Board of Education Meeting October 21, 2025

001Good evening and calling the meeting to order. Welcome to the West Hartford Public Schools regular board of education meeting. It is Tuesday, October the 21st, 2025. Karen, may you please call the role. >> Mr. Gagnan, >> here. >> Mr. Goldman, >> here. >> Dr. Harris, >> here. >> Mrs. Marman, >> on her way. Mrs. Nesserella, >> present. >> Mrs. Yagalof, >> present. >> Dr. Present. Dr. Thomas Ferguson here. Student Representative Kayla Gia >> here and Student Representative Bridg Venie >> here. >> Thank you. And Bridget, may you please lead us in the pledge of >> allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We do not have a revision

002to the agenda order and now it is time for public communications. This is where we're able to hear from you your thoughts, your questions, your suggestions. Each person is allowed three minutes to speak and we ask when you go to the podium to please share your name and your town of residence. Please be mindful of Karen who will hold up a yellow card when you have one minute remaining in your time. And when your time is expired, you will see a red card. and we ask for you please to conclude your sentence and respectfully take your seat. Please be mindful that we are attentively listening to all comments as they're being made. However, it is policy that we do not respond to comments as they are being made. And so we first will begin with

003those that have signed up on the list. for the purpose of our awareness want to share what the agenda for this evening includes and we're hearing comments on all topics but nonetheless this evening we are speaking on setting the 2026 high school graduation date accept revision of policies 1240 1900 and 5560 ratification of the West Hartford Police Employee Crossing Guards Association contract 2025 school day SAT results and approval of minutes from the September 16th 2025 board of education meeting. So on the list, we do not have anyone signed up on this list, but this list we certainly do. And the first name we have is Kimberly Hughes. And I will say in advance, if I mispronounce anyone's name, I do apologize, but Kimberly. Hi everyone. Can you hear me? Okay. And what was I supposed

004to say? My name and Kim Hughes, resident of West Hartford. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for the time and energy you bring with you every night or at every meeting. I really appreciate that as a parent um as a citizen of West Hartford. Happy farm to school month. More on that later. My name is Kim Hughes. As I said, I've worked at Westmore Park as an environmental educator for many years. Um, I co-lead a nonprofit called Route to Rise, where we support relationship between people, land, and food. I serve as a commissioner for Sustainable West Hartford. And I have literally put in hundreds of volunteer hours at my children's school, cafeteria, and garden. Importantly, I currently have a role supporting the statewide movement for farmtoschool. really exciting. One of my favorite quotes is offered

005by an educator, David Soil. He says, "If we want children to flourish, we need to give them time to connect with nature and love the earth before we ask them to save it." It was in this spirit that I fully committed my energy to centering food and where it comes from as a way to help us remember our connection to our home, the living world, and to each other. Food is connection. Food is love. As I mentioned, October's farmtoschool month and at recent events in Old Sabre, Connecticut, education commissioner Charlene Russell Tucker said, "When we invest in school meals and farm-to-school initiatives, we invest in the whole child. We invest in our communities and in the future of Connecticut." So, what is FarmtoSchool? On the Department of Education website, it says, "Farmmtoschool connects schools and

006local farms with the objective of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving school nutrition, student nutrition, providing agriculture, health, and nutrition education opportunities, and supporting local and regional farmers." At the same event, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bisawit said, "Our agricultural business contributes over 4 billion to our state's economy every year. It also provides more than 22,000 jobs across our state. It is important that we expose our students to a whole variety of occupations, hobbies, interests, and ideas when they're young so they can dream big and set out to achieve great success in the future. Our students are part of the local food system right now and have a role should have a role in deciding its future. So, did you know that our legislature just this past June awarded 1 million annually to the Connecticut grown

007for Connecticut kids grant program and $3.4 million for the local food for schools incentive program. This is on top of existing federal and state incentive funds that have been available since 2023 and have come with technical assistance for nutrition services directors. Students and school districts across Connecticut are building green houses, revitalizing gardens, hosting farmers markets, community dinners, building pollinator gardens, and so much more. I have a lot more examples to offer you. The farmtoschool movement in Connecticut is strong. We actually have funding. We have support from state agencies and we have the Connecticut Farm-TSchool collaborative that brings all of these efforts together and connects everyone. So, I'm just wondering where are we on farm to school in West Hartford and how can we grow farm to school in West Hartford? Thank you. Next, we have

008Nikia Alexander. He's here just in case he's Okay, remind me. Okay, Nikia Alexander, resident of West Hartford. Good evening. Good evening again. My name is Nikia Alexander. I'm a parent and active community member and co-lead of Route to Rise. Route to Rise works to strengthen relationships between people, land, and food. We believe a big part of that is ensuring that all people have an opportunity to deepen that relationship through education focused on health, agriculture, and sustainability. Tonight, I'm asking the board to consider assembling a farm-to-school team, a small working group made up of administrators, educators, parents, and community members to explore how West Harford can begin implementing farm-to-school programming in our district. FarmtoSchool connects students directly to local farms, fresh food, and hands-on learning about where their meals come from. It bridges the classroom, cafeteria,

009and the community, helping students to understand that food is not just something we eat. It's part of a system that affects our health, the environment, and our local economy. As Kim mentioned, we don't have to start from scratch. Connecticut already has strong examples to learn from. So, for example, in New London public schools, the district used a Connecticut grown for Connecticut kids grant to strengthen its farm-to-school program. They purchased reusable produce bins for food deliveries, connected elementary school students to local farms through field trips, and hosted a community meal featuring locally grown Connecticut food. In Windsor, at the John F. Kennedy School. They created a vegetable and pollinator garden to connect hands-on learning with science and math. Students grow vegetables, study biodiversity, and learn how pollinators sustain a healthy environment. All supported by the same

010grant program. These examples show what's possible and how starting small can lead to a big impact. Here in West Harford, we believe I believe the passion, we already have the passion, the partnerships, and the experience to do the same. And we know that collectively and with the support and coordination of the district, farm-to-school programming can be sustainable. That's that's why now is the time to formalize this work. By assembling a farm-to-school team, we can plan a small pilot perhaps in one or two schools and pursue available state and federal funding. And just to reiterate the funding, the Connecticut grown for Connecticut kids grant program has been expanded to allocate up to $1 million in 26 and 27. And the local food for schools incentive program will add another 3.4 million in state funding in 26

011and 27 as well. These grants can support everything from purchasing local food and supplies to building gardens and hiring coordination support. So with the support of my organization or our organization, Root to Rise, local farms and a community ready to help, we can make this happen here in West Harford. So, I urge the board to consider one, assist in assembling a farm-to-school team to design a pilot program and pursue grant funding, and two, launch a small pilot and one or two schools to model what's possible. By doing so, we can bring nourishing local food, hands-on education, and community connection to our students and join schools across Connecticut who are leading the way in this space. Thank you for your time and continued commitment to our students and our community. >> Thank you. Next, we have

012Get Ge Syers. Again, I apologize if I mispronounce your name. >> Good evening everyone. Um, today I'm here because I heard about >> Sir, pardon me. Please share your town of residence. >> Oh, West Artford. 10 years residents in West Artford. So, I heard about restorative justice that the school is going to go with and I was confused when I heard it. So, um I asked AI and the AI was telling me about restorative justice, what it means. um says restorative justice in a school is an approach that focuses on building relationship and repairing harm instead of using traditional punishment. So it is against traditional punishment. as I understood it, I think this restorative justice is circling around students that are um uh violent or um disturbing the peace of the school or something around

013that. So especially we are talking about the school school children school children whose uh brain is not fully developed. So by avoiding traditional punishment and emphasizing and community building, social emotional learning, uh problem solving through restorative circles, peer mediation, one-on-one conversation with students, all these things um would in my opinion would incentivize the students to even do more harm to the school. I think this restorative just is another emotional social emotional learning project which is we have been opposing these things for years I guess but it didn't matter. So in my view this uh student I mean this emotional learning is has more harm than good because it destroys the social fabric or the young generation. this restorative justice. I one thing I give credit to the democrat is they are very good at uh

014Democrats are very good at engineering words um restorative justice. It looks like good but it is harmful. Uh like another example, Democrats wouldn't tell us the baby murder. They would tell us u planned parenting. Planned Parenthood literally were taking away human life but we call it choice. So those kind of world engineering are there. So this is another word engineering restorative justice. So in my opinion this restorative justice is not is not going to help students it will hurt the students. So as um I mean it didn't matter even before we were going we were opposing about um the mascot school mascot but we brought um uh red Indians the indigenous people to testify here and the student all the student voted against the mascot change but it didn't matter board of education passed it

015anyway. So, in conclusion, as a white liberal woman, I am against this. I don't like this idea. I I say it again. As a white liberal woman, I oppose it. But the good thing is the Democrats don't know what a woman is. Thank you. >> Thank you. That is all who we have signed up on the list here. I will ask if there's anyone in the audience who cares to make a public comment. We'll ask again if there's anyone else who cares to make a public comment. Right. We shall pause on public communications and shall continue with the agenda which includes non-staff communications and reports. And this is where we very much love to hear from our young people what is happening within our schools. So Kayla, may we start with you please? if you

016can please share what is going on at Hall. >> Hello everyone, good evening. Here's another update from Hall. We recently held the NMSQT lunchon to celebrate our national merit commended scholars and national merit semi- finalists. Parents were invited to join the event which was catered by the careers and foods classes. They did an excellent job preparing and presenting the meal and the event was a wonderful recognition of student achievement. In addition, spirit week and the pep rally took place last week, which created a stronger school spirit. During the rally, homecoming was officially announced for November 8th, which will be held at the town hall this year, a new venue compared to the cafeteria in previous years, and many students are very excited about the change in location. On the sports side, this week was a

017full lineup of Connor Vas Hall games across multiple sports. Tonight, both girls and boys soccer teams, as well as the volleyball team, are competing. Field hockey plays tomorrow, and swimming also has a meet this week, concluding with the boys football game on Friday night. Meanwhile, the Hall Robotics team will be hosting the VEX October pushback qualifier on October 25th, which will run from 700 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. here at Hall. It will feature teams from multiple schools competing throughout the day, which we are looking forward to. In terms of music and performing arts, the choir is performing their in praise of music concert at St. James Church this evening. Last Saturday, the Cisti orchestra and jazz band performed at the Gifts of Music Gala fundraiser alongside young musicians from Charter Oak, which was a very

018successful event. Next week will be the Autumn Leaves concert held at Connor High School. Lastly, the fall musical Curtains opens next Thursday, October 30, with additional performances on October 31st. Students and staff have been working hard in preparation. Notably, this Friday, October 24th, Hall will hold a special schoolwide assembly with Laura Stack, the founder of Johnny's Ambassadors Youth THC Prevention. Her presentation aims to reduce teen marijuana usage, increase the perception of harm for brain development, and teach students to resist peer pressure. Coming up, the National Honor Society fall blood drive will take place on October 30th. And overall, Hall students are engaging in a busy and exciting fall season. And that concludes my report. Thank you. >> Thank you, Kayla. And now, let's hear from Bridget sharing what's going on at Connard. >> Hello, everybody.

019Uh, greetings from Connard and happy fall. Connard will be featured in an upcoming broadcast on what is right with schools for Channel 8 News. Keep your eyes peeled to learn more about Connard's mural project and the students that led it. Connard's fall play, Good Kids, opens this Thursday at 7 p.m. with additional performances on Friday and Saturday. To support Connard's Blackbox, tickets can be purchased through the Connard Drama Ludus website. As the weather cools and the leaves change, we're looking forward to the Autumn Leaves jazz show on October 29th featuring Connard's orchestra and jazz band. Admission is free and we hope to see you there. Moving on to our sports section, we've recognized that Connard's fall season is coming to a close. Connor boys golf were the CCC Division West champions with an impressive 13

020to1 record and placed fifth overall in the CCC's. Girls field hockey recently celebr c celebrated a two-1 win two zero win over Northwest Catholic and expects another tonight against Hall at 6. Connor's girls swimming remains undefeated as they face Hall tomorrow. Girls soccer played against Hall today at 3:45 while boys soccer will take them on tonight at 6:00. Cross country has their final state meet this Saturday and football will play Windsor this Thursday at 7:00. We are also incredibly excited and proud to announce that through our pink out nights, Connor has raised over $1,000 for breast cancer research. This fall, Connor will also be hosting many fun and exciting events. On October 31st, Connard's EMS classes will be hosting a Halloween blood drive open to all students over 16 and faculty members. One donation can

021save over three lives. So, don't forget to sign up and to donate on the Red Cross website. We also celebrated college board recognition night honoring students for their achievements on the PSAT and AP exams. Trick or treat street is also coming up and we're accepting candy donations to make the event extra special for local families. Connor also recently recognized our community's cultural diversity through this year's ID Autumn Festival. Finally, this Thursday, October 23rd, Connard will also host Laura Stack and receive the same presentation as previously mentioned by Kayla. We've had a very successful fall for Connor students and they continue to make plans for their futures. The PSAT took place last week allowing freshman, sophomores, and juniors to prepare for the SAT. Students were also given opportunity to end to attend the college fair and

022meet with numerous college representatives. The career center visits have also been offered, allowing seniors to meet with their college as admission counselors and ask their questions. Thank you for listening to Connor's updates. >> Thank you for sharing, Bridget. Thank you both, Kayla and Bridget. represent your schools very well. Now, continuing with the agenda, we now have unfinished business, but there is none of that. So, let's go on to new business. That being setting the date for the June 2026 high school graduation, seeking a recommendation or a motion rather that the board of education vote to set the date for this year's high school graduation on June the 11th, Thursday, June the 11th, 2026. So moved. >> Thank you, Claire. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Jason. Passing to Paul. >> Thank you

023very much. Um, so I'm certain that our seniors are excited to see this on our agenda. Um, it may appear early in the school year, but as you may recall, some years back, the uh, state legislator legislature, excuse me, uh, voted to enable boards of education to set the graduation dates um, anytime after October 1st, you could set the date. Uh, June 11th is not our scheduled last day of school. Our scheduled last day of school for this school year is Friday, June the 12th. However, as been our practice, we with Safegrad, we like to avoid um graduation date on a Friday uh spilling into the weekend. Uh we feel like we can have a a better safe graduation night on a weekday. Um so, uh in consultation with Mr. Dwarte and our two high

024school principles, we we talked about um utilizing the Thursday or if we wanted to if we wanted to predict any snow days and the decision was no, the earlier date has worked for us. Um even if we have one or two snow days, uh we are very practiced at enabling our seniors to be able to have that earlier graduation and it actually uh it helps the schools in terms of how they operate. So, with that, I'm bringing you the recommendation that you set the graduation date for Thursday, June the 11th. Um, once you set that, uh, regardless of our snow day calendar, that will remain our graduation date for our high school seniors, and we will operate any other shifts uh, for the remainder of our students around that. >> Thank you. Teammates, questions or

025comments regarding the proposed graduation date? I dare not say any objections to that. Claire, just to be clear, then seniors would not go to school after that date. >> Correct. Seniors would uh seniors would be done on the 11th and there would be no need for them to attend on June 12th. And that has been our I'm seeing them uh that has been our practice uh typically that the seniors are a couple of days ahead of uh the remainder of the student body. >> Any other questions or comments? All right, with the motion on the floor, all of those in favor say I. I. >> Any oppose? Any abstain? The eyes have it. All right, congratulations, ladies. And now let us move on to the next agenda item, which is revised policies as a first

026reading. seeking a motion that or rather a motion by Laura Thomas, Jason Gagnon, and Gail Harris that the board of education accept as a first reading the following revised policies which were reviewed by the board policy subcommittee beginning with community series 1000 that being policy 1240 visitors and observations in school and 1900 school security and safety. Is there a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you Shannon. Is there a second? Second. >> Thank you, Jason. Discussion. So, Mr. Darte, passing it to you, please. >> All right. Good evening, everyone. Um, I'll start with policy 1240, visitors and observations in school. So, as you know, we welcome parents and caregivers and community members to visit our schools. And the policy outlines steps that we take to ensure these visits are safe and minimize a disruption to

027the educational learning environment. For instance, we require all visitors to receive prior approval and also to follow all security and health protocols. In blue, what you'll see is the new language, which addresses situations involving federal immigration authorities. In short, if an officer comes to a school or requests information, staff should not handle it themselves. Instead, they must direct the officer to the school administrator who's been designated to manage these situations as outlined in our school safety and security plan. Um, this approach aligns with our current practices and also something that has been mandated by the state. >> Thank you, teammates. Regarding policy 1240, any questions? >> Yes. >> Can I just get a point of clarification? Um, are all the policies that we're reviewing tonight, are these all first readings? >> Correct. >> All first

028readings. Okay. Thank you. >> Certainly, Ethan. So really the only change is federal immigration and I realize this was done through a lawyer. Is this in violation of federal law? >> It is not. And one of the things I do want to highlight is obviously we always are compliant with all federal and state mandates. And so really what we want to just ensure is that we have a solid practice in place to uh make sure when folks come to the school and it's you know it's specifically outlined in this for immigration officers but the same can be said for anytime we have a visitor. I have no problem with that. But >> yes, >> the focus is >> the changes were the changes were all about federal immigration and I don't want to see them

029ice come, but I don't also want to be in violation of federal law. I mean, it takes me back to and this is just my perspective. When I first went in the army as a second lieutenant, it stressed you don't obey an unlawful order. And I think we're putting people in that position. >> Just my opinion. I want to jump in. Um, and I respect the example. Um, but I'll say it's it's really just chain of command to use that example. If if an outside entity comes, the understanding that u whether it's the federal ICE official, whether it's West Harford PD who wanted to come to speak to one of our students, West Harford PD are exceptional partners to us. The teacher is not going to act independently. They're simply going to approach the administrator.

030Um, but there's there's absolutely no, you know, this policy is not a is not a change to our existing practice. Um, it is it is language that the state of Connecticut has specifically requested that, well, not requested, I guess, required that all school districts put into their statement of policy just so that there's no confusion. Um, and it and it's to the it's it's to the expediency for federal immigration. Uh so that you know should there be anyone impersonating a federal immigration officer that a teacher doesn't just act willy-nilly that that nope let me get let me get to our administrator so we can make sure that anything that we need to do in compliance with law with you know with the law and with legal orders is followed appropriately and that nothing is happening.

031>> I wouldn't have any problem with it if it >> didn't highlight federal immigration. All it is is federal immigration. Understood. And that that's required language under the >> I understand. It just to me it takes me back to you don't obey an unlawful order. Correct. That that was >> I can't tell you how many times that was stressed to me when I went through our uh officer basic >> Jason. >> I I was just going to add and as we talked about the the policy committee that this enables us to follow federal law and to do it in a very appropriate way. Um, for instance, an ICE agent could show up under one of two different types of subpoenas. Um, it's not on an individual staff member to know that that's the proper subpoena.

032We're going to have people who are trained who know what to look for and how to specifically respond to that. So, not only are we following federal law, but we're also preserving the rights of staff, of students, of the district in responding to those agencies. Now, the fact that ICE is called out, I think it's twofold. First, it's from the legislature asking us to do that. It's from guidance from the governor's office as well. But second, it's absolutely topical. I mean, there aren't other agencies, you know, that that are having the type of actions that ICE is taking at the moment. So, I think this is a timely policy. I think it's the right policy and I think it enables us to follow federal law appropriately. >> I'll respond and then Claire. Yes. So, if

033it said law enforcement, I wouldn't even bring it up. But it doesn't say law enforcement. I think it should say law enforcement, but it doesn't. >> Well, I I would take that up with the state legislature. We're being directed to do that, to specifically call out ICE, and I I think in part because it addresses real concerns that that, you know, families are having about this, real concerns that our staff members are having about this, and community members in general. So I I think that calling out ICE is one required by law, but two I think at this time quite appropriate >> because law enforcement, >> but law enforcement is is part of this anyways. If you read the entire policy, it's any any visitor has to go through certain procedures. This is calling that

034out. We're adhering to the general statutes which are listed here. Um so one, we don't really have a choice. We need to follow this policy to be in compliance with state law as well as federal law. Claire, um, just to clarify, is this only effective upon entering the building or trying to enter the building? Could what what is the protocol or policy if um, students are trying to get on a bus or there's a line of parents picking up students? Is that also a time where you would find the principal administrator? >> Yeah. Yeah. So again, what the what we're looking here is to have clear policy on if a situation arises and they're on school grounds that we would want to make sure the correct person is there to address. I think Jason's point

035is spot on that there's a lot of nuances to it and we just want to make sure that we're following that correctly. >> Other questions or comments? Again, this is a first reading, so there is no voting on it this evening. However, this is the time for us to discuss what has been proposed. Any other questions or comments regarding the policy that is on the floor? All right. Well, let us proceed to the next policy, please. >> Great. And so, policy 1900, school security and safety. So, as I'm sure you're aware, each school is required to have a school security and safety plan to address all hazard threats and enhance emergency preparedness that follow state standards and guidance. Um, these plans must now include protocols for interacting with federal immigration authorities. And so, similar to

036policy 1240, it requires that a designated administrator be responsible for handling these interactions and outline steps they should take. It also points out that other staff are required to directly uh find the appropriate administrator who's been designated to handle these situations so that that can occur um promptly and correctly. So, these plans are submitted annually to the state. We actually just submitted ours recently and it was approved. Um, and they are kept secure. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments or thoughts regarding policy 1900? Gail. >> Um, yeah, Julio, can you It's telling us that there's um at least one administrator at each school um who's going to serve as the individual responsible for interacting with federal immigration authorities. um who is that person at each school? >> It's going to be the principal. Um

037in all of those cases and they've been working with my office and even prior to me in this role, Andy had worked with us to sort of work through what are the steps that we want to take. >> Okay. Can you expand a little bit on what kind of is there some training or is there some kind of protocol or how are they how do they learn how to do the interaction with federal immigration off officers? >> Sure. So certainly we've given them a list of some things to ask for right away. You know, one of the things we just want to make sure is to get identification in those pieces, but then the next thing is really to get a phone call in to either myself or Eric Dy um so that we can

038start working on the next things and and perhaps we'll have to just respond to school ourselves as well to help out in those situations. >> Any other questions or comments regarding policy on the floor? All right. Again, this too is a first reading. So, we shall revisit this when it's time to vote. Now, moving on to the next motion proposed by Laura Thomas Ferguson and JC Gagman that the board of education accept as a first reading the following revised policy which was reviewed by the board policy subcommittee that being student series restorative practices response. Is there a motion? >> So moved. Thank you, Shannon. Is there a second? Second. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you, Latoya. But Jason, appreciate your second as well. Discussion. And so, Mr. Darte. >> Um, so if you

039recall at our last board meeting, the board of education did pass policy 5560. However, there was a motion for a a revision to that policy. And so it was submitted um and brought to that subcommittee um where there was a discussion of that time and that's where we're here now. And so I do want to just quickly look at the language that was proposed to be added into that. It's in the very last paragraph on page nine of your packet and it reads including for students of color and students with disabilities in recognition of historical disparities. And so you'll see that is in blue font and that would be the new language that would be added into this policy should it be approved by the board. Thank you. Discussion, thoughts. Jason, >> I'll just add

040that the the work we did on this was really to try to balance the um suggestions that were made at the board table. So that included you know um giving credence and in reference to you know why this policy exists in the first place where perhaps we have had you know not perhaps but where we have had failings in the past which we've made you know great strides on but which you know I think we need to keep as our load star as we go forward. Um, and then balancing that also with the need, I know I think across the board, no pun intended, uh, we we wanted more data on how things were going to filter out and and how these would, you know, how these policies are actually working once they're in practice

041and then balancing that yet again with concerns over, you know, student privacy rights and things like that. So, that's where this language comes from. >> Thank you. Other thoughts or comments regarding Yes, Latoya. Um, yeah, I just want to say that I appreciate the the language uh shift here and and everything that you've shared, Jason, and just you all taking it back. Um, and and wanted to, you know, continue to just lift up, you know, the just what is behind this policy and that, um, restorative justice, uh, and restorative practices come from indigenous communities all around the world. Um, they don't come from, um, political systems. They they come from communities. Um and you find them in the beginning of every community. They actually started in West Africa. Um and you find origins in them

042in New Zealand with the Mayori's people and then first first nations people um as well. So they are practices that are that are embedded in every indigenous community around the world um centered in relationships. The other thing I wanted to say is that when Connecticut um came on uh brought on the school-based diversionary initiative, which is what really put restorative practices um as something that schools could try and districts could come on board with and that helped lead to that policy. Um they it came out of uh CHDI, which is the child health um child health development institute. It's a research institute here in the state of Connecticut and they brought restorative practices forward um as a best practice. they researched it um and then when they had data that showed it was effective, they

043brought that to the capital and it it got funded um into the governor's budget. And so this is an institute that um their best practices are are deeply researched and when they're brought forward, it's because they've been shown to be effective. And so I wanted to give that context and that information is out there. Um and then also wanted to lift up again that um the policy itself that was brought you know um brought forward to the state um really came from the community. It was parents, it was students, it was community members and it was educators who brought this forward and and asked for it to be a policy. And so I really um am grateful for us at the board table with um you know lifting it up because it is our role

044to support um the the things that our our families say um they need the the things that are going to protect our students. Um and there's absolutely nothing wrong with centering building healthy relationships in our schools. And I want to say one last thing that restorative practices does not incentivize harm. it actually holds more accountability. Um, and so yeah, I'm always happy here or outside of here to answer any direct questions about that because it is my field of expertise. Um, but I just wanted to make sure I clarify that publicly so that people know what it really is and and and what it's all about. Thanks. >> Thank you. Other thoughts or comments? Yes, Claire. Um, I remember there were some discussions about um deadlines or or and I assume those were dropped because

045this is a a policy that will run for many years and and the commitment we have is that it will go in next year's student handbooks or >> it's in this year's now. >> Yes. So, all of our handbooks again since they're electronic, we were able to go in and put those. So, all of our secondaries as well as our elementary handbooks have been modified. >> And and what are the plans, if any, to um help the public and the parents understand more about restorative justice and practice? So, you may recall um I don't know if it was a highlight of the report, but um as part of the new legislation, our school principles are putting together uh climate committees which will include um representation not only from the teachers, from other employees in the

046school. It will include representation from our parent community at the at the school level and it will include representation from our students and they will um they will have a hand in reviewing and providing input to the school uh climate improvement plan. Um and then they will also be uh invited to a meeting at the end of the year where at the school level they will review um school metrics based on what they've said in their plan in terms of what their action steps were um and then what the results of that were at the board level and for the larger community. God bless. I'm certain that we'll be um providing you with some reports in and along the way um as to as to how we perform and you know historically we've always had

047a component in our end ofear plan where we kind of talk about um where we landed and I would expect that we will continue to do that and we will just modify and adjust as we as new measures come on um those measures will be reflected in our um in our reporting about our end of year results and then certainly as an input to our next year goals. If that answers, I hope. >> Thank you. Other questions or comments regarding the policy on the floor? Again, this is a first reading, but this is an opportunity for us to discuss and to ask questions so that when it comes before us again for a second reading, at that time, we will vote. And we certainly want to be well informed of where what our thoughts are.

048Any other thoughts or comments? Ethan? So, I have a problem with this as I said before because of the school resource officer not being included. I appreciate that you you allowed me to make that motion but got shot down. Um, question for you. Um, it doesn't me mention gender male female for the measurement. I was just curious why for doing ethnic or >> I believe the looking May you may you elaborate please on your question. Well, it's it's got um black, Hispanic, I assume, but usually there's a difference in the numbers between the black. >> Oh, well, I'm I'm reading from the state. >> Sorry. >> So, it it it doesn't get that granular. Um so, we can ask for whatever information I I think we want is my understanding for, you know, going forward

049as a process with the board can request, you know, sort all sorts of information or say, you know, the information you presented wasn't what we were looking for. wasn't the format we were looking for. And as long as with it's within state and federal regulation on student privacy data, I think we should be able to get that. This call out again goes back to specifically we're looking at the the data for students of color and students with disability because of of you know historic issues that we've had the the office of the children's advocate has has dinged the district in the past on this. And so if we're looking at really important metrics of you know where we need to make the most pro um progress I think it's there and and so I think

050>> I was looking at a different document so >> the state document um question I had was the punishments and again I'm ref I'll reference the state document talked about how the same punishment had different um carrying a knife into school in this document it was 100% one year of expulsions, the next year it was 90%. And then 70% for different uh groups. Is the punishments the same? If you if you walk in using the knife example, would it be the same for all students or is there >> I mean this policy doesn't you're you're asking a question I think about administrative regulations what we do for um discipline specifically um you know I assume exclusion from school um there are certain things that are mandatory expulsions uh but this this policy does not >>

051address that so I you know I'm certain we we can have conversations around what that is, but that's but just I just want to just make sure everybody's clear that that's an administrative regulation. Like that's that's something that we do um in conjunction with whatever the mandates from the state are. The state does give us specific mandates for certain incidents um that are that become mandatory suspension or mandatory expulsion and then there are things for which we have leeway. At the end of the day, I think to answer your question as best as I can, um, even more globally than a than a specific knife incident or something, but because then there are knife faximiles, like there's so many different little variations in that. Our goal as a school district is always to be as

052consistent as possible um while at the same time um providing the opportunity to to ensure that you know we have a good understanding of what actually happened, what the intent was, what the severity was. That's that's different from um I don't know that's that's different from trying to operationalize a uh a standard differently. You know our standard is our standard. Um but there is there is you know there's context and nuance to to a lot of different things but we do we do aim for uh consistency because trust me parents talk and so if you are inconsistent with things um you'll hear you'll be challenged on it and appropriately so. So >> that was my concern. Thank you >> Latoya. Yeah. And I just want to like give a little bit more context to this

053too so that um just you can understand a little bit more about how it works. Like I'll give two examples. One like if a student comes to school with a weapon or a student threatens like severe violence, right? And they get expelled. Restorative justice practice isn't saying don't expel the student. But when that student gets expelled and then eventually they have to come back to a school situation, maybe that next year or whatever that is, right? They don't they're not just put back in. There has to be a conversation. There has to be talk about the harm that they've caused. There has to be a plan put in place. They have that has to be addressed because if you cause harm on that level and then you just go back to another school the next

054year and all those kids knew that you made that threat, they're not going to feel safe around you, right? And so restorative practices says it doesn't say you don't get the consequence. It says you get a consequence, but you also have to fix what you broke. And that's more accountability. And it's just it just hits harder than our traditional punitive systems. For example, one of the big issues we see in our schools, racial slurs, anti-semitism. A kid makes a racial slur, anti-semitic comment, they get suspended, they come back, they make the same comment, they keep getting suspended for the same behavior. It's not changing the behavior. They get the consequence, but then they have to fix it. They have to sit with all the Jewish kids that they that heard the anti-semitic comment and face

055those kids and hear from those kids how they were impacted. And then they have to commit to making it right and rebuilding trust with those kids in that community. Whatever that looks like, it's creative. Whereas the slap on the wrist isn't creative. I know I'm going to get slap on the wrist and maybe I don't want to be in school, so I'm going to keep getting suspended. And so that's what I like about this practice because it holds you accountable in a way where you're gonna you're gonna feel what you did and because of that you're less likely to do it again. So you still would get an explosion if you're supposed to get an expulsion, but you're not just going to come back the next year and walt right in like nothing happened. And

056so that's like the level that it goes to that our traditional punitive systems like haven't taken things to. >> That's very helpful. I'm more just because we're measuring it trying to understand the measurements. So >> G um so I you know appreciate um all the explanations here and I appreciate um the uh discussion on the policy subcommittee who spoke spent a lot of time on this. Um I have problems with this. I'm I'm going to make a comment with this policy uh for a couple of different reasons. Um first reason is that I I have a problem with the state and I know this has nothing to do with the people sitting here but um I do want to say that I think the state coming out with a policy of this nature um that

057is mandated to the point where we are unable to really change or modify almost anything in the policy um is problematic. Um I don't think um that every district in the state is the same. And when you put out a policy um about this particular topic and then make it impossible for us to modify it in any way that uh might be more um appropriate for our district is to me a red flag to begin with. um the fact that the s um the the uh I think the SRO's in our schools are excluded from this and it's mandated in the policy that they have to be excluded is also problematic. I mean if we're trying to create a certain atmosphere inclusiveness um as Latoya is saying you know a different type of environment maybe

058I I see no reason why an SRO officer can't be part of that. Um my other concern is that um I do understand you know uh what the intent of the policy is but I I find that there are very few guard rails on this and as much as um we would like to assume that that the policy um will be implemented in a certain way I think there's a lot of vagueness and and it's hard to know when it exactly it will be and when it won't be and how it will be. Um, one of the things that our teachers, you know, at least as long as I've been here, have complained about consistently is the lack of discipline in in in the classrooms. The behavioral issues in the classrooms. I mean, that's a

059policy is not going to make any of that better. It's going to actually um uh exacerbate it. I mean, obviously that's something that when you get your data, I guess you'll be able to tell that, but for me reading the policy, that that seems to be something that I would be quite concerned about. Um, so I, you know, I I I know that my colleagues on the on the um policy subcommittee know that I I like to try to have cohesion, but I I have a lot of uh issues with this policy, and um I just wanted to bring them out at at the table. Thanks. >> Thank you, Claire. Um, so I I am okay with the SRO um not being a part of it. And it says as long as the conflict doesn't

060escalate to violence or constitute a crime. The SRO um they're police officers and they're experienced in uh dealing with violence or a crime. And I see that as an appropriate place. One of the things about restorative practice and being a teacher myself and seeing the behaviors, there are some guidelines here that are very helpful for administration and teachers to start having a consistent language. Um, and and the way it's addressed is going to differ because every there's personalities and there's different approaches, but at least there's a guideline. And not only does this protect the kids that might be wronged in the community, but the perpetrators of the wrongdoing are kids. They're not adults. They need a chance. They need an ability to come back and to be accepted back and to be able to write.

061The the decision they made to do the harm isn't made with a fully mature brain. It's made impulsively. It's made reactively. It's made from what they saw in television, what they see in their environment, and then they act out and do something unwise. and they're kids and they need a chance to learn how they hurt someone because they probably didn't know when they did the harm that they were about to wound a classmate someone they didn't know, you know, somebody who'd been through trauma themselves and then all of a sudden they made it worse. And so this protects not only the perpetrator but it protects the people harmed because now there's some tools and these tools are not available or have not been available across the board equally. And I think our kids in the

062state need something like this that protects both the kid that does the harm and the kids that are harmed. And so I'm in support of it. Other thoughts or comments? Latoya, >> do you have >> No, go ahead. >> Certainly. Please, Bridget. >> Sorry, I just had a question. Um, so this policy was put into place on September 16th, right? So, it's already in place. We're just making edits to it, right? >> Very good question. You are correct. >> Perfect. I was just curious because like what what was the alternative before restorative practice because I feel like that's been around longer than that. Maybe I'm wrong. >> You are not wrong and I'm going to defer to our administrative team to explain more. >> Yeah. No, Bridget, you're spot on. I mean, I think even

063as far back as um you know, when I started my career many many many years ago as an administrator, I don't think we knew what this this term was, but we were doing it right. And I think that's one of the things that as we've had a lot of conversations amongst our team and even as we've gone through I mean at this point we've probably gone through 30 scenarios right we keep looking at hey did this really change how we responded or did it just ensure that you know our policies and our practices really were all consistent across the board and like I said we we've talked a lot about we recognize the most important thing continues to be relationships and really at the heart of restorative practices is those relationship pieces and you know

064I think as Latoya was trying to say is when you do harm to those like trying to repair them if you can and sometimes you're not right. Sometimes like that's not going to be a place we're going to go but at least making sure that we've got these practices in place and outlined. Um you know and Ethan to your point is just you know always remembering that there's going to be certain policies that supersede this. And so if if it does, you know, I think last time I used the um a Title 9 or a sexual harassment policy, there's going to be if if that's the case, then we have to look at those and issue those appropriate consequences. Um but that again at the end when it's all said and done, we do want

065to look at restorative practices when that student returns or even if that student may not be returning, there still needs to be some restorative practices to perhaps that classroom or or whatever that would be. So um and and I hope that you guys are seeing that in your schools already today. So, >> does does that answer your question? >> Yes. Thank you. >> Certainly. Yes, Gail. >> Yeah. I just want to make one comment um to that. Um I mean, I guess you know, we've said here a couple of times that these practices have been in place for a while and even though we didn't have maybe a formal policy, they've been sort of I think multiple people have said that we've been doing this all along. So I guess my question would be then

066why are you know we being dinged for whatever we're being dinged for at the state level if we've been doing this all along? I mean there seems like that sort of doesn't quite jive. >> No, it's a fair question. I think I would just say that um this isn't a legislation that came down specific to West Harford public schools. I don't think that these practices have been in place statewide. Um, even for all the credit that I want to give us as a district, uh, I wouldn't say that, you know, we've been anything close to perfect with it either. So I think the intention around this is to bring attention to it uh statewide for school districts and to kind of have some asurances that you know the things that the good practices that you

067may have been doing before you know I was going to say in response to Bridg's question like something that we've always talked about before is a re-entry meeting and I think I think Latoya kind of mentioned something about re-entry that's that's a common phrase that we use when there's an issue and and and sort of before we just have this a student come back when there's been s something significant we sit down and we have a conversation um I think the science of restorative practices uh has has provided insights and and professional education for people for when you have that re-entry who needs to be there because we've had a lot of re-entry meetings have we always had exactly the right people there enough people there you know I can't say that we have, but

068with the best of intentions, we we try to do that. Um, I hear what you're saying, Gail. I mean, I I think there are a lot of things that are legislated that I feel like we're either already doing that or we have a good version of that or or what have you. Um um that's you know but that's part of the world uh that we're living in in terms of when when we see that there are some disparities with how that's act in in other places that there can be legislation unfold to ensure that the best possible practices are happening uh with fidelity you know statewide nationwide whatever it may be >> and please pardon the oversight Latoya please you have the mic. >> Yeah, it's all good. Thank you. Um, yeah, I just think

069um I wanted to add that uh Dang, I kind of lost it. I wanted to add that one like I wanted to reiterate that this the state didn't just come up with this willy-nilly and like give this to districts. It was advocated for by students, families, and community by by And so I I want to just lift that up. It's not, it wasn't just like the state was like, we're coming up with this policy and you have to do it. It came from people, came from residents. Um, and um, and the other thing that I wanted to lift up is that yes, while we have been, you know, using restorative practices, policy holds us accountable. Um, and here the disparities around students of color and students with disability, those have existed. And so while like

070there yeah behaviors um there have been struggling behaviors the reason this policy is coming forward and the reason why restorative practices has emerged in Connecticut is because the traditional systems haven't worked. They haven't worked. They're not working. They're not working. Look at our prison statistics in this state. Look at look at look at what is happening here. It's not working. So yes, we needed something new and people were practicing this in pockets, but policy makes us all accountable to it. That's just the bottom line. And like, and I'm just going to throw it out there cuz I actually don't mind saying it. Like everything in us is going to want to fight against these kinds of policies because of systems of oppression and racism that have taught us to be transactional and punish people. And

071this is calling us back to who we were. People who used to be with each other, who didn't just exclude each other and count each other out and and other each other and and make ourselves superior to each other. This is calling us back. And so, yeah, everything in if you got resistance to this is because we are all susceptible to this these systems of oppression. We are all susceptible. We've all been colonized. And so, this caused us to liberate ourselves and to and to engage in a paradigm shift. And it's hard and you're going to hate it and you're not going to want to do it, but it's going to make you more human. And when we start to engage in these practices that connect people and center them in relationships and welcome them

072back into the community and tell them they're redeemable, we humanize them and we humanize ourselves. So, I mean, that's really what this is about. And I don't know, like you got to be a cold person to be against human being being human with people. And so, that's that's all I'm going to say on that. Like there's nothing wrong with centering our practices and welcoming our kids back and allowing them the space to grow and heal and be together and learn in a way that's productive and not punitive. Other thoughts or comments? >> Ethan? >> Well, I'll just make one comment. Um, I'm still voting against it because I'm believe you don't ostracize a group of individuals from the process. If we're going to do it, you do it with everybody. And so the school resource

073officer, I still have a problem with them being excluded. I do appreciate the re-entry part that Latoya made before. They gave me a different understanding. So, but I'm still voting no, but thanks for the explanation >> and thanks for insight what you shall do when it comes time to vote. But that's not happening today. But thank you. Any other thoughts or comments? Again, as a first reading, we have been discussing policy 5560. Any other thoughts or comments? All right. Well, we shall move on in the agenda. Thank you very much, Julio. Oh, no. You're not going anywhere. All right. All right. Well, let us now move on to ratification of the West Hartford Police Employees Crossing Guards Association contract. seeking a motion that the board of education ratify the negotiated agreement between the town of

074West Hartford Police Employees Association and the Board of Education for the period of July 1, 2025 through June 30th, 2028. Is there a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Jason. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Shannon. Ethan, appreciate yours as well. Discussion. Passing it over to our teammates. >> Good evening. So, I just want to start by recognizing and thanking the 43 crossing guards that we have supporting our public schools and helping to ensure the safety of those students every morning and every afternoon that walk to and from school. So, these negotiations took place in June of this past year. And this um we're looking to ratify the agreement that will go from July 1st through June 30th of 2028. Um as part of that agreement, there was a 1.5% wage

075increase each year. And then um consistent with the previous agreement would also be life insurance um of $10,000 and a retirey life insurance of $5,000. Um, just for your knowledge, this was actually negotiated by the town that negotiated the contract, but these employees follow a school-based schedule and the funding is through the board of ed. >> Thank you, Miss Shannon. Thank you. Discussion. Again, we have a motion on the floor regarding this contract. Any thoughts or comments? Yes, Claire. >> I I just would like to raise up all the crossing guards. Um, I don't know how many people in the community know what uh strong relationships they build with the kids that they see every day and the firstname basis. I mean, they're amazing and when they do come into the schools, you know, the

076kids are just thrilled to see them not on the street, you know, they're they're very excited. Um curious though, um I never wonder and I just got got asked this a couple weeks ago by my husband is um do they work like a twohour shift and then they're off and then another two-hour shift? Is it about is it about 4 hours a day? >> It's about I believe 150 minute shifts. So, um just um in the morning and in the afternoon. And there actually are some guards that are known as premium crossing guards. And those are at spots in town, for example, where you may have hall students crossing as well as King Phillip as well as Aken. So, certain intersections do have premium crossing guards that work um a little bit longer hours than

077the standard shift. And I appreciate the call out because I know I can speak from experience with Miss Daisy at Aken. Um just the love that the students have for her. Um and that she truly is part of our school community as are all of the crossing guards that we have. >> And and one other thing I just the vision zero and the um things that I see in town that are making it safer. Um, I see a lot of crossing guards at some of the places where the streets have been adapted and the crossing walks have been changed and I'm I'm very happy to see that they're safer as well as the kids um because they're there all you know every day for their shift and these improvements are great. It is. That's all

078part of the big puzzle. And there are some of those intersections are very busy um with students, with cars, with different traffic patterns. So, we're very thankful to what they do for us every day. >> Other thoughts or comments? Yes, Gail. >> Thanks. Um I'm sorry. Could you may have said this, but how many people does this >> There are 43 crossing guards. >> Okay. Other thought? Yes, Shannon. >> I'm curious about just how the benchmarking works when kind of setting the rates for positions like this and are we competitive, I guess, with other surrounding towns and do we have any issues with recruiting individuals to be crossing guards? So, so actually all what's interesting is we uh we fund this because it falls under our school year and they you know we fund it

079out of our budget. However, all the hiring and the benchmarking and all of the negotiations actually happen through the town. So, the crossing guards, um, I think it works through the West Harford Police Department and as I understand it, uh, you know, the West Harford Police Department have an agreement with us where if a crossing guard were unavailable, were sick for some reason, they would send a patrol officer to to cover to the to the extent that the patrol officer is available and not needing to respond to other things. But um yeah, but we don't um short of the potential if your husband was interested, we'd certainly pass his name along, but uh we don't we don't do the active recruiting or the supervision of the individuals that falls on our West Herford Police Department,

080and we're very thankful um for the collaboration. >> Yeah, just to piggyback on that, you guys remember Sergeant Hopkins was here last time, so he helps oversee them. And so, um, he and I have often communicated when there's some issues and things like that that we may want to take a look at a different, um, crosswalk or different route, um, and things like that. But again, it's another example of a great partnership we have with West Hartford PD um, to take on some of those challenges. >> Other thoughts or questions, comments regarding the motion on the floor? All right, seeing none, all of those in favor say I. >> I. I. Any oppose? Any abstain? The eyes have it. Thank you very much. >> Now, moving on to staff communications and reports where we shall

081now receive our superintendence report. >> Did I skip over something? >> No, no, you are perfect. I was right. >> I was anticipating SAT and I think Ann was as well. Um, but it is my absolute u pleasure to report it. I feel like it's been a little while since uh since we uh last communicated and there are many many celebrations that occurred between September and today. So, um I'm going to dive right in and a huge congratulations going out to Katie Bond who's a school counselor at Hall High School. She was recently recognized as the 2025 Build No Fences Award winner, which is a recognition provided by the bridge and it honors individuals who break down the barriers and create inclusive, supportive communities for young people. And um while Katie certainly was surprised, I

082think none of us uh were surprised by her nomination or the fact that she won it, she's she's just a gem and we're glad for her. Um, I also want to throw out a huge congratulations to Jessica Fallus of Connard High School. She's been named the 2025 Connecticut Secondary Art Educator of the Year Award winner by the CAA. Uh, that's uh Connecticut Arts Education Association. They have an awards program that celebrates excellence in visual arts education and and promotes professional opportunities for our art educators. And so I'm trying to count up now between I believe we had a music outstanding music educator of the year and outstanding art educator of the year. Um I you know the list just keeps going and um so so proud of our teachers here in this district. Um I

083also want to give a shout out to uh Alexis Fritus, a fifth grade teacher at Charter Oak Elementary. She was recently recognized and honored by NCTM, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics as part of a linking research and practice outstanding publications award which is uh which is award within the mathematics teacher uh which is a prek12. Uh she had an article developing the right reasoning in kindergarten mathematics. Um, and that article was not only published, it was recognized for its excellence. And, uh, she will be awarded at the opening session of the NCTM annual meeting in Atlanta this year. Um, in alignment with Hispanic Latinx Heritage Month, which we celebrated from midepptember through midocctober, uh, Hall High students is just one example. Hall High students explored social change, language, culture, and history through the

084study of traditional dance from Costa Rica, Argentina, Spain, and Peru thanks to the very generous support of the Foundation for West Harford Public Schools. They're always doing such great work across our schools. I wanted to just give them a shout out. Um and then students from both Connard and Hall who served on the West Harford Prevention Partnership Student Ambassador Program participated in the creation and dedication ceremony for community mural that's now on display at the at the library entrance over at Blue Black Blue Back Square. So I hope folks will take a moment to go out and see that. Kudos going out to Miss Chiffon Teoddoro, Chinese teacher at Hall and Connard, uh for uh presentation and contribute her presentation and contributions she made at the Yukon Early College Experience Professional Development uh program for

085teachers. Chiffon was recently recognized by Dr. Yang, a professor of Chinese and applied linguistics and the director of the Chinese language and culture program at Yukon. So, uh, shout out feather in our cap that we have such exceptional teachers and they're making an impact in the larger educational community. And finally, last and certainly not least at all, congratulations to Hall science teacher. And this was very secondary heavy this time, but uh Cindy Karoo, who earned recognition as a University of Chicago outstanding educator awardee. So each year newly admitted uh University of Chicago students have the opportunity to nominate uh an educator who played a significant role in their lives, made a positive impact on them and Miss Karoo was celebrated for inspiring and preparing a student. Um something that she does on a daily basis

086for the next generation. So very very proud of her. Um in curriculum news, I want to just share a little uh something to come. Our secondary teachers in grades 6 to 12 will receive a half day of professional learning focused on practical strategies to integrate artificial intelligence into their professional practice. That's going to occur on election day. Uh they're going to spend the morning over at CCSU. Uh and then they will break out in department in the afternoon for content area of learning. Um and next board members are invited to participate in our high school veterans day activities. Uh, Connard High School will host a flag ceremony on Veterans Day at 9:00 a.m. and Hall will again host its annual lunchon and musical performance beginning, I believe, at 12:30. Um, and if you have interest

087and have availability, I would ask you to RSVP to Lori in my office. Um, and in addition, on November 2nd, uh, the Office of Equity Advancement in collaboration with the town of West Harford will be hosting our second annual West Harford Community Block Party. Um, our schools, our local community organization, and town leaders will engage the public uh to share resources to build awareness and build connection. This event takes place at town hall from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on November the 2nd. That is my report pending. Any questions? >> Thank you very much teammates. Any questions or comments regarding the superintendence report we have just received? >> Shannon and then Latoya. >> Um who who is doing the AI training at central? I'm just curious. >> So I know we have Matt MVIS is

088going to be one of the people involved. I know we're going to also have some of our own local educators uh that are going to be hosting sessions. I don't know if there's any other names. Ann? know breaks. So those are produced by our own staff and then the afternoon departments will meet and for application take a lesson or two and adapt the uh strategies how to make lessons more durable is one aspect and how better tools >> and I can certainly provide some highlights of that training um once it happens so that you can get a better flavor. Yeah, and I'll just make a plug for Matt MVIS as someone that we've used for training and we're doing a lot of policy work on AI and education at the state level. So, um, he's

089been a huge adviser and definitely encourage anyone in the community to listen to his podcast chated edu because you will learn a lot and I think it's everybody should be educated in what's happening with AI and its impact. So, >> yeah, Matt Matt's been a great partner for us for a couple of years and just a huge shout out to Ann uh Jackie Corelli. I know you got a whole team that's working. We have a we have a Ann's put together a kind of an AI working group and they meet regularly to look at policy, to look at practice, to look at professional development, to assess where we are and and to keep the ball kind of rolling forward on this. >> Latoya, um, I just wanted to share that I went to the college

090fair at Connard and it was amazing. So, I wanted to make sure that I shouted y'all out for putting that together. Um, it was packed. Like so many students were there. My my daughter is a sophomore and she was like, "I have to be there." Um, and so we were there, but I thought just the um the variety of schools that were there and opportunities too because there was military there, there were instate schools, there were, you know, trade schools, there were H.B.CU. There was just such a great variety. And um I was just watching her. She had like a very narrow um oh these are the only I'm I'm dedicated to these like few schools that I'm gonna apply to. But then she went to the college for spoke to a lot of different

091recruiters and her list grew a lot. And so I I just it was wonderful to see all of the students um really enjoying that event. So thank y'all for putting that on. I think it's so important. >> No. Absolutely. Thank you for that feedback. Um just a shout out to Patty Pyers and and our two um you know career counselor coordinators uh one at Connor and one at Hall that that do that that make that event and we've you know there have been plans each year to like how do we how do we make it better than last and and I'm very glad to hear I know the military's been involved in other areas so it's not just college it's college and career and that's really what we're after. So thank you >> Claire. I

092just wanted to share too the uh unified um sports soccer tournament is being hosted at Connard tomorrow. Um they had over 70 students at the first practice. Um it is huge and it's just so amazing to see how many kids show up for that program. Beautiful. Other thoughts or comments? All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Vicinus. And now we shall proceed to staff reports and board discussions where we shall learn more about our 2025 school day SAT results. So passing it to Mr. Vicas who will pass it to teammates. >> Absolutely. So as Ann and Eileen get set up, I know um Ann McCernan, assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction, Eileen Eustace, our director of secondary education. certainly no strangers to all of you. Um I'm just very very excited to have them present this

093report and I'll I'll just share a little uh steal a little thunder. Uh you know, but one of the things that you'll see in this is you know we were always doing a a comparison to you know not just the state but the dur and the very competitive nature of our dur. Um, obviously, uh, with all of our state assessment results, we're always well above the state average. I think that's that's generally our expectation. Um, it's always very, uh, it's a challenge that we accept to compete with the DUIRG. Uh, but you'll see in this presentation how essentially we're tied with the DUI in literacy for the first time. And this will be the third year in a row that we have beaten the DUIR in terms of the DUI average, in terms of our

094mathematics scores. It is a testament to the excellent work uh of an and eene in terms of the PLC's and and the coherence um and really just uh the the great great dedication and rolling up of sleeves of our educators. And as is true for every high school accomplishment, it is a success that is shared through middle school through elementary for the foundational work that happens all along the pathway. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to these uh brilliant educators to to lead you through the full full story of the report. >> Well, thank you, Paul, and good evening everyone. It's good to see all of you. Eileen and I are here to present the 2025 school day SAT results. Um, they confirmed that they we believe they confirmed that our focused

095instructional strategies are driving improvement. um and they also help us to sharpen our focus for the future. Um so the overview or the executive summary, we're very pleased to report that in math we're scoring at in the top 13% of school districts in Connecticut, in the top 27% in reading and writing. I'd like to point out that when you look at state data, there are districts that are have suppressed data. They don't have 40 students, so I can't see their results. And so these are only of the districts that are nonsuppressed or districts that had a school this year and last year. For instance, Lichfield changed. So they were on last year's list, they're not on this year's list. So when I say that that I I can't tell those schools that have suppressed that

096how they would do. Um we have noticed that students have gained back approximately 94% of their prepandemic average. and we had a very strong year for a substantial year-over-year gains for students of color and students in the high needs group which make us very very happy. Um we still have a lot of work to do because we want to continue focusing on eliminating um our opportunity gaps. So as we move forward I'm going to turn it over to Eileen for this slide. So the SAT remains central to our work as the required state high school literacy and mathematics assessment. Its utility as a free globally recognized benchmark for college readiness is invaluable. As we analyze the data, remember this is the second year that our students took the fully digital adaptive test as noted in

097the bullets at the bottom. and achieving these gains on a brand new rigorous assessment speaks positively about our students adaptability and our teachers preparation. So just a reminder as well um meeting goal on the SAT means students meet that college and career better uh college and career ready benchmark and you can see the scores for reading and math or reading and writing is 480 and mathematics is 530. So, if we take a look at the um reading and writing, I overall we're very pleased with our district's growth in 2025 and that we exceeded the state and our DRB peer districts in both reading and writing and mathematics. Our year-to-year growth rate was higher than both comparison groups. This success suggests that the instructional coherence we've implemented may be having a positive result. However, our focus

098now shifts from outperforming peers to raising the performance level for every student in West Hartford. So, specifically for reading and writing, you can see that 78.7% of our students met the college and career ready benchmark. Our improvement from last year to this year was an increase of 4.2% which is uh greater than the state improvement of 3.2% and our DRB schools of 1.6%. 6%. >> This is the same information on um a year-over-year chart. Uh so you might notice that um we have hit our highest four-year point uh with 78.7% of our students. We're approximately 20% higher than the state. I think what's most impressive is Derby is a group of schools that are school districts that are similar in much of their makeup and we like to comp compare ourselves to that just to

099make sure that we are setting the bar high for ourselves and that we are um very in tune to the the potential performance in the state. Um at this point we have not only almost matched the dirt performance but we have recovered 94% of the prepandemic performance and that compares favorably to the state which has gotten back about 87% of performance and the DUR about just shy of us 91.4 in the reading. As we move on to uh math is going to take us through this one. So in mathematics, 55.3% of our students met the college and career ready benchmark. And we do still have a ways to go to meet our goals here, but we did show improvement at a faster rate than both the state and DRBY schools as noted in the percentages

100that you can see. Uh we also have a recovery rate of over 94% of our preandemic uh average, which demonstrates the effectiveness of our collaborative recovery efforts. we're regra we're regaining ground at a faster pace than our peers. Uh looking at the information in this way you will see that over the past few years uh we had a dip after COVID it continu we we actually had dipped down after COVID we had a slight upre increase and then last year a bigger fall so we're on our way back back up that um that concerned us and I know it concerned the math team so we will continue to examine uh strategies we have a whole list of them that we're working very hard on I can explain them in depth uh we are pleased pleased

101that we have recovered 94% of our prepandemic average, four-year prepandemic average, exceeding both the DUI and the state. But I think what's most impressive on the chart is that we are um outperforming the DUI. Um and that is really really significant and it I think the next slide will show that even why it's significant. So this particular slide which is also in your written report would show that some of our most challenging groups to educate kids who have higher cha higher bars to achieve the higher challenges to get over include our students of free and reduced lunch and West Harford has 28% of our students who receive free and reduced lunch and the dur average these 16 or 17 schools have 17%. Um in our ELLL population um we have about 9% 8.6 six I'd

102have to look it up percent of students who are in the ELLL uh group designated with ELLL services and the DUI is under five. The high needs is one of uh to remind you what high needs is again is any student who might receive special education services who uh might be a multilingual learner or be eligible for free and reduced lunch. Our percentage of students is 40% high need students the DUI is 32 and in special education our DUR, our district is approximately 18.5% according to Edsite and the DUI is about 16. So for every single measure, we have more students who are facing more barriers and we're performing at the same rate as the DUI. So I'm very very pleased with that. I think that's something that you really want to think about when

103you think about performance. Um these are clear measures that are very challenging for our teachers to help students because these are big barriers. are coming to the country with little English or you're still learning English, you have documented learning uh challenges or um you know you might be uh feeling the uh the effects of having a a modest um uh income level that affects your a lot of you know all of your life. And so our teachers are doing an outstanding job of working with every student. Our leaders, our our um department supervisors have worked really really really hard on this. They talked to us all the time. Um as soon as the results came in, I think Connard called us, some of the leaders at Connard called us and they they were so excited

104and then they had missed the number and calculated it wrong and they called again. I thought they were going to cry. Why please don't cry. we'll we'll keep working at it. You know, there was a little dip in something they didn't want to see. They had worked so hard on. I know their heart and soul is to help all the children, not just in the SAT, but in every way that that um they can. And I want to take a moment to thank all the teachers and all of the administrators who make sure that we are addressing every child. Although we have a long way to go, this report is really positive, especially in light of the DUI. Um, DIR B is a DUI we're in which has uh there's only about six or eight

105schools in DIR A. And so DIR B is the next 16 or 18 schools. So we are comparing ourselves to some of the highest performing uh districts in the state and Connecticut is one of the highest performing states in the country. So, you know, I think when you take all that in, you'd say they're really working really, really well. Um, we're not done. We have a ways to go, but we're pleased. Um, when we look at our students of color, we were very pleased to see here that um in the area of um reading and writing, the students of color had hit their highest performance since the pan the pandemic was over and we have the lowest gap with the all student group. So we were very pleased to see that and their recovery rate

106actually exceeds the all group which is 94. Their recovery is 96 in ELA and in math um it is not the highest since the pandemic but we did see the lowest gap since the pandemic. So we still have a ways to go here although we are also pleased to see that their recovery rate for students of color is very strong at 94 mirroring um the all student group. We really want to celebrate this. Um the students of color group is very important to look at. We look at them at um to make sure that um these gaps are closing and we're we are um addressing all of our concerns. Uh in our high need subgroup, we saw some really good performance as well. We had the highest performance the yellow um highlight in reading and

107writing at 50% of our students uh in the high need subgroup reaching benchmark on reading writing um in math that is not you know there's still quite a ways to go in math uh and we will continue to look at that. What you might notice here though is um the recovery rate for students in the high needs group is about 8% less than the all group. So it is our biggest we talk about this at every meeting I'm in. I have a little symbol I show the teachers to and the leaders to remind them of the the barriers we're trying to remove for students in the high needs group so that they can have a clear path forward. Um, so, uh, we're very pleased with this, but one of the things I definitely wanted to

108point out, and I wrote it down because I wanted to make sure I said that here. Um, one of the things we we were controlling for is if you look at our students of color group, which is here, and you remove high needs from that group, our students of color who are not high needs are performing at 90.1 90.9% proficient on the English um portion of the uh SAT and at 65% in the math portion. So we really is crucial to separate the groups of students of color from the high needs group because the barrier is certainly not anything to do with color. It has to do with the challenges students face. Um very important to understand that that is the focus group for us is students who are receiving special ed services, ELLL students

109and students who receive free and reduced lunch. Um, so to show you some progress on our gaps, we've narrowed our gaps uh significantly. Gaps between all students and students of color, lowest since the pandemic. The non- highnee students of color had their highest performance ever. Um, n almost 91% in reading and uh writing, I'm sorry, and then 65 almost 65 in math. And that is only a 5% gap with um non- high need students. So the gaps really really shrink when you eliminate the high needs. So that's where our focus is serving high need students the best we possibly can the most coherent focused collaborative manner that we can find takes all of us really thinking hard about what will help the students the most. Um so the core finding is when economic disadvantagel status

110and special education are controlled the uh students of color group perform within 5%. um goal for next year, building upon our gains to further close the opportunity gap, our uh efforts have been in uh professional learning communities in a specific format called PLC at work that is really guided by the work of solution tree, which is an outside provider of services and um re and publishes the work of some really forward educational thinkers. When I say they're forward thinkers, they were around for a long time. um Rick and Becky Dufour, uh Michael Fulen and some others. But this group has taken all their work and turned it into professional learning series to train teachers around the country in how do you work collaboratively? How do you examine student work and make decisions as a group?

111Not as an individual when you're, you know, sitting there with popcorn and you're trying to correct your papers and maybe uh, you know, de decompress from the day, but as a collaborative team. How do we look at student work and make decisions on what's next? And teachers have the teachers and leaders have been very receptive to the work. We continue to look at our effective instructional strategies to make sure there's consistent use. We have eight strategies that we promote. Um we continue to offer both focused remediation with acceleration. If you only remediate with students, they get further behind in the in the new material. So we we've worked closely to help teachers with materials will allow them to remediate but at the same time move forward. So you can do that sometimes by what you

112would call interle material where you're remediating some work but you know it could come up later on as the students move forward and you revisit it as it appears. And of course we always are expanding our enrollment in rigorous courses because it has just been a winner. Remove barriers for students. they do well. Um, our key takeaways, uh, kind of that similar to where we started, we wanted to remind you we're doing very well in mathematics in, uh, compared to the to the state districts in the top 13% in 27 in literacy, very strong results in relation to the DUR, very strong gains for students of color, and we are recovering at a fast rate. We'd like to see a 100% recovery of course and we'd like to see no gaps but that will be

113our continued work. So with that we are invite you to ask questions. >> All right. Thank you. Andya was your hand raised? Pardon me. I'm sorry. Thank you. Questions, comments, thoughts. Jason, >> just thank you for this. I mean I think overall very very impressive. Um I I often wonder how we ended up in Durg B because when you show those statistics we look nothing like DUI B. I mean the headwinds that our students face, the barriers that our students face are are completely different than than the DUI. And yet, you know, time after time you guys come up here and you present that we're, you know, meeting the same level that they are or in this case we're exceeding the levels that they have. >> Yeah. Um that's a great question. Um the durgs

114you know years ago the durgs were used by the state as comparison. They got away from that and they've re actually reconfigured them. They don't the school state finance project you'll see um uh state and school finance project has a new duran is very similar to the one we were in under the old state model. Just a few changes to it. Um I I wonder too sometimes um these I think 16 very similar towns from around here like Farmington, Simsbury, Glastonbury, Avon, some downstate like Trumbull. Um a couple new ones, Rocky Hill and South Windsor we're in this year. Those two actually have higher ELLL populations than we do because to to do this I have to actually pull the records of every one of those districts in every one of those categories and then

115average it. Um so it's great exercise. as I was telling Jason when I walked in, I started the report in the summer um when you have more time and um so it change it has changed over the years although it's substantially similar to how the state first said it uh I don't know how we end up there but I'm thankful for it in many ways because um comparing to the state alone doesn't give you a good a full picture of how we're doing and I think um we always want trying to set our bar as high as possible. So, I'm I'm thankful even though I have no idea how. >> No, I I I appreciate that. I just think it bears repeating over and over again what an accomplishment these types of things are because,

116you know, we hear it a lot. You know, people want to compare scores with, you know, Simsbury, Farmington, you know, Avon, those towns. We don't actually look anything like those towns. The the barriers again are so much greater and yet our students are right there if not, you know, achieving more. So, I think it's it's just speaks to the the work that you all are doing. >> Well, thank you. I'm just going to bring that slide up again because as I actually went through every one of these districts and pulled the um their ELLL percentage, there were some that had 0.4 0.4 ELLL or um you know, the high needs overall were eight percentage points higher, 40% and and this district average the DUR average was about 32 free and reduced lunch. you know that

117that is such a that's such a a challenge to overcome from getting to school to having food to having correct transportation to those are all you know challenges big challenges to focusing on your learning and accomplishing um high levels of performance. So it bears uh I'm glad you you notice it. Thank you. um our special ed team as um we often uh we have a higher percentage of students enrolled and we have some um they don't go further into breaking down you know the particular I would analyze it if I could but it doesn't come that way for me anyway. Um but our special education team has been right with us in this PLC work. That's one of our biggest pushes this year is when we meet at the table the PLC table that there's

118a special educator available. They can't be at every meeting. We know that because they have lots of work that they're doing including compliance work. Uh but to have them at in the PLC room when they're discussing um ways to modify, ways to accommodate, ways to differentiate, ways to pull small groups and that might be the best way to address something they saw in the student work has been really a gift and I'm so pleased for the partnership we have with our pupil services department. So, thank you Claire. This chart is just amazing. Um, thank you for the presentation. Um, one of the things you can often lose track of is when the population is that large in these groups, they're also seeing each other's success, their classmates, and and their friends and their um they're

119they're being celebrated by their teachers, but they're also feeling better about their own performance. Um, you know, it's been said way back when that the kids that struggle need a year and a half growth. You know, they already struggle, but if they're ever going to get ahead, they need to grow a year and a half every year. And as a new teacher, I was like, how is that going to happen? Um but one of the changes that has happened with the um IEP the goals being written based on the grade level standards um does this show was that implemented by this test and I mean how long before you feel that the students being educated with their um IEP goals based on grade level standards might even have a greater impact. act on their SAT

120results. >> Well, thank you for mentioning that because it might be something that other board members are not aware of, but um there's been a recent change in the way IEP goals are written and that they are now written on grade level standards uh which is really important. It it's going to take a while for us to um realize all the benefit because there's a learning curve and the learning curve starts with the special educators really are getting in um really studying the grade level standards and so they you know they are special educators in many many different fields right so they're not just English or just math or just social studies they they have to know quite a bit so there's a little bit of a learning curve but they're coming along very quickly

121one of the things I think that's helping is when they're in the PLC's, they listen to the teachers. This is the target we're going for. This is how it's tied to the standard. This is the evidence of how far the students have gotten here. What should we do next? Are we accelerating for this group? Are we remediating? Are we doing both? Are we going to differentiate? Are we going to pull small group? How are we going to address this? So, they're learning along with our teachers um with with with with all of the educators um about the standards, but it will only have a positive impact. I can't say how long it's going to take, but as we know, we're smarter together. So, when we can desilo any work or at least build bridges across

122different areas of expertise, we're going to get better. Latoya. >> Yeah, thank you so much for the presentation. Um, and I just wanted to lift up here um because I know we, you know, talk about um data like when we're thinking about our our um diversity, equity, and inclusion office and I look at this data and I think about that. I think about how there have been all of these wonderful initiatives to create belonging in our schools, the language services, special education, which is a huge part of diversity, equity, inclusion work. um you know, the intentional um recruiting of teachers, um just all of the the things that make all of our students feel that sense of belonging and deepen that connection with their teachers in the school community. We're seeing the results in in

123in the testing and we're seeing the results um in their academic achievement. And so I want to just kind of um bring awareness to that that this is where we see some of the results of um some of that DEI work that's happening in the district, right? We're we're seeing it filter into the test scores now. Students feel they belong. They're getting the supports they need. Boom. They're successful. Yes. Our focus for the past three years has really been coherence more than PLC's because PLC's are part of coherent. the more coherent we can be in our efforts from pupil services to equity advancement to our work in in the curriculum office to HR and hiring and professional development there and to operations the more coherent we can be as an organization I think we have

124the chance to see better and better outcomes um that working together but really clearly we have expertise in special areas but we have to bridge that so that for the teacher's sake. It doesn't feel like equity office wants that, curriculum wants that, special education needs that. We need to continue to work on that for the people we serve. And we hope that this year's report and um is is some evidence of >> other thoughts? Gail, >> thank you for the presentation. Um I just I had a couple of different questions. Um, one of them was I I just want to make sure I understand on this chart where you tell us that um 55.3% of our students um this is table one. >> This is telling us that 55.3% of our students are meeting the

125state uh threshold on the SAT um for college readiness, which would mean that about 45% of our students are not. Okay. >> So to just to give you a little context there. So you because that is scary, right? That is a little scary. So what that means is the college board set these benchmarks and Paul can help me out here if I misspeak. Why don't you just tell them because you're you can say it probably more compared. >> So absolutely. You know, I I'm I'm glad you bring it up because Sorry, I got some reverberation. As a math educator, it pains me that the college and career ready benchmark for mathematics is set so much higher than the college and career ready benchmark. It's for literacy and reading. It's a 480 versus a 530. So,

126so you have to get, you know, and the SAT is a norm test where 500 is supposed to be the average range of performance for um for a student, right? And uh what the college and careerity benchmark was, it was based on a a very large national study that the college board undertook to say um you wanted to have and I've forgotten the exact percentage of uh certainty 70% >> 75 75% certainty that as an incoming freshman you would get a B or better in the freshman level coursework. And because at colleges the the the freshman level coursework for for a college student in mathematics could be any range of different things could be anything from really college algebra all the way through calculus. And in order to get a B or better in those

127things um apparently it's you it's more challenging. you have to have an even higher score, an above average score in the SAT of a 530. Whereas to get a B or better in the uh entry level um English course and I don't I think it was actually larger than English. I think they did English and I >> think they did humanities >> humanities in general. Um it was a 480. And so the the college and careerity benchmark it's benchmark off of actual real performance but it's but in some ways it takes away from the benchmark of the SAT which itself is a 500. So um so math has a higher bar and and you see that you see that for us you know with a 55.3 you see that with the DUR scoring below us

128at a 53.4 and you see that at the state we're only a third. And what's interesting to me, what's very interesting because I was I was present at Connard for uh the presentation and you know the group the group of the group of kids that took this test, they're they're seniors now. Um but last year's senior class uh you know there there's they renamed it what it is, but it's the used to be called the equity uh on the AP test >> equity and excellence. uh rating which was the percentage of the high school graduating class that had taken at least one AP exam during their during their four years at any point and and passed with a three or above. Um the district had its highest score ever. It was just shy of uh

129it was just shy of 67%. So twothirds of the graduating seniors um are leaving with a um an AP exam under their belt that they've passed. But under this metric, it's only saying just just more than half. So So it's just more than half. What is it? Just more than half are thoroughly prepared. I would say no. Well more than half. Way way way more. Our students are leaving with an excellent preparation. Um it's it's just the nature of what this benchmark is. Um and I think it's also it will be interesting because there's a shift happening in college as well as to what the math progression is. The holy grail of mathematics progression has always been to achieve through calculus. And now in colleges, they're really rethinking that and saying, what does the average

130student really need in mathematics? And they're they're looking at different progressions relative to statistics, relative to data science, and so on and so forth. And I think the assess access accessibility of the mathematics uh of some of those more practical applications is is greater and therefore down the road the college board may do a new study and they may find that I don't need to get a 530 any longer to do well on the practical entry level mathematics courses that are programmed for me in the college setting. Maybe I only need somewhere near that 480, somewhere near that 500 average score. At which case, if we reran these numbers using 480 as a benchmark, I would expect we would have equally a a as would the state, as would the dur have a high high

131percent. So, I think the comparisons are the important thing. How are we doing compared to the other uh very wellrespected school districts across our state and our state as a whole, which as Ann said, uh Connecticut is always in the top two or three in the country. You know, I think our our closest peer is Massachusetts has an excellent excellent school system, public school system. We compete with them and uh and we're you know we're we're crushing the state and we are ahead of the dur multiple years in a row tied with them back in 2223 and edging them out and now even getting a little distance between them. So um very proud of the results. >> Can I just follow up? >> Um yeah no that I appreciate that. I mean because when you

132look at that number it sort of implies that 45% of our kids are not uh really college ready but on the other hand I mean you can play with the with the benchmark too. I mean if you bring it down you're obviously going to bring that number up. So um that was one thing that you know I did sort of stand out to me. Um the other thing that I stood out to me is that we are in the top 27% um in reading and literacy. Um but on our scoring in literacy um so I don't to me 20 the being in the top 27% is not like it's it's good but obviously our math is much better. Um it seems like those things were flipped. So our math is is very high or seems

133higher but our you know our college our math readiness is on the low side. >> Yeah. Isn't that the 55% that you you know you would say is that a concern and yet it's 87th percentile right? So it's top 13%. Um now being in the top quarter sure am I I'm not you know it's not top 10% top quarter it's where I want to live. uh for sure and demonstrates I think as Ann said there's there's always room for growth um and I think that when you look at um our demographics as they compare with 40% of our children at free and reduced lunch and over 10% of our student as multilingual learners I don't know if it's 10% of the 11th grade yet but um yeah that was district number and the percentage of

134kids um with IEPs who who need assistance taking a rigorous SAT test. Um being and and having those bigger percentages, it's it's the um it's the challenge and the opportunity in front of us because uh for us to still be competitive, still be in that in that. But are we celebrating? Are we resting on that as a laurel? We are not. Uh we we will we want to be in that top 10% um for both. and we're inching up on it in mathematics. Um, and we will continue to work on it um within our within the reading and writing realm. Um, but our our scores overall and again our growth uh we had very very strong growth this year. Uh, and that's one of the things that we look at year-over-year. Are we making progress

135toward that goal? Um, and that's where I think the results for both were also very impressive with kind of having growth that that that exceeded the state and so it tells you it's not just a fluctuation of the test and then well exceeded the dur. Um, so that's where you see that you know and we've seen that we've seen static scores over the years with some of our literacy where we're just kind of holding a ground somewhere typically in the 70 percentile range for students hitting the benchmark. Um so you know you do sometimes plateau but seeing that we made a big jump in growth in comparison to DUI B was very promising for what we're doing. U but absolutely are we resting on that? Are we com are we you know are we are

136we happy with where we are? Never. We we're we're on a path of continuous improvement and challenge accepted would be what we'd say. Other questions or thoughts regarding the report that we have received? >> Shannon, just a curiosity I'd have too is to compare, especially with other districts that don't have as high free reduced price lunch population, the percentage of those students getting access to test preparation. And the SAT is like a unique test in that there is a way to prep for it unlike Smarter Balance which you don't have any advanced notice of what's going to be on that test. And so I think that that would be just interesting is that there's probably less access correlated with free and reduced price lunch to that and then that skews for that percentage of districts

137who are getting higher than us. >> Yeah. I think um I'll just offer when you we we used to get a lot of reports. We get the you know the Saturday administration as SAT which is um kids that are taking it you know I'm going to pay for the test and so on and so forth. uh off the top of my head an like this and this may be dated but it was typically like 85% 87% of the Saturday groups are hitting goal are hitting the college and career ready benchmarks which I think speaks to you know hey I'm taking a test I'm taking this for the second time whereas the school day that's 100% of kids the expectation is if you're in 11th grade and you and you're enrolled in school you're taking the

138test the only kids that aren't taking the test um are the students that are identified uh it's the 1% group that are identified for the alternate assessment off grade level. So it's very very few kids. Um so it's it's casting a much much wider net which is why it's a dramatic difference from say the 85% hitting the benchmark uh that you see on a Saturday administration versus the whole school measure. But as a district what's our measure? Our measure is not the kids who elect to take it. Our measure is the kids that we service and we service all kids. So the the school day SAT will always be the measure that we'll put out in front of you guys. >> Claire, um I'm just curious. So for um the old paytoplay the paytoplay and

139different things people um students with free and reduced lunch could get waivers or scholar scholarships and that >> this is a free test. >> What? >> This test is free. No, I'm just wondering has there ever been a request or a possibility of someone with free and reduced lunch wanting some test prep and is there any way to go about offering uh test prep to those students if they you know come forward. >> We actually offer a few options for test prep. Um we actually uh so one of the things that the English and the math department supervisors will do is they identify and we do primarily focus with our high needs students um because they're a group that we're really focusing on moving towards benchmark and they are invited to a bit of a

140more intensive prep program that runs for about six weeks after school. And then last year we offered another opportunity that was open to all students. Um, and that was overseen uh with some of our school counseling interns as well as a couple of other teachers. And basically what we offered was an opportunity for them to actually use many of the free resources through College Board, but it was through guided more structured sessions. um because you can talk about the free resources a lot with students but then you're really oftentimes relying on them to go home and access them on their own. So we put together um a program where at both Hall and Connard where um people were available to walk them through the various resources that were there and to actually help guide them

141through and really give them some structured practice time which was a great opportunity. And one other thing that we've done is we've had some um curriculum writing that has been dedicated to some things that are related to SAT prep type things that we've embedded within curriculum in grades 9 through 11. And what we're really pleased to see is the co um the coherence efforts across departments. So science and social studies are all contributing to the literacy assessment as well as the English department. um science is and social studies is also jumping in on with the math assessment um where they were divvying up like various concepts and skill work and working to embed them u within the curriculum using common question stems. You know, we talk a lot about like what's in our control and

142what's out of our control. And one of the things that we can do to con, you know, in ter what's in our control for our students is to um really offer just help them be as prepared as they possibly can be so that when they walk in the day of testing, they're as comfortable and as confident as they can possibly be. Um, so that that's really been something that we have been working on and will continue to work on in order to help prepare students. >> The also the PSAT is given twice. I mean, >> three times. >> So, so we have students take it in 9th, 10th, and 11th. And there's definitely research out there that speaks to the more often you more opportunities for practice. Just the repetition of sitting for that will

143also have an impact on familiarity and and correlates to an increase in scores as well. >> Now when they get their scores from their PSAT, they also might have that as some kind of um study guide >> guideline to help them with the SAT. Plus, it's not as fearful when you take the SAT if you've had the PSAT. >> Right. And that's one of those sessions that we've been offering, the one that we started last year with the resources available through College Board so that when students log into their own BlueBook account, it connects with their performance on the PSAT and it actually targets practice for them. Other thoughts or questions or comments? All right. I I appreciate greatly appreciate what you have shared. Thank you so much for all that you do for our

144students and thank you for continuing to inspire them while raising the bar of expectations. But thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, and moving on to routine matters where we have the financial report. Seeking a motion that the board of education approve the financial report for the year ending June 30th, 2025. Is there a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Jason. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Shannon. discussion and so teammates which one is presenting today Ethan. All right, Ethan to you. >> Okay, >> the um report being submitted, let me just get there. It's for the end of June 25, the uh end of the fiscal year for the school system in the town. Uh for fiscal year 25 school year system ended the year with a positive variance

145of $41,884. There was an additional surplus of 700,000 in the general fund at the end of the year that the school system was allowed to move forward into its special program education services which can use for future years if def deficit occurs in terms of future budgets. Um, as you'll remember, last year the school system had been projecting a significant deficit at one point due to the potential reduction in the subsidization of the special needs um out of district tuition line item u by the state of Connecticut. That reduction of funding was reversed erasing the deficit when the state pa state legislature passed a midyear sub special supplemental appropriation raising the reimbursebursement rate from 60% of excess costs to 73 and a quarter which result in the school district's positive overall variance of more than

146700,000. Did I get it? Okay, you know the general fund in the fiscal year 25 was budgeted to be 200.8 8 million in four categories. The first category salaries had a positive projected variance of 816,000 out of a fullear budget of 129 million. large positive items or variance items uh was teacher substitute salaries with a positive variance of 312 teacher assisted salaries with a positive variance of 270,000 regular custodians to 17,000 and unused sick leave um 226,000 on the negative side offsetting was professional salaries with a negative variance of 327,000 the second category of the general budget benefits was had a budget of 36.2 and basically was projected to or came in relatively close to the budget. Third category of the general fund purchase services with a budget of 31.8 8 million was projected or

147had a big I'm used to saying projected but had a negative variance of 165,000 large positive line items was the out of district tuition 203,000 after the legislative changes professional tech services 135,000 and rental 113,000 variance negative positive variance the negative side was people transportation a negative 435 contracted services 336 six and the final category of the general fund supplying material had a budget of 4 million. It was basically projected or basically came in slightly over budget with no real significant variance. In summary, the general fund with a budget of 200.8 million ended the fiscal year with a positive variance of 41,000 after you transfer 700,000 to the school spee fund. Um, so that takes care of the general fund. Terms of grants, state and federal, the district had 6.8 million in grants at the

148end of June or for the year, federal and state um grants. 316,000 of those funds were not used and are being carried forward. And then finally, in terms of the special funds, uh the third financial set of funds, the 10 different funds ended the fiscal year with $2.2 million balance. most significant fund activity was the education service reimbursement fund which we've already which I've already discussed that ended the fiscal year with a balance of 747,000 um next significant fund was the interest income fund which earned 172,000 in fiscal year 25 and then the final set of funds was the nutrition service funds terms of the nutrition service funds the balance at the end of June 25 was 4.1 million approximately 600,000 less that the June 24 balance is anticipated um that the money will be

149used for both Hall and for redesign of Connor. And if I have my timing right, I believe money has already gone towards Hall. So that was all I had. >> Thank you, Ethan and Miss Rua. Thank you. You're here at the table as well. And so the financial examiner's report has been shared with us. Teammates, any questions or comments? Jason? Uh not so much on this report, but just going forward. Um do we are we seeing any impacts or do we expect any impacts from the government shutdown in terms of funding we're receiving >> at this time? Um we we've received word that the state has received uh funds to continue dispersing them to us. Um you know, we'll continue to monitor the situation moving forward. Claire, and if I understand correctly, the 336,000 that

150was um announced as a cut this summer, that has been cancelled >> regarding federal funding. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Okay. And then um just curious the the transportation costs, the pupil transportation costs of 11 um is that 11 million? Yeah. 11 million. Um the out of district tuition um is that transportation cost of the out of district tuition for the um students with special needs. Is that embedded in that? And do we have a number? I know the state's working on helping with some of the transportation impacts of um the district having to transport to all the private schools. Is that separate or do we have a number that separates the two? >> So, when we're looking here and we look at the transportation figure, that does include special education transportation and that was

151a driver of the overage that we had this year. Uh, when we look at the out of district tuition line, that's just the tuition cost. Um, and then >> I'm just wondering, do we ever break out what the transportation cost is for the outed district? We don't in this exhibit. >> Okay. I'm just curious. I know that the state is working to support that because it is >> we we can we we can get those details. We know the difference between the amount of our transportation costs that are dedicated to out of district versus not. So I I think and then as part of our um as part of our excess cost reimbursement, we certainly submit >> um and we include those costs in uh but I know that you're talking about um you know

152the state would hope to potentially have some I think regionalized transportation or share some transportation. Um I haven't seen that finalized yet. I've heard that as a talking point, but I haven't seen a definitive plan >> because that sometimes that transportation cost isn't too far off from the tuition cost. I mean, it's it's a it's very high. So, I'm I'm hoping that the state does follow through with that discussion. >> Unders. Yeah, understood. But at least what I can what I can say with certainty today is that the costs that that are incurred for transportation for out of district are part of the excess cost reimbursement that we do file for. So every every dollar um is accounted for that that goes into you know the potential for an excess cost reimbursement once we once

153we hit that four and a half times threshold. Other thoughts or comments or questions? Again, we have a motion on the floor regarding the proposed report. All right, seeing none. All of those in favor of approving the financial report, say I. >> I. >> Any oppose? Any abstain? The eyes have it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, moving on to approval of the minutes. seeking a motion that the board of education approve the minutes of the regular board of education meeting of September the 16th, 2025. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you, Latoya. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Jason. Discussion suggested edits. Seeing none, all of those in favor say I. >> I. Any oppose? Any abstain? The eyes have it. Moving on now to information and reports. Board

154members, do we have any communications and reports to share from other boards or organizations? Seeing none, do we have any other information and discussions? Seeing none, moving on to future business, announcement of future meeting dates. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, November the 5th, 2025 here at the town hall in room 314 at 7 p.m. followed by Tuesday, November the 18th, 2025. Room 3:14 here at the town hall at 6:00 p.m. So once again, we'll come together again on Wednesday, November the 5th at 7 p.m. here at the town hall, followed by Tuesday, November the 18th at 6:00 p.m. here at the town hall. Do we have a request for future agenda items? Seeing none, do we have any visitors who would like to make a comment? Seeing none, we do not have an executive

155session. Therefore, seeking a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> Thank you, Shannon. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ethan. Meeting adjourned.