001calling the meeting to order welcome to the west hartford public schools board of education regular meeting it is tuesday april the 5th 2022 7 o'clock maybe please have the roll call charlotte dr chang present mr goldman here dr harris here ms nazarella present miss poland here dr steinberg here dr thomas farquharson here student representative andrew maglio present student representative avery woods weber present thank you and now we'll have the pledge of allegiance by led by andrew please and to the republic for which it stands for my nation under god indivisible with the liberty and justice thank you we do have a revision to the agenda order and proposing or suggesting a motion to revise the agenda order due to the length of time anticipated for the budget discussion and other agenda items and with that
002proposing to following public comments to then have section item number 7b for non-staff communications by reports from student board representatives to then follow that once the student representatives have given their update then to proceed with the agenda as noted with unfinished business and so on and so forth do we have a motion so moved is there a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any oppose any abstentions the eyes have it thank you so much for your flexibility now moving on to public communications this is an opportunity where we're able to hear from the public your thoughts your suggestions your concerns each individual has three minutes to speak and there are 21 minutes per subject matter as you are speaking charlotte will hold up a card a yellow card to let
003you know that you have one minute remaining in your time and when your time is expired you will see a red card now it is very important to remember as you come to the podium and once you give your name and your address that those who are speaking as well as those who are in the audience we require for comments to be made in a respectful way this is a board of education meeting we have students who are here students who are watching and it is our collective responsibility to model for them appropriate behaviors and that will be entrusted upon all of you so we certainly look forward to hearing your comments and we will attendedly listen to them now it is bored policy that we do not respond while comments are being made but
004please know we are listening and we again look forward to your respectful delivery of your comments we have a list here of several who have signed up and please know that because it is 21 minutes per subject if we do get through the 21 minutes we do have public comments at the end of the meeting as well and we certainly welcome to hear comments at that time also first we have anita hello my name is anita kellyan and i live at 48 west normandy drive and my topic is the budget as we know it's been a long call here on february 15th i submitted a foia request for west hartford public schools documents that would substantiate the figures presented on the west hartford public schools 2023 budget i at that time i asked for contracts
005financial details and titles for the categories of and they're termed objects on the budget workbooks test materials instructional improvement and textbooks all of these documents and this is an example of what i received or at the corporation of the corporate council for the town of west hartford so anyone who's interested you're more than welcome to go look at them these are public but what i want to bring and what i handed out to the board members are the last page for textbooks and if you see the total for it it comes out for the fiscal year 2021 to 20 20 20 i'm sorry to 2021. if you see the uh the total it says 475 thousand dollars 27.73 now there is a discrepancy because of this paperwork that they gave for substantiating it for the
006budget that they present on a combined they have it as five hundred and four thousand dollars and for the general fund five hundred thousand at minimum that's about a twenty five thousand dollar difference which is not substantiated in the documents i would also like to add for anyone who wants to do what i did and put all those numbers on those four pages on an excel worksheet you will actually end up with a total of 439 thousand dollars ten dollars and that gives you a discrepancy of sixty thousand dollars as board members you will be voting so the question is you had two weeks i was here on march 23rd starting to show the discrepancies have you had the opportunity to look into what i have been taking time to look into because though they
007presented the responsibility falls on you a yes vote means i did look into it and i can confirm that these numbers are accurate a no vote would definitely more say to someone like me hey i'm not sure i need to look into this a little bit more because discrepancies are coming the last thing that i would like to bring to your attention is that on march 31st there was a three million dollar grant in aid given for the tennis courts and i am curious to know if one of the board members would ask whps where where is that going to show in the um [Music] in the budget and with that and my red card i conclude thank you next we have addie good evening addie lord in 561 park road i am here tonight
008to speak about the budget tonight is meant after all to be about facts and figures two weeks ago i received the results of my foia request for financial information regarding assessments and shared my preliminary concerns with you all i am not the only resident and parent to raise concerns regarding the financial information used to prepare the budget we are coming into the last quarter of the year and yet i received very few invoices two quotes one of which is from the previous fiscal year and i hope was paid and no contracts as requested i expect that all members of the board have done their own fact-finding and checking as elected agents of the state it is an expectation of your position by residents that you would have done so with due diligence if you have
009not done so then you cannot make an informed yes vote and need to vote no the subject of public relations was brought up by by member nazarella to promote the great things done by the district and teachers and a budget of a hundred thousand was mentioned as previously suggested to be included in future budgets it was also mentioned that we are the only district of our size etc without a public relations department or firm it wasn't very clear what we were talking about in-house our outside pr firm but greenwich with its similar with a similar district to ours doesn't actually feel the need to have a pr firm connecticut ranks in the top three in the nation and west hartford is upper tier in state for investing in our young students at just under twenty
010thousand dollars per student per year given the fact that mr chang has stated that the district is underfunded in many news articles and our teachers are still putting their hand in their own pockets perhaps we should look closer at the figures i'm sure parents and especially teachers would appreciate that hundred thousand invested in education rather than public relations perhaps in trying to source teachers for middle eastern languages it was mentioned in the same meeting that we have an even larger population of speakers now will the 27 000 given by the tribes also go to education or into some dark hole if our students are to compete on the world stage this is a wise decision as many nationalities work in middle eastern countries and for middle eastern businesses my own family included living in dubai
011or maybe towards translators to help teachers and parents communicate more effectively for their students given our diverse population of esau families please consider all information presented from all quarters out of a town budget of 318 million close to 185 million is for education let's make sure it all adds up for every student's benefit thank you thank you next we have kyle hi my name is kyle zelazny i'm a registered independent and local attorney and i'd like to make some comments on the sel curriculum this isn't a political issue this isn't supporting tolerance or diversity this is simply the incorporation of gender and sexuality theory into the education of kids who are incredibly underdeveloped physically and mentally and when parents and concerned community members oppose this we're labeled bigots and transphobes even though most if not
012all of us support the right of a mentally and physically developed individual to follow their preferred sexual orientation or gender you claim to be doing this in the name of tolerance and diversity west hartford already has and embraces an incredibly accepting diverse and tolerant culture from my perspective it is the administration before me that is closed-minded singularly focused on tolerance to such a degree that you cannot see the harm and inappropriateness of the curriculum for young kids no kindergartner is lesbian gay bisexual transgender or queer no kindergartner is heterosexual they do not have the required hormonal or brain development or sexual inclination they do not care if somebody has too gay or lesbian or heterosexual parents they just want to hang out with friends play games in sports and learn art and music they do
013not want and their parents do not want schools to engage in an existential discussion with elementary school kids about sexuality gender identity and sexual orientation parents want their young kids to learn how to read write and do math to be kind respectful and treat others how they want to be treated any kid truly suffering from gender dysphoria should be given the greatest level of care this care and support can be provided by the school and community when the kid reaches an appropriate age kindergarten and elementary school kids are not at the appropriate age allow kids to develop and make that choice on their own for themselves without being influenced by teachings on sexuality gender identity and sexual orientation at an inappropriate age if you truly wanted to be transparent and if you truly had the
014best interests of the children in mind you would have sent a letter to every parent in the district giving them a fair opportunity and notice to discuss the highly controversial notion of teaching their five-year-olds gender and sexual theory these types of conversations should occur in the home with the family unit with their parents or guardians not the classroom you like to say don't mess with trans kids but it seems to me you're messing with everyone's kids in conclusion i believe that the administration i believe that the administration before me are wrongly inserting inappropriate teachings of sexuality gender identity and sexual orientation in the academic curriculums of kids as young as five years old without the consent of the people who care and love their child the most their parents thank you [Applause] thank you next
015we have ellen my name is ellen nichols i live on quaker lane and i'm a retired sixth grade teacher at the march 15th meeting dr harris proposed a public forum on the new elementary gender identity curriculum the board with mr moore's support voted it down five to two let's go back and look at that mr moore said similar forms around the country quote bring out parents who just want to tell you you are wrong so apparently a forum would raise too many complaints dr steinberg said she didn't think the administ admin team should be put up to the firing squad yet you approved and introduced the gender identity curriculum who better to defend it such a form could be modeled after the december human rights commission meeting where dr chang and dr farkinson explained the
016curriculum and took questions for the better part of two hours but a form would indeed raise concerns and here are a few first this is not two plus two equals four the ideas in the new curriculum are not universally held they are contrary to many people's personal views religion value system and in some cases science next parents have the right to impart values to their children not the government storybooks that teach five six and seven-year-old children that they can change from a boy to a girl or that their sex is assigned or perhaps misassigned at birth is contended material parents want to be the ones to decide if and when to have these sensitive conversations remember parents cannot opt their child out of lessons at school finally the lessons are controversial it is not mainstream
017curriculum here or around the country there is no connecticut state standard or model lesson to date west hartford developed their own lessons neither vetted nor tested and there are no long-term research is no long-term research that shows the effect of presenting these confusing ideas to elementary children now to miss nazarella's comment that quote these books are about teaching tolerance i don't see the other side there is another side that is that people can be accepting and open and still not want opposing values taught to their kids there are thousands of books that a classroom teacher can use to teach kindness compassion and mutual respect books that don't also challenge the innocence of a five-year-old at the same time i can also say with one hundred percent confidence that a teacher does not need a book
018to make any child feel welcome that is the very nature of the job fortunately we live in a country where where an individual is free to be who they want to be and live the life they choose but that freedom does not extend to writing curriculum the gender lessons should be removed from the elementary school until they are ratified by parents thank you [Applause] thank you next we have scott sweg [Music] everybody can see that okay uh scott zweig 19 clay bar drive good evening members of the board and residents of west hartford on march 15th the tribal council of the scattercoke tribal nation approved a resolution consenting to the respectful use of names images and symbols that recognize the history and culture of native americans this resolution is important for several reasons first it
019was adopted by one of the five state recognized tribes in connecticut and therefore has unquestionable credibility second west hartford now has the written consent required by public act 21-2 to retain the names warrior and chieftain and obtain the funding from the mashintucket pequot and mohegan fund and finally and most important the board of education now can hear directly from one of the connecticut's native american tribes who publicly supports the continued use of warrior in chieftain i had the opportunity to speak with chief richard velke of the scattacoke tribal nation on friday he said that he received numerous requests for tribal consent for the use of native american names and images in connecticut schools according to chief felkey the tribal council adopted a broad resolution so that all schools across connecticut could continue to use names
020like warriors chieftains and red raiders for example the town of derby worked directly with the scatico tribal members to ensure that the names and images like red raiders would be respectful consider respectful by the tribe chief elky has also expressed interest in coming to west hartford and working with us to accomplish the same goal regarding our use of warrior and chieftain the most powerful thing that chief felke said to me during the conversation was that the current eradication of native american names and images from our schools and teams is another genocide of the native american people genocide that is the word he chose to describe the elimination of native american names images in west hartford and across the country genocide chief elky fears that if all native american names images and symbols are erased from
021our society that the native americans along with their rich history and years of sacrifice will be forgotten chief elky confirmed what many supporters have been saying for years that many native americans feel that these names serve to honor and respect the long-standing cultural traditions and contributions of native americans in this country if native american tribal members in connecticut tell us that they are honored by these names and wish to continue using them then who are we to challenge them i urge the board of education to invite chief felkey to the april 19th board of education meeting to discuss west hartford's use of warrior in chieftain and the scatical tribal nation's position on the matter it is time to revisit this issue the board of education wanted input from connecticut's native american tribes well now they
022have it the scatter coat tribal nation supports our continued use of warrior in chieftain it's time to listen to what they have to say i also want to announce a petition that we have to support and save the warrior in chief in names if you're interested in supporting it please contact us at hall connor united gmail.com hall connor united gmail.com thank you [Applause] thank you next we have lisa hi my name is lisa king i live at 9 danforth when i'm here locally i grew up in west hartford and i went to the school system here and i have many friends and families here now currently i'm living in santa monica california so i'm here to speak on the sel curriculum because we implemented that curriculum probably at least six years ago and i mean
023i'm a registered democrat i've always voted democrat i voted for that well i didn't vote but i was aware of it but we didn't really let parents know i'm a clinical psychologist in santa monica and i just want you to be aware that this isn't really working out as we intended and i've heard other people talk about yes of course we want to instill kindness and respect and and that is the goal but i'm not sure that the goal is being met through the curriculum that we started so i just wanted to implore you to really look at what you're trying to do and how you're doing it and what might be the negatives of of the approach maybe talk to other places that have been doing this for much longer and other cities other
024states and see what the downfall is and maybe you could improve on the curriculum or the prototype one thing i've looked at i've watched a couple of the other board meetings and the one with the human rights commission on zoom and one thing i noticed is when we're talking about this is that there was a population of people that is never mentioned and that population is the neurodiverse kids and those kids are really suffering from this program and that's what we're seeing in santa monica so neurodiverse kids i'm talking about kids with adhd kids with autism kids with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder they struggle socially and they struggle to be seen in school and they are the most bullied kids and left out and abandoned and isolated kids on this planet and they get a
025hold of this and they're all deciding okay that's what's wrong with me i am in the wrong body i am trans and then they get a lot of attention and they're suddenly seen and they love it but these kids who already are struggling in the world to get along and their parents who have been struggling to help them all this time now have an extra problem that they don't know what to do with that no one told them about and no one you know helped them see how to work with their kid with this so i just want you to consider that and think about it and and talk to other cities and states and find out where you can improve on this and make sure that you're meeting your intended goal thank you [Applause]
026thank you next we have john moss good evening my name is john moss i live at 46 hilldale i'm the parent of two students in the district one in elementary school and one in middle school i am here this evening to speak in strong support of the district's work to update their social emotional instruction to include topics that help students to learn to treat everyone around them with dignity respect and acceptance and that's really what this is about teaching kids to respect and be kind to those around them learning about the identities of people in our community helps us to understand the world in which we live this benefits all students it makes more well-rounded students who are prepared to be members of a broad and diverse community our students will encounter peers who have
027different gender identities than others it's not an issue of if it's an issue of when and in many cases it's happening at an early age so shouldn't we be teaching our students in a purposeful consistent manner rather than on an ad hoc basis that logic seems to be accepted for all other areas of our curriculum so shouldn't it be here when a child doesn't see themselves reflected in what they see and experience in school their connection to the school becomes more brittle it sends the message that their identity doesn't have the same value in our community as other people who see themselves or people like them reflected in instructional content it doesn't take condemnation to make someone feel unvalued it happens when someone is told either by explicit messages or implied beliefs that their identity
028should be kept concealed quiet and out of the way some have suggested that the discussion of some of these edi topics such as race or gender identity and other matters might make some children feel uncomfortable we must remember that learning and growing is not always a comfortable process and feeling somewhat uncomfortable is not necessarily indicative that the content is inappropriate if that were the case nobody would study the holocaust or other characteristically unpleasant topics some of our most important lessons in life whether in the classroom or outside of the school are anything but comfortable and it's worth remembering that learning to be able to cope through an uncomfortable moment is itself a key life skill while learning about some of these edi topics may be challenging at times it pales in comparison to the trauma
029that a child feels when a classmate friend or loved one ends their life because they feel alone isolated and unvalued that will have a far greater impact on our community than a quick discussion about how some people prefer a particular pronoun or see themselves differently than we might think unless someone feel that i'm being over dramatic let's be clear this isn't rhetoric it's reality tragedies continue to happen constantly across the country because some children see themselves as broken something to be ashamed of or someone not deserving of respect and love if we can take steps to stop this shouldn't we everyone wins when we send the message that west hartford students are valued accepted and respected so let's continue to support our great schools our amazing educators and most of all our outstanding students thank
030you [Applause] thank you next we have jill mckelvey hi i'm jim mckelvie and i live at 30 mohegan drive my family and i love west hartford my wife and i moved here before we became parents one of the reasons we wanted to live here is it's a is it's award-winning schools and educators my wife and i are committed to partnering with our child's educators we value education and want the best possible outcome for our child which is why we bought our home here in west hartford of course reading language math science are critical to a growing mindset but so is social emotional learning why because it focuses on truth respect honor these are all values we value and instill in our child and purposefully seek out areas of overlap in our in our child's life
031like school church sports friends and community sel teaches the essence of life which is relationships knowing how to empathize with others with other people's experiences or truth actively listening to others interacting with others respectfully and honoring others differences being acknowledged and affirmed is life-changing and life-saving differences matter thank you [Applause] thank you next we have marcia mccracken mccracker pardon if i mispronounced your last name hi i'm marcia mccracken i'm at 50 fairly road i want to speak on related to the social emotional learning i believe that all curriculum regarding gender identity for k through 5 should be removed it is none of our business what a child thinks or feels about their gender i feel that it is a violation of their personal privacy to force them to participate in these topics it also takes
032away some of the carefree innocence of childhood if it is important to parents that their children be exposed to this material they can introduce it themselves disney and other children's media are already integrating this topic public education doesn't need to cover this when there are other means of exposure at the discretion of parents adding curriculum for gender identity also causes division in our west hartford community we have residents who are for this and those who are against it education has been around for thousands of years without this curriculum we do not need to add it now i watched the board of ed meeting for march 15 2022 on this matter i was disheartened to see the democratic board of ed members vote no to having a forum with parents going forward i would like to
033see the curriculum for west harvard be transparent and created with the participation of west hartford citizens thank you [Applause] thank you and before calling the next speaker just to know in terms of our subject matter on social emotional learning again we have a cap of 21 minutes per subject matter if the next speaker is speaking on seo that will be the last comment on that subject matter but again we do have public comments at the end of the meeting as well next we have kathy davis hi my name is kathy davis and i'm a mom and an educator here in west hartford public schools i came here 17 years ago because west hartford had one of the best non-discrimination policies in connecticut i was raised in southwestern virginia at a time where being queer was
034a death sentence and i lost many friends because of the stigma of being who we were i became a teacher in a time when i could be fired for who i love and my kids could have been taken away just for who i was well when i looked for a place i came here because of that one line in a non-discrimination policy and i'm so glad that i did as margaret chase smith the first female senator and u.s representative said the right way is not always the easy way standing for right is unpopular and is a true test of character well we have always stood for all the members of our diverse west hartford community it has been hard and continues to be hard and i thank you for standing by our social justice curriculum
035in these hard times it is so appreciated you don't hear what a great job you're doing because the people who are happy with you don't show up to these meetings because we trust you and what you're doing and so you don't get to hear from us as often and for that i'm sorry and i wish we were doing better um the social justice curriculum just teaches people to treat each other with respect and to talk about our differences with love so that we can understand each other it gives kids a language to discuss the things they notice are different and to be able to communicate with each other and understand each other that's all it does it gives you the tools to talk to paraphrase sally ride the first american woman and the first american
036lesbian in space young people need to see role models in whatever careers they choose just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday you can't be what you can't see and i never knew a place like west hartford existed when i grew up well thank you for helping our children be seen and to see themselves fulfilling their dreams all of them and one last little comment being the mother of a neurodiverse child they are perfectly capable of understanding how other people are different than them and want other people to understand how they're different from them and it's very there's nothing in our curriculum that i don't find appropriate for my child thank you the next several names listed here identify their topic on scl so again we invite for you to speak a public
037comment at the end of the meeting that would be for larry phil ted graham and vicki again we welcome your comments at the end of the meeting but here we have kristin who i believe is speaking on you'll share your topic so kristen hi my name is kristen burns i live at 24 riggs avenue i'm here to talk about the ancient greek at connor high school which is being discontinued um starting next year so my son is a junior at connard and he currently is in honors ancient greek three and out of the blue greek was cancelled and i understand that was because mr coleman is retiring excuse me um and i talked to mr heinz and he advised that there was no plans in place to allow the children that are currently in the
038pipeline to continue that course of study which makes it really difficult for those students um especially the students in their first or second year i'm sorry um who need a foreign language in order to apply for colleges and i spoke to the superintendent's office and i would just ask this board to ask connor to look into ways to help those students complete that curriculum i can understand not offering it to incoming freshmen but to allow the students that are in greeks one two and three to finish out that four-year course of study thank you all for public comments again we do have that at the end of the meeting moving on with the agenda to unfinished business we now will have the adoption of the 2022-2023 board of education meeting and the recommendation will be
039that the board of education review the superintendent's proposed budget in the amount of 181 million three hundred and twenty eight thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollar thousand dollars make revisions as necessary and adopt the 2022-2023 board of education budget so now we will have oh pardon me thank you so much yes before we get into that hefty topic of the meetings we did revise the agenda thank you so very much out of respect for our young people we certainly want for them to attend to their studies this evening so we're going to have our updates from our student representatives starting with avery pardon good evening um can you hear me okay so to start with that haul the spring show madea has begun rehearsals madea is an ancient greek tale of revenge and women's
040empowerment based on the greek myth of the sorceress medea and jason hall deca is holding a financial literacy scavenger hunt for april financial literacy awareness month um 10 winners will be chosen to receive a 50 credit to the school merchandise store uh tickets to junior prom are now for sale and the junior prom will be held on may 7th um it with national honor society um the class of 2023 will be inducted on april 20th and there's also going to be a blood drive on april 27th and the new mascot name has been narrowed down with the options moving into the final rounds um we haven't received last it was the quarterfinals and there are about eight options i believe now there will be three options released to students in the coming week or so
041and i'm sure that the name we choose as a community will reflect our school spirit thank you avery andrew um connor is currently having a number of drives for actually very disparate things deca has partnered with the environmental club and the connor earth day project to create an egg carton drive throughout the school also one student took it upon herself to organize a connored connor drive of collecting backpacks filled with toys band-aids books honestly anything that could be useful in school to send to ukraine and also the connor current is having a book drive uh for the ywca and their uh that's running until april break with the other two running a little after through through april um connor also participated in an equity summit along with hall and farmington last week to plan for
042an upcoming larger statewide summit with with more schools and at that one different ideas were discussed for what could then be discussed on the statewide level so out of that ideas like code switching and how men of color can help women of color cultural assimilation those were the predominant ones and then also spring sports have started they started two weeks ago and now they're going getting into full swing boys volleyball boys tennis um boys baseball all won this week and um a number of sports teams are having their first matches this week girls tennis plays for their first match tomorrow if it doesn't rain um also looking ahead chris herron is coming back to connor i think some people will remember him he came about five years ago and uh he spoke to the whole
043school at that point for those people who don't know chris herron he was a professional basketball player who um who now gives us speed speeches on mental health and substance abuse and i know connor has a very robust heron project club he now has a club that works with high school students so i think everyone's i'm very excited i think everyone else is very excited to hear him because none of us would have been there for when he came five years ago and that's on april 26th thank you andrew thank you avery right and now we will proceed in the agenda to unfinished business the adoption of the 2022-2023 board of education budget we'll have miss hewitt dr murrow and the whole team to come before us and so if i'm as things are getting
044prepped up just want to share again and certainly speaking to our colleagues here which we are well aware of this is one of those items that we the honor has bestowed upon us in our role as board of education members we know that there are primarily three pieces that we are responsible for as board members one of them is in terms of our superintendent the other certainly is issuing policy and the other is the budget so tonight's piece certainly is one that is significant and look forward to discussion ultimately to get into a place of voting on the budget and so with that we know what was initially proposed but i'm going to pass it to msuit to continue on further please thank you very much um so as you know the superintendent's proposed budget
045was the amount that you had mentioned when reading our resolution for this evening what we have for you tonight is a spreadsheet where we will keep track of any adjustments that you propose and as you vote on them and they are either adopted or not adopted our number will change so that you can see what the running total is for the budget that you will adopt this evening so what you can see here as we start we start with our adopted budget for we have the proposed budget that superintendent proposed and the uh increase as well as a percentage increase of 2.8 percent any amendments that you make will show here we'll keep our running total and our running percentage increase for you so i turn it over to you to propose any adjustments you
046have or to answer any questions that you might have about the process certainly thank you so much i want to see in terms of certainly teammates want to hear your suggestions your thoughts but also in terms of um recent information learned um in terms of modifications and how that may apply here team referring to the pension um and let's may pass it to you or of course so we recently received our actuarial valuation report for the town pension plan uh the measurement date was july 1st 2021 and it is calculating the required contribution for the upcoming fiscal year based upon that analysis uh we are able to reduce the budget for the upcoming year by 177 000 uh based on the results from the actuary thank you question on that yes 177 from the 181
047through 228 correct okay and so as we begin going through just want for you all to think recognizing that there will be or there is an intent for there to be 177 000 less than for us to proactively think of how we can think of that in terms of the ultimate budget that we come from uh we come to in other words proactively looking to see where we can account for that 170 170 less than in terms of our decision making but opening it up please to questions comments ethan yes so i want to follow up on a point that was made during the recent town comments in the budget there is four years agree is that been pulled because i do think we owe a commitment to the families that i feel bad for
048a kid in his junior year all of a sudden being told so i don't know what you're pointing a point of parliamentary inquiry sorry through the chair uh do we need a motion on the floor first before we begin discussing the budget and in depth well where we are now is is discussion if there a motion for proposal to add or to take something i'm sorry no emotion about the budget in general um a motion to review and make revisions as necessary and adopt it and then we would make amendments to that motion i don't believe so only because this is continuing from previous discussions the initial motion was made initially and having the workshops and so right now where we are is ultima when it comes to voting on the budget emotion at that
049point in time and certainly intermittent suggestions to add or subtract will vote on those motions unless there is a difference of thought thank you i apologize it was meant to be a question so i guess my question is what happened to the ancient greek because it seemed pretty compelling when you guys were doing the budget workshop it's not a budgetary item it's a question of having a person there to teach we didn't we're not not offering greek because of budget we're not offering because we don't have somebody to teach it so i guess my question is if that person wasn't there that's a savings however i would hate to think we're it's not a savings because the kids that would have taken that will take another course okay i guess my i don't know if
050this is the right place or time but i would it's not we don't respond to public comment that's that's been no i know that's what i'm saying for those kids we take we take care of the kids we meet with them the school counselors meet with them this is you i and this has come up with we don't even know about a full retirement yet we don't have papers and yet so it could shift at this point so we're saying this based on projections but people aren't obligated to retire until later in the year we've got to make but we haven't even made the decisions yet because until the budget has passed we don't allocate students to class we don't build our schedule until that point so right now there's nobody that's not in any
051class and there's nobody that is in any class that happens later questions uh thoughts pieces in regard to the budget items you want to look to add take away what your thoughts are deb sure i was trying to respect my fellow board members and give somebody else a chance first um it's ironic that today is national librarian day and i'm making this proposal and i love librarians i do but we have a vacant position at the high school and i would propose that we eliminate that vacant position um and liz can you tell us what that would what savings that would give us certainly um when we look at salary and benefits uh the reduction would be 120 with that motion is there a second high second discussion all those in favor of eliminating the
052vacant library specialist position say aye any oppose any abstentions the eyes have it thank you other items yes so i know we just created a savings but i would like to propose after our few budget workshops and also during the last meeting here um given the need of our special ed population i would like to propose that we add an additional supervisor in special ed is there a second for that motion seconded jay jason discussion so ethan my question is how would that fit into the current structure i mean you're adding a position it's gonna have different report i mean it's just i'm not sure how it fits in i'm sorry can you just clarify ethan when you say fit into this structure so you're adding a different another supervisor and i'm trying to go
053back to the notes the question i asked before that came back is you currently have six correct so this would be number seven correct so would that be you have x amount of people reporting to each or yes so our department supervisors are currently separated across all of our 16 buildings including an additional building that's housed on asd campus cogswell to support our strive and post-secondary transition program one of the reasons that we have the need for the increased supervision is due to the increase in needs with our student population if you think back to one of our last board reports where we showed the increase in students that we have topping out at 1 500 students our department supervisors are responsible for the individualized education plans across the district and so currently those six
054individuals are responsible for all 1500 individualized education plans so this seventh person would support that caseload they would also be managing the supervision of our our clinicians our special education teachers our related service providers like ots pt's teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing and any other related service providers who provide services under the individualized education plan so just so i understand because reading through it it seemed like like the out of the there's like a hundred students that are are they part of those that is correct yes and one of one of the needs as we separated the case loads one of our department supervisors currently overseas are out of district student placements which is a 108 right now in our private schools and magnets so students who attend a parochial school here
055in physically within west hartford public schools were responsible for the ida provisions and that means that they have private school service plans so if they live physically live in berlin but they attend a parochial school here in west hartford west hartford public schools is actually responsible for the provision of idea as it relates to private and parochial schools so it's our case managers and department supervisors that actually oversee that process so that one individual right now is overseeing approximately 300 individualized education plans thanks other discussions yes gail thanks um firstly i wanted to really commend all of you and and uh as our superintendent for putting together this but budget which is just you know just a work of art it's just amazing how much time and effort go into it and i i really
056appreciate all the detail um my question on going into what ari proposed is why if we've put together a budget and i i know there's been a lot of work um it would seem to me that what's in the budget is what the district would need and i'm not clear why we would be adding in other things if you didn't ask for that initially and i don't know who can answer that but i i think you know i hope you understand what i'm saying it seems to me that you put a lot of work into this and and you ask for what you need so why now would we be coming and adding things in thank you that's a good question but i think it's important to note and i i think melissa explained and
057tom certainly explained when we were at the budget workshop that she did ask for this and this was something that was considered and we operate and set a budget also in in consideration of what um of what can and should be appropriate uh as far as moving forward with our our tax base and understanding the the resources we have available so there's always things that we cut from it and that was uh something that was cut and there's a huge need for that as you've seen the mental health needs of our our students are increasing on a daily basis and we're we're stretched thin with that and will continue to be especially operating uh within the ieps next year yes gail and then claire um thank you i you know we did get these extra
058esser funds and i would have assumed that you know a large percentage of the money that we did get for sr funds would have gone towards some of the mental health needs of of our students um so it would seem to me that that would be playing into some of these extra costs that we might need that weren't able to be put into the budget but could be possibly funded through the us or funds one of the limitations to the esser funds is their their short-term duration funds so it wouldn't be a permanent funding um and there's a step down so some of those funds start stepping down as soon as the end of next year so for that reason esser funds are not a reliable source for us to to access these types of
059positions and the other piece is that an 092 which is the administrative degree in special education isn't that common necessarily for people to move into the position so the applicant pool if it's going to be an interim for two years and then they'd be out of a job that would limit the ability for people to apply for the position in the assert funds but because it is something we looked at with using the answer funds for this too as we have in other areas i also just wanted to comment that i feel like a lot of our esser funds were used for mental health issues and they're not going away and they're actually increasing so i don't think that this is irrelevant to the fact that we already have put a lot of our funds
060towards mental health and yet we're still struggling so that was my my contribution to the discussion because i think this is um a valued position and a well and it's a necessary position if we're going to continue to provide um the high end so uh special ed services that we offer and that people move to this town for claire and then jason um so i think this um the increase in special ed identification the new eip system the potential of out placement the amount that the people currently the directors are managing is quite substantial and in some ways better coordination less of an over workload there's a lot of things that could in the end save the district money if you mismanage and overload this critical of identification the paperwork all the legal requirements within
061this group and with it growing at the rate it is nationwide we're seeing an incredible growth in special ed and when the esser funds lead leave it's even more important that we have a well organized system so i support this position jason jason and then avery um claire said everything i was gonna say avery and my story is quite the same um but i did want to just for context on this nestorella's comment do you have any way that you can help us understand how adding another people services department supervisor will help balance out that workload and what that'll look like for students that's a really good question thank you for asking it so as we look at our department supervisors roles they're they're working to do two things one they're they're looking at managing
062the compliance for federal and state obligations and laws and secondarily and most importantly working to ensure that students programming is appropriate and in order to do so they need to have the time to be able to meet with teams to observe students in their classrooms to be able to see the students in their active learning environment to be able to coach teachers and professionals and to provide oversight and so this would allow me to to reallocate their roles so that they can be doing that important work of physically being in the classrooms and in the schools to see student programming thank you so much you're welcome other questions regarding the emotion that's on the floor comments all right we'll move to vote all that are in favor of adding a pupil services department supervisor say
063i i any opposed no any abstentions the eyes have it all right i did want to mention even though the first adjustment is administrative in nature you do actually need to adopt that in order to um to amend the amount and to get that reduction okay all right that's correct yes yeah all right so with that then is there a motion to support reduction to the town pension contribution so moved a second second any discussion all those in favor say aye hi hi any opposed all right the eyes have it other pieces to add or take away from the budget all right so liz oh yes jason sorry this um so i'd like to make a proposal to change the allocation of federal funds it's not a reduction it's a budget neutral shift um is
064this a appropriate time to do that if you can share yes and then make a motion it will have to second and okay okay great so um i i do have some visuals to share with you so so just bear with me while i walk through this idea okay um so our federal funding is designed to support education classroom education in response to the challenges presented by the pandemic so when we made our initial allocations of these federal funds we suspected what might be the needs of the district for this year and the year ahead so we know a lot more now about the needs of our students we know more now than we did then so i'd like to make a proposal to reallocate funds in the light in light of the needs of
065our students as well as our teachers so during our meeting on october 19 2021 the district made a presentation on the state assessment results for grades three through eight with some sobering realities for high needs students the from the year prior to the pandemic 2018 55 percent were below grade level achievement for high needs students in 2021 the 2021 year those students who were mostly remote or fully remote were below grade level achievement that's just for for ela in math we have prior to the pandemic of high needs students were below grade level achievement in 20 and the 2021 year those who were fully or mostly remote 89 percent were below grade level there's a widening gap between high needs and those without high needs so our students need more attention from caring well-trained adults
066in these immediate years now to keep our obligation to provide the best education to every student so there's also the issue that you know families who chose fully or mostly remote for safety reasons are faced with some challenges for their students and shouldn't be penalized for making decisions based on health so adding instructional support at this time is crucial to enable a deliberate recovery and also to surpass the prior levels of achievement while high needs students in west hartford public schools do better than the state average we should not be satisfied with a more than 30 percent gap in outcomes prior to the pandemic so adding instructional staff and support staff is important at this point to relieve the day-to-day burdens on current teaching staff spreading the work among other teammates meets the children's needs
067and wards against the conditions of fatigue and burnout so we also need to make sure we're adequately staffed and responding to mental health needs and this position the people services department supervisor is an important addition to that but there are contin there continues to be high intensity stress and trauma endured over the last two years so when we meet these needs of students were able to support learning for these challenged peers so this is just a beginning proposal right i expect there to be dialogue and i would really love to hear your thoughts uh the executive team's thoughts on how best to reallocate some of this money and i'm talking about the student activity fees funds now let me say before i say anything else about this that i don't think parents should be paying
068student activity fees i was trying to think of a really good analogy for it and i can't the closest one i can come up with is like asking soldiers to pay for the military but that doesn't really fit um so in addition to there's three parts that i'm saying i want to reallocate funds i want to have a step down in funding for student activity fees and i want to initiate annual increases of a hundred thousand dollars every year until we have student activity fees covered in the regular budget so the esser funds at this point give us this capacity to do classroom work and to care for our students in the schools but we also have this opportunity to move through this what we've what we've provided for it's student activity fees right and
069it's good for us to have a plan for reducing that cost to families in the long term so let's see so i have i have tables to share um here why don't you pass those down um part of my thinking around the student activity fees is that in the 1920 year 2868 students participated in student activities in 2021 year students participated i'm sorry this is high school sports it's high school sports um the 1920 year was 2 30 2019 2020 school year 2868. this is high school sports 2868. in the 2020 2021 year students okay and then it was estimated for this year 2021 2022 2500 students participated right so the thinking behind providing for student activity fees is that through the esser funds was that this was to reduce the barrier of entry for
070students so everyone can benefit from this and and indeed we've seen this you know with you know record uh you know uh participation from our sports teams um incredible you know theater uh productions musical performances art shows activities produce incredible value for our community incredible value and and we shouldn't be asking families to bear that burden it's difficult as we can see to add a hundred thousand dollars into into the budget but if we valued it enough to think that it was necessary to recover from a pandemic i think it's necessary to do that on a permanent basis that's why i've added to my proposal for using esser funds not just to reinstate activity fees for families but to include a a mechanism for us to add incrementally those fee costs right so perhaps i've
071said too much but love to this is a first draft that i want to pass by you guys hear your thoughts questions happy to respond thank you so thank you so if you may if you may give a motion but a shortened motion and then we'll get a second and then we'll to have the discussion at that point i make a motion to reallocate the student activities fees um do i have to give the years uh you can you can can we clarify yes please so we're not able to commit funds or appropriations for future years so with the plan to phase in 100 000 per year for the four years after 2023 we can agree to that in principle but we cannot actually commit those funds at this point in time so what we
072would want to do is make the motion for anything that will affect either the general fund for the upcoming year or in general if you wanted to set rates or propose reallocating esser funds in if i'm understanding you correctly so the esser funds are just a lump sum that we've planned out and expressed in our plan how they would be spread out over a three year period in effect what you allocated last year by board vote was 1.8 million am i right now 1.2 what's the number for pay to play it was 1.2 million we had assumed over three years it would be approximately 400 000 per year as you have detailed in your current column so 1.2 million of our esser proposal has gone in under repais replacing pay for play we don't necessarily
073say by years that's our plan so we can step down and know how things are going through so really what you'll be doing is looking to allocate we've already spent four hundred thousand so basically eight hundred thousand or some variation of it you'd be looking to reallocate if i'm understanding correctly yes that right yes that's correct so how does that happen through the motion what what what is the mechanism so possibly to suggest to move to reallocate 800 000 of the student activity fees but i think if i'm reading your proposal correctly you're you're kind of doing a step down in the pay-to-play fee so prior to us um covering this under the sr funds the fee was 175 per sport with a cap of 700 per year so if you wanted to you know
074step that down over the course of two years for example maybe we would charge families one hundred dollars per sport next year and we would cover cover the other half through esser and then if i'm reading this correctly then the third year we wouldn't use sr funds at all so we would go back up to the 175 dollars per sport with the proposed offset of a hundred thousand if adopted as part of the annual budget process yes do i have that correct that's right yes thank you so so from a motion standpoint i think that we need to do a couple of things i think we need you need to reallocate or propose reallocating six hundred thousand of sr funds and we need to um make a motion to adopt a certain rate for pay
075to play okay with a cap as well so if it's going to be you know half of it is 87.50 per sport but that's kind of an unusual amount so i would recommend something rounder so if we did 100 and then again we would have a cap per family i'm sorry this has no impact on our general fund budget no well it will on the athletic fund because we're replacing yes or money just with um revenue from parents but yeah you're right because it doesn't affect your output you're right it doesn't affect the general but it's like you're creating a slush fund did you know well you don't know what the 600 thousand no it's the same as we've always had for pay for play so it's an athletic fee account that always goes towards
076uniforms officiating and everything so it's not a slush fighter we've had talking about the money that you've moved the 600 000 i think jason has some plans for that yeah that's right so the plan is in the motion for the six hundred thousand okay so i'd like to raise a motion to reallocate 600 000 for the purposes of hiring paras or counselors tutors one in math one in english or reading sorry and one trauma interventionist now i estimated these salaries based on what i could find in the budget these may be off um and these would with that 600 would be able to fund those positions over two years right so that's where the reallocation is if i could just clarify if i could ask the team about the allocation and if they'd want it
077split over two years if you'd want to taper just as hopefully the needs become less acute over the next two years and that perhaps you're using more of it next year and so it's not positions that you necessarily spread out over two years but maybe you do more of a triage model next year i know paul melissa if you have initial thoughts melissa or paul either one you know i we've had a lot of discussion you know i think we're really starting to see the impact of covid on our youth in this moment in time and there's an interplay between what you're kind of noting there with the test scores and the impact that it's having on the academic for a variety of reasons um it could be what students experience was over covid it
078could be the the social emotional impact impacting their ability to access the learning either way we see that there's two very strong needs be it in education and accessing the curriculum and then also with sel and i'll let paul speak more to the curriculum components but you know i certainly can justify very easily the need for an additional trauma interventionist at the secondary level we continue to see very acute needs as ari has pointed out even in the private sector but we still continue to see that in in the education all the way up but particularly with the middle school and high school students we're seeing a high rate of risk assist assessments um continued and even though we have used a great deal of our esser funds for additional clinical positions those clinicians are
079inundated daily with a high level of need and it's it's very challenging so certainly can justify that very easily however in the spirit of being proactive to say what else can we be doing for our students to keep that level of stress anxiety and overwhelm low i think we can really do more with our academic support and i'll let paul talk to maybe what that could look like certainly thanks listen thanks jason for the opportunity on this important topic [Music] i think we look at um you know the models that we have across elementary middle and high school and we've been having conversations about the variety of needs and to melissa's point there is definitely an overlap between behaviors with students kind of the re-engagement specifically for students that were in the remote setting perhaps
080for a year's time losing you know you're really losing the year of norms the year of maturity the year you know it so you're you know we hear this time and again at every single level a significant number of students are coming into the school setting and you know socially in terms of their social norms their emotion their ability to deal with stress they're a year behind like so i'm coming in i'm a fifth grader but i kind of act like a fourth grader coming in like a ninth grader but i'm kind of acting like a middle schooler and so on and so forth and even this late in the year surprisingly we we still hear that so and it has an impact on their academics so we're looking at a couple of things currently
081within the esser model we do have say within the area of mathematics we do have the coaches that at the secondary level and which was replicating a structure that we had at the elementary level those coaches helped dramatically in terms of the academics with uh with the engagement in the classroom with the professional learning for the teachers so they're helping our teachers to get better working with kids in terms of how do you make that lesson engaging exciting dynamic something that kids are active learners in versus passive learners the trouble i think that we're having more frequently is in the re-engagement just in the behavioral components so the trauma interventionist has been a model that exists at the middle school level as melissa just said something that we're looking to replicate more broadly just perhaps
082an additional person but but also perhaps at the elementary level uh something like a a school counselor something like that counseling model where we can be working with children uh to help re-engage them re-acclimate them have greater touch points have a more say consistent mentor so that if they're having episodes or if they're having struggles we can kind of give them a soft landing spot work on the skill that they're struggling with send them back into the academic setting we do have the tutor support we have plused up tutor supports through esser so we do have that academic need that's currently built in we have probably just with the hiring troubles that that you all remember we've been dealing with since the beginning of the year um not necessarily been able to fully realize uh
083the number of tutors that we we can afford under esser and that's one of the things as we get to our to our annual periods where we re-evaluate our expenditures and and look at our needs it is an area where we would continue to look at adding more tutor support to the school but i don't you know i think if i were um thinking at the elementary level i think we would we would potentially be looking and talking about a two-year change we might be looking more at counseloring type support um because we have the avenue for uh for the tutors um yeah so as i think of it jason not to not step on it because you can motion it however you want to since none of these votes are additions as that is
084to the specific budget these are shifts to our essa plan which will have to change and submit to the state so really you don't we don't have to go to this step yet in terms of what i think people have a general understanding about what we add the problem and the benefit of size is that we get a large amount necessary four hundred thousand dollars as a shift here we'll certainly use um trauma interventions things like that the problem is if you split it up because of our size amongst our elementary schools two pairs across 11 places doesn't if you're doing paris tutors and everything else i'd rather us have a chance to come together with more of a proposal to you for i mean we we have talked about this idea for years and
085we looked at it in the esser funding in terms of um next year really having a focus a on the trauma interventions because we may have some sr offsets we have to use differently anyway because as you said we proposed it and we're going to be making motions which every district should be making shifts to how they're using esser as they react to covet over time but something like this with 400 000 um and i'm doing at the top of my head you know you could have six seven school counselors at the elementary level um that maybe you then then you're splitting time two days a week three days a week depending on the size of the school which i know our elementary principals would all think that that would be a great thing for
086a kid when they are having a child and they are having an issue and either going to the principal's office or waiting or anything else to have somebody on the site another that's not the school psychologist because that might not be the appropriate intervention at that point but somebody else that can do the counseling component the second step component those things i i don't know if i'm like i i would just before you propose that we can talk about it more and maybe come back to the board table because we'll have to anyway with the amendment to esser and maybe put that before you if that money were reallocated with 600 because we'd be looking at 600 000 reallocated over that time because that would be a shift so i really think your motion is
087to reinstate pay for play however you would and reallocate six hundred thousand dollars into esser that had been removed for pay for play did i misspeak liz i don't wanna no i think that's exactly right and we don't need to be as specific tonight about how that reallocation will occur but we do need to um set a rate for pay to play if we decide to reinstitute a fee and paul melissande julio do you agree about how to propose that over time yeah you know at first i think any of these positions would be worthwhile but i think to tom's point which is a really good one is that with 11 elementary schools to really be able to have an impact in the way we'd want it to with with use of this funds if
088we're reallocating them it would behoove us to look at some different models and we can certainly kind of put our heads together and think through some different proposals to kind of bring forward for consideration but i do like the idea of using school counselors to supplement our clinical staff to serve as another intermediary to provide supports for students who might not have specialized programming that might just need an intimate intermediary and more proactive way of addressing maybe some of those needs that students might have that come up across the day claire pardon me you all said jason um i just wanted to add that um this you know that i really appreciate thinking through this on the fly with us and to you know hear the um the different ways that that we can use
089these sr funds in in this moment now where these uh where the impacts are so you know the younger the student the greater the impacts right now and um and the attention to the elementaries and the scope and scale of that um is you know greatly appreciated thank you claire yeah i just wanted to check your your high needs population that you saw the change in is that special ed or not necessarily specialized i think that this is um uh let's see high needs is defined as those students with individualized education plans okay english language learners socioeconomically as identified by participation free and reduced launch program so um what i i i feel that um it's very hard to keep up with the rti program especially with um all that the changes and all the
090struggling that the kids are doing so both behavior and academically i think it's um good to put a big effort in there before these kids become identified as special ed and so i know what it's like to try to manage and do those cycles of intervention and keep the data um it's outside of the special ed but there's a large pocket of our population that's not identified but that's struggling and the teachers are again trying to manage such a diverse ability level in any one classroom so i think it would be great to get some more of that support on an elementary level so just to thank you so much for this and just we still have a partial motion on the floor so just once you first get a clear motion on the floor
091in a second we've had discussion but formally have discussion um and then we can proceed my understanding of where we are is that the allocation is a secondary step that what we need to do at this point is to propose a fee a reduced fee um so i think that's the first step in this yeah okay so i make a motion to reinstate pay to play um at the rate of a hundred dollars is there a second hope parting is there a family maximum so it was 175 previously with a cap of 700 per family so that's i guess it was four four hundred yeah okay okay four splits well yeah the the motion is for and a cap of 400. okay so just to be clear to re the motion is to reinstate pay
092to play at a rate of per child with a cap of four hundred dollars per poor sports yeah per family for family per family no instead of per child per sport yes it's 100 per sport per family all right we'll state it again reinstate the pay to play at a rate of 100 per child per sport at a cap of 400 per family all right is there is that your move to that is is there a second second discussion claire if i could respond to your um just going back in time no child is ever we don't know if a child never came forward before that is an absolutely fair point but we try to make it clear we continue to tell people anybody that's on free and reduced lunch is automatically waived for many
093fees for sports and we also tell any child they don't have to tell somebody by face if they can put a note forward to the athletic director to their coach to the principal payment is not something we're going to keep a child out of a sport for um just so that's clear clear and and and back to my prediction about free and reduced lunch are we anticipating it being covered by the federal government next i mean the lunch is being covered because i believe that population will grow and they're going to grow because the stigma has been removed a lot of people didn't apply that might have benefited from applying and now they all enjoy the lunch and i think there's going to be an increase there yeah there may be the federal government right
094now still has not committed to next year in a bill that would have brought that forward it's been blocked right now so it would appear right right now that we'll go back to the old way of doing free introduce lunch next year and we'll we always try to get families to apply and make sure that any child that needs this across the district it's a it's a constant kind of advertising discussion theme with families starting at the elementary level going forward so but i yeah the numbers going up wouldn't surprise me and you you remove any hurdles that you anticipate we we try to do everything we can to make sure we try to reach out to families we try to make sure we try to publicize the issues we try to make sure the
095kids aren't stigmatized by it in lunch lines we try to make sure we do everything we can in a setting of a cafeteria with 400 kids at a lunch at the high school gail um jason so i just curious and i i understand the whole idea of we wouldn't deny anybody playing a sport but again some kids may not feel comfortable if they feel that you know oh i have to go ask my mother for a hundred dollars they may just shy away from playing um do you have any sense of out of these 2 500 kids or so that are playing sports how many of them may not play because of the fees associated um well i think um tom's you know comments indicate that there's every you know means of of accommodating any
096need um is made no one has been turned down and with a hundred percent of the fees covered fewer students have played sports so but that that could also be because there's yeah yeah students there's cover there's all kinds of other things sure um you know i appreciate your motion and i i am certainly somebody who would support you know more instructional types of things in the school um but i also think that you know the families are suffering now as well i don't think it's as much as we talk you know we're a board of ed we talk about what goes on in the schools um there's raging inflation uh gas prices are out of control the real estate in this town is is basically sky high and we've all seen letters come through
097to the board of ed if people were basically been forced to move out of the out of the town because of all of the costs so i also worry about the cost to our families and even though these these numbers aren't all that big it it may negate some kids being able to partake in these sports just because they don't want to you know have to ask their parents for money that isn't there yes yeah yeah thank you for that i mean i really deliberated over this and to really think through um how this will impact families and the way that we have it set up now is that there will be zero cost for the next two years and a full reinstatement in three all right so my plan is not just to turn
098the spigot off and make families pay more now my plan is to reduce the fees for the long term so that families don't ever have to pay for it again but i mean somebody does have to pay for it so if families don't pay for it somebody else is going to have to pay for it right that means the money has to come from somewhere so what i promise to do is every year i will make a motion to add a hundred thousand dollars to the budget until all fees are covered that's an incremental increase of a hundred thousand dollars such that it becomes a part of the recurring budget of the district so that would in four years earth i put in here is by the fees would be fully covered in the budget
099in the regular budget so i oh are you pregnant i have a couple things um i'm good to go so two things one is i think i have a problem taking away the activity for you i think it's important for kids i've learned not to be sarcastic here but what about other activities like travel you know parents could say that but that aside um we don't know where the money's going and i i appreciate your saying i'll you add to it every year but we always are going to have barriers so my counter suggestion to you looking at this is we're approximately a hundred so when we stay where we're at we're about 140 000 give or take ahead why don't you do that and maintain and then that way the 400 kids still aren't
100paying right but you put 140 000 assuming the town council doesn't cause us a curveball all right because i'm just very uncomfortable saying we're going to have a and it's my choice of words so i realized nobody else likes it like a it seems like a slush one that we're gonna figure out and i realize that's not what it is but i'd rather see something like that and keep the kids whole or the families hole because i do appreciate the town will cover them i'm the treasurer of the west hartford soccer league we cover kids but i don't think that many families or kids are going to come and say and it may be different for the soccer you know for the town leagues because there isn't the school lunch program definer but i just
101i would prefer if we could do something like that i'm willing to do that but otherwise i'm just voting against everything because it's to me i think this it's good to have kids play sports it's good not to have some kind of limitation it may only be 100 bucks but as gail said who knows what's happening with the economy and it's it's not getting better it's getting worse so just to clarify for us so sure it's okay no no it's valid points i was shooting on the fly no that's okay so so if i understand right what you're proposing would be to leave the pay to play the currently that it's being funded by the board through the esser fund so that there's no cost to parents and allocating the excess or what you've currently
102identified as the excess 141 to 41 000 to interventionists for next year is that what would whatever okay you i don't want to say here's where it should go sure no i don't want to make sure we were talking the same okay but that would be based on assuming the savings stay there it wouldn't no if i'm what you'd actually be doing is allocating funds to replace pay for play and that money that's freed up by you'd be allocating budget funds to go for pay to go for athletic fees right and then those athletic fees that are offset automatically would revert back tesser and we'd make the shift to our asset plan yeah just trying to keep that i understand the kids hold no i'm just trying to make it or the family's home claire
103so i'm just curious you you got permission um to use the esser funds to pay for sports fees and those were considered as their funds to help with the academic impact of the pandemic on the students it's the social emotional impact and the idea of sports music arts there's a section of the s or as the law was passed that you want students engaged you want them um taking part in ethical activities you want to re-engage them in the schools and so that was part that the board voted on we wrote it up as part of our essa plan and that was approved every year we'll be sending in amendments to the esser plan i'm not i'm not advocating or not advocating i'm just saying that's what's going to happen every year of esser because
104we had to make guesses that we'll be putting this much towards this factor but it turns out we need more than that um so we're taking from something else and we'll resubmit to the state which allocates the answer funds it's already allocated to us we'll we'll reiterate how we're right we keep talking about the esser clift and this esser cliff is you get a hundred percent you know you have to pay all the fees when the officer funds runs out or sr funds helping kids who have been hurt academically and maybe getting them to a better place so you've got a cliff no matter what you you're taking away your support and tutors and interventionists or you're taking and making the parents pay the fee but that cliff comes how do you just fall just
105so what this would do to jason would allow you to start the changing to the pay eliminating the activity fee but also still give you some money for whatever comes back which we don't know yet or unless you have that proposal so it's just trying to find a way to keep it the the activity fees whole so thank you so i i appreciate the the discussion and what i'm clearly hearing is that um we certainly recognize the benefit of the activity fees being compensated because our our students benefit from it it's promoting social emotional engagement learning that certainly is we all are in agreement with that and i i also am hearing and appreciate clarity reiterating that the reality is as things stand now inevitably in two years that provision will no longer be available
106to our family so that's that's a reality what i'm hearing with the proposal please correct me if i'm wrong it's also addressing the reality of the need at this time in addition to promoting our social emotional engagement with our students but the needs at this time in addressing the mental health social emotional challenges that our students are experiencing right now because of the pandemic and the proposed ways that additional supportive services can facilitate with that i think we're all in agreement that that is we've heard that many times many presentations that is an inevitable known that we know so it's a matter of how to respond to both and what i'm what i'm hearing and again correctly if i'm wrong is the proposal on the floor is one that involves concurrent planning um as opposed
107to just sequential it's concurrent in that recommending reinstating the pay-to-play at a rate of 100 per child per sport with a cap of 400 dollars per family with also there being discussions of how to utilize esser funding and how to reallocate that and so that's where the concurrent planning comes into place which according to the table you have here helps to pave away so that come two years from now where where things as they are there's there's no supports supporting activity fees but with the proposed plan things would be in place at that point in time to support a slow titration where ultimately there is plans by 2026 2027 where it is a part of the budget where activity fees are covered 100 percent for students is that and and so with with that um
108i'm hearing yeah this i'm hearing concurrency i'm hearing proactive thinking i'm hearing addressing needs and appreciate the discussions that supporting that and i see the value in what's been proposed again it's not a sole elimination of it's a reallocation of in support of trying to maximize the funding recognizing the immediate needs that our young people are experiencing at this time other other thoughts discussions yes deb i strongly oppose this proposal we last year had a robust discussion around this and the discussion then and i'll bring some of it back now and there there's even new research in the interim since then is that participating in physical activity participating in music participating in art is healthy for people it promotes learning it promotes engagement it promotes positive social emotional status and this is um i think
109it's wonderful that we are able to provide social workers counselors and a variety of other resources towards that type of support social emotional learning but i think we need to recognize that research shows that there are other ways that can also promote good mental health and exercise and physical activity are some of those ways that also promote good mental health we also are trying to make sure our kids feel welcome feel that encouraged to participate in our activities at the middle and high school level and this is a way that we can remove a barrier because as we said we know that no one has ever been turned away when they've asked for help we don't know how many families aren't even having the conversation where you know the kid comes home from school and
110says hey dad i'd really like to play soccer and dad says we don't have the money for it do something else go get a job or just study more after school so we don't know how many families that impacts and this is just one way that we can help ensure that there it there isn't that barrier um i also think it is important for us to recognize that this is a way that we can directly help families in west hartford this is money basically back in their pocket and yeah there's going to be a cliff and that means in two years families will have to pay 175 dollars per student per sport with a 750 cap or 700 cap unless we make a change but until then i don't see why we would ask them
111to continue to pay money when we have a plan with special federal funds that are designed in part to help students re-engage in the school setting to ensure that families do not have to pay those fees so i would strongly oppose this proposal and i would ask my colleagues to join me in that opposition fight yes uh uh ari and then gail yes um so i completely respect your your viewpoint deb um but i guess the way that i look at it and actually an area of interest and research for me um in my profession is actually the impact of physical exercise on the mental health of children and adolescents so i completely support that argument i guess when i look at this and i think i had expressed this when we went through this
112the first go around with the esser funds that there it it's and i think tom you even said like when you go from asking people to pay everything to pay nothing it's going to be really hard to get back into that that swing of things so i i actually like the idea of some level of titration for families to get used to participating the other thing that i think is a lot of our students participate in sports outside of school there are a lot of opportunities extracurricular town sports so that while yes we are supporting families by providing the cost for pay to play we were not at the same time if we reinstate um a reduced fee we're not negating um physical activity opportunities um kids kids can go and and take a walk
113around the neighborhood like it this doesn't limit the opportunities for physical activity and exercise but i do see in jason's proposal by continuing the path that we're on with the esser funds we we are basically negating the opportunities for kids with regard to potentially having a counselor to support them those are things that they can't get outside of school whereas physical activity and exercise and moving their bodies is something that they they can you know we're not negating the opportunities but again if we are negating opportunities for academic loss to to gain some academic standing to we are negating the ability to access additional mental health supports within the schools by continuing on the path that we're on so that's just my my viewpoint on this gail and then andrew yeah jason i just um
114could you just repeat the motion because a lot of different things have been said here and i just want to make clear that i understand what exactly you're proposing if you just say it like succinctly yeah the proposal is the the motion is to reinstate pay-to-play of a hundred dollars with a cap of 400. and then you said that that would not take place for two more years is that so it would happen immediately next year yeah yeah next year and the hundred thousand dollars a year in the budget that's not in your motion no no yeah because i this is just for the the fee rate okay yeah thank you andrew um i i just say listening to kind of the back and forth um i think that um ms steinberg you bring up
115a very good point that counselors really i mean one of the best ways and possibly one of the only ways many students can access them is in schools i just say from like my perspective as a student i know that for a lot of students sports in schools really aren't the same as sports outside of schools i know i participate in tennis and i know at least the tennis program at connard the way my coach runs it it's no cuts and it's he's been coaching at actually in west hartford for multiple decades and he has created a culture where he reminds us that he still gets phone calls from people who are now adults who say that um they've given up playing tennis because really the reason they played tennis wasn't to play tennis but
116it was to be part of that connored um connor's sports community um and i i just know from my personal experience that connor's sports are real and hall sports probably too are such a huge part of so many students lives not just uh for the physical activity or having something to do but really because so many people find that community that i think is so important and i think we keep going back to that idea of community and belonging um and and then i think again miss poland you bring a very good point of we don't know how many people um having any fee has precluded the conversation at home about so i would say i think that whether the fees a hundred dollars or 175 dollars that could already eclipse so many conversations of
117students who don't feel like it's accessible and i would just ask you to do anything and everything you can to make sure that those conversations do get to happen and if that's not having a fee for the next two years uh then i i think personally that's what should be done avery i really do appreciate um andrew's comment the one thing that i would like to add that i find particularly impressive about jason's proposal and that i think needs to be acknowledged is how it balances these two methods of improving social emotional health for students because jason's proposal like ari said allows students to access something that they would not otherwise be able to supplement with other activities while providing some support for families with if a further emotion was passed long term being able
118to um you gave those activity fees long term so that our reality hopefully in five six years is that we don't have activity fees and that those students who right now have these acute needs um can access guidance counselors i think um i i just i think that that's an optimal solution to balance these two needs um and i don't think no i just i think i think that that's something that really needs to be acknowledged here um thank you um for you a question actually for tom when we've had this conversation in the past um i've asked about whether we can just automatically allow students on free lunch to get a fee waiver and i believe i was told that we could not share information from nutrition services with any other department or division
119of our system and therefore we were not able to automatically provide a fee waiver yeah we can't automatically we can't share the list of students on free reduced lunch that it's basically only run by cafeteria services which is why there has so it's not like we can notify kids hey you don't have to pay um with that being said um listen this is this discussion i'm it's not a question of being caught in the middle i am 100 against pay for play always have been i don't think schools should charge for that as i've said in the past um but i also want all of those counselors that jason mentions also so no i do think in answering honestly i do think we're very good at identifying kids and not keeping kids out of the
120sport and that and i'm not i'm not arguing for a point i'm just saying as the school principal as a former coach that's something ethan you mentioned the soccer league and that's the one thing i guess that mitigates it in my mind i and i again i don't have a position on this one this is a very this is the this is the essence of a budget where you're going through and there's no good choice of an increase in the budget that would be my vote but i don't get one um and uh because a hundred dollars is cheaper than all the youth sports leagues charge i mean it's it's just comparatively when you look at what you get for the hundred dollars it's 12 weeks of a sports season with two full-time coaches at
121least maybe three full-time coaches referees officiating buses transportation so just in terms of it it's not exorbitant there are districts charging seven hundred dollars eight hundred dollars and pay for play that's the only thing i wanted to say in terms of that which i know nobody's advocating for thank you for that clarification so in follow-up i do think it's important for um for my colleagues to realize whereas we do offer in town a plethora of sports at the youth level by the time you get to high school if you are a girl who wants to play basketball if you are a kid who wants to swim if you are a girl who wants to play softball there are no opportunities during the school year for these activities outside of a premier high level multiple hour
122multiple day commitment per week um expensive sport but for all that is only good for people who are extremely good at that sport and um there are i will say i think there's a boys basketball league that goes up to high school there are a few sports that you can play at the high school level even if you're not like one of the best kids in town but particularly for girls those opportunities do drop off so if you don't make uh the basketball team you don't have an opportunity unless you're you know you can play jv usually but not even always right and so that's one of the reasons why i think providing sports at the high school level in a way that's accessible to students and to families and again you know i'll go
123back to what andrew said it's part of making our students feel part of the school community this is a small thing that we can do to help families right now we know how great the need is in town of course we've seen the property revolves and we expect that there are going to be some disproportionate tax increases depending on where you live in town and that is something that we're trying to take into account um and by keeping our commitment to not have pay to play for families this this upcoming year i think that's just a small way that we can help ensure that our kids get to participate and i am very willing to work in future years at trying to find a way to cover this with our regular general fund and that's
124what i would uh propose that we look for ways to do this in the future outside of the astrogram but for this year to leave it as is just to clarify and support one of your one of your statements you are correct especially about female sports in town and the other piece is that's why we have several no-cut sports per seasons that any child that can't i mean it's hard to make a basketball team in a 1500 person high school um so that during that season there's also indoor track there's other sports that a child can go to that's an athlete that we want to be engaged in something so just to clarify the point right so any other comments yes jason yeah um i just want to thank my colleagues on the board um
125tom for your comments and context um you know very much trying to balance multiple needs going on and i i personally completely agree with the difference that physical activity makes my watch tells me that i swam 54 laps this morning in preparation for today so it's that physical activity that is uh is you know is a part of my my wellness routine and i know that that that to be true for for children as well i just want to reiterate here the need for students with with high needs a majority of those students who were fully remote or mostly remote are not at grade level not at grade level we need to try as hard as we can to make sure that when they get to high school they can use those sport activities in
126the way same way that kids today can and i think this is a balanced approach that pulls kids up where they need it in school in the classroom you know provides some relief and a much lower cap while we work on the board to devise a permanent solution to eliminating activity fees for good so with that we'll call on oh ethan and then i don't question jason's intent or motivation but there's a big difference from having you know if we pull the cat if we pull the activity fees or we make the parents pay we're going to have the same problem next year of adding back so unless you do some kind of modification i i'm with that but i i just think that the sports is important i think if even if you force
127kids into you know families into they choose one sport not the other sport i i just think that's a bad situation to get in and you know i i'd hate to see this go away so all right so calling now on the vote again the motion on the floor is to reinstate pay to play at a rate of 100 per child per sport with a cap of four hundred dollars per family all of those in favor can we do a roll call though please certainly yes so charlotte if you may the roll call and will state our vote dr chang yay mr goldman no dr harris no miss nessarella yes ms pullen now dr steinberg yes dr thomas farquharson yes so the motion passes all right any other thoughts uh pieces regarding the budget looking
128at what so far has been moved and passed in terms of the budget we have some reductions here so the number we are looking at you can see right on the screen there other thoughts young people thank you so much i propose we add 200 000 to the budget to eliminate the newly reinstated pay-to-play fee is there a second second discussion deb if you can repeat once again your motion a proposal to add 200 000 to the budget or whatever the actual amount would be given that we didn't actually make it in half right so a proposal to cover the portion of paid play fees that we just eliminated from sr liz if i'm correct that'd be about 225 000 correct should be a little less if we went to a hundred dollars instead of
12987 right or 100 to a little more you need all right a little more yep okay discussion so in essence what i'm hearing you propose in terms of cover the expenses for pay to pay fees that were just eliminated yes other discussion so um would the plan be to continue the additions to permanently cover this in subsequent years well we only vote on one budget year at a time but that may fall i think the question though is looking again with the motion that passed before it was looking long-term trying to make interventions concurrently long-term as well so i think if the question is touching on that also we since we only voted on uh next year just now i'm proposing we only vote on next year for this proposal as well other discussion gail
130yes yes so i just want to clarify so the 200 000 would go towards making sure that families are not paying any of these fees correct other discussion yes all right i just have a question just to get a better understanding so we present our budget obviously to the town council they they cannot dictate kind of line by line correct um if if there is what is the decision process that happens next if they say you need to cut twenty five thousand dollars from your budget so if they all right so they adopt budget what april april 25th and so at that point we would come back at the may meeting as we have in the past and we'd be at this place again where we'd say we have 225 000 to cut we could
131either do it as this is what we would do or we could put it back to you this is what they would do and then you'd have to amend the budget um in that say because we have x amount of dollars and we demand it by eliminating something that's in the budget here and i don't know if it would be helpful we haven't adopted it yet but if we did we'd be increasing the budget by the amount there just so you have an idea of what we're talking about 83. 83 000 in total would be the net of those four adjustments line seven on the budget shows what that does the tally so it would be a 2.9 percent increase instead of a 2.8 but since you're playing with ester funds could we take an
132uh i know what motion make after this i'm good other discussion points with emotion on the floor jason um could i i'm um recommend a 100 000 increase instead of a 225 000 um no thank you okay other dis yes scale so i you know in general have trouble accepting a 2.8 percent increase in the budget in general and i understand it's a roll forward budget i understand there's all kinds of negotiated contracts that we don't have any control over but we are in a time where there's raging inflation housing costs are out of control gas prices are out of control there's a reassessment in town if we keep playing around with the funds one way or the other i mean somebody still has to pay for this i mean it looks great on a
133piece of paper but i mean we are putting a burden on the families one way or the other here and i think we have to be mindful of that these are very difficult times covet has hit everybody not just the schools it's hit families as well and i i think that you know to be responsible 2.8 to me sounds high in this climate but if we had kept the budget at 2.8 percent i mean it would be something i could i could support and i think that we have we can't really be in a bubble here i think we have to realize that families are out there too that have to somebody's going to fund this it's not well we took it from here we put it over there we put it over there we
134took it over here i mean it has to be funded somehow so either you're gonna you know raise taxes in town on all the western families or you're gonna get it some other way that is still gonna hit the families so i don't know i i have a problem in this climate raising the budget in any way shape or form or taking away funds from families to play sports so that we can use it in other places i just don't think that that's what we should be doing right other discussion all right let's vote on the motion on the floor again the motion is to cover expenses for pay to play fee all of those in favor say aye i all those who oppose say nay nay any abstentions the emotion fails other p pardon
135me it was three uh the uh we can do a roll call uh four were in not in support of it three were in support of it but if we prefer to do a roll call we can certainly do that charlotte may um pardon a roll call please hey dr chang no mr goldman poor dr harris yes ms nazarella no miss poland yes dr steinberg no dr thomas farquharson no other items to discuss add or recommend removal on the budget as of now as it looks the budget is a proposed 2.77 increase at 181 and 180 one hundred eighty one million one hundred eighty seven thousand eighteen dollars so can i just make a comment and if the vote already happens so it's done but if you generally are going to eliminate or put it
136into funding the activity fees then we should have been able to do something with that it's just an observation so you take it what it's worth i i don't question the intent i just think the execution is going to be very hard to do and this would have been a way to start so if if i may though from what we voted on um it is a titration so for the next year it's not a 100 activity fee that the families have to pay what's been proposed it's still a reduced amount ultimately getting to a place in future years of where they don't have to pay at all so i hear what you're saying yes there is an activity fee but it is a slow implementation of it recognizing that the way it was prior
137to the vote inevitably would be 100 i don't question the intent of anybody i just questioned the ability to get there if we can't get there this year or even if we're going to do this for whatever i think i'd like to see it eliminated but i just i'm skeptical but i'm happy to be proven wrong all right um i just this is not to to point fingers or or point anyone out but i guess gail if you could clarify for me um what you had just said is you didn't support any increase in the budget um but then voted to increase it by 250 000 so i'm just wondering like how does that how are you able to kind of justify that well i sort of feel like we're playing a game we're taking
138money from one place and we're putting it somewhere else so to me it sort of balances out i you know we took the money away from the families who are now going to have to come up with money to play sports and that i believe is approximately that amount of money and we just put it somewhere else so but i guess by adding it back in that increases the percentage of the budget increase which then as what you said will actually end up just costing residents as a whole more money so i i don't i mean i feel like it's an even steven thing so i it's an even steven thing it's a wash right we we're putting it back in one place and taking it out somewhere else this is actually hitting the students
139directly whereas the overall property taxes throughout the community and spread out i mean i could just tell you i had a lot of opportunities i had to pay for some of my sports you know when i was growing up which was fine but somebody's paying yup i'm taking money out of my own pocket here i guess ari i don't feel like like basically what i reiterate myself i don't think this is the time to be adding any expenses to families who are struggling in this town right now so we just added in 200 000 expenses to our families and so we tried to refund it through the budget so to me it's sort of a wash yep i agree other thoughts other items before we put what is currently proposed as the budget up for
140vote before we do madam chair i don't know if any members of the board wanted to state certainly just want to sit there and yes any specific other line items that would like to be proposed for the budget all right hearing none we are at the place now of voting on the final budget adoption again of an amount of 181 million 187 000 18 and so because this is something that's very important in our role would like to hear from each of you your your vote but also your thoughts if you so choose uh in regard to what you are voting for so charlotte once again if you could please do the roll call i'm sorry before the roll i i think that there were a few of us who had statements we wanted to
141make before before voting certainly yes go right ahead sure clear yeah so um i'd like to thank the budget team and everyone that put this year's budget together the presentations and the budget workshops were thorough and i appreciate the quick response that we got on all our board of education members questions in this challenging time i'm impressed with the reductions that were put forward and the prioritization of maintaining the high quality of education we offer all students we're a people organization and i feel fortunate to live in a town with such amazing education staff who give their best every day to our children and i understand the negotiations with sally were done prior but i think it's great the way we support our teachers in the district and we are have an incredible staff thanks
142other comments deb yes thank you crafting a budget is one of our most important responsibilities as west hartford's elected board of education this budget while imperfect meets the needs of our students and families while taking into account the financial restrictions that our town residents face we recognize the growing needs in special education and mental health we're also seeking to maintain the high quality schools that make west hartford a town where people seek to raise their families both long-term residents and those who have more recently joined our community i want to also take the opportunity to thank liz and tom and the whole team for their work on this budget as well as my colleagues around the table for digging into the details and taking seriously our fiduciary responsibility and of course i want to thank
143all of our 1500 plus staff members for their commitment to our students and families and for taking seriously their responsibility and educating our next generation of leaders i asked my colleagues to support this budget other comments sorry i just want to echo my colleagues sentiments thus far i want to thank all of you for all of the the work that you put into this the responsiveness with regard to the budget workshops um and and i just want to say um it's a huge ask of a view of us um to really try to balance all of the needs that we know we have within the town and try to prioritize you know everybody has different priorities um i think we've we've all made that clear um in the budget workshops in this meeting um but
144but i really want to applaud all of you because i think at the end of the day where we might disagree in certain topics or areas i really think we're all trying to balance kind of the needs of our students and our families and our residents academically emotionally um kind of all you know this whole model of um wellness um across all areas um so i just really want to thank you and um i'm in support of this budget and as tom had said earlier i mean if we could have more that would be lovely i think that would help us to kind of meet all of the needs um but but i do think for right now and coming out of covid you know it feels very apparent to me here on the board
145as well as in my professional role that really the priority right now has to be meeting the needs of our students mental health and social emotional um functioning so thank you for for building that into our budget ethan so i'd also want to thank those who worked on the budget because i know how much fun they can be but it's always a good time with them i was fine with the budget as originally presented while i would have liked to have seen more reductions or weight or less of an increase i realized that it was your best estimate of what could be there and what was necessary i was also fine with the first three adjustments i believe they were my problem is with the fourth i have a strong philosophical problem with that i
146don't think it's right to charge families activity fees i realized that was done in the past but we had a way to get around it and i wish we could have done something else i there were ways we could have done a bit more of a compromise collaborative that didn't seem to work so i'm going to vote no on the budget i realize it's a very small part but philosophically i just think it's the wrong move and i don't want to improve the budget gail yeah i already thanked you guys before you guys did an outstanding job um i want to sort of build on what ethan said i would have supported this budget the way it was written i believe that you people are the experts and what you gave us is what you
147needed and i would have supported that um i can't really support some of the things that have been added into the budget so therefore i'm going to also vote now on this budget thank you will i jason yeah thank you um again reiterate the appreciation for the ground level details and what this budget enables i'm really excited for the work that will be done with this 181 million one hundred and eighty seven thousand eight eighteen dollars is uh the lifeblood of our community and uh and um i'm grateful for the conversation here and i think that we can continue to to work together for for the town and that we will continue that work day to day uh on the board um and so i thank everyone for their um their time here this is
148a volunteer position uh and it does take uh quite a bit of time to think through you know our work here um so i want to thank each and every one of you for for that work and and and that you know would we do this work together thank you thank you and i share the thanks that have been shared by colleagues appreciate each and every one of you for the robust discussion and as has been mentioned even moments we agree to disagree um it still is good that there is discussion head and that is our responsibility when it comes to talking about the budget certainly want to thank tom and all of you from the executive team in coming up with this budget and giving the reasons and rational why we know the past
149year but if we think about the time of the pandemic the past two years goodness i can say more than two years because it's been more than two years there's been a lot on our students and clearly what we see things that we knew last year rather things we know now we did not know last year in terms of how pronounced the concerns are so appreciate the effort has that has been made to try to address those concerns now so they don't continue and linger on our young people are deserving of that our staff are deserving of that as well and so with that i will be supporting the budget as it is here but please let's not be mistaken although at the top of this discussion made reference to we have three primary roles
150as being on the board certainly the budget certainly superintendent certainly the policy making please don't think that woof now we're we can just relax absolutely not the work must continue on um and so with that we'll ask for a roll call please for the vote on the budget as is stated now at 181 million one hundred eighty seven thousand eighteen dollars this reflects a two point two partedly two point seven seven percent increase dr chang yes mr goldman no dr harris no ms nazarella yes miss poland yes dr steinberg yes dr thomas farquharson yes the motion passes the budget passes here as we know it now we'll go over to the town council and on april the 25th they will be voting on their budget we certainly hope they will receive what we have proposed
151as is but we will be attentively waiting to see if recommendations are made thank you so very much again thank you moving yes i'm against it but um does that reflect the added the 181 187 reflect the added activity fees yes but it's not an impact because that's good 25 added in that's going to reduce to the but it's not so you mean because it's listed here no because dude there was you're adding taking 400 out of here right so adding it here is revenue as opposed to ask her so that all gets accounted for in the intersect inter-scholastic sports fund so it doesn't affect the general fund oh i didn't know you had one of those yeah okay all right thank you so much and moving on with the agenda to new business appointment
152of a personnel search committee excuse me could we do the unfinished dish or the unfinished business there there is no additional information i i had one i wanted to put in that's at the agenda oh at the end okay all right all right i'm fine that's all right so yes we are now in new business appointment of a personnel search committee the recommendation is that the board of education appoint a personal search committee for the position of superintendents of school so before we go into that i just want to give an update of why this is even on the agenda so we all know that the end of june we are going to be saying farewell to our current superintendent mr moore again this is actually your last budget with us and so thank you
153so very much thank you so very much for all of you've done for the eight years you've been superintendent helping us along the way to get to this point um and so i'll save all the farewells and all that stuff for a later time but nonetheless we know that we must collectively and concurrently uh and assertively move forward in terms of identifying a new superintendent and so that means there's steps that are involved and as you know from our last meeting we had an executive session to discuss how are we going to approach those steps and the intent was to come before you to give an update of where we are and so i want to share with you that one of the first steps that we want to take is an appointment of a
154personal search committee and this will be comprised of board of education members in accordance with our charge which is to appoint the superintendent of schools as stated by policy 2120. again it's important to remember that's one of our primary roles as a board of education members to appoint the superintendent so that's the first step we are planning to take and you will be bear witness to that in just a moment and then the next step is to appoint an interim superintendent you may have noticed on the agenda later on we do have an executive session so our evening is certainly far from done uh in that executive session you want to further look into what that may be how that may appear in terms of the appointment of the interim superintendent but please don't be
155mistaken we will come back before you after the executive session with an update so those of you who dare to stay or dare to stay awake and watch you will receive an update at that time and then also a next step is to pursue a hiring consulting firm to facilitate the search process why are we going to do that this is a lot of work to hire a superintendent and it's work that requires due diligence it requires time it requires the efforts of many who are able to attend to that adequately so so we certainly want and recognize the need for those supports so we are looking into hiring a consultant firm and we'll have more updates to you on how that will unfold but please know that we are looking for or rather in
156terms of hiring a consultant from this process involves adhering to guidelines associated with bidding policy number 3310 again we'll have more details with you as we move forward with that and then we also have another step and this is more of a concurrent step we know that as we move forward we certainly want to in collaborating with the consultant firm whoever that may be we want to hear from the community and we want to do this through community sessions and we also want to ensure that we have a diverse pool of candidates when it comes time to ultimately appointing and electing the superintendent i also want to highlight that with this process and with us wanting to keep you abreast of where we are in the process we also know there are some information that
157we cannot discuss we cannot disclose and referring to confidentiality and this certainly pertains to candidates as we have candidates who will apply for the position we look forward to who they may be we must maintain their confidentiality because they may be at a particular district who may not know that they're looking elsewhere so because of those efforts when we give you updates please be mindful that names and locations of who is a potential candidate those that information identifying information will not be shared but we certainly will keep you abreast of where we are in the process so again rewinding to the first step the first step is appointing the search personnel search committee and with that looking for a motion that the board of the board establish a personal search committee for the purpose of
158recommending to the board one or more candidates for the position of superintendent of schools and moved further that the following individuals be appointed to the committee dr jason chang mr ethan goldman dr gail harris miss claire nessarella ms deb poland dr ari steinberg dr lorna thomas ferguson is there a motion so moved is there a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye any oppose right the eyes have it so with that we now will move on to and i uh yes move on to staff communication and reports mr moore the budget's my report tonight i'll update you on other things next meeting all right duly noted and staff reports and board discussions we've had lots of that so we'll continue on routine matters approval of the minutes seeking approval of the minutes
159of the regular board of education meeting of march 15 2022 with that the recommendation that a board of education meeting approved the minutes from this meeting so moved sarah second any discussion all right all of those in favor say aye aye any abstentions nays all right the eyes have it great great now moving on to information and reports board members communications and reports reports from other boards and organizations all right hearing none we already heard from our students so appreciative to them now moving on to future business announcement of future meeting dates we have tuesday april the 19th 2022 the regular board of education meeting at seven o'clock here in room 314 then on tuesday may 3rd 2022 regular board of education meeting at seven o'clock once again here in room 314 followed by tuesday
160may 17 2022 regular board of education meeting seven o'clock here in the legislative chamber room 314 do we have a request for a future agenda item last december a motion was made to change the two high school team names vote was held on february 1st with the intent in that time period to get the feedback from three different groups high school students the overall community and west hartford high school alumni and the native american tribes there was a significant report response from the community hartsey who was from both sides the response from the high school students as relayed by the student reps was definitely favorable for keeping the names as is the one part where there seemed to be a gap and not from lack of trying but from lack of response was from the
161native american tribes and on the website there's four responses one from 2015 which is sort of hard to give credibility to and the other three in my opinion were relatively ambiguous requesting would be respectful of them but not really specifically commenting on the current names over the weekend we all i assume we all i know i received a interesting response from and i'm going to struggle with this name scatter coke tribe did i get right really won't happen again clearly in favor of keeping the existing team names i know that we took a vote to change the names of february but if we are truly an organization academic organization focused on educational learning i think would be beneficial for the town to invite this scada coke tribe chief as well as any representatives from the
162other tribes i would hope there would be some to hear what they have to say on the subject a lot of assumptions have made in terms of their perspective but we should actually hear from them so it asks the next board meeting two weeks from now that we invite them and see if they'll come and give them a chance to make their comments and have the member of boards ask the questions if a program so all right thank you other agenda items suggestions all right moving on to comments from visitors are there any here that would like to give a public comment we know that we had some who were on the list originally but we reached the cap the maximum of subject matters if those individuals are here or anyone else who may be
163here to public comment yes when you approach the podium please share your name your address and you have three minutes and charlotte will hold up a card a yellow card when you have one minute remaining and a red card when your time is expired thank you larry laser 29 legend road west hartford so i came here tonight because i was uh listening to the board of education meeting last i think was march 15th and gail harris made a proposal and her proposal was really just to have a forum to discuss the sel curriculum there's no sense of any criticism but i think there was a desire that some of our residents have concerns about the seo curriculum and there was a recent poll that came out from the national parents union that said about 35
164percent of parents have a significant concern oftentimes of lower socioeconomic groups so i just think the board missed an opportunity for parents and the board of education to get together and talk more about it i think parents could learn from you and you may be able to hear some comments from the parents that may be helpful it's it's a new curriculum and we know we're going to be modifying that over the years and i think just to encourage that dialogue is is important for everybody there's a lot of good things there i think we all can probably start with saying we want to create an empathetic environment or schools for kids who are gay kids who are transgender and we all agree on that and i think part of that starts with this dialogue and
165having that form so i i think you should re-look at that maybe dr harris could resubmit it along the same lines when that was being presented i guess i was a little bit concerned on the feedback that dr harris got um i thought it was a little bit condescending in some ways in terms of how some of the board members spoke to her um you know one of the board members said you know we're on the side of empathy and caring what's the other side i think people can disagree on some things particularly youngest age kids and talk about it it doesn't mean that either side is uncaring or unempathetic it just means that some people may have a different perspective i think our town is is a wonderful town it's incredibly diverse and the
166strong opinions particularly i think you can focus on the youngest age group and we've seen that nationally obviously i don't agree with happening in florida but there's a lot of discussion about the youngest age group and i think a forum gives residents an opportunity to kind of talk about their concerns and then may be educated by you and maybe they can educate you as well so i think you know the concern i had is that oftentimes if you look at discussions there can be this orthodoxy in terms of what's the current view on how we should talk about things and if a minority group poses a challenge to that there's oftentimes i think attack is probably too much of a word but there's lots of negativity thrown to dr harris when she was really looking
167just for a discussion she wasn't saying we should eliminate it she wasn't talking about high school or middle school she was talking about the youngest kids in our school system so i think we should welcome that and i think maybe to look at how that discussion took place because i think that that discussion could have been done better and and i think it's a good role model for avery and andrew when they go to college and other kids that kids are afraid to talk about issues they have a lot of anxiety to talk about these issues and if anything this should be the role model on how we talk about conflicting issues on these things so thank you for your time [Applause] thank you other comments that would like to be made yes i saw
168you late young in the back your hand and then with the red hair yes your hand has pardoned please i'll be brief um patty fleming 34 linwald i'm super nervous only because i think um just what i'm going to share might um i don't know i i'm really nervous because i don't feel that expressing counter view points to this seo curriculum is is received well you know like the gentleman said before if you if you say something that you know you're maybe raising some concerns you are um labeled not empathetic not compassionate um i would just like to recommend if this is a little book review i read a book this past couple of days called um irreversible damage by abigail schreier and i just strongly recommend that you read it i think it's it
169speaks to a lady spoke earlier about kind of the psychological things that have been going along with with what's happening in the schools the major institutions medicine psychology our school systems are really um just pushing pushing something that i think is is really harmful in fact irreversible and that's what the the whole book is about it's it's really tragic we have a 100-year history of gender dysphoria and what the book points out is that um lots of things lots of really mind-blowing interesting things and and she um comes at it in such a compassionate and compelling way so i would just i would just ask that that you would read it thanks thank you other comments hello my name is graham i live at 243 steel road so just to start off i grew up
170in west hartford i was product of the west hartford public school system and big thing i want to emphasize that andrew i think was the first person that i heard really pointed out was community um i had a strong sense of community in this town we were always taught to be um to be tolerant and uh and in case anyone's wondering i'm talking about the sel curriculum that's my subject matter here i think the the intention by people who put these books out to read is to promote tolerance and we would all agree that tolerance is a good thing but the the thing is uh i think there can be some unintended consequences with this and i'm not just talking about what might happen with kids development but i'm talking about us as a community
171we can already see this a big divisive issue and we have parents that are for it and parents that are against it and i don't think anything less of parents who are for it and i commend you for coming up miss from west virginia i forgot your name i apologize but i think you said some very powerful stuff and i think you know you're right to feel the way you feel about this um and i think though at the end of the day as parents we should reserve the right to have input about content that is provocative this is a provocative and controversial subject i don't think anyone would disagree that this is you know jarring some emotions with parents in town um i don't want us to get to the point where we are
172now not going to be sitting next to each other at soccer games or you know shouting at each other at all kinds of extracurricular events one thing that i knew growing up is that the big issue maybe somebody remember back in the 90s was sex education in school and parents at the time had a lot of trust in school because these schools gave parents the opportunity to opt out if they didn't agree with it my parents were given the opportunity they chose not to but if they wanted to they could have why don't we fix this issue right now and give parents the opportunity to opt out of this if they don't want this being read to their kids this is a sensitive topic if parents want to introduce this to their kids as early
173as kindergarten that's their choice i i'm not going to tell another parent how to raise their kids the first book my kids will read when they get to elementary school is a book about a transgender teddy bear that changes its sex or that wants to change its sex to me that's a little too it's to me it's it's it's too strong of a subject that i would prefer to discuss with my kids when they're ready and as mr uh john moss who's not here anymore said this is something that will eventually you know they will encounter at some point and i think it's up to the parents to uh when to discuss this i think you could you could save a lot of headache in this town if you let parents who do not agree
174with this opt out of opt their kids out of this in school i think by forcing parents to have their kids have these books read to them you're going to create a lot of division that's going to last a really long time i don't think it's good for west hartford i don't think it's good for the community let parents opt out of this and if parents want to have their kids read a book about a transgender teddy bear in kindergarten let them do so but let parents have a choice so thank you thank you other comments yes and pardon me to be fair in the back i saw that you stood at one point in time do you have a comment uh no uh to your to your left yes did you have a comment
175no okay pardon yes and then in the back yes thank you for the opportunity to be heard tonight i'm vicki coyle i live at 442 mountain road i support a curriculum that is about inclusivity and kindness for all students including those students with a different gender identity i am however concerned about the books that have been selected to be in the elementary school curriculum for gender identity comments tonight indicated that people were under the impression that the books were about tolerance and acceptance but i want to read some examples that are concerning to me in fifth grade students are read a book called it feels good to be yourself among other things the book instructs students that when you were born you couldn't tell people who you were or how you felt they looked at
176you and made a guess maybe they got it right maybe they got it wrong what a baby's body looks like when they were born can be a clue to what the baby's gender will be but not always you might feel that your gender changes from day to day or year to year we were told that the gender identity curriculum was about how to treat other students but was not teaching a viewpoint or ideology but the book i just quoted does precisely that it is an ideology or a viewpoint that doctors guess what your gender is at birth and it has nothing to do with how we treat other students the book should be removed from the reading list we were also told that the curriculum was about getting rid of gender stereotypes but the book
177i am jazz talks about girl things like girl toys and girl clothes this is reinforcing gender stereotypes finally as was just referenced in kindergarten students will be read about a transgender teddy bear no one has offered an explanation let alone any data for how teaching a kindergartner that individuals can identify as the opposite gender is developmentally appropriate for a five-year-old in fact there is no data supporting this curriculum at the elementary school level the only study cited by the district is one study involving adolescents i know for a fact that numerous west hartford elementary school teachers do not want to teach these books one teacher told a parent that never in her career has she been told she was required to teach a specific book until now dr harris made a simple request at the
178prior meeting let's hold an open forum where parents can get clarity and express their viewpoint on this sensitive and important subject based on the number of speakers tonight which had to go before and after the lengthy budget discussion i think that just shows that a public forum on this topic is warranted the state of connecticut has weighed in and decided that eighth grade is the time to introduce a lesson on gender identity without engaging in the community the district has unilaterally decided that the time to start this curriculum is kindergarten there needs to be an open discussion about this decision the west hartford community should be heard and the three books i mentioned should be removed from the curriculum is inappropriate and not geared towards the goals of the curriculum as explained by the district
179thank you very much thank you yes good evening my name is juan villamizar i live at 51 tumblebrook lane i like a lot of the speakers tonight i believe that this is a topic that needs more input from parents in town is i think is irresponsible and uh predatory to our children uh but you know enough has been said about that i'm gonna get a little more personal about what i'm here to speak about it's about my own stepson he's currently on an iep program requiring that he be accompanied with a pair to his recess and last friday he was not accompanied by a prayer at his recess he was taunted by two children and caused him to lose his balance he basically went into one of his conditions he's got a social condition that
180i'm sure can be uh the system knows about the principal knows about it and the investigation was conducted by his classroom teacher not by an iep professional or a social or psychologist and he has not been in school for the last two days because on monday he had fears to be at school and a lot of things manifested for him and again we're still waiting to hear from the school the administration to find out how we're going to keep our 85 percent less than where he's supposed to be at child because like the gentleman spoke earlier tonight i am a victim of my kid being left behind because he did not have the proper support through covet to meet his education needs things that are written in paper were not followed by this system i
181need some answers thank you thank you other comments yes thank you for giving me this opportunity my name is gage i'm i live on 56 gillette streets first of all i would like to make a full disclaimer uh i'm not from a well-funded uh advocacy political arm i'm just a parent the reason why i'm saying this is because back in november last year when west hartford parents we opposed the sel curriculum mr thamur labelled us as well-funded advocacy political arm in this article so that's why i need to do that disclaimer so the truth is it is a progressive left school administration who are truly serving as a political arm not we the parents in the process they are destroying the reputation of our once a great school system by introducing such divisive curriculum as
182we have heard from parents majority of them this sel thing is a divisive and it's not doing any any good lately the progressive left dominated board of education has been throwing at us the parents all kinds of divisive topics and we are try we are tired of playing catch up with uh with them that will change hopefully in the next election when we reclaim our board of education they throw at us the mascot topic which was really not an issue then the mask now the acl tomorrow they will certainly come up with weird subjects i have a couple of questions uh here public school kids come from diverse family backgrounds how does this sel treat those kids whose parents do not agree with lgbtq propaganda so the united nation has set a goal to eliminate
183genital mutilations worldwide by 2030 the u.n is against this because of scientific reasons mutilation is harmful at many levels so why is the west hartford public school choose to teach contrary to science or do the school administration think our kids genitalia are uniquely resistant to any harm in wrapping up my speech i strongly oppose the scl gender identity curriculum and demand it be removed from the school public school ground thank you any other comments and i will share if there are we have space for just one more comment in regard to social emotional learning again we cap at 21 minutes per topic is there anyone else that cares to speak in general but this is the last opportunity to comment on sel subject matters any other comments good evening everyone my name is natalie wagner
184i live at harvest lane here in west harbor connecticut and um i don't have any prepared remarks because i didn't actually come here planning to make any remarks but um you know did want to listen to other members of the community on the sel topic which is what i was going to comment on i did grow up here in west hartford and was largely a product of the west harvard public schools until the end of middle school and a previous speaker talked about feeling part of a community and one of the reasons i left the west harbor to public schools was because i did not feel part of community and i didn't exactly know why at the time um what it was that made me feel a lack of connection i think it was a
185lack of understanding a lack of visibility a lack of language within my community about something that i was struggling with now i'm the parent of four kids that have gone through and three of whom are still in the west harbor of public schools who are facing comments from their peers in elementary school grades about the fact that they have two parents of the same gender um so in response to the comments about this not being an appropriate topic for children in elementary school grades i just want to make sure the members of the board and members of this community are aware of the fact that children are discussing these topics anyway and i'm very grateful for the work that the school district has done in developing this curriculum to help give students the vocabulary to
186talk about these things in a respectful way with one another and i think that that's very important for my family and i think it's very important for students who are not from families like ours to be able to talk about these issues in a respectful way and so i'm i just wanted to express that i know it was said earlier that not enough people are coming out in support of this because often we're just grateful that it's there so i just wanted to stand up and thank you any other comments on any other subject matter hearing none we will continue on with the agenda and move to our executive session uh two topic areas to be covered one discussion concerning the appointment of an interim superintendent of schools and the second possible action concerning the
187appointment of an interim superintendent of schools is there a motion moved second second uh discussion all in favor aye aye aye aye all right the eyes have it we shall return somewhere safe with somebody good that's not a good background so team thank you so very much productive time was had and as we know the purpose for the executive session was discussion concerning the appointment of an interim superintendent of schools and possible action concerning the appointment of an interim superintendent of schools and from our discussion we do have an action and with that would like to put forth a motion motion that in accordance with section 10-157 of the connecticut general statutes the west hartford board of education appoints dr andrew murrow as interim superintendent of schools effective july 1 2022 and continuing through june
18830th 2023 or until such time when a new superintendent of schools is appointed whichever comes first and moved further that the board chairperson be authorized to finalize and execute a contract of employment for dr murrow's service as interim superintendent is there a motion so moved is there a second second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye aye aye all of the eyes have it dr murr dr murrow thank you so very much [Applause] so as we know this takes effect july 1st however sure there will be some transfer of knowledge you've been here quite a long time so you certainly have that but we are fortunate to continue to have our time with mr moore and we'll use that up until the end of june but nonetheless we'll continue with our path forward
189so now that we have our personnel committee we have an interim superintendent appointed our next charge now is to work on identifying a consultant firm to facilitate our steps moving forward with that teammates seeking a motion to adjourn so moved is there a second second meeting adjourned at 10 24. you