >> Yeah, it would definitely Yeah. >> It would be more of a hassle. Yeah. Most definitely. I mean, definitely would scare off a lot of people who'd want to

099to come and do do the work. >> There's different tiers, right? Like the Raptor system is basically public records like convictions that are publicly available. The DCF there is a central registry that does not require fingerprinting, >> right? >> Um and then federal stuff is a whole different thing. You got to make an appointment, get fingerprinted, all that. Um yeah, I don't I don't know where the risk >> is is interesting though because that would not necessarily be for criminal convictions, but it would be substantiated, >> right, >> complaints. But yeah, it's like I feel like there is a difference between somebody who volunteers at field day versus somebody who's in the school like three hours a week every week for a year. But I also don't want to over complicate things by proposing a

100tiered volunteer system or anything. >> I wasn't totally enamored of doing this at all. Um I'm meeting a request by even proposing it. But in in response to what I think are legitimate concerns all the way around, um the way I figure it, we either say we're not doing this and toss it or we say we're going to make the following edits and we edit the thing and if we can I'd rather just do that now and get it over with or um we say you know concerns be damned just do what's here. I personally think we should either toss it entirely or edit it. Probably edit it, but >> because it doesn't exist. Is that what you're saying? Currently, it doesn't actually >> this particular one. >> No, we have nothing. >> Well, there

101are a lot of pages that go with it. >> Yeah. Well, and and that I mean part of it is, you know, I had sent um I think I I sent something there was a form that was supposed to be part of it that I know, but I forgotten all about it initially. >> Okay. >> And well, I didn't forget about it. Apparently, I cut it off. Anyway, here's my point. Um folks may say, you know what, we're not doing the stupid thing with the form. We're going to do this in a different fashion. >> I don't have a problem. form. The form isn't as um cumbersome. It's just us trying to do our due diligence. As long as somebody's honest about what they're putting on the form, it's only going to work as well

102as somebody is willing to um but you have some good language here that the school district doesn't provide insurance coverage for the volunteer. like all kinds of >> I I mean I think there's stuff in here that's meaningful. Um >> it's good to have a form of some that way volunteers we have record that volunteers received all this information too. They can't >> Exactly. And and it could be a digital form >> that they complete. That way it's always housed in an accessible location. Um >> all right. So again I'm going to try and push this to be practical. Let's go through it par paragraph by paragraph. First paragraph, who wants to do what? >> Oh, you're asking us. >> Yeah. >> Under qualifications, >> what are we looking? >> Starting right under community relations,

103school volunteers. >> Oh, wait a minute. You're talking about um >> policy, go through it step by step. >> So, there's multiple versions and you want to go here. >> There's multiple versions. Well, this is this is rags. >> This is the regs I'm talking about. >> We don't need to do the rags here. We can do the policy. >> Well, the regs are where the language that you like is. >> Well, I can adopt this form. >> Okay. >> Right. We can just adopt this form because you're setting policy. We don't need to go through um all of this here. I'm happy to um put that as part of the packet. Um, but I thought we were going to just look at the policy. >> Um, I was assuming that if we were going

104to adopt the policy, we would adopt some version of the regs to go with it. >> Okay. We don't do that very often, but um I guess I kind of figured if Jody felt it was important enough to send the rags along, we should look at it. >> Okay. >> But I I would like to just be methodical. Paragraph one of the policy. Any changes? >> Not paragraph one of the policy. >> Paragraph two. Paragraph three, we're adding the word certified before staff. >> Okay. >> Certified district staff. >> Um, paragraph four. >> Anything. Paragraph five. >> That's our Raptor system. Right. >> We have the mechanism. >> Yeah. I I hate to like throw it out there, but it's possible that somebody could be on the DCF registry for abusing a child, just not

105the sex offender registry, >> right? >> And they would pass Raptor. >> Correct. >> Okay. That might be worth thinking about at least the DCF registry. I'm I'm more on the fence about the the federal piece just because it is such a behavioral barrier and a cost barrier to getting involved. >> Yeah. But I mean if we look at like fringe cases, we could also be talking about folks that have convictions in other states that would not show up in our DCF registry. That's Yeah, it depends how much like CA we want, you know. >> So what do you guys want to do? >> Well, this person is never to be left with our kids without >> supervision staff. Um, this is paragraph five you're talking about. >> Okay. So, are we leaving paragraph five

106as is? >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, paragraph six, volunteers are required to submit to state federal criminal checks and record check by. All right. So, what do you want to do about that then? So Teresa, I think I think it makes sense for when there's like onetoone like supervision of volunteers. What about like how does something like field today works, >> right? Everyone's sort of you're supervising a large group, if you will, right? You're not no volunteer is out there by themselves with kids, right? >> So they might be manning like a group uh game somewhere, right? They might be at the food table, but it's more mobile, right? People are moving everywhere. It's not controlled like in a classroom. It's very controlled in a classroom, >> right? Um, so we could certainly assign folks

107to really >> well that could be part of the rights if that's what you want >> to assign that adults visiting or volunteers are always being supervised. So, somebody has their eyes on the volunteers because you're right, somebody could be coming in to go to the bathroom. Like, are there opportunities in transit that they're not actually supervised by a certified district employee? >> Understood that language. Which I think the question is just is that practical, you know, because that does it does what the >> I do know because I I can envision right like they got to go to the bathroom so they're going to come in. >> Yeah. >> So when in people's minds they're like oh they're not right now assigned to any kids but that doesn't mean in their path >> right

108>> they're not interacting with kids and no one is aware. >> I think the concern could be if we put that language in >> I'm going to ask you to do me a favor. Um can you speak up? >> I could try. I can stably hear you and I know my recording is not going to catch. >> That's all right. >> Um, so the concern with that, um, yeah, if we could actually supervise, that's excellent. Like there's no risk there. It's if that can't practically be implemented, the district would be assuming any of that risk and liability if something were to happen, >> right? >> Um whereas if we do require background checks, that keeps limits the liability in a very different way. >> Well, we should do both, right? Like >> Yeah. >> Okay.

109But this is policy which means that what matters is the actual language we put down. So paragraph six, what do you want to edit? What do you want to change? >> I know I'm being a pain in the butt. >> No change. >> The most conservative and safest liability approach would be the language as is. >> So we're going to including the uh Department of Children and Families at DCF7. I'm not objecting. I'm trying to understand. >> I believe so. Yeah. and including the federal the federal criminal record >> because if someone comes from a different state, you're not going to have >> I'm not objecting. I'm just looking to understand. All right. So, next paragraph starting with the word annually. >> All right. So, we're keeping six is what I'm hearing. >> That's what

110I'm hearing, too. >> Yeah. I'm sorry. I know we want to keep moving through it, but do we think that's going to be a deterrent to people volunteering? >> Oh, for sure. >> Yeah. >> And the manpower to manage it, >> right? Well, then we need to think about whether we do it. >> I know. Thinking safety. How do we guarantee >> that's the bottom line >> to the extent that we guarantee anything? I don't you've used the name a couple of times. I don't recall what it was that this system where you put it in the U >> raptor then I think we say volunteers are required to submit to raptor >> and they have to do this form a testing a testing right testament that they don't have >> a record >> and

111it' be an honor system if you will >> right it's a liability shield for us it doesn't change the actual like boots on >> well we tried Right. But we should still I I did really take careful notation of this that we need to be more diligent because it's it's with our youngest >> and most vulnerable population is where this is more likely to given the climate r >> I don't know that being um on an honor system that to me it just that seems like it would open us up to liability. I mean, this is about the safety of our, as you said, most vulnerable, youngest, youngest children. If we're going to do this, then let's do it. And the folks that are out there, I might feel like this is a deterrent, but

112I also think that there's more people out there that would say, okay, the district is putting an extra safety mechanism in place to ensure the safety of our children. I cannot put a price tag on that. So, we can process this a little bit more. We're a very small rural community. A lot I think all of our volunteers typically are our parents. I in in in a how do I say this in a ethical sense I don't disagree with you at all in a practical sense in a tiny school district where almost everybody knows everybody who's volunteering throwing up the kind of roadblocks that we're talking about. Um I a part of me wants to get the the elementary school principal on the phone and say how much of a nightmare is this going to

113be for you? >> Oh it would be it would be and it you know our PTO impact people come in to the schools to set up and prepare and they do a lot. >> Yeah. >> But they're our own community members. So maybe we can put language in there. And sometimes we we might reach out to um the local senior citizen center and they are volunteering to come in and read, but they're all community members, if that makes sense. It's not somebody else working for some company who wants to come and just volunteer their time. That's part of why I'm suggesting we simply codify the use of the Raptor system because first of all, as far as we know, it works. We haven't any problems. And you're saying it's done everywhere at all time. It

114is easily managed. Um, there's no question in my mind that the added layer would increase safety. I am concerned that it might increase safety at the cost of having volunteers to do the work that the volunteers do. >> Um, I just Steve, what do you think? It's it's a tricky uh situation because there you know um without getting a lot of input like there's going to be those in the community who are going to be 100% for the fact of that extra layer of allowing for that extra protection for the children that they're sending to school. However, it is also then going to make you know one of the biggest difficulties we do have in schools is getting volunteers. Um, and so I I I'm trying to, you know, I know the Raptor system is

115in place to allow for, you know, the flagging for those for DCF and for when they come in through the door there, but do we need to add that extra layer and at what cost? And and that's and that's um that's why I'm going back and forth, I'll be honest with you. Um because you know um a parent would like to hear that hey yes we are adding that extra lay layer of of um you know just allowing the to the background checks but um like I said it also makes it difficult for those who maybe who do come and volunteer on a regular basis as well. I I'm not I'm not really sure. Well, let me ask a question or or pose a thought or I'm not sure how to say this. Terry, you

116were here when we did the thing about handling money um coming in from events. And if you recall, we wrote something in good faith that we thought was going to be fine and workable. and um just about gave the the lady at the heart the high school a heart attack because she was going to have to go to the bank every single day with the language we've written which was an unintended consequence and we ended up revising it. I want to suggest that we consider going through the rest of what we can but this sort of final question >> let's table it till Dr. Drio can get some input from the elementary school which is going to have the most impact on this and maybe the middle school. >> Yeah. And keep in mind >>

117and even the PTO things like that, >> right? But this isn't even the reason you're bringing up this policy. It's not because we're concerned about this. This just happens to be the language in there. So, I just want to remind us that this isn't the reason we're here discussing. >> Well, and and that's why I'm that's why I was saying just stick with the raptor system. But Terry's right, an extra layer of protection and is still an extra layer of protection. It's hard to argue against that. >> What if I take the whole thing? This way I'm getting input on the whole thing. >> Well, I would expect that you would, but I still want us to go through and do what we're doing. >> The regs. >> Um I I I want to go

118through the whole policy if we're And then >> that's it for the policy, right? It seems like it ends, right? >> Um >> and are we able to adopt the policy to amend later? All right. So then let's quickly go through the rags um if you don't mind. >> And um is is that okay? Can we do that? Let her get some feedback. >> Are you guys okay with that? >> Sure. >> Feedback helpful. >> Most definitely. Yeah. >> Okay. We're meeting tomorrow morning. So >> all right. So the regs um any questions on any of the paragraphs or edits in there? No. >> Um, part of it will change in item two because it talks about you must submit to the background check and stuff. We may end up deleting that. talks about on.3

119recruitment. It just talks about waving the requirement temporarily. >> I'm sorry, I'm not hearing you. >> Where it talks about waving the requirement temporarily. I don't know if it's worthwhile thinking about putting like a time frame in for when something needs to be done by instead of just If we keep that in there, we'll have to. I think that's a good point. >> But we don't even know if we're going to keep it, >> right? >> So, um I don't disagree, but I would say let's cross that bridge when we find out if we're have a bridge to cross. >> Yeah. Which, um I think to his point, it might just need a little bit of tightening in terms of maybe adding some kind of a parameter to that. >> I don't disagree. >> Yeah.

120>> Um all right. What about um item four? Anything in there? >> Certified staff. >> Oh, yeah. Thanks. >> Um, am I looking at the the uh in that paragraph it says, "The need of special needs students may be shared when needed, but only with prior written approval by parents or guardians with the knowledge and permission of the building principal." Um, I think that needs to be tightened up just a tad bit. >> Yeah, we can't imagine like a volunteer is going to need some highly confidential >> information. >> We could take it right out if you want. >> Well, this is >> Well, we shouldn't be sharing any. Number one, >> right? >> Exactly. Um, special needs, we have to take that language out. >> That's terminology we don't use anymore. It should be

121students with disabilities. >> We do just saying >> um we I know I'm kidding around obviously. Um we we can you can edit anything here you want. You know that um we could delete the whole thing. I just by way of clarity. The only reason I was even saying that is knowing that in the elementary school there are parents who will work with small groups of students on records or at least there were back when my wife was doing that. >> But it's it's in a controlled environment in a classroom, right? So the teacher's right there as opposed to I'm going to take these kids elsewhere >> where you don't have >> oversight. >> We can strike it completely. >> What I would suggest strike it or or not. Um what I would add to

122that is furpa language and confidentiality laws. Um because to your point, >> they really don't need no >> to know right >> that students >> information. So either we put in language or we just take that section out >> and that's an important reminder to even our own staff that they're not sharing something with >> a volunteer, >> right? Because if if you then sign a release, then what do parents what what are they actually signing? It's right here. Release for >> right here. >> I'm looking for page five. >> I know you are. Which is right there. >> I just wanted you to know it was back to back. >> All right, fine. I'm dumb. What can I say? Okay, so we'll strike that then and just get rid of it. Um item six,

123anything. Item seven. >> Actually on item six, Teresa just practically do we maintain a sign in sign out log or is it all electronic on the computer now? >> Um it's typically electronic. >> Yeah, but they do have sign in sign out. Yep. Um we actually hold their license and um they get it back as they leave as a mechanism especially when like concerts then we know is there anybody still in the building >> but what were you going to say? Uh nothing just semantics. Um that sentence that begins with the word additionally >> and ends with uh as soon as practical after the word superintendent. >> What number are you on? >> I'm on number seven. >> Okay. Additionally, volunteers are expected to report any safety concerns or inappropriate behavior to the building principal

124and superintendent as soon as gradual. >> I would strike that and just put the word immediately because >> Yeah, >> I meant to tell you, but I forgot. >> Yeah, >> exactly. >> Well, keep in mind this is >> we don't control the volunteers. they might not even um have this awareness and really like even if we give it to them it doesn't mean they're going to typically policies for you know our own employees but okay >> well except in this case it would require the building principles make sure that people >> they have this that they have this awareness yep they I would imagine sign off that they've received and they understand their role goal >> and what they can and can't do. >> Okay. Anything else in that section? >> Eight. >> Nine.

125>> Uh- before to nine. >> Oh, >> I like what she just said. Maybe have that the building principal is responsible for conveying the contents of this regulation and having >> a signature. a signature from volunteers >> or signature of understanding, however you want to word it. >> Can I put building principal or designate? >> Managing all the >> because I I'm envisioning >> as long as somebody's doing it. Yeah, that's fine. So number nine talks specifically about the screening. >> The screening again. So >> that's just going to be >> it talks about the screening here but in the policy it had much much more robust >> you know language but we do screenings. >> All right. So uh I am assuming that we're going to leave nine alone until such time that we

126make a decision. >> Yeah. And then agree >> the last paragraph which starts with a request to volunteer. Um any questions about any of that? >> Question. I had the last sentence about um banning or reinstating. I don't know if we usually spell out like appeal processes in our >> I can't hear you. I'm sorry. >> The appeal process at the end. Oh, >> I can also move next to you, Jim. Yeah, ju just I don't know if it's worthwhile to make the appeal process more operationalized. I think is that writing a letter to the board, showing up to a meeting and inviting public discussion? >> Appeal directly to maybe the board chair. >> Yeah, I I was going to say board chair. >> I'm actually concerned about that language. Um I think that this

127crosses the line for the role of the board. And the reason why I'm saying that is because we are governance and not operations. Um, >> this sentence to me >> I don't have any problem deleting it. >> What I would put instead is any appeals shall be processed in accordance with board policy 1312 which refers to public complaints. >> Okay, >> say that again slower. Any appeals shall be processed in accordance with board policy 1312A. >> And you really think I'm keeping up with you as I try to write. You're such an optimist. You really are. I love you. Any appeal shall be processed according >> in accordance >> with >> policy >> 1312A which is public complaints. >> Okay, that works. >> That's all I got. >> I like it. Okay. Um, anything anybody

128wants to play with >> on the form? Is there language in here that actually makes the form compulsory like that they in order to volunteer this is you have to complete this? >> Um I believe there is but if there isn't I'll go through it and I'll add it. >> I just >> because I don't >> I don't think I saw it. All right. So, if you go back to the policy, I'm going to suggest we add the following. All prospective volunteers are required to read and sign the accompanying form 1212 or whatever we decide to designate it. >> Well, it aligns with the policy 1212. >> Yeah. Okay, >> thank you. >> It's fine. >> There's a question about the form. Jim, if you have any thoughts, it asks the volunteers physician contact info.

129>> Um, one more time. I'm sorry. >> On the form, it >> physician info. >> Yeah, I did see that. >> It's kind of weird. >> Yeah, >> I agree. I >> I don't This isn't my baby, guys. Whatever you want to do. >> So, emergency adult contact makes sense. >> Yes. But >> yeah, >> maybe a box like any medical info this district should know, but >> Oh, okay. >> I would feel weird providing my primary care doctor to read to first graders, you know. >> I'm happy to share with any of you. >> There any health condition that we should know like something like that >> we should be aware of? >> Be disclosed. Guys, I got to I'll be right back. Excuse me. I'm sorry. >> Remember, we're on steal some of

130that orange juice. >> Oh, yeah. It has calcium in it, too. Much needed. Teresa, can you think of any like volunteer positions that would merit like the deeper level of background checks? Like I just >> because it then it completely conflicts with being a volunteer, >> right? >> Because if you're a substitute, then you absolutely do go through all staff, >> every all the vetting requirements. So if you're a volunteer, there's um >> it would conflict with being a volunteer. Um, this form is kind of Oh, this is different. We're not there yet. >> Well, it's number nine. It's bizarre. Go back and look at that. Number nine, page nine. Printed name of volunteer for school use only. General description of assignment supervising students as needed by a teacher. >> Yeah, >> why would I

131would never be there based on everything we just >> I was going to say think if we're workable with that as a district kind of regulation then yeah it's kind of a non-issue >> it um >> I'm wondering if the form was made presuming that there would be times where volunteers would be with students unsupervised but >> that just under the whole thing just >> it's like an internal it's like an internal document on page nine >> that speaks to whether we're >> you know, determine whether a criminal background check is necessary, but it didn't make sense that we're going to determine whether supervising students as needed. >> Yeah, we're not doing that. >> Um, it just Okay, so this would be eliminated. Is that what I'm hearing? This section uh that's on page nine.

132Yeah, I have no problem eliminating that. >> Um, page eight. Where's the Oh, there it is. I was trying to figure out where the physician stuff was. >> Um, so that line will delete, too. >> Okay. Anything else on that? Okay. Um, the next policy is required under law. We're apparently behind the eightball and it was due and we didn't do it. So again, straight out of cape. I've done no editing. What's your budget? This is the one about um work release and stuff. >> I looked at it earlier and there wasn't anything that really stood out to me, but >> it's all in line with legislation. Yeah, I didn't see anything that >> I mean that's >> stark. >> All right. Um, if there's no edits on that, can I have a motion to

133forward that to the board of ed for approval? >> So moved. >> Second. All in favor? >> I I thank you. >> Okay. Um what I'm going to suggest then is that um we schedule a quick follow-up meeting again, maybe even just all remotely um or you know I can come in quick for 10 minutes and use that um to see if we can finish off the volunteer policy after Dr. Deo has had a moment to get some information >> and if we get really lucky maybe we can do both of them that and the curriculum template at the same time. >> Yeah. >> Is that sounds good? >> Okay. Um can I have a motion to adjourn? >> So moved. >> Second. >> All in favor. >> Guys, that was a long meeting. Thank

134you very much. >> Thank you. We got a lot done.