001the meeting to order welcome to the west hartford public schools regular board of education meeting it is tuesday march rather may the 17th 2022. charlotte may you please call the roll dr chang he'll be uh coming late mr goldman here dr harris here ms nazarella present miss poland here dr steinberg here dr thomas farquharson here student representative andrew maglio excused student representative avery woods weber excused thank you claire may you 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 to the agenda order and now is the time for public communications this is where we are able to hear
002from those of you in the audience we're able to hear your thoughts your comments your suggestions each person has three minutes to share their thoughts and there are 21 minutes per subject matter we ask that individuals once you're at the podium to please share your name and your address and one thing that really is important and it said every time we'll continue to do so please be mindful of sharing your thoughts in a respectful way we are here to hear from you but we certainly appreciate when it's delivered with respect now be mindful that poor board policy we do not respond as comments are being made but we are attentively listening so i have a list here with some names and we will begin with eleanor farquhar [Applause] so [Applause] so [Applause] so [Applause] do
003[Applause] do [Applause] do [Applause] so [Applause] thank you and before we call the next speaker one thing i was remiss to share which was not a challenge this go around was charlotte will hold up a yellow card when you have one minute remaining in your time and a red card when your time has expired and we'll ask you please to respectfully take your seat at that time next we have katrine katri i apologize if i'm mispronouncing your name yes [Applause] pardon me mick hold just one moment we're having i think an issue with our sound we want to make sure to capture every voice just a moment please [Applause] thank you yes we'll improvise thank you so much i'll hit the button can you hear me now yes okay hi my name is catrice rogers
004and i'm a mother of a child who has kidney disease migraines dislocated shoulder allergies asthma ibs it's hard taking care of him with my own disabilities but i do my best i've been part of pto since elementary at charter oak and here i was the vice president of communications i had an idea to get more people in at first i was laughed at but the idea was simple get pizza see in new york everybody loves pizza oily dripping and it brings people um no one thought it would bring anybody but boxes of pizza bought a lot of people i'm telling you this because that's where i started with nothing and that's how i started helping and was harford i'm now a treasurer and also part of community concern i've been helping for a while with
005everything going on i don't know how but i have and when i'm at the meeting on zoom everyone is friendly but when i came to the event people stared at me like i had a rash no one introduced themselves they moved away from me i even went up to a person to say hi she walked away but on zoom she was my friend she was okay to talk to me it made me feel like why did i even take the bus to come here because i take a bus i lost the hour of my time that maybe i could have wiped down my house again because my kid has allergies i came out here for what and i left afterwards i was told that we chatted we didn't i felt unwelcomed i felt like i
006didn't belong i fight every day just to show everybody that i'm a human and now when i come to this i'm not welcomed but my id says was harford and it says that i'm a woman five foot so i am human and i do belong now can you make sure that i belong there too thank you [Applause] thank you next we have lori schwartz let's see if it work does not work there then there please good evening my name is lori schwartz i'm a west hartford resident i was educated in the west hartford public schools and i'm a former west hartford public school teacher i strongly oppose any and all implementation of transgender education in the west hartford public schools there is a reason why abigail schreier wrote the book irreversible damage among her many
007warnings is the growing contagion effect among young females who are permanently changing their bodies and may later regret this decision there is a reason why mary hassan rice wrote the book get out now she does not believe that the public schools are safe places families are increasingly finding that there is no respect for diversity or for their own family values they protect their children in homeschooling and in private schools and there's a reason why anguished parents of trans kids are forming numerous support groups to help them cope with the aftermath of the known hazards of this ideology they have formed parent groups such as gen spec partners for ethical care our duty transgender trends and parents with inconvenient truths about trans and the fourth wave now the aftermath that they are facing based on this
008experiment with young children is something that they would not wish on their worst enemy they face school systems that will not share information with them about their very own children a court system that protects the civil rights of a child to transition against their parents wishes and gender clinics that offer life-altering paths to children and young adults some colleges provide the medical hormone blockers and cross sex hormones right on their campuses and evil even will pay for surgeries for their students [Applause] let's remember what we are talking about presenting these ideologies to children in the west hartford public schools will necessarily lead some of them to decide to transition you cannot claim that your curriculum does not influence students and often often at inappropriate developmental stages or against their parents beliefs i would go so
009far to say that the curriculum has the risk of indoctrinating the children into a point of view that sometimes is not shared by their teachers and often is not appreciated or shared by their parents just as a solid academic curriculum will necessarily lead most children to go to college introducing a social construct of gender to children will lead some to seek to change their sex you have no right to introduce this point of view to the children in the west hartford public schools and thereby spreading it to other nearby schools in doing so you will be confusing many children dividing many families and leading children in a direction that has ramifications far beyond what they can comprehend let's be clear what we are talking about excuse me your time is up can i just finish
010one paragraph no i'm sorry your time is up thank you okay thank you thank you and now we will have anita hello anita kellyan 48 west normandy drive hold on [Applause] i thought a lot of what i thought a lot of what to say for tonight given what occurred today and i did send an email and you did receive it tyranny begins and it begins with the simple ignoring of laws or in our case the boe's policies and bylaws these policies and bylaws were written voted on and put in place in part to protect the public at large and yes this includes the school employees the members of the board we the residents and our children the students one of the most important policies is policy 8310 which states that any substantive amendments of policies
011and bylaws shall be made only after a second public reading jason chang was the person who put forth the policy for changing the names he made two mistakes one he did not hold the second reading two the motion he put forth was flawed with the fact that he did not speak about provision two which is material when it comes to making the motion without a full two readings of emotion that would amend policy 1700 west hartford public schools is not allowed to change the mascots to attempt to do so would give cause for the public to seek remedies in the costs in the courts i mean jason chang has to consider does he want to use our money money that we give to educate our children in um tied away in the court system for
012those of us who have lived and worked on foreign soil there are only a few government constitutions that are over 250 years old the us constitution with its amendments is one of those our constitution allows for peaceful change in a society without revolution and or coup d'etats every student who is a product of a curriculum of excellence would know this on the same topic of following policies and procedures i present another situation where there was an infraction by a board member in this case it was an infraction of important right provided to the people by the people and that is the right to obtain public records i am speaking about the freedom of information act a connecticut state statute jason chang made a technical violation when he did not respond within four days to my
013freedom of information act request as required by the connecticut state statute this brings me to the most painful situation i find myself that certain employees of our west hartford public schools are not following the policies procedures meant to protect the poli the public i want to remind everyone in this room that any member of the public and yes that includes you jason that includes andrew morrow and that includes paul vicinus that all of us have the right to inquire about how public funds are used by principles of schools we have the right that our district's director of finance provide records that reflect accurate and thorough accounting of all public funds we have these rights without fear of retaliation of coercion or of hearing that our children are pulled out of the classroom unnecessarily and seeing
014our children slandered that is a very strong comment [Applause] thank you next we have gechen getchat um as you may tell i am from different continents from africa and when when i was there in africa many of us uh if we have been given a choice to go between heaven and america many of the people would choose america not heaven why am i saying this america is the greatest nation on earth because of not you are different human being but because of education i believe education the previous uh generation put huge value to education and many of the greatest schools on earth are here in america the ivy leagues and many other great universities those six scientists who put america on top of world war ii the manhattan project scientists they put america on top
015not because of any ideology but because of science they were all physicists but today american school system is a laughing stock of the world nobody i can tell you would choose american education system because today public schools would teach two genders would be like abominable gender is not between men and women but there are hundreds of genders this is against science and there are many many other things that are really killing the education system so i would like to advise or bring to your attention please let us not mess up with education system and especially in the public school because it is the store of society if you see my family many of my family left behind because they are their farmers they will never went to school school education rules so let us give
016much value and much respect for education system uh especially in public school instead of putting all those you know pronouns nouns all kinds of garbages please let us focus on math science engineering technology and all other things like computer science thank you [Applause] thank you that's all who i have listed here is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak yes please come to the podium uh for this and yes hello my name is mary of 43 acadia street i previously spoke on april 19th as an rn mandated reporter with nursing background in school nursing teaching nursing developmental psychology physical assessment and adolescent psychiatric nursing i am predominantly a certified occupational health nurse specialist and trans cultural nurse i've reviewed rosanna haskins report for tonight's sighting and what she proposes is quote new
017research and longitudinal evidence of a particular case for adding the contended field of gender identity content to west hartford the research is not new since 2015 it is not a longitudinal study it's only five years it's not landmark 300 participants it's not published yet the second study but i will include a separate research analysis in a different document my three points are about developmental childhood theory developmental theories of kohlberg 1966 show children do not integrate the meaning of quote sexual constancy constancy until age 12 and later this means natal sex is not grasped as immutable during the latency period freud of school ages respective six to 12 years this period of innocence should be protected by the board of education the superintendent school administrators and the equity and diversity advisors and it's possible to protect
018it this is the age when children want to be children they're generally inclined and attracted to their own sex and they make friends with their own sex and they avoid using the other one when i was a child we used to call it cooties and they accept psychomotor and academic talent challenges and tasks not necessarily driven by anything that is seen in gender identity safety belonging and a positive self-image are the hoped for expected outcome the second stage or the pubescent tasks which begin between the ages of 12 and 18 are hormone driven as seen in ericsson's psychosocial theory with sexual identity driven by a secondary sexual sex trait and sexual affirmation of what is happening in the child's body is undermined and it's harmed by something called gender identity theory and curriculum which separates
019from what is happening in the body from the mind without any informed consent of parents and legal guardians and mandate mandatory school attendance should not be interpreted as tacit consent my third point about informed consent is generally given in writing it's a foundational principle of all research opting out and how to do it needs to be explained in a written statement to parents and that's generally signed otherwise the schools should not be able to collect and give data without permission which includes surveys reloads and all such activities thank you [Applause] hi i'm ripley heintz 93 brace road west hartford connecticut my dad was born here class of hall high 1950 graduate i currently have a 15 year old daughter at connard she's a freshman i'm really nervous public speaking and i have a seventh grader
020at sedgwick clover is about to be 13. they came out to me as non-binary at the beginning of sixth grade i am a parent experiencing this and yeah i was raised catholic and yep i am an open-minded person um clover was born evelyn and is neurodiverse so she's dyslexic or they are dyslexic parenting comes with a lot a lot i don't think that changing mascots is tyrannical i wrote a letter about that everyone's can have their own opinion about that but seventh grade is an era of bullying everyone survives seventh grade middle school is tough you don't want to go to the bathroom because it's embarrassing you don't want to stand out because it's stressful everybody's just trying to learn and get by and i'm in this parent leadership training institute group right now that
021gave me the courage to even come out here my community project that i'm working on is normalizing non-binary understanding nb which is e-n-b-y short kind of nickname for non-binary yeah things are changing do i think that it's contagious no pretty sure it's not contagious do i have all the statutes and the research and all of that you know i went to grad school at yale for forestry i don't have all of that but i know what my kid's experiencing and i know how evolution in the world happens not just biologically but socio socioeconomically emotionally so on and so forth so i would say you guys are doing a great job i've got a yellow flag i can write all this down too and thank you for your time thank you excuse me thank you is
022there anyone else that would like to make a comment hi cindy gothier 44 manchester circle i seem to like to get up here spontaneously because i've never planned to speak but um just wanted to throw something out there i was here a couple meetings ago spoke about my daughter's challenges with special education in this town and my frustrations that have been going on since elementary school and she's now a junior at connard and i stayed late and listened to melanie thomas's presentation to all of you and did that so that i could have an opportunity to speak to her in the hallway afterwards had a nice conversation she assured me she was going to address some of my concerns and that my daughter's guidance counselor would be contacting me the next day that was four
023weeks ago i haven't heard from anyone so this has just proven my point that our schools suck they treat our children terribly and they are never accountable for what they do and nothing ever changes and my kid's a junior and it's still not changing and i've had enough so i'm getting to the point where i'm ready to start legal action against the town because i i'm done i'm done asking for supports that i pay taxes for supports that my child is entitled to and a future for her that she deserves just like anybody else's straight a student does that gets all the attention in this town thank you [Applause] any other comments from anyone in the audience please approach the podium please share your name and your address it's mark greenstein i'm at 2 cross
024hill road and it's it's really a question for you who bravely spoke and i sympathize but it's it's a question for everyone here with experience about what you said that you understand evolution and the question is why so recently if what's happening to your daughter and some other kids is evolutionary why is it so sudden that we have this plethora of kids who are or claim to be non-binary i want to hear from you but please direct your comments in general not to anyone specifically at all please okay so if anyone whether it's members of the board experts beyond here or in here who could teach us about the sudden influx that this board has to deal with and educate all of us about whether this is evolution or the alternative that a lot of
025people put forward is it is being taught in a more directed way and if there's evidence of that this board should know too thank you [Applause] thank you are there any other comments from anyone in the audience i'll ask one more time all right we now will pause on public comments and we'll move on to unfinished business which we do not have any at this time and on to new business where we will explore the state of connecticut healthy food certification 2023-2020 2022-2023 excuse me please please lower your voices thank you the recommendation is at the board of education adopt the following motions pursuant to cgs section 10-21 5-f the board of education certifies that all food items offered for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not exempted from the connecticut
026nutrition standards published by the connecticut state department of education will comply with the connecticut nutrition standards during the period of july 1 2022 through june 30th 2023 this certification shall include all food offered for sale to students separately from reimbursable meals at all times and from all sources including but not limited to school stores vending machines school cafeterias culinary programs and any fundraising activities on the school premises sponsored by the school or non-school organizations and groups the next piece is the board of education allows the sale of students of student sale 2 students of food items that do not meet the connecticut nutrition standards and beverages not listed in section 10-221-q of the connecticut general statutes provided that the following conditions are meant one the sale is in connection with an event occurring after the
027end of the regular school day or on the weekend two the sale is at the location of the event and three the food and beverage items are not sold from a vending machine or school store an event is an occurrence that involves more than just a regularly scheduled practice meeting or extracurricular activity the regular school day is the period from midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official school day location means where the event is being held and must be the same place as the food and beverage sales so with all of that liz thank you so much for joining us we'll pass it to you please thank you very much as you read in great detail there we have before us the annual state of connecticut healthy food certification uh the
028certification in summary commits us to following the connecticut nutrition standards for all food that we sell in our cafeterias and in our schools not only is this good practice but it also enables us to receive an additional 10 cent per meal reimbursement for every meal that's served in our cafeterias west hartford public schools has been participating in this program and certifying that we will follow these standards since 2007 and this is a motion before you tonight uh to continue to do so it's a relatively straightforward but i'm certainly happy to answer any questions that any of you might have thank you so much liz teammates any questions ethan this is a probably stupid question this is just the same as the prior year in the prior year in the prior year it is it's the
029same certification the state has um a template language that they um require us to adopt but the standards are the same and it is the same certification that we have seen in prior years how much is at the bottom uh bullet point i was just kidding how much do we receive because of this yeah yeah so um it's based on the number of meals that we serve so in 19 i'm at the last bullet point the one about the ex the x the outside school hours is assuming it's relatively insignificant it is it is primarily its food that is served during the day uh the outside of school um is very limited in nature okay thank you other questions hearing none with the first motion that was read the mouthful please don't ask me to
030read it again um is there a motion to accept the motion that was initially read so moved is there a second second discussion all of those in favor say aye aye aye any oppose the eyes have it all right and with the second bullet point that was read the recommendation is there a motion to accept that recommendation so moved is there a second a second any discussion all of those in favor say aye aye any oppose all right the eyes have it thank you so very much and with that now moving on to staff communications and reports we now will hear from our assistant superintendent soon to be superintendent mr dr murrow all right so um i apologize we have a bunch of stuff and i'll have some stuff for my students as well we
031have a bunch of stuff and wanted to to share this as well from our students and so i want to make sure that i get everything all set for us here [Applause] um let me start off by congratulating uh connor senior uh maya maya polantik who uh received a letter from the secretary of education on thursday naming her one of two uh 2022 u.s presidential scholars from connecticut and just one of 161 students from across the country to receive this recognition it is a fantastic honor and the entire school is very proud of her for this we also had four seniors in west hartford members of both connard and hall's football teams were among the 13 scholar athletes honored on sunday at the doc boise new northern connecticut chapter national football foundation and college hall
032of fame banquet at aqua turf that would be jack kennedy and oliver held we're named scholar athletes from connor and colin richard and matthew farber from hall received the honor at the 55th annual banquet it's nice that we're actually meeting again in in places like aqua turf and having these these banquets they are an important part of the high school the high school experience if you get a chance earlier this evening we had a fantastic presentation for the biennial collection uh the art collection which is the permanent semi-permanent i should say art that's on display throughout the fourth floor and these were these are student work that every couple of years are are changed out to really reflect uh some of the the great things that our students are doing across the grade levels k
033through 12 in in various art classes and so if you get a chance to check that out i would recommend that i have from andrew who apologizes that he can't attend uh this evening that uh countered sports teams are wrapping up their seasons in uh the coming week and many sports teams are are having their matches against hall this week so hopefully the weather holds last week connor did hold a very successful junior prom at glastonbury hills country club as well as the junior award night earlier in the week senior prom which is in simsbury will be hosted next week with connor earlier today connord farmington and hall hosted the second annual equity symposium with 12 schools in attendance over 80 students from across connecticut discuss topics such as the job phobia colorism and code
034switching among others during the day 8 30 2 to 1 o'clock and final voting i should share for uh connor's new mascots begins tomorrow and lasts until friday of this week uh hall is in a similar position and we're ready to go forward with ideas and and such that the that the school design groups are developing for that and hope to have then a presentation for you on schedule as we talked about at the next meeting and finally uh but certainly not least the mom of two students at connor uh lak pasherpa reached the summit of mount everest for the 10th time last week on wednesday morning making her the first woman to do so and if you get a chance to check out connard's webpage as well as the instagram there's a wonderful picture
035of the connered flag being hosted on the top of mount everest which is pretty cool so that's what i have for this evening to share any questions thank you any questions regarding what was shared this evening all right thank you so much now moving on to staff reports and board discussions where we will receive our update on the elementary social emotional learning sel civics curriculum so we certainly welcome to the table mr vicinis dr haskins and ms kerry jones and we'll pass it over to you three well good evening and thank you very much for this opportunity to present again um this is i'm dr haskins i'm losing uh i want to say this is their fourth presentation i know we had a quick update on uh curriculum in general on september 9th at our
036opening report but uh really our first presentation in earnest was in october i believe october the 19th and i believe we had an informal update at one point i couldn't find the date december where we came to the board and it is honestly a privilege to be able to provide additional information and update into and to really narrow our focus and i want to begin by just apologizing uh for really having our backs to the crowd i know this is a presentation to our board of ed but i know that there's been really a lot of civic engagement in and around our sel curriculum specific to our gender identity lesson within that curriculum and so this presentation is as much for you as a board our listening audience at home and folks in our arena
037i also know and i'm pleased to be joined at the table by my colleagues kerry jones our director of elementary education and dr rosina haskins our director of equity advancement dr haskins has had the privilege to report to you many times on the seo curriculum at large and i really wanted the opportunity to be able to lead some conversation and talk about this through a curricular lens and hopefully to be able to provide some clarifications out there that that really seem to be some persistent misunderstandings even from some of the comments that i heard this evening in our public comments so an overview of what we intend i'll talk generally about the larger social emotional curriculum and give some background for it but i really want to very quickly zoom in on what seems to
038be the area of specific interest from our public and from some of our parent community in and around gender identity to be able to talk about what it is and what it isn't that we're teaching not really here to talk specifically about what gender identity is and what gender identity is not nor is that really a significant component of our curriculum so i definitely want to try to help clarify that persistent misunderstanding but to really talk about what is included in our lesson on gender identity versus what is not to talk about the review process i know that we've spoken in the past about different input channels but i do want to make sure that folks have an appreciation and an understanding of changes to our curriculum and how the process of review is something
039that is has vitality something that has life and then i'm going to turn it over and ask dr haskins and ms jones to talk about our parent communication and education efforts because that's also something that we realize throughout this process that there's a greater need for an area where we can provide more effort and more emphasis the last thing before i transition i do want to just highlight the graphic on the slide it's there to represent kind of a model for our work and curriculum in general and looking at uh looking at our focus and our commitment to equity as at the intersection not only of everything that we do with high quality instruction high quality pedagogy certainly our efforts to round out our education with children relative to their social emotional learning their character
040development their development as good citizens our work with cultural competence to recognize and respect the great diversity that we have here in the district and then certainly our commitment to family partnerships and we see equity as something that lives at the intersection of all of those things so it's an important graphic for us to think about as we go through the first thing that i want to mention in in this slide really the next set of three graphics will will demonstrate the overlap from the national level to the state level to the local level in terms of social emotional learning and it's important to kind of mention because that seems to be a question in terms of is sel in any way shape or form kind of overcrowding our curriculum is it in any way
041shape or form impacting the quality of our education our ability to help students uh with their mathematics with their literacy with their social studies sel has always been a part of our curriculum it's always been a component although perhaps it's lived under different names certainly sel is a piece and when you unpack what it is as is demonstrated here in this national model for sel as for as put forward by the collaborative for academic social and social model student learning or otherwise known as castle um it's lived under um names such as character development it's lived under names to include civics and it and it really looks at all of these components and and what's uh it's lived in our report card indicators uh for a long time uh just in terms of how true
042students treat each other um as well as some of their work habits um but what's important is that uh given the pandemic we've recognized and and and all of the isolation that we've had over the last couple of years behavioral health in general and social emotional learning specifically the ability for relationship skills the ability for self-management some of these other components have have taken on greater weight and it's the state of connecticut that has number one adopted the castle model and integrated it within their own framework for what they're calling not only social emotional but also intellectual habits the state of connecticut put greater weight upon social emotional learning and charged us with schools to ensure that we had greater weight within it within our curriculum and its integration throughout different components and different subject
043areas it bears mentioning the definition should there be any doubt um so obviously we're from connecticut we adopt uh what the connecticut state department education has done to define social emotional learning specific as the process by which children specifically achieve emotional intelligence through competencies of self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship skills and responsible decision-making now as a district we have taken that um taken close paid close attention to that definition into both the castle model and the connecticut model and we've developed a framework that we can use that really centers in and around the four domains that you see there in those four domains within those four domains we embed skills we embed direct instruction and lessons and resources to support the development of a positive self concept the identification understanding and regulation of your own
044emotions and the identification and understanding of the emotions of others the development and understanding of rules and responsibilities within diverse communities and that's really where we see uh the very specific tie-in to our civics instruction and the development of positive interpersonal relationships and for us really it's the connection between interpersonal skills emotional intelligence roles and responsibility uh as a member of the community that grounds this work for us within our civics um and it's and it's probably the most important sort of a first opportunity to identify the charge within our social emotional curriculum is that of these domains is that of the development of the positive concept and the relationship skills it is not an investigation into certainly growth hormones or the differences between your gender identity your anatomy these are not the concepts that
045live within our elementary curriculum so while i might you know certainly understand some some concerns some debate some questions about developmental appropriateness were that our curriculum i want to be able to really kind of talk about what it is that we are teaching and the bulk of what we teach comes from a core resource called second step second step has been in this district carry for any number of years well over 10 years um and and historically it wasn't the sole curriculum historically our social emotional curriculum was uh not not as uniform as we are as we have tried to make it given this emphasis with the state of connecticut we've had a number of different programs that have been introduced many of which we still use in the district but not necessarily as our
046as our guiding resource which which second step now is some of these just to just to reference them so folks may have heard them before we've used pbis to support social emotional learning we've used responsive classroom uh we've used cps or the ross green model we've also used the yale university work with the mood meter and ruler excuse me but we've used second step and second step has historically always had a presence in some of our curriculum because of the quality of the of the materials and the comprehensive nature of it so in general there are i would i would ballpark between 50 and 75 great lessons associated with four major themed units the themes of the units are common across the grades the lessons themselves are developmentally appropriate based on their grade level and
047that represents the bulk of the curriculum but we've also integrated that curriculum with our ongoing work as it relates to cultural competence and specifically social justice in the last several years we've made a real commitment to uh to having more assured learning experiences in and around cultural competence and we've developed a social justice curriculum that's built on standards it is framed around these four concepts of identity diversity justice and action um and it is the identity theme in which our our gender identity lives not as the singular element but as one of several that we'll talk about so in essence we supplement our second step resource materials with lessons that we've designed aligns these social justice standards it provides the frame the framework for us as a district for teaching about culture and for teaching
048about equity and and i think it bears mentioning the importance of the mentor texts that we've selected what you see on the screen are uh the texts related i believe to grade one under under this social justice heading that address each of these four domains of equity instruction the mentor texts play a specific role because what we don't want given all of our diversity we recognize we have we have a significant amount of diversity we don't necessarily always have um a great um a uniform distribution of that of that diversity in a classroom so we don't ever want to place a singular student or a small number of students as bearing the weight of representation of whatever that might be whether that's representation of their race their ethnicity their religion their politic their gender their
049gender identity their family structure whatever it might be it's important uh for us we feel to have texts that not only provide that uh that anonymous that neutral kind of a third party character who can represent the lesson that we're after but it also provides for our educators a framework a guide a kind of a set of goal posts in terms of all right this is the lane that we want you to drive in we're not looking for you to necessarily go beyond our intended learning objectives so within that as we've said ident the theme of identity one of the four domains of of those social justice standards um it's it's a very wide theme it's uh it encompasses all of these different components we have lessons across our grades that attempt to reflect uh
050the variety of characteristics that formulate an individual's identity that that vary for all of us but but we recognize that gender is the one kind of that's getting a lot of the attention so within this within this larger uh sel curriculum within its four domains of of self and social awareness um skills for developing a positive self concept skills for developing positive interpersonal skills narrowing that to identity and with identity speak speaking specifically of gender for which we have developed a total of two lessons and the uh the outcomes the learning outcomes for those two lessons are written here again uh with with the with the very real hope uh for clarity around what we're after um we are after our students to be able to identify examples of gender stereotypes um so that to
051not fall victim to gender stereotypes we are also after students to have comfort in expressing who they are as persons regardless of which domain we're talking about but certainly under gender identity and to be able to show respect for others we are not looking for much beyond that in terms of being able to dissect it being able to debate it in terms of you know social morals looking at different scientific arguments looking at neuroscience that none of that obviously lives within our elementary curriculum but it bears some mention in terms of how this is all grounded um so to appreciate the learning goals that we have i want to reference uh this excerpt of a graph a graphic from our state of connecticut grades k-3 social emotional and intellectual uh habits so what what the
052state of connecticut has done is they've they've taken learning standards that actually exist within the pre-curriculum within the pre-k standards the early learning standards and they've provided a progression for those learning standards through grade three and if i look specifically say in toward the middle of that where there's an expectation for students and i'll use second grade to see themselves as valuable contributing members of their family of their school of their community group that's this concept this positive self concept to recognize their personal strengths their personal challenges and limitations to describe to be able to be comfortable describing aspects of themselves i contrast that with statistics very real statistics that we have in research regarding some of the obstacles for our students who identify either as transgender as non-binary or as what we may refer
053to as gender non-conforming based on a cdc study there you see it 27 percent of students nationally feel unsafe at school more than a quarter of the popul of students in this population 35 percent report being bullied one out of every three more than over half report feelings of loss and hopelessness and 35 percent report not suicidal ideations not contemplating actual attempts of suicide so what we have are statistics that are very at odds with each other in terms of the the goal for really that self-awareness and that positive self-image and it's important to note that the incidence rate nationally for students who are transgender or gender non-conforming is approximately two percent according to recent studies it's further important to notice that as recently as 2018 west hartford conducts a youth at risk survey um
054every every two or three years where we look at our supports that we have for children in our curricular program and our incidence rate among our high school students is equivalently about two percent so you know other research talks about the stability of gender identity um and so we recognize and we know from from example from our from our families from a student i met this evening upstairs on the fourth floor uh that we do in fact have students that that are gender non-conforming or gender questioning and they are questioning at an early age and our job with that is nothing more than to help them to have this positive self concept to help them feel respected and feel welcomed and ultimately feel safe in the school it's it's the concern you know i listen
055attentively to what folks are saying when when um whether through communication uh with my office or with dr haskins through email or or at the podium and these are some general themes of messages that i've heard uh people claim that our that our students are too young to understand the topic of gender itself um and and mind you i said you know gender was the quote that i heard because again um there's gender there's gender identity uh that these lessons are going to create gender confusion um among students misidentification the the uh leading to a change of sex i think i heard that as recently as moments ago um and that gender identity itself is this whole concept is biased it's in conflict with basic math and science so these are some of the things
056that i know people have concerns about and i don't want to minimize those concerns but i want to provide what what we're relying on relative to the research that we've done and our approach and first and foremost uh is a is a quote from the american pediatric association that we recognize and we know developmentally in fact it's written right into our early learning standards that children are aware of the physical differences between boys and girls as early as h2 and they have a stable sense of their own gender identity they see themselves as male female or they potentially may see themselves as not certain or most students by the age of four that that information comes from the american pediatric association and it really speaks to the notion that the inclusion of gender as an
057attribute of your identity and and our desire to talk about you know it's you know is it when children are young they recognize the differences even in play as to what boys might play with versus what more girls might play with and there are those students you know while while it's possible uh in fact i think it speaks to this this to try to debunk this question about confusion that while students will identify that and they may be influenced to exposure of stereotypes in terms of play or in terms of sense of dress between being a boy or a girl their own innate sense of self cannot be changed and that's a statement again from the american pediatric association uh there there was a different quote that i was referencing from an article i believe
058in psychology today that talked about the stability of a student's gender identity based on based on studies that that it is not rapidly changing nor is it necessarily being influenced by the occasion of a character in a singular text or lesson the last question that was on the screen the question really that that seems to be wondering about what it is that we're teaching and is what we're teaching in conflict with science is it in conflict with anatomy first off sel as a concept is not in conflict with math nor science and it's the sel curriculum we don't tease out the differences um and and we could clearly have a really fruitful and engaging conversation as a board as a as a public forum with you know this concept of what gender gender identity is
059and gender expression and the differences from anatomy but these are not conversations that we're entertaining in our elementary setting they're simply not um what we're talking about uh they they do live there is a there is a standard within our health curriculum and i know that's where some folks have talked about why are you placing this in civics versus health there's a standard within our health curriculum where there's an expectation you do speak to what's the difference between your physical anatomy your gender identity your gender expression and then on a whole separate topic whole different island your sexual orientation and you know who you prefer who you're attracted to that lives within the health curriculum that is introduced as early as grade six um aligned with our connecticut state department of education standards it is
060certainly something that students excuse me that parents have the opportunity to voice a desire to opt out of but what we're talking about within our seo curriculum and this is important is teaching students to be confident in their self-expression teaching students to respect others in their own self-expression and it's and it's an important note that research and that's not something number one i don't want any student to ever be confused about how to treat someone else i don't think that our curriculum creates confusion and around that um and it's important to note that research has shown and this was research that was uh to be honest and transparent but primarily based on racial bias but i think i will go out on a limb and say that i would expect that it extends to gender
061identity research has shown that children develop bias based on both exposure and lack of exposure to diversity and so we know that within our without our own experience we know that within our own curriculum and perhaps within our within our own upbringing that when we don't have the ability to demonstrate the wide variety of differences between us we automatically can develop that bias and research shows that by age by age that bias is present in children and by age 12 students can be some students can be particularly set in their in their thinking but research has also shown that through exposure and and really just through an appreciation of difference that that students can even unlearn that bias if they have gained it and and really that's that's our goal with this is that we
062developed a curriculum that's intended to support awareness and appreciation of the diversity that exists here within our community and and our curriculum is um you know has its own vitality has its own life to it um there's there's been questions that have come forward to us from the public you know what's the opportunity or or i would ask the board to consider how you know review of this curriculum um so i want to talk about first foremost to talk about our broad structures for review which do exist in this curriculum certainly would be a part of that we do have what's called a five-year curriculum review process in general where every curriculum uh regardless of the last time that it's you know it's shelf life uh goes through a thorough and formal review but new
063curriculum such as such as our um social justice our identity curriculum specifically has had ongoing review since it's in its infancy we've done a review of all of our lessons we've the three of us have sat down and looked them over in light of questions that have come forward in light of conversations that we've had with parents to ensure that the material that we've put out to our teachers very specifically identifies the learning goals that we're after gives them some left and right kind of limits as to what our intended objectives are we've reviewed very thoroughly resources related specifically to gender identity we've read every book we've read them against statements that we've made publicly in terms of what we intend for our curriculum and where we intend that curriculum to kind of to kind
064of end and what conversations were more appropriate at home and and in response to that review we have identified some books that you say you know what um you're right that book uh probably it's not a bad book but it goes beyond our intended learning objective and we've replaced those materials so we've recent and we've reshuffled others to place them into more developmentally appropriate grade bands and we have ongoing review it didn't stop this year didn't stop in december we know that you know there's there's books that folks have said they're not satisfied with they had questions about we've re-read those since and while i would i would feel comfortable today telling you that there's no text that we have in our in our set of mentor texts that are up on our website that
065i am uncomfortable with at all um there are one or two where hey if i found a better resource at some point in time i might replace it but not because what we have is in any way shape or form inappropriate simply perhaps out of respect for some questions that have come up and ease with navigating that in a classroom setting should it should it become problematic all right at the end of the day our process that we're engaged in in this gender identity lesson that we have has been has been very well informed not only from research but from input from our community from feedback from our parents our educators and our instructional leaders and so we will continue with that but the other thing that we do hope to continue with is is
066dialogue because the dialogue that we've been able to have uh in small groups and one-on-one with parents has certainly been uh the most fruitful uh the most positive in terms of being able to really get at the root concerns and and ask questions and dig deeper so i'm gonna turn it over at this point to my colleague dr haskins uh but one thing oh forgot my little graphic here i wanted to i wanted to mention this one piece um this is something that i jotted down that i heard in discussion uh two weeks ago at our last board meeting in the context of the comment really is in and around the school mascots issue but but the statement was if students you know and this is my paraphrasing so i apologize but if students feel
067have this negative connotation regarding themselves as individuals regarding their school regarding their own identity based on the name you know i think it was chief dinner warrior then we've failed to educate them and and you know that's there there's an absolute validity in that criticism and absolute validity that that our intentions are never for students to feel uh any sense of anything other than affirmation about who they are as individuals i would want that same sentiment to be applicable to a child's gender identity to their race to their family structure to their religion i would never want anything that we're doing or not doing as a public institution to cause a child to not feel valued by their school system and i think it's kind of around those topics that we can have greater public
068conversations so i will turn it over now to dr haskins good evening there really isn't much more that needs to be added pause presentation was very comprehensive and succinct and as i sit and listen to him frame out our goals and our aims i think you know this quote that you ended with or paraphrasing of a statement from previously you know that resonates with me because we truly want our all children to feel safe and bringing their full authentic selves to school and you know we really just want carrie and i we just really want to close out this part of the presentation by highlighting communication efforts and opportunities for two-way dialogue two-way learning opportunities as a community together and so we think it's important first to underscore the value of school and family partnership
069as you saw on the opening slide the visual and the opening slide family school partnership it is an essential component of our equity model over the past two years we've deepened our efforts to foster the values of kindness respect and personal self-concept and so in doing so we have invited diverse perspectives lived experiences backgrounds and voices of our families and we've sought to translate that feedback as well as the feedback of our educators and our students into our ongoing curriculum review revision not just the content not just the what we teach but how we teach and so much of the response to feedback or inquiries or concerns that have been raised including those that we've heard here during public comments they are reflected in some of the key shifts that we've made this year in
070the fall and in the early winter and those include our communication channels having more information on our website and making sure that it's accessible our school and classroom newsletters that highlight some of the topics that are coming and even our selection of resources as paul uh talked about we have truly honored all of our stakeholders requests for individual and small group live discussions lesson walkthroughs review of our resources and mentor texts walking through companions that go with them and we have provided every single email we've provided comprehensive responses almost like a board report response to every inquiry including those of support and so we do recognize it hasn't been enough there's so much more that we can continue to do to strengthen our school and family communication and transparency we've seen a surge of what
071i call climate emergencies or and horrific events sadly as recent as this past weekend in buffalo and they signal an urgent need for stronger school and family partnerships those that are built on trust civility and mutual respect so it is what research tells us we've got lots of decades of research on family school partnerships and they tell us the benefits and how it benefits our children enormously and it's essentially what our children deserve they need to see us united not divided and so my colleague carey she's going to talk about future school-based structures and inclusive what we call dual-capacity partnership opportunities linked to learning more about our sel civics curriculum thanks rosina so we recognize there are variety of needs among the families and caregivers in our district some families may be looking to understand
072the why to understand the larger context of these identity lessons and what social emotional learning is about we understand that some families may be seeking clarification specifically on this one lesson on gender stereotype or gender identity and others may be looking for specific information on supporting their children at home you know their child may be coming home and having this conversation and how do i support that conversation and so to address those various needs we're looking to the successful models of several of our schools who've had these conversations with their families on social emotional learning in general and more specifically on gender literacy and so based on those models we are planning to host school-based workshops specific to gender identity in the late fall and early winter of next year following our kind of broad-based
073curriculum nights we really want teachers to focus on all of their academic areas at our early meetings and really be able to have a later in the fall early winter specific workshops for parents and caregivers of elementary children at their schools where they have those relationships of trust with school staff as well as with our support and those school-based workshops for families will address three key areas in response to questions and and concerns that we've heard to share those three lesson targets as we heard from paul tonight to model lessons and resources and to offer the opportunities for questions and answers um while the workshops are still being planned obviously we're speaking to the principals who've led some of these workshops and we want to have their collaboration and and have some specific design relative
074to their communities we would anticipate that parents families and caregivers would experience a lesson themselves that they'd have opportunity to read the mentor texts related to that one gender stereotype and one gender literacy lesson relative to their children at their grade level or across the grade level so those texts would be widely available and to ask clarifying questions to have that dialogue as was shared this evening we're hoping that hosting these workshops at school sites will bring clarity will bring understanding and will bring trust among our educators and family and caregivers about exactly what these gender identity lessons are about what they are and what they're not and we look forward to having that dialogue in a way that um as we said will will foster that sense of of hope and optimism and inclusivity
075that is characteristic and for which we feel responsible as a school district details on those workshops will be forthcoming through school newsletters later in the fall so thank you for the opportunity to share this evening and so with that i would really love to open it up to any questions any discussion um from the board thank you so very much thank you teammates questions thank you very much was very nice presentation i have a few different questions but i'm going to start with one question i i totally understand you know the whole concept of trying to teach children empathy kindness you know good behaviors that we want all of our children to emulate but i my question is why did you pick um gender identity specifically we the population of people who identify as transgender
076in the united states is exceedingly small and i'm sure that if you were to do a survey of the students in a particular classroom that there would most likely i haven't done the survey but i would assume that there would be more children in that classroom that come from families where there may be problems such as drug abuse alcoholism divorce disability and yet i when you showed the paul when you showed your list of books up there um i think you said it was the first grade none of those books had anything to do with any of the things that are probably much more likely to be found in the classroom than transgender and i i understand the idea of which i know it's a concept that's been raised that we want the child to
077see themselves in the classroom but i think children can see themselves in a classroom in many different ways and not only by their gender so a child has many facets and they can see themselves in many different ways so my my question is why did you pick this in particular as opposed to all the other things sure no fair question i appreciate it um so the thing that i didn't show as i referenced on the slide with the second step materials there are you know in the neighborhood of 50 to 75 additional lessons those those lessons not necessarily drug abuse at the at the elementary level but um as as those needs pop up we certainly address that you know through our clinicians and such but the whole variety of other issues and the comprehensive
078nature of social emotional learning is typically been addressed through the sel curriculum that exists within the second step program and it has to do with the kind of the fluid nature of how the uh how the sel curriculum is structured that teachers given you know any particular need perhaps you know loss that might exist within a family and you know bereavement the teacher can find an appropriate resource and bring that right out so i i certainly wouldn't want you to think that those materials don't exist the why of the inclusion which is also a fair question of gender identity really has to do based on need over the prior prior to the writing of the lessons and and really you know you roll it back um we started with a singular text um prior to
079that identification that singular text was was the um call from parents in our elementary class uh schools in elementary classrooms asking for help asking for support um indicating that that their child perhaps was planning to come to school wearing gender non-conforming clothing and they were very very concerned over how their child would be received they were very concerned i mean the families understand the statistics regarding bullying the families understand other students who may not you know necessarily recognize if if the child chooses to change how they're how they're called by name and things of this nature so uh it was from that need and you know at first it came up in one school and then there was a second and then there was a third and then we realized that this is bigger than
080an isolated incident this this is not a significant number it's two percent but it's significant enough one child makes the difference and uh so from that we uh you know we had started with an approach initially where when it when we only knew of a student here or a student there with kind of an intervention approach that we would work within that classroom within that grade level within that school but as the incidence of students became more commonplace we recognized that we had a larger need and we also recognized we didn't know what we didn't know we didn't know how many students might not be necessarily coming forward and again our goal with this wasn't to create necessarily like uh an emphasis or an awareness um on gender identity solely it was really to recognize
081and acknowledge that there are those students uh that have different you know in the same way that we teach they're different family traditions there are families that have different structures um they're there are individuals that might look different from us might have different culture different language different appearance um that this was just another difference that exists with an identity uh but we're all still the same people that we were yesterday we're all still friends on the playground kind of a thing so as we sought to have uh some form of a lesson or a resource to support teachers with this concept we identified a text but we had a one-size-fits-all approach and we got plenty of feedback from our teachers hey this you know this doesn't work i've you know this is great for the
082fifth grade classroom but i've got i've got this need in my third grade classroom i've got this need in a second great class so we went back to the table we tried to identify uh developmentally appropriate texts and lessons that would that would align with them and again with that concept of the mentor text so that as i mentioned in in the kind of an intervention approach what happens is that singular student now bears the weight of this lesson of this identification of this classification uh for the entire class and potentially for their school that that's that's one of the reasons why um you know students uh are depressed they don't they don't talk about it they don't bring it up it's very isolating uh we didn't you know we wanted to figure out a
083way that we could um not not position the student and so that's where we came upon the concept and the variety of identities so that it wasn't singling out one thing and a series of mentor texts that touch on all the different facets and all the different components of identity so that it's not teaching about transgender it's not teaching about divorced parents it's not teaching about you know asian americans or african-americans teaching about the many different facets of identity and students have exposure to many different types without necessarily needing to go into depth because the the whole premise of the lesson is in around acceptance all right i just wanted to follow up because i i just feel like that was that comment could be somewhat misleading i was wondering if you could go back
084to the pie chart with the identity components because i just want to point out that what you're telling us is that in sel when you're talking about identity it isn't just gender identity that we're discussing we're discussing religion we're discussing different family structures different race and ethnicity different cultures so this is not this sel is not purely defined by gender identity it's part of somebody's potential identity and we're just addressing that in addition to religion two culture two socio economic status i just felt this isn't just about gender identity and that's not the only focus of our sel when we talk about identity i just wanted to clarify that 100 and i know i know these two professionals can talk specifically to this the gender identity is a singular lesson uh there are there are
085four to five lessons in and around identity itself the one that uh there is one that that we lead with generally that's always in common regarding name and i don't know if you want to if you guys want to say any more but you're absolutely right that um within the concept of gender there's a gender identity sort of a feature in that that might be just something gender non-conforming and then there is also a second lesson in and around gender stereotype but then there are other lessons that touch on these and i just want to reinforce the notion that our social studies standards for our state civics is one of the components of this so while i know there's been some comments and questions about why this is not under health curriculum understanding one's identity
086and others identities and differences and and having respect for that is part of developing citizenship and and becoming part of making decisions and understanding um each other so it is about kindness and compassion but it also builds on that from an early age in our pre-k learning standards toward our civics curriculum in our secondary level really understanding what it means the foundations of citizenship so it's really building in this is a building block toward that as well so that foundation of decision-making and really our democratic principles i just want to make a distinction between identity and circumstances children nor any of us we are not we are not whether it's domestic violence substance use that does not define who we are it certainly is what we have to overcome but i just don't want to
087complete that with who we are in terms of identity and can i just follow up sorry i just wanted to make a comment i i think that the presentation this evening provided really comprehensive insight into what the curriculum looks like it it you know i think the data speaks for itself just the data that you presented paul about what the statistics are for those students who maybe express themselves in a non gender conforming way how what the impact of that is if it isn't kind of accepted from an early age i will just share without breaking any confidentiality that there are students in our district who are suffering and experiencing suicidality you know depression all of these things and i often wonder you know for some of these older teens if we had had this
088curriculum when they started our district in kindergarten would they still be experiencing the level of distress and suicidality and mental health issues that they're currently expressing so i just want to thank you for incorporating this into our district because i think you're saving lives at the end of the day thank you ethan yes yeah um that's right i thought that but my question is or when i read this my reading was okay it's good to talk about shared mission talking about shared values talking about involving families my prominent and i believe in this town and i believe just throughout the country everybody wants what's best for the kids how they get there is a different question but every you know so i'm going in with that intent when i listen to because my kids are
089out of the school system but when i listen to people come up here during open communication people send their emails or conversations there's not that feeling of shared mission and and my question is how do we get there and and i think the best thing that you said to me and and i wish you would emphasize it more is here's where we heard you and here's where we changed and here's the books because that says we're listening and i think it's very important to get everybody behind the basic concept not everybody's going to agree with it but at least it shows that we'll make adjustments and that was i think when we're talking about can we get families involved or just hear them small groups not big groups but you know in one of the
090fears i had when i read this is family workshop well workshop's great if we're going to listen to you when we're going to work with you or we're going to talk to you and i i know you're going in with the intent of working with people and you want to hear them but you know as well as i do a lot of people times people just they're they're looking for the first instance of there's a wall here they really don't want to hear from me and i don't know how to tell you to do it other than the one and frankly for me from a management perspective the most effective thing i ever did was compliment people when they proved me wrong who worked for me and say look i screwed up you know whoever
091did something here and they showed me i was wrong but i think that's really important and i don't know how else to convey it but the more you listen because we want everybody behind the whole thing so anyways listen i i want to thank you number one and uh i want to agree with you um i would hope that the concept of what we have heard and what we have learned from parents that come through and if and if it hasn't i certainly want to i want to emphasize that again in our review process where we talked about in terms of we got some really good critical feedback that said you know you've you've identified what your learning goals are and i just feel like this text this resource extends beyond it and and that
092was where we did make those changes uh but i wanted to mention that in general in every conversation that we've had when we go back over these goals that are on the screen they've had resounding um agreement from from anyone whether they're whether they're opposed you know theoretically opposed or theoretically in support the the area and i'll apologize if that was my main emphasis the area where folks seem to get tripped up and seem to create the habit is in the perception i believe of what we're teaching and and um and i'll use i'll i'll just take it out of potentially what might be the you know the hot button and i'll just i'm just looking at family structure in the right corner here family structure if as an adult if i assume okay so
093in this concept of identity they're going to teach about family structure and i think of it as an adult and i think of it perhaps as a as a fairly academic setting and i can picture you know a five question define um you know nuclear family define single parent define divorce define remarried defined same sex marriage define it's like that's not what the instruction is it's really um a lesson that is in and around exposure so you're reading a story and there might be two families in that are highlighted in the story and the two families you know you you see the characters and there's you know the mom and the dad and they're making breakfast over here and in this other one it's the grandmother that's uh doing what have you with the child
094who raises it and at the end of the day you're talking about in the lesson the things that the students did in common the things that might have been unique or special in terms of what the family was doing and so so the students have been exposed to the different family structures but it's not direct instruction take that same concept and it's applied in this in this question of gender identity to an exposure it is not an academic discussion with children around definitions of terms and so on and and that seems to lead to what i perceive as a lot of the confusion and concern so that when when we've had these conversations with parents generally speaking everyone will tell me they absolutely believe we have a wonderful community in which we live everyone will
095talk about the fact that they they support um a an inclusive uh treatment they support respect for others um and and where we have had either resources generally it's been resources that have perhaps gone beyond what we're targeting in the instruction we've received that feedback we've thought it through and as i did mention there are some current questions that are coming up about a particular text say and we've gone back and we've re-read it because i take that feedback seriously i do want to be able to listen and let folks know that they've been heard and it is exactly why as as carrie mentioned we want to have more of these opportunities because i can't get that same understanding from an email nor from notes i might jot based on what someone said without the
096opportunity to probe deeper and so it those have been the conversations in rosina at night rosina talked about those that we've had that have been very very fruitful um very very helpful for us and at the end of the day there might have been parts of the conversation that we decided to to leave in some disagreement about how we felt yep we did have that honest exchange with those individuals and with those families and it was it was really beneficial i don't think you're going to make everybody happy but at least that they were hurt and perception does become reality unfortunately and so it's it's their perception not yours and i think hence the small smaller more intimate school-based conversations i think will be really critical to this i think that'd be great other questions
097let me see if something i'll come back to you gail uh claire yes so um thank you very much for the presentation and i do uh appreciate the the listing the adapting and and teachers and in general are reflective every time they teach every new class you change and so with this curriculum um you need to adjust there definitely i think was some fear of the community and there still is fear and through um the school itself the individuals that you know the family connections that a school has i think is a great place to have these conversations and to have people be able to voice their concern but also to try to understand more um the the fact that everyone who asked for a meeting got a meeting you responded to the emails you
098did receive but still if there's a misconception of of what you're teaching you know you say perceptions reality but if perception is faulty it's not really reality it's reality is when you clarify is my perception correct or not and so if you perceive something educating talking to the teachers being part of the community i think people can get informed i was kind of surprised at some of the books that were recommended to be banned and so i purchased them so i could read them and read them with myself and with children um and one was about a teddy bear who instead of wanting to wear the bow tie around his neck wanted it in the hair and there was no mention of any body parts any you know in fifth grade is where i taught
099for 13 years and brought up body parts and it wasn't the puberty lessons in fifth grade i can count on a hand on a hand the five or six families that said we don't want to be a part of this very few families opted out of puberty education but that was the year that we would talk about it but it wasn't about relationships it was about changes within your own body and the same with the community officers who come in in fifth grade to talk about drugs and cigarettes and alcohol because these things are brought in at the developmentally right year i found the books that i read not inappropriate and i didn't see anything about them that talked about you know sex or organs or anything that people are afraid that they are talking
100about that so i'm glad you're continuing to look at what you have and re-evaluate or even add new text as they come out but it is real i work with children that are you know dealing with these issues and their friends are understanding and the kids see people in grocery lines and even our assistant secretary of health just one woman of the year with usa and she's an admiral and is transgender and kids see these things on television they see them in the world and it's it's important for them to kind of understand and i'm glad that you're doing it yeah um i wanted to talk a little bit about the research and i know you had sent a couple of articles in the um report so um one of the articles that you actually
101put in the report called mental health of transgender children who are supported in their identities actually uh showed in their conclusions that children who are socially transgendered compared to a peer group really did not have any increased levels of depression and very slight increased levels of anxiety so and this is looking at element this is only looking at elementary school the second article that you you yourself just in your presentation had referenced on the i think psychology today was looking more at um [Music] children who had transgendered and then looking at the stability of that over five years meaning whether they were looking to transgen to to uh go back to their original gender i did a study i'm sorry i did a search myself on research that's out there about what is the implications
102of potentially teaching this in the elementary school if there are any long-term studies and i could not find really anything out there that is specifically talking about teaching children about transgender identity in the elementary school and what is the outcome of that so i don't think and i i mean you can correct me if i'm wrong but i do not believe that there is any research out there that would be considered long-term studies peer-reviewed in the elementary school that shows that teaching this type of material or exposing children to this type of material has either a negative or a positive effect so therefore i i have a problem with essentially introducing this type of material to children that are very young in the elementary school without some type of scientific research that backs it up
103and i i really don't believe it's out there i don't think that you had it in your you know i don't think you gave it to us in the report i know there's a lot of studies here but they don't specifically address that and the one study which is the mental health of transgender children actually found that there was no differences in depression and elementary school children who were socially transgendered and very slight changes in anxiety levels now so i know you had the cdc 2019 report in your presentation but i don't believe that that really relates to elementary school children no thank you so if i'm remembering the the well i'll talk to you guys a lot of different things there so the the one about the five-year study that was really more intended
104to be in response to a concern that i heard at the previous meeting that had to do with rapid onset gender dysphoria and there were a couple of studies that we had seen that mind you they weren't necessarily longitudinal they were five-year studies because a lot of this stuff is um really just currently understudy i mean if you really if if if our goal was to get into a lot of education and public discussion in and around the question of gender identity itself its history you know all the different terminology that's associated with it to include you know gender dysphoria and the and the debates that live within in there is that a positive connotation term a negative connotation you know none of these things are things that that technically exist within our curriculum none
105of these things are necessarily learning objectives that we have but there did seem to be some growing fear and some growing you know frequency of comment from the public that related to the notion of if my child contemplates the existence of a person who is gender non-conforming they may become gender non-conforming that that was that was paul's interpretation of of what he was hearing um of some concerns within our community and so what i wanted to do in that report was one of the things as i wanted to be able to provide some uh you know some feedback to that concern i know that we had um a member of our community who who who came forward and said that they had experience with that and and um you know and and had brought that
106as a concern i i further know that we had a different member of our community uh i believe who identified self-identified as being in the lgbt community and said you know if if uh if heterosexuality were going to influence me the preponderance of heterosexual cues you know have had no impact on my my sexuality and and and was therefore saying the same auto apply relative to this um so what i'm trying to respond to is the notion that if there's a character in a in a book who's in any way shape or form gender non-conforming perhaps uh jacob's new dress a child would the child doesn't identify as transgender anything else just someone whose self-expression is such that they they uh he prefers to wear a dress or frilly clothing or something of that nature
107that doesn't mean if i read that book that i am going to automatically want to do the same so that that is some of the some of the findings that the american pediatric society has has shared and there's a quote in in the powerpoint to that um the question about the rapid onset gender dysphoria was addressed in one of those articles but again that itself all of these kinds of research indicators are not to demonstrate a positive impact of this simply to quell my hope would be to call a fear if that fear if that fear existed for any reason given that our curriculum is really about not about being able to help students identify gender identities our curriculum is about students being able to demonstrate respect for individuals i mean i i can find
108i know that you know we've pointed to general research and around the the benefits of social emotional learning and it really kind of speaks to that it really speaks to if you are providing character education if you are providing students with um you know positive examples of being accepting of differences that that has a positive impact on them that's the longitudinal research that i can point to because that's the goal of the curriculum there is a lot of new research that's starting to come out because in in all honesty people either haven't really studied transgender uh historically or if they have studied it it's been based on assumptions and models that quite honestly are um very likely outdated at this point and it's been conducted during a time when societal norms are such that there
109is a lot of pressure to withhold information about gender identity so i do anticipate that you know in terms of any questions that individuals might have about the larger concept of gender identity that there's that there's research that's emerging and that there's more research to come but rel but most of that would likely be targeted to any secondary level conversations our understanding of you know a lot of the big questions that were out there with the board and with the public had specifically to do more so with k to three and that's really been where we were trying to focus it and so i did try to pull together even even some additional and i could i could potentially look to have anything that's not already referenced in the board report uh referenced online but
110try to pull together some additional um resources that i found after uh writing the report that might might have been uh beneficial and and the only other thing i was going to say is what i thought i read on one of the research articles and i'll go back and reread it was that the uh when when students were affirmed in their identity in general that the anxiety was lessened they did not have heightened anxiety and when when essentially when people when the topic is not discussed when uh when people are not you know their identities are not acknowledged that that is when you have um a greater uh preponderance of anxiety um and depression so that's my recollection of what i read but i will honestly i'll have to go back and re-read it if
111uh if i misunderstood with one comment i mean i think that um you know part of my concern is that none of us really do know because i don't think the research is out there what is the effect of potentially introducing some of this material to young children and i mean i'm just going to read like one line out of one of the books that is i think you guys are using um so i am jazz jazz has a girl brain but a boy body this is called transgender i was born this way jazz likes girl clothes and princesses not trucks at first the school wanted to make jazz use the boys bathroom and play on boys sports teams but it didn't feel normal to me at all so i'm also going to read one
112other quick excerpt from a different book when you were born you couldn't tell people how you were or how you felt they looked at you and they made a guess maybe they got it right maybe they got it wrong what a baby's body looks like when they were born can be a clue to what the baby's gender will be but not always you might feel that your gender changes from day to day or year to year your feelings about your gender are real now my concern with that i have a couple of concerns with that is one is i have delivered 3 000 babies and i don't feel that i am making a guess when i tell the parents what the gender of that baby is and i don't think that there's any evidence or
113any research out there that supports that type of excerpt from a book and my concern is that if you read that to a young child what is that potentially and i i'm not necessarily expecting you to you know i do want to respond if i may um and so first thank you for that's one of the books i talked about um i wish i don't know if you have the the excerpt on the following page i might not have it in here all right that's one of the concerns and and you know to ethan's point it's one of the concerns i've heard in an email before it's one of the concerns i've talked about with parents in open dialogue and generally when that and i'll and i'll go back to the jazz book as well
114i believe both of these books if i have it correct are situated in the fifth grade um i know they're in the upper grades um and the the the book about the best guess goes on to say and and provide and i don't have it i can't quote it for you but it goes on to discuss um that and try to provide an explanation that the guess is the idea that when you're born uh people are making those decisions based on your physical anatomy um and the you know so i don't necessarily i'm not in love with the best guess and and i'm not in love with the fact that if you take that one quote on that one page on the left hand side and don't have the quote on the right hand side
115then it is possible to lose context of of what's there and so that was the book specifically that i was saying if i could find a better book i would i would replace that um but i do feel that the whole notion and the whole point of that story if you know under when when the story is read in its entirety um is able and and with the ill with the age of the child it's developmentally appropriate that that it's going to um the concepts going to carry through and if there's a simple question that can get answered without without going you know beyond where we want to go with it the i am jazz book in both of these books uh being in that fifth grade level attend specifically to state guidance that uh
116will identify that school districts um teachers specifically do need to respect the wishes of any child who chooses to change their pronouns and who chooses to use a uh a bathroom that that is different from their um from their uh you know assigned sex um these these are these are real mandates from the state of connecticut uh their their protections and rights that that we have to uh certainly uh abide by and and we have procedures for that but we need to have some education um for our students so so that that doesn't lead to bullying or other issues and where bullying generally exists most prevalently in schools and where and where sometimes violence and victimization happen can be in unsupervised areas such as the bathrooms so um so your point is very well taken
117but there is uh there is purpose full choice behind those those are books that we've read carefully and again that one i think it's it feels good to be yourself um that's one that um we've read and re-read and debated and each time we get a question on it we go back and pull it off the shelf and we read it again and we say um i'm comfortable with the language given the context but if i could find a better book that delivers that i would i would prefer any [Music] you know any any shades of question that i have to having a gap when having no resource at this time if i may enter party let me interject thank you i'm so glad for the question and we actually have some of those books
118here and just to ensure that we're getting the whole picture of it do you mind reading the book please to us those two pages i think would give greater context okay thank you no it's not that long but but part of it is is there's a difference between a baby sex and a baby's gender and if you don't understand the difference between a gender and sex it can cloud a lot of things so it says here see when you were born you couldn't tell people who you were or how you felt and the felt i really want to stress that they looked at you and made a guess maybe they got it right maybe they got it wrong what a baby looks like when they're born can be a clue to what the baby's gender
119will be but not always when people guess wrong it's okay to let them know ruthie was five when she told her parents i know you think i'm a boy but really i feel like a girl and i just have to say children boys like to wear necklaces to school sometimes my daughter likes suits and ties and she was treated with respect but she could be in another district and i know some of those districts and i've heard about some of those places where she would not have been treated well and i'm glad that my daughter can wear what she wants to wear and people are not bullying her but kids are bullied day in and day out when they're different when they don't fit in when they're not wearing the right clothes they are singled
120out and they come home crying and they don't feel like they fit and they don't belong and those kind of sad unhappy children color our classrooms and as a teacher i need to make sure that everyone in my class is safe and feels accepted and is comfortable and if they want to use the boys bathroom because they identify as a boy i will support them and if they want to use a non-gender bathroom i will support them because they need to feel safe in my room they need to feel safe in my school so sexuality and your anatomical body parts is not gender and and it's a hard concept to learn and it took me a while to learn it you know it wasn't natural at first i was very confused so i'm glad you're
121having these conversations to help people understand the difference and find a way to meet their children that are in their classrooms just like a mom or dad might have to deal with that in their own home because it's so important to know you're loved and accepted excuse me i'm going to ask please in the audience please lower your voice we're here talking about social emotional learning it's important to demonstrate that in appropriate ways thank you can i could i just just say one more thing so my concern with this paul is that i don't know and there's no research to tell me what is the effect of of this of a child reading this what is what is the potential effect and i'm not i'm not asking you because to try to answer it because
122i don't think the research is out there so this is what i'm concerned about is that you have young children and their brains are not fully developed and they're reading that the doctor might make a mistake and you can change your gender from day to day and year to year and i don't know and i don't believe anybody else knows exactly what how how that affects the child and it has nothing to do with you know not being accepting or not making all children feel welcome but i just what i'm concerned about is that we we all have the same goal here but i don't think we have we want we're we think we should get there in the same way now i i appreciate that and i can't you know i can't create obviously
123research that i don't have i'm going to respectfully say this much i know that for decades upon decades we have not provided education and not provided acknowledgement of the existence of transgender individuals and i do know what the research says about the impact of that and it is these statistics that are at the bottom of this slide so i i trust me when i when i say with every respect i i appreciate the notion but and and if we were trying to go far down a path with it i would i would very much um perhaps have a different different stance but given that we are really our our objectives with this is that solely of of respect acknowledgement and respect i i don't think that i think that if i think that we're on
124the side of improving these numbers and i don't anticipate that we're going to see a negative impact and i think some of the emerging research that's coming out uh is is showing positive trends and and i think that it's important i think you're asking an important question and i think it's important for schools to maintain that trust with parents so i think that more research and more information is is something that we want to be able to provide because i don't want that to be a question for anyone i don't want anyone to to have fears about it so so you know i respect what you're saying but my fear is that left unattended this is what research tells us will have with with those students so we do have the book lists are available
125on our website and you can pretty much if you google the titles you can get a youtube reading of any book so you don't need to purchase them oh excuse me pardon pardon me during uh comments are made during the public comments at the beginning of the meeting and at the end thank you ari i did just wanna and and i have research and i'm happy to share with everyone on the board as well as all of you there have been numerous studies along the lines of the results that you shared there that a gender non-conforming student is eight times more likely to attempt suicide than a gender conforming student there is clear data with regard to that so i feel like that that's our objective right to have and and it's and it's related
126to feeling validated or valued and and to be very honest in my experience home is sometimes not that validating space it's not a safe space for gender non-conforming children and teens and if we can provide that safe space at school and they can feel validated there you know then we're doing our we're doing our job ethan i had had a question about the statistics you have here just trying to understand you cited two percent transgender as a statistic my question is is that k through and i'm assuming it's not but i don't don't know so i'm asking the question k to 12 or is that i assume it would get higher as you go up in time or i mean i'm wondering because it's it's against kindergarten to third grade and i realize you yeah
127we haven't asked our you know certainly not locally we haven't done a study to identify um our gender identity of our of our elementary youth nor do we necessarily plan to i would tell you um the two percent is a national statistic i would need to go back to check on the age of that generally speaking though the the research is saying that your gender identity is stable from the time that you you essentially establish a gender identity so i would i would i would offer that the national statistic is is is a fairly stable i would have to go back to honestly check the records as to when they collected it i can tell you that our most recent 2018 youth at risk survey is given separately to middle school students and to high
128school students and the incidence rate for our middle school students that are identifying as transgender is also close to two percent i think it's like slightly lower it's like 1.8 percent or something but that you know and that's sixth grade through eighth grade i haven't teased it out by grade level no um but um i just assumed that it would be higher in the upper you know hard way i think that's a common um assumption and i don't um i don't have a you know a solid kind of a answer that i can give you on that but i i do feel that people you know i think it's a more adult conversation so people think they come to this you know it's a it's a common assumption people make that children come to this
129later on i think what some of the research that i've been reading is showing is students come forward later on but don't neces it's not necessarily that they either haven't had questions or haven't felt a certain way it's just a certain point in their time in time in their life when they have a relationship with their parents or with their friends that they're uh more open to talking about it and just a follow-up just on the numbers just you decided or on page four it talks about one lesson per gender stereotypes and one on gender identity is that for each grade or is that for that's for each of our grades in k through five okay so there's no we're going to do more this is when we move correct in middle school it's starting
130to get you know a little bit more technical at that point and it lives within the health curriculum it's not a it's not intended to be overly technical certainly not within the k-3 which has been kind of the big question and and uh you know based on some of the conversation we've seen by fifth grade in fourth and fifth grade we do have the added uh objective that i can i can use my own preferred pronoun and i can respect the choices of others for theirs and again that's not a we're all going to sit around in a room in a circle and we're going to identify our preferred pronouns it's if you know if someone has a preferred pronoun and they have chosen to use it and they disclose it we're you know we're
131going to have an upfront lesson so the first time that that happens that child's not made to feel uncomfortable i understand but you i thought you said that was state dictated it is so it's but it's also you know therefore it's a lesson that we provide to ready our kids i think that reduces some of the turmoil i agree but i think it's also just a good thing to do i understand but yeah they could take some of the fire away anything that has happened in younger grades in younger classrooms where students have have um asked for their a different pronoun to be used and we've accommodated with use of some other texts claire um so if i understand correctly there's the time that these lessons come can be fluid because if if a classroom
132is dealing with an issue on the playground or an issue within the classroom that lesson can be moved any lesson in the sel can be shifted around to deal with the current conflict or crisis that you're dealing with is that true correct other quest jason thank you also apologize to my colleagues on the board and the pres presenters today for being late um to the meeting [Music] i wanted to add to our notion of these statistics in a sense because on the one hand you know it could be you know we could look at say like a two percent kind of number and say these are a very small percentage of the population um but when we look at you know um the incidence of hate crimes where people are targeted for their identity um
133the most deadly identity in america is to be a trans person of color and we're talking thousands of identity-based murders and and so what we see is that even in this very small population we see them as incredibly vulnerable um and and so you know if we're we're looking at how we want to how we want to educate what do we want you know students to leave our schools with you know having these kinds of competencies having these kinds of sensibilities i think is really important in our state and um you know and and while two percent sounds small that we're still talking about 180 students um that's in in in our district right so um so i don't want that number to kind of minimize the the sort of significance and the the the
134value that i think um the the direction that that we're going um and i think um one of the you know i try to kind of comprehend like what is it that is so troubling about about transgender and i think for me at least i've seen some of the some of the discourse and some of the the talk the talking points and references seem to revolve around this uh this belief in the um the the link between biological sex and gender identity and that transgender identity does demonstrate that those two are different pieces of one's identity um and so it is a much you know a much deeper kind of you know understanding about uh about how identity is formed and the forces which which shape us um so i think in the wheel of
135identity that you showed you know there's um i'm really glad to see a whole range of of other of other positions and other you know things that shape who we are uh you know one one lesson i've seen done i don't know if it's done here but it you know starts with a heart and it says you know what makes your heart beat you know what are the things that that make your um that fill your heart and it has spaces in that drawing to identify different different parts of you and uh and i think the more that we give students the opportunity to understand that about themselves that it does produce these kinds of outcomes right the these learning outcomes that you've identified in the in the slide that you have here so i
136think that's this you know incredibly valuable and the process that you guys are talking about with continuous improvement i think is absolutely necessary um and that you know for for many many decades trans identity was persecuted and pathologized um people were imprisoned for it and um and so you know the fact that we're at a point now where we're asking what is the impact of this you know in the research i think it's really important to understand how slow it is to come to what trans rights activists have been asking for which is a validation of their identity and that our our academic system which does conde which does conduct research has to catch up they they are they are doing that work um and so i do anticipate you know more more research being
137done i hope it i hope it's done uh and you know in in the fashion that you're you're pointing to because uh the other statistics the other things that point to how that is impacted how how validation does produce these you know mental health results but also in terms of the sel framework that this is actually about helping all students access their education right that there's that social emotional learning produces academic outcomes too um so i think that's um that's something i think wanted to add to to the conversation um and it's sort of maybe unrelated but i'll throw it in there um there's one of the things that um the comments that i've heard is that um that teachers are experimenting on their on their students and that they're untrained in this material but
138i know that west hartford has a really robust professional development scheme uh that is every week basically there's professional development some fashion maybe not always on this but um really you know is distinctive in its um regularity whereas i know other districts have professional development maybe every other month uh or and other you know sequences that maybe aren't as robust um so i'm wonder if you can speak about teacher preparation and the kind of professional development that that you all have been working with the the teacher the elementary teachers in this area thanks jason for your comments i i also would like to highlight that one of our texts talks about culturally how different cultures see gender differently maybe then we may in american culture you know his and that historically marginalized groups based on
139gender identity maybe in other cultures perceived differently so i think native american culture and and maybe other cultures around the world may see gender differently than we do and that's something potentially to expose children to as well over time in in an educational system so um thank you for those points um but to professional learning so in october our teachers um engaged in a professional learning session where they were introduced to uh this this framework and these two lessons and the texts uh the original set of texts uh before they were received feedback were revised based on our teacher feedback as well we we get gathered feedback from them and it actually opened with a story of a family um who live in boston and their child and we positioned it that imagine because not
140all schools may currently have a student right now who is gender non-conforming or maybe transactively transitioning their gender and openly and so we asked them to position themselves as welcoming the family to their school tomorrow and the impact of that story and thinking about that family coming to their school was profound because we have a responsibility and we've taken pride as a school district in truly welcoming all families and all children to this district regardless of race religion and gender identity and um so that was a very profound experience i think for our staff to really personalize it and think about wow this child and family are coming into our school how are we going to manage this and support and welcome not just manage but also manage maybe children in the classroom and so
141that's why we we not only framed around the text but just in general how are we going to communicate how are we going to support our children and other staff in in in thinking about a family coming into our school district and a child coming into our school district so being really child centered about our professional learning was was important and then secondly looking at our learning targets and really framing our learning targets how did this fit into that larger sel framework and civics framework for ourselves thinking about the text themselves getting feedback on our discussion guides that we had prepared so we really wanted to give teachers the tool as as claire alluded to um there may have been fear in approaching this topic i know for for many of us not growing up
142with thinking about topics of gender identity not really even understanding it so even some of the vocabulary work we did have support from our lgbt plus alliance in some of that one-to-one maybe work and support and conversation um so we had representatives at each school supporting and with follow-up and even maybe modeling some of the lessons and support um so uh there was that initial piece um and our school principles were 100 supportive and presented you know the initial um professional learning so we've gone back to get feedback on that as we always do on our curriculum and again that that informed in december we had the follow-up and and that feedback informed some of our shifts so um you know we usually come back at the end of the year and and and inquire
143how do things go we added some other pieces to our identity curriculum for instance our name identity lessons and some other pieces to our lessons so we we come back to our teachers and get that feedback but um again that child-centeredness to our professional learning thinking about the reality of this because it is for our children not if this is going to be a situation because that you know two percent i think the research i think your point around and are thinking about research it's these are marginalized people in our society and i think we have to consider safety of all and you know research on the harm of hearing a story um you know we our fifth graders are also learning about enslavement in our colonial town and in our society so hearing about
144marginalization of other groups of people is not developmentally inappropriate they're learning about our colonial history and our history of america they're also learning about the amazing inventors in our society as well so they're they're learning about at fifth grade appropriately all the facets of our of our society and just piggyback one thing um in addition to those professional development opportunities that kerry mentioned to those major ones that we had as we've gone through this process um you know we we're here and we've heard feedback that might come to us the parent says that a teacher says that you know they don't feel prepared or what have you so we've engaged with our principals and we've asked them to re-engage with their staff and they've offered the opportunity where if any uh individual teacher needs any
145support whatsoever they have whether it be the principal the curriculum specialist or someone else in their building to come in and help support them with the lessons but realistically once we've gotten through the lessons through the professional development and the modeling that kerry describes and and there's good understanding in and around what's expected and that the expectations really lie along um a couple of guiding questions and a read aloud where the focus is demonstrating respect um you know typically the moral of the story is that the students enjoy the same um you know the same games the same friendships the same likes and dislikes regardless of their gender identity regardless of their race their ethnicity etc the teachers found that this was not a most teachers found that this was not a big lift that's
146not really been brought to my attention of [Music] significant gaps but we're always seeing that feedback as carrie mentioned and we have feedback mechanisms to make sure that we're always providing the professional learning that's needed i mean at the end of the day i think our teachers do a phenomenal job so i have every confidence thank you and uh thank you so much for this presentation can you go back to the slide where you had the lesson targets up there and the one i want to specifically ask about is i can identify examples of gender stereotypes and i find this is such an interesting lesson and you know there's been a lot of community engagement around uh this this very topic here and i think the vast majority of people who have provided feedback whether
147in person or by email or any other way have been very respectful and support most of the social emotional learning curriculum and they recognize that our efforts to help create our next generation of leaders requires people who can confidently interact with all types of their peers and and others regarding the gender identity pieces however one of the common themes that we've heard relates to whether in an effort to begin these conversations around accepting diversity we might actually be reinforcing gender stereotypes so you know a lot of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s and this was like the prime time for sesame street and the implementation of title ix we were we were taught that girls could dress like boys boys could become nurses girls could become us senators and champion athletes and
148supreme court justices and the framing back then was to sort of ignore gender stereotypes and just move past them to not acknowledge them to instead um just act as if they didn't exist and that there were no barriers to being who you wanted and how you wanted to be that way and so i think that this is one of the sources of discomfort in our community right now because we're now reframing the way that we think about stereotypes and this is like a complete analogy with race and all other things i can at least speak for me growing up north of boston and 70s and 80s it was we don't see color there are no barriers for girls you can be whatever you want and we're changing the way that we talk about these things
149now in recognition of the fact that we haven't really necessarily made all the improvements that we thought we would make by teaching kids of our generation my generation to just not think about stereotypes so this shift and this reframing i think is a little uncomfortable for for some people and i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the benefit of identifying gender stereotypes instead of kind of ignoring them and telling our kids you can just be whatever you want thanks deb um it's a great question and it's i mean it's a really great question i was um i heard the question as well from some of our from some of the public and i was you know i had to soak it in and i had to appreciate it because um i wanted
150to understand what folks were were initially concerned about and and i think you characterized it very well which was you know a good perspective for me to be able to try to talk to folks about and do more research around uh what immediately comes to mind is uh and i won't have the year and i don't have the website handy but i could i could come up with it but it was a study that was done fairly recently and it was in great britain and it was done with kindergarten students and they were asked and i apologize i don't think i've used this at the board table but i know i've shared it with others when they've asked this question they asked students in a kindergarten classroom to just draw a picture of a firefighter
151draw a picture of a pilot and draw a picture of a doctor and as you might guess uh the overwhelming majority and i can't i can't quote the specifics but it was the overwhelming majority of students both male and female drew pictures of male characters as firefighters pilots and doctors um and then what they did was they brought in three guest speakers that were dressed up um the pilot was fully in pilot garb with a pilot's helmet on the firefighter was fully dressed up with a big firefighter's hat and then i don't know what the doctor had i think i think it was like a surgical mask over their face so that they initially couldn't identify the gender of the individuals and of course the shock value was when they when they took off all
152of those things they were all female role models in these in these professions and the students and it's all on film and to watch the children's reaction the surprise and the awe and then the conversations that happened it was a demonstration that at a very early age these stereotypes are are just learned and they're not um they're not explicitly taught or anything else it's just there's a you know at the end of the day no matter what there's research study i was reading that that basically says if a child is a is in contact with societal influences if they're in front of tv if they're out with their families at stores if they go to movies if they go to school you know society inundates them with subtle messages all the time that that trains
153potentially stereotypes or bias and you know that i reflected on that as i was thinking about it my own granddaughter and sure i'm always trying to do the things that are educationally sound and responsible encourage her in stem i give her educational games but i think about the amount of influences between myself my wife her parents and the percentages of which those things might fall along gender stereotypical lines and so the need for it and i need only reflect back on our last board of education report on computer science and the under representation of females there there is a genuine impact to these uh to these hidden messages and so i would i would respectfully offer that the approach of not encouraging people through direct instruction that says sure we recognize there are gender stereotypes
154but but they're just stereotypes they're just that you can you can you can have examples and we seek to provide those positive examples i i think back to the title uh the title ix celebration of some of the amazing female you know graduates that we've had in the incredible things that they've gone on to do and being able to ensure that we're putting those good models and those good examples in front of children there's a great text that we identified in support of that in fourth grade i believe it's called mary wears what she wants and it's the story and i i forget her last name but she's an actual congressional medal of honor recipient she lived in the i think it was the 1800s and was involved in the civil war and she you
155know during the time it was conventional to wear dresses and this and mary wanted to wear pants and that's what she did so there's a great historical lesson within that there's a great role model lesson in terms of the accomplishments of this uh of this very spectacular individual who happen to be female and then there's a great gender stereotype lesson in it that you know provides students with the with the knowledge and understanding that it is okay to have that ability for self-expression uh there are other you know the pink is for boys kind of a thing pink it gets really the the more all that stories pink is for anyone um girls can play with trucks and things of this nature like it's okay to have these interests and the books go through it
156and we can appreciate some of those stereotypes as adults but as you know the really the moral of the story and the whole lesson that's being instructed is for students to realize that it's okay uh to have interests outside what might you know might what you might later call a gender norm other questions comment yeah um i want to go back to the question of um why the um well this i want to talk for a minute about the state mandates in terms of um sel and but particularly in gender and you can correct me if i'm wrong my understanding is that in the fifth grade or the eighth grade i'm not sure which one the state does mandate a lesson on gender possibly gender identity so we are not really in compliance with the
157state mandate because we're we've introduced this much earlier and my question is why are we not following the state mandates or whatever guidance um on this particular issue when i'm sure we're following the state mandates and guidance on most things no i i thank you um i would say that we're absolutely following the state mandates uh the state talks about um the use of pronouns and uh that is within our within the fourth and fifth grade that we teach that and that is in accordance with guidelines the state talks about when you talk about teaching about um you know in connecting having having a further discussion about okay let's talk and i and i could pull up the specific i had the specific learning objective identified but it's students will be able to identify the
158differences between gender identity gender expression biological anatomy and sexual orientation and that's that's a middle school health standard that's taught in our middle school health that is not what we're what we're teaching at the elementary level um we do you know there's no there's no mandate that says from the state that you cannot acknowledge the existence of gender folks who are gender questioning transgender etc so we're not we're not um in conflict or or not in compliance with any state mandate and it kind of gets back to what is it that we're teaching um we're teaching lessons in and around um respectful respect for individuals in their self-expression so one of our books um in the uh i'm trying to think of one of our texts i'll go back to i need my glasses i'm
159sorry i'll go back to the color red you know the red was about the crayon that had uh the outside wrapper was different than the color that it drew uh and that the notion that throughout the story this inanimate object you know is having trouble because it's trying to conform as it it it thinks it's a blue crayon because it's outside wrapper says blue and it can't draw blue it can't draw water it can't draw this can't draw that and then eventually toward the end of the story it acknowledges all the things that it can draw within the color that it is and so it moves from a deficit model of seeing itself to a to a more affirmed model yeah they're you know it's not a that that technically falls as one of our
160read aloud stories in one of our lessons under gender identity although it you know it doesn't doesn't mention gender identity doesn't mention gender it's really a story that's intended around the objective of having comfort in your self-expression and not looking at conformance and and and limits that are set upon you from the outside world but appreciating those things those skills that you have and those opportunities that you have to contribute and be valued so that's why that lesson while it is the gender identity lesson that we've chosen is a social emotional learning lesson it's not a lesson about gender identity but it's something that if i'm a youth that was questioning my identity i can connect with that and i can say wow the way i'm thinking about the world might not be the right
161way i should think about what i have to offer not what um you know the reasons why i i feel like i i don't have something to offer because i feel differently than this you know so so that's not an over sort of a piece it's not it's not in conflict with anything it's not an indoctrination and it's not um trying to to overtly teach something about sexuality or uh or or realistically or gender identity and the difference between gender identity anatomy those are not objectives and they're not topics that come up in the story they're not objectives of the story uh the objective of the story is for really for for people to have you know a more assets kind of a benefit uh outlook instead of a deficit but outlook so so in
162that way i honestly gail i don't think that we would in any way shape or form not be in compliance and and where we do get to in fifth grade and you you uh talked about i am jazz and i am jazz actually comes under gender stereotypes as a lesson and it's a fifth grade text and it does acknowledge um the fact that there is a fifth grade character jazz who's gender non-conforming but it talks specifically about stereotypes within that the idea that um while you know i am this person i can still like these things you know it's all about it's all about the likes and the dislikes it's not about um it's not trying to teach uh anything that would be in any way shape or form construed is not in compliance with
163a yeah i think compliance was probably not the right no but i i mean i appreciate it yeah i think what i was trying to say is that the state doesn't mandate in any way that we teach about gender identity in the early elementary school i'm not saying we're not in compliance i'm just saying that there is no state mandate for that whereas you know for example like the pronouns there is a state mandate or sure i i mean my best honestly my best response i mean we have a responsibility for the state to to ensure that we're you know we're setting conditions because because that's really the way that i look at this curriculum it's the conditions that we're setting for children to feel safe to feel accepted to see themselves reflected those that's
164the guidance that we have received it's it's like a safe school climate concept um and we're trying to recognize and acknowledge all the diversity that we have here in the district and not be excluding it would it would feel awkward to me to say that we're going to acknowledge you know all different aspects of identity except for this group and and that's all that we're trying to do is that acknowledgement and acceptance so i don't i don't know if that answers your question i cut you off i apologize yeah it does all right i really don't mean to put you on the hot seat but something that just keeps gnawing away during this entire presentation is again going back to this you know our sel includes all of these things about identity disability culture race
165age ses religion family structure and yet the only area of discontent that has been vocalized is this gender piece and i'm wondering if you guys have any thoughts as to why this is i thought a little about that you know i it starts to stem into the realm of you know personal conjecture but um you know jason made comments earlier this evening about the fact that it's been a topic that's been relatively taboo for quite a while hasn't been talked about um openly in society when i was in school essentially the same thing was true about the lgbt community it was a taboo topic it wasn't discussed um it it you know personal experience speaking only as paul uh it generated you know the potential for fear oh if i you know if i have
166a friend that that comes out to me and tells me they're gay and i hang out with that friend um will i be gay will i be thought of as gay et cetera is that a bad thing and those were the connotations because the the lack of exposure just uh and this is what bree this is what research tells us just breeds unintended bias and and typically it's negative because it is it is uh an element a group of people who are different from the majority and therefore um the the the emotional connotation uh is typically negative and and so i think i think there's an in you know any opinion that any individual wants to have on a subject um relative to you know how it how it uh aligns with personal beliefs religious
167beliefs etc um is totally separate from the universal that everyone seems to have general agreement with there's a responsibility that we have to to be uh to set conditions for all students to be schools or a place of acceptance schools or a place of safety schools or a place where where it doesn't matter any elements of your identity don't matter our responsibilities to you as an individual for your education and for your well-being never get any disagreement on that topic so the notion of a lack of acknowledgement of any one group and the impact that it has in recognition of the of the potential negative impact that it has is not in alignment with that mission to be able to provide and and that's not to say that there's any effort you know let me
168change the topic from gender identity to let me spin the wheel and i'll just change it to religion and we have board policy and we have lessons that look at religious traditions we're not trying to indoctrinate children into any one religion or another we're not trying to say that your religion is less positive than this other religion we are simply trying to provide exposure for students to recognize there are those individuals who have different religion than you may have and they're still good people and you can still be friends with them and you can still play with them on the playground replace religion with race ethnicity skin color replace it with physical ability disability our goal is not is neither to promote indoctrinate defend debate any of the attributes of identity merely to acknowledge and
169affirm our common humanity ari it's a really good question and it's a hard one for us to answer from where we sit on this side of the topic but it is one that we're trying to better understand through listening and we think that we'll be able to get there i do feel confident that in our plans communication plans going forward with schools we'll be able to understand better where some of the angst is coming from so for right now we're trying to clarify um any confusion or misconceptions that are out there and um but we would we welcome people to come forward and share what specifically gives them pause or consternation around this topic and like these are some stories uh some stories right from from authors and and gayla's listening to comes and we
170teach children to to understand in fifth grade but you know all along the way but in fifth grade this is a story of a child um but we i really do look forward to hearing stories from our community um you know we we've heard the stories of of families who have felt marginalized in our community and we've we've needed to respond we have a an obligation to respond and but we also have an obligation to respond to parents who are concerned with what's happening and and feel for their children that this may not be the right thing so so we appreciate that um but we need to have an appropriate form to do that and so this was the starting point i i hope of of of a reset to the conversation and uh to
171to have a place in the forum to do that and um we appreciate your listening and your good questions to help us get there claire um when i when i look at the chart i i do think even a school-based conversation about disability is helpful but all the things in that chart most people can define you you're not going to get a big argument about the definition but when it comes to gender it isn't something everybody is as comfortable with defining understanding the changes that we've seen in schools and the changes that are not as hidden because for a very long time there were gender issues that were hidden and we didn't talk about them we didn't have stories about them and those many people stayed hidden and so i do think there's a lack
172of knowledge about that one section that these school-based conversations and time to just learn learn what it is what it isn't be able to share your fears talk to the teachers talk to the people in your community i think it's really great and i'm looking forward to seeing what you guys do this fall ethan um just one thing and i think we're gonna sort of hit on it but just to build on it when you define success because you do have success you know by the workshops my hope is it's more in bringing people together by going out and talking to particularly those who have struggled with this because i think if you communicate hope you may not get everybody to want to have what you want and maybe people may not agree but lisa
173communications there and it can be hopefully somewhere where there's a balance and everybody feels like it's part of because it's not healthy to have such division so that'd be my one request i agree and i would want i mean you're trying to get there too my measure of success would be that that folks have that understanding of what we're trying to do and and that they trust that regardless of where they are on any spectrum that they recognize we're not trying to overstep family conversations and i know we're not there today based on what i hear you know through email or through public comment but i do hope that we're going to get there i think a willingness to communicate is critical and i think if you're doing that which you sounds like you are
174and i have no reason to doubt it that's critical because people do feel just from listening to them and the emails out of alignment or they can't speak so thank you other questions comments jason um so i wanted to ask about the youth at risk survey um and i i just can't remember if we've talked about that before it's been what's that it's been years it's been years it's it's been on hold uh we we generally do it every two to three years the last time we administered it was in 2018 we were and we we did not have the opportunity to administer or we did not take the opportunity i should say to administer it during the pandemic but i expect that we'd likely be looking to do that again and it informs our
175you know our youth at risk relative to any range of topics be that substance abuse um you know sexual risk behaviors at a young age um all you know all manner of things and uh we then try to look at to see if we have the appropriate education and programming if things if some you know i seem to remember andy crickman if i'm wrong like vaping came up one year as there were a lot of students that were engaged in vaping so we said oh we need to put some educational programming in relative to the risks of vaping because it seems to be taking off and at a younger and younger age and we just want to make sure that students and families you know are informed of uh you know any potential hazards because
176the for a while there was a myth out in the public like oh this is like the safe form of you know tobacco usage or what have you so um that that's like a very very broad definition of what it is um sorry i just wanna get a little bit more understand is it uh something that all districts use is this a model that you that has been developed here so uh there is a state model for the youth at risk survey that we have aligned to however uh we found you know a couple of some of the questions some of the formatting in the state model to be a little bit unwieldy so we've customized it and we have you know we have the ability to do so it's not um we're not precluded
177from from doing that we have also at times partnered with some town agencies uh as it specifically relates to grants that they've received to not only if they if they help and support us in the implementation of the survey uh grant money can then be afforded to help with services in response to any identified needs within the town so uh we've enjoyed that partnership in the past as well but we've do so and we've done it both ways we've done it on our own we've done it in support do we know if there's any funding for this in sb1 with the student mental health bill i don't have that knowledge off top my head i don't recall specifically if there's anything targeting that jason but there is certainly increased funding at the the state level
178and certainly increased interest in in providing resources not only for student mental health but to identify uh students that are struggling whether it be with identity whether it's with addiction whether it's with uh certain other behavior risks is there a plan for when it will be done again or is that under an assessment of the availability of funding and grants no it's honestly it's it's probably been more just uh the availability of time so i would expect i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna say i would expect we'd probably be administering again in next school year uh-huh it's 20 to 20 22-23 okay thank you any other questions or comments all right well thank you so very much uh echo all that was shared questions enlightenment thank you so very much for sharing with us where we
179were and where we are now and cannot echo enough how greatly appreciated it is it is you are and i'm just thinking again of our role as board members and we have three primary roles one of them certainly being policy not only to implement policy but to uphold policy and we know we have educational equity policy 1800 which supports this and advocates for this and it's important for us to know uh teammates and and those who may be viewing that when it comes to upholding policy it's not an a la carte approach uh when it comes to our educational equity policy it's not an a la carte we'll apply it here but maybe not there it is one where it refers to all of our students so thank you so very much for ensuring to
180do that and we know that when conversations are had and topics are addressed people respond differently so thank you for receiving the questions thank you for receiving the concerns and i would not i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge again the importance of talking about this because we know there are certain topics let's say 70 plus years ago that would not have been very welcomed in some communities uh certainly as it comes to race relations and there were persons who responded then with oh no no no no but look how far we've come but if we did not get clear evidence this weekend of how far we still have to go so those that may still not be convinced of the challenges our society continues to deal with well please we had a
181very stark reminder of that this weekend and so thank you again for being proactive with these measures we look forward to hearing the updates in the fall thank you and so with that we now will go to our personnel report and we'll have mr giulio duarte who's been quite patient thank you so much [Music] good evening everyone so our personnel report can be found on page eight of your packet and as you can see this is one of our largest personnel reports as it primarily reflects the end-of-year resignations as well as the end-of-year retirements since my last personal report to the board we did hire two contracted teachers as well as two interim teachers so just a reminder folks that are on uh contracted teachers are someone who we're hoping to see stay with us
182for the long haul and an interim teacher is essentially filling in for a teacher that's out on leave so this year we had 16 end-of-year resignations and 21 end-of-year retirements i can say that i had the privilege of meeting with uh many of the folks that are retiring and it was truly a highlight of my day to see their energy and their passion and their dedication some of them after 30 years of being in education yeah jason is really something to be just admired uh and and i know that and i know many of them personally too and so i know they've left certainly a legacy behind in their building and i think throughout the district so i want to just take a moment and personally thank them on behalf of the district for their
183service to students and families with that said our turnover rate for the year looks uh like we'll be heading towards about four percent so again that is made up of primarily our retirees we do anticipate getting a few resignations over the summer that tends to be typical but in terms of staff recruitment i have to say that i am truly pleased with our efforts thus far i think we knew going into to this that we wanted to be very proactive and we've been very proactive not only in my office but i think all of the administrators i'm really just being diligent about that so we've attended multiple career fairs including uconn and cracks minority recruitment fair we held our own west hartford career fair which was very successful and i'm pleased to report that we've
184already identified several candidates several very strong candidates that we see as great fits to join our west hartford family and are moving forward in that process i also wanted to just quickly report on our leadership role since we do have a couple openings so depending on which uh we're looking at we're at various stages in the process so certainly in our social studies department supervisor tomorrow we'll be wrapping up our first round of interviews uh really pleased with the candidate pool there a lot of experienced folks some new folks and and so it's been great to go through and i think it's always energizing uh one of the things i've been doing in my role is just meeting with all of the candidates that come in to interview for any leadership role and it's been
185great just for me to talk to them but also to hear just the perspective of other folks of what they see as west harford and why they're coming here and so it just a good reminder that we're doing a lot of really really good work that's really attracting some strong candidates because they believe in the work that we're doing so i think that's always great for me to just reinforce and recalibrate as far as the connor principal position so we'll start that interview process next week again had a good applicant pool for that and excited to go through and see those candidates and then we're also working on creating and gathering stakeholder feedback so that we can create the leadership profile for charter oak so uh last week i sent surveys out to all of
186the parents and caregivers i also sent those to the staff at charter oak have sent an email inviting any member of the charter row staff that would like to meet with me personally for one-on-one interviews i'd be happy to do that and we'll be hosting a uh i guess what would you call it a conversation with the hr director for parents and guardians in the morning for charter oak and one in the evening so that i can hear feedback as well from that community so i feel very confident that i'll have a strong sense of what that community is looking for we know that's a very important hire for us and all of them are particularly we want to really pay attention to that and i think we'll have a strong leadership profile that we'll
187be able to to post and also begin with that process so um that is where we are right now and i'd be happy to answer any questions that the board may have thank you thank you questions comments regarding yes claire yeah um i was just looking at the teacher resignations and um about or ten of them were only a year and many of them special education and i'm just wondering what the shortages in special education are these resignations um are we looking for special ed teachers or you know is there a shortage right now and do you know what we're doing to try to get more specialized sure so i i know melissa's been actively recruiting and her team looking at applications again during some of those career fairs i was highlighting and actually texting
188her right after interviews with folks they're saying hey here's someone put on your radar at our career first she's identified so they've actually gone through and interviewed several folks if you remember back too when i did our non-tenure renewal meeting we had several folks on there that really are strong candidates too so we're continuing to to reach out to them and again you know i don't want to say that it's not going to be a heavy lift but it's certainly a lift that we know needs to happen and we also it's really important i've been stressing this with all of our administrators is regardless of what we think i don't want to rush any process it's really important that we go through and we diligently meet with candidates we go through that process and we
189make sure that they're the right fit for us um and so again we'll go through that i'm i'm confident that melissa is doing a great job with her team and they're you know actively looking at that as far too i do just want to highlight you look at something that says you know it's a one year they've been here one year it's hard to pinpoint and i've had conversations with folks with exit interviews i offer anyone that's resigning or leaving the opportunity to meet with me for an exit interview and and some folks have taken me up on that and a lot of it it's various reasons um to be honest with you it's not a west hartford even a teaching piece it's families relocating um you know partners or spouses getting different opportunities that
190thou puts them in a different role within their family structure so you know we want to be understanding of all situations and again it's good for me to meet with them because i want to make sure that there's no theme that we need to be looking at or thing that we should be worried about and there's nothing that has come up so i appreciate the question though other jason yeah julio thanks for the report um i noticed one of the the um the teachers here is educated in massachusetts and and from pennsylvania and it made me it triggered a thought about out-of-state teacher certification and what does that look like for us i can't remember what the the legislative landscape is for um hiring teachers with connecticut certs in state certification um given you know
191that we're looking at potential shortages in the future can you remind us what does that landscape look like right so there certainly is a certification process they need to go through um to be honest connecticut tends to be one of the hardest districts to get um you know certification rolled in and we've had we're actually working with one of uh a teacher they're looking to come here from massachusetts and really struggling um to go through that process and they're actually they have their doctorate um they were a in the same role in massachusetts for many years and and everything we've seen they're a real rockstar candidate and we're just struggling with some of the pieces that um we need to get and and go through with the state of connecticut i can tell you that
192we've got several folks really one in my office that's outstanding at going and supporting people through this process because it's nerve-wracking it's not easy and um you know to go back to that person one of the things they actually had to do believe it or not was go back and contact their professors in college that um some of them were 10 years ago and asked them for their syllabi um and we had to present that to the state so i appreciate the laughter although i don't know that it's been a laughing matter because it has been a lot of work and i appreciate the professors being so accommodating but that's the type of thing that we're working with and certainly expressing that to the state and asking for some flexibility and asking them to be
193accommodating but you know i think it's important and and that's one of the things again that attracts candidates to west hartford they know that we have people that are going to work with them and not just say hey here's what you need to do let us know when you got it someone in my office will actually follow up we have great relationships with people on the state level to be able to actually call instead of just go email back and forth get on the phone and say can you just tell us exactly what it is that you need so that we can communicate that with our person and go through that so but i wish i could say jason that it was easier it actually seems the opposite folks leaving connecticut to go to other
194states seems to be very easy sometimes it's just filling out a form and paying some money but that's not the case um vice versa so okay thanks for the update yeah other questions again um yeah i just was curious are these numbers of resignations and retirements about average are they high they are they're about average actually i had spoken to liz earlier today and she had projected 25 retirements so we actually came in a little bit below that um again there may be some you know typically with retirements they would have told us by now uh resignations we may see some some pieces here and there um you know on some levels i think it's average and i'm not overly surprised and a lot of people i've talked to like i said it's they actually
195kind of hung in there because they didn't want covet to be their final year and so i think had we have not had covet they may have gone um but in their mind they wanted to try to go out on normal terms and so they've gone through some of that other questions comments all right thank you so very much thank you thank you now we will move on to routine matters approval of the minutes looking to approve the minutes of the may 3rd 2022 regular board of education meeting is there a motion a motion fix up thank you is there a second second any discussion all of those in favor say aye aye any oppose the eyes have it all right thank you now on to information and reports board members do we have any
196communications and reports from other boards ethan well it's not from another board but um it was just this sort of disclosure type thing uh at last board meeting we had two weeks ago one of the speakers during open communication identified two policies that they said that we had not fulfilled in terms of our wireless compliance in terms of the team nicknames and i got a couple emails over the weekend indicating that from other people so i did go back to lorna last night because i was about to take the red eye and um asked if we could have the corporate council look into it because i think we want to be in compliance so just to let everybody know that i did request that thank you yes and so thank you so much ethan yes
197you did and that request was has been passed on to our corporate council they are looking into that that dr murrah please if you would like to add an audition i'm just gonna say yeah we did have that conversation uh we did pass that on to the corporate council i can tell you that um their their initial response was that you know we've discussed this matter they're confident that the procedure we followed was was the right procedure to do so and they're gonna follow up on that with the letter i appreciate i just figured we should no absolutely it's a good question ask okay thank you ethan other uh updates from other boards comments all right i do have a brief one um just uh speaking on behalf of the foundation for west hartford public
198schools as we certainly know this is a wonderful foundation that helps to raise funds and to create grants for our teachers to apply for and the results of that grant funding goes back into our classrooms and our school system so it definitely is a win-win that's mutually beneficial and there is a new grant that has um been issued and you get the correct name of it and it's the tom moore superintendent grant uh the intent is to raise 26 000 representing the 26 years or more than 26 years that tom moore has contributed to our district so once you share that effort that's underway please certainly do reach out to the foundation you can reach them online and contribute um and not not only for uh this wonderful effort for this grant but there are
199other grants as well other grant funding this is something that happens year round for those of us who recall our pre-cova days we certainly remember the west hartford cooking uh cook in with the apostrophe at the end and that was a wonderful event that happened just down the hall that collected and gathered many individuals lots of festivities but unfortunately because of the pandemic that has been put on hold but very impressed with the foundation for they have continued to be eager and persistent and find ways of raising funds and again it's for our students it's for a classroom so please certainly want to give that recognition any other comments or updates board matters all right so we now shall move on to non-communications and reports but we've already had that thank you so much dr
200morrow for speaking on behalf of our student representatives on to future business announcement of future meeting dates tuesday june the 7th 2022 regular board of education meeting at seven o'clock here in the legislative chamber room 313 this will be our last board of ed meeting of the academic school year do we have a request for future agenda items comments from visitors do we have any visitors here that would like to make a comment all right if you can please approach the podium share your name and your address please and the same rules apply three minutes per individual 21 minutes per subject matter charlotte will hold a yellow card when you're down to one minute and a red card when your time is expired thank you lori schwartz one timberlane i just want to speak briefly
201about policy making in west hartford and what i want to comment on is that number one i was very impacted by hearing the different opinions by the various board members here and i can see that there are varying opinions about the gender policy that is being proposed to be implemented and in setting policy before doing so i think is very important when you have diverse opinions within the board when a member of the diversity committee has openly admitted that there are materials that they are using because other more adequate materials have not yet been published i think we need to take that very seriously there's an absence of good research to support the program that you're putting into effect interest groups have not met yet to consider and to really digest the opposing viewpoints of
202other parents in this town and we know that there are many parents who do not look at gender as a social construct but look at it more from a medical biological standpoint there's no opportunity to exempt children from this program and also looking at the past in west hartford because i was a student here and a teacher in 1972 the west hartford individualized math program was one that the parents were vehemently opposed to and felt it would be a failure the board went ahead and approved that policy and it failed many children in this town here we're talking about an ideology that ultimately leads to medical interventions and permanent changes in a child's body and i would ask you as a board you have everything you need right now you can be respectful to children
203you can nurture any trans child who walks into your school you have psychologists to deal with them you have parent conferences to deal with that you can teach respect every teacher in this town knows how to treat children with respect and kindness and you do not need to implement a program that has not been researched has not been approved by the parents and for which materials that are appropriate have not yet been devised i'm asking you to halt this program for the sake of the children in this town and for the parents to really show that you believe in diversity and that you respect the parents in this town thank you are there any other comments thank you my name is mary from acadia street and i would simply like to follow that with the
204true meaning of the word gender which is being misappropriated broadly which i really hadn't learned that myself before the last one month the word gender comes from the greek root g-e-n which means to give birth and i was very so warm to learn about dr harris's career because while i voted for you i really didn't know that you are an ob gyn and so when we speak about gender we're really not speaking about one sex or another sex or non-sex this terminology called non-binary because without the physical capacity to give birth and lineage which is written down if you work it look at many words which have those root meanings in them it all means progeny moving forward and in the meanwhile our world is suffering a crisis of near to zero birth rate and
205it has been stated and promulgated just within the past 48 hours i've read that we need to have more people giving birth and so i would just charge the board that this meaning of gender is has been misappropriated it really means two complementary sexes that are not alike and there's no spectrum within that they're completely different and everything that's being talked about in what they call gender identity is really personality traits thank you are there any other comments comments all right so with that we do not have an executive session seeking a motion to adjourn so moved is there a second second the meeting adjourned at 10 14. you