001calling the meeting to order good evening and welcome to the west hartford public schools board of education regular meeting on this tuesday april the 19th 2022 charlotte may you please call the roll dr chang here mr goldman yeah 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 to the flag of the united and to the states which stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right we do not have a revision to the agenda order and now we are at the time for public communications this is an opportunity for us to hear from the public your thoughts your suggestions your
002concerns each individual has three minutes to share their thoughts and there are 21 minutes per subject matter we ask that when you go to the podium please share your name and your address we certainly do ask and encourage that all comments are made in a respectful way and be aware that we are attentively listening to you however it is policy that we do not respond to comments as they are being made but we are listening to you as you are speaking please be mindful to charlotte she will hold up a yellow card when you are down to one minute left in your comments and when your time has expired you will see a red card i have a list here of several names and again we have 21 minutes per subject matter so if we
003do reach the 21 minute mark please know that we also do offer public comments at the end of the meeting and we certainly welcome to hear from you at that time as well beginning with on j ostberg i believe and i apologize if i mispronounced anyone's name hi good evening my name is nj ostberg i live at 70 west beacon street here in west hartford i'd like to talk just a couple of minutes about social emotional learning and crt um i'm new here this is my first time speaking but i've been reading a lot of articles about both curriculum and i'm not sure that a five-year-old can process what gender is what pronouns should be used i i believe as a parent and a grandparent that social emotional learning begins at home i believe in
004teaching basic information so that children will learn and thrive i think we're getting off of that i i grew up in the 60s and the 70s graduated high school in 78 graduated undergrad in 83 and so on so i'm i'm old school and i am not an anti-gay racist nothing i just think we're going a little bit left of center and i don't think it's good for the kids to be that young i do think that yes there are kids at age five and six and seven perhaps that know they're gay or that they know that they're in the wrong body but it's up to them and their families to come to that decision not to go sit in a classroom and be told oh susie it's okay if you want to be called steve
005who i don't believe that that's the teacher i don't believe that the teacher has that right and to do this across the board and so i'm against this curriculum very much so and um that's all i've done thank you [Applause] thank you next we have catherine last initial b byro thank you my name is catherine byrod i live at 85 fenbrook road i've lived in west hartford since i was 11 years old i'm a hall high grad mother of two hall high grads and i just wanted to express my support for the mascot change and my support and trust in the process as it is working out and that i think that in a town like west hartford where i learned where i attended bar and batman's buzz and confirmations and where i have attended
006braces and i have celebrated ramadan that we need to provide a neutral mascot situation so that people can feel that they belong and that they are not targets and that they are able to not be stereotyped or identified as a mascot rather than as a person [Music] and so i wrote to you before the vote and everything i said in that letter is true and i just want to express my continued support for the process of the mascot change i am the mother i have the sister of a hall high cross country runner a cousin of a connored basketball player and the mother of a hall high softball player none of them feel that being a warrior or a chieftain was more important than being a good citizen and neighbor in the world thank you
007next we have addie lorden 561 park road in february 2021 this all started for me questioning financial discrepancies with regard to public funds and here i am with a few with few answers and even more serious concerns i was told recently to give up it's not worth it i'd be slandered defamed my family targeted and called a political operative and much worse that's all happened and allegedly assistant superintendent mr morrow has threatened to investigate me a.g garland i gave him the opportunity several times to refute this his silence is deafening and assistant superintendent mr vicinis has stated in a meeting that parents concerns are irrelevant our contributions insignificant and we have no right to information on how public funds are spent them winks at me in this very room as much as to say you
008can't touch us this begins and ends with money there are millions of dollars to be had in the name of equity we all question the sudden resurgence and urgency with which our school team names were eradicated names clan mother sharan and others do not deem offensive or propriety to native americans mr chang declared the revenue of 27 000 minuscule and this is a moral issue but he alluded that there was more at stake this vote had to be done and couldn't wait until june but i see now why members of the board voted down transparency and why some members feel they need public relations experts a vote based on senator kathy austin's bill regarding tribal revenue a bill that was not completely presented here by chairperson farquharson why the urgency 24 tennis courts in need
009of renovation with a hefty three million dollar price tag a supposed item in the whps budget but then the state generously steps in issuing bonds to cover the cost pushed by austin and others in the business of monetizing our equity her own press secretary making the announcement but these bonds could not be issued for existing structures and the three million was approved for sports facilities the tennis court project has not gone out to bid and no winning bid has been made public senator austin is being slated to be our new next governor by many who will be her lieutenant governor out of those pushing for these funds through under the umbrella of equity i wonder did the inner circle of the boe whps and town caucus on this did you include them other members the
010members of the opposite party in these discussions about this sweetheart deal 3 million is only the tip of the iceberg equity is worth a lot more apparently i question the new style of report cards and why so much space was allowed to sel and social justice subjects under the main subject social studies excuse me pardon me your time has expired how much is your integrity worth [Applause] thank you next we have anita hi anita kelly i'm 48 west normandy drive here in west hartford connecticut i am not originally from west hartford i'm actually originally from philadelphia a lovely quaker area city philadelphia meaning um city of brotherly la philadelphia anyway i am here for one reason and that is to show that the administration of the west hartford public schools have made grievous errors and
011they do not give full information on february 23 2018 tom moore turned around when i asked him to look into something he said no i'm not going to do it and i said well why not he said i made my decision i'm not going to do it and i said well then how do i appeal your decision and he said you can't appeal my decision tom tomorrow knows and dr farkasan you were on the board of ed i went to the office of civil rights and they did investigate the situation and that may just come up again uh in october i saw issues with the principal regarding public funds i brought it to the attention and interesting things occurred but let's suffice it to say on december twenty second paul vicinis assistant superintendent of curriculum
012wrote to me i understand i appreciate your request however the audit responsibilities you described because i was asking to look at the funds and how they were used public funds or related to the pto they do not extend to the finances of webster hill or west hartford public schools well he was wrong freedom of information act gives us all all of us the right to look at how the administration uses public funds because as we all know west hartford public schools does not print the funds it comes from all of our salaries but the worst part the worst part is is that not only did they attempt to target me and slander me with as tomorrow wrote casting aspersions but they went after my son on march 14th and you are well aware of it
013because i wrote to you uh he was pulled aside for misinformation hearsay in which the other student involved said that my son was not involved in the situation both children my son and the other son they are both students of color and the other mother is as rain as enraged as i am if we talk about equity and we talk about children of color then i wonder i want to understand why the principal is given certain rights and the curriculum specialist is given certain rights but when my son is pulled out of the classroom he's not allowed to speak and you know what he asked to go back into the classroom assistant curriculum specialist did not allow him to go back you're in executive sessions you need to look at how the schools are being
014run in the schools you need to talk to the parents thank you [Applause] thank you next we have scott swag good evening as i look around this room tonight something is missing excuse me please pardon us sorry scott swag 19 clay bar drive like every other time um i look around this room i see something is missing i see the board of education i see the superintendent members of the community and even the media but i do not see chief richard velke or representatives from any of the native american tribes in connecticut where are they do you not care what they have to say esteemed chairwoman on april 9th you told a former board of education member and trusted member of this community that if chief felkey contacted the board directly and requested to be
015added to the agenda for tonight's meeting that you would include him well on april 12 chief felke submitted that request directly to the board as you instructed yet for reasons i cannot understand on april 13th you refused his request and instead offered him a mere three minutes to speak during public comment why did you go back on your word the disrespect you and your board members show to chief felkey and all native americans in this state is absolutely shameful you claim the decision to erase the names warrior and chieftain from these schools were meant to protect native americans under the guise of your equity and anti-racism policy but do native americans need your protection from these honorable names do they have they told you they find them offensive demeaning or derogatory maybe if you actually
016let them speak they could tell you the board cited the supported supposed native negative impact these names have on native americans but here we have an actual native american chief who supports keeping the names i wonder why the board refuses to hear from him why are they ignoring him if anyone's opinion on this issue should be ignored it should be yours and those of your fellow board members none of you speak for native americans none of you you should let them speak for themselves it appears that you're the ones who are discriminating against native americans by silencing the voices of those who disagree with you and you just stare and smile and carry on if you truly cared about native americans and how they felt about the names warrior and chieftain you would invite them
017to this meeting to discuss the topic not hide behind procedural technicalities of meeting agendas given the lack of due diligence performed by this board when making the rash decision to strip our high schools of these honored and respected names you would have all been well served to listen to native americans in this state especially a leader as honorable as chief felkey democracy dies in the darkness i ask you all to stop hiding in the shadows and step into the light if you'd like more information to support our petition to save the hall warriors and counter chieftains please contact me and my friends at hall connor united gmail.com hall connorunited gmail.com we will not rest until the warriors and chieftains are restored to this community for generations to come thank you and long live the warriors
018thank you next we have john souza uh good evening john souza ate ironwood lane in west hartford long time resident grew up in town came back when i had kids put him through the school system i'm still actively coaching in town for younger people um i saw an article in the current about the sel discussion with the schools and i was really terrified and horrified that the topic of gender identity is being taught to kidney gardeners first graders without the express permission of parents um i learned that the topic is part of the civics curriculum and it's not eligible to be opt out of like uh doesn't require specific notice to the parents of the materials used as well parents are trusting they're busy you know this town is expensive to live in the states
019very expensive to live in everybody's working they're busy they trust the school system to do the right things i think they would be demayed dismayed if to learn exactly what's being taught to their five and six year olds i'm going to guess that a lot of them don't know what's going on we used to teach our kids when i was growing up and when my kids were little we used to teach them to respect everybody that's common courtesy regardless of their gender their color their disability they didn't need to understand the reasons uh that all the adult concepts behind it they didn't need to understand that they just were taught to respect everybody regardless now i wonder to myself is the world gone crazy it's is nothing off limits to little kids today these are
020complicated difficult subjects even for adults let's be honest so why can't we just let kids be innocent do we have to sacrifice a little more of childhood on the altar of sexual anxieties today this is this is getting out of hand stop sexualizing kids at a tender age move the gender identity portion of sel to the health curriculum outside of the k to five grades require full disclosure of the topics and material to be used given to parents in writing then allow the parents to opt out and according to their own judgments and good sense it's scary to me that this stuff happens without letting everybody know and you can say well they posted on the website um you know it's all there to see but it's not there to see because people are busy
021if they knew exactly what was happening i think a lot of people would be up in arms to be honest with you even better i i say to myself i remember when my kids were little even when i was the teachers were overwhelmed they had so much to do they have to teach to the test and they can't get all these other topics in let's take this stuff out of the curriculum do we really need that i mean everybody in this room these are educated people i could teach my little kids you know basic understanding of what they need to know they don't need to know everything that's horrible in society today not saying that this topic is horrible it's just over their head and they don't need to understand it i think we're beyond
022that point we shouldn't be sexualizing young children that's all i'm trying to say thank you for your time and i hope i made my points clear [Applause] thank you next we have trevor horn hello thank you my name is trevor horn i'm from 30 garland road in west hartford i'm here to speak in support of the continued inclusion of the social emotional learning curriculum for the elementary school children my family moved to west hartford after researching school districts that would explicitly include social emotional learning the benefits that we see our children gaining from the curriculum that they're part of now um that they are being exposed to in the magnet school today that they uh attend are significant um but we wanted to be able to bring our kids into a local school system where
023they start attending school with neighbors they interact with on a daily basis so our experience with social emotional learning is one that has helped in partnership with us to teach our children acceptance and empathy for others around them my children have a far more nuanced understanding of how not only to interpret other people's feelings but how to interpret and deal with their own emotions than even i do today as an adult i certainly attribute that partially to the social and emotional curriculum that their school has implemented which appears to be very similar to west hartford's we are planning on sending our children to the local school next fall assuming that this curriculum is not actually in threat of removal so for the most part i am here just in response to seeing the news articles
024about how this curriculum is intact under uh here in town my wife started speaking with other parents we know in town that are very much in favor of these programs in school and wanted to see ourselves see for ourselves what was being said i watched the last meeting that took place online and was happy to see that there were others who stood up in support to defend the program like several of us are here today to do as well i i do want to touch on i first want to address you know that i heard some residents at the last meeting talk about specific books that are part of the curriculum specifically one about transgender teddy bear when it comes to the transgender community there seems to be a lot of confusion from parents about
025what it means to be trans and i'm not here to educate anyone on that today but i would point those parents to resources like the trevor project true colors and glsen to gather more understanding of what it means to be trans i will say though that being trans is not something that is controversial it is a state of being that people actually have to exist with all books like the one previously mentioned do is try to normalize the concept that transgender people do exist and should not be marginalized because of who they are i implore everyone to read those books that are easily found on the west hartford school district's website and actually take time to learn about the concepts presented in them we are not sexualizing young children by giving them the language to
026talk about who they are while not every parent may want their children to understand these concepts i would say what ends up that ends up being more of an argument of why this is crucial to can uh continue including in the curriculum the mere fact that there is opposition to the inclusion of topics surrounding empathy and tolerance tells me that there may not be much explicit learning on those topics in such households so at the very least kids can be exposed to that as a requirement in our schools um i do also want to mention that this is not just about acceptance and tolerance excuse me i'm sorry i'm over my time thank you thank you next we have casey for brazil [Applause] good evening my name is casey rousseau i live at 85 handbrake
027road i'm here to thank the board for their actions in february to end our town's use of the historically racist nicknames for our two excellent high schools i'm very supportive of the process established and distressed that a population of residents has decided to put energy into retaining these names rather than into something more productive the board's decision in february was completely in keeping with the equity policy established in 2021 which expanded on the 2020 promise to dismantle all elements of systemic racism and historical inequities and i applaud your efforts thank you excuse me the level of respect is not only for those at the podium speaking but those also in the audience thank you next we will hear from cody faulconer i believe hello my name is cody and i am visiting from 243 steel
028road i am a proud member of the lgbtq plus community and i identify as a transgender male during the last meeting we heard from both sides of an emotionally charged topic focused around the k-5 social emotional curriculum in particular a book that teachers are mandated to read about understanding gender identity being transgender and the process of transitioning myself and others feel as though reading this book to such a young audience will be dangerous and confusing for children especially those that are neurodiverse as a grown man i still struggle with the complex and ever-expanding gender identity spectrum which has been a long journey of understanding and self-discovery to introduce this to kindergarteners who developmentally cannot grasp the concept of gender completely will only lead to confusion and is a grave disservice to the queer community at
029this young age i still believed in santa claus magic and unicorns in no world i would have been able to comprehend the concept of gender identity and in fact it would have led to more confusion among myself and peers children are simply not developmentally or neuropsychologically developed enough to safely process the information introduced in this book this will inevitably lead to mis self-diagnosis of being trans which will have dangerous and potentially irreversible irreversible effects that lead into adolescence and adulthood ultimately parents should have the option to enroll their child into this curriculum obviously there are varying opinions on this matter some parents will be okay with their very young children hearing from their teacher about gender identity however for those that aren't the options should be available to opt out of this i am beyond
030happy to live in a world where this is something that is discussed in schools but k to five is entirely too young thank you [Applause] thank you excuse me thank you next we will have sean daly thank you well western hartford west hartford board of education members my name is uh sean daly and i reside at 1779 asylum avenue in west hartford as a resident of over 50 years and a product of the west hartford education system duffy sedgwick and connor and a parent of a daughter in the school system i must say how ashamed i am of the majority party of this board your failure to practice what you preach is abysmal and unacceptable first you ask for opinion from students in the general public on the high school names issue but when you
031don't get the answers you want you ignore it then you have a state recognized tribal chief who wishes to address the board and support in support of an honorable place of a school mascot name and in a racist manner um uh you refuse to provide him with the honor of an agenda item speaking spot and instead relegate him to the back of the proverbial agenda bus with the general public only allowing three minutes to challenge this governing body it's shameful and this board needs to practice what it preaches concerning diversity and inclusion i call on the board of ed to reconsider and invite chief felkey the and give him the agenda item he deserves to appropriately address this body there are members of this board that nearly make me ashamed of being alum of the
032university of connecticut one would think that a professor of ethics would recognize the hypocrisy of this issue and fight for chief felkey after all even though the national congress of indians wants to end the use of harmful indian mascots we now have two tribes that say these names are not harmful kind of blows that theory out of the water then you continue to refuse to listen to the majority of parents in west hartford with valid concerns about the skewed and inappropriate reading material as it pertains to gender curriculum for the kindergarten through third grade level in west hartford public schools and when dr harris reaches out to you with an olive branch to allow for public forum for parents to provide their opinions on the subject you cower in fear and attack dr harris we
033all know what the true issue is dr rosina haskins is not the solution she is the real problem with our sel curriculum she has gone far past what even the state of connecticut guidelines feel are inappropriate are appropriate in an effort to justify her role and push her personal agenda of indoctrination in our school system that removes parents from any form of control over their own children i ask this board searches for a replacement for tom moore that is more level-headed less fear-mongering toward parental involvement with the school system and most importantly someone who truly understands diversity and inclusion and will remove dr haskins from her role many of you may not remember but there was a time not long ago when a different party ruled west hartford and they came into the majority over
034a board of education issue and it was even during a time when democrats outnumbered republicans three to one as it does today you've seen what has happened in san francisco the state of virginia and other towns in connecticut don't be so arrogant as to think it won't happen here take a look at your audience it's different people coming to speak with you every week and they're going to keep coming until you listen thank you next we have john rickson i believe her last initial begins with r john i'll say it one more time john yes all right well we will move on to the next name on the list ellen good evening whoops don't start the clock because i lost my speech thank you my name is ellen nichols i'm a retired sixth grade teacher
035and i live on quaker lane tonight i'm asking the board to perform a full review of the gender identity curriculum it has been in place almost a full school year and continues to raise concerns among many parents teachers and residents the gender lessons tell five and six-year-olds that a boy can change to a girl and that their sex might have been misassigned at birth by doing so west hartford has disregarded the professional standards provided by the state of connecticut and this deviation deserves a close look first the state includes gender identity lessons under health education which includes sex ed healthy relationships and mental emotional health one would think west hartford would place their gender lessons under health ed as well but they did not instead our town put gender lessons under civics which is a
036branch of social studies slash sel social emotional learning why did west hartford not follow the state guideline one reason might be that the state allows parents to opt their child out of health sex ed but it does not allow them to opt out of civics or sel it seems the admit administration does not want parents to have that choice this is something the board should rectify put gender identity in the health sex ed curriculum and let parents be the ones to decide if their kids should have these controversial lessons the second thing the board should look at is the age when gender identity is taught personally i think it does not belong in the schools but the state health education standards incorporate gender identity twice both of them many grades higher than west hartford for
037example one standard is called sexual health it calls for children to describe how people are similar and different including sexual identity gender gender identity and gender expression the state recommends this be taught in grades three to five but in west hartford we start in kindergarten west hartford begins gender identity at five years old at an age where children can become confused question their own biology and wonder about their family values in towns that follow the state standards kids may be hearing these ideas at age 10 instead of age five older or in many towns not at all west hartford has chosen to ignore the state standards and is introducing gender lessons not only to younger children but also preventing parents from opting them out this is why the board should call for a complete rewrite
038of the curriculum thank you [Applause] thank you next we have maggie edwards hello my name is maggie edwards i live on south main street pardon me if i get emotional this is really tough for me some of the members of the board may have gotten my email about what happened regarding my daughter last friday as we were waiting for my daughter to get in her last acceptance for college she got into all 10 of 10 got into howard as i was calling to brag she got a message on social media from a fellow student at hall that i will warn you is quite disgusting and graphic and went on for quite a while he called her the n-word over and over and over again told her to kill herself over and over again sent her
039videos of nazis killing black people of homophobic slurs of anti-semitic slurs the n-word over and over again a video of nazis killing black people he told her um that he would hang her from a tree if she does not hang herself he told her multiple times he sent her pictures of her in middle school and um i want to thank the west hartford pd because they did arrest um this person and she can't know who it is because it's a minor but this is a series of events that over the last couple of months has been getting worse and worse in the high schools mainly a lot of what i hear about at hall from talking to other parents other friends some have actually asked to move their children out of hall into other schools
040or out of the school system altogether the there was things in the bathroom there's kids that go up to some of the children in the school and tell them on a daily basis to kill themselves or call them the n-word and something has to be done because i'm sick of doing excuse my language but doing this over and over and over again my kids have every right to go to school and not be harassed and you can believe whatever you want or you don't have to like other people or what but it's common respect to not tell kids to kill themselves or to contact them or to show them pictures of them when they were younger make threats she got into all 10 schools all 10 schools and she should have been celebrating that and
041not worrying how to continuously deal with this crap excuse my language and she would like to speak too thank you [Applause] thank you next we have elise edwards hello i'm said daughter elise edwards um 554 me uh south main street i come to the board today especially as my mom discussed um me getting terrible threats about my life but i'm not really here to talk about my experience as this kid the only reason i really i'm really happy that they that the police were able to find him is because we don't know how many people this kid also told to kill themselves i personally know multiple people who have um mental disorders as well as i do who would actually listen to this kid and i just i don't understand why people do this it's
042like um especially whole high school claiming diversity here and there we took probably like three steps forward to take a million steps back to go back to where we were before um especially in the case of just like color people in general my friends including myself are uncomfortable in multiple classrooms because not only are the only colored people there but anytime race is involved in the conversation we feel forced to say something and that should not be the case we should not have to run away from kids um because they want to come up to us and tell us that we should die because of our skin color and i don't mean to blame parents because i for sure know that friends have a lot more to do with influencing other kids than parents do
043but it kind of draws a line of what are you teaching your kids if other kids are going up to people and telling them that they should kill themselves because they can't change the way they look um i don't i don't have much there than that so thank you [Applause] thank you next we have cheryl starbrat sorry brat cheryl hello i'm cheryl storybrad i live at 122 mohawk drive i have two young kids in the west hartford school system kindergarten and third grade and i know the scl program has been painted to be this terrible program that's shoving gender down little children's throats and making them identify themselves and that is not our experience at all everything has been extremely age-appropriate i don't think my kindergartner has even really broached the subject yet and my
044third grader is just learning how to be able to speak about it respectfully and be able to talk about it and i think that's the ultimate goal of this being a kid is tough and whether we talk about it or not children are going to come from a huge variety of family structures and they're going to be feeling a multitude of feelings about themselves i was in elementary school in the 80s in ohio and we didn't talk about that kind of thing at all and so when our differences started to emerge as we got older i think people approached it with fear and as a result of that kids were bullied and made fun of and they probably the kids that were maybe feeling feelings of being gay or trans had no way to identify
045that because it wasn't normalized at all and i can't imagine how isolating that must have felt and i feel very proud to be in a school system that from an early age is teaching language to talk about it and normalizing it and allowing kids to just be open to it so when their kid when their classmates might start to you see these differences emerge it's not going to be this scary weird thing that's been silenced we'll be able to just be which is what we all want for ourselves and i think every parent wants that and it's not this huge scary curriculum i can assure you my kids are thriving in it absolutely um that's all i have to say i just wanted to speak out in support of sel thank you as we said
046at the top we have 21 minutes per subject matter so we have time for one more comment in regard to seo and so if they're i'll call the next name and if you are speaking on scl that will be the last comment on that at this time and as we know at the end of the meeting we do have public comments however if there are other comments on other subject areas we do have time and rather space for those india liddy hi india liddell 26 fernwood road good evening members of the board of education as you know i wrote you an email last week asking you to consider putting an item on the agenda for tonight's meeting the agenda item was chief richard velke of the scatiko tribe one of the five recognized tribes in
047connecticut and one of which who the board sought input from early on regarding the use of the warrior and chieftain names my email indicated to you that chief felke would be here tonight to express his support and continued use of the names of warrior and chieftains by our two high schools my understanding from mr scott zweig who met with and spoke several times with chief felke is that the chief contacted chairwoman farquharson requesting time on the agenda to speak at this evening's meeting i also understand that at one point in time dr farkerson agreed to have chief felkey speak but then rescinded that offer the facts might be slight slightly skewed but um mr zweig clarified that the reason behind this decision is unknown however you will notice that chief filke is not here tonight
048and that is because of that although he could have attended and been given his three minutes of public comment he was too insulted by the unwelcoming response of our board of education uninviting a chief is one of the uh i'm sorry uninviting a chief of one of the active and recognized tribes of connecticut is beyond disrespectful what were you afraid to hear that maybe you had made a mistake that the generic warrior and chieftain names are not considered derogatory you asked for input but because chief felkey may not have been the input you were seeking you decided it did not fit your agenda and was not necessary as i've said once before you will continue to vote the way you like but you should at least have given him the opportunity and the respect to
049be heard i believe the 27 000 tribal funding includes a requirement that native american history will be taught to our children i looked at both the current middle and high school curriculum descriptions and did not find any reference to native american studies i did find world regional studies middle american and caribbean south american western eastern europe sub-sahara africa middle east africa asia revolutionary war modern warfare latin american studies modern africa middle east african-american black and puerto rican studies most recently added by governor lamont during the 2021 legislative session senator kathy austin did push through a senate bill 314 which called for our local and regional school boards to include include native american studies in the social studies curriculum i acknowledge this bill is in conjunction with discontinuing the use of offensive native american mascots and
050i do believe this is to be implemented in 2023 and 2024 but why wait this topic is not over not just yet no matter what the outcome i will tell you this i will make sure that our schools do create a thorough curriculum with lesson lesson plans that teach our children about the history of our connecticut tribal nations so they are not discarded not forgotten and most importantly not erased by people like the west hartford board of education [Applause] thank you i see john souza's name here but i know he spoke previously okay all right so thank you then we have mary nagy hello my name is mary nagy of 43 acadia street i am an rn mandated reporter my public health nursing background includes school nursing teaching nursing students developmental psychology physical assessment skills
051and adolescent psychiatric nursing i've recently reviewed content dispersed to west heart for teachers on the back cover of an sel gender identity instruction book and books for k through 5. these promote stereotypes and gender dress and color confusing confusing school age scholars my three points number one gender identity does not determine biology 160 plus genes are embedded in our dna at the fertilization of egg by sperm xx and xy chromosomes determine sex and gender these are not assigned by a doctor at birth they are seen as early as 12 weeks gestation by ultrasound and confirmed by blood tests conversely gender identity literature alleges gender is assigned at birth not embedded in our dna gender is not something you quote feel inside as seen in the k-level book teddy becoming tilly suggesting you can transition back
052and forth well this might be magical thinking it is not kind it is confusing and scary leading to my second point kindergarten is not a place to teach gender transitioning in kindergarten a child of this tender age should not be led to question if they have a boy inside of them or a girl kids need to be themselves without being sexualized secondary sex traits are hormonally driven in puberty not before puberty is on average ages 12 and 13. public health authorities tell us we have a contagion of gender confusion and suicide trans kids are at 19 higher risk yet 90 percent will detransition if left alone not that we shouldn't accompany them decreased social media greatly limits both and this leads me to my third point remember the natural latency period k through puberty latency
053simply means kids are happy to be tasked with making friends achieving certain basic understanding of academics reading math spellings science us ranks 30th behind other countries in math we can do better or be excluded math books need to be reviewed for content bias and stereotypes yesterday over 70 math books in florida were removed from schools due to content bias please remove from the current west hartford sel learning gender identity reading list all books promoting gender identity ideology place them on the list promoting stereotypes every book i saw promotes divisive stereotypes and potential harm to family and children west hartford is diverse many of my friends neighbors and families wear cultured derived clothing and colors africans indian pakistani vietnamese americans male and female wear tunics crouch you wear albs catholics and and habits clothes should not
054be sexualized stereotyped as seen in the student's book jacob where's the dress instead let us focus on kindness now i don't know if i've gone over my three minutes but i have a one minute that i'd like to speak to indian culture because i don't want to introduce myself a second time i understand one minute no part of me ma'am just out of respect for everyone yes i am okay thank you but your time has expired thank you so much is it the fruitful three minutes it is yes when the red card is shown i didn't see it yes three minutes okay thank you i am a trans cultural nurse i support the use of the mascots my great grandparents came here on four mic generations has expired thank you [Applause] next on the list
055mary i see your name again on a different topic but i'm just going to go i'll come back to you please thank you that is the max for social emotional learning discussion at this time again at the end of the meeting we do have time for public comments so if i call your name and if you are to speak wanting to speak on scl please do share your time at the end of the meeting but if it's on another subject please do come to the podium next we have kate caps capes okay so thank you and gina morris i see scl as well all right thank you and russell gardner [Music] russell gardner i live at 8 willow lane in west hartford this is a completely different topic i'm here to talk about high school
056graduations i had the privilege of attending a high school graduation in hall last year and that happened to be my first encounter with the board of ed at the graduation uh it included a member of the board of ed speaking as part of the graduation i found that astonishing so i asked can you hear me okay okay so i asked several parents i did my own survey and asked several parents uh why a member of the board of ed was speaking at the graduation it was unanimous they had no idea i then asked each parent who this person was they didn't know who they were and then i asked each parent if they saw any value in having a board of ed remember speaking at the graduation they didn't see any reason why to do
057that i then did a survey of several students ask the same three questions who is this person they had no idea why they at the graduation speaking they had no idea did they see any value they had no i they didn't see any value so apparently it's some sort of tradition that the board of ed likes to have a member speak at graduations so i'm here to let you know i'll speak for myself at this point that parents have the families have no interest in hearing you speak at a graduation i i shouldn't even have to be here to explain it to you but i will walk you through it okay a graduation is about the students graduating the graduation is for the students and their families it's bad enough hearing the principal talk too
058much okay but then to hear you i mean it's something narcissistic and i'm waiting for to see what happens at the graduation this year and whoever speaks i'm going to come back and let you know how mediocre your speech was okay it was mediocre last year it was embarrassing and it seems like you some of you this is not for all of you but whoever is planning on speaking at the graduation this year take a good look at yourself okay don't listen to your friends and family of course they're going to say yes we'd love to hear you talk but take a good look at yourself and ask why you're being so narcissistic and think rather than thinking of yourselves think about the students and the families let the students speak more you know find
059ways let the principles know don't talk too much and find ways to have more students speak during the graduation that's what we want [Applause] thank you that is all that we have listed here was there anyone who did not sign up and wanted to speak on any other subject matter apart from scl again at the end of the meeting um so ma'am yes and then mary will call on you yes ma'am at the door yes ma'am yes i i'm talking about military children yes you may yes you can come to the podium and please share your name and your address yes let me open here my name is coralis ruiz and i live in thomas street and i am a parent of three children in the west hartford school district we are new to the
060district we arrived in july of last year we are a military family my husband serves in the us army and he is stationed in barry rosenblatt army reserve center here in west hartford as every military family we face difficulties but also have the opportunity to go places that others cannot and learn from others in ways that are unimaginable the reason of my visit and comments tonight is that april is the month of the military child i am a bit sad because i have not seen anything done by the state or the school district when my husband told me that he had orders to come here to connecticut i was excited and scared scared because of the transition of my children my fears grew when i visited the school district website and found no information for
061military families i couldn't even find online how many military children are in the state of connecticut let alone in the school district i can tell you that in the state that we were living before coming here there are over 13 000 military children but my fear came true when i received a call from the district stating that my children were not going to be enrolled until we had a home address in west hartford i was shocked and frustrated there is a military compact nationwide that is supposed to protect us everyone knows about the existence of military children yet there is lack of understanding or empathy by the west hartford district when enrolling i use my husband's duty station address as i can do but i was scolded by the district employee that called me because
062according to her i needed a home address in the state that we were living military orders and duty station address was enough to get my children enrolled after we finally had an address i was told that we needed a physical and a dental evaluation in order for the kids to start school it took many phone calls until i found an angel in one of my kids school which is the spouse of a veteran and she convinced the school to give us time to get those ready so this the kids could attend school normally she did this because she knew what we were going through she understood us and had empathy and compassion unlike the school district it also took many phone calls to doctor offices in connecticut to get those appointments that first week of
063school medical offices here are also not very welcoming to military families and the issues we face these are things that no military family should endure because there is a common knowledge of us but also military compacts nationwide worldwide there are more than 1.6 million military children who face many challenges and unique experiences as a result of their parents service while military members serve around the world we often forget the challenges faced by their children military families move on an average every two to three years like us impacting military children through changing schools and support networks defense secretary caspar weinberger was responsible for establishing april as the month of the military child in 1986 and the department of defense has honored his initiative ever since the month of april is an important one for military children
064who have one or both parents serving in uniform due to what i have mentioned tonight i invite the west hartford school district as well as the school districts in the state and the leadership of the state of connecticut the state representative state senators and the governor as well as the congressional delegation to purpo up and join the president of the united states of america fellow states and the department of defense schools and military serving organizations in celebrating and assisting military children and the sacrifices they make thank you so much for letting me speak tonight and and share awareness about military children have a blessed evening [Applause] thank you yes sir sir pardon me par one sir one moment i'm just going to have mary and then i'll have you to go please thank you thank
065you for your kindness i i apologize for continuing to speak my name is mary maggie i'm from 43 acadia street and i previously introduced a little bit about my professional background i've been living at my current address for about less than 30 years but i've been living in west hartford for 40 years i am a trans cultural nurse and i take pride in the american indian history and culture i take no offense at the mascots in the beautiful names and images of warrior and chieftains i take northeast pride in them and i grieve the institutional memory loss upon their removal my second point is my great-grandparents came to west hartford from hungary and my grandparents came from ireland both names the warrior can con out a hungarian background and chieftains an irish background these could
066be from other cultures too even though they are from the american indian culture and west hartford rightly chose them in the 1950s that's 70 years my third point american indians such as the wampanoag tribe that still live in massachusetts inhabited west hartford and were kidnapped by the spaniards in the in the late 1500s and those remaining died out in the 16th century don't further erase american cultural indian history fourth point west hartford has vestiges of indian culture and street names found in tungsten's plantation mohawk drive mohegans these are worthy these should remain too my fifth point i personally was raised in simsbury my parents grandparents and great grandparents came though to west hartford from their respective countries that's four generations simsbury prizes its indian culture and history and i wish west hartford would too please
067reinstate mascot names and worthy reference to american indian tribes and culture and languages thank you [Applause] thank you gentlemen in the back yes good evening my name is juan vieimisar i live at tumblebrook lane in west hartford and again i am back here advocating for my son um i forgot to mention he's black last time i spoke to you guys and that he was bullied i told you guys that right and um he also suffering from ptsd from his teacher he doesn't want to go back to his classroom he doesn't want to be in that classroom and we're awaiting a meeting with his teacher face to face with his teacher the head of the es department the principal and his advocates and we haven't heard yet we had a meeting last uh two weeks ago
068on thursday and there were no solutions given so what is going on with this inclusion i mean you guys are preaching a good song you guys are up here preaching some good stuff but it's about time we practice it because it's it's more like the town and the school is afraid that i'm gonna sue you guys but you're putting me in that position because you're you have a plan for my son a written plan that you're not following that the reason he ended up when he ended up is because you did not follow that plan and i'm still looking for answers i expect a little bit more from you guys you know and this is just just this is what nobody knows about and what everybody knows about the the the changing of the names
069the education program you're still hiding all that information from everybody we all want answers i want to answer this lady this young lady who has accepted to 10 colleges i fear my son what's going to happen to him he's being bullied oh he's not a little kid either he's a huge kid he's a 10 year old that looks like he's 15 and he's being bullied because he's got dark skin curly hair and he's just very quiet thank you [Applause] thank you are there any other comments that would like to be made again if it's on scl if you can please reserve it till the end of the meeting but at this time on any other subject matter i'm cindy gothia from manchester circle my daughter is a student at connor high school and um is
070in the special ed and to say i'm frustrated is i can't find a word big enough to describe my feelings about our special ed system in the school district she has been pushed through since webster hill told that everything's going to be fine you know the whole nine i'm just i'm over it and i think more parents need to know that our special ed department needs to do better by these kids i have asked repeatedly for her to be held back and i am constantly told we don't do that in west hartford um she gets a d and they tell me that's passing that is not acceptable how are we setting these children up to be successful adults and be able to be successful at college if we're telling them that a d is great
071and i get nowhere with the school i've tried and tried and tried with the pupil services to get her into an alternate placement and i was told a few weeks ago at my last ppt meeting that's not going to happen and i think the problem is with our school system is individuals that work there not that they're god they think they have all this power and he looked me in the face and said that's not going to happen mom and i said you think i'm going to go away because you said that's not going to happen because i'm not going to go away and i told you that mr moore many years ago i'm not going anywhere but my kid is getting ready to graduate and what is she going to be in life if
072she's not given the opportunities that every other child in this town is given because she has an invisible disability so she can walk she can do everything like a normal kid so they don't see the disability and they don't get her the services that she is entitled to and she deserves thank you [Applause] thank you any other comments from the audience from the area here i'll ask again any other comments one last time we're going to pause and public comments again we do have it at the end of the meeting as well moving on to unfinished business um at the april fifth meeting based on a letter that was sent by chief felke to a member of the west hartford community and published in the west hartford news i made a motion that the board
073invited chief welke as the as well as the other tribal leaders for the other connecticut native american tribes my intent was to have them attend tonight's meeting with 2020 heights 2020 hindsight i'm sorry i should have made the motion for the specific date instead of not specifying any date i'm now trying to correct that mistake why am i doing this there are a lot of assumptions made by members of the board and members of the community as to the wishes and beliefs of the native american tribes while we received several letters from the tribes speaking for myself i found the letters ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations well i voted to keep the names as is because i believe the names warriors and chieftains without the imagery that was removed in 2015 could be attributed
074to a number of things unrelated to native american history i would now like to hear from those with actual native american history because i think that was a guide for many and their thoughts on the names as members of the school board we have a responsibility to make sure that the appropriate due diligence in terms of the meaning of the names from both sides those who work for it and those who are against it from a native american perspective as someone who has a strong interest in history i would generally like to hear what the chief and other tribal chiefs have to say i also think that an act as an academic organization which we represent is important to encourage different points of view we should complete the process in terms of what the change
075meant from a historical perspective and fully understand what what it means to them i have heard been told that the board does not invite individuals outside the school administration to testify outside of the public communications sector section of our meeting i acknowledge that but think that given the perceived impact of the name chains in the community this be the one time to make an exception without context the name change is small but you look at the passions that this has raised for the community both positive and negative and i think we owe it to the community to complete the process and hear from the various chiefs hopefully there'll be more than one that we'd like to speak therefore i'd like to make a motion that we the west hartford school board invite chief wealth felkey
076and all the other tribal leaders to give their thoughts on the west hartford team names at the first board meeting of may i have no idea if they're available but i feel it's important to make the effort so i'd like to make that motion is there a second [Applause] sucker discussion again the motion on the floor is for the five tribal nations to chiefs to be invited to the board of education meeting taking place in the first meeting in may discussion avery forgive me if this was already covered um has there been um a conversation with these individuals and groups to confirm that this date would be one that they'd be available for and willing to come in for speaking more for myself i haven't done anything because i didn't think it would be appropriate
077without it i'm without having the board to prove it so i wasn't i don't think that's something i should do all right that's understandable thank you other comments questions claire the process that's been started within the schools with the voting and that are are you okay with that continuing as we go are you also asking that to change i i'm taking it one step at a time i'm not asking for that to change i would in a perfect world i would like to be able to say let's re-look at this i don't i think that'd be overplaying right now i think more important let's hear from him and then maybe it convinces everybody but i'm i don't think that's what happened so i'm not looking for that to happen i'd be okay with it happening
078i'd support it but i'm not looking for that to happen in my motion other questions comments just to request that when the vote is taken it be taken by roll call please duly noted other questions comments um yeah i want to just in support of what ethan's asking for i feel that the way we've handled this process has not really been in the best way that we could have handled it i i think that this obviously is bringing up a tremendous amount of passion in our community on both sides and nobody who sits on this board is a native american and we all you know gave little speeches when we took the vote but at the end of the day um i think it's very important to hear from the native american tribes in our
079state and then to really think about what they think about these names i i think that you know to do due diligence that would be an appropriate step um when jason first made the motion i believe it jason correct me if i'm wrong i believe it was in december um and then i had requested that we have some extra time to kind of listen to what the students think what the community thinks um truthfully i i don't think that we were given really enough time i i know some people probably gonna disagree with that but i mean there's a lot of moving pieces to this there's a lot of information that we could gather and i don't really think that that we did that in a in a way that you know could have been
080more um appropriate and more complete so i would very much like to hear from the people who are the most affected by these names and i would be very much interested in hearing from really all the different tribes if if they would come and speak to us yes ethan i was gonna say the answer to the question i have not made any invitation or talk to anybody because i didn't think that'd be appropriate if the vote got approved i'm happy to try and make the calls or work with whoever else is interested in doing it my intent is to have as many as much feedback just for the to hear what has to be said from a historical perspective as anybody but i haven't haven't talked to anybody comments claire i i'm very curious about
081how the tribes feel and and would be interested to hear it but i'm very concerned about the students and if you have a large number of kids who don't like that name being used with their team they won't wear the paraphernalia with it you know we did get a lot of letters and so the chiefs can have feelings about their name being used but what do we do about the students who aren't comfortable and that's that's my concern so there are many reasons of why i voted and i would be interested to hear from the chiefs but they're not 14 and 15 years old in a school with new policies with the state coming up with culturally relevant pedagogy they don't have some of the knowledge that is happening in this time and age so
082if i could respond two things one is some of the students who may not like the names now may hear something different but two i think for those who like them don't like them i think it's good just to have a historical perspective in general and my hope is it'd be a learning as i did not put in a motion to change the names because i don't the vote's been taken i would like to change them but i think i would lose so i do something i i it's just taking a step forward and to me is completing the loop so but my hope is it would be a learning for everybody involved because a lot of assumptions were made with the best of intent but they were assumption other questions comments ari i actually
083am all for um having a panel of several of the tribal leaders if if the purpose is to provide education and to get a broader understanding i guess my fear is is that having them come and having us hear a different perspective or whatever the perspectives are i don't want the assumption to be that this is if they say we're good to go we approve there are other factors as claire said that went into the decision so i also don't want i don't want to mislead the public or mislead the board that this would then be um we're going to change the decision the decision has been we made a vote i would not pause the process that we're in the midst of right now to wait to hear and and schedule but if the
084if the purpose really is for education and the purpose is to kind of hear other perspectives i would be comfortable with that um i just don't want the assumption to be you know if they come and they approve that then we we are revoking or were revisiting the topic so i can only speak for myself my assumption is they're coming here to for that to me it's for education and educating like i said i am not if i'm not adverse to the change but i did not make the assumption particularly after having talked to you all that everybody would say oh no matter what they say that it'll change it might if i was betting man i wouldn't i wouldn't go to the casinos and put that wager down so i think it's important though
085that we complete the loop that's just my feeling what happens after that i don't know i did want to try and get this sooner than later just because we are choosing or the name stuff is in process and my motion does not have anything to change that because i don't think that would be appropriate at this time are there questions comments i appreciate oh yes jason thank you lorna um yeah uh thank you for the motion i appreciate the curiosity and um the interest in dialogue um and i think you know we this would be a replication of the process that's already been established um we've asked for and received letters from from the tribes um there's um there's also you know to me that you know thinking about what we've what we decided on
086was a process that seemed you know appropriate and and inclusive of all the things that the the information that we saw from students from residents so one of the things that i think we learned from this is that that the mascots really have no educational value we don't learn much from mascots um we we know that because the the ideas around the mascots pardon me excuse me again please be respectful and contain yourselves as comments are being made because the ideas around the mascot have changed pretty rapidly so can we expect any kind of lesson to be learned from from that so but we have established that the names do present harm for students and ex excuse me again please be respectful and contain yourselves we have young people here young people watching it's important
087to model for them appropriate ways of responding even if comments are made that you may not agree with this process has shown exactly what the research tells us that without more diverse and accurate representations of natives that mascots become the lightning rod it's important to have many more things in really substantive fashion if we are to honor native folks team names are not the way to do it the pequot the mastertoken pequot tribe the scatico tribal nation the golden hill gusset and mohegans have all made applications for federal recognition and state recognition of their tribal status nowhere in these applications have they mentioned the recognition awarded to them by team names of any high school in connecticut if team names were so important to tribal nations they would have mentioned them in their applications to
088the state and federal government for recognition this is not a legitimate claim to honoring tribal people there's a lot more that people can do they want to honor indigenous people in this state the attorney general is the uh the caretaker of the state's relationship with tribal nations if there is a support for these tribal nations it should be expressed to the attorney general the bureau of indian affairs has a northeast region office that does handle tribal nation status that's also an appropriate way to express your support for for native tribes there are also many tribes who don't have recognition who don't have the status afforded to them such as the sikkiyag tungsus and nipmuc peoples so you know to think of the removal of these names to use the argument that removing these names somehow
089diminishes the honor to native peoples is very hard to swallow the scatter coke tribe has suffered from deliberate exclusion from their lands in the 1960s the town of kent sent their firefighters to practice putting out fires on the homes of the scatico tribe tribal nation when they are denied entry to their lands their lands were allowed to uh to go unmaintained and they were not granted permission to return to their lands this prevented them from establishing the necessary requirements that would be available to them in their application for for tribal sovereignty one useful mechanism that can be used to support native people is to call for the strengthening of connecticut's indian affairs council that was formed in 1975. the last time to my knowledge that this council had a quorum uh was 1992. this is
090an important voice for tribal leadership in connecticut governance we want to know history right so this is this is the history of the scattercoke tribe as told by one of its members ruth garby torres what we're here to do is to take care of our schools and to ensure the equity and inclusion of all students in the educational environment these mascots have really shown to be an obstacle and barrier to that i'm going to say no to the vote no on on this because the process that's going forward has shown a much stronger student participation in the excitement around building a new name than to even participate in the original survey demonstrating an interest in moving forward these ideas are about the future and we want all of our students to be able to to
091enjoy and benefit from the educational environment and i think this process has really you know provided a window into a new place for them that they've decided so i think i'll stop there so if i could respond more yes so and this so as i said when when this vert vote took place to me warriors particularly is a name that could be used for native americans but could be used elsewhere however it was attributed for the vote for those against it because of the native american context i with all due respect i think it's for the native americans to say this is positive or negative to them not to us particularly with you know from a background perspective you can say you don't like the name you don't think it's respectable but in fairness i
092think that if we have the chance to hear from those impacted about it okay then we should hear from them it would be like someone trying to tell me about my religion or me trying to tell someone else about their religion i just think if we really want to complete the circle then that's what we should do and i just um you know mascots is it's there it's i mean i you know was that my college mascot was the quakers there's nothing exciting about that but nobody was making fun of the quakers it's just what it is and i just think we should complete the loop we should hear what they have to say and from an overall history historical perspective frankly it'd be very interesting and i don't see how we lose in that
093perspective gail jason i just want to respond to what you said you know i respect your opinion and i respect your your knowledge about all of this but at the end of the day i feel it's incredibly important for us as a board to hear again from the people who this most impacts and that's not us and at the end of the day i mean we all still may exactly feel the same way that we felt beforehand but i think it also is questionable how it comes across as a board when we are being asked by a chief and maybe other chiefs that would like to address us and may have differing opinions on this issue and we don't allow that process to happen i personally think i know you probably don't agree with me
094but i think the process was flawed i think it was rushed and i don't know why it was rushed we you know we're told that we're going to get into budget season there was no real need to run to do this without getting all of the information um that we could and at the end of the day we may nothing may change here but i think it's important to hear from the people that this most impacts and i would like very much for the board to allow the native american community to address us on this particular issue excuse me thank you andrew um i guess i have a few things to say number one i think that mr chang made a good point that students have definitely been very eager to come up with new
095mascot names i just wanted to clarify one thing that i think maybe more than one person said um i remember that avery's poll showed that a majority of students did support keeping that um warrior name but um but to me to me i i really don't see inviting him as initiating a reversal nor do i think that it necessarily should be um for me when i was conducting my own evidence to to share with you to help you all inform your decisions to me i valued the native american students the native american student who reached out to me enormously i think that the testimony she gave to me was extremely powerful i i know at least one of you expressed that it was extremely helpful to you in making your decision um and i i
096think that we're obliged to listen to um this native american man who wants to speak i'd say one thing that i also felt i wished we had had more native american perspectives especially of students but i realized that it's a small number of native american students we have at hall and connor anyways but um when we have the opportunity to hear from somebody who this is their lived experience i don't know how we could refuse wanting to hear from him i mean i really in school i really haven't learned that much about native americans in this process i really didn't learn that much about native americans and for decades we did use names and images that were explicitly tied to their culture so i feel obliged to hear what he has to say i i
097don't even know really his his points i don't somebody said that he was in favor of keeping them but i've yet to hear that from him so i'm not really sure what what i do know is that i don't see any harm to myself in my educational journey and hearing from him avery yes so just for the purpose of i have another point but i just want to say for the purpose of making sure that we're all on the same page my survey um i believe it was around 62 percent were in favor of keeping the name 33 we're in favor of changing the name and then whoever was left over was unsure um but the exact the 10 stitches might be a little bit off but it's around there um i i really want
098to echo what i've heard a few members of this board and andrew say that this is an issue that impacts a very small minority of stu like impacts a very small minority of students in our school district but their experiences um and the research that we see on how um portrayals of native americans in stereotyped imagery impacts youth um i think that those experience these experiences need to be taken with the most gravity possible um and i think nessa at miss nazarella's point to um that she mentioned when we were doing this vote of having such contention between the student body even if it's a majority 30 of the students wanting to change the name is still a significant portion of the students and that sort of division in our school i believe that it
099shouldn't i don't think that we that we should be fostering that i think that we should be trying to form unity especially in a setting that is meant to uplift everyone um but as i do say that i am really um i'm really appreciative of mr goldman's interest in creating an opportunity for the board to have this narrative as part of our history um and i wonder going forward this perhaps wouldn't be part of this motion at all but i wonder going forward um with the opening these lines of communication um via an in-person dialogue rather than letters that members of the board who are not native american then interpret um i wonder if this could be used as an opportunity to then inform the histories that we as a community and in our schools
100use because like andrew said we don't learn that much about native americans in our schools and i think that this voting process for those who have had the opportunity has been a learning experience and even if we do not return to the motion i think it'd be very positive for our community to become more informed about what the implications of this will be in the long term and to just be more informed about how we can as a west hartford community work together better other questions comments so thank you ethan for bringing forth the motion and i think a common thread that has been shared with comments from all is there is a shared desire to learn more but i think at that point that's where there is some different direction in terms of why
101wanting to learn more i hear with the motion that it is to i appreciate hearing that it's to have all of the welcoming or inviting all of the tribal leaders to share their thoughts um and i think in terms of our school district that has been an ongoing area of desire for us to want to learn and enhance our curriculum as it relates to native american culture we've never claimed to have be doing all of it we've been very clear and saying we know we need more to do so appreciate the candor for our young of our students here sharing how um acknowledging that there is room for growth to learn more of that and that's something we collectively want to do but i also just want to be clear and not wanting a next
102step to give a misinterpretation of what that next step may lead to i also want to be clear that we are in terms of the process that was done that we can respectfully agree to disagree on the process um but i also don't want the narrative to be rewritten we know that communication and outreach was made to all of the tribal nations and we know that we receive communication back from them now whether some found the content of the letters significant in terms of what they said they want and not um it does not take away from the fact that opinions and thoughts were shared in those letters and i think it is important for us to be respectful in acknowledging what was said in those letters people and persons communicate in different ways but
103we certainly don't want to minimize what was expressed in those letters and we also don't want to take away from letters that we received even dating back to 2015. um yes that was seven years ago but um that doesn't mean that the content of what was discussed in that letter changed what was discussed in that letter was quite clear and so with that information in terms of what we heard from received from the tribal nations coupled with hearing from our students in the community we know that contributed to ultimately the vote that was made on the first but even beyond that we know that as board members our due diligence is to support and uphold policy and for uh those who voted in the way that they did a great deal of that was because
104of the two policies that we have in place in particular policy 1800 so i just want to be clear with that piece because i don't want it to be the the events to be altered in a way as if things just did not uh take place acknowledging the voice and input of others i also with the specific i know the recommendation you made before of inviting chief elky and with that being a part of this conversation and also all of the other types want to be clear as well um that the only communication the only comments that were made in regard to chief elky's presence here consistently were in regard to the opportunity for public comment only because we already had the agenda already in place so just want to be clear with that but
105also want for for us to know and we know already as a board that um chief elky did reach out directly too to us or to myself and appreciated that uh and we also know that i responded back to chief velke and responded back and in response to his comments and shared the position that we have in terms of where our agenda is today and how you're certainly welcome to participate in public comment um and also what led up to the vote that we made february 1st and so it was a pretty uh detailed response and we also know that chief felke responded to that email and in that email he expressed appreciation for the response and he also expressed appreciation for the vote that was made on february the 1st that is important to
106know and so with the desire of hearing from all of the tribal nations again that is something we all share we want to to learn more but i also don't want it to be misconstrued as that is a step leading towards a means of changing a vote that did follow due process that was done uh in feb on february the first we collectively want to be able to learn more we know we have more that we need to learn and we want for that to be an inclusive process and so uh with that um it seems like you're ready to hit that button to make a response so please go right ahead nope i will pause please that's all right um i was gonna say as you know two weeks ago when i realized that
107uh when i made the motion and afterwards realized it wasn't going to happen because of timing i did say i wanted to do this so i just think it's important to do i don't have any i like i said i'd be thrilled if we change the name back but that's not part of my motion because it's not realistic it may he may be compelling and maybe y'all will say let's do it and then i'll adapt okay but right now i don't have any that's not what i'm pushing for that's not what i'm asking for right now i'm just saying i think it would be a healthy process to have and i hope it would be multiple individuals and and i wish there was more time so we could schedule one would be appropriate for them
108so i have no idea if chief velke can attend i have no idea if anybody else can attend but i figure at least let's try um and then when we see where it goes i think one of the things as the student spoke both speakers were is maybe it's something that you can establish the relationship so it does become part of a normal process not a not a unusual or or out of the norm process but that's something for the school administration but at least the contacts would be made sorry my notes today they asked me would you be open to their presence being either in a zoom or a recorded remark specifically to west hartford so that they wouldn't have to necessarily have that exact date free so that they would have a chance
109to i mean we got written statements but would you accept a video statement about our town specifically clear i love that idea except i do think there's something more genuine about being able to just like when we have people sit at the table here and we can sort of go back and forth with them i think it's it's a much more thorough meaningful process when you can have that back and forth and i also want to say one other thing i know what lorna said is like she doesn't want it to seem as if we potentially could be going in a different direction but you know i myself if i could hear from some of these people that represent native americans i mean maybe my ideas would change as well and i i think that
110should be open to everybody at this table that you know we may not be part of ethan's motion is not to go and change what's already happened but when you actually hear from people that this affects and you can have a back and forth conversation with them you know i i would be open to thinking of things in a different way as i just as i hope everybody at this at the table would be so could what what would i do and then ethan yes so i just think that human beings have schedules and we have lives and to tell a native american chief you have this one opportunity to come to a meeting that could last three hours and that's your only chance to share is not being respectful of their lives and their
111time so i mean we're giving them one moment you know one evening that they can come and if they have a graduation if they have anything else in their life going on they have no voice well i mean maybe that maybe then we would have to assess it but i mean if that could happen in that forum where we can have the back and forth i personally think that's preferable i do understand what you're saying that if you know they can't come at this particular day at this particular hour then maybe we look for an alternative option sorry that's fine my response would be uh i think the zoom may be something we have we should do if that's the other option pre-recorded just it's you're not asking it's not a give-and-take i mean but
112if that's the only choice we have then i guess we'd have to figure it out it just doesn't seem like it's fair to the individual you're talking around i i don't know but but clearly the preferred option would be to be here but i accept your point that particularly if there's a geographical distance you know it's let's we should be accommodating as best we can so to me the zoom makes perfect sense sorry but that's my thought so may i ask with the motion the way it was presented it was presented and gave a specific date and so but but i'm hearing from discussion that it's more of wanting to have it to be a learning piece and that seems more open-ended and so again if it's a matter of open-ended learning that's something that
113can be in collaboration with many efforts many entities we we know our public library they could be a part of to support that efforts and our school those pieces but if it's just for the if there's if it's time sensitive and for the purpose of doing it because of events that are happening that again gives a different impression for the desire for wanting to have them here so there's a lot of context coming here i i think it should be in the context of what's going on around us because then i think some of the you won't be nobody will be listening as intently so i would prefer to have it now if they said we got to do it and before we i i don't know that cross that bridge when we go there
114but i'd rather be aiming for the two weeks and then if it doesn't work it doesn't work you know i i'm not i made a motion that was general before and it got you know nothing happened it didn't work the way i wanted it so i'm trying to be do the dates so i'm trying to learn and just so yes just so i'm clear it is within the context with using context it is within the context of the school mascot because i think right now people are focused people are focused on it okay and again i speaking for myself i didn't hear anybody volunteer to say let's go revoke this or whatever i i perfectly fine if you all did but right now i just want to hear what they have to say i'm frankly
115very interested because that's something a lot of a lot of assumptions are made valid assumptions and probably in some cases it's accurate but in some cases it's not so deb may i offer a friendly amendment that when we issue the invitation we allow for the invitee to designate a person to attend in his or her stead if they're not available on the date that we ask that works for me i need to actually move that as an amendment so i will move that as a friendly amendment is there a second to the amended motion on the floor second so the discussion now is in regard to an invitation being made to the five tribal nations either the chief or designee as it relates to the topic of school mascots how they view it in regard
116to their so all right for the first meeting in may right for the yes for the first meeting in may okay i'm just pausing only because that ask was was made and we received the response i understand but i think if some of those as i run them were ambiguous and i think you're going to get more out of the give and take dialogue as i think gail or someone else said and also having them have a chance to express themselves other than in one letter and some of those letters to me again i don't want to rehash this debate i lost it gail i'll rehash it i just i do want to also say that i agree with ethan on these letters i mean they can be interpreted different ways i mean one of
117the letters i'm not going to go through everything here does say if um like from the mash and tuck it peacock tribe that if a school or sports team using a specific tribal name has written consent of the federal state recognized tribe whose name is being used to that would be acceptable so the problem with these letters is i don't think that they're really they're vague to some degree and people can interpret them as they wish i think when we have a you know a face-to-face discussion we can ask the kinds of questions we want to ask listen to those answers that's an entirely different venue or information gathering tool that would be coming out of these letters my thought is with that though i imagine as a board we don't want to put anyone
118this could be in any subject matter in in a defensive state and just from what i'm hearing if we were to have them there and to question when they've already shared their thoughts and although persons may view the content of it differently it also we also would not want to be disrespectful as it will explain yourself and so that's just that that is is is what i'm i'm pausing on except that that is not my intent my intent is if there's questions is to try and get more information not to if the guy it would be a loser to challenge somebody based on what they believe and it would not it wouldn't be appropriate but it would also be if it's i just don't i mean from a pure debate perspective it's a losing hand
119so that is not my intent i can't be i assume it wouldn't be the intent of anybody else the intent is to just clarify understand and get more um information so right but i fully respect what you say it should it's under no circumstances to be confrontational if you disagree with somebody you disagree with somebody andrew and then avery um i just wanted to say that i do hear what you're saying um but i think at oh pretty i mean every single time a panel has come during the board meeting and you guys have asked them questions i think you've asked them very respectfully and i think that they value the opportunity to speak and i've certainly personally valued the opportunity to learn so while i mean i i hear what you're saying of like
120i don't i don't want this one man to feel on the defensive i think that all of you have asked your questions in the past in a way that really is more exploratory and asking um every speaker to to just share their insights valued insights that you all clearly do communicate you appreciate so hopefully he would he would also feel that the same way as all of our past speakers have avery so this may be a little bit repetitive as we've had a little bit of discussion of this um i'm just wondering um in regards to preventing this from becoming a defend yourself explain yourself sort of situation um and in preserving like the the intents of this board as they've been expressed for learning and exploration i'm wondering as it was mentioned earlier if
121inviting um tribal leaders to come to a board meeting what the purpose of that because um i've seen throughout my time my short period of time here that when we have um when we have panels of people come in to give presentations on school subjects those are usually for the purpose of better understanding the allocation of funds better understanding um how policy should be applied and informing the public of um activities that are occurring in the schools so i'm asking mr goldman um with this new information that we're hoping to glean um or um clarifications what the intended application of that is going to be so we made or a number everybody made assumptions based upon what we thought was appropriate and what we thought was right was wrong a lot of assumptions were made
122of this is what the native americans want believe think should be this is a chance to hear what they actually think what was very compelling to me was in the letter i think it was a letter it was somewhere i saw maybe it was the newspaper there was some comment that eliminating they were he was concerned about eliminating his heritage cleaning you know by cleaning it out and i that i had never heard that before and i thought that was relatively interesting and it struck a chord with me because people do worry about their heritage being eliminated so again it's it's partly just educational he's willing to speak my hope is others would be willing to speak maybe we do it through the zoom we certainly can have designate because as was pointed out people
123do have calendars and you know just because we have a date but i just think to get the focus we need to pick a time and then move from there because if we leave it ambiguous it just won't happen so just uh did i answer your question or at least at least i tried maybe i should give a little more context there was this brief discussion of this sort of discussion being something that could be facilitated through for example the west hartford public libraries and i'm wondering um if this discussion would hypothetically be pursued through the libraries versus through here if i i i just i'm wondering like if that would have a more um beneficial outcome for our communities um in connecticut as a whole also in west hartford and then specifically um like
124for the board's application purposes if we were to invite people here um what the information would be used to inform going forward [Applause] all right it's a perfect segue avery thank you um i was actually as you spoke my my question was going to be if the purpose of this um discussion invitation is for education purposes are there other venues that could be used besides a board of ed meeting where this is not a typical venue for those matters so if the purpose is education and recognizing different points of view and providing historical context are there other venues that could be proposed that would not be on a board ed meeting agenda [Applause] so again i'm at a disadvantage because i haven't spoke to the chief had any contact with the chief had any contact
125with any other chief or any other tribal leader so i'm making assumptions my assumption is that it'd be more compelling for them to come to a board meeting and be able to talk than to go to the library with notice respect to the library and i think we are always i am and so i assume others would be interested in what is being said i'm sure i'm not sure if a library has the same kind of context or even you know do they do things at night i don't even know if they're open anymore at night so i i can't answer that all i can make is emotion and i have no way to compel the library to do anything or this group to do anything i will say to you and i appreciate you
126sharing what you're assuming and what you're not what what you may not know for um a fact i'm just also reflecting back on chief elky's reply email and not only did he make reference to um expressing appreciation for how we voted he also highlighted the importance of wanting his tribal nation to be respected in the history to be taught and learned at a state level so i think again he shares a sentiment of wanting the educational aspect of it from a broader perspective because he specifically and again you can reference them the email specifically made reference to from on a state level wanting for this to be acknowledged um and the educational experience to be broadened so i i think that that does give some insight in terms of venues that may facilitate that broad
127learning experience [Applause] i can't raise your hand given my length of time here on the board of ed i was just wondering if anyone else tom yourself included could provide some perspective if such an issue has has ever come you know to the board how it was handled you know just to give some sort of historical context regarding a similar matter or similar topic there's been learning topics we've brought up that throughout the year we discussed where we had seminars and presentations with parent groups with student groups throughout the year rather than a one-off um which is kind of you know that's the the question i have is really and i i just i'm always nervous about tokenism you tell me about your people and what your people think because there's a body of knowledge
128about this and there's this isn't this is a subject and um and good people can disagree and it is one of it's one of those things that i think understanding and root cause is more than a two-hour board meeting if we if we want to really get into this then i would suggest a focused long-term book study combined with panel discussions where we invite different panelists both from scholarly fields and from native american groups and try to do it in context with our history department with the library but it's not a one meeting thing i would say it's it's months of learning and real deep learning if if that's what the community wants which i think we would all welcome but that that that would be the mechanism that i would see but that's a
129different purpose i understand what ethan's saying i'm not saying i'm just saying that whatever your it's a question of what the goal is is it we want to talk about west hartford's vote on this or do we want to talk about mascots traditions and what that means to native americans both in connecticut and across the country so i i think there are it's a competing ghost what's the what's the goal here other thoughts or comments before we vote on the motion on the floor jason thank you um you know i think if the purpose is to learn there's a lot of resources already available uh that we just have to pick up and and read the one of the most consistent messages from native tribes in in connecticut is that they want their land back
130that's the most consistent message that they they've argued for uh west hartford public schools does not own any land uh the town of west hartford owns land and um if they did you know if west hartford was willing to uh to turn over that land back to uh native uh sovereignty that would that would be something i think that the tribes would be interested in um that's the very clear message from much of the the litigation um much of their tribal governance is concerned uh with land management and the resources of sustaining their population um so you know the interest uh for a school districts you know use of a name um does not really pertain to the the survival of of these tribes um so there are very material physical conditions that the tribes
131do do consistently argue for and unfortunately none of those resources are at the disposal of the west hartford public schools dead i wasn't going to speak but um because i don't i don't really want to belabor this point i think everyone knows where we all stand but you know i think um jason makes some really good points about um the most important things that we can do as a society to repair what has happened with the native americans here in connecticut here in our nation and some of those things do involve deep discussions around land ownership i think you mentioned a native american council that the state has vacant positions on but you know we can't do that as a board of ed what we can do is we can invite our local tribal leaders
132to come address us and allow us the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with them not about you know all of the different ways that we can enhance our curriculum or improve our relationships but at least for a beginning conversation to hear their thoughts on a topic that we have brought forward that has made our community interested that has in some ways divided our community and i feel it could be healing for our community to hear from our local tribal leaders for me personally as a board member i would definitely appreciate the opportunity to engage in dialogue with our tribal leaders you know just like later in the agenda we have a report on our high school counseling and it's in writing and we can all read it but that's not enough for us we
133want to invite the experts on this topic who wrote this report to come forward so that we can engage in a dialogue and ask questions and learn more and that inviting our tribal leaders here to our board in a forum where clearly the community is paying attention and is interested in learning about this issue is a way where we can learn more than what they have written on paper we can learn more than the resources that we can find online and we can hear directly from the people who are most impacted by these decisions you know there's a saying in the advocacy community nothing about us without us i urge my colleagues to support this motion [Applause] other comments i i do have a response and i appreciate thank you the the what you shared
134and how you responded again i just want to restate that the way that the emotion is on the floor it is directly connected to the mascot matter and that's different than having an open-ended exchange and learning process and so i just i say that because i don't want to exploit the desire of wanting to learn more for a desire of wanting to rebut the outcome of a vote that happened in february that did happen in response to solicitation of feedback from a collective body that did result in feedback received from the very tribal nations that were speaking about inviting where the view is their response was not adequate enough i think that that is not a fair representation of respecting what some have said and so i just think it's important to be clear with
135what the emotion is saying it's specifically tied to it i don't think it's fair to view that not supporting this motion is going against wanting to hear from the tribal nations and wanting to learn more of the process again the common thread that has been shared with all of us is we recognize the value of learning the educational opportunities for this and that it's something that is an ongoing process an ongoing area of growth we have had that we desire to have it's not accurate or fair to base the decision on this motion to determine whether or not that is something we are collectively in support of and so with that with the motion again that is on the table on the floor in regard to inviting the five tribal nations to come to the
136first board of ed meeting on may the first to hear their thoughts specifically as it relates to the school mascot matter the vote rather the motion is on the floor and if we can please early roll call to hear the votes dr chang no mr goldman yes dr harris yes ms nazarella yes miss poland yes dr steinberg no dr thomas farquharson no so the motion passes and again it is with the intent of inviting the five tribal nations to come to or their representative thank you to come to the meeting on february the first uh again may the first pardon me to come to the meeting on may the first in regard may the third the first meeting in may to come to the first meeting in may to um to come before the board
137to be on the agenda to come before the board to share their thoughts on the school mascot to matter and so with that just want to be clear that we still already have a process underway that our students and and teachers and staff are already a part of so that will continue um but in response to this uh motion the vote the invitation will be extended so do you want me to help try and and i've not talked to anybody but i'm happy to help since i started this to try and get them or is should that be done without we'll we'll talk we'll collaborate because i want to make sure that again the events as they happen and the narrative in which they happen are accurately shared and reported to all so we will
138certainly as a book fellow board member we will collaborate and ensure that our collective body is aware of those steps okay all right i offered no we'll collaborate yes yes all right moving on to new business we have the ratification of the west hartford custodians uh the recommendation the board of education ratified the negotiated agreement between the west hartford custodians threes and the board of education for the period july 1 2022 through june 30th 2026. hello there hello good evening everyone good evening before you for approval is a ratified agreement between the board of education and the west hartford custodian threes so that's how they go by this is a group of four custodians one at connor one at hall one at kp and one at cedric that essentially act as the head custodian at
139the respected school and oversee daily operations the c3s ratified this agreement on march 11th so the contract you're voting on this evening is a four-year contract and will call for a general wage increase of three percent each year looking at the insurance category we have increased the employee premium cost share in 2022 23 and 23.24 to 20.5 then in 2024 25 and 25 26 it will increase to 21 we also have a few minor changes that i'd like to highlight we increased the employee annual shoe allowance to 200 and we increased the longevity payment by 200 in each of the years of service category so that summarizes this agreement i did want to just take a quick moment to thank all of our c3s for the work that they do day in and day out
140supporting the needs that it takes to not only have a school looking good but to make sure that it's welcoming to all of the folks that enter there so we would be happy to answer any questions the board may have before you vote on this agreement thank you thank you questions ethan i assume it's such a small number but this fits within the budget for it does these increases have been included in our adopted budget i've assumed that but i figured i'd ask very good other questions yeah okay uh i have actually two questions one is can you tell us how many people this affects how many people are in this contract so it was four this is only this is four people correct one at connor and one at hall one at kp and
141one at cedric oh okay and um can you explain to me the longevity column there sure it's essentially the years of service that an employee has been with us so you can see um on page one there where it's a breakdown of six to nine years of service so an individual will receive eight hundred dollars eight hundred eight hundred dollars per year one time on one time and so you can see the breakdown as it goes through all the way until an employee has 25 years or more of service then they would get 1200 that's like like a bonus a one-time bonus correct correct thank you other questions comments questions one less time all right so again seeking a motion that the board of education ratified the negotiated agreement between the west hartford custodian threes
142and the board of education for the period of july 1 2022 through june 30th 2026. so move madame chair is there a second second discussion all those in favor say hi opposed all right the eyes have it thank you so much thank you now moving on to staff communications and reports we now will have our superintendents report thanks um in the history interest of uh time i'm going to go um relatively quickly i want to congratulate we had two cedric 8th grade quest students who submitted their type 3 projects to the hartford regional connecticut history day contest and they came in first and second place in their division they're moving on to the state contest in first place junior individual documentary julianna farquharson congratulations to juliana and second place junior individual documentary conrad kalke congratulations
143to conrad we're very proud of these students their hard work their ambition and we look forward to um the work they'll continue to do as they prepare their documentaries for the state contest years ago a young fallon moore went to nationals in that contest i will brag and then um we got very good news just today nam the national association of music merchants gives out awards on the best communities of for music education the united states and west hartford was once again selected as one of the representatives one of the state representatives for best communities for music education in the united states so with everything that our music department's gone through with kovid that is certainly a feather in their cap and i would be remiss if i did not um mentioned that there were
14459 different winning voice for change proposals remember we talked about this a couple weeks ago um where money from the american relief plan and assert funds the governor and the state set aside money that students could propose items for their local schools and decide how that money should be spent there are 59 winners across the state of connecticut two came from west hartford from connor the everyone wins initiative which is about science and students student-led art projects and at hall the outdoor wellness project with space for outdoor classes to promote positive mental health practices at hall both were deemed by the state to be winners got enough votes to be winners and we're proud of them and we'll be getting a check from the um state and those students will run those projects over the
145next year so excellent examples of community involvement so with that let us move on thank you so much brief questions at all yeah scale when the superintendent has to be in regard to what was shared during the superintendency any other questions regarding what was shared superintendents report all right thank you so much now moving on to staff reports and board discussions non-renewal of non-tenured personnel back to the table once again mr duarte all right good evening again um every year at this time we present a list of non-tenured teachers whose contracts are expiring on june 30th and according to state statute the board of education has to vote to non-renew these contracts so in front of you all of you should have an envelope with those names in there once this occurs we are then
146required to provide written notification of that vote to the impacted non-tenure teachers so before you this evening you have a list of 41 teachers who who are being non-renewed the majority of these are interim teachers who are filling in for folks that are out on leave when we hire them they understand this is part of the process they know that they're filling in for someone that essentially will be coming back and when that person that teacher comes back that essentially their contract expires so the good news um the good news is that we have a tremendous and often times we do a tremendous amount of hiring from this list so of the 41 names that you see in front of you when i come back in the fall and do the opening schools report hopefully
147you'll see many of these folks on that list as either being in an interim position again or now being a contracted teacher so you know as always our pool of candidates that we've hired they're exceptional we've been very impressed and very proud of the work that our interim teachers have done i've been and had the pleasure of seeing them either in action or meeting many of them as we hire them so we are excited for that so following the vote this evening we will provide written notification to the teachers tomorrow we will of course thank them for their service this year and we'll just let them know that their contract does indeed expire on june 30th i do want to just point out this is really more of a formality all of these teachers know
148that this is going to happen and they most of them also know that the vote is occurring tonight um so at this time i'd be happy to answer any questions that the board may have before you vote thank you any questions i do if i could just add when giulio said it but i just want to give our thanks to these people that um that took the opportunity this year to come work for us um in the midst of covet amidst uncertainty in a time where we needed staff members and julio just went to the recruiting fair and we have our own recruiting fair coming up but he just went to uconn basically every student teacher which in the past they're just doing teaching every student teacher is in a contracted position at this point
149because there is such a shortage right now in connecticut so these people really stepped up for us and we're greatly appreciative to them this time yes i appreciate that and mr moore stole my thunder so i will do a quick plug at the end but i won't deviate from your uh procedure here all right claire yes yeah so i'm just do you have a typical or what an average new hire is each year for well like do you typically hire 50 teachers each year what's your normal it's somewhere between 60 and 100 it just depends when you when you go through the retirements and then people that move and then shifts that come about and then these type of one-off contracts that come up because people could be on maternity leave for the year or
150other kind of leaves it's typically there's low years we've had in the past few years where it's been as low as 50 but there's been as many as a hundred okay yeah and i think that's a good point because it's one of our i think advantages why we also get such a strong applicant pool because they know and we tell them you're coming in but we're a large district we do have folks that retire and there are openings every year and so essentially you get to take an interim position and i always tell them consider this say two three mo however long interview um because i think we would always prefer to see a body of work over someone sitting in front of us having a conversation and so many of them excel and do
151really really well and then ultimately the principles end up fighting over them and where they're going to land so it's it's it's a good place i think for many of our folks and just to follow up these um teachers um do they have personal days or can they get release time to interview if they find another opportunity so that they're have something in the fall if they're not offered right so they're contracted teachers they're they're entitled to all of those and and we understand and want to be with all of our employees flexible and as we said everyone our goal is to have everyone laying on their feet our goal is to have them land on their feet in west hartford but we understand that different things happen different opportunities and so we certainly are
152accommodating when we need to be other questions jason trying to get under context what percentage do you think of the people on this list will be rehired in the fall ballpark i'd have to completely just make up a number but i'll give you 50 how's that that sound good i don't know tom if you have a better number but okay so it's just a standard process it just seems crazy but i guess it is what it is yeah and we do you know we try to make sure and that's why we work with our teachers to help them understand because again i got one myself as well that first year and so it's scary when you get that piece of paper and you don't really know what it means and so just wanting to make
153sure that we comfort them and let them understand it has nothing to do with performance because ultimately i think as soon as you receive a letter like this you think it's a performance and you think no one's told me anything um and so we're really clear with them up front and with the union on those pieces so like i said this is not a surprise to anyone other excuse me other questions all right so with that seeking a motion to move forward with the non-renewal of non-tenured personnel so moved is there a second second discussion we've had it but any other discussion all right all those in favor aye aye aye aye aye any opposed all right the eyes have it thank you so much great and before i leave i'll give a quick shameless
154plug for our career fair coming up on the 26th so we are very excited about it want to promote it and we're hoping and i was just at uconn with natalie simpson and we got to interview and talk to some different candidates and as tom said we we recognize that we want to be uh proactive and we want to make sure that uh candidates understand west hartford and the beauty that it is to work and the support that they get in this district so we want to continue to encourage folks to come out for that experience so thank you absolutely no shame with that at all thank you so much all right now moving on to high school counseling program we now will hear from ms ann mckernan and ms melane thomas as well yes
155of course yeah but you know paul um this is melanie's first time up at the board table presenting and melanie took over our school counseling department last summer and as you know we have big plans for how we want to shift our school counseling department the high school we've realigned some things we brought melanie in who is an expert and has done wonderful work looking at where we are what we're doing and what we can do better and so this is really a first step almost in terms of a report on because i've talked about this to the board a lot over the past few years and this is kind of a first step into melanie's work what the goal of the department is and just kind of as a welcome to melanie in her
156first presentation of the board so and i will only say that tom has simply done a masterful job saying better than i could everything that i was about to say my only contribution to this report is to welcome melanie to the table to introduce her to all of you and and really just compliment her on the great start that she's had and the impact she's already having in the district so i'll turn it over to melanie can you hear me okay unmuting in real life versus uh google me didn't know it was a thing but um thank you everyone for um having me and i'm excited to present to you guys and i just want to say a quick comment about the two young people sitting at the table you guys are amazing i'm very
157impressed with with everything you've said and done today and i just want to kind of take some time to give you guys a quick shout out because i think it's very impressive and a great learning experience for for you both to be here um so um as mentioned my name is melanie thomas i'm the new department supervisor for school counseling at the high school level at west hartford public schools um just a little bit of background about myself i am from new haven connecticut i graduated from a small magnet school in new haven and went to uconn got all three of my degrees from uconn and i spent the first eight years of my career in manchester at manchester high school and now i'm here in west hartford so i'm going to provide a quick
158overview of our school school counseling program um give you some information about some of the focuses we've had for the year um some future goals and then some time for questions and i will try to keep it as succinct as possible because my bedtime alarm went off so um so goals and i'm going to kind of look at notes as i do this so our mission is to guide all students towards the best possible opportunities in a supportive environment and the emphasis on all is really important especially after you know some of what we heard today i am very passionate about helping diverse groups of students and believe that every student deserves fair opportunities in terms of schools and what we provide especially in the school counseling department our program kind of goals and curriculum
159is based on the asca model so the american school counseling association and that basically means that our program is data driven we're continuously looking at data and i'm looking at ways to improve how we collect data in order to make decisions about our programming we deliver our program to students in a systematic fashion throughout the school year so there are kind of different themes throughout different times of the school year and different themes based on grade level and we deliver our program in a variety of formats ranging from individual counseling group counseling or small group counseling as well as classroom presentations we try our best to keep everything age appropriate in terms of grade level you know starting off in ninth grade with transitioning to high school all the way through twelfth grade when students
160are thinking about their lives after high school and everything in between in conjunction with every other staff member in in west hartford public schools we aim to help close achievement gaps through our programs and we really want to kind of support students overall i have the you know mindset that counselors play the middle role and everything we're kind of a liaison between family students teachers administrators and we you know we we want to support everyone at the table but the students are at the center of all the decision making just a little bit about the staffing um so each high school has eight school counselors um and we also have two career college and career coordinators one at each school the structure of the caseloads i know there's a little bit of debate but i
161see the value on both sides so in in west hartford public schools our format is that we have two ninth grade counselors and they only work with ninth grade students so each year they welcome a new freshman class and their focus is really on um helping students transition to high school because that is a big deal and it really sets the tone for students in terms of their success in high school um after ninth grade students move on to a new school counselor in their 10th grade year and then the idea is that they stick with that same counselor for the remainder of their um high school career for lack of a better word and that is where the school counselors deliver the rest of the curriculum so the the topics that are geared towards
162grades 10 through 12 include career exploration um formulating a plan for after high school and then actually seeing that plan through by making specific steps in 12th grade caseload sizes are roughly around one to one counselor to 191 students which is favorable to to what's suggested by the american school counseling association um and it allows for counselors to really develop good relationships with students not only in terms of post-secondary planning but also supporting them emotionally throughout the school year so i believe that the caseload sizes really support the availability of counselors throughout the school year in addition to our structured programming so as i mentioned earlier um each grade level has a theme starting with the the who am i and you know what do i bring to my this high school experience that's your
163ninth grade year um tenth grade that and and i will say there is some overlap because i'm not going to say that um in ninth grade there is no career exploration or there is no post-secondary planning all that is part of the ninth grade year but the primary goal is really transitioning and learning who you are as a learner and adapting to the high school and learning the differences between high school and middle school and and really trying learning how to be successful in the high school environment 10th grade um the focus moves towards career exploration as i mentioned um and still developing who you are as a student because you're you know still a young young in the game and then in junior year students really start to develop their plans for after graduation
164and we do have a semi junior workshop at both schools that support that and kind of nailing down the steps to take uh to pursue your post-secondary plan and then we have another workshop senior year that focuses on that as well but then in senior year students are able to actually put those plans into motion throughout each grade level we use a variety of tools to support students including naviance that's a big one there's a lot of tools on there including career exploration personality inventories career interest inventories we the bulk of the college application process and you know the technical pieces is done through naviance as well and there is a very useful college exploration tool on naviance um and we also use uh tools like the college board and then the list goes on
165and on but we do uh primarily use naviance in our curriculum work through the school counseling department so just a little bit of kind of a summary of the events that happen for students throughout the school year starting with freshman year this day in the life happens actually in eighth grade so that's an opportunity for students to visit the high school get a tour get a feel for what's going on get excited about the upcoming school year and really get delayed of the land um right before the school year starts freshman orientation happens same idea but now you know students aren't as far removed and they can really start to get pumped up about what's to come um freshman seminar happens throughout the first semester of high school um and then in between all of
166that students have opportunities to meet with counselors on an individual basis um counselors meet with every single student for course selection um but there are other opportunities outside of that to meet with counselors as well during the sophomore year and i will preface this by saying this is something i would like to kind of focus a little bit more on getting sophomores into counselors offices earlier on in the school year um sophomore year is is to me one of the more challenging years in in high school just because it's it's like you're not just starting but you're not ending either but you're somewhere in between and it's it's kind of an interesting time so i would like to really grow our sophomore programming but right now what we offer um we offer opportunities for students
167to meet with school counselors either in a small group format or an individual format just to get you know get to know your counselor get have your counselor get to know you um through that small meeting we also have a psat presentation in the fall just to gear them up for that administration in october usually and then we are actually just wrapping up our career workshop series tomorrow which is a short series three days where students learn about what their potential career interests are through a career interest inventory junior year like i mentioned before we do have our junior workshop which is a roughly 10-week series that focuses on post-secondary planning um there are excuse my watch that's okay i needed a breather um the junior workshop again a roughly 10-week series that focuses on
168post-secondary planning and including included in that are weekly updates for families um and then during the senior year we we jump start the year with individual meetings with seniors in addition to a senior workshop at connard and then at hall there's a senior day again working to kind of um find the best of both worlds in terms of what we want to offer to our seniors but what what i've seen is really impressive and i think our structures are a blessing compared to what i've seen in other schools so some events that families can take part in to learn um more about school counseling and actually get to know school counselors include open house and curriculum night those are your standard events that are put on by the school we offer family presentations um for
169the past couple years we have offered these in a virtual format but hope to bring more in-person presentations as as you know circumstances allow but what i do like about the virtual format is that we can have more people attend it might be a little bit more convenient for families to view online and then we have the follow-up q and a's for those and we also have the opportunity to record those presentations and post them on our website which has been really beneficial to a lot of people um we have newsletters that are sent out by the freshman team freshman counselors we also provide weekly updates as i mentioned earlier throughout our junior workshop in our senior workshop series we've been able to offer a financial aid night we were we had the pleasure of
170hosting a representative from wesleyan university this past october to talk about fafsa and financial aid to our families we recently hosted college knowledge night which is a panel of admissions reps geared to talk about the admissions process from the point of uf admissions which was really powerful and impactful and we also had the how to pay for college night so this is not an exhaustive list of family opportunities um but you know i do want to kind of showcase some of the larger events that we have in addition to that families are more than welcome to reach out to counselors to meet on an individual basis just a little bit about our impact now this information is pulled directly from our school profile and our school profiles um use naviance as the data mechanism to
171to capture these numbers so i i think we have a pr we have a good percentage of students close to 90 percent of students pursuing a further education whether that's four-year colleges two-year colleges or technical schools and then we have a small number of students pursuing military employment and then that other category which can include anything from a gap year it can include the post-secondary program through pupil services and then some students choose to pursue a pg year and then obviously there are students who may have some unique circumstances where they may need to take a little bit more time to develop their plan for after high school um just a little uh caveat just to add to that we did add a short senior exit interview to our curriculum and those are taking place
172right around now and it's a 15 minute opportunity for counselors and to learn about student plans and just kind of update that information on naviance so we can have the most reflective data available for the public so just to talk a little bit about the focuses for this year because again i am brand new um learning about the department learning about the district as a whole um and i you know i had some ideas coming in as i interviewed for the position and and took it on um and i've you know observed a lot and and i'm i'm impressed with a lot but i also realize that there is a lot of work to be done so some of that work includes really um building our capacity to support that capital all students and that
173means that recognizing that every student has their own path and that path may or may not include a four-year college that may include a pathway that is you know different from that and we want to be able to provide opportunities and curriculum to support that so part of that includes exposing the school counseling department to those different programs so in addition to college tours to build knowledge around you know trends for where our students are applying popular schools that students are applying to um building knowledge about other programs so what we did in the uh early in the school year back in november is we had a professional development opportunity to visit a few programs throughout the state um and that included um as nunchuck community college as well as job corps which is a
174training program so there were obviously some counselors that went off to learn more about four-year colleges but we i made it a point to include some of those other additional opportunities as well we had the opportunity to attend two college board conferences the dream deferred conference um which focuses on college access and opportunities for black and african american students um which is very powerful great experience we were able to bring two counselors from each side of town so in in addition to myself and um paul and ann and rosina were also there um and it was a wonderful experience and really the takeaways from that was you know how can we as a department work to better serve our students and one thing that really stuck out to me and the counselors was the importance
175of mentorship opportunities and this is something that i you know i have personal experience with in my previous district and hope to include some opportunities related to mentorship um in the future in west hartford um the preparate conference similarly is another college board conference that i was able to attend along with a few counselors so we brought three counselors there and uh ann and rosina were there as well same kind of um [Music] focus but only this was for the latinx community so access and opportunity for for those students um we are in the process of enhancing our knowledge as a whole for the department with naviance because one of the first things i recognized um as i took on the role is that we have this great program but we are certainly in need
176of some formalized training from the experts in terms of how to use it to its full capacity so we are in the process of getting some training regarding that and really um trying to improve ways to incorporate data collection in naviance um as well as google because i realize that there are you know they're both good tools but we want to be able to use both of them we've had professional learning opportunities to have some real candid discussions about problems of practice in our in our own department and i hope to continue those discussions and as i mentioned before we hosted our financial aid night and i hope to build on that to include more fafsa completion events because i realize that that application is um although becoming easier it's still a cumbersome process for
177a lot of families and and um can be made a lot easier if we kind of get everyone at the table at the same time um another focus that i've [Music] been focused on i guess i could have said that better but partnering with community organizations has also been um a beneficial aspect of school counseling this year so we've been able to partner with a variety of community organizations to host for example a college application boot camp and i am in the process of working with a couple parent volunteers who really want to support students with the college essay process so those are things that are up and coming and i really hope to increase the excuse me increase those opportunities increase alumni involvement i think students value hearing from students who have actually been
178through this closer to the time that they are just to learn about their experience what they're experiencing post graduation [Music] i really want to improve our um collaboration with other departments um especially after hearing some of the comments today i think we can improve our collaboration with our special ed department our english learners uh department as well as um ever you know more collaboration with teachers i think we we can use some improvement with collaboration overall with multiple stakeholders in in our schools and then also the last kind of thing that i want to hope to build in the future is increase programming for the grade 8 to 9 transition that is something that we're working on at hall right now there's a new event that's happening soon called meet your hall family which will
179give an opportunity for parents to to talk to me in small groups about um important transition related issues when it comes to welcoming your student into high school and hopefully in the future we bring that to connor but we are piloting it at hall this year and i can't take credit because it was not my brain child but i'm happy to support and we do have school counselors supporting that as well i hope that wasn't too long but so you can see why we're impressed with melanie in terms of the volume of the work and her quick ability to be able to really uh kind of chair this and steward it in the right direction so we open this up to your questions and discussion at this point thank you so much and before questions
180want to formally also welcome you melanie thank you so much glad to have you here teammates questions for what has been shared comments ethan i did have one question and this may be i'm not sure how to do it but have you ever looked or is there a process that you could do sort of an after action type of thing to look at kids where they go to college what they're successful and what they're not and sort of look back and say okay you know the kids who went into computer science did very well the kids who went into french i make it up you know you know things that then that would say hey are there things we're doing i don't know it was just as you're reading you know reading it i'm just
181trying to think how do you learn from where we're successful when we're not very interesting question i don't know that we have the data say on a programmatic level in terms of where what what the majors are that students choose although uh what one of the reports that we will give to the board um i believe it's the second board meeting in may uh pending the release of what's called the profile and performance report the ppr this is a state generated report where they will look at through data captured from the national clearinghouse they'll look at the formal college acceptance rates that have been reported through that mechanism in addition to something called a college persistence rate which is uh the percentage of students who entered uh in a given year saying they're in their
182you know freshman year of college who returned for their sophomore year which is what i'm sort of hearing in your question i know that if you dig into larger reports that are available on college persistence you can begin to break things down but i don't know that we have a sophisticated method here in the district where we've been able to to do that based on what students have declared as majors and it's it's often difficult because you may not declare your major for for two years um but that ppr report is coming the data that's typically reported on the on that college front is usually i believe it's two years behind yeah it's it's two years behind and that's the issue is that we rely on the national clearinghouse for the data and so the
183majors the list of majors i get a question we've tried to figure out ways to do this getting surveys from students as they leave when we were at conor back 15 years ago we tried to get this and have students as they come back report back to us but you're kind of reliant on them to do it and and then the clearinghouse information the issue is uconn has trouble getting that information just because of the shifting of majors within that same university so we kind of have it on a macro level but it's hard to do it by school or by subject the one thing that sort of triggered with paul's answer is it always surprises me when and i'm a layman so if i'm mistaking it is it seems like a lot of kids
184go to college but drop out and that always really it's just a terrible you know yeah our persistent trade's really good here was it good yeah okay yeah be interesting enough thank you all right gail or did you have your hand gail and then claire thanks for the presentation it's really interesting um i had actually just two simple questions one is both in connor and hall you have a like at hall you have an eight percent other rate what are those people doing because you have employment you know separately so right so so we are um working on improving you know the options in terms of what what is reportable on naviance because there are canned responses that don't allow us to elaborate on other plans so as i mentioned in the presentation that can
185include a gap year program that can include a pg program so a post grad you're in between uh high school and and going to college some students take an additional year primarily like to improve on athletics is usually that what students do for that um and then in addition to that there's the post uh the post-secondary program through pupil services so those are students um who are in the special ed program who move on to that additional year before officially leaving um the public school format so that's what and then and then i like i said inevitably some of that other includes students who are truly taking some time off to you know whether it's they need to address the mental health things or maybe they have another maybe they're leaving the country maybe they're
186traveling um but there's just not a way to capture that data in naviance and and that's why we want to um get that formalized training just so we know that we're using naviance in its uh true intention and able to report data that is truly reflective of the student body thanks um then my second question was um you know there's a lot of talk about college and college preparation and and that type of stuff but um i just said maybe you said this but if you could just reiterate like with technical schools where there's you know tremendous job opportunities now um you know all kinds of jobs out there that there's nobody to do no skills and then you have people going to college who come out of college and don't can't get a job
187so i'm just curious if there's any um you know resources are pushed towards any people going towards the technical realm absolutely um i i agree there is a big push for you know four-year colleges but i i do truly know and believe that there are opportunities outside of that and it's something that we need to work more into our school counseling curriculum but there are opportunities to have those discussions and also one other thing that i did not mention was the opportunity to go to the um oh my god i'm forgetting the name of the um name of the event but there was a fair um at the casino that focused on what you're talking about the trade programs and those opportunities that are outside of the four-year college realm um and you know i
188have my opinions about the event itself it was the first time it was held um but i do think it's a valuable experience for students no matter what your plan is to to learn those options and i was happy that we were able to bring a group of students out to that fair but in addition to that we do have representatives from different trade programs who come to visit our high schools throughout the fall to talk about those options and students are welcome to attend those events um i believe every student is welcome no matter what the grade level to attend those um sessions piggyback a couple of other ideas that uh happen operate outside of necessarily melanie's purview so brian cohen's our career and technical education department supervisor and through his work and his
189staff they will bring in speakers who focus on college and career they do coordination with the career counseling staff the two the individual members that are that are aligned with uh the school counseling department that work in our career centers we also have a new person a teacher marianne taft who splits her time between our reach our alternative high school and working with job placement job shadowing and i know that she just brought a mobile help me with the name of it mobile it's goodwin college goodwin university's mobile lab that focuses on advanced manufacturing that was just at both high schools in the last just the week before we went on vacation so the classes went out were able to go into this mobile lab which just made it very nice so there is that
190aspect from brian's work that connects very well to the community colleges and i know melanie's had this push to also go to as nun tuck and which has a great advanced manufacturing lab and we've also talked about lincoln tech and other schools as well thank you andrew um i know you mentioned times when the people who work in admissions staff at four-year and i'm not sure maybe two-year colleges come and talk to students and like their parents i think i went to one actually um but i'm curious to is there like any process where um admissions officers maybe come and talk to counselors or teachers about i mean for the counselors it would be more supporting students through like the application process and then maybe even for teachers i think i've heard some schools um
191used as like an opportunity to help teachers write better letters of recommendation or however they would support a student through that process in the classroom yes definitely so um the piece about the letters of recommendation that actually has happened in the past it was before my time but last year the admissions represented from gale holy cross and uconn i believe met with different staff members doing professional development with that yes so so and that's something i i hope to you know reinstate in the future um and the idea of admissions counselors coming to talk to counselors is absolutely um something that's pretty much ongoing because we're in regular conversations with admissions staff throughout the application process and constantly learning constantly visiting colleges and learning you know what's new and you know what's appropriate in terms
192of um you know their processes but every college is different but it's uh it's a ongoing learning opportunity so to the short answer to your question is yes and yes pardon the oversight claire claire and then avery so i have just a couple quick questions um post-secondary do your counselors within the high school continue to work in the up to 22 program so um that is with the pupil services department so it's a separate separate form of counseling because it's more of the job shadowing counseling and so it's it's just not under that department it's under the pupils those kids and pupil services do get services of the counselors within the high schools correct sure they they have access to them and they're part of a caseload so it depends on that student and what
193their needs would be whether the best way to access that is through pupil services or through the regular department as it goes through but absolutely okay and then for course selection of eighth graders are they meeting the counselors from the high school or do they do course selection with their middle school counselors great question so it's a combination of both so the high school counselors go down to each middle school to present about the program of studies and the timeline as it relates to course selection um and then they meet with their middle school counselors either in a group format or individually to um actually nail down that course selection in our system so okay okay and last quick one do you have military and people with military background or anyone from the military that
194can come into the high school to present to kids interested in that path absolutely and we have one of our counselors as a is a military guy and um and and we do regularly have military representatives come and visit the high school to talk to students along with uh the college reps and trade school reps and our assistant superintendent i was gonna say we we've got several teachers in the district i'm always asking if there's if there's a need someone to talk to you know but we have many teachers that are that that have you know military service that also are more than happy to speak to students if they have interest and you know the difference we're not recruiters we're not trying to sell anything we can we can have honest and open conversations
195it's one of my favorite things to do avery so forgive me if this question is a little poorly stated um i'm trying to figure out exactly how to ask it but um with west hartford being named one of the i think mr moore you said one of the best towns for music education um i'm wondering what sorts of guides and resources are counselors given to then guide students who are looking into the conservatory path and other sorts of more specialized four-year college programs that's a great question it's that's this is something we've talked a little bit about in the future of how do we align um because you can look at this in terms of specialties in terms of the department with so sports for example who are the school counselors that are best liaisons
196with sports and have that exposure because we do have counselors in both schools that were college athletes it's the same area with music so as we go forward and so this year we've had we've had counselors visiting different colleges across the country and um becoming kind of the experts by region is kind of one of the models that we've looked at and that's kind of folded into that that who's going to be the school council that really knows about berkeley who's going to be the school counselor that really knows about rhode island school of design and those kind of fields where even if that's not your counselor your counselor can say let me talk to this counselor who's kind of that's their specialty area so it's an area that we haven't been where we want
197to be but we do have it as kind of our overall plan and i was just going to add that as as as melanie said the liaison with other departments for instance our music teachers have great access to which schools you know those are very specialized programs as you said you know they're conservatory-like programs and our music department is quite knowledgeable so liaisoning and um as melanie said that it'd be a a goal to to add to because uh mr bowles and mr uric and all of these great music teachers have the experience they they have placed help students get placed in programs that take maybe 10 students in the whole country and and it happens regularly when i can name children right now who are going to amazing programs and a lot of it
198is their music uh teachers background but when we can coordinate with counseling i think that will make us even stronger andrew and then deb oh okay all right deb thank you and welcome it's nice to uh to see you here at the board level um and appreciate your presentation you made reference to our policy where we have special counselors for ninth graders uh different from the 10th through 12th graders and i'm pretty sure that that policy is fairly new within the last like three years or so and i think you said like some people like it some people don't like it i'm wondering um how we will assess whether that is a successful model if we if we plan to assess i hope we plan to assess whether it's a successful model and how we
199plan to do that whether it's a survey of families or students or just kind of seeing how things go do you have any thoughts on how we might look at look at what we're doing and determine whether we want to continue that way i was just going to say i think that's a great a great question i think it's been around a few more years than that uh maybe five or six anyway and i think it's a good time to maybe take a look at it so i think it's a good question but i i don't know if we've had formal conversations yet on on how to start that but uh i know melanie maybe you have some thoughts no i was just gonna echo exactly what you just said um i know that it
200has been a conversation point um and like i said earlier i believe there's pros and cons to both sides unfortunately i only have experience with this type of model because it was that way in manchester um and then the only other experience i have um was through my internship in east hartford where they had two counselors per grade level um and you know there's pros and cons to that as well but one thing that i'm consistently thinking of is the importance of the freshman transition and and not to say that grades 10 and 11 aren't important but the transition for for ninth grade and then the successful transition out of high school for 12th grade are two very important and competing demands especially in the beginning of the school year so i would be curious
201to see what the you know what the information tells tells us if when once we do start to explore that and i do think it's worth exploring because what i i don't know what i don't know um but yeah i think i definitely think we can work to do that in the future and i just apologize i want to chime in because i was present when we made this uh transition in our programming and i would say it's a programming not a policy just to uh you know because i think that's an important distinction the rationale at the time um that was that was presented was that our ninth graders were really being under serviced um and i think it was you know maybe two or three years in we started to hear from our
20210th grade parents that you know that transition sort of shifted and i won't say that the 10th graders were being under serviced at that point but it's a new face and you haven't had that year of relationship so it was kind of like a starting over again and we did have it on our you know we had it in our larger plans that we would probably be reviewing this program after it was able to to get some fee maybe four years in and of course covets happened and we've been in a two-year stall i do have i do think that you know relative to some of the specifics that you ask that surveying is an important component of that of the various stakeholders but we have other measures and one of the you know i
203was talking uh mentioning the uh pro profile and performance for the ppr another important statistic that's captured and that's that's uh measured for all schools is um the ninth grade um i'm gonna i'm gonna lose the specific that they call it but uh it's it's essentially the percent he'll go ahead help me uh i'm also it's kind of like an on track for graduation thank you that's exactly what it's called the on track for graduation okay i got it exactly but uh it is an on track for graduation measure that says you know the ninth grade year is crucial in all the literature for for graduation and for on track so you want to make sure your ninth graders receive at least and this was at least five credits and that they are moving on
204through the process because when they get stuck there it often really either delays or you know can really derail a child's experience so that on track for graduation ppr uh metric is is as one we had we've been very successful with it that was that's when we would have to make sure we don't compromise if we change them and the five credit requirement and then that's a research-based statistic as ann mentions takes on even greater weight when you consider that since they've started that metric they've they've changed the graduation requirements in the state and up them from from what used to be at the state level 21 to 25. father jason thank you um melanie thank you so much for this presentation um i did not have this experience in high school um and you
205know i graduated high school with a d minus and basically counted as a failure that there wasn't a future so i'm wondering what's the experience like for students like me in in our schools you know how seeing the the plan that you have for for the students and developing the plan in the junior year and how to execute that plan um is essential um and i think you know your approach to continuous improvement to going to conferences and finding out ways to address underrepresented students i think is um it's amazing and just want to hear more about what someone like me would have would experience in the schools um i appreciate your comment and you know i would love to say that our program reaches each and every student but i and i but i
206know that there are some students that still um get a little lost and and that's not their fault um and that really leads me and drives me to seek that continuous improvement that you mentioned um and part of that includes more of a consistent message not only from school counseling but from the school as a whole in the district as a whole everyone has to be on the same page if i were if i could tell a little story actually happened today i was in some classrooms helping with the 10th grade career exploration lesson and you know we tried a little something new use the new inventory and naviance and right off the bat i'm like okay we need to change this we need to change that in my mind right because i think it's
207great but i know it can be better um and what really drove that home for me was a comment that a student made in one of the classes that i was in today and we were doing he was doing the inventory he wasn't really into it you know kind of going through the motions um and one of our school counseling interns asked him hey what do you know what are you thinking of doing after high school and i'm standing near this conversation and overhearing it and he said nothing like i'm not gonna do anything right so my ears perked up right away i'm kind of listening in on this conversation so i go on my computer on the side just to look him up because i was able to get his name and looked up
208his information and looked at his grades looked at his naviance account um and he had since gone to the bathroom so when he came back i pulled him aside i said hey what's going on i heard you say you don't want to do anything after high school is that really is that really true so he started to open up about how he he's just kind of struggling a little bit but i made sure to mention to him that i saw improvement from the first semester to the second semester and really kind of drew out what his you know thought process was in terms of saying i don't want to do anything and turns out he does have interest right and i tell that story to say that i want all counselors to take that approach
209um there's a reason why i'm in this role but i realize that everyone is not me and i everyone doesn't take the same approach as me but i want to be able to empower counselors to have more conversations because that's really what it boils down to like it's not about checking boxes and getting this done because i have to and i have to show the data it's yeah i have to get this done but it has to be meaningful for every student especially for students who and i don't want to say you were lost in the sauce in high school because you met you might have you know things happen and and that and it looks like you're really successful now um but like those conversations change people and i really hope to follow up
210with this student just to see you know what happens because what one person taking that interest and that's not to say no one else has taken interest in this student but i could have easily chose to just say oh here we go another student who's not thinking about their post-secondary or they're not invested or they're not this it's taking that extra step just to pick students brains and i think that's really important and our programming needs to allow for time for that to happen and i want to add one thing if i may um i think melanie has captured the importance and the power of the personalized approach it's something that we've talked about you know it's something um when i worked with tom at connor it was it was the mantra of the building
211in terms of developing those personal relationships with kids and that is absolutely the number one uh tool that we have and that's the charge for the for our counselors but um i think melanie's point that you know being very candid that that potential exists um all the time but it it makes me reflect on other structures we have because what happens is especially in big comprehensive high schools like we have it's very easy for an individual to become lost and so we do have not just the support of the structure of school counseling or the teacher relationships you know we think about the reach program think about uh to drop out prevention it's intended specifically to be the smaller more personalized setting for students who may lose their way who may not be finding academic
212success success not because of you know any real issue with their ability to learn but but perhaps their ability to find connection in that large group and they thrive in that setting that exists you know with strive that exists with um opportunities that we can take to um you know blend a student's day as they get further along and look at job shadowing opportunities figuring out the hook for each and every child what what is your real interest you know i really heard that story coming out from melanie as to getting down to being able to figure out what is it that this student is looking for and i if it was gail's question it doesn't always need to be the four-year college and that's why we're really trying to invest in these other opportunities
213to make sure that we have a comprehensive approach so that we can provide opportunities for all kids um i just want to say i am so excited for our school counseling department with you um at the at the wheel um i just wanted to speak to i mean i think the presentation and then even that story um i think your genuineness your passion um and your you know real desire to implement change within the school was very apparent so i'm i'm super excited and i'm so glad that you're here with us um i just wanted to comment similarly um from from what jason was saying i'm really excited about kind of the initiatives with um kind of more community involvement including mentoring looking at alternate paths to post-secondary plans um and then that alumni engagement
214i think you know that whole piece um i think it it offers you know i i know that a lot of the important work happens in naviance and in the counseling department but i think these are opportunities that can also help those students that aren't quite sure what they want to do and mentoring or speaking to an alumni those are things that really i think can have some meaningful impact for a lot of students who are still undecided or confused so i just i'm super excited for for our counseling department thank you so am i other question jason yeah thank you um yeah i really appreciate the story i was going to follow up with a question about high needs students but i think what you've expressed is the personalized approach and the ability to
215to determine those different avenues to reach every student i appreciate that so two questions and i'll ask them together and so um one is um is there different forms of counseling for student athletes i say this because i see a lot of student athletes struggling at uconn that there's excitement about their performance and we care about sports in west hartford uh and their performance often drives their their choices uh but then when it comes to the academics uh that can present a challenge that they didn't foresee and so i i i see the struggles that that student athletes at uconn are um are faced with and so i i'm i'm compelled to to think through that here um and the other is uh that to ask you whether there's a prevalence of students choosing a
216gap year because of um the notion that many colleges don't have the in-person experience right now or i have a limited engagement um because of covid restrictions etc so i've just heard of you know anecdotal evidence of students uh you know deferring plans uh for college and and taking a step back and and just if there's conversation around those kinds of concerns whether there's like a window of opportunity or um or what kind of you know um thought process goes into helping them evaluate those those choices so those are the two so i'll start with the athlete question so i the athletics piece has always been something that i don't want to use the word mind boggling but it it is a process and i know their process is different um from the traditional student
217who's not pursuing college athletics um there isn't a separate process for them in terms of the school counseling aspect however conversations about being a student first is absolutely part of the discussion when it comes to you know the college application process for athletes because we realize that you know sports are important they're exciting but you know there's always that chance what if you get injured what's your backup plan how are you gonna continue um what are you gonna do after because the percentages of getting into you know the big leagues and you know being a professional athlete those percentages are so small that you have to have a realistic plan in terms of what you want to study in addition to being a college athlete so um that's another piece that i want to look
218to improve especially in terms of like just the knowledge around that whole world it'd be really nice to bring in a representative from a college to kind of speak to that like um andrew mentioned earlier bringing in college reps to talk to counselors about you know how to really coach from for lack of a better word students into that world um so definitely a growth area um [Music] but but the conversations are happening and i hope that answers your question i don't know if paul or ann have any i i was only going to piggyback um just this is a recollection and i'm and i'm honestly not fresh on it for what's current practice but obviously eligibility for for sports for our athletes does depend on their performance so i know a lot of our
219coaches would coordinate for academic study halls and things like that and i don't know if that's still a practice but i would imagine that that's a piece but i think i think melanie's answer kind of goes more at the heart of your question as to are our counselors having those tough conversations with kids to make sure that they're not being myopic in their in their preparation and and that they are kind of looking at the bigger picture if if their intent is both college and athletics can you repeat the second question again i'm sorry the choice of a gap year due to covet and higher ed i think there's a combination of things going on um covet is certainly a player um i don't have like data to support it right now but i'm i'm
220i know the idea of being in a virtual classroom for eighty thousand dollars a year is probably not really appealing to a lot of students um but i also and these are all like my own personal opinions so i'm just gonna preface it with that i also think um students may be a little apprehensive because of how how much it costs it's so expensive [Music] and part of our job as a school counseling department is to have those conversations with conversations with students and families earlier on to understand all of what the college application and research process entails and part of that is when you you know when you develop a list of schools and we always talk about reach target safety or you know that something like that um reach target and safety applies
221to the dollar amount too um and that's something that i don't see happening as often when it comes to talking about college um because students will set their sights on these these great schools they get accepted and then they have to have the hard conversation with whoever is at home like how are we going to pay for this oh um you didn't apply for that scholarship you didn't get any merit aid yeah you're not going right and that's a harsh reality for a lot of people and i think it ultimately leads to some of those decisions to like re reconfigure a plan but again that's like my own what i've seen um in my own experience working directly with students um so it's it's definitely a goal to incorporate a little bit more of that
222in the discussion when it comes to college planning in addition to um really talking more about financial aid resources because that's another piece that i i see as a growth area in our department um thank you i was going to add a brief comment to maybe help fill that out um last year i think at our state of schools report we did see a little bit of a change and i don't have the numbers in front of me but i see tom shaking his head too i recall re presenting to to the board that we had seen a little change in more in-state students and a little bit fewer in private out of state and those might be the most some of the most expensive not all we have plenty of expensive private in-state here
223but we have seen a little dip in private out of state and a little increase in a public and private in-state and although i don't have the numbers we we at the time thought that might be a coveted fact that why go as far away if you might be coming home and why spend as much of you may be coming home to your lovely west hartford house to take your classes so um i just would add that is something i think we saw in our graduation day and i was just going to add one tiny thing that there was a report i can't remember it was a state or a national level report that came out sometime in the winter that i read that talked about the impact of uh specifically college attendance as a
224result of covid throughout the pandemic and i know there was a fairly uh substantial dip uh overall in in the in the larger trend it was i make up a number but it was somewhere two three four percent difference i would have to refresh myself i have it on my computer somewhere thanks other questions or comments right melanie again thank you so very much i do want to comment and it has been shared and i echo all that has been said very much appreciate and respect your energy and your personalized nature of meeting every student where they are at you emphasized how you want to reach and connect with all students and hearing you say that is believable and i think it's important that no matter how many skill sets how much educational background a
225person can have to have that personal sense of recognizing the potential that every young person has and tapping into that potential and helping them go in whatever direction they desire to go into kudos to you for helping our young people do that so thank you very much we look forward to more to come paul of course and of course thank you so much for your never-ending support as well thank you all right now we'll move on to routine matters we now will have our financial report approval of the financial report for the period ending february 28th and we have ms liz hewitt coming to the table thank you so much and i believe this evening ethan is going to be giving us the financial report [Music] set okay the uh school funds are reported in
226four categories first category being the general fund report which was budgeted for fiscal year 22 at 176.3 million second category is the state and federal grants fund at this point the school system has 21.9 million dollars of funds and some of that funding covers multiple years both prior and future then the third category is the special funds report which covers six different funds and the fourth category is the nutrition service funds as of the february 2022 financials the general fund report projections are projecting a positive overall full year variance of 25 000 while positive the variance for the full fiscal year has gone from a positive variance of 95 000 at the end of december to a positive projected variance of twenty five thousand a negative change to twenty seventy thousand in that two month
227time period and it is positive but it is just about breaking as with the december projections there was a tradeoff in accounts with a variance in the total salary lines being a positive 1.5 million plus projection and purchase services projection having a negative variance of almost the same amount the projected variances of each of the line items decreased i'm sorry increase from the december projection so the variances increased in both cases the positive variance of cyrus was a combination of open positions and an increase in the percentage of recent teacher hires as part of this teacher mix uh not naturally but teachers are paid you know recent teachers are paid less than more experience the negative variance in the purchase services was a function of the school system needing to hire special educate more special
228education support from outside services in terms of that's what i had in general funds in terms of the state and federal grants there's is over 9.2 million in outstanding funds or available funds over 8.5 million of those funds are concentrated in the two large sr grants that are still outstanding and then in terms of the special funds the six different funds are projected to end the june fiscal year with the 2.1 million dollar balance which is pretty equivalent to last year just over 50 000 plus from the prior year balance in june um and the year-over-year change in each of the balanced funds it was relatively minimal and then the last one is this nutrition service fund where there was a significant increase in the fund balance from last year at this time or february
229of last year 2021 was it basically a break even to a balance at the end of the fiscal 20-year two-year 1.6 million and has been discussed in prior sessions the fund is generating more income than pre-pandemic period as all students are currently fed free of charge till the end of this current fiscal year and that's what i have so and i guess we just keep waiting to see the variances hopefully they stay above zero yes they will be refined as the year goes and we will continue to report monthly but happy to answer any questions thank you so much thank you ethan teammates questions comments regarding our fiscal report all right well with that hearing non-seeking emotion that the board of education approved the financial report for the period ending february 28 2022 so moved
230is there a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye all right the eyes have it thank you so much thank you moving on to the approval of the minutes approval of the minutes of the regular board of education meeting from april the 5th 2022 seeking a motion so moved is there a second second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all right the eyes have it thank you so much information and reports any board members have any communication and reports to share all right other information and discussions there is one brief thing i do just want to mention and what triggered it certainly was our robust discussion and hearing the counseling update um and as we know as a collective body of board members this volunteer opportunity that we
231are so um honored and uh to to have the honor of fulfilling we come from different backgrounds and different levels of expertise and pieces that we contribute to the discussion and one of our teammates here made a reference to graduating from high school with a d minus and i appreciate that level of disclosure and sharing and realness and what prompts me to single you out and saying that jason just wanting to acknowledge a recent recognition you received from the university of connect connecticut rather where you were nominated and voted by the students to receive the recognition of academic of excellence in terms of mentoring i apologize for not getting the correct name of it but receiving an award by the student body for your contributions and mentoring undergraduate students and so again hearing where you
232were hearing where you are now you are a testament of a purpose of change and how there certainly is ongoing evolution so just want to congratulate you in that regard all right any other comments updates all right so we'll move on now to non-staff communications and reports did that already now future business students i apologize i think my bedtime has passed as well so pardon me our student representatives absolutely we will begin with avery thank you i know that it's late so i'm gonna try to keep it short and sweet but i've actually wanted to highlight something that i've been noticing around the school and over the past few weeks that i think is really remarkable um the student faculty committee that's the organization of students who meet um bi-weekly with ms ambrose one of
233our assistants our assistant principals oh gosh i'm mixing up that's the night speaking and faculty members they meet and they talk about how they want to improve the school environment and to just make school life better for everyone and recently a subcommittee has been making motivational and encouraging announcements every morning so the hall sim hall students derek williams and mary huey white and meredith norton have been presenting uplifting messages encouraging students um in whatever their efforts may be which i thought was just really touching um in addition to um ethan's drift caves two f twenty thousand dollar voice for change award um for the outdoor wellness project so we just have a lot of really awesome student initiatives going on right now to improve um our school life um returning from break our spring sports
234athletes have been continuing their training even through the time off um and in soccer nikki delores and toby ruffo received allstate and academy academic all-state honors and the cta's connecticut soccer coaches association annual awards banquet and the connecticut soccer coaches girls association annual awards banquet and lucas almeida was named the connecticut player of the year with allstate all new england and all-american honors um and nicholas i apologize that might be mispronouncing the same hermes was hall's first champion of the kingswood oxford tennis invitational singles in 15 years um and then coming up we'll be having chris herron a former nba player to speak to all students about personal values identity and making healthy choices this opportunity is being provided by the west hartford community of concern and the heron project to educate students on substance
235use and the dangers associated with that um heron will be sharing his personal struggles um and how he came out of it thank you avery andrew um i'll just highlight a few things that have been happening um first like uh students at hall returning from break we're now in the full swing of spring sports um so teams are practicing and games are going on all week a full slate um also back before break the week uh right before april uh spring break the specialized um the specialized performance study group which is connord's um like advanced acting class they had a day where they each chose a fictional character and portrayed that fictional character and stayed in um stayed in in their role for the entire day and students from um all grades visited and were
236able to interact with them i went with my english class it was definitely very interesting an eclectic mix from l woods to frog and toad and everything in between um also um connord's esports team has been very successful out of 33 teams the um out of 33 teams the the smash bros super smash bros team placed first and out of 17 the league of legends team placed sixth so both of those now move on to the playoffs which start friday and go through um next week also um as mr moore brought up we had and avery mentioned at hall we had a voice for change proposal that was successful and that was led by a junior jeff rosborg who's also our vice president of student council and i encourage you to read about it i'm
237i'm sure it's um in some newspaper definitely the connor current will have to cover it um but he has sweeping plans um there's a garden there's funding for sports funding for music and art so it's it's definitely really everyone does win as his uh plan states and finally i'll mention that connor is also having chris herron come on the 26th which i mentioned that last meeting and everyone is very excited and he's i think speaking to the parents at town hall i'm not mistaken the the night prior so um if parents want to come you can see chris herron as well thank you andrew and again thank you both so much for those updates and now moving on to future business and with that we have announcement of future meeting dates our next meeting will
238be on tuesday may the 3rd 2022 our regular board of education meeting at seven o'clock here in this room 3 14 followed by tuesday may the 17th 2022 regular board of education meetings seven o'clock here in this room 314 and then lastly tuesday june the 7th 2022 regular board of education meetings seven o'clock here the legislative chamber room 314 do we have a request for a future agenda item right comments from visitors do we have any visitors here to make comments we know that there were some from the list before we had exceeded our time for the subject matter of sel so do just want to honor those persons who i said we would go back to or they would have the opportunity at the end of the meeting so if kate capes is here
239gina morris all right anyone else here to make a comment all right seeing none hearing none we have an executive session the executive session uh is pursuant to section 1-206b of the general statutes to discuss strategy and negotiations with respect to pending litigation to witness matthew rowe versus west hartford board of education and town of west hartford docket number cv22507-2310 seeking a motion to go in executive session is there a second second all in favor hi hi all right hey she said it's okay [Music] [Applause] do great seeking a motion motion to adjourn oh sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry adjust the gun seeking a motion to adjourn is there a second second all right meeting adjourned at 11 o'clock you