Board of Education: June 02, 2025

001It's 6 o' in here, folks. A couple over here. at 6:00. It's 601 and I'd like to call the June 2nd East Lime Board event regular meeting to order. Those you can stand and stand for the pledge of allegiance. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we start out with some special recognitions. This is a great great time of year. uh we have a lot of um recognitions and it's a broad it really shows the breadth of our students talents and uh it's just great to see and we're looking forward to uh recognizing bunch of different people for different things. So I'll turn it over to Chad. Yeah, I'm going to call right upon uh Mrs. Kelly uh Clinty if you want to come up. We'll start with Abby uh

002and we can recognize Abby and I don't know if Misella wants to join too. Oh, Abby, would you like to come on up, too? Sure. Come on over. Scooch in. Okay. I would like to introduce to you Abby Aello. She's a fifth grade student on the seafares at Elms. Um, Abby is going to talk to you this evening about her experience and she recently won first place uh a prize in the book in something called the book creators tell your story contest. Abby has nothing been short of a celebrity status at Elms. Um she has been interviewed a number of times both in newspapers and she had a recent airing this past Saturday. So why don't you if you can share um a little bit about um kind of how you got recognized in the

003process and Mrs. Misella is going to jump in and and this with you as well. Okay. Um, as you all heard, I I won first place in the create your own story competition with book creator um associate company. And when I won, I got my book professionally published um the Kindle Color soft and the pizza party for my for the rice club. Um, from that there has been a lot of recognitions from this accomplishment. So, as Miss Kelly said, being on the New London day, um, CT25, and being here in the board of Media, um, I'm Jackie Misella, language arts at the Sea Dogs. I'm a sixth grade teacher. Aby's fifth grade. Abby came to me from uh, joined our club. Thank you so much for giving us our clubs back. I know you speak

004because I I'm very passionate about having our clubs especially. I actually did even mention her at the the board of finance. Um it is because she started this in the class with her teacher Miss Denis and inspired uh go further with this. She came into my club. We worked on it and collaborated along with many other students who are in there who are exceptional writers and would have no place else to express this if we didn't have these afterchool clubs. So I really really want to say thank you so much for reinstating all those clubs. It means so much to people and this could never have happened without you. So thank you all very much and and the town because the town voted it. So thank you. Abby, can I ask you, can you share

005a little bit just a kind of a little vignette of what your book was about and and if somebody wanted to pick it up and read it, what they would find and discover? Um, my character that I created, Emily, comes home to finding chop sooie in the fridge. She has to go wash her hands and instead of water coming out of the sink, gummy bears overflow. Exciting. I have to ask you, when you found out you won, were you excited? I found Emily jumping up and down in the foyer in the main office, jumping for joy, screaming just happiness. It was fun. It was fun. Well, we're proud of you. Congratulations. I appreciate it. Yes. Congratulations. Well done. We're proud of you. You're in the picture seat, Abby. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Right. We're

006gonna turn over to Mr. Kid. We've got some uh some music recognitions. Um Mr. Kid, let me turn it over. Sure. Um so um last time I was here with the board of education, we had some live music. Um so we figured we'd kind of continue um that that theme uh tonight. Um we have a fantastic um and very enthusiastic music department and faculty right now. Um three teachers, Mr. Maize, Miss uh Mr. Dailyaly, and Miss Latanzy, who I think do a whole heck of a lot to instill a love of music, um and the importance of music here, uh in our school community. Um and we also have some really good music ambassadors uh amongst our student population as well. and we just wanted to take a brief moment this evening to make sure

007that they got some recognition in front of you all for some of their individual accomplishments uh this year. Um so I have uh three students here. Um the first student I'm going to call up is Meline Anderson um who made the National Association for Music Education's All Eastern Band this year. So Maline, come on up. Um and then we also have um Luke Bergman and Danielle Kim with us who both are Connecticut Music Educators Association Allstate Music Festival. Um, so come on up to the boat. Besides besides being um fantastic uh musicians, these folks are just uh excellent all-around citizens at East Lime High School. There are students that you pass in the hallway um and say hi to you. Hi Mr. Kid, how's it going? Um and look out for other people. Um, so

008not only are they accomplished musicians, but they're just great representatives of what it means to be a student at East Lamb High School. So we thank you all very much for your efforts and keep up the good work. Keep playing music. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Done. Congratulations. Congratulations. Well done. Coming this way. Yeah, congratulations. Great job. Way to represent East Lime. Thank you. I feel clear. Congratulations again. And then uh last but not least uh we're going to call Mrs. Kelly back up. Um we have some CAB uh student recognition awards that we do each year. So Mrs. Kelly, we have two middle school students and we have two high school students. We'll start with our two middle school students. Mrs. Kelly. Yes. Um the first student that I would like to share a

009little bit about with you is Aya Jolly Ballentine. She's no stranger. She's also one of our middle school reps. Um, so she's been here before as well. Ayla exemplifies outstanding leadership throughout her diverse and committed involvement in school and community activities. As a dedicated member of the drama club for four years, she has embraced both leading and supporting roles, demonstrating adaptability, teamwork, and strong work ethic. Aya's participation in the Triam Music Honor Society highlights her dedication to service and excellence in the arts. why her membership in the festival performer choir showcases Aya's commitment to collaborative performance. Taking the initiative to begin the process for the ultimate frisbee club reflects her drive to create opportunities for others and her willingness to take on challenges and bring people together with shared purpose. Additionally, her per her participation

010in the Dungeons and Dragon clubs demonstrates her creativity and ability to work with others in a in strategic and imaginative ways. Ayla not only takes on challenges outside of the classroom, but inside as well. Ayla seeks feedback and contributes with probing questions and insightful comments. She models exemplary student behavior by following expectations and showing kindness and tolerance to all. Beyond school, her passion for art and music is evident through her private lessons and her entrepreneurial spirit in creating and selling jewelry at local craft fairs and farmers markets. Ayla's ability to balance multiple commitments while fostering teamwork, honoring responsibilities and demonstrating diplomacy in various settings makes her a strong and inspiring leader in the Elm school community. This is why she was recognized by her teachers and then nominated by our life teachers um to be

011present here this evening and I can only echo as a sentiment Mr. Kit just shared. Aya will always say hello. She is always friendly and always has a smile on her face when she's passing in the hallway to everybody that she g. So congratulations Aya. Well done. Thank you. Congratulations. We have a certificate for Connecticut associations of boards of education too. So, I'm going to give you that letters or as well. Thank you so much. Congrats again. I'm just going to leave the podium. Our next recipient is Gavin Jazerki. He exemplifies exceptional leadership through his active participation in both school and extracurricular activities. As a dedicated four-year member of East Middle School band, he has demonstrated leadership by setting positive example for his peers, contributing to the band's success and participating in the extracurricular jazz

012band to further develop his musical talents. His involvement in the wellness club and leaders club highlights his commitment to fostering a positive school environment and supporting his peers. Gavin consistently exhibits exemplary student behavior, follows expectations, and takes on leadership roles in cooperative group settings, ensuring that all voices are heard and valued. His friendly demeanor and ability to advocate for his learning reflect his curiosity and determination to grow both academically and personally. Beyond school, Gavin's dedication to athletics is evident in his year-round commitment to club lacrosse, his participation in East Lime's town program every spring and his four years of training in jiu-jitsu. His practice of jiu-jitsu is demonstrated in the classroom as he models control, conscientious learning, and adaptability. These experiences has strengthened his resilience, discipline, and teamwork skills, making him a well-rounded leader who

013honors his commitments and positively impacts those around him. Gavin, congratulations. She on behalf of the board of education, congratulations to you. Thank you. Well done. Very proud of yourself. Good job, Gavin. Thank you. Congratulations. Good. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Thank you. Sit down here at the end. U Mr. Kid, are you high school representatives? M. Thank you. All right. Yes. It's um it's my pleasure tonight to introduce two exceptional students that um are the recipients of the Cape Student Leadership Award at the high school. Um, and if you take a look at the criteria for this award, things like a willingness to take on challenges, uh, the ability to make tough decisions, compassion, teamwork, commitment, these two students check every single box. I'm going to start with, um, Garrison Biggs. Um, Garrison is a steady

014and compassionate leader. He's someone who consistently, excuse me, shows up for others. He's deeply involved in our school community through the peers reaching out program where he supports new and incoming students, helping them navigate high school life. He's a regular volunteer in the counseling office, helping with everything from organizing events to simply being someone other students can count on. Athletically, Garrison's also a standout. Um, varsity athlete, soccer, I think he took a break from basketball, but baseball as well. Allconerence in infielder in baseball. Just finished a game. um and was um you know recently recognized like I said all conference but beyond sports he shines in the classroom a member of the Spanish honor society and in the broader community where he volunteers with the miracle league as well um supporting children with physical and

015cognitive challenges. What makes Garrison truly special is his character. He's respected by his peers and trusted by adults in the building, leads by example, treats others with respect, and is always ready to lend a hand with humility and kindness. You do a really good job. Um, I'll talk a little bit about uh Annie, too, if you don't mind. And Sure. You want to do it that way? If that works, right, Mr. Bring them both up and we can individual. All right. Sounds good. Okay. Um, Annie Annie Missouli. Uh, Annelise Mazoui. Uh Annie's a dynamic and thoughtful leader. She's someone who brings energy, purpose, and compassion to everything she does. Um an academic standout with a deep curiosity and drive to learn and just as impressive in her extracurricular involvement, soccer, indoor track, lacrosse, part of

016student senate and peers reaching out with Mr. Bigs, uh where she helps build community and support new students. She's also helped raise funds to ensure her classmates have access to meaningful senior year experiences, a true example of leadership through service. She volunteers with the Miracle League of South Eastern Connecticut, active in Best Buddies, um, supporting individuals with disabilities. But beyond that, she's also a cadet officer in the Civil Air Patrols Themes River Composite Squadron. um holds one of the highest cadet ranks, contributes to emergency response work, promotes aerospace education, and is pursuing her private pilot's license. She aspires to attend a US service academy and continue serving her country. What I love about both these students is that they make everyone around them better. They lead quietly, kindly, and with purpose. They're respectful, polite, and

017thoughtful. They are students who leave a lasting impression not just because of what they've done, but because of who they are. I should also mention their their families who are here. A big thank you to the Bigs and Missouli families. You should be incredibly proud of the young people you've raised. The values you've instilled in them. The kindness, integrity, and the work ethic have left a real mark on our school community. we're all better for it and I am very thankful that I have them for one more year uh to help me lead Eastlime High School. So congratulations again to the both of you. Garrison, we'll have you come up first. Half of the Connecticut Association's boards of education. Congratulations. They really commend Thank you. Congrats again. Thank you. All right. Danny, thank you. Congratulations.

018Well done. Congratulations. Very impressive. This bealf of the board of education. Thank you. CS association of boards. Thank you. Wonderful. That concludes our recognitions. A lot of them this evening. So, thank you all for for coming and amazing accomplishments uh for each of our students. So, really thank everyone uh from the staff to the students to making this happen. Everyone is welcome to don't feel free. You can leave now. It's a good good night every day. Congratulations. Congratulations. [Music] Next item on the agenda is public comment. Any public comment? This is public comment. Any public comment hearing? None. No. Oh, where are students? Yeah. Uh, hearing none, we'll close public comment. Special reports. We'll go to the selectman representative. Uh, we have all miser. Yes. And thank you for having me. What a great night

019to come. I'm so excited. Um, we have a public hearing tomorrow, uh, June 4th at 7 o'clock at the town hall and this is to consider the proposed ordinance on establishing the East Line Coastal Resilience um, reserve fund. There was a discussion at our last meeting considering a moratorium that would last about four years uh as requested by our zoning commission and that would help with pertaining to affordable housing and guidelines um not allowing not allowing affordable housing in it's just some of the guidelines for two time so that will discussion the town is in summer mode as we home now, which is exciting. Our beaches are opening up. The annual Memorial Day parade. We have numerous events already. The Black Sheep Fun Runs Walk starts tomorrow at 6 and the N farmers market will

020soon questions for Yes, I do. You said the public hearing was tomorrow, June 4th. I'm saying tomorrow's June 3rd. Sorry. I just want to make sure I have the right date. It's the fourth is the right day. Okay. Wednesday. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify to make sure it was Y June 4th. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um yeah, unfortunately can't make it. I just got a late email. Okay. Okay. Uh so we closes our special reports. We have no student representatives today. We do have consent agenda items. Mrs. We make a motion for the consent agenda. Make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. All those in favor say I. I see. Yes. Thumbs up. Yeah. Good. Uh [Music] uh post saying motion passes. um consent just agenda just a

021two items. One were meeting minutes from the previous meeting and the uh proposed East Lime Education Foundation grant recipients. So, um the foundation is up and running, which is fantastic. And they did, uh do their first grant of um to nine nine nine uh nine different teachers got grants of different amounts. So, uh, it's really great that that foundation has gotten up up off up off the ground and is already giving donations, which is pretty quick from the time they started to already giving donations. So, really appreciate the foundation for supporting our schools. We're delivering those letters to those individuals on Wednesday. Okay, great. Next topic discussion and action items instruction presentation on artificial intelligence journey update. Turn over to Lisa's gonna need the charge with share my screen. We call this journey because it

022is a journey. Most definitely a journey. Been a journey and going to continue to be a journey. Sorry about that. Okay. So, good evening everyone. Thank you for uh giving me the space and time this evening to share a little bit with regards to um where what we've uh done over the c past few months. Um so on the docket for this evening, I'll talk a little bit about what's new. Um we were here in October and gave you a brief update with regards to our journey um up to that point which was really focused on our teachers providing professional development introducing AI um platforms to them how they could create more efficiencies in their work. We also had done a lot of work with our guidelines at that point. Um I'll so from there

023I'll give you a little update but then really going to turn the focus of the presentation to um some studentf facing work we've been doing over the past few months and I've um brought along an excellent team with me this evening. I'll introduce them in a little bit. Um but really this is that's where the heart of the presentation is. You're going to hear from both teachers and students and their experience on some of those studentf facing AI platforms. both what the teachers experience has looked like but more importantly what does the students experience look like um and I think we're gonna have some open and honest conversation with regards to where we are in this space um and then we'll talk a little we'll spend a little bit time at the end to talk

024about what is the plan moving forward um so what's new um since October so we've done some professional development um continued professional development we had our March um ed camp both at the middle school and high school where there were a variety of AI sessions provided to our um our staff members by our staff members. In fact, many of our teachers here were presenters at our ed camps in March. Um, additionally, we brought in um, Magic School AI, which was our studentf facing platform that we're piloting, and we had done a kickoff professional development with them with the 60 or so teachers who agreed to, uh, enter into the pilot. Um, since January, a small group of us, um, Dr. Lun was a part of this group, myself, uh, Miss Kazalino and, uh, Gil Galant

025and Shannon Saglio, the two other districtwide instructional coaches. We all took part in an AI micro credential course which was developed by Matt Murvvis, who was here to present to the board. Um, I found that to be a really excellent deep dive into the world of AI. It was offered um synchronously and asynchronously over the course of five modules um and really provided the space and time for me to dive in and learn more about what is AI, how does it work, best practices around prompting. Um, I learned a lot around media and how to use AI to support digital digital media and we sort of we did this as a small cohort to see is this is it worth offering to a broader group of people and or do we want to take components

026of it and turnkey it to our faculty. So, we're in a space where it's a little bit of both. I did open it up to um any of our um administrators. There's a session over the summer. So I provided the opportunity for our additional admin to participate, but we'll continue to talk as a coaching team with regards to what components of that AI course might we want to turn key for staff in the fall when we come back. Additionally, I had attended a superintendence conference um back in January where I really did I I I leaned into culture and climate and AI as my focus areas for the sessions that I attended. and the AI sessions that I attended down there. Um, two two components. One is we're doing a really great job in ESLM

027here and we're in a good space in terms of where we are in the world of AI and in our journey. We've got our guidelines. We have some direction for students uh and teachers. We have more work to do in that area. Um, but we've put the parameters in place for us to move forward. Um but the it is where I really learned that we really need to start looking at a studentf facing AI platform and are we going to invest in that space and deciding on one there's multiple and so I did go to presentation ironically it was from two districts in Connecticut who had who are using two different AI studentf facing AI platforms magic school AI and um school AI which are two different platforms uh and we decided in eime to

028go with magic school uh as our first pilot, but I'll I'll I'll bring you up just be on that in just a second. So again, um the conference really reinforced the work that we're doing here, but then really started to to um shift our thinking with regards to that student facing. So in terms of the platforms, like I had said, Magic School AI um is the one that is in um actively piloting right now. You're going to hear some examples of that from our team this evening. Um, we have not done anything with school AI, but um, one of our teams tonight is going to talk a little bit about the coningo writing coach and um, what that is, uh, look like for us here in East Lime. I've been playing around with some of

029the new Google Workspace AI features. Those are actually very new. Um, I learned about those um, most recently at the last AI conference that Jeff and I went to up at um, at Advance at Advance. And so, um, and then we we have our own securely platform, which is our web filtering system, but they also have a chatbot. So, we've been using that chatbot, too, as a platform. Um, and then we've just been continued exploration of uh, various teacher tools. I put some of the most popular ones on the slide. Um, chatgpt, diffit, brisk. Some of our teachers might have other ones that they're using. There is so much out there that folks are using. Um, but we just continue to explore and provide space and time for teachers to explore and share with their

030learning. Just a quick clar. Sure. Do any of the studentf facing tools they offer a broad package that would include teacher where you'd get one enterprise AI tool you want to use it student teacher administration maybe that's later in the um so I'll my answer is kind of um but we can I think to to listen to what's been offered we can talk more about okay what the what all the different platforms offer and what would be the best direction for us to go in. Um, can I just interrupt real quick? Sure. When you're done with your presentation, can you send us this one? This isn't the one that we have. Yep. We'll update it on the on the sheet. Just throwing me off because it's not matching the screen. Sorry. That's okay. To get

031it out there. Yeah, we had we had made a few updates along the way. Yep. Thank you. Yep. Um, so I'm not going to sp we don't have an elementary team here with us this evening. Um, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about studentf facing AI at the elementary level because really we're looking at 712 as that space, but I will share that we have found some spaces where it has been really unique and um, enriching for kids. So the first is that uh we've used uh the magic school AI ch chatbot um to bring historical figures to life through some of the um the uh wisdom modules. So for example, I think you observed the uh Socratic seminar on some of the space exploration for a module. Well, students

032then used a chatbot to interview Neil Armstrong later on. And so they're having a a an interview with a historical figure that just helps to broaden their experience in that module and continue to build background knowledge. Um, and then, uh, one of our library media specialists was using the securely chatbot to actually, um, help students identify additional titles of books they might want to be interested in checking out based on their interest levels and titles they've read already. So, she provided them with a lesson on on how to prompt. These are the subject areas I like. You know, um, here are a list of titles that I've already read. can you suggest some titles that I might want to take out at the library? And of course, she vetted those lists with the students, but

033it was just another way for them to come up with, you know, because sometimes kids struggle with what do I what what should I check out? So, it was just an opportunity for them to get some suggestions outside of the librarian offering those for her. Um, so at this point in time, I'm actually going to hand it over to our middle school team. They're going to share a little bit about um the studentf facing AI at the middle school level. So um I'm sorry it says instructional coach that's not accurate. So we have is Carla here back here. Okay media specialist Carla Wovich who was here if you remember back in the um back in the fall we have our social studies teacher Kyle Wilkinson is here and um they brought along their twoth grade

034eighth grade students Sophia and Olivia who are going to also share out. So, I'll just invite you up to the podium and I'm going to hand the slide deck over to you. Hello. Coordinating your shoes on that. Yes. Okay. Hi everybody. Um, thanks for having us back. Uh, I thought I would just really quickly um refresh what we had talked about in the fall, which was um starting with teaching students about AI first before we started letting them use it. So, we did that with all the seventh and eighth grade social studies classes. Um, and it just fit nicely in the news literacy units that we'd already been doing. It was just an easy place to bring that in and make it make uh lend those two things together. Um so some of those learning

035goals were um just can you define AI? You know every student if you say do you know chat GPT they know all of that they maybe even have used it but they might not be able to actually define it and explain it. So we start off with those basics you know what makes generative AI different um what makes it unique um some basic understandings of machine learning. They use that fun this fun little like robot program to sort garbage and colors which brought in also how bias happens and exists in AI and understanding that. We talked about pros and cons. Um, honestly, when I got that an notification from New York Times that they had released uh a report with fake citations uh from the government, I was actually pretty excited because it was an

036opportunity for student Nobody was more excited about that than I was. I had seventh graders in. I was like, "Guys, it's happening. Everything we taught you about like we taught you these things and it's happening in real life." Um, and so they understand those pros and cons and the limitations of AI because it is so important that they understand that that the AI can just make things up um that don't exist and the other cons including bias. Um, and we talked a lot about algorithms and how AI plays a role in algorithms and how algorithms really shape their online world and the pros and cons of that as well. So that was the focus of that learning in the fall and I would say another goal for that would be for next year to start

037looking at how we can bring that down to five and six. We've talked about that a little bit at the technology committee um as a social studies department um how that might look bringing some of this down to those younger grades. So that was step one in the fall. So Kyle would be somebody that I work with that along with all the other seventh and eighth grade social studies teachers. And then we started uh in after the new year generally is when we do the big eighth grade research project. So, okay. Uh there's like no good time to say this, but um next year will be my first time repeating a curriculum. So, thank you for letting me keep my job. I'm very excited. The social studies department next year. Um the eighth grade research

038project was like something that gave me a lot of nerves. I didn't know what was going to happen. um because it's typically something that takes quite a long time and a lot of work for my students and they their favorite part of eighth grade. It's the best part ever. Yeah. And um so essentially for the research project we're focused on westward expansion. The students have um an option of a bunch of different groups of people that moved west in the 1800s. And they start by just picking a group that they're interested or interested in. They have to explain the economic, political, and social gains and losses of their group. And they must answer the question, how did westward expansion and the concept of manifest destiny reinforce and contradict the American identity of the United States

039as a land of opportunity? It's a mouthful. It is a mouthful. Um the honestly, I think the AI chatbot kind of helped with that because it was such a mouthful to be like, can you reword this for me? And it would. Um, and then the outcomes of that, they need to have a bunch of different note cards, so many note cards, and citations of actual sources that they found. So, they can't trust AI. They have to actually find things on their own. They participated in a Socratic seminar where they worked together. Um, they had like a partner in the inner circle and a partner in the outer circle and they could kind of type to each other in a Google doc. And it was really cool to see them like communicating silently, but like trying

040not to make faces at each other because I said they weren't allowed to do that. Um, and then they went through and created a storyboard, which is what my students are going to share today. I will give the caveat that we spent so much time on this project. It was like the entire month of March, and it was a great use of our time. I don't want to like say that it was too long or anything, but when it came time for the final product of the poster, it was crunch time. I gave them two days. There's a couple typos in there, and that's my fault because I made them go so fast. Um, but like these two students are super diligent and hardworking, so I'm sure they're going to kill it telling you all

041about their project. Sophia and Olivia. Um, so this is I don't know how to display this, but this is our um story board and we did it on the outlaws. So Outlaws during Westward expansion. And um this was kind of our outcome. But before we did all this, we made um an outline using Magic School AI. And um it kind of just spat out for us like a huge paragraph, paragraphs and paragraphs on everything you could know about outlaws and their journeys and how they benefited from manifest destiny. Um Oh yeah. And then after that we did the Socratic seminar after our research and then it was time for us to do our storyboard. Um the first thing we did was obviously with our in-depth research um we had to create an accurate depiction of

042um what we think these like these parts of the outlaw's lives would look like and then we gave a um accurate description of them. And after that, we used um magic school AI again to we used these descriptions and tried to be as thorough as possible to and most and really descriptive so we would get good accurate pictures. And these are the pictures that they came up with. And then after we did that, we um added um uh paragraphs on why they were inaccurate to our research that we um I think there were definitely some pros and cons with Magic School AI. Um, something I thought, okay, we got pass along. They can see it closely. Um, I think something it did really well was the outline for us was really useful. Um, we were

043we had a lot of time, but um, going through all the sources everywhere on all the websites would definitely take more time than if it just gave us an outline. And so the outline gave us like a perfect step-by-step kind of thing on like what we needed to research and what we needed to dig into, not just like reading off of AI because we didn't know what was true and what was wrong. And um after we got the outline, we researched and we found out some things that were maybe false or not true and we were able to decipher that because we did all the research that wasn't AI. Yeah. Um, similar to Sophia, when we used Magic School AI, the one pro about it was that it did give us um, more efficiency on

044what to research instead of just giving us like the whole entire like just asking us research outlaws and us having to like physically or mentally decide what was important and what we should cut out. It did help with that. But I think a con of doing that would be it takes away the learning of um learning how to um how to like research and how to figure out what topics would be the most important to research even though it does help with efficiency. What about um what what would you say were some of the challenges in getting those images? What challenges did you um so for text I'd say it was really efficient. It was super fast, but um we asked it to generate some photos and that definitely took a much longer time. Like

045we had to try it multiple times for it even to be remotely accurate. Um we knew what was accurate and what was false by doing prior research. So I think the prior research and Mr. Wilkinson having us like really dig through helped us with that. We found some um errors like on if you see it, you'll definitely see some interesting errors. Errors. Yeah. And those were the best ones we could get, too. Yeah. Those took a while to Yeah. I think that was a common theme amongst all the eighth graders was getting images to reflect what they wanted. And you can see from their board, they had to sketch it all out ahead of time. So they created some rough sketches of this is the story we want to tell and this is our ideas

046of what images would go here and the text we want to add. But getting AI to actually create those in a way that looked authentic was much more difficult than I think even the students realized would happen. There was a lot of troubleshooting. Like we had um the cowboys they experienced like this great freeze in the late 1800s that kills all the cows. So, anybody with the cowboys had to try to figure out how to get a school-based AI tool with like image creation to come up with the image of a dead cow, which I know sounds like, I don't know, why would you ask AI to do that? Because it was a historical thing and like violence happens and death happens. Um, there was a lot of like students coming to me saying, "It's

047just not doing what I'm trying to do." And I had to be like, "There's the cows are sleeping. There's like wine spilled. I don't know what to" And it worked occasionally. We had to trick it a little bit. Um yeah, it was definitely it was a fun process for sure. A lot of a lot of challenges. Um this was just a sample. This is actually directly from some of the work students did. We would give them the prompts because we're trying to that's something we're trying to model for them. Um they would put in their topics and I didn't want to put the whole thing on there because it would be too long, but this is exactly what would be spit out um when they get it. This would obviously a student that had picked

048women moving west as their group, but it just kind of gives them some broad ideas and then some further bullets of things to consider for their research. Um, it is great, it's efficient. Um it does take that brainstorming piece out of it for them which has pros and cons but truly the difficult work is finding the information on their own, reading the information, summarizing the information, looking it from that perspective of economic, political and social gains and and sorting it in that way in that critical thinking piece. So this part is is honestly the easy part of the whole project is generating that outline. Um, and we did have um this was another um this was another prompt just to kind of show you some of those limitations. That's the exact student prompt. They typed

049in westward expansion trail map and they got this which I it kind of looks like something maybe out of like the Hobbit and then I don't know a labyrinth of gardens. I don't really know what that is but that's the exact prompt and that's what got spit out. So there's definitely like limitations to what they are maybe visualizing in their head, especially from all the research that they've done to what's actually getting getting spit out. Um, and just to to clarify your question from earlier, Magic uh school, which is what I've been using most, you do have access to all of the teacher features and then you have the separate piece of building student rooms. So, the one that they used to create their outline, that was like a custom created bot where I gave

050it directions for what I wanted it to do um for them. Um but there's a lot of bots that already exist that you can just assign, but you can customize them or just I did was just create my own. So, it's kind of all-encompassing. The teacher does get feedback from like student responses in there. Yeah, it's completely moderated uh which is what Kyle is saying. So, this is um an example of how it redirects students if they ask something that's just completely out of um if it if it's just not on if it's an offtask question. One, it flags it for us. So, we can check in. There's a moderation panel, but you could see that it says, you know, I can't comment on this. Um I'd be happy to help you. Let's refocus on

051your project. If you're still having issues, here's what you could do. But like re So, it's, you know, it can type students can type in anything they want. We do give them that warning of transparency that we can see all of their work. Um, nothing they type in there can't be viewed by the teacher, but the bot will automatically redirect them to get back on task, which is very helpful. And now that I'm reading this more closely, I think this might have been one of my students saying that I hate class 5. I don't. They were grumpy. They just came back. Uh but it does it's just um just to show you some of that behind the scenes capability of what what these programs can do. You guys have anything else to share? It's all

052of them. Yeah. I just want to say like overall that AI has pros and cons and I feel like um the efficiency is really important but um I think that the research itself is also very important because without the research and without the prior knowledge if an AI makes a mistake then you won't know if it's right or wrong. And I think it's important to know thanks for sharing. Thank you guys for coming. Very we asked what because we're going to go to a high school. You want to make some? Is that okay? Yeah. That's fine. I had a couple questions. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was just so the images that you shared that you pointed out the Empire State Building obviously that did pretty easily. Um, was that the first image that came up

053when you generated or was that you reworking it and you couldn't get it? That was us reworking it. Yeah. So yeah, that would that would have been interesting to see, you know, contrast where you started and how what you bet it to to try to um massage it into what you wanted it to be. And I guess like the other question is I don't know if you went outside of magic AI with the same prompt to see what it we did a little bit. So like I was like guinea pig number one with this. So like we attempted to go through the magic school one. Um Magic School actually doesn't have their own image creator. They use Adobe. So like figuring out multiple licenses and trying to get everything to work right was kind of

054hard. Some kids got in, some kids didn't. So then I switched to Canva for some of the kids. Um what I found in my experience is Canva was much better than Adobe's is in terms of the image creation stuff and Canva was free. So I just said, "Let's hop in there and try it." Um it's like a limited number of credits or something you get per month, something like that, um without paying for it. So we've tried a couple different things. Um, so there when that print when you're talking about those prints is so they had a limited number of revisions. Like you can only do the image so many times. So I had to like stipulate that to the kids and say, you know, you only have x amount of attempts here. Please don't

055start with like a banana wearing a hat. Like silly stuff. I know they did, but yeah, there it was. I tried working with certain students um like a lot of them who did women um had a lot of information about the suffrage movement and trying to get an like an a historically um historically accurate depiction of maybe um women protesting during the suffrage movement was incredibly difficult and tried so many different things putting in specific time periods United States this time period and it's still it just was really far off a lot of the So I have um two questions related to how how you did the the the work. Um that you you look for accuracy and what what resources did you you use to kind of check for the accuracy students? Oh, do

056you guys want what I make you do? Sure. Um, one of the sources that we found helpful, it was a database, but World Book, Britannica. Um, those were just a few that I thought were the most Those are the traditional things. We also um Oh, we also um spent a long time um researching what would be reliable sources. And when we picked out our sources, they were all like they had to be like government or double fact checked. And we had to when we sort cited the sources we had to write like a few sentences on why it would be reliable to make sure our um reasoning because this is takes is a big project they do have a large amount of graded things that are worth quite a bit of points. So all of

057their notes are graded and they have very specific guidelines to what their citations have to look like, what sources they have to use and as Olivia was saying, we make them tell us the sources they pick on their own. So when they're googling, they do have to give us a small annotation as to why that specific source is reliable. Um, which is also graded and and of course we we talk we do lessons, we talk about it, but um it's it is a lot they do a huge amount of work really it's really helpful too. And the second question is related to it's more for my curiosity. So you you have a prompt you use you you give it to the AI and it gives you spits out a bunch of things you give the

058same prompt again maybe not on the same day maybe this next day you get the same information or you getting different information I think a lot of time you get different information and I would add that you know which is appropriate but they are limited because it's also a school program so which is Kyle was kind of getting at before they are limited by like that school filter part of it So, you know, any part of historical American history is often there is violence if they some students focus just on the experience of Native Americans during this time period. So, if they might have included research about the Trail of Tears or the Wounded Me Massacre, but if you try to put some of those words into it, it'll like flag it for you and

059it won't it just won't create an image that could depict violence in some way. So even though it's appropriate and historically accurate to their research, if they weren't in school, they might be able to get something a little bit more accurate to that, but because we are of course dealing with appropriate school filters, there is some limitations there. I had a few questions. So uh so I guess one on the it sounds like the image creation is really can create some challenges with especially using the schoolbased AI. Um what about the non-image creation piece of it? So putting in a prompt getting text back and information does that work? you you're going to hear a little bit more about that from the high school um because you know because really the the I'll let you

060guys answer the outline was a textbased thing and that was much more efficient than the image creation stuff was like that was two three seconds and the whole outline was spit out for themselves. So the image creation is I think is still kind of evolving all of AI right would would it be interesting what about so we have magic school gadget is the one and there's a separate one called school AI. Yeah. So if you ran we have access to that KIGO KIGO and because it would be interesting to run the prompts in all three and just see which does better and which which so that that would just be interesting even for a school project if the students had access to all three and kind of did some evaluation. Um, they're honestly I said

061they're getting like the dialup version of image creation at this stage in their life, you know, like in 10 years from now they'll be like, "You should have seen what it was like when I was Do we have So we talk about the filter, the school filter versus if I just go to chat GBT or claude or something like that. Do we have ability to move that filter on how much how filtered we want it as a district or is that built into like we haven't I mean I haven't really gone too deeply into the backend filtering on a platform. I so I can't really answer that. Um but I would say maybe and if so not to a a a wide you know. Yeah. You might be able to open it up a little

062bit, but it's really the whole point is to keep kids safe, right? Yeah, I know. And it's a platforms are interesting if you and not having answers to some of these qu I mean we're still figuring all this out so I'm not expecting answers but it it was just for me it was like well I wonder if we could toggle you know if it was one to 10 all being different levels of safe not a 100 which is like open everything up but we're it might be set at two and we can move it to four and see how that is and see if we're comfortable. That that would be kind of interesting. I I I don't know. Uh yeah, I guess we'll evolve and I hope that we can I like based on I

063don't know based on like public perception when AI first came out and everybody was saying that the end is nigh. Like I do kind of understand why they're being so cautious about all this stuff, especially putting it in the hands of kids. But that would be very nice if we could. Yeah, just a small, you know, small adjustments, not big adjustments, but just a tug. any other and then I don't know if you could answer this but I was just thinking about how as I learned next year's students will they be starting with so the output for next year is their first picture going to have the Empire State Building in the background and then they can like build on it so in a couple years that first prompt would be what you were thinking

064fast things have been developed. I would not be surprised if next year is totally different and it works so much better. Yeah. I know the back end, right? Yeah. Yeah. AI like clear it out for next year. No, no, no, no. I mean, that's sort of what they AI is about is it it actually learns as it goes and it accepts feedback along the way and so all the time that they are going in and reprompting it, it's learning more and more about exactly what they're looking for. Yeah. So, and every company is different. Like Chat GBT over the past few months made massive leaps forward in their own image generation. Um, and I won't be surprised if other companies start catching up to that to vastly improve. Yeah, it's so Yeah, it's so true.

065You So, some some companies get way out ahead and then, you know, it's like that water gun game with the horses. You know, some fly and then one stops and another one goes. And I'm Google was way behind for a long time and they're just finally catching up and so it's just very interesting to watch how all of the um the companies are progressing over time. Yeah, it's hard to make it's actually hard to um exist in that situation from an educational standpoint because we're trying to to an anchor ourselves in a space where you know we can define the work and move forward but it's changing all of the time. So it makes it difficult but I think you know you you hit the nail on the head when you said it doesn't replace

066the learning right I still need to learn know how to research I it the the chatbot magic school AI that's not going to do that for you. So, it's it's really about how are we designing tasks to support students in understanding on how AI works to teach them how to use it ethically um so that then when they leave here they have the tools to use it in the workplace um or in post-secary in a way that's going to be ethical and professional and useful at the same time owning their learning along the way. It's the most important part about and then So I don't question more of a comment. I just want to give kudos to like you know uh the instructors and and the students too for talking about this because I'm thinking

067like I teach a college class and the work that you guys are putting together and like the way that you're thinking about this is far and beyond some of my college students. So, so kudos to to both of you and to the instructors as well for making them think big about all these questions about the you know like the accuracy the you know ethical use of all this because it's the skill that's going to be really important by the time you guys get to college. So thank you. Thank you. I got VC and then Kate. So I I have a question from Miss Carla. Um in the middle school we seeing an example of applied to the social sciences. Is there a similar effort going on any of the STEM disciplines? Um yeah. So we

068have had actually for a really long time in our school district, we've had what we call the assured research program where every single grade level has to do a research project. So um in grades six and seven right now that is science and last year we did do a little bit of um an extra one in science. I collaborated with Carla Frisbee um who was a science teacher where we looked at um some misinformation with uh climate change and the kids had to research that. So we do do similar type research with similar standards. So these kiddos by the time they get to eighth grade and they're doing this eighth grade one, they've been doing it for a few years already. So some of those basics with note-taking citations, it's not necessarily brand new. We're

069just building on some of that and increasing the expectations for them. But I think that and those are conversations that Anelise and I have had about how we can bring in the other disciplines a little bit more. we have the research component but how maybe we can bring in some of that AI teaching because it's not just only social studies it's those types of critical thinking skills that they need to of course for all the disciplines and as we know misinformation is rampant in a lot of science fields and that would be an important skill for them to be able to sort through yeah and you know I'll just follow up with a comment thank you thank you for all all the information you have provided and this is this is not a one time

070deal. This this is continuous. So, you know, models, the algorithms, those are going to keep changing. They're going to get smarter. Yes, I think we have to keep up. So, this is something that we have to keep doing. So, thank you for doing this for the Hey, she's Hi, I just wanted to uh compliment the work that's going on and I I think that Anelise to your point, the idea of critical thinking and using the Socratic method, especially with AI, is always going to need to be kind of run in a parallel program so that we're always constant constantly questioning the validity the and also the implications and the applications and the dynamics of it across what you've already mentioned across all the domains of whether it's art or science or social studies and its

071relevance to us personally and then also to us in a community but I think I think it's just a very very exciting time in education so I think buckle up and enjoy the ride thanks thank you so much that comment. We're going to switch gears to one of our two high school examples. Now, um I'd like to invite up coach Tiffany Kazalino, um social studies teacher Colin Macgyver, and Marin is a special because Marin Todd has been a part of both examples. So, Marin, I included you on this one. I know you're here for the writing, but we'll, you know, I know you'll have um great thoughts to share as well. So I without further ado, we'll turn it over to them. I'm gonna turn it over to Colin just a minute, but before we

072get started, I just want to give some context for why this partnership. So Colin had approached me wanting to do a coaching cycle. So when I saw what the assignment was, we were piloting Magic School AI at the same time. And so I've gently persuaded him that maybe we could incorporate some of these tools um with this project because it seemed really perfect for some of um those tools. So Colin's going to explain the assignment to you. Uh I'm going to talk about how we incorporated AI and some of the conclusions that we came to and then Marian's going to give us a lot of feedback. So Sure. Thank you. Um I'm kind of like shocked that I'm here talking about AI. I'm an admitted skeptic and slightly frightening the future that we're facing, but

073um it was a really good project. I'm happy to talk about it a little bit. Um so for the third I'm I'm Colin McCyver by the way. I'm a social studies teacher. Um formerly of the middle school now at the high school for the last three years. Um I teach US civics and US history. So our third unit uh for civics is about federalism. So state and local government. So I've always tried to find ways to make the learning meaningful for kids on who's representing you, what are they doing at the Connecticut General Assembly and what are some ways that kids can learn more about what's happening in the legislative process. So I teamed up with Tiffany and we started to look at um some proposed bills and we wanted to look at what was

074actually being talked about in the legislature. Um so students firstly used the CGA website to find out who represents them. And for the majority of students in our district with the exception of a few Salem kids, uh it's State Representative Menipes and State Senator Marks. So they are the the two that represent them in Hartford. Um, we looked at the bills that those two legislators have proposed and sponsored. So, there's a big list. There's a lot of things that they're working on up there. Um, the students were given time to take a look at those bills and then find topics that were interesting to them. What was something that stood out to them? Was there a topic that you're interested in? Are you passionate about the environment, things relating to schools, technology? Um, and the

075students then selected a bill uh that they wanted to look at more. And I kind of told him it's like looking at the bill from its infancy to when it passes. You can see the steps in where the bill is sitting right now. Is it proposed? Is it been voted upon? Has it been passed to a committee? Um and then once the students researched the issue and the bill, um they were going to draft a letter that they would, you know, they could send to their um representative or senator. So it was a cool opportunity for them to see legislation in action and a way to learn about who's representing them at the local level. It just takes a second. Yeah, there you go. Um, so after call explained to me what the assignment was,

076um, I identified three tools in Magic School, student facing that could possibly help us to sort of enhance the experience for kids. So, um, Magic School has a ton of studentf facing tools. Um, the three that seem most appropriate were research assistant, debate partner, and writing feedback. So uh what research assistant does is students enter once they chose their bill they enter that into magic school into what you do is you create rooms for kids and then you put the tools in the room. So when they get into the room they're able to use those tools. So research assistant they just they typed in information about their bill uh and what it did uh was it researched three re research questions for students to think about and then curated uh five online sources for them

077to investigate. So within a matter of seconds, here are three free resource questions related to your topic. Here are five sources for you. Um after that, because Colin wanted them to pick a side. So you know, do you support this um or not? So we thought it would be interesting to have students play around with something called debate partner. So basically they entered their topic. uh the debate partner asked them what side they were on and the debate partner argued the other side so that the students were actually having a dialogue with that um chatbot and what it was designed to do was to deepen students thinking about what their opinion was about that side. Um and then once they got into the drafting stage of writing their letters uh we had them use writing

078feedback. So the cool thing about this was that Colin was actually able to upload his rubric into writing feedback. So that the AI was using his grading criteria to give them feedback on their letters. So they uploaded or copy pasted their letters and the feedback was tailored to the points that Colin was looking for in his letter. So those were the three tools that we used. Um so just in general there were obviously there positives and negatives. Um so for the research assistant students were able to refine their thinking and source material quickly with the use of AI. Um one theme that I noticed with the middle school presentation was efficiency. Yes, it's efficient. They can help kids get things done very quickly. uh unfortunately and again to echo u the middle school folks um

079they weren't engaged in generating their own questions. They didn't have to find their own sources. And so this brings up questions of you know are we sort of depriving kids of building these skills that really are essential um to just you know just skill building, critical thinking and all of that. Um the other thing is that magic school resources were not entirely up to date. Uh it magic school updates itself. Uh I think the training that we did is it was 2023 was the last time that they had updated their platform which I remember I found shocking when I learned it. So the kids were finding where they were looking for things that were really very current. They were having some issues with finding sources that were current as well. Um debate partner I that

080one was cool. It depended on the quality of the questions and how they were engaging with the chatbot. Um, but to be able to deepen their thinking around a topic um, by having something ask it questions um, was a neat was a neat um, feature. Um, I negative putting negatives, but I guess it would be just not engaging with the chatbot at all, not really engaging thoughtfully. Um, but it's and I don't know if any of you have engaged with a chatbot around asking a questions and trying to get you to deepen your thinking, but it really is kind of shocking the or not shocking but just surprising how it can help you to kind of think about things by asking you questions. So, um, as far as the writing feedback, um, you know, the

081tool used the assessment criteria that was a huge plus um, and students and I guess this is the most important, they received actionable feedback immediately. So um as you probably know grading writing is a very timeconsuming process. Teachers are not able to always give students feedback in uh real time. This gave them real-time feedback and that is a huge benefit to the platform. Um so the negatives that we noticed just through observing students and talking with them when they were getting that feedback. Um some students didn't agree with their feedback. Um they didn't think that that was really a good point um or trust that the feedback really was good feedback. and then verification of the efficacy of the feedback really required teachers to look at that feedback and then look and see what the

082students had done. So uh one of the benefits I guess for teachers using AI to give students feedback is it takes that time consuming step out but at the same time you don't really know what students are getting for feedback unless you read that feedback and then turn around see if they used it. So it's almost like an extra step. Um, so that was one of the things that we noticed. So, so we found basically through doing this, um, that it's a tool. It's it's a tool to help with research. Um, students still need to be able to ask questions to themselves. They still need to be able to find sources that aren't just, you know, spit out to them immediately. Um, I think, you know, I used to teach the same project that Kyle

083was just mentioning, um, when I was at the middle school and to think of how useful this tool could be going forward. Um, you know, we spend a whole day or two finding sources, it took seconds, I mean, to to find sources, but there is the going back and forth finding if a source is good or not. That's something that's missing from this. So, um, I teach, uh, a co-taught unit with Janine Barber, uh, at the high school here for US history, and we spend a lot of time looking at sources. Are they good? Where are you getting the information from? So, um, we had to kind of go back and forth looking at where is this source coming from? So, you'll get a variety of things. You'll get things from websites to edus. It

084just spits out based upon code words essentially. Um, so there is a little bit of work that needs to be done with that. Um, but when we look at speed there, there is no question that this helped get feedback to students quicker and they could do this project, something that would take a week or two in a couple of class periods. So, there's definitely some benefits to this. Um, the the writing feedback particularly being able to upload the rubric I thought was really helpful because it could identify um things. And in just a moment, I'll turn it over to Marin. Marin will talk about it. Uh, see see what you thought about the uh the assignment. um I put up here there's a lot to go over but we actually used AI to I had

085the students reflect on what they felt about it uh after using Magic School and then we used AI we sort of like double AI here to summarize the feedback for us. So here's some AI time 2 feedback. Um if you want to take a look at that on your screens I'll turn it over to Marin Todd. Me and Marin go back to the Welks Kea at the middle school so we're finishing up here but anyways go ahead Marin tell us about it. Hello. Thank you for having me. So, I have some pros and cons, but first I want to talk about what my CJ bill was about. I talked about bans like cell phones in schools in Connecticut, and contrary to like popular belief, I agreed with it. So, a little Yeah. So, some pros

086for the software was that it was easy to use and that it was very neatly formatted. It was very straightforward, which I found very nice. uh it corrected my paper directly by targeting certain sentences due to the rubric just it was flat out right to the point and it gave some good sources that were used ultimately for my final draft. So that was very useful. And then some cons that I had with magic school was that it did it was faster than finding my own sources, but it did take a little bit to like generate and some kids were in my class were like frustrated, but overall just some patience would be fine, but it was also kind of slow to operate. There were some inac inaccurate sources in the magic school. Um, it gave

087me Norfolk, Virginia when I was talking Norfolk, Connecticut for some times. So, even though I said Norfolk, Connecticut, it still gave me some sources that were inaccurate. But if I just went into the article and I saw it was wrong, I obviously didn't use it. So, but that's really pros and cons. But overall, I think if kids could use AI to help them, they want one that is efficient and effective. And in that case, like another software like Chad GBT would also be more likely used by students because it is a lot faster and it gives you exactly what you want. So that would mean more plagiarizing for kids. So maybe looking into other softwares like maybe the one that I'm going to talk to in a little bit. But overall, it was very good

088and I thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Mary. We appreciate your feedback. Switch over. Sure, I'll leave question for Aaron. Uh, thanks for coming in and sharing. Uh, you had mentioned obviously I think efficiency and accuracy is kind of two of the core things that you're looking to get out of a tool. Have you guess question one is have you gotten to utilize a lot of other AI tools and if yes, how does Magic School AI like stack up to those? So, I do use Conigo for English and I thought it was very effective with helping me. Um, this was also very effective like giving me straight to the point and it was like it did help me but overall like there were inaccuracies I didn't find in other sites like other kids

089use chat GBT and it does give them straight like accurate points most of the time. So maybe this just needs to have like a few more years to like building. But overall it was a good site. Bill and then I just had a question. The middle school spent a lot of time dealing with inaccuracies. I was curious on that debate piece. Did it present information that wasn't accurate to try to convince you to to support the or or supporting the other side with inaccurate information, I guess, is what I'm getting at. I think when it was trying to debate, it was kind of broad. It was kind of like just simple responses that like could deepen like what you think. So, like it wasn't inaccurate. It was more of just like trying to keep you

090thinking. It was like kind of just directing you towards another person's opinion, which they weren't wrong. It was it was helpful for finding more sites. Yeah. Yeah. If I can add to that too, it was interesting from the teacher perspective watching the kids argue with something and I couldn't see what they were about. You could see their faces and everything, but we that is one drawback to it. I couldn't see the what was being debated essentially. So, um you know, for that might be something to to consider going forward as well. I think we so one clarification. So when when you asked it to evaluate your writing got feedback and you implemented the feedback then asked it to review again. Yes. And and I guess that's the point where even if you reise something it

091was still bringing up a similar point I guess. Yeah. It kind of just directs you to like if you did have an inaccuracy or like something that could be fixed, it tells you exactly where and it helps. You can ask it questions overall. Yeah, it did it did help with that. So, two related questions. Uh first one is okay. So you did the did the research through through the through through the AI tool, right? You know, you check everything. You write your piece, but you've corrected it because you went to the right source. Does it bring that up as an error because you corrected it? I don't think so. I in the writing it didn't really bring up like the sources. because it brought up more like grammatical errors or like faith like phrasing wise.

092It was not checking for the fact it was checking more for the writing style fact. Yeah. Right. Okay. If I may, it also I mean I mean some I don't know if it was for yours Marin but some kids actually said you need to make this point stronger. I mean, it did give, you know, sort of I'm going to call it conceptual, but definitely identified areas in their writing where they could have um just been more detailed or had more evidence or or something that like that. So, I guess it depended on the student and what kind of, you know, how their yeah, how their response measured up to the rubric. Um, but yeah, it would give more sort of big picture feedback as well. So, if if I may too, um it looked for

093different criterion in the rubric. Like one of the criterion is like to provide background to the to the intended audience on what your topic's about. Some students didn't have enough in there and I read through the commentary and it would say add more to your background. So, it does look for the criterion of the rubric and give suggestions relating to that specifically. So, I think that was really helpful. Yeah, I think it's helpful. And now now this is I asked a similar question earlier because I use AI in my line of work and reproducibility is is somewhat of an issue in at least in my line of work. So give give a g give a particular paragraph of of writing ask for feedback maybe an hour or two hours or maybe next day um get

094the same one without any changes you get different feedback and I don't know if you've done the experiment I'm just curious if you did that experiment personally I haven't I've gone back into like my history and it's still like it has obviously like the same stuff it hasn't changed it kept the history same so it kept it but I I haven't like retried the same wording. I just went back and went back to the sources. Would be interesting, you know, I mean, if if anybody does that experiment in your group, I' I'd like to know this because I do this in my line of work for for fairly complex things, but I would like to know, you know, what other people are experiencing. So, for what it's worth, like I have done it and I

095you can do it immediately after and you get a different No, that's my that's my complete. You don't have to wait. It's immediate. No, I'm I'm just trying to see, you know, if there is a lag because because here you're using a different interface. I mean, you're not using Chad GPT. Chad GPT is a little bit different, you know. You're you you're using a your um different vendor, right? Um and I'm just curious. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but I but that's my experience, too. So yeah, Lee, um Colin, you had mentioned that one of the potential drawbacks is that like you weren't able to see the dialogue that students were having when they were debating, which kind of sparked for me. Are you able to see the writing feedback that your students are receiving? Yeah,

096you can see the you can see the writing feedback. You can also see all their search histories. You can see anything through Magic School, if I'm not mistaken, that can all be pulled up. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot. And in answer to your um question about filters um it flagged a lot even I mean some students were um they were researching bills about drugs like prescription prescription drug. Yeah got flagged because it had the word drug. So I think from our experience the the filter is pretty sensitive. So when we saw a flag we would look at it and know pretty quickly that it wasn't a concern. Um, but it is on the back end when you're looking at all the information the teacher is getting about what students are doing. It's a lot of

097information. Um, so and I don't think we're meant to delve into every single little thing that they're doing because that kind of takes away from them. Let's face it, we want this to be something that helps with teacher workflow. Um, but when teachers are reading all the con all the flags and all that, it's that's really not how it's intended. But it is useful if you do want to look and see, okay, well, did Maron use that feedback that he gave and so so it it can be useful, but I'm not going to lie, it's a lot of information that teachers are getting about what's there's a lot of alerts that it gives you as you're as you have so many kids using it every Sure. Do you did you find are you satisfied with

098the quality of writing feedback that your students are receiving from Magic School? I I guess that's to be determined. I'm not sure. I think I think the fact that they were able to get feedback so quickly. I mean, I think to how long that would take me if I was to take 50 rough drafts and then analyze them and give that, you know, I think, you know, that would take a whole weekend. This took minutes. So, it's it's I don't know. I I think they did they all did pretty well on it for the most part. I didn't have any that were, you know, poorly done. Um, so I think it might have caught a lot of the the things in the rough draft, but um I think you know my big concern with it

099more is the sources I think than anything. I had two students who were in separate classes that did the same bill and they would search and the sources were completely different depending on what what topic they were looking at. Um, and then I also just out of curiosity entered their topic into Google's Gemini which is a separate feature and they got completely different sources than what they found in Magic School. So there wasn't a similarity between the different AI searches. So um yeah, I hope that answered that. It did. Thank you. Makes sense. Yeah. My I had a similar question. It was about the feedback aspect. Um more about the content rather than like the efficiency piece of it. So, you know, this exercise was studentf facing and the comment back was that, you know,

100some didn't necessarily agree with the feedback and sounds like you saw some of the feedback that was provided and kind of my question is more around knowing that you know this wasn't necessarily part of the exercise, but if you had um any insights or input to share in terms of the content that it was giving feedback in terms of, you know, you've uploaded the rubric. So, you know, you know what's on the rubric and and if you were taking the student assignments, if your rubric, do you do you have a sense of the would it be similar to kind of the feedback or the scales of the the grading on the rubric that you might provide or or um you know completely different? I don't I think ultimately I still had to take them home

101for the weekend and score them on the rubric. You know, I'm not sure if what the AI generated would have matched exactly what I scored, but I think that it was a revision process that helped them to improve their draft. Do you get what I mean? Like as opposed to it didn't score the it didn't score their essays. I still had to do that. So, it might have given them hints and help like ways for them to improve it, but I'm not sure. Um I don't know if that's the other thing Colin is that you know the you know the students right so you know what they produce for you before you know and and you know have different things that you'd be looking for as the teacher knowing them as a as a writer.

102Yeah. But like you said helping the student with their process um is a little bit different. Yeah for sure. I think it gave quick feedback to show hey you don't have enough in your introduction. Can you maybe add to this a little bit? So, I think it might have been like a quick first step. I don't know if we're ready for it to be grading things for us. Do you know what I mean? If that makes sense. I think our students have something to say about that. They do have something to say about that. So, the in between steps are really important with regards to feedback, but you know, Colin is the certified teacher in the room. He knows the kids. He's reading those essays and ultimately scoring them. And kids deserve that. me you're

103a rubric too that you know. Yes, exactly. You developed the rubric. Personally, I would never want AI to or anything because it doesn't like take in any type of like work that you put into it or like they don't know the person. They don't like I don't know. I feel like the teachers like part of their job is to like take into account what went through and like how they went through the process. I feel like and also like not knowing like you can't go and talk to the teacher like why they graded it that way. you like you can ask an AI but it's not the same. It's never going to be the same. And I almost wondered if some of that was built into the comment right with the negatives in terms of

104the lack of trusting of the feedback and you know the hesitancy of of um you know taking the AI feedback generated. So you know thanks for adding to that. I know Miss Trestler is going to talk and and Maron will talk about uh the writing coach and that level of feedback and how helpful that has been. Um so you'll get another sort of lens into that and how that has played out in a different context. Have a few questions. So um does magic school learn about the student as time goes on about the person who's actually inputting in. So like chat GPT is learning about me as I'm putting in. the next time I ask a question that might have relation like well I know that you like ABC or you do these things so

105here's how I'm going to tailor the response is magic school each independent how does that how does that work is it learning about the student or is it I have no idea I mean um magic school actually is an overlay of chat GBT so what's running behind Magic School is a large language model and what's happening when you when these guys talk about it being outdated, it's because it's running on an older version of chat GPT. So, I could assume that many of what the things that chat GPT does would do the same for a student over time um in certain scenarios. But you know when we're when we are uploading a rubric and putting feed and and uploading an essay well it's actually going to provide feedback based on that rubric and the essay

106not necessarily on the student unless it's prompted to do that which I don't know if in magic school you could do that. So does each student have their own separate login? So to your so there it's their school email. Yeah. So to your point, when you use chat GPT and you log in with your email, it knows who you are. It knows what you've searched. So it would stand to reason that it that magic school will be doing the same thing because even if they're logging in in Colin's class or Nan's class or it's the same student profile that's logging into that magic. What would be interesting to track if you can is as a student through different even through different classes but an AI tool may start to recognize you know you're really struggling

107with I mean I'm learning Spanish I'm terrible but I have been doing it for a year but the tool I use does recognize I'm having trouble with certain things so then it drills me on that but it's learning that I'm getting these wrong like I'm not recognizing in your writing it could start recognizing you know this concept it you're you're not you're you're struggling a bit with you may look to do more work in this area and learn more so I don't know if it's doing that but it would be interesting positively and negatively uh because we want to protect the student and privacy and all that but also if it learns from it and says hey you're doing well at this or hey this scenario improve That would be interesting. Have I just I

108know that there's certain tools that will sort of build a memory on the user. Um and then there's c certain tools that definitely won't. So like the chatbot that Carla created for our project that is sort of like a blank slate when we create that chatbot and then when the kids hop in they're talking specifically about Whispered Expansion. It's trying to steer them in that direction. So for that chatbot, if the kids's like, "I like soccer." It would kind of in a very polite way say, "Well, I don't really care about that. I'm trying to teach you about Westward expansion." Whereas like if it were a chat GPT that has all this memory or I know even KIGO has sort of like a tutoring tool that is a thread through everything in Conigo. Yeah. Then

109it really would build a memory of who you are. Um but I haven't experienced KIGO myself all that much. I know Miss Trestler has. filter. Would filters impact that at all too? I wonder because I mean we have filters on. I don't know. I also don't know too if it if it would matter if they're in a different room because we had to create a classroom with those tools, the research assistant and all that. I don't know if it would translate to another room or not. I'm not sure. I'm not we don't need an an answer, but it'll be interesting as as we do more of this. We're going to start figuring it. We're going to figure it out as AI figures it out, I guess. Um on the filtering question. So the prescription drug,

110so someone does this search and it comes up and says, "Hey, rug, bad word. Can't do it." Can an administrator or something override that and say, "No, this search is or this question's okay." Or, so it didn't prevent the students from doing it. It just alerted us that they were to see it. Okay. Okay. So, and then I think ideally the way that you know you would have what was it called? status report or whatever page that was, you'd be keeping an eye on it as you go. I mean, for this particular appointment, we were both circulating around around the room constantly. So, to keep an eye on that was sort of a third and we I was mostly interested just from the experimental perspective like what is it going to flag? Yeah. Yeah. I

111don't think it would block I don't think it would it would first of all I don't think that it would allow like say you know whatever they research and what sources it curated. I don't think it would curate something that wasn't appropriate. Um, but as far as what the kids were searching, I mean, our kids were fooling around too, so they were asking goofy questions and um, you know, one student was trying to, you know, do you know where I live? You know, just doing like, you know, stuff like that. And, um, it didn't prevent him from asking those questions. Um, but it did try to redirect them. So I think at some point if something I mean they weren't doing anything that was super inappropriate but um as you saw you know Carly gave

112you some snippets of their responses it is going to try to redirect a student then we'll you will get a flag if it's something that is concerning so it's yeah two other questions so on the debate partner I think I so I think you had said so I was wondering is did anybody change their point of view but it sounds like it stayed at a level that was so you know I have a view that of X and so the the AI tool takes the other side of the argument in theory in a debate you go back and forth it's like wow I never really realized that I never realized that and you might say wow my point of view has moved or changed doesn't sound like questions it was asking or the points it

113was making was in that way is that well you as like you start it, you like make your claim and like you tell it like what your side is and then I didn't personally because I didn't change my opinion. Um, but it tells you, it gives you complete opposite point of views like if people have medical like if they need their phone due to like medical issues or if they like what if something happened to them and they need to contact their parents like seeing the other points of views. It also made me want to like research more on other topics like on the topic but like different locations that have you know differences. So, I think if you did change your claim, it would change it for you. So, but I didn't try it,

114but I'd assume because it's trying to go against it. Yeah, I think it the student really is the one steering the conversation and then the the bot is reacting to that. So, my guess is that if Mary said, "Oh, that's a good point. Maybe I've ch" then it would start to kind of go in that direction. So, it's adaptive. So, it's going to adapt to whatever the student is inputting as their thoughts. I wonder too if if it would matter if we had them do that at the start of the project as opposed to in the middle because they had already done some research and started to formulate what their opinion was before they debated with it. Whereas if you said tell me a little bit about this I don't know anything about it maybe

115that would kind of change the outcome or help them to steer their opinion. So la sorry la last point I know a lot um on the not trusting the feedback from the writing coach or the writing um that that the student might not trust you know get feedback and it's like I don't agree with that does the student have the chance because I know in like chat GPT and others I might get a response like I don't agree you know can you rethink this because of you know these things or it might be in this writing it's like they want you to do I was like I don't agree with that because of can and you have that discussion where then the yeah you can you can talk to it and like not actually but

116you can like tell it like why your opinion like should be like seen and it will say oh I didn't think of that and then it'll go through like other opinions and like it'll change its view if you talk to it. It's good. Well, B, thank you so much. Uh, oh, Olivia, sorry question while you were talking. Um, so I'm very interested in what you were saying about like it learning with the students over time. Probably not something you have an answer to, but like that's going to be really fascinating to see. Um, do you know if the quality of the question asked dictates the quality of the output? Okay. So, like if one student's just really gifted at asking, are they going to get better feedback and then that's going to help their writing

117portion? Are are you saying like with generating the topic that they're talking about? So, like as they input a prompt in the debate or if they're looking for research and they just they frame the question in a very correctly, very correct way. Are they going to get a better answer than somebody who's like, "Is this yes or no?" I don't know if it would be for a different type of assignment from what we did because ours was so concrete with like, "Tell me about House Bill number 814.6 and it would tell you, you know, it would give you questions based upon that." Um, where that's how most kids entered the initial question was, you know, expand on House Bill whatever. and it would tell you the issue both sides and then that's kind of how

118it started. I don't know if it was more like a hypothetical question or something that's yeah I mean the students were really just putting in the bare minimum if they like here's the bill. Some some even just copied it from the state website and just plunked it right in there. So I don't think that that prevented them from getting good research questions and good sources. Um we do need to I mean in the microcredential course that we took um was uh there was a whole module on prompting itself and we know that the more information we give it uh if we ask it to take on a role I mean there's all these things you can do with it to get just to yield the best results. Um personally I think that's a skill we

119need to teach to students um whether they're using AI in school or outside of school. Um, but yeah, the more you give it, the better the results. But at the same time, they could have just started with the name of their bill and then they could drill down from there, too. So, I think that one of the pluses of a platform like this is that it is it knows it's interacting with students and it's been designed to um sort of know that it's not necessarily maybe, you know, an adult who's got fully formed questioning skills. um that they're high school students, no offense, um but that you know they might have may have something to learn about how to prompt AI that adults might have better skills with. I guess just because of experience. So

120I do got I have something to say. So I've heard from other students that um they didn't get a lot of feedback and that might have been due to like the bill that they picked or like how much like they wanted out of the bot. Like personally, I got a lot out of it and like it gave me a good amount of stuff just based off of how I worded it and I tried to word it more formal. So like some kids might not have and they didn't get the most out of the bot. So that could totally depend on, you know, whether it's a good outsource or not. I just think it's really fascinating. Thank you. Yeah. Thank Thank you. Hold on. Okay. Thank I got I got another paper. Oh, okay. She's always

121always prepared. And then I'm going Did I? So we have um high school English teacher M Trestler here this evening with her student Marin. And um they are just going to share a little bit about the um pondingo writing coach. You can do the or it's just a little delay to the screen. So great. Thanks. So good evening everyone. I am Nette Trussler. I am a 22year veteran here at the high school. My first time speaking in front of the board. So, thank you for having me tonight. Um, I do want to add as well that uh about 10 years ago I finished my master's in educational technology through Yukon with the tuition reimbursement program that the school offers teachers here. So thank you for that because I felt a long time ago that this

122was um that journey that we started with here and I knew that this was going to be a journey that I would like to embark upon and throughout the last um 15 years or so I have been working with my colleagues and with my students on a very small scale but this is larger as we move forward with AI. So um just to give you a little bit of a background on KNIGO, I have always used Khan Academy in my classroom for grammar. We did a whole grammar unit uh the first semester of the year and um after having used the u grammar part of Khan Academy, I saw a 60 minutes interview with Sao Khan about the writing coach Kigo, but also about Kigo itself, which is um specifically for teachers. It's almost like

123magic AI for teachers and then part of the KNIGO uh platform is also the writing coach which is separate from the teacher platform and the writing coach is really about process. So part of what we were seeing in the classroom was that students were, you know, making quick quick drafts and then um getting feedback on those drafts is time consuming in real time and trying to get them feedback uh quickly enough to have them take that feedback and move to the revision stage. So, in having seen that interview where it showed students working with the AI writing coach, which you know, I keep hearing about like um the writing process and student interaction. It's really interactive and I think Marin can talk to you uh most about the interactive nature and she already has spoken

124about some of that, but it really was about the process. Students were sort of circumventing the process. They weren't thinking about the prompts deeply enough. they were just moving right into writing. They were skipping the outline stage. They went right into drafting. Um and then to get that feedback for them for the revision stage was time consuming. And so I thought why don't we just pilot this piece because with approximately 20 kids per class to give that kind of feedback in real time um is a lot. And I think the other note that I is made on another slide is it's not just about the real- time feedback. It's also about the um equity of each student being able to have personalized or AI size feedback um while I'm working the room and helping students

125with the kind of prompting that we were just talking about because some are better question writers than others. Some are much more able to interact with the writing coach than other students were. So Marin is, you know, very adept at doing the interactive um work with the writing coach, but you know, some students aren't. I also found too when we talk about equity in a class that is upwards of 20 students and in our advanced CCP class, we have a variety of learners, I had students who would not typically come to see me or speak with me at my desk or wait for me or call on me. And one student in particular I noticed was um talking away with the AI writing coach and I could see all of the questions he was asking

126the coach. All very good questions. Part of the assignment was writing a thesis statement with a counter claim and one of his questions was what is a counter claim? And so the the questions he was asking the um writing coach were questions he could ask me but he felt very comfortable with asking the AI writing coach and and this first part the process that it takes students through. So just to give you a little bit of um an understanding about the process of the writing coach I generated prompts from our anticipation guide. So we had a whole class discussion on a variety of topics for Orwell's Animal Farm that talked about leadership or equality or education. And so that was a nice uh discussion that we had um in class. I took the anticipation guide.

127I put that into chat GPT and asked it to create argumentative prompts that were based on uh argument at this level and so on and so forth. It gave me a variety of prompts. I gave, of course, after I vetted them, I gave them to the students. They were able to choose a prompt of their ch of their liking. So, in the past, these kinds of uh prompts weren't as varied. So, I was reading paper after paper on the same idea, one after another after another. These papers were like there was so many differing perspectives, so much complexity and nuance in their writing that I was like step one that's that's check on on that box for the writing coach. When I put the assignment into the writing coach, it also asks if I want

128a word limit and it's optional. I think in the future I wouldn't put a word um I might lessen the word count because I gave it a thousand words. And so I did have students who were frustrated with trying to meet the thousand words. I gave them some options, but I also had a lot of kids who when it came to stamina who really hammered it out. They were like, "Oh, I really have to think about this. I really have to flesh out this idea using the evidence that the writing coach process is asking me to come up with." So the first part there are several parts to the process and then I'll let uh Marin speak and I I probably should have moved forward with this piece here but move it forward please. Yeah.

129So um the steps that it asks students to consider the first step is understanding. So it asks the student to understand the prompt and that's where you can some students are like I got it. I'm moving on to the outline stage. Whereas the other student that I spoke about, he talked to the AI writing coach for about 30 minutes just trying to get more answers from the coach. Um, and sometimes this is done in class. I give time in class to work on this piece. Sometimes I can see the time stamp when they're working on it outside of class. I can see how many minutes they've actually worked on these pieces. Um, that student worked for about seven hours in total from start to finish on this paper. But this was after of probably what

130three three weeks three to four weeks that we were writing on this as a process. So the first step is the understanding. The second is an outline. You have to fill all of the boxes in as far as uh introduction and thesis is concerned. Their topic statement. There's a box for uh evidence, your source and reasoning. And they had to do that for all uh different points that they made for that paper. it will not let them move on to the drafting stage until all of those boxes are full. So students are like I got to finish the boxes before I move on to the drafting stage. And then in the drafting stage again it's all interactive. There's a sidebar Marin can speak to uh you on this where um they can ask the uh

131AI writing coach to offer suggestions or can you look over my first paragraph and offer suggestions. Marin's excellent at the questions. I'll let her speak on that because I don't have my fingers in that part of the process. Um, but once they get to that word count, um, they can then move to the revision stage and that's where the AI writing coach will then uh check for craft and structure, tone, um, what else was it like? craft and structure, introduction, all all sorts of the parts of the writing process and the revision stage that I would typically look at. Um, but with 60 students, it was nice to have an assistant so that when they finally turned in those papers, um, I will say that having taught this text here and there, we've we've picked

132it up and put it down, um, and have had students write arguments for Animal Farm. uh these pieces were superior. I felt to years ago, student writing from years ago, it there was just a depth to it and a complexity to what they were writing. I still read all of them. I still gave comments on all of them. I scored those pieces according to my rubric. And um I thought the process for me at least was really eyeopening. A lot of the questions that I heard you ask with um other writing parts to Colin's piece, I think a lot of it is still, you know, so brand new. Even for myself, uh next year I plan to as my to view the data and look at the questions and and look at the feedback they

133were getting. And there's so much to process with this piece. It's it's almost a challenge at this point to tell you exactly, but there were some pros and cons. We can talk about that later. Marin, you can speak to your uh work with the process you'd like. We can go back to the I Oh, you want to go back? I'm sure. Okay. Sorry. Very good. So, this is the understanding step. So, there's four steps. There's the understanding, the outlining, the drafting, and the revising steps that students see. And this is where like the rubric is and you can always go back to it and see like what you have to write. And overall the the bot does like tell you exactly what you do need to write but it is in wording right where you

134see it. So this is my actual uh like writing. So the left is the process. So that's like the graphic organizer and it's like a clean format that it makes it easy to understand like where I should write my information like Miss Rustler mentioned the main point, evidence, source and reasoning and it was and then it was like right there and I could easily see it and it right next to it was a bot. So if I ever needed to ask questions it would always help me. To the right was my final draft of my Animal Farm essay after going through all four steps. So, I wanted to add that in there. So, this is the bot on the side of the revising. And the top blue bar is a point that it made that

135it wants you to revise. And when you're given this, you can either say, "Explain this suggestion, give me changes, uh, did my changes address this suggestion, or give me an example." In this case, I said, "Give me an example." And instead of giving you exact wording of how you should say it, it takes a different source completely. So in this case, it was American Revolution and it worded it how you should or how you should understand what you should be writing into the text. So it doesn't allow for like any plagiarism. And I really like that because it helped me understand it a lot with using a different source and just how to write it. And I didn't have to ask a teacher, which was great. So it just it told me right in the

136in the bot. So now I asked for it to explain the suggestion and it was very thorough. Not it wasn't like paragraphs like magic school. It just summarized it but nice and quick. So it gave me three points to check and I went back into my work and hopefully I I tried my best to revise these points and then once I have revised them I asked it to check my revision because it can and it did and it really helped me through each paragraph. So it gave me exact places of where I should be looking and what I should be looking out for. So that was very helpful as well. These are just other examples of what I can like ask the bot and like other responses cuz I did ask the same thing of

137give me an example but it did have a different revision. So it gave me different pointers. So like as you said with saying the same thing, it did give me a completely different uh thing based off of what it told me I should be fixing. So overall, Con Migo allowed for immediate feedback. It got right to the point and helped me really revise my writing. It allowed me to ask questions I would typically ask Miss Trustler. So it gives her an opportunity to meet with other students that would want an in-person like a person to talk to. And then it didn't allow me to plagiarize like I said in my essay because it allowed me to actually think through in my own words compared to other AI softwares like chat GBT. And overall I really

138enjoyed this app. I thought it gave great feedback and it made me write a lot better because it gave me exactly what I needed and without having to ask Miss Trustler. So it was great. I could still ask her questions if I needed and I did, but I didn't have to go up like 20 times to ask like little questions. So, thank you. Thank you, Mary. Not Lindsay. It's so in all in all of that there there are advantages and disadvantages. Um these are the words of students from reflections that I also asked them to uh offer. Um, one point that I wanted to highlight where Marin was happy with the example that was outside of the paper. I had another student who was like, "What?" Could not understand. Why are you giving me an

139example of American Revolution? Yeah. And yeah, why are you giving me an example of I think theirs was from the catcher on the rye and they were like, I'm talking about Animal Farm right now. So, you know, depending on the student and and you know, the variety and diversity of of our kids, which I think was an advantage to this program because um like I said, it just made it very equitable for all students who introverted, extroverted. Um they were able to interact in real time. Um helped students stay organized. It helped improve writing. It helped um guide them through the process. And I think again that was sort of the initial problem was process and the secondary problem is feedback. Um and so I liked that it gave them uh you know write reasons

140the student says and um it doesn't give them direct examples to copy from. So it's really asking them to be uh the thinker throughout this entire process. And then some disadvantages students that did not like the structured piece. That is an argument a point um in other pieces that I've read where um there are those who are fearful of diminishing creativity and I get that. I try to also this isn't just the one way that we teach writing but it is one way to teach especially argument where it is um very structured and then um the student that felt that they were challenged with the suggestions that the AI was offering them and then it it was hard for them. I think that's my next part of growth too. How do I instruct and we

141talked about that too. How do we help students become better at writing effective questions that are going to enable that interaction? And then uh the student didn't like the thousandword limit um and that they felt too pressured for it. And I agree. I think that next time. But the one part of this program, it would not allow me to edit. Once students were in the process, it wouldn't let me take it back a little bit. So I was like, well, if you get stuck, maybe towards the very end, why don't you reflect on the process to get you to that thousand words and then you can, you know, maybe get to the next revision step, which I think was the most profitable. I mean, along the way, they're getting feedback, but that revision step, I

142think you had like 14. Yeah. for upwards of 14 to 16 comments on the entirety of the piece where it's really attending to specific aspects of the writing process in the end I thought was very helpful and then you know of course my like I said my commentary in the end um was very different from what I've really experienced in the past I was looking at different aspects of line of reasoning and nuance and complexity is a much higher more advanced uh commentary than recheck your topic sentence or you know so I found that to be very interesting and again I think overall there's still a lot to learn so my perspective definite student engagement from the commentary gives students a little bit of autonomy which I think is great for independence can I do

143this without my teacher or having to ask so many questions. I can ask this uh uh tool these questions immediiacy quality um honors the introverted student increases stamina and equity and the stamina piece I think is really an underscore here too. We're going to ask these kids next year to take um Yukon Honors ECE and that's going to be a lot of writing and they're really going to need to have something that they can maybe fall back on for structure if they're in need of um but also these assignments that they're going to be getting not just in their 12th grade year but beyond is going to require a lot of stamina. So it's um developing that along the way as well. And then the disadvantages, again, I think these are still repeated suspicion of

144AI. Um, best questions to ask, novelty and overuse. I wondered about that, too. Like, oh, this is fun to do now, but now I'm dreading it. And then, um, definite resistance to structured approach to writing. And then the, of course, it doesn't replace us. No, we're always there to give feedback. Thank you. Questions? I I should have asked this question to all um across the board. Um is there way for differentiating and their um support with language learning? Yeah. Multil- language learners. Is that is that built into these platforms to differentiate or handle that? I could answer at least from one one of the neat things about Magic Student is um especially because we're paying for the full suite of it. Um it students can actually they have um when it gives them that out

145like that outline for example, they then have um a little menu that they can do different things. They can shorten it. They can uh so they can change the length, make it less wordy. They can translate it into any language that they want. Um, and there's additional things they can do as well, but there are some, at least from the magic student end, some builtin um, things that students themselves can do to change the prompt to make it fit their own needs. That's that's magic. The magic AI interface is ex is very similar to the KIGO interface, but KIGO is for teachers and that magic AI is more for student use. So there's likewise a feature where a teacher can create where a teacher that's um a different they can create a plan where they

146have differentiation included in that plan but I think it's nice to have the student be able to uh work with the program directly. Well you commented that you couldn't change it from a hundred or thousand words rather. I'm thinking, well, would you just like use a differentiation feature or something and say, well, this kid only needs to write. Yeah. And I and I sort of did it for them where I was like, here, let's solve this problem together. You you write your reflection at the end of this process. I mean, I know that's just kind of a basic approach, but I was kind of like, you know, I worked with it. In the future, I will because it is optional, I might verbally tell them you should probably have about this many. I mean, I

147don't even really work in word or pages. It's really more about the quantity, but of course we don't want them writing one paragraph papers if you know can help it, right? um with something with like what Colin was doing, you could build your own you could you could customize you could basically create several different customized ones where you're uploading different rubrics and when you are um um if you're giving in in I feel like in Nan's case it is more of like they're walking through the writing process but with magic student there's an option where it's just writing feedback where students would instead of going through the whole process you could create something where here's the rubric. Kids could upload their work, um, a finished piece, and say, "Can you compare to the rubric and

148tell me how to how to improve it?" Um, and when you do that, you could create different versions of it based on, uh, rubrics that have already been um that have already been changed for ability. So, if you had different rubrics, you could make different bots. Um, and then you could also give it specific directions of what you wanted to focus on. So, it could be varied by groups of students based on ability if you wanted to because you can say, "Here's my rubric, but I want you to focus uh your feedback mostly on this one element." So, you could kind of customize that for different reasons if you wanted, but that's different than what Nan what Nan's using is more of a it's already it's going you're doing the whole process with them, whereas

149that one is my work's done. Can you give me some feedback? Right. and they're getting constant feedback for every part of that process. So, it's a different those are two totally different tools or that's at least I'm not as familiar with the writing one, but with magic student that's there are different ways you could and at this point Khan Academy is a free resource. I don't we don't pay anything for Khan Academy which the grammar has been great. They have a SAT prep uh feature too and lots of different courses and anybody can on academy. Um but uh the writing coach also, you know, these are resources that we we just use. I I can't say that in the future it won't be a paid resource book. I've been using it for years. So I

150could just guarantee you that have to pay for KGO. Um, when it gets to like the like AI tutoring chatbot aspect of it, it's definitely like a fee. Um, and I really just say that because I read Sal Khan's book and it's like very much an advertisement. He ready to Yeah, good for him. He's done a lot for people. What is an overarching question though? tried tried a few I'm just going to call it agent because that's how my mind think you know maybe I think school AI school AI kamig go I know I know many of these are paid something is free now will will become paid in the future how are we going to decide what we going to stick with yeah I'm gonna I'll I was I'll talk about that in terms

151of next steps but um we have about you know we had a good size group enter into the pilot. Um, I have not yet circled back around with them for their feedback, but I will. But just in my in with the work of the technology committee and my close work with some folks out in the in the community, um, we're not ready to make a decision on Magic School because right now we paid into a pilot for Magic School. And so, um, we most likely will try on another, um, platform in the fall. And my hope is that we get similar group of folks who did the magic school AI um pilot to do the the next platform whether it's school AI or con mango but we'll reconvene the technology committee in the fall and

152make that decision and then after that next pilot make a decision. I do think that it would be in the district's best interest to pick one studentf facing paid platform and move forward with that for now and then we can obviously monitor and adjust as we move forward. But I don't I don't suspect that will happen um until it probably midway through the year next year um because we're still really in the vetting process. Um so I mean I definitely agree that we may want to want to pick one and for consistency across across different things but I also agree that I think it's too soon to pick one right to our diligence because I completely I could not agree more and you can hear there's so many different um options out there and um

153you know I I do think that depending on the content area some platforms probably are better for than others and so you know we'll have to take all of that in consideration but we will do that with the technology committee with people who are using it in the field so that it's informed decision um and I'll I'll talk but I also think students have to be at the table too on that decision you know we have to continue the the feedback loop from our kids because um as you had had heard tonight you know they they really can speak so articulately about what the experience has been like for them. So that's a really important component, too. Thank you so much. Yeah, to wrap up, but I I have to just take a second and

154um extend my heartfelt gratitude to this team that was here presenting this evening. um but also extended to all of our teachers who have been dipping their toe in the AI world because number one it's a risk. It's something new. It's something different and we're doing it in the face of our students which isn't easy. Number two, it takes time. It's another thing that's happening in addition to regular classroom planning and assessment of C classes. And as we know, plates are already overfilled. And so I just am so grateful for the work that you all have been doing. And um especially for our student voices this evening, thank you um Marin and and our other two who are here from the middle school because um you know, I really feel as though we have to

155center all of this around what are what are the people in the field saying, both students and staff. Um so I really truly appreciate all of you. Really thank you. Um um so where do we go from here? Um we developed our AI guidelines but we really need to start focusing on an AI vertical framework. And what I mean by that is what are the student learning outcomes in the use of AI? Um first of all we need to decide what grade does that start at and then in terms of um how understanding AI works and in addition to that the e ethical and responsible use of AI. So we need to start building that out. There are some some things that are out there already established but we'll get the tech committee really um

156rolling up their sleeves around that work next year. Um as we had just said Vic the we're going to continue those studentf facing AI pilots. we're not in a position where we're ready to make a decision. We don't want to commit too soon. And so we'll do that again with the um AI committee to make a uh a choice for next fall where we'll go. Um and then continue professional development. We've talked a lot about um assessment durability. So how do we develop tasks and assessments that are AI durable? I think that you saw examples of that this evening. they're AI durable while at the same time teaching kids how to use AI. And so that's how we have to think innovatively around this work moving forward. Um, of course, we want to continue to

157um, uh, demonstrate tools to our staff, um, both our certified but also our non-certified staff in terms of how can they use AI tools to improve improve their workplace efficiency. our our you'll see in our culture climate survey, you know, that work life balance number was really low. it was it's a little bit better now, but I think AI might be a way to help get to that um better work life balance for our people and um just continue to explore um and have our our our team looking at expanding that AI use and um supporting student learning while at the same time honoring the learning process outside of AI. Um and again just those ongoing going feedback loops um feedback feedback feedback just continuing to bring the information to the board, gather feedback from

158the board, ensure that we are on the same pathway that the board wants us to be but also what are teachers and students saying and um how do we need to monitor and adjust moving forward through the use of maybe some focus groups um and things like that and that will be work that we set out to do next year. Yeah, thank you so much. It was really great. Clearly, you could see we're extremely engaged and care about this and and have a lot of questions. So, definitely want to keep this regularly on our agendas. Uh, and this was a great way to show it. It felt it came to life a little bit soon. So, thank you. Thank you everybody. Appreciate you here is that was huge. Mary. Have a good evening. Thank you

159all. She's either sophomore or junior. Yeah. her sister graduated last year's 11th grade English class. So she's she was good. Okay. [Music] Um Okay. Um Okay. Moving on discussion action. We have the high school vision committee update and feasibility study. Um so the high school vision committee met last week where that was um and do you want to talk through the visibility study or do you want to Yeah. Um Yep. Uh and um I think uh yeah it's attached um so we the committee had kind of gone back and forth and uh and really what it was coming down to was you know the dollars and making sure we have enough dollars at the end of the year to to move forward potentially with you know that feasibility stud. This is really kind of the

160next step for um our high school uh for the vision committee and moving forward towards eventual either in a renovation or or building of a new high school. So this is um two separate there's two separate doc this is uh phase one. Um there's phase two as well, but all we're asking the board of ed for is approval for phase one. And if you had a chance to look at the document, there's there's two tasks in phase one. First being um in this we would look to have this conducted this summer. Correct Chris? Um this is a a summer project a space needs a full space needs assessment of the high school building which would you know home projections uh develop an assessment of current room usage capacity inventory all of that um would take

161place programmatic needs and then task two would be a full um facility analysis. So full analysis of the building um pros, cons, issues uh etc. um is really um the information that we need for some of our next steps. So um the total cost um for that phase one is $40,650 uh and talk with Mariana, we feel that you know we're okay space to be able to move forward with this year's money to to to kick this off. um need for this first phase. Then we would look at where we are at the very end of the year upon June 30. If there's still open POS and things that you know need to be closed out, but we potentially do um or sign on for phase two or wait in the new fiscal year to

162move forward with that one near future. So open up for any questions. And Dr. Lund is here as well. Um, sorry. The money that 40,000 Yeah. 40,6 still going to be enough money in the budget left over to give us a padding in our rollover account. Yes. Yep. That's something we looked at closely. There also going to be enough money left over to finish the list that Chris started last year but didn't get to finish. What do you mean like this? Like I know we put stuff off that we gave Chris last year to do that. We didn't finish it. You got everything. I thought we didn't finish it. Well, we set some money aside in the capital that we are executing like uh do you mean the like the locker rooms? Yeah, like the

163locker. you had the rooms up in the library to finish and I thought we were working on maybe some stuff in the commons we were going to look at. So, we have a couple things that are ongoing. Uh we have team room slashclassroom that we're putting into the women's locker room that were funded already and signed the contract for and they'll be doing the summer. Uh we have some aesthetics and cosmetics in [Music] the atrium entrance of Niantic Center. Um and those were the two things that we had left that we have plans to do. We talked about doing additional work in the media center but we sort of had tabled that ending with the media center. So, I don't think there's anything of that original list other than those things I mentioned. I just

164wanted to make sure we got to the stuff that we were a good Y. And then what does phase two look like? Phase one is the task one and two. What does phase two? I don't have that. You got phase two document. I don't have that in front of me. Thank you, Chris. So, phase one really is present state. Phase two is starting to look at future state. So there's two tasks in that as well. Um one of which is you know how is our existing facility location? Is there areas uh within this whole property? We're looking at the whole campus that we could expand into. Can we go that way? Can we go over property direction? Can we go up on the hill? So it's looking at the whole site um and the availability

165of site. Um and then uh some basic conceptual site planning in that as well. So some basic drawings. So that's part three. And then part four is actually some conceptual drawings of what things could look like, you know, where the buildings would be. Also some options of do we build wholly new? Do we build half new or portion new renovate? Holy renovation. those types of of issues as to you know what is the are the possible then and maybe some suggestions on where to go depending on what funding looks like and what others and you know what phase two is going to cost yeah it's 43 the same this it's 43 it'll probably go up just a little bit as we move into the next calendar fiscal year Um, two-part question. One, I'm assuming that

166we this project out for for bid. So, we're using the um on call architect that we have. So, we put that out for for bid. We vetted, you know, we put it out, vetted a bunch of architects, and this was the architectural firm that we selected. About how many folks? We think we had nine and we interviewed three and this was the top of those. I'm curious from a and this is obviously a very important thing to get right. The price tag for task two and phase one makes a lot of sense to me. Sorry. The price tag for task two and phase one makes a lot of sense to me. for task one. It just feel, especially with AI now, it feels like a pretty sheep price tag for those items. Um, I'm just

167curious if the other folks that bid were in the same ballpark or just I guess a little bit more understanding of like why these items would be 20,000. So, for clarification, we didn't bid this particular ask. We bid for an architectural firm uh on Idiq contract in definite delivery indefinite quantity. So anything that's in the world of architectural needs is what we brought them on board. So when we did that we gave them this is our first task order. Um so this was their proposal in response to that. It's split 2020. It's only crushed before you join. 2650,000. Yeah, it just it's a weird breakdown for AI could probably do that for us. Yeah, just it feels like a big presentation on AI. I bet you they could figure that out. Less than $20,000. Yeah,

168that's the only thing that jumped out at I mean, $20,000 is a lot of money, and I recognize that obviously we want to make sure that this project is done at the absolute highest quality and with a lot of the tools and intelligence available today. It just feels well, I know one thing that we're paying for obviously, uh, this particular firm does has been and continues to do a great amount of school related work. So, um, they've done a number of buildings from the ground up throughout the state as well as renovations. Um, so we definitely paying for real live wisdom, experience, and expertise. Um, in addition to the nuts and bolts type things, you all you all have battle scars from the budget uh that we just went through. So again, I'm I'm sensitive

169to sensitive to pause. one one thing I would like to encourage all of us you know to think is what's absolutely essential and what's considered bells and whistles you know means I you know in all the discussion we had there was one thing that somebody said and I don't remember who said it so I can't attribute this to anyone but you know no buildings don't make group students or they you know there are things just beyond buildings that that matter more when it comes to education. That being said, I I think the point I'd like to make here is how are we how are we monitoring what's absolutely essential to to remain up to up to code and make sure that uh you know we are building building a you know we updating so that

170it it it stays there for a long time and avoiding the bells and whistles. I guess that's that's kind of what's what's how are we setting our guard rails here. Um I think that's basically what we're trying to do is the initial planning and to do you know put a lot of effort and time in the planning. you know, we're five, 10 years out potentially with this project and by starting now, um, you know, the committee's already visited a bunch of schools trying to get ideas of what other folks are doing in both things to maybe incorporate as well as things to certainly avoid because they aren't working out as a good beller whistle, for example. So I think we're at the stage very early that um you know forget you can always there's always

171the uh little rules of thumb like if you invest $1 in planning you save $100 later. So I think we're doing no that I'm just as an example of course but I think we're putting as much effort in up front early into the game to both determine what we what we need what we can do uh as well as by starting early getting support as well as the community um as we move forward. So I don't know if that answers your question. It it does. It's just that excuse me and the only you know can leave it for now but we have to keep an eye on making sure we're only doing what's needed you know and what what we don't need is fancy what we need is what is essential right okay and and

172I would say that's really what we're we're at that early planning stage trying to determine even what our options would be so we're not even to that point So I think that's a good point. We we need to know what the options what what do we know we can't do basically with our our footprint uh and then we can kind of go from um so my hesitation on this one is I just feel like the price is a little high so I'm wondering what background information there is that justifies this being very reasonable price. um a lot of similar work. I can tell you that, you know, when you're dealing with principles and architects and whatnot, you know, we do have the rate sheets. We looked at the hours that they they thought it would

173take to do it and we didn't see any I didn't see anything unreasonable in the amount of effort that they were going to put forth. Following up on that, is there an option for them to blame us that we owe additional funds for work that they found to be outside of the scope? No, this is a this is a fixed this a fixed price task. So only if we ask them to do something else can they seek more funds. Did we negotiate at all? We did. We cut back on some of the hours that they had in each of the tasks actually. This is pretty Eric and Jeff because I know you guys were on that committee. Um are we ready for this? Like is the committee done and they're it's really the next step.

174Yeah, we've toured six buildings. Um we're just at that point where and of Christian I mean that we we really kind of need to know dealing with here sort of thing that's going to drive you know the next set of decisions and and work next year. So I can add I'm looking for committee feedback on like where you guys are. Yeah, we we're actually in my eyes a little bit in a pause for this. Like I don't know schedule another meeting. We haven't because there's nothing to to do. We need this information and data to start thinking about that next thing like when we were at the elementary projects they keep us stuck. Yeah. So to add to this discussion, just so everybody's aware, um task two of this is something that we would be

175doing around this time anyway. We'd be looking at a full spill facility assessment of this building. The one that we had was um more than decade old now. So, um, we would be doing that anyway, having them come in and they're going to go top to bottom with the building and identify all the problems, uh, current state of the equipment, any problems that we have. It will, if nothing else, going to help us build a full capital improvement plan for this building in and of itself. Whether or not we say, okay, we're going to be building something new, so we don't want to have to do these or we are going to retain this area and we're going to have to do that in order to continue to operate this building. for example, and the

176thing that, you know, does keep me up at night for this building is the switchboard um by the loading dock was installed in 1967. It's 60 almost 60 years old now, but they're they don't make parts for it anymore and uh they it's not an off-the-shelf item. So, if something was to happen, we would lose electricity. So, for the almost the entire building. So those are things that they will look at and say, "Okay, if nothing else, if you're going to retain this part of the building, you're at least going to have to do something with this piece of equipment." I think I think that's where, you know, just to understand kind of the the variability of what the committee is thinking about is, you know, one is obviously one is do nothing and just

177keep fixing things and whatever. Two is renovate the whole bill everything here but stay in this footprint and and renovate. There's another option going the other extreme which is just complete knock everything down and build something completely new. The likely outcome is something in between those. Right. And so we have a wing is the old wing. Yes. Okay. The A-wing is 60 years old. B-wing's only 25 26 years old and we also have all our athletic facilities and the question is did we want to we do something where knock down the A-wing maybe keep the B-wing do you not our athletic facilities can we keep all of that and everything to try to keep cost down and then also looking I think this will give some ideas. We looked in some of the schools that

178we looked at their square footage per student was lower than ours is currently. So maybe we don't need to build and it's just optimizing space. So So part of the reason we probably have more square footage is when you it was built previously and then you add on and everything like that, you're not optimizing space. So if we can optimize space maybe the footprint does actually doesn't need to be as big. I don't know these are the things to be considered. it might I'm not for um so these are this is helping us starting to formulate some of these discussions and and that's why it's both parts that will really help the fourth the fourth task or whatever the rent more in depth renderings it's kind of for me is task one two and three

179I really be interested at four eventually but I have that probably a little more time in my guys. Uh, now what do people want to do? Jamie, go ahead. I would like to make make a motion to approve funding for phase one high school feasibility study in the amount of $1,650. Second. Second. Further discussion. All those in favor say I. I. post same motion next topic window I know it's getting it's already 8:30 when you have executive session so our members um is discussion action discussion board of education retreat just happy to take any question I'll try to speak quickly is we have a retreat next week uh we'll have a short meeting and then we have our our retreat afterwards kind of three main topics for the retreat one will be as you reflect

180on where we spend our time on our agendas are there things that we spend too much time on. Are there things you want to see more of? If there's And so Anelise has actually graciously graciously agreed to facilitate the retreat. So I should um and so if you have any thoughts ahead of time on things on looking at our agenda and how we spend our time and ideas of things you want to spend more on, some things you want to spend less time on. If you can send those to Anelise correctly. Is that okay? Okay. Send it to Anelise ahead of time. she can start putting some things together that will facilitate our retreat um and discussion and then we can we'll go through that that piece of it. Uh the second piece is um

181Mariana has put together our three-year forecast. Um, so Bill had asked a couple meetings ago or a few meetings ago in the middle of the budget is like, well, how's it looking uh for next year and and and after and Analise has Mariana spent some time and she's pulled together that three-year look. So she'll present to us so we can see what it looks like for the 20 26 26 27 and 27 28. Thank you. Um that's the second part and then um the third part is some of somewhat of a a long-term planning and if there are idea big ideas or things that you're thinking about that you'd like us to think about as a district holistically and to um you know potentially do things differently or look at more um or spend some

182time on I'll give an examp um you can give any ideas picture ideas to Anelise. Well, um and then when we get to the retreat, we shall collect them. You know, whoever sends those in, you know, to take a few minutes to explain the why, why is it important or what are you thinking and and why are you thinking about that? You know, one we just had an AI presentation. One one might be around AI and what are we doing with AI and how can we advance? Um and these are things then we would start to fold into our agendas. Um getting to the first topic as we start saying is here are some things that we want to spend some time on and especially things that might be take take over might take not

183just months might take years to to look at and decide on and implement. Um so those were the three topics uh that we had discussed for their trade yesterday. No, those are the core areas. We might, you know, use some flip chart paper up to be able to move around the room a little bit. Um we talked about that. Um really it's just, you know, some some thoughts. You know, we wanted to harness them and then go from there. Well, you said anything? No, I'm just thinking logistically maybe I'll put a little um Google form together with those two questions and just send it out so that we can collect you can just then answer the questions into the form. Would that be easier for you guys? Okay. So, I'll do that sooner than later.

184Just easier question. Um that closes our discussion action items and it's 8:35. Uh very well that not to put any pressure on your administration report. No, some of these you know we've already kind of you know you know graduation middle school's Thursday um this week next week high school on Friday the Yep. both of the high school turf. Um exactly um the director of security posting um went out today. So we'll be board member two to be part of that process when we get into Eliza. Okay. All right. Great. So hold that Jamie. Hold that thought that you're um listen there is no thought holding in my head. You will I'll make a note of it right now. So got it Jamie. Um I will not hold a thought. So definitely um and and just

185um you know you know a lot of movement with roof projects uh the town building committee we're trying to get that group together. It's been challenging not going to lie to get this actually did talk to him today. Okay. The chair of the town building committee it's it's just it's been challenging to pull them together. Which is this? I'm sorry. The project the This is for Lily Behane's roof because we're going to recommend to the town building committee that we do not go with one bid out of the there was like seven um that this company um which we're recommended to them. We're probably not going to go. Yeah. So, more to follow there, but um together roof as well is in process. We want to get that out to bid and get filed with

186the state because we want that to start potentially right after or swim um for the winter season next year. We could do it either during or right after. We already secured a spot for the boys swim team to practice elsewhere if necessary. So that's a place too. So more to come on on the roof projects, but next summer, not this coming summer, but next summer is going to be an extremely busy summer with the capital projects between fields. Yeah. Nic Center's roof's roof now. Um and hopefully finishing up the polar time soon. So stay tuned. We'll keep you posted on those. Um the rest can wait for Yeah. Yeah. Sana I have I am sorry but I have dreaded news talk about just to give you a heads up. um we're still not closed. So

187what that means now that I cannot do anything in 2026 so I cannot enter POS. Um I'm hoping that there he told me he was going to close in May. That has not happened. I'm hoping they're going to close soon because otherwise our our secretaries leave, you know, for the summer and we have you we have the other secretaries there. However, if we don't start getting our orders in, obviously we are not the only school ordering from places. Um so we have that dilemma and then more importantly and more concerning for me is as I'm working toward the payroll migration. Um, if we were on payroll with Munis this year, that means I would not be able to run pay. So, I am trying to get a hold. I finally talked with our sales man.

188I I've emailed our sales manager because I can't get our sales rep to respond to me. I'm thinking we cannot I'm of the opinion we need to separate the databases because it'd be great. I'm all about efficiency and working together with the town, but I can't and I don't even know. I need to look into it, but because 20 it's not closed in 25 is not really a recognized year and I can't get reports. I don't even know if I can generate reports. I need to do the EFS, which is a large, you know, it's a huge report that I need to code and I I just don't know. So, um I'm looking is there anything we as a board of ed can do to I mean I mean it's gonna c if we do

189separate databases obviously it's going to cost more money um because it's two separate databases but at some point I think we have to factor in that I we can't keep um operating in this manner in which I I I can't like 20 the 2023 audit is still not done. It's not possible. Should we keep kind of adding things? So, I just don't understand. But I and I certainly Yeah. No, I certainly am not trying to be respectful to anyone at all, but I also have to be able to run the finance department and I I just I you know, it's just it's difficult right now. So, um, again, and our payroll, we were initially going to split the payroll and they went off and are using ADP and so now we're going to be I

190didn't realize till I think Jeff and I went to a meeting and they presented it. Yeah, I saw you. Um, so anyway, so long story short, I'm waiting on that, but what's the cost difference if we split? That's um that's what I'm trying to find out. Right now we pay about I don't know I think our my share because we don't have all of the same things that they do because they have utilities. I want to say it's like 60 something thousand. 60,000 is our share. 60 65 currently. So I'm going to guess we would it would may not be exactly double but yeah I'm just it might be which then brings I mean they're paying 60 plus 7580 for ADP. So they're paying hundred and something thousand um for software too. It's it's it's

191just I guess we need to decide. I just want to let you guys know I will I'm waiting for all the information but kind of a road we may have to travel the can't keep going. Yeah. Yeah. just can't caugh up with one thing they got the next one that they've got and there's a number of recommendations that each one liable like we are for our audits not being done on time. So there is a um there's a municipal review board that um I believe they are reporting to them as for for auditor for towns that don't have their audits done on time fine or like um there's not a fine. The only thing that I believe right now I was told is they're not um they're not able to issue if and again I

192I believe what I was told is they can't issue permanent or financing like bonds. They have to issue short-term bonds because the rating agencies um impact our capital aren't everything, you know, will not give a rating. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but what if um if I have you and me to kind of go through and make sure everybody's maybe Denise, I don't know. Um, and I think we need to bring this make it really clear that this us doing and yes, I mean I don't want to we just went through I don't want to spend $60,000 on something that we shouldn't have to spend $60,000 as a teacher 60,000 for. Yeah, I would I would agree but um we will always be behind. Well, or I have to fix I mean

193but I have to catch up. I mean so I I agree but the undertaking of um there's a lot that that has to be I just at least yeah at least to say we can meet and have the conversation sort of thing for us to understand. Yeah. And again, like I said, I'm not trying to be critical. I just need we need to do something. We need to pay our employees and we need to but that's my biggest concern is and that and like a concerned about my in September because if I have to manually do that like that's just an undertaking that is not simple because that starts budget time too. It starts our rebudget timeber That's thanks Mariana for the update. Let's see for keeping it short. You will do your job. So

194let's see what we can do. And hopefully by then I'll also have a cost. Maybe it won't be 60,000. I'm just guessing right now. You know, it could it could be less. I don't It was 3,000. I think I'd have a you know, it's worth but if it's not going to be 3,000, it's going to be material enough that be to try to get this fixed without spending. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Uh close administration reports committee reports. We had a policy meeting today just before. So there were a number of policies that were reviewed today in that committee. They will be forthcoming in a coming agenda for first review and discussion. It's next week though the 21st July. July. Yeah. They're coming in July. And they're I mean they're they're cleaning up and adjusting some of

195the legislative updates. um retiring and replacing and for um uh August 7th is the leadership conference at Westbrook at W's Edge. uh delegate assembly is November 20th. A CAP convention is November 21 to 22. A new board member orientation and leadership conference is December 9th. No has gone has gone. I don't know if anyone else has done it, but it's good. It's fun. You learn a whole lot. Um and now that the state has mandated orientation, it's a nice way to get that credit. Um there's a legislative wrapup June 10th in Hartford. Um and the school finance webinars are all archived and the board chair webinars are on the website. Folks uh in terms of learning is next Thursday which Jeff will come to. We do a kind of state of the state of the

196learn state of the union um update learn on morning and then we go into our board meeting which is then uh on Thursday. So um Jeff and I I'll be there for the state of the union next week. Okay, that closes committee reports. Uh board comments, future agenda items, hearing none. Uh we do have need for executive session. Do I hear a motion? And it's just with Yes. I'd like to make a motion to enter executive session with Superintendent Newton for the purpose of discussing the proposed performance evaluation of the superintendent for the 2024 2025 school year. And don't say that it's not in the mot we're 2526. 2526. Perfect. Second. Thank you. All those in favor say I. I. I oppose thing.