Board of Education Meeting of May 3, 2022

001on this tuesday may the 3rd 2022 7 o'clock charlotte may you please call the roll dr chang present mr goldman here dr harris here ms nazarella present miss poland here dr steinberg here dr thomas farquharson here student representative andrew maglio president student representative avery woods weber here thank you andrew may you lead us in the pledge of allegiance please [Music] we do not have a revision to the agenda order and we now will go to superintendent's presentation where we will receive presentation of the finalists for the west hartford board of education teacher of the year okay thank you this is the first meeting in may every year we announce our teacher of the year finalist for west hartford public schools which we know is an achievement we have a standard we try to set when

002we decide whether to grant tenure to a teacher we meet and we talk about does that teacher exhibit excellence or the potential for excellence to be in the top 10 percent of teachers across the field and um you know with this being teacher appreciation week i'd be remiss and not saying thank you to all of our teachers and i think our three nominees tonight would be the first to tell you they are proud to represent so many fantastic west hartford educators who are deserving um of these accolades in this honor so the teach of the year process is rigorous and begins with nominations from other teachers nominees submit a resume an essay and recommendations finalists then have a lesson videotaped and the final three are then formally interviewed by the teacher of the year committee

003i would point out this teacher of the year committee is by their colleagues this isn't central office at all i get notified who the three finalists are um remarkably close to tonight so i haven't seen any of them until just in the hallway which very excited though i know just how skilled these three finalists are so if they would come up um troy jones michelle hagerty and alana goldberg [Applause] all right i'm going to start with alana since january of 1998 alana has been a speech and language pathologist at charter oak elementary school she has also provided services at whiting lane king phillip and hall high school during her years with west hartford public schools i know alana well as she has served on the superintendent's advisory for years and has been a just a

004tremendous voice not just for charter oak staff but for what's right in our community and isn't afraid to tell me what's right which is something i greatly appreciate from alana so it is with great pride um that i give you this is one of our three finalists [Applause] michelle hagerty since august of 2000 michelle has been in elementary classroom teacher at smith school and i'm currently first grade and she's a teacher that exemplifies the it takes a village philosophy to education you ask anybody at smith about michelle they will tell you that she is ingrained not just in her children's life but in the whole smith community's life and what um i really appreciate is she forms partnerships not just with those children in her classroom but with the families of those children and exemplifies

005that belief that it takes all of us coming together not just to raise our children but to educate them and to make them who we want them to believe so michelle thank you so much [Applause] now finally this is one that i've known the longest we pretend over time that we change from who we are at 15 16 17 years old i knew troy as a student at connor during that time when i taught and he is the exact same lively ebullient happy presence who goes down the hall and you know when he's there just as you did when he was 16 and he's a leader and he is one of our great pe teachers um since august of 2002 he has taught pe in west hartford at king phillip and at bristow and we're

006so lucky to have him as a teacher i'm lucky to have him as a colleague i i also should point out if you go deep into records and is one of the few people that's been here a long time i contend so i do have this institutional memory troy still holds the record for the 5 000 meters at connert high school 16 minutes five seconds [Applause] think you're breaking the 16 mark now but it's with great pride that i present this to troy [Applause] so congratulations to all and at the end of the month this will be announced to um west hartford's teacher of the year and they'll move on to the state and then the national teacher of the year competition but really i i mean it all three this year are so deserving

007so congratulations [Applause] so i would like to say professionally and personally i want to take this moment just to thank and congratulate tom moore for everything that he's done for our district so so as many of you know tom's been a resident in west hartford a teacher in west hartford and obviously most recently an incredible superintendent um it's a challenging position to be in we joked a couple years ago about it being similar to a place kicker in the game of football right coming in to win the game if you make the field goal you make the right decision with your team it's like okay well that was expected but if you missed and you make a wrong decision poop up right so tom i just want to say you're going to be greatly missed

008i know that superintendents around west hartford turn to west harper to find out what we're doing when important decisions need to be made and they look to tom moore to see what is west hartford doing you know and then making a decision to represent their district so tom i wish you the best professionally and certainly personally but we appreciate you thank you all right well said and wonderful and many congratulations again to alana michelle and troy wonderful wonderful wonderful and so with that we will now transition to our public communications this is an opportunity where we're able to hear from you your thoughts your suggestions your concerns each person has three minutes to speak and there are up to 21 minutes per subject matter as you are speaking you will see charlotte who will hold

009up a card with a yellow card that is when you are down to one minute in your time and when your time is expired you will see a red card and we ask at that time for you please to respectfully take your seat we very much want to hear and are attendedly listening to what you are saying but it is policy that we do not respond to comments as they are being made and when you come to the podium please do share your name and your address and want to say this with great emphasis as much as we want to hear what you have to say we are respectfully listening we ask that your words are delivered in a respectful way also that not only is for those speaking at the podium but those that

010are listening in the audience we do have a list here and again we said there are 21 minutes per subject matter if we do get to the 21 minutes mark we do have public comments at the end of the meeting and we certainly welcome you to make your comments at that point in time as well first we have graham brown [Applause] good evening everyone graeme brown from 243 steel road um so like i said about a month ago this is a very jarring emotional subject of sel and i know that there are some people here who have just come to listen to what people have to say so if you're not familiar with what we're talking about when we say scl there is a portion of sel that is the gender identity curriculum involving a

011series of books from kindergarten all the way up to fifth grade that talk about and introduce the ideas of changing gender changing sex um and i know like i said last time there's a lot of people who feel strongly on both sides and so i'd say this not an entirely joking way but i think it's easy to say this is probably the most controversial subject that's coming across the board of ed and yet the funny part is that we could actually very simply solve this issue by giving both sides what they want right now currently the sel gender identity curriculum is listed under civics everything about your personal identity it directly relates to your physical emotional and mental health that should be moved over back into health and parents that have objections to it should

012have the ability to opt out of it parents who are okay with it should should be fine with their kids still having that that instruction in school and reading those books i really think we could just end this whole discussion about it it's going on for several weeks it's going to keep going on it's only going to get bigger and it's causing some division and i think by doing so as a board if you guys were to step in honestly and allow parents the option to do that you would instill so much trust that you have that we've started to lose between the parents and the board of ed and the west harbour public school district in general i think that's really important for long-term success in west hartford west hartford has always led the

013way when it comes to education let's lead the way when it comes to showing that we're willing to meet parents where they're at and showing that we respect different views whether we agree with them personally or not and let's give parents a voice let's let them have an option in this now the only thing i will say one last time is that the sel gender identity curriculum should be moved from civics into health so parents can have an option and that's all i'm going to say thank you next we have rebecca seaton [Applause] i'm rebecca seaton i live at 8700 drive as a parent it's my responsibility to be aware and informed about my children's education i talk with them read school communications and reach out to their teachers when i have questions i also

014exchange information with other parents what i do not do is intentionally spread in misinformation because that would be teaching my kids to lie for instance if i said that our elementary social emotional curriculum teaches sex education i would be spreading a lie if i said students being taught u.s history from racially inclusive perspectives was critical race theory that would also be a lie if i said social emotional learning and social justice instruction was taking the place of reading writing and math that would be another lie instead of talking about things that aren't happening i want to talk about what is happening because our district believes that every child deserves to feel they belong in our community first a note that i teach young children they notice differences as early as ages four and five children

015can show positive and negative biases about differences related to race and gender talking about human diversity with children doesn't cause these biases and prejudices children learn prejudice from prejudice and how people in their world respond to differences is what teaches bias and fear when they don't have age appropriate information about human differences in gender race culture and ability they fill a vacuum of understanding with confusion misinformation and other people's biases if a path to becoming empathetic critically thinking and resilient adults can be derailed starting as early as preschool we need schools to equip children with the tools and skills to address this social emotional and social justice learning promotes kindness and fosters empathy and it teaches children to understand how someone else's experience of mistreatment is a harm that should be confronted and prevented for

016this every child needs to develop positive personal and social identities to gain comfort and joy with human diversity to recognize unfairness and understand that it hurts and grow confidence to stand up for oneself and for others against discrimination i am so glad we live in a school district that recognizes this thank you to the board members district and school leaders and teachers who support and implement this instruction with integrity and reflection thank you to parents and community groups who affirm and challenge this work to make it more inclusive and transparent and to students who learn about themselves and each other together every day you are on your way to becoming empathetic critically thinking and resilient adults thank you [Applause] thank you next we have scott zweig uh scottswag 19 clay bar drive uh first i

017would like to welcome our esteemed guest chief richard velke from the scatter code tribal nation that's you guys are using up my time i'm grateful that you're able to join us here tonight to share your position on our town's use of the names warrior and chieftain it is truly an honor i would also like to thank the board for inviting chief valky here tonight a representative of one of connecticut's five tribal nations his input is critical to this issue of all the voices in this room including mine his matters the most i hope that each of you will listen with open minds to what he has to say much has been said about the lack of a fair and transparent process in reviewing and voting on the decision to change our honored and cherished team

018names well i'm going to say a little more public act 21-2 became effective on july 1st 2021 yet for some reason the issue of our team names was not raised during public meetings in september october or november instead superintendent moore sent out letters to the connecticut's five native american tribes asking for input on the names without informing the public that this topic was even under review after getting no response the board went ahead and proposed a motion to discontinue the use of these names what i never understood was why the board waited 159 days from the effective date of the legislation to raise the issue during a town meeting why the long delay clearly they were thinking about it given the fact that superintendent moore sent out letters on their behalf two months earlier and

019why was the board so eager to vote on the motion so quickly initially mr chang wanted to hold the vote during the december 7th meeting without so much as a public discussion on the topic however after urging by other board members the vote was delayed a mere 59 days again i ask why the rush what's the hurry surely if you could wait 159 days to raise the issue you could have at least waited that long to discuss and consider the topic before voting the process was flawed from the beginning but now we have a chance to make it right i call on the board to delay implementation of the proposed name change for our teams until an appropriate process has been undertaken by the town and the board our neighbors in canton established a formal

020process took six months to evaluate the decision and they kept the name warrior watertown spent an entire year year studying the issue engaging the community through meetings public forums a formal 16-member committee before deciding to retire their name indians and choose warrior we're do we think we're better than the people of canton and watertown do we think we know more i suggest we know less because we spent less time talking about it i call on the board to delay the implementation and launch a formal process to review the name before the end of next school year which can be done in compliance with public act 21-2 in the one-year grace period thank you [Applause] thank you next we have anita well i guess i'm going to uh piggy back off of what scott said because

021i am here actually on that issue but more importantly i think what's most important here your name and address please oh i'm 48 west normandy drive thank you um so what i want to say is yesterday i sent an email to the entire board not only scott already raised the question of what public act 21-2 is rebecca seton said we have to make sure and ensure that we are very correct and precise so i in my email stated to dr chang because he is the person who is fighting this the most that there is a board of education policy 8310 if you make any changes and this is contradicting 1700 when you decide to make a change you have to do two votes if we are not uh a society a following policy policy that

022is your policy that you have to follow ours then why do you demand our students to follow the rules it starts from the head and the head is the board of education i also want to bring up that there is one other one it's called policy 1230 where public complaints are made and you go through the list and you escalate up i brought to your attention that my son was targeted i brought to your attention that i felt that he was being that there were certain 14th amendment rights that might be violated i brought to your attention that the assistant curriculum specialist at the school prevented him from going into the classroom and she had nothing of no basis to do it on and i have brought it to you and i expect some kind

023of inquiry probing or investigation because that was a little boy's rights who were violated and that is a policy but i also want to respect with what's going on today and that is um we're here for the mascots but most importantly we're here for native americans i've i brought this book to you on february 1st i hope some of you bought it i hope some of you read it but i shall only read two very strong points in it it's written by clan mother shiran and she starts with a very interesting she starts with ancestral reverence sago thank you to all my honorable ancestors known and unknown my father chief big eagle tribal leader medicine man tom flanders tribal spiritual advisor medicine man my grandmother clan mother chieftais rising star tribal leader medicine woman my

024great george sherman roy black bear medicine man and mary and eliza freeman who were african-american indians of the pogassette nation free slaves who had a haven on our tribal nation's land for all the enslaved who had escaped when she starts with chapter one what makes me indigenous i hope i do her justice in reading this i was born an american indian raised as an american independent your time is out you know what dr farkasan i think other people have spoken longer and i think people should hear what is being said because this isn't my words this is somebody else's words excuse me anita anytime the red card has come up i have spoken to others as well please thank you for your comments [Applause] thank you next we have lisa king hi my name is

025lisa king i live at 9 dan's fourth day and danforth when i'm local i was here before so i'll remind you that i'm a psychotherapist practicing in los angeles california i left these packets on your in at your desks i guess from advocates protecting children um you can just peruse them as you want to or you know whatever your inclination is i just wanted you to have them they were given to be by maria kefler um who is the advocates for protecting children um i mean i kind of want to explain why how i got to this point where i'm aware and concerned because many therapists and psychologists and social workers are now concerned about this gender identity issue not social emotional learning just the gender identity portion because many kids so i'm going to

026tell you in in california i was working at a high school three years ago and also at a community center as a psychotherapist and in my high school suddenly four kids within two weeks came in and had declared their their um trans identity and stated they had gender dysphoria now these they don't come up with this from nowhere i mean somewhere they got it and at first i was just oh so very concerned and empathic and and you know compassionate nurturing about it but then i started to get curious because at the same time at my community center parents were coming in with or without their kids alarmed at this sudden trans identity from their children that they didn't suspect or they just didn't know where it was coming from so it now does have

027a term called rapid onset gender dysphoria so i started to put two and two together and then i just started really researching what was happening because i did i didn't know and that's when i discovered abigail schreier and i had seen her on on youtube speaking to hillsdale college and she has written a book she lives in los angeles and i'm going to leave this i only have one um and it says in here at least read chapters five and six if you i mean i can understand that people don't want to do all this reading um and with the book by maria kefler chapter chapter one is probably the most most important just so you know but um so there are many of us getting concerned that that kids are being confused by this

028they're starting to question when they might not have they're thinking that they can change at whim especially like i said my my population was kids with learning disabilities autism adhd adhd and so they they think they can just change i can change to a different sex or i can change and i can change back again and i mean these are kids in high school so i just i just want you to be careful because i don't know that of course we want all our kids to be empathic and and understanding and accepting and inclusive but we don't sorry don't we don't want to hurt kids we don't want to be hurting kids to help another we have to make this work for everyone thank you thank you next we have cheryl starrybrat and cheryl you

029know i apologize i please do go and then addie i apologize i do see you on here i had the two a's back to back so after cheryl goes addie please um would love to hear you thank you so much hi i'm cheryl staribra i live at 122 mohawk drive i'm here to talk in support of scl and i just wanted to really quickly go through some of um so my both my kids are in the west hartford school system and the teacher sends out the curriculum every week about what they're going over and here are some of the topics under scl we can greet our classmates by name and in new ways to make everyone feel welcome in our classroom each day we know how we want to feel in our classroom each day

030and what we can do to help each other feel that way i can participate respectfully in the morning meeting and understand why we meet i can be a respectful learner and use self-talk to limit distractions and keep focused i will be able to demonstrate assertive communication skills in response to scenarios live your dream review of seo skill breathing and self-talk those are just a couple pointers that have come out through the last couple weeks in the teacher's email at its core sel teaches respect and inclusivity it shows our children how to be good members of our community and peers to each other children and teachers should be encouraged to talk openly about our differences and not shy away from them there is a myriad of data that shows lgbtq kids of all ages have lower

031rates of depression anxiety and suicide when they feel accepted and supported by their peers and their adults being lgbtq isn't controversial and i think it's important that we that we are able to talk openly and respectfully about this both at home and in conjunction with the school curriculum there is no harm for our children to learn this but it can be really harmful if it's shamed and silenced thank you and now we will have addie and thank you for your patience uh addie lord in 561 park road um earlier this evening i presented miss hewitt mr chang and the corporate council with a request for information regarding applications for grants and aid under public act 607 1979 through the office of public management also known as opm which many of you will recognize from recent

032news articles and the dep i included you mr chang because you have in past interviews alluded to the fact that there is more at stake than what you called the minuscule 27 000 west hartford will receive in tribal money also despite speaking passionately on the subject of eradicating the names warrior and chieftain because of their detrimental effect on the first nations people you voted not to invite tribal leaders you have spoken of your childhood trips to the reservations in california but you have not mentioned speaking to tribal leaders here in connecticut about west hartford team names you speak for but do not want to speak to or listen to our indigenous people i find both a little odd perhaps you have some knowledge on the whole bond award of three million dollars for sport facilities

033through the dep not the department of education the deep just as senator austin pushed mascot bill through in a budget vote in 2015 images were removed in part based on then connor high school history teacher tracy wilson's public comments now the current town historian who again gave public comment on february 1st 2022 of first-hand knowledge that tribal leaders wanted the names gone never mentioned in the interim seven years of what she did to fight for or produce a native american curriculum as promised by her and whps miss wilson is the wife of state legislator beth bai who was and is very involved in education as the current commissioner of the state's office of early education and whose house mr chang you have visited gareth bay is on the board commission commission committee bond commission committee

034senator austin's press secretary announces the award of 3 million to west hartford for new facilities shortly after moody investors services increases the town's rating of first in 20 years on march 30th 2022 this means the potential for a great payday for west hartford has already seen when the bonds passed on march 31st 2022 the fastest approval ever according to government governor ned lamont and senator austin is tipped to be the next democratic runner for governor thank you [Applause] thank you next we have ariella already please pardon if i mispronounced your name ariela alroy 1930 boulevard i just wanted to speak very briefly in support of the sel curriculum uh i think that we live in such a diverse and globalized world and people are really expected to know how to treat each other with dignity

035and respect and speak to each other um in an inclusive way and if we weren't teaching students how to you do that in their real life they would be very compromised i think in their futures it's such an important thing to know how to be inclusive and how to be respectful um to everyone with different backgrounds orientations identities and abilities learning about differences does not make you different and being exposed to curriculum that includes gender identity um it doesn't create a trans child it just doesn't i know from personal experience if my sister is a lesbian and if if heterosexual content was able to influence her it absolutely would have she would not be gay she was surrounded by it and very silenced um in in her personal identity and that did not change her

036and it will not change other students it is simply giving them the tools to talk to each other and everyone else in their lives with respect so thank you [Applause] thank you next we have katie capes [Applause] hi my name is kate kappas this is a pilot year in which west hartford teachers are using the devereaux student strengths assessment okay um legally i don't have to give my address i reached out to deb and it is not required legally your lawyers themselves told deb deb communicated to me i do not have to tell you my address it is on file it is in my children's files this is a pilot year in which west hartford teachers are using the devereaux student strengths assessment or desa a tool to assess students social and emotional learning three

037times a year teachers are required to subjectively assess a student's behaviors using a minidessa in which the teacher answers eight questions about each child's classroom behavior such as the following how often did the child do something nice for someone speak about positive things follow the advice of a trusted adult each question is scored on a scale of zero to four zero being never and four being very frequently this score is solely based on the teacher's impression of the child if a child's total score is low he is labeled in need and then a full deci must be completed by the teacher this can be as many as 72 questions answered about the child by the teacher such as how often did the child cope well with insults and mean comments respect another person's opinion act

038as a leader in a peer group scores are tallied and broken down into eight subgroups then the scores are recorded on a dashboard called aperture where they are stored tracked and not necessarily protected several of this if several of the students scores in a particular class are deemed in need the school psychologist pays a visit to the class teachers and parents are not notified about this visit the desa is similar to a psychological evaluation given by psychologists and psychiatrists this mental health information is being obtained by teachers who are not trained psychologists or psychiatrists the information about each child is as sensitive as information gathered in a pediatrician's office but many parents in west hartford are unaware that their child is being assessed in this way some problems i have with the subjective questions teachers

039answer about children are what if the teacher answering the question does not like a particular student or their parents it happens all the time in west hartford what if a child raised to be humble offers acts of kindness without notice what if the advice offered by a trusted adult defies the morals and values instilled in a child at home why would you want a child to follow the advice of a an adult very frequently unless your goal is compliance advice should be freely given and freely received the children should be allowed to make independent decisions and learn from any resulting mistakes how does this assessment take into account introverted students who are usually quiet and unassuming many of the west hartford elementary schools have not been transparent with families in telling them about this assessment

040or how the collected data is and will be used west hartford needs to let parents know that they can opt out of this psychological evaluation thank you we have time for one more comment on the subject of seo and i will read the next name on the list if your subject is on that matter please do come to the podium others thereafter if i do call your name and you wish to speak on the subject of seo if you can please reserve your comments at the end of the meeting when we also have public comments next we have lori schwartz good evening my name is laurie schwartz i live at one timber lane i'm a west hartford resident i'm a taxpayer i'm a former west hartford school teacher and i'm a parent i oppose the

041use of my tax dollars to support gender education and i wish to have a few minutes just to tell you why i feel very strongly that this is a content area for which parents have no provision for exempting their children this is a very serious concern when my daughters went through the west hartford schools we were able to exempt our children from the sex and health education that conflicted with our morals and values this was a very important choice for me as a parent who wished to keep my children in the public school for the gender education parents are not allowed to exempt their children and this is a very serious concern gender education is a very sensitive area and it's best addressed within the confines of a family families can select doctors psychologists support

042individuals to help them on a path to journey with their children gender dysphoria is a very serious matter that parents are dealing with and they need the school support in a different way than you wish to offer it what they need is for you to respect their freedom and their rights to lead their child on a path that is safe for their family private family matters were always part of my classroom work for nine years in west hartford oftentimes parents would call me with some kind of confidential information regarding their child oftentimes that was because their child's behavior might be different in the classroom they weren't asking for my opinion on what they should do with their child they were asking me to watch out and safeguard their child likewise if i heard their child

043say something in the classroom that reflected a sensitive issue something that could be a parental concern i would call the parent and i would share that with the parent but not with any judgment as to what they should do and not with any agenda of my own to lead them that's for parental rights that's not for a school system or a teacher the second reason why i oppose this education is because gender dysphoria is a moral issue and whether we want to admit it or not people have different viewpoints about gender ideology starting right from the biological issue from which it originates parents who are facing this issue are facing a very very serious concern and they do not need staff members to lead their child in a direction that disunifies their family much division

044can come in a family which is the last thing a child needs when they're dealing with a serious issue excuse me your time is up okay i'm sorry [Applause] thank you the next name i see uh case i do see it's on seo so if you can please share your comments at the end and then we have russell gardner russell gardner eight well elaine i'm here to provide feedback to the board dr harris and mr goldman you do not rush to judgment to promote any personal ideology in fact your ideology is all about taking the time needed to explore the facts before voting on an issue you demonstrate commitment to process one example is how you wanted to delay the vote for changing the chieftain warrior names unfortunately you were not unfortunately you were outvoted

045but you demonstrated empathy by wanting by wanting to hear more from all sides of the issue you have been open to learning and taking the time to explore issues more deeply you express your concerns honestly and thoughtfully i thank you for being an example of good government a good government for the other members of the board i'm going to start by talking about my first board of ed meeting in this past september of last year some of you weren't here i'm trying to address uh the prejudice and bigotry that i still see amongst all of you so if you weren't here during some of the incidents i'm talking about i'm just they're examples um my first board of eddie bourbon meeting was september 21st for those of you um i'm sorry their four parents that

046spoke at that meeting a parent the second and third parent thoughtfully presented their concerns one concern was for the student's mental health another concern addressed how the superintendent was gaslighting parents let's acknowledge that neither issue has ever been addressed by the board of ed let's also acknowledge that the board of ed bullies parents one example occurred at the same meeting september 21st it's on youtube check out the video the board bullied a woman of color for not wearing a mask this room was almost empty there were only four parents that spoke there are a few extra parents as well the woman was sitting behind me by herself in the very back row i didn't even know she was there she had not said one word she was sitting over 50 feet away from the board

047the board stopped the meeting and called the police only because this woman was not wearing a mask you authored the whole incident but there was no apology from the board even worse was how the board uh used the media to send us a nasty false message about the meeting and we had news and hartford current there was no response to the second and third parents who spoke none their concerns had never been addressed the best the board could do was for a board member to use the media to lecture parents about following the rules the superintendent used propaganda to ridicule and disparage the parents at the meeting the media and uh board of ed elite make every accommodation for the superintendent while the superintendent weaponizes the media to send out nasty narratives about west hartford

048parents you are responsible for how he conducts himself the superintendent creates a savvy political narrative that divides our community the superintendent has been at war with west hartford parents all you do is look the other way you act like a good old boy's club but the fact is the superintendent reports to you this is unprofessional of you and the superintendent to behave this way please stop the jargon stop being so obtuse stop the political theater stop projecting your ideas for social engineering and stop using our children as guinea pigs for your personal ideology [Applause] thank you next i see getchan i believe but it also is on scl so if you can please reserve your comments for the end of the meeting because we've reached our max and i see david and ella goldberg i'm

049not sure what topic if it's on scl if you can please reserve your comments if it's on another subject matter please feel free to come to the podium all right and then anne beers i believe i also see it's an sel so if you please can reserve your comments for the end of the meeting is there anyone else in the audience that would like to make a comment on another subject matter please do come to the podium good evening india liddell 26 fernwood road i am picking up we're uh picking up where anita erickalian left off um again the book by clan mother shiran what makes me indigent indigenous i was born an american indian raised as an american indian live and still continue to live as an american indian and i will die an

050american indian since the day i was born being raised at my father's knee taught me the ways of the american indian and how to live for tribal and cultural survival to preserve the arts and crafts that are real authentic and handmade by our tribe and other tribes and to preserve the culture and the traditions to defend and protect ancient property rights and lands tribes have a chain of command that consists of clan mother tribal leader whose position is higher than the chiefs and the chief disses chief and co-chief war peace chief and or council chief and the tribal chairman these are the areas that anita wanted you to hear thank you are there any other comments yes please come to the podium [Applause] thank you i'm mark greenstein of two cross hill road and it

051is the subject really is unity which i think west hartford could do on two of the big issues here a human as a district a mascot if we could affirm a human mascot is someone you're proud of that's why schools and teams name them after someone prideful i mean look at the nfl steelers rangers patriots chargers cowboys my favorite 49ers actually my favorite is the whalers we miss them intent matters in the naming of a mascot and though i wasn't around when warriors and chieftains were named i'm certain that the intent of those who chose those those names was to choose something good not something denigrating so and this is the kind of affirmation that i think west hartford could take and unify and rather the town decides to keep the names associated with native

052americans or not if we can affirm that there is pride behind it this is good and here's why of all places this pl this town can affirm it we have a squad named for a native american that would be king philip i went there when i went there for grades k through five i always thought it was for some french king okay it was for a native american he wasn't even a good guy okay he killed a lot of colonial british american settlers yet we had the temerity to say there's something prideful about the area and this one warrior yes and chieftain and we have a school still named after him when we can affirm that there's goodness to that it adds unity i got one quickie on unity two and that is and dr

053i've written to you about this boy if you could just take sex ed out of education you got good parents here you have therapists here kids can learn outside of the 8 a.m to 2 30 school and instead be learning math and english and science the way we used to it would take away it would take away the animosity that you're seeing a little of here it's just going to get worse and it's going to be parents against parents and parents against you and if west hartford can be a district i i respect that okay you're shifting into another subject matter that we have put on pause all right thank you unity thank you [Applause] any other comments all right okay sir to the podium actually my name is gate 56 gillette street i wasn't

054prepared on this one but just it bothers me all the time when i think about it is about crt crt critical race theory that is about race i guess and it has been taught around american school all over the country and it says it promotes that the white man is a racist and the black people and other minorities are inherently or systematically subjugated or something racism is imposed upon them so i always been fascinated by history as a historian and um the white i mean the black race has been [Music] subjugated for thousands in thousands of years starting with uh with the arabs when they went to africa in the 7th century and for thousands years until the late 15 when european came over 147 million africans were shipped off to the east and only

055about 12.3 or 5 million came over to the west and out of that for uh 1200 i mean 12 million 500 slaves who came to america only 480 000 ended up in the north america so that's about 3.8 percent the rest went to brazil and haiti and jamaica and other south americas so um once um the 0.3 percent came over here at least um you know there is no i can't compare between slavery and eastern slavery in western israel but they are more both brutal but at least those who came over to here they kept their balls so their balls are not removed like the arabs are doing to the africans so those were those who came over here were were some of them are mistreated unfortunately which is bad history and but most of

056them are helping because i wanted to tell you one country in africa uh called liberia was uh was was a jungle forest and it was a white man of america who in 1822 brought them back to africa to give them space they were slaves here so these people were taken to africa and they wanted to buy a place for them in senegal and the chief of senegal refused them and then this white men all of them are 12 of them are white and then they persuaded another chief in the land of life it wasn't called liberia by then and then they were bro they were brought to liberia today liberia is a free state with a black free state it is it is capital cities uh monrovia after uh republican president john james monroe so

057when it is it is because of the white man okay so i don't buy this narrative of crt so it is evil divisive so it should stop thank you [Applause] thank you i see a hand raised for a comment yes please come to the podium good evening my name is mary nagy i'm from 43 acadia street and i don't have any comments prepared but i'd like to continue a little bit about what getch was saying and i'd like to reference two books for you to continue that particular vein of information one the book title is quote white cargo unquote i don't have the author's name i'm sorry and another is how the irish saved civilization by thomas cahill i would just speak from a second generation irish person i'm hungarian as well is that the

058irish people being caucasian or white were also enslaved and shipped in many places i think that each people's ethnic and cultural history has this phenomena of oppression the second thing i want to speak to is the fact that the native american culture are people that lived here before any of us immigrated here there might only be one or two i really don't know um people themselves might not know what their ethnic history is without doing a dna test but i would just say being a new englander and i've lived other places in the nation and abroad but being a new englander and a west hartford i and a simsberry ite is that we did have certain tribal nations here and myself i'm uh 67 years old i'll be 68 years old i really didn't respect

059or understand the american native tribal history i didn't begin learning it or respecting it until about five or six years ago i started noting names of towns and streets and as a youth we used to hike up to king's phillips cave and some of what the gentleman was saying here is sort of incorrect because it comes from a colonialist narrative but i don't even have contemplated that without my own sustained personal pursuit of knowledge and reflection again i didn't repair any of these things but i i'm very very pleased to express gratitude and thanks to the board for reinviting chief velke i'm very um interested to hear everything that chief has to say and i'm a little bit out of shape right now but i've done a lot of athletic work in the past so

060i really respect human tribal mascot names and one of my personal achievements as a athlete is having climbed peak in phoenix arizona and it was really one of my life events thank you just say that if there are more mascot names entertained for female teams might be something they could look at thank you bye thank you i'll do one final call for comments all right we will pause on public comments and again we do offer the opportunity at the end of the meeting as well we now will move on to unfinished business which we do not have any of but we do have new business discussion with connecticut's native american tribal nations and the recommendation was that the board of education take input from and has the opportunity to ask questions of representatives from connecticut's

061native tribal nations and so before we call our guest to the table here just want to share with all of you the invitation rather the letter email rather that was sent to all of the the five local tribal nations again this was in response to our meeting from last the last meeting that we had and from that an invitation was sent to the mashantucket pequot tribal nation golden hill pakistan tribal nation eastern pequot tribal nation mohegan tribal nation and scattercoke tribal nation and the invitation read as follows dear to whomever it may have been to i hope this email finds you well on behalf of the west hartford board of education we extend an invitation to you or one of your representatives to participate in our next board of education meeting on tuesday may the

0623rd at 7 pm located at the west hartford town hall room 314. during our most recent board of education meeting a motion was raised and passed requesting to invite the five tribal nations to attend the first voa meeting in may to hear thoughts specifically as it relates to the school mascot matter with hopeful anticipation you're able to attend you and other tribal nation leaders or representatives will be on the agenda to share your thoughts and engage with board of ed members through discussion as you may recall the subject of school mascots within our district dates back to 2015 although at the time a decision was made to keep the names and remove the logos discussion about the names remained within the community over the years in october of 2021 our district reached out to the

063five tribal nations in connecticut seeking their input you may recall having received a letter from us the tribal nations contacted were mashentucket pequot tribal nation golden hill pagata eastern pequot mohegan tribal council and scotticoach tribal nation prior to the board voting on the mascot in february we received responses from three tribal nations as well as having previously received a response in 2015 from the national congress of american indians all of this information is available for public viewing on our website after receiving responses from several tribal nations coupled with feedback from students and the community our board voted during the february first 2022 board of education meeting to select new mascot names for both high schools in addition to feedback received from various entities the outcome of the vote to select new mascot names was influenced

064by two of our board policies policy 1700 school nicknames and images and policy 1800 educational equity our work as a school district is continuous and evolving as we strive to educate and enrich the minds of our youth your collective voices are edifying and represent the rich native american history both past and present deeply embedded within the fabric of connecticut as our district is in the process of selecting new mascot names we recognize the collective voices of the tribal nations aligns with whps's educational equity policy where we strive to create high quality curriculum instruction and opportunities where the narratives lived experiences and perspectives of students from a wide variety of backgrounds are reflected in the curriculum and provide an authentic voice to reflect diversity and inclusion we welcome your presence at our may 3rd meeting to

065share words of wisdom with us all if you or designee is not available to attend please consider sharing your voice via an emailed letter or video recording to be read aloud or played during the meeting if you have any questions feel free to contact me and contact information was given warmly in signed office that was sent to each of the tribal nations and we are so glad that we have chief elky who did respond and is here with us today so chief elk if you please may come to the table [Applause] as chivoki makes his way do want to also share that we did receive a response from the machine tuck at peacock tribal nation unfortunately they had an untimely death this week so they were unable to have someone to come on their behalf

066however when asked once again if they had comments or something they would like to share they restated that the position statement that was sent in january that is what their comment still aligns with and again that is available on our website and then we also did receive a response back from mohegan tribal council and this was the response that was given dr thomas farkasen thank you for the kind invitation to attend your next board of education meeting the mohegan tribe appreciates all the effort your community is putting in to hearing from native voices about this matter mohegan tribal leadership has spoken about this matter numerous times and has been working directly with their neighbors here in montville mohegan leadership was never involved with the drafting of the state legislation which created deadlines for communities in

067connecticut nor do they wish to be asked to adjudicate on behalf of all native american people what is offensive on its face they have made the decision not to offer any certificates of compliance based on this new connecticut law and will therefore not be attending we deeply hope that your community faces this issue with tolerance and understanding that no person or group should be subjected to an environment that allows hate to thrive so before we continue absurd do you want to say this is for the tribal nations that were invited so please if you can return to your seat he was on trial nope i that's all right i i already spoke with him prior to and shared with him sitting here and he expressed no opposition and this is um an engaging discussion so

068again thank you so much chief you are certainly not on trial this is an opportunity to engage we want to hear from you and so thank you so much for your attendance here and as shared before we first just want to hear your thoughts on on the matter thank you mr chairman and i appreciate being invited here tonight by the west hartford board of education and i apologize to the community that you're looking at my back still but this is the position we're in tonight yeah it's unfortunate but i did not recall receiving your first letter that you sent out in october 21 not saying it wasn't sent out if it was we missed it and my apologies for it we normally are responsive one way or the other just like other tribal nations were

069this evening to you so my apologies to that yeah uh i'm here this evening and it seems like the communities are changing quite quite drastically there was times before where different names were accepted and uh everybody went about their business and today there's a lot of pushback uh not just on locals but on names people are taking them very personally and uh i have a great idea what they're going through because that's the way i have lived my life for the last 72 years okay i know what it feels like but it it's funny because it doesn't come from you it does come from the state however it doesn't come from you and i want to tell you tonight why we supported the use of your warriors and chieftains and why the scatter cook still

070supports it tonight even having other tribes step up against it and for you to understand i have to give you a little background of my tribal history we ruled the northwestern corner of the state of connecticut back in the 1700s and had plenty of land that we were able to live off of by either work or by feeding ourselves and as the white men encroached on our lands and our reservations they had taken them away from us but they did a great thing the state of connecticut they gave us overseers and these overseers were to protect not just us but our land from being stolen from us and we still being recognized by the state it didn't work out that way we had some 2500 acres and as of today we have just approximately 400

071acres in scatter cook kent connecticut that 400 acres is mountainside if if you're a deer you know you enjoy it because you need to have them legs to get up and down the hills but in 1981 the tribe had decided that we were going to fight for federal recognition and that's what we set out to do and in 1981 we sent the letter of intent to the bureau of indian affairs department of interior telling them just that and it took from 1981 to 1996 before we submitted our first petition our first petition consisted of three binders 2500 pages of documentation and after the bia reviewed it they said that in itself would give the scatter cooks a 90 percent chance of gaining federal recognition that was in 1996. what hurt the scatter cook people and

072not just us other tribes too was gaming because gaming became involved it no longer was are you a native american that belonged to this state it became does the state want another casino in the state because once you become federally recognized there is no stopping any tribe then or now from opening up a gaming facility as part of the uh federal rules so and it's it started out to be a self-sufficient uh purpose so the tribal people can go ahead and start providing for themselves building for themselves working for themselves and start developing what they have missed throughout the the centuries before that i don't believe today as i did then that it was made set out for people to become millionaires that's what it ended up doing and unfortunately that left a bad taste

073in a lot of citizens here in the state of connecticut but we went ahead and submitted our petition and then we had to uh technical assistance and we had our final submission in 2004. in 2003 we submitted it in 2004 january 29th they came out they being a bureau of indian affairs recognizing the scatter cook people as being a federally recognized tribe by that point in time in 2004 what this tribe did was submit over 55 000 pages of documentation and spent over 25 million dollars in order to get it accomplished that's what it took to gain a federal recognition status who did we have against us we had the state against us we had the governor against us we had two senators at that time dodd and lieberman we had the attorney general richard

074blumenthal who was against us and we had the six delegations representatives in the state of connecticut that fought against us and that wouldn't have been too bad but see i was involved with this since day one and we went and knocked on every one of these representatives doors told them what we were doing told them our plan showed them our petition asked if there was anything else that we could possibly share with them that we'd be more than glad to do so everything was fine they shut the door and said it was all good don't worry about it good luck you should be federally recognized well in 2004 we did get it three months later there wasn't a single representative or senator and including our governor that wrote to the bureau of indian affairs saying

075that we bought our way into federal recognition why did we buy our way in because we spent over 25 million dollars that 25 million dollars was all accounted for an inspector general came in from washington dc and went over all of our books and found everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be and that money was spent trying to get a recognition it was not spent on buying a lobbyist we have one lobbyist so we had people didn't believe it they still don't believe it was the truth we have one lobbyist okay and we needed that because once we get federally recognized we had to know where we're going to go we we couldn't go back and start studying everything so in 2005 on columbus day the bureau of indian affairs reversed our

076decision and gave us a negative because of all the political influence that was going on here in the state of connecticut they had hearings being held up on the floor in in washington dc they covered strictly the scatter cook tribal nation and the eastern uh eastern pequots at that time because they got denied also along with us we didn't give up we tried our best to keep going but we got beat down we started back up again in 2009 and we continue today to keep fighting for our federal recognition what brings us here tonight for me anyways i know there's quite a few things on the floor is the use of the names this state in my opinion tried to hold genocide on my people in scatter cook they try to erase us and they

077are still trying to do that today so when somebody says to us are you offended by a symbol are you offended by a logo i'm saying no what offends me is what happened to us and what continues to happen to us by the state of connecticut i had cartoons here from the kent tribune back at the time so speaking native american indians it even has one with richard blumenthal and myself hiding one on one side of the tree one on the other a native american walk in the center line because he's intoxicated and he and the state cop is there with him these are the things that hurt not your logo not the color in your symbols the gentleman spoke before we are honored in this in one sense that out of all the names

078that you could choose you choose to represent native americans don't disregard that don't abuse it don't diminish it and that's what you're doing when you strip it you should never had come to a decision in this town or any other that if a tribe did not agree with you that your money was going to be taken from you it's not a fair way to go about business what are they going to do with next hispanics blacks you don't have enough on your committee you don't have enough in your town stop it don't allow them to do to you what they are doing to us i've been in this fight i know what it's like to be outnumbered i know what it's like to be offended and i know what it's like to stand up for

079what's right i heard some people here tonight standing up for the right things it's unfortunate the board can't respond but i have to assume that you heard the same thing i heard i don't want to time tie up the evening on uh on a presentation i'd be happy to answer some questions [Applause] thank you chief elky thank you very much and again thank you for being here thank you for sharing uh and sharing in the way that you did you informed many uh and reminded some also so thank you for that if it's okay with you we would like this opportunity for my colleagues to be able to engage with you this is not an inquiry so it's not a matter of questioning you it's a matter of trying to continue the learning process and

080possibly through that maybe there will be some insight as well in terms of what led us to this position also and those events but nonetheless we want to work with your comfort level and have an engaging conversation and is that all right with you sir oh sure i've been in these seats before well we think of us all in a circle where we're here just to talk with one another a conversation okay so colleagues teammates comments or questions ethan yes chiefelkey uh welcome sorry um thank you for coming really appreciate it i thought it was very interesting i was particularly interested in your letter because it gave a different insight and this is past history and i'm just curious we used to have imagery as part of the names those got taken away so well

081it is right now is warrior chieftains at least for the short term would to you from what you said with the and they're not coming back but i was just curious because i thought it was interesting about the heritage being removed those were would those be something you'd want to keep or not keep yes they would be something i would like to see you uh entertaining and bringing back i testified not testified i got the mic in front of me and apologized but i uh gave a presentation in woodbury connecticut in nanawag they had an indian chief logo on the gymnasium floor and i did not know about it until my daughter went to school there and she had said something and they brought in a group to speak on native american issues at that

082time and they were gracious enough to remove it from the floor and put it on the wall not to do away with it we didn't ask them to do away with it i would not ask you to do away with it i don't know if some of you probably went to the schools there and and are either chieftains or warriors yourselves and and grew up in a community i would have to ask the community or you are you doing it to degrade an indian is it a purpose in in the great native americans that you have it or was it actually for what you i believe you selected the name for because you know the chieftains that that's that uh name and warriors started being used in schools you know like in 61. so i

083think it was a great thing that they were doing they were recognizing the people that once walked through these lands and was giving them the honor and and the privilege of being re-recognized again so just default is there other ways west hartford can help recognize the native american culture in addition to the names well you know there's five state recognized tribes just two federally recognized tribes i can only say one one of the other three tribes are reaching out to be recognized not being federally recognized but being recognized by the community support them know that they're there know that they've been there all these years and and they haven't gone anywhere now i know back in the uh what late 90s a lot of people's property was being tied up on land claims and everything

084we did the same thing in camp okay but they were the only avenues that we had in order to be exercise our rights and to be heard because that's the only time if we didn't do them things nobody's going to hear what you have to say what leverage do you have you don't have any do we want to take anybody out of the house out of the property no more than i want someone to take me out of mind but that's the way it has to get to the table for the state and the tribes to work together if they erased this gaming aspect for native americans these five tribes would be federally recognized today they shouldn't be hanging on a gaming aspect it should be a legitimate process that you go through how can

085we take 21 years that we took to to finally get recognized and in three months the stake and turn it around there's seven criterias in which you need to to meet you don't meet one of them seven criterias you don't get recognized and there's a thorough investigation it goes down and there's technical assistance meetings that go around and you're meeting with groups of people constantly and testifying you know you get caught in a lie in some of the stuff you you're in trouble so that that's how you could help uh thank you for your question other questions kind of dead thank you and uh thank you chief elky for coming to educate us in person this evening we we do truly appreciate it you know one of the struggles that um that i've been personally

086wrangling with and i know a lot of people are is that while the original intent of certain team names may have been to honor native american tribes or native americans in general unfortunately what has tended to happen across the country is what some might consider cultural appropriation by fans showing up in headdresses and other native american gear what some might consider mockery and certain like if you think about the cleveland indians and the tomahawk chop that they do in the stadium and i think you know one of the goals is to try to prevent those those actions from occurring so i think that is part of the drive behind eliminating the names is to eliminate the behavior that tends to be associated with teams that have those names i'm just wondering if you can help

087us by sharing some of your thoughts on what you've seen take place in ballparks and and other sports stadiums across the country and whether you think that changing the names of those teams will help to eliminate those actions thank you well i appreciate the question thank you uh for myself and i only speak for myself because just you know your board might feel one way you know the board's going to feel a different way too i'm sure there's i i received mail okay for the position i'm taking from other tribes across the nation too some good some not too good okay and and everybody has the right to their opinion on that but i i can only tell you from what i known from watching sports all my life uh yeah you you mentioned a

088tomahawk chop and it and it always seemed like they went on the tomahawk chop when they were rooting their team not when they were mad at him they wanted them to to push on uh for victory and to keep on going when the indian chief got on his horse and rode around after a touchdown i don't recall cowboys chase number anybody in blue suits going after him okay there was no choke hold on him he was celebrating a touchdown he was celebrating his team's victory he was recognizing them and honoring him for what they did in his way of honoring none yes was he a native american i don't know i don't know who was underneath it okay could have been might not have but it wasn't done in a disgrace to the tribe it

089was done in support of a team so that my position today and it always has been like i said i i did this back in the 90s you know for a school so you know we haven't changed probably dug our heels in a little bit more since then for what has happened to us but you know our position here hasn't changed thank you i appreciate your thoughts and i do recognize you're speaking for yourself and not asking you to speak on behalf of everybody but really appreciate hearing your opinions thank you thank you other questions or comments gail thank you first of all i found your presentation very moving and really almost had me in tears um i appreciate you coming here and speaking with us this has been a very very divisive issue in

090our community and we've had a you know we've been talking about this for a long time we've had a lot of information but this is the first time that we've had the opportunity to hear from somebody who's native american and i appreciate hearing your thoughts um i want to just be clear that if what i think you're you're telling us your perspective is that you find the names warrior and chieftains to be honorary and not demeaning to native americans and that you would see this as a way of maintaining and honoring the history of the native american tribes particularly yours in our in our state and in our community if those names continue to be used [Applause] well what i'm saying is i'm afraid for you not to use them not to use them today

091would maybe seem like a very small thing we're going to change our names this way we can keep getting some money from the two casinos to help support the town budget but not to use them today what are we not going to use 20 years from today will the will the students coming in to the classes first and second grade even know what native americans are any longer are they going to know what a warrior was what a chief is i did not like the word squad before but that's me personally okay everybody has things that offend them differently and i think you saw in the presentation if if you're presenting it to offend us i'm against you if you're using it is a something that you have views for how many years now in

092this year town is your school mascot don't let others tell you what to do i'm fighting to fight well against odds on me and my people but don't let them tell you what to do we don't let no one tell us what to do neither if it's right you stand up for it [Applause] um thank you so how would you answer the group of people that feels the opposite to what you're saying that these how do we answer that or how do we understand that when people are telling us that these names are derogatory because it's been a it's been a you know sort of a very difficult discussion with listening to both sides we obviously there are people who feel the names are honorary but there are also people who feel that it they

093aren't then i would like to see them sit in front of you and explain why like i am doing tonight maybe they can teach me something i don't know too and maybe i can teach them something they should know so it's no disrespect meant to my brothers and sisters and they don't mean disrespect to me i would hope but if my fellow tribal members of the other tribes are here tonight maybe we could have furthered that discussion to one another i've talked to a few of them and they seem to have a different position than what their letter says so i don't know who guides them okay if it's people guiding them a number of people or if they're speaking for the tribe on their behalf only that's what i'm afraid of most tribes i

094talk to tribal people yeah again no we we we don't want to be made fun of i got cartoons like i said here you know that that's really disgraceful it shouldn't be done to any nationality any race of people but yet it's done to us and it is it's uh the slap on the back and a good old boy joke again you know so uh i i can only answer it that way uh gail that if other people were here maybe we could have had that discussion i don't know how to answer them other than to say take another look look at what you're saying what you're doing and the possibility and the probabilities of erasing what we have being recognized today forever that would be my plea to him avery yes hi um thank

095you so much i wanted to clarify or not clarify i just wanted to ask a question um and please forgive me if it's something that perhaps i should have known um you mentioned that you find the term um offensive and i wanted to ask what makes that turn offensive to you versus chieftain or warrior so we can better understand um what representations you do prefer well the word squad to a woman to me is an insult okay it's not even a prostitute okay it's worse right language i don't care to use it it'll board meeting like this that's what makes it offensive to me the women weren't treated right they were abused they were beaten all right and that's why they got that name and that is why i find it offensive so the the

096other two names hey look you know uh you know native americans don't have the corner market on user names warrior and achievements okay warrior is a fighter he's a a a battle he's a soldier a chieftain is a leader of his clan it doesn't necessarily need to be a native american clan so we don't have the corner market on all title words like that it is something that needs to be shared throughout i know in this instant because of the uh logo that you use with it becomes tied into native american okay but the the word itself can't be offensive because it just doesn't pertain the word squad does okay thank you so much thank you for your question avery other questions clear hi chief felkey it was very helpful to hear your perspective and

097to understand that there are different points of view in 2015 when we retired the logo a commitment was made to incorporate more native american education into our school system i'm actually an educator i taught third grade in west hartford for three years did the social studies unit we brought in local tribes we taught them students about the medicine wheel and sand mandalas and drumming circles you know it celebrated a lot of the the arts i recently wanted to know what's been happening you know since i was a third grade teacher a and would love your input because i do agree we can't erase you know it's important to race but as an educator it's more for us to learn about your culture and to learn about your traditions and to hear the stories of the

098native americans and we honor them by teaching each generation about the value that the native americans brought and also some of the conflicts that we as the first you know the explorers had so there's a fifth grade unit that's been developed it's totally integrated and every explorer follows with a native american tribe that was impacted by that explorer and so that the kids in fifth grade at their reading level are learning about this so i i was curious and so i met with the superintendent and got a preview because in november he's going to be giving a full presentation to the board but i know that the state of connecticut in january 2023 is releasing some native american lessons and it's statewide it's going to be available for all schools but as an educator when

099someone hands you a curriculum and tells you to plug it in the teachers always say what are you going to take off my plate you can't just add things to the plate without removing so west hartford's approach has been integration so like the folk tales in one grade are now not about paul bunyan and johnny appleseed but they're native american folk tales there's been work with the different tribes in the area to get oral storytelling because we were told that writing the stories for native americans wasn't the most authentic way that oral storytelling was the best so i i would love to know where else and what else we can do within our grade levels and what you would recommend so that we are educating our students and teaching them about the rich culture that

100the native americans bring because i think that's where we really understand the value of that culture we honor that culture and we let those stories they don't die they don't get eradicated like you're concerned about because we're teaching our kids about a very important culture that was here before we white americans arrived do you have any education programs or or education ideas that you could share about how we can make our students more aware of the value and the contribution of native americans well as i say here this evening i you know i wouldn't have anything obviously okay but there is programs that uh i certainly uh would love to see you put together uh teaching on not just native americans themselves but on the state native americans where they are located what they have

101done the boards that they had fought the people that they got along with king philip was mentioned before too you know i mean these uh need to tie into today's tribes to show that they were the same people that went back then i don't know about third grade i remember the only time indians came up was around thanksgiving time not not in west hartford okay because you're the award of feathers for the turkey or you wore them in your mind was one of the other so there is a book you might be interested in and it was um co-authored by ashley callan and she um there's a whole chapter on all the native tribes in connecticut your tribe is mentioned all the regions all the contributions and it's available to all students in the state

102so this this book is now at the reading level for the kids because we always have to make sure it's at the right reading level but in november we will be hearing a broader presentation and it's been hard for me having taught third grade native american history within west hartford to hear that we don't because i'm finding out we are and we continue to improve and we're looking forward to what the state brings and we would love to have your contribution as to oral storytelling or anything that would help our students understand more about your tribe i believe if it wasn't i don't think it was last year because of covey but two years ago i testified in front of senator ulston and supported her bill from k-12 on introducing native american stories uh in

103a curriculum so that i i supported her on so well thank you i really appreciate your coming and sharing your perspective i appreciate it thank you claire other questions or comments jason hello chief felkey thank you for uh for coming to to the board to uh to meet with us uh it's an honor to meet you um and you know i really valued your advocacy for education uh in native studies education here in connecticut and you know this is something that i really wrestle with and how um the the the knowledge that we need to do more uh because as even though the the work that's done in our district um may be more than what others do uh i it's it's not enough and we need to we need to develop it more and

104i think you know for me thinking through what you've said about the names to me is you know and i think about how we have folks that want to keep the names but also haven't haven't learned the history right and and so there's to me a kind of disconnect right and and what what other research tells us is that native mascots can't take the place of curriculum can't take the place of of of learning from uh from organized lessons from primary sources from hearing from community voices uh diverse representations of many different you know members of the community and and so you know to think through the challenges that your tribal nation has gone through um and that the names of of teams that have had indian references native references um didn't help in in

105that in that struggle for for recognition and to me i see you know there's a an educational obstacle to to thinking through you know how do we expand how do we do more when we also have to undo the the stereotypes and uh and and the mythology around uh around natives in the state and and i'm wondering how does that how does that strike you in terms of you know how do we really expand this given that that many times the names are are used you know native names or native reference names are used to to ridicule and that we've seen that from testimony from from parents from students here and that goes against our our stated policy on equity in the schools and i want to see the curriculum thrive and to me this

106is one one dimension of having the curriculum thrive uh and and so curious how how that how that strikes you and if you can help me understand some of those differences i wouldn't want you to think for a moment that i am asking you to keep the mascot in symbols and do away with education is clear just point out okay i don't know why what you just said and what she just said couldn't piggyback each other and and you carry them both down the line together because the education is going to give the understanding of the symbol and and and the uh colors that you're using okay the both of them got to be mixed together that you leave one behind forget about it you're my answer to that would be yeah you would you

107marry them together and the curriculum is 100 right 100 right that's why i went up and i i advocated for it you know with senator i think that's a great thing it's about time because even in my schools with with my children and now my grandchildren very little is being said in the classrooms on natives and it's a shame and here they are you know they got a grandfather that's the chief or something you know they don't their grandpa and they don't talk about this you know so a symbol is easy to pick up pick the symbol up brings the thought to the mind brings a question to the mouth then it brings it into the curriculum you're doing both together i think jason thank you sorry and then ethan i cheat belkey i want

108to again reiterate what everyone else has already said i i really appreciate you coming and taking the time to educate us and and give us some you know background and understanding of your experiences for me during this mascot um debate process whatever we want to call it the thing that really struck me um at my core and i'm wondering if you can kind of help help me have a better understanding or kind of help me come to terms with what i'm struggling with in terms of keeping the mascot or making a change is in this process you know we had students reach out to us who felt that the use of these terms um were derogatory where they did i wish i had the email andrew had shared with us there was a native american

109student and this is what like just stays with me and and the words expressed and the thoughts expressed in that email i mean just stay with me the the email said every day i walk into my school with the name chieftain plastered over my head i don't feel like i fit in i don't feel respected um and that really so you know i think it all comes down to intent versus impact the intent could be um to be a positive um inspiring term logo uh mascot but but i think the part that we're missing and what that email spoke to me um is the impact that it's having and that it's not a uniform impact on our students who you know i i know that there have been numbers passed around you know stating 60

110percent of a sub subgroup of students not not the entire school in either case but a subgroup had a 60 percent you know preference to to maintain the mascots but that also left 30 of students who said we don't support this and we want to make a change and we feel like it would be to our benefit to remove these logos because of the impact that it's having on their um personhood mental health whatever it might be so i guess for me that that's really for the sticking point for me is that we have students in our district who are expressing to us the desire to to change the mascot name and create a new mascot that everybody can get behind and while i know that this is a divisive issue among a lot of

111the adults in our town it still remains a divisive um topic within our student body and you know when we talk about unity and we talk about coming together as a town and as a community that thirty percent you know my thought process was why not come up with something that everybody can get behind everybody can feel valued everybody can identify with on some level as opposed to creating a situation where 30 percent of a subgroup of students don't support that excuse me chief before you respond please in the audience please be respectful if we can hear you up here that's rather distracting and rude please chief elky okay uh well here he might my response to that would be you're never going to get 100 of anything and i don't think uh today unless

112we bring the 60s back then kumbaya days you know you're not you're not just going to see them anymore you know uh everybody seems to be on a fast track why how about this how about they get off their phones and see if he can do that for for class okay and see how many percentages of them will sneak that phone call still in okay it's it's not going to work it won't work for something like that and it won't work for something like this i i say you have to you have to look back at your town in your history of the name that you've had here for some you know 50 years and it's been supportive excuse me okay 70 years and it's been supportive through all that time it's not just native

113americans and ethnic groups that are going through a tough time right now the kids are going through a tough time and this is a storm that we got a weather and if if we're gonna it's not me yo but if you're gonna turn around and start satisfying every you know two thirty percent you know that or against something you're never going to have a cohesive body working for one and we we have the same in my tribe but we're not a hundred percent agreeable on nothing in fact it's just me and my wife in the house and we're not a hundred percent so you know there's there's always the divide but you know you work it out and and you get through it i have 51 years thank you okay thank you ethan and then

114gail thank you um what what um motivated me to be interested to hear what you had to say was in your letter you talked about worrying about your heritage being disappearing and my question is and it's following up on the other questions from your perspective or is there do you see it as being an enhancement by having the names that will then impact people to the interest or i mean it's sort of a softball question but i thought it was based on the questions how do you see that enhancing by having these names to them create the connection hopefully with the students but i think i said it and i'll say it again i'm not worried about today i'm worrying about tomorrow i'm only in about 20 years from now because if you keep cutting

115and taking things away the word native american is you're going to need your curriculum to find out what a native american is because it's going to be obsolete term and question is in the time that you've been doing this have you seen schools where you've seen other than the example you gave of your daughter's school where it was on the floor examples where people have done it in a derogatory way or yes i had talked with the town of derby they have their uh logo on the floor i asked them to remove it and put it on the wall and i gave them the resolution that i shared with your chairman thank you yeah i just want to follow up on one thing that um ari said um and i just be curious what you

116think um to me when i hear that you know we have students in our district who feel that the word chieftain you know makes them feel inferior or negative um [Music] and that maybe 30 percent of the students did wanted to change the names as opposed to something like 65 percent wanted to keep the names but if we talk about those 30 percent and the students in our district that are native american um i think that it it actually as opposed to reflecting on the students i think it reflects on us because what you're telling us is that these are names of honor and dignity and somehow students in our district who are particularly students who are native americans have been made to feel that these are names that are derogatory so what it says

117to me and maybe going a little bit on what you were saying clear is that we could keep these names and also at the same time educate our own students as to why these names and your history and your culture are so honorable and i guess in a certain way we haven't done that when a student walks into a school and feels that the word chieftain somehow is demeaning to her i think we we've failed in in not being able to educate our students that these are honorable and dignifying names and that there's a tremendous beautiful history here that somehow has been turned around i appreciate that i wouldn't want to take any i appreciate that i wouldn't want to take anything away from the student because i have not walked in her life to

118to see what she has experienced by being a native american to begin with what her family has experienced and and their livelihood too you know uh i can only uh speak for mine and uh you know i i would hope that if it hurts that bad that you're not looking to change the name for their purpose but get some counseling to find out if there's something else that you could be helpful with with them because that that's concerning to me my kind of kids would look up and say that's me baby you treat me with respect that's my name up there okay so that's everybody is has a different walk in life and and people need help on different avenues of it so that's the only advice i can possibly give on that and and

119i hope you know that person does well seriously thank you and have respect for your time i'll do one other call for any comments other comments chief elk you up if i can just finish up with one thought sure i sure appreciate it and after you finish i just want to share a thought as well but please you do go first yes okay if i'm going to be finishing up here i just wanted to thank you and and the board for allowing this forum tonight and uh being able to to speak to you and wanting to hear the other side i i wish more towns and cities in the state would would take your lead and and do exactly that and then just don't say this is the way everybody feels it's not the way

120everybody feels i'm willing to sit here with my peers and if they want to go against me i'm willing to tell you why they shouldn't but in my final thoughts i would say if you already changed the name and doing away with it i would ask everyone on the board to really reconsider and and reestablishing the names that dishonored this great town of west hartford for so many years thank you [Applause] chief velke again sharing the appreciation with colleagues here and our student representatives for your presence here today it's greatly appreciated and and one to say that although there have been even different opinions here with even on our board one common thread and theme has been our desire to want to learn more and know more hence your presence here we certainly know that

121we have more in our district that we want to do that we are doing we certainly know that our intent is not and has never been to a race it has always been to elevate um even going back to 2018-19 i believe it was when we voted to change on our school calendar from columbus day to indigenous people's day for the purpose of wanting to ensure that there is congruency between our what's printed and what we're teaching in our classroom and you've got a sense of what is being taught in the classroom that is what our continued effort and desire is and so share very much with you your your desire for others to want to learn more to learn more of your culture to learn more of the significant historical and presence that your

122tribe and other tribes have not only in connecticut but in our country as a whole and i think in terms of elevating the cultural aspects that is something that certainly resonates well and i say that with my board hat on and as a human being as well it is not about erasing it is about trying to learn more of and so that is the path that we are striving to go down and we want to do that collaboratively so please allow this to be one a future times to engage with you again appreciated your words of wisdom and sharing and that is something we want to continue to do but please rest assured this is just the beginning of us wanting to learn more and expand more the partnership the collaboration the presence that you

123and many other native americans have in our country thank you that was very nice very kind words but you brought one issue up that i i need to address that was columbus and native american day columbus day native american day they want native american day to take over columbus day from what i see in legislation and not just here in connecticut that's another one i'm against okay native americans deserve native american day what day it is i don't have a day for you right now maybe it's earth day okay but they deserve their own day don't pit us against columbus again okay columbus is recognized by the italian descent people and and they honor him on that day and and now i'll tell you what happens in my world is the italians and native americans

124start bumping ahead why are you taking my holiday away native americans deserve their own day so this the italians with columbus day don't don't put us together like that i appreciate you saying that and respectfully received and i'll even take it further it's more than [Applause] i'm sensing that applause was not for me but i will pause for it to continue but nonetheless appreciate what you said very much so and i'll take it a bit further it's more than a recognition on one day it's a matter of recognizing it 365 days a year not only your culture but many other cultures as well absolutely so we share that experience we share that desire thank you so much for your time we do have something for you a small token of appreciation for you joining us

125a today and this is from [Applause] all right as we continue on because we certainly have other many other pieces that happen in the agenda our audience tends to shrink at certain points in time but please certainly do share and stay and learn more again what's happening in our school district so next we have the ratification of the west hartford board of education professional employees we have the recommendation that the board of education ratify the negotiated agreement between the west hartford board of education professional employees and the board of education for the period of july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 and we have liz giulio and andy here so thank you so very much we'll pass it to you good evening everyone before you for approval is a ratified agreement between the board of

126education and the west hartford board of education professional employees this is a group that consists of 32 employees with a wide range of job titles such as our benefits specialists our network administrators and our registrars and although all of these have very different responsibilities they all play a critical role in supporting the day-to-day operations of the west hartford public schools excuse me julia pardon me i'm just going to close the door apart thank you so much thank you pardon the interruptions no problem the professionals union ratified this agreement on april 21st so the contract you were voting on this evening is a four-year contract with the first year being retroactive to july 1 2021 the contract will call for in 2021-22 and 22-23 step movement and steps 1-9 will receive a general wage increase of

1271.75 and step 10 will receive a three percent general wage increase for 2023 24 and 24 25 step movement and steps one through nine will receive a general wage of two 2 and a step 10 will receive a 3 general wage increase looking at the insurance category we have increased the employee premium cost share in 2021 22 to 19.5 percent and twenty to twenty three to twenty percent and two thousand twenty three twenty four to twenty and a quarter and two thousand twenty four twenty five to twenty point twenty point five in addition we increased the employee pension contribution 2122 to 5.75 and 2022-23 to 6 percent and in 2023 24 and in 2425 to six and a quarter one minor change that i would like to highlight is that we increase the longevity by

128200 for those employees with 15 to 19 years of service and those with 20 or more years of service so that summarizes our agreement i did want to take a moment to thank all of our professional employees i can't begin to tell you how impressed i've been with their knowledge attention to detail and their overall dedication and commitment to the west hartford public schools we'd be happy to answer any questions the board has on this agreement thank you so much colleagues yes claire um can you just help me understand um the professional employees what titles and what what are those roles i'm i'm not familiar with it sure i can actually tell you exactly what they are i was going to say julie can read it it's a hodgepodge player of anything from accountants to

129um account education directors and so forth for the most part thank you did you want me to go through those or no other yes scale all right thank you um sorry i lost my train of thought i had a couple of questions um what is what are the step steps one through nine i'm assuming that's years worked correct so and depending also it could be if it's a new employee coming in we would take a look at you know where they were on that but ultimately when anyone is hired within any of our bargaining units we would place them on one of our steps so if you look uh through all of our contracts or at least virtually all of them will have some stepburn employees placed on and every year an employee would move

130up on that chart until ultimately you reach that top step and then there would be no more step increases you move up every year like correct correct so if i'm on step eight this year next at the beginning of next school year i would be step nine right and you're also saying not everybody would come in at step one it would be somewhat dependent on their level of experience or correct correct okay um [Music] i just had another couple of questions on the pension contribution um is that something that's mandated or does the employee get to choose whether or not they want to contribute to that no that's something that folks that are in the pension plan um would have to contribute to they have to contribute like so they they can't say hey i

131want to contribute half of that they have to contribute those numbers no correct and then um if you could just you said something about 200 which i didn't is that a yearly thing yes if you remember we talked about our longevity plan for some of our employees so every year when folks hit a certain longevity and you can see they're all broken down within the contract um and so they wouldn't get that one lump sum so for instance our employees that had 15 to 19 years of service they would receive a thousand dollar um one-time payment between years 15 through 19. correct okay each of those years oh each of those years yes okay oh right i see that okay thank you ethan yes um question for you the how many of the 32 employees

132how many are in steps one to nine and is there anything beyond 10 or is 10 the final listing so 10 would be our our max step we have a total again of 32 employees 19 of them are on step 10. so actually answering your question backwards okay yeah and i'm assuming but i figured it asked the question it fits within the budget it does it fits within the budget we assumed these two i should ask no i i appreciate you asking thank you other questions all right thank you so i believe you now will take it to vote and so with that seeking a motion that the board of education ratify the negotiated agreement between the west hartford board of education professional employees and the board of education for the period of july 1

1332021 through june 30th 2024 so moved thank you is there a second a second thank you discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed all right the eyes have it thank you so very much now we shall move on to staff communications and reports we will now have our superintendents report thank you as i mentioned before and i don't want to go over it again to death but i do just want to thank all of our teachers teacher appreciation week it was also principal appreciation day falls during this week and just what we know what teachers have done um every year but the past few years especially um during this pandemic and as we come out of the pandemic and i think that's um something that we have to realize and i think

134it's important that we celebrate teachers but with um more than thank you because over the coming years we're going to see a significant teacher shortage we had a great career fair and julio and his staff did an unbelievable job bringing in people from universities last week and it's one of the largest career fairs in the area one of the few districts that do this but they already have jobs the the numbers of people and the shortages in this profession are real and i fear they're going to continue um to be real in the coming years so um we need to continue work like future educators diversity that elevates the profession and elevates the respect that our society has for teachers this is a good week to start doing that i just want to say i'm

135been so fortunate to have been raised as a teacher in west hartford and i you know i i say to people all the time when they ask my profession i say i'm a history teacher on special assignment as a superintendent right now because teaching is something that's part of your identity i think and it's i think anytime you say what i am it's part of who you are so um thank you to all of our teachers and the work they do and support of our kids um april 24th to may 1st our holocaust remembrance days nationally in west hartford we do a lot of work to make sure um that something that never forget is constantly talked about but unfortunately we see enough events in the world that um that we could argue that that

136never forget is often forgotten um but last election day we did um training with our modern world history teachers on um holocaust education and resources how to teach and how to get the message across with we partnered with uconn for that we also partnered connor partnered with uconn in offering genocide studies as a yukon ece course so of course that students would get both college credit and um and of course counter credit for which we see other ece courses and this is this is now a pilot we've been offering genocide studies for the past couple years this is something very happy to partner with uconn for and we actually have a group of students that are not just getting uconn credit but this is also an opportunity for them to get their mastery certification that

137we talked about before through um genocide studies so um just wanted to um point out that as part of our curriculum and um lastly i'm talking about last week and i know we talked about it ahead of time that this was coming but i was so fortunate to be among so many pioneers of the passing the torch event last week celebrating the 50th anniversary of title ix um [Music] and it was at the hall high school auditorium and the participants and their memories of how west hartford led in the struggle um for equity for our females in sports and we know title ix isn't just about sports it's often attributed to sports but their work to start teams and develop teams um and how that happened over time and it and it is an example

138of progress because sometimes we get caught in the idea that there is not progress you know people say it should be the way it used to be i'm always like are we sure it should be the way it used to be because girls weren't playing sports back then um so that that notion of how um it uplifted um these young women and how their coaches did at the early eight stages and we had people that played professional sports and a pilot and these these um these uh committees that came forward to talk about in this book it's in my office and there's one at the town hall now with memories from west hartford's own own pioneers um was greatly appreciated so it was a great night that i was very fortunate to be a part

139of so [Applause] my mic is being defiant pardon oh let's see all right all right thank you questions in regards to our superintendent's report at all comments yes can you talk a little bit about the teacher shortage and if we are expecting that to get worse in certain areas over others what those areas might be special education is going to be dramatic across the state there's as we see the needs that are so acute the social workers school psychologists mental health professionals behavioral therapists and then you look at how many the universities and colleges are producing there's not enough to fit that need and then you look at the fact that there's esser funding for all these districts for this year next year to hire people in these short term areas so that there's more

140jobs than there have been we've had the benefit of we've had a robust program people have wanted to be here other places haven't had it now there's districts and you've seen districts offering incentives to stay year-end incentives that will be paid out next february for their teachers to stay so this is you know the contract we agreed to last november is a good contract but i can tell you that our special ed teachers are getting called by i was on the phone superintendent today yelling at him about it's unethical what you're doing um with one of our employees um that's during mid-year trying to pull somebody out of another place isn't appropriate um and uh we're gonna see more and more of that so that i would say is an extreme example special education is

141where we're gonna feel it the most thank you claire um some of the work is being done to um recruit teachers of color through the resident program are are we participating in that we're active participants excellent and is there any version of that that could be seen in the special ed route and could that ever be because that takes care of two problems is there that possibility yeah those teachers can be brought in through special education and that's a certification group for them um so that's something that is being done um with that it's a state program um but where it's those are on the margin areas that help it's we've got to get 18 year olds going into education as their field of choice that's the issue right now unfortunately with with covid in

142the last few years and the mental health crisis not only with students but with teachers we there are more and more people i'm hearing about are leaving the profession and it's not for retirement and it's it's to do some other kind of career that is not so you know demanding and so what what can we do to convince the younger generations to go in the field that is so difficult because i i've taught for 24 years i'm not full-time in the classroom that would be a whole nother job to go to every day you know so it it's tough you have a lot of thoughts on this that are that could be a book and um i actually am in discussions with another superintendent about um co-authoring an article if she's from another part of

143the country but superintendent saw your shortage because that's the other reality of this the principal shortage when you post a principal opening you're not getting the same number of applicants as you used to with with experience certainly not at all um so um i think it's a i think it's an american story not just a west hartford story not a connecticut story i think that this is a question about you know in connecticut overall we pay teachers well comparatively to other parts of the country there are places that are you know connecticut i think historically is second or third massachusetts in illinois maryland's elevated over the past few years um or some of the states but um they're states that don't grant maternity leave for teachers still so this is this is a national issue

144about what what is going to entice people into a field especially if they're going to feel under attack in that field [Applause] other questions ethan i don't know if this goes to tom or it goes somewhere else but i figured it just triggered memory at the i think was the last meeting but when we did the budget we had two hundred thousand dollars taken away from the um sports activity fee put somewhere else at what point do we see where that money goes or i i don't know if this is you liz or no sure before the end here so no it's a fair question let me just so today we have the meeting with the elementary principals um we had one of the meetings that go through where we're looking at section breaks for

145next year so we've got the now the budget is passed everything's kind of on hold till the budget passes and then we go through with the high schools and we start really okay you guys run your schedules because there's going to be what we say and then there's going to be but we need another math section here because this didn't so there's always that kind of give and take the elementary levels then we get the sections done but the sections then we have to break down with all the specials and who's going to be at what school so all those things have to go together and then we begin the allocation not just of who's historically been in schools for special education um but what the unique needs are next year and so it's an

146analysis that goes through what are the needs where is it going to be so before the end of the year might have more information on march 17th certainly on june 1st i'd share that information about where that looks like in terms of exactly where it's going we'll get a chance to see it absolutely okay just sort of outside out of mind no we'll have to do that anyway with the yes or funding um any shifts so that's something that is you would have to sign i mean we'll make the changes but we have to make them publicly before we send them in to the state and federal government thank you other questions or comments all right tom thank you so very much now staff reports and board discussions i don't believe we have any we've

147had lots already let's move on to routine matters financial report approval of the financial report for the period ending march 31st 2022 and i as we have liz thank you for coming and i believe deb is going to be giving the update today thank you and um this is the report as our good chairperson just indicated for the period ending march 31st um so just about a month ago and it looks very similar to the report that we received last month we have a little bit higher of an estimated surplus about 110 000 but this is again in a budget um the size of our is just essentially a rounding error so nothing terribly notable there if you turn to page seven the general fund report i'll just highlight a couple of items um the

148teacher salary line item you'll see a balance there and that's largely uh just reflective of hiring teachers at a lower rate less experience than we had anticipated we also had a couple of teachers leave in the middle of the year and replaced with less experienced teachers call your attention to the teacher substitutes and teacher assistance lines 5180 and 51.85 so you'll see we have large balances there and this is the same trend we've been seeing all year difficulty filling those positions and then this is reflected in the all other purchased services line where we have overexpended by a little over 1.5 million and that is due to utilizing staffing agencies for some of the needs that we've been unable to fill with our own hires turning to our state and federal grants fund report on

149the next page you'll see several grants listed there that typically would be one year grants that we've actually had some extensions on we're probably going to carry forward about 11 million dollars from this year into the next fiscal year and those are largely you can see the largest grant balances and we will spend all this money so no worries about that the largest balances you'll see are account 502 236 which is title 1 public improving basic skills 502 252 this is the idea part b section 611 public and 502 264 it's another igea grant that we will plan to expend over the next year or so and just as a reminder if you look towards the bottom of the page we have the esser grants and i always just like to remind people what the

150deadlines are for each of these so sr1 which is 502.062 that grant must be expended by this september 30th and you'll see that we have no grant balance that we estimate to bring forward to next year asser ii just a couple of lines up we have until september 30th of 23 and esther 3 we have until september 30th of 24 and so for both of those we are going to plan to carry money forward into the next year but we will definitely utilize those prior to their expiration turning to the next page our special funds report this looks largely the same as it has all year the one item we're just kind of keeping an eye out on is instrument rental and you'll see that we do project a loss in this line item this

151year and this is mostly due to fewer strings rentals coming through the schools that people are using an outside service to rent their strings instruments mostly so we'll just kind of keep an eye on that not to worry though because these funds can be um covering that that loss there so the extra money we're getting in from other grants and from our interests and investments will cover that loss but just something for us to be aware of and finally nutrition services page 10 we are serving a lot of meals and so that is really good news the fund has a nice healthy balance and i think we've mentioned before that we will be utilizing some of the extra funds to replace dishwashers and stoves this summer so we can refresh the equipment and the schools

152make sure they're energy efficient and working as best as they can we also just need to be aware that it appears extremely likely that the free breakfast and lunch program is going to end this year there's just not been a lot of movement on the federal level to extend that and so we're likely to see this this fund change a lot next year once uh people need to start paying for lunches again so we'll have to keep an eye on that and also make sure that our families do fill out the free and reduced lunch forums for next year these haven't been as important over the past couple of years because everybody's been getting free lunch but um starting in the fall we we presume that people will have to start paying again so we

153want to make sure that our families are making use of the free and reduced lunch if available to them so that is the report and happy to take any questions or pass them on to liz claire um i just have a question you know i was worried about this free and reduced lunch ending is there any way to be proactive and reach out to families during this school year about this need to apply and and the reason is over the summer families don't always check things they travel and then they show up at school expecting free lunch so i'm through counseling through communication i i really hope that there's something very proactive in the month of may and june so that our families know i would say june i would we wouldn't be able to

154do it yet because we're not every budget is finalized at this point so we don't have to walk back we do i will say this is something that i think our principals and the onboarding do a tremendous um tremendous work with especially with our new students and bring them in and you're right claire will have to bring it back middle and high school for people that have already been here and do extra reach out we certainly will i just want to make sure we're not we don't send mixed messages i i'm 95 sure the way this is going but there's still a five percent chance and the other thing i would mention is that although our percentage as a whole has dropped um so last year we reported i believe it was 27 uh free

155and reduced lunch as a total pop of our total population and we're down to 25 this year so basically we lost perhaps 2 percent so we are actively still sending information out to those families we do a mass mailing to all families in the beginning of the year but i don't want to give the impression that we went from 27 and now need to start over again we saw a drop but it it's it's not a lot of students and we will do everything we can to uh to get their forms back in yeah so i would assume that two percent will come back and i would even gather that we're gonna get three percent more exactly and so do we have the budget and the funding in the first couple weeks of schools to

156feed we do so those kids will not go without lunch but families can get some catch-up time in the first couple weeks of september to get their financial information in exactly there's kind of a grace period there and we never refuse a student a meal it doesn't matter when it is whether it's september whether it's november or january the child needs to eat they're going to eat at our schools yes other questions comments all right thank you so let us now rather seeking a motion to that the board of education approved the financial report for the period ending march 31st 2022 thank you ethan is there a second second jason thank you jason discussion all in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed the eyes havoc thank you so much thank you liz thank you

157deb now on to approval of the minutes approval of the minutes of the april 19 2022 regular board of education meeting seeking a motion please so move is there a second second any discussion all right all of those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed the eyes have it thank you so very much on to information and reports board members communications and reports do we have any reports from other boards and organizations if i'm sorry just one thing lauren if you could don't you have a report from the history day board from the state i just got a notice of something [Applause] is that to be shared but she doesn't know look at the living room owner farquhar um i didn't know if you had gotten this um took first place in your performance

158division in history she'll be going to nationals and i didn't know if you had all of that information so so i am happy for her she's not my i know i saw it i just saw it yeah yeah no no that's all right but thank you for sharing no no that's all right she is a student of ours nonetheless so proud of her national history awesome awesome awesome eleanor proud of you proud of you proud of you the um the national history day on saturday which i attended was wonderful my daughter was there representing so glad for eleanor and the other students also so a round of applause for eleanor please that is awesome thank you thank you any other reports from board yes jason yeah uh just wanted to uh give a shout out

159for uh for may is asian american pacific islander heritage month and there's a number of community events happen around the state and encourage folks to to look for those and to celebrate one of the you know interesting parts of the calendar is that this is also legislative session and we have a bill in the legislature uh bringing asian american pacific islander studies to k-12 education very appropriate that it's on floor during aapi month so thank you [Applause] thank you jason good information absolutely other updates from boards at all comments all right i want to make sure i don't do what i did the last time now we certainly want to hear from our student representatives so beginning with avery please so ap exams began yesterday and they will continue all the way through next week

160after that we will have a short period of time before we begin finals um tickets for medea hall's um greek tragedy of the year um will are currently out there will be performances at 7 p.m on may 19 20 20 and 21st and a matinee at 2 pm on may 21st as well on may 7th the junior prom will be happening tickets have been sent out and students are very excited to get back to prom um rita's came to raise funds for safegrad for our seniors which was also an incredibly popular event i saw people walking around the school with their little cups of shaved ice and running out to get that during their free periods um the environmental club had a visit from the girl scouts they planted vegetables in our garden um we

161have a compost um a burgeoning compost program with worms and the girl scouts participated in feeding these worms and taking care of them and they also learned the basics about worms so this was a nice opportunity for our older students to connect with younger kids sarah antoine received the marjorie little award for academic excellence this is an award awarded by craic of a one thousand dollar prize gabe sisk walker beverly jamie rendon and sean mcdaniel daniel of boys track will be advancing to the championship race and a new school record for the 1600 meter relay was set um recently at the um penn race yes um and to commemorate what used to be known as title ix well it's pretty well still well known by that um holland connor artists have been presenting an exhibit

162in the front of hall which honors key members in pursuing general gender equality which includes patsy mink who the act was later renamed after um and these this artistic project includes um short biographies that i've been seeing students stopping to read and learn about these figures in our history avery thank you and i have to say i've seen what is in the lobby at hall it's beautiful in terms of the artwork i'm highlighting them that so thank you so much for your update thank you andrew um i'll just go chronologically starting with two weeks ago um connord had a lot of activities related to earth day and we kind of had a whole week out of it actually at conor we have a very robust environmental club and something that was started last year was

163the uh something we're calling the earth day project so they decorated this school and that was up all week the connor curran our school newspaper also put out a special issue of the newspaper solely about earth day and environmentalism and also the earth day club in tandem with or the environmental club in tandem with the earth day project uh put out information the entire week via social media and um physically in the school last week uh conor music's connor's music department put on the broadway concert um and also last week chris herron came and spoke on tuesday and then the following day on wednesday community block was spent debriefing over his discussion of substance abuse and i'm i'm not sure if how familiar everyone here is with him but definitely a very powerful story i've

164heard it a few times actually um this week as mr moore noted is teacher appreciation week so um the administration has been doing things to show their appreciation um every day i think either at some point there's going to be a breakfast i know there was lattes were served to the teachers um but mr hines stress definitely for everyone including and especially the teachers this has been a very difficult year so um just showing really how appreciative we are and as a student how appreciative i am i'm definitely very um next week uh next weekend this week we're having ap exams um those end friday and then makeups are the following week or two but the vast majority of students are taking them uh these two weeks and then just looking forward to the rest

165of spring connor's drama department is also putting on a greek tragedy uh but we're putting on eurydices so um stay tuned for that posters just went up um and that will be happening in a few weeks thank you andrew i love the non-verbal communication here good thank you so much both of you for your updates and thank you as well for emphasizing again how this is teacher appreciation week that is certainly i think collective i can speak on behalf of the board we certainly appreciate all of the teachers all that you do for educating serving as role models empowering our young people we certainly know on our board we are appreciative to educators that we have claire and jason thank you so very much for your role and in what you do we certainly need

166your teachers so thank you thank you and people again thank you so much for your updates now moving on to future business announcement of future meeting dates we have the next one on tuesday may the 17th the regular board of education meeting at seven o'clock here at the town hall room 314 and then the last meeting for the year the academic year that is tuesday june the 7th 2022 regular board of education meeting 7 o'clock here at the town hall in room 314. is there a request for a future agenda item seeing none do we have any comments that would like to be made yes please if you come to the podium and please share your name and your address [Applause] uh my name is casey rousseau at 85 henbrook road i wanted to uh

167i don't want to keep you guys any later i put my name down to talk about um social emotional learning i want to thank the board for their leadership um in establishing a curriculum of social social emotional learning uh there have been a number of people who have commented here tonight and on previous occasions that in their opinion five-year-olds are too young to learn about gender identity it seems to me they have completely forgotten the lord of the flies levels of education they were subjected to on the school playgrounds hallways and classrooms of their youth in my recollection any perceived deviation from traditional gender norms subjected a child to harsh correction from their peers and in many cases the adults entrusted with their care please ask people ask for parents to have the option to

168up opt out of these curriculums i say that if a child is old enough to understand the terms of boy and girl they're old enough to understand that those terms don't neatly fit every child in the stereotypical way our students need to learn how to interact with the world around them in productive and respectful ways and finally i want to offer my warm appreciation to the board for listening with equine with equanimity to much of the abuse that was heaped from this pulpit um i i don't know how you do it you do it with grace and it is very saddening for somebody to hear fellow members of this community denigrating you and your work and i appreciate it so thank you thank you we had here also on the list once we reach the

169cap from before get you but i do believe you did speak yes you haven't okay yes on gender okay good evening my name is gage again my address is 56g letter streets i'm here to speak about the gender identity curriculum being implemented in west heart for public schools first some historical background i need to discuss about on june 5 the world came to know about an outbreak of unusually aggressive cancer called kaposi sarcoma this terrifying news was first published by in the cdc morbidity and mortality weekly reports immunologist dr michael gottlieb cdc's dr wayne chandra and dr alvin fredman kane confirmed the discovery of this deadly epidemic which specifically attacks the immune system in only gay men even a weekly report a weekly newspaper for the gay and lesbian community in san francisco called the

170bay area reporter published its first mention of gay men's pneumonia in july 2 1981 this is like within less than a month of the outbreak the newspaper encouraged gay men who are experiencing shortness of breath to see their physicians this pandemic was rightly called then by the doctors as a gay related immuno immune deficiency or grid before the great dr fauci who was the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious disease renamed it to hiv aids to cover up the source within seven months of the outbreak the first community-based aids service provider in the u.s was founded in new york city the center was called gay men's health crisis or gmhc this hiv cancer was introduced by a white gay man was intentionally made to spread across the globe and in the continent

171of africa became by far the greatest victim of it the black race was targeted by this evil and wiped out uh and africa lost 27 million people to hiv aids since 1982 over 76 women are now living with hiv hiv consuming a daily dose of hiv drug cocktail to add insult to injury the racist group this racist group turned around and accused the black race as a source of the pandemic they blamed him for eating monkey that has aids and then transferring it to the white man this theory was pulled out of a thin air by white liberals like de rosie crawford who wrote a fictitious book called virus hand as if that is not damaging enough to the global community the white progressive leftists that dominated our public school system okay i'm finished public

172school system are now excuse me sarah your time has expired thank you we also had on the list from before and bears or boars is she still here no and david and ella goldberg is there anyone else here who would like to make a comment please come to the podium cindy gothier 44 manchester circle and i would just like uh to follow up on the school mascot issue and just say that my impression of the last meeting when um mr goldman asked for someone to come and speak to us to educate that it was kind of like lip service like your mind has already been made up and nothing was going to change it and i just hope that that's not the case because i really appreciate the fact that he took his time tonight

173to educate all of us and i would hope it would mean more than just lip service because i am coming on my 40th reunion this year of connor'd and i can tell you that the majority of my classmates from 40 years ago are so upset about this and don't think our mascot name should be taken away and for us to have that feeling this many years later i think says a lot and i really think we need to reconsider and not push this through and i understand that 30 percent are offended by it but like the chief said not everyone's going to be pleased with every decision and the 30 percent is clearly the minority thank you any other comments one last time all right with that we are do not have an executive session

174and i just i feel compelled to just share a quote before we depart or seek an adjournment i certainly know that we are here certainly to talk about board matters talk about our district matters educating our young people i just want to remind us uh the words of dr martin luther king jr who said the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education so again i'm honored to serve with all of you as we continue to do what we are here to do in that charge and with that seeking a motion to adjourn so moved is there a second second meeting adjourned at 9 50.