Board of Education Meeting of December 7, 2021

001so evening we're going to call the meeting to order welcome to the west hartford public schools board of education regular meeting on this tuesday december the 7th 2001. may we begin with the roll call charlotte dr chang present mr goldman here dr harris here miss poland here ms nazarella present dr steinberg here dr thomas farquharson here student representative avery woods weber present student representative andrew maglio present thank you and andrew may you lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you as we continue i would like to make a motion to modify the agenda to include a proclamation from our mayor and delegation and add it as

002the first agenda item under new business is there a second i'll second the motion any discussion are we ready for the question all those in favor say aye aye aye any oppose any abstentions the eyes have it thank you [Applause] as we continue on we've made note of a revision to the agenda order so we will proceed with public communication which will be followed by unfinished business new business and the first item on the new business agenda will be the announcement or the proclamation let us go on to public communications i have a list of names here i will call them in the order they are listed starting with oh and before i do that just want to announce apologies for the screen that is uh down at this time it's being rather temperamental so

003this will give us a time to practice our patience and flexibility the first name listed here is russell russell gordon or gordman i believe and just to share for each individual who is coming up each person has three minutes per individual 21 minutes per subject matter and when you come to the podium please be mindful of charlotte over here who will hold the car up a yellow card means you have one minute left and the red card means your time has ended and prior to speaking if you may please share your name and your address thank you yes we also if there's a button up there if you can please hit the button to have the mic turn on for you there you go my name is russell gardner i live at 8 willow lane

004in west hartford i'd like to start by welcoming welcoming new members i'm hoping that your leadership will help change the direction of meetings that i as i've seen them in the last few months i'm hoping that your leadership will help address mental health concerns that have been brought here child abuse policies by the board mask wearing risks to the children in our schools uh issues that the parents have brought of regarding the emotional development the physical health of children suicides um and this this is basically i'm just looking for um a welcoming of diversity of viewpoints uh that parents are bringing here and are being ignored it's basically i mean classic leadership shows that a group is stronger and healthier when embracing the diversity of perspectives in the group now in the past few months

005i've seen the opposite i've seen the board in the last few months brush people off you don't respond to the parents concerns you don't meet with the parents i'm talking about public response to the parents concerns the board is incredibly biased self-centered you refuse to discuss mass efficacy you seem to be afraid of the truth you refuse to discuss health risks to the children who are wearing masks you refuse to address the surge in demand for behavioral health care you can read all about it there's a sense of smug disdain that comes from the board you pursue your personal political agenda while putting our children at risk you know committees that have been formed to empower the parents for providing their input i haven't even seen a survey to collect information from the parents no

006compassion no empathy no kindness lots of lip service lots of lettering good job the board in the last few months has had its neck that had its knee on the neck of these parents to add insult to injury the board has not responded publicly to any of the concerns parents have brought to the board you're pushing down you're imposing your own agenda it's really a form of violence if i had more time i could explain it to you and i just expect better that's my phone saying time's up thank you [Applause] thank you we next have keith pardon uh cousin i don't want to offend by mispronouncing your last name you should hear how telemarketers absolutely flip when they answer the phone um so i don't know when does my time start is it when

007i say my name and my address yes okay so my name is keith kaczynskis from west hartford six pioneer drive so hi uh i'm a parent of girls ages six and eight in the district the topic of diversity equity and inclusion in school is a controversial subject but all for the greater good of promoting a diverse and thriving community we are obviously lacking in this area being dominantly white and little other cultural influences this can indeed prove detrimental to how our children learn and absolutely needs to be addressed but in a manner that is not divisive inclusive of the parents and continues to support our fundamental common beliefs one of those beliefs is that all of us as americans are created equal no matter where you come from you are no better than your neighbor

008it takes a community to recognize unfair conditions and lend a hand most of us agree with this but some do not those people can be republican or democrat black or white straight or gay immigrants or natural born citizens those who disagree with the american way may wear many different disguises it is important though to recognize that this core belief exists as a majority in each and every one of us those groups we can also all appreciate that being different is hard and presents additional challenges to overcome it is everyone's right and our duty to ensure others have an equal opportunity to be successful and happy in promoting these ideals though i do not support divisiveness in one of the books in the curriculum there is a portrayal of a lone black girl standing up against

009the sea of faceless police officers behind riot gear helmets it clearly dehumanizes the officers and suggests they are all against a right to breathe and be free we cannot move forward as a community if we blame any one particular group for the issues we face instead our children should be taught how to recognize when our ideals are threatened no matter the uniform they wear or the signs they hold up it is also important for us to provide our children accurate and age-appropriate information as they grow up gender identity is especially confusion with natural changes and hormones that swing wildly giving incorrect guidance one way or the other can be devastating to their long-term health and well-being in some of the literature i read there are several examples that reinforce gender stereotypes such as a favorite

010color being pink means feeling like a girl or being a boy means pretending to be a firefighter or police officer officer it's not appropriate to label the activities likes or dislikes to any gender instead i want my young girls to know that they can like whatever they like and participate in whatever activity they want regardless of gender there are many books that promote the right ideals in the curriculum but there are some that promote divisiveness stereotypes and judgment albeit likely inadvertently laced within the text it's dangerous nonetheless teaching our children concepts that promote diversity is indeed a non-negotiable how we do it though needs to be a conversation that includes the parents a potential way to do this is by simply including a diversity of parental opinions and curriculum development i ask you to take

011a tactical pause and allow us the parents to be part of this journey with you and work together to provide the best education possible that's a red card let's see thank you thank you next we have kate capes good evening for months now parents have come before the board to tell you that they object to what is being presented to their children through the sel curriculum i have several similar concerns regarding the topics and teacher presentations during community lessons at the high school level parents have explained that their objections are focused on protecting their children and preserving the in their innocence so when the alarm bells signaling a loss of innocence or the hypersexualization of our children begin to ring we parents will fight god has entrusted our children to us pioneers in education such

012as piaget froebel and montessori showed us that child development happens in stages and that specific developmental needs must be satisfied during a particular window of opportunity to be wholly ready to venture into the next stage children seek the answers to questions that nourish their developmental needs from zero to six that question is what is that everything the child does orients him toward understanding the truth about the world surrounding him a child at this stage of development is not asking who am i or who are you he must master his own body and understand and explore the world around him before he is ready to ask such questions the sel curriculum in subtle and not so subtle ways forces upon the children these two questions who am i and who are you and heavily incorporates how

013do i feel sel promotes feelings and encourages decisions based on feelings from 6 to 12 the questions driving a child's endeavors is why is it essential to this stage is the ability for children to work in pairs or small groups shared productive work is essential to seeking the answers to this question this is why we have such a negative this is why we have seen such a negative impact in the children during the pandemic they have been physically separated from their peers these unmet developmental needs are going to leave a huge hole adolescents from 12 to 18 years begin to ask who am i the teen who is moving from childhood toward adulthood learns to overcome challenges through his own efforts effort is a missed focus in the sel curriculum through community lessons the disturbing

014answers that my children and other teens are getting to this essential question of who am i are i am my gender and sexual preferences i am privileged and should feel shame i am a victim these answers defy our common inherent human dignity inherent dignity does not come from the affirmations of others awareness of others feelings does not lead a child to choosing the socially or morally right thing to do sel teaches that based on the feelings others feelings children should abandon truths instilled in them by their family and faith this is dangerous and it encourages children to use a progressive culture as a moral compass rather than to be grounded in the truth that is greater than their own feelings [Applause] thank you next we have patty fleming hi my name is patty fleming i'm

015at 34 linwald west hartford my name is patty fleming thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my family and i moved to west hartford about two and a half years ago one of the deciding factors for choosing west hartford was for its highly ranked school system we absolutely love living here and enjoy so many facets of our great west hartford community at the last school board meeting i sat in the audience and listened as you expressed how child-centric and student-focused your policy-making strives to be i can tell you for certain that after two years in west hartford public schools you did not have my three children in mind you didn't have them in mind when you unanimously passed policy regarding critical race theory and gender inclusion ideology i can also say critically that you

016didn't have my children in mind when you force them all home for a year and a half and continue to implement anti-scientific mask mandates and encourage the unnecessary and ineffective vaccination for all school-aged children the cdc recently came out with a report saying that the vaccinated and unvaccinated transmit coven 19 at the same exact rates there are plenty of studies that have come out that call into question the efficacy of mask wearing and social distancing protocols i would venture to say that these policies not only didn't have my children in mind but an expansive number of children whose parents are starting to wake up to the anti-science rhetoric and mandates you are continuing to push on our children mr moore as an american history teacher you can appreciate the fact that the founders of this

017country strive to create a system of government that would prevent an impassioned minority or majority to impact laws and create policy and yet that is exactly what you are allowing to happen here in this body i would venture to say that many people are in our community if given the safe space to say so if they weren't afraid of being canceled or losing their jobs or being labeled hateful believe there are only two genders and that there's nothing fluid about it most would believe that all people as image bearers of god ought to be treated not by how dark or light their skin is but by their character and most people believe in our right to choose what is best for our families in our medical decisions and what subjects our children should be exposed

018to at the last meeting many of you lauded one of your board members ability to remember the names of the children under the care of the selected body mr moore and fellow members of this board i just made your job easier you don't have to remember the names of mine they are no longer under your care we have lost trust in your policy making decisions i came here tonight to give voice to my own concerns but also to encourage and embolden the growing number of parents i'm meeting who are expressing these same values contrary to what you say mr moore we are not part of a well-funded political advocacy group we are not political operatives if anyone is using our children as political pawns in a divisive social game a strong argument could be made

019that you are new members of the board please listen listen to the voices of concerned parents that are out there i am part of a growing grassroots parent group our voices matter too thank you [Applause] thank you and next we have jacob werblow hello everyone uh good evening i'm jacob warblow from 27 howland road just first want to recognize the other speakers uh you know just powerful testimony and it's um it's just wonderful to have that opportunity to speak so i appreciate you for coming out so i just want to share a little bit of observations from the middle school transition um so uh consider fifth grade uh eleven-year-old child you know one core teacher who is responsible for 24 students a day and a few months now that child um has daily recess play

020playground access and is with you know that self-contained class for four to five hours of the day and in just a few months when they transition to middle school that same child uh has all new teachers every 42 minutes all new students in each of the classes and the teachers then have caseloads of 110 120 students per day so that's a huge transition and i don't think uh that that's in the best interest of child development and and of our our our children's children's um our children's needs so there is a solution and i think it's really simple um covid did give us an opportunity when uh last year we moved to a block schedule and even though some teachers really struggled with the 80-minute block because it's very difficult to teach direct instruction math

02180 minutes to to anyone especially middle school students but that gave the other teachers science arts language arts history opportunity to go much deeper into the curriculum and to build better relationships with the students and for the students to build relationships with each other so even though that rationale was made because of the safety concerns with kovid and and the the the motivation to decrease uh the number of interactions during the day i think it's something that deserves uh reconsideration because now we're in a situation where the children have returned but they have fractured relationships they they're difficult difficulties you know figuring out their own identity we have this new curriculum that's needed but is controversial and the children are not able to develop relationships um because they're in a model that does not make

022the most sense for their own learning so as an educator myself a a educator who trains teachers several of my students teach at sedgwick you know they're they're alumni from ccsu and you know i really hope that we could together possibly have more of a structured conversation to look at time and how we can utilize that differently so thank you all for listening i really appreciate your time and thank you for your service being on the board is a full-time evening commitment so thank you all uh thank you do we have any other guests here who would like to make a comment please approach the podium good evening my name is jeanne wegen i live at six middlebrook road in west hartford tonight i wanted to voice my concerns regarding superintendent moore's response to a

023recent news article the article was brought about after parents spoke here before the board of education on november 3rd voicing their concerns when the article was published the superintendent had an opportunity to address the concerns of the parents who had spoken but instead he deflected and politicized them [Music] the parents concerns were once again ignored and an opportunity for transparency was lost i'm worried situations such as these foster a climate in which parents many of which are taxpayers will be afraid to speak up tonight i would like to formally ask the board of education and superintendent moore to coordinate a public forum meeting where parents concerns and questions can be addressed in a public setting it's an opportunity that we do not have at this meeting or these meetings this will allow parents to better

024understand curriculum and policy they have questions and concerns about it will make parents feel as though they have a voice in their child's education thank you thank you any other comments okay we will continue on to unfinished business which there is none moving on to new business and this is where we i just saw them here and i don't know if our delegation is here i believe they may have stepped out for a proclamation someone could just get their attention please thank you all for your patience and what we will do is we will continue on with the program again what was intended was a proclamation honoring the recognition of our superintendent as superintendent of the year and we certainly know that as recognition that can be given at any point in time so with

025that we will continue on to new legislative matters updates rather that is and we will have dr murrow to please come and superintendent more to give us an update on what this is about please okay thanks as dr morrow and um jason siegel our athletic director dan zatun principal of hall and giulio duarte principal of connord come up um in the seven years ago um the board a dre addressed the question after a lot of people brought it up about chieftains and warriors created policy around those um two names and over time certainly to the and they'll go through what um what the board came to the conclusion new legislation passed this past year makes every board have to bring this topic up again and discuss this and make a decision going forward so with

026that dr morrow thank you tom um as tom mentioned and as you have in your briefing book uh the public act 21-2 included the provision that beginning in the fiscal year ending uh june 30th 2023 no municipality shall be paid a grant if they have uh or have a school that uses symbols or images that depict or refer to a federally recognized native american tribe or individual custom tradition mascot nickname logo etc and so really uh for us this is incumbent upon us to review then our status uh with the chieftain and with the warrior because the town grant to be received is a little more than 27 000 on a yearly basis so in the fall of 2014 following community falling student initiative community discussion emerged about nicknames and references and whether they were

027appropriate for a school we then encouraged students with the board encouraged students in the community to engage in a dialogue about this we spent time in in public settings about this we did extensive uh work at the high schools as far as surveys and work with the students the board policy subcommittee spent hours looking at recommendations inputs speaking with uh both local and national bodies and reviewing policies and came up with uh three options really that were then proposed to the board in 2015. one was really to keep the chieftain of warrior name retire everything else including the logos and the student organizations with the native american references one was to change both retire everything the warrior names and everything uh else as far as mascots and logos and the third was really to to

028do nothing at that point and so the board uh after careful decision and uh debating unanimously passed the policy that kept and maintained the chieftain and warrior names but required the schools to change the mascots and the imagery around that and so at that point the uh both uh both high schools engaged in a process working with uh working with public working with their students and developed the uh the new logos for connord and for hall and so what we're we're left now with the idea that in light of the the work that you've done as a board uh with your equity policy in light of the legislation we need to be considering whether or not uh it's time to engage in the discussion and engage in the uh in the determination from your standpoint

029of do you at this point change and ask the schools to go back with the students and to change the chieftain and the warrior names and just to um to chime in and uh thanks andy both you know i'd say jason giulio and dan very rare that would you have principals and athletic directors that have lasted this long to have been able to revisit this um and all of them have done a really good job in decoupling the name with the imagery of the past that being said it's still the imagery of the past it's still the links of the past and this is one of those topics that is unique to the board there isn't a administrative take i've always said from the beginning of this you need to ask us information from costs

030and otherwise so this is one of those topics that that the board does vote on uniquely kind of up to you as policy so happy to answer any question if you have nothing else to add andy no just as you as you can see from your your briefing as well i should have mentioned that where hall and conrad are currently a part of approximately a dozen schools in the state that still maintain a name that would be considered linked to a native american mascot or tradition thank you colleagues questions yes andrew yeah um i have a question so from what you just said mr moore and from what i've like heard about in the past i'm pretty sure correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure the word chieftain also has applied to other

031cultures outside of the united states and native american tribes so i guess i'm wondering i i wasn't obviously um that engaged in seven years ago when the mascot the mascot imagery was taken away but at that point um were all ties kind of severed between the name and the image or is there something besides like the legacy that still concretely ties the two together it's a good question andrew and i i think you really it's difficult to sever something from a legacy i think we can and to be completely candid and my my children went to connor and so i'm very much a part of that community as well i think we can in essence kid ourselves and say that well chieftain can refer to other things as well um just as we can say

032that warrior can refer to other things as well we're kind of kidding ourselves and we're parsing language at that point and we're doing a disservice to to an entire community i think we do that i i think that your question's fair and it's it's something that a word in and of itself that's cross-cultural has different meanings the roots of both of those words at both of the schools in both of the imagery and both of the history when it was a mascot when there were people dressed up at both hall and conor going back 30 40 years there's certainly that tie you know as well as i do the student groups at hall used to be the reservation that's moved away student group doesn't call itself that anymore at conor it's the red sea moved

033away from that but there is a tf often on the shirts correct that the students use and what does that signify yeah tribe forever so even though we've tried there's still that connection that no matter what that still exists in the memory and in the day-to-day operations yeah no that's thank you yeah that's interesting i was just curious but i mean yeah it's a very good point that yeah legacy is important other questions ethan yeah this is sort of new to me um question so when i read the briefing book this afternoon um my first thought was warriors and i don't associate that with indian tribes more with the military and so i went to the dictionary it does not mention native american at all did the same with chieftain which i you know maybe

034i'm looking for the the edge but i mean because you guys did change my first thought was reading robert louis stevenson as a kid was the chieftains of the scottish clans so my question is is this past history where you're because of the way it was associated you're still there because if you've changed it to me you know it all depends on how you look at it and certainly warriors to me and i'm focused on that more than chieftains because chieftains to me is sort of ambiguous i don't i unless you want to think of it that way it doesn't really strike me i i i saw it as different so i guess that's well and that's again that's fair i think what we're what we're simply putting forward here and it's for the board

035to decide is the the state sees it that way and and certainly groups historically have seen it yeah this did not mention native american in either aspect no this the state was clear in the debate it was clear and the legislation that these are acts that they've defined what they have well they specifically define chieftain as these the names you will pay you will lose all funding if chieftain is one of those words so is it uh is apologize no no it's fine is it the state that's deciding this or is it because this word that it was the native american tribes no no it's the state this is part of state legislation passed this year now the native american tribes in the state have been unanimous and statements over the past few years that

036they would like the schools to remove their names and the team names that have ties warriors wasn't listed that's the question you could get into the semantics of is chieftains and his warriors so i guess you can look at what's the roots of the names in the district and again we're not trying to advocate for a position we just want to be historically accurate that yes 10 years ago both of the schools had native american imagery and um both represented warriors and chieftains i think it's i actually agree with your point completely about chieftains can mean a lot of things i'm irish i used to listen to the chieftains on saturday mornings with my dad that was also there yeah and um so i understand that that difference it's this is what the state legislation

037brings forward and in addition i think the board has received over the past few years many communications about this topic gail and then dead superintendent moore you said that the state would we would lose all of our funding can you i think that's what you said twenty seven thousand eight hundred twenty dollars from the pequot and mohegan grant i mean the decision isn't reliant on the funding it's right because what percent of our funding is minuscule minuscule yeah absolutely i just wanna clarify that i also wanted to say as somebody who grew up in this town and went to hall high school um that those those names have meaning to people who grew up here and who participated in the sports teams and i think that that also has to be taken into account when

038we're making this decision and thinking about it that some people here have you know lived with those and and played for those names and it has a meaning on that side of the issue as well thank you avery and then deb um like andrew i was in fifth grade but um i just want to better understand the history behind this um you mentioned communications to the board um were those from um groups within west hartford within our surrounding hartford community and um could you just elaborate on that those communications sure there was there was one person who's um since moved away we've tried to get in touch with him that acted as liaison with many groups who um worked with lacrosse who had a lot of discussions about the lacrosse roots of native american names

039and um and we we did get communication i think you have one of the yeah and i can i can share uh with the board as well this was actually shared going back through the file back in 2015 this was shared with the board and with uh dr uh over marcus velasquez who was the previous board chair and was the chair of that time from the national congress of american indians this is a letter that was conveyed through andrew lee who was the the representative we were working with locally who was also tied into as tom and mentioned uh with the uh mohawk tribe and the work up in new york and this is from the executive direct director at the time and uh they talk uh while i and many others recognize that the

040vast majority of individuals who support the continued use of indian references names and imagery do so with good intentions i want to assure you that i and countless other tribal leaders are not honored when schools perpetuate india-inspired names and mascots such as the hall warriors or the connor chieftains extensive research provides demonstrable evidence that the intolerance and harm promoted by indian inspired names of mascots can have very real and disturbing consequences from negatively impacting the self-esteem of native youth to perpetuating harmful stereo stereotypes and racial tension as your town has experienced firsthand applying seemingly benign names like chieftains of warriors to student populations enables an atmosphere where american indians are not honored but in fact stereotyped mocked or worse and so again this was and i can share this uh copy with the board if

041you'd like later as well thank you deb good evening uh thank you for this presentation um you know i was trying to pull up the legislation because i've read it many many many times and i actually don't remember that it lists out the names specifically i it was pretty vague and i think that there were some members of our media in connecticut who were trying to make lists of potential names that might run afoul of this legislation though there hasn't actually been a list published yet by the state office of policy and management who i think although it's not 100 clear would actually be the state agency in charge of making the decision but i did want to also bring up and ask for you to share with the public as well there's another part

042of this section of public act 21-20-2 june special session and that is that if the district gets a letter or permission from a local tribe saying this name is okay this name doesn't offend us then the district can choose to keep that name and so i'm just wondering if we can have an update on where we are because i know that we are seeking information from our local tribes to touch on that piece of legislation thanks yeah we've communicated we've written email and letter and haven't heard back yet um so it's been about six weeks since we wrote and haven't gotten communication okay thank you jason yeah just on that point my understanding of the exemption there is that that was available for schools that had existing relationships with the with with the tribes that

043were schools that were on reservation land and i didn't think that there were other schools that had that possibility of submitting the letter that just isn't the way i read it so let's try to get some clarification other questions comments jason yeah so um so one thank you for for the presentation and um and for bringing the candor to to the the conversation um obviously something that has um has continued to um to surface as a problem even after uh you know the the board's attention to this in um in 2015 so you know i think there's for me there's a compelling case to um to change these names um one we are an underfunded district and our students deserve as much of the state funding as we can get this uh share of funds

044will continue to grow as a part of the pequots mohegan's contributions to the state um second i think there's a very strong compliance um issue here for our anti-racism and equity policy um you know very clear from the letter the 2015 letter that if the names were associated with any other racial or ethnic group that it would very likely have have been raised and wouldn't would not be okay so why would it be okay for native americans right um and just in regards to getting communication from the tribes the tribes have communicated with the state through the general assembly virtually continuously over the last several years about their preferences on this and um and so you know including tribal leaders and native american students in the state so based on their testimony to and state

045bodies uh it seems very clear there that these are their wishes this has an additional you know benefit of you know aligning with our curriculum and with the district's stated commitments um to building up a broader conversation about hearing and honoring the voices of living indigenous tribes and nations doing so in this way i think also paves the way for um for developing um a stronger curriculum in this in this fashion and um and anticipates the rollout of of new social studies standards for k-8 grades in native american studies in the coming years thank you another question ethan i had one question but i guess i'm not sure who it goes to since it's a board decision if we were to get rid of the nicknames what would happen if somebody and this is just

046just thinking it through or at least as i thought it came and said they wanted to get rid of king phillips school what about in this i realized it sounds or at least to me it didn't make sense but you never know peta came and said we want to get rid of animal i mean you can go a whole i i don't know it's just it's worth the stopwatch as an end i think you have detached it at least as i read it and i think you know and again it just because to me again the military the warrior thing i think is i have a totally different response and chieftains i did have a different response and i realized historically in what starford it was associated but you either turn the table or you

047return the page or you don't so sorry other questions or comments all right yes dr stein um i just wanted to kind of get back to um it's interesting because i was feeling the same way about warriors versus chieftains and when i associate the word warrior with like cancer survivor but sitting here in front of the board and actually sitting here and looking back at our policy that we just passed as a district i am actually in favor of changing the names i mean if you look at our vision the vision quoted by this board and voted on by this board is we make a solemn promise to identify and dismantle all elements of systemic racism and historical inequities we vow to clear paths with a relentless duty to those in traditionally marginalized groups and

048and i guess for me my interpretation of the word warrior well i might not see it as disrespectful um it's not really my my decision to make if there are people telling us that by using these terms shows some level of disrespect or inequity then as a district i feel that we have to honor a policy that we just voted to uphold so i would say i actually support the idea of changing both names other questions or comments so we've had lots of of questions and comments shared and that's good that's what this is for to discuss and recognizing the path from 2015 to where we are now certainly a lot has happened and yes we do have a public act that is encouraging more of this discussion certainly we know the onus of our

049role in being on the board is how do we respond to that however we know that when it comes to decisions that is not something we want to do in haste and we certainly want to have that to be an inclusive process and so with all that has been shared any other thoughts of where we are again the recommendation is that the board of education review the continued use of chieftain and warrior in light of recent changes to connecticut legislation and boe policy so we've begun that review process jason i didn't mean to cut you off no that's all right i'd like to raise a motion uh to bring the district into compliance with public act 21-2 with a vote to discontinue the use of chieftain and warrior and create a process to adopt new

050mascots a motion a question is brought to the floor for us to bring the district into compliance for public act 21-2 with a vote to discontinue the use of chieftain and warriors and create a process to adopt new measures do we have a motion i'm not sure your process can i ask a question or do i need to have your motion so we have the motion do we have a second i second questions or discussion so the question is sorry the red thrust now the um i thought i heard that warriors was acceptable to the state i can only share ethan the legislation that you have which is any name symbol or image that depicts referred to as associated with the state or federal record not federally recognized native american tribe or a native american

051individual custom or tradition as a mascot nickname logo or team name i would argue that somebody said it was not i i believe it i believe it was deb mentioned that there was a media piece afterwards interpreting that listed uh a number of the different of the different schools and such and uh but i don't know that the state has put out a list specifically i think it's it's open to their interpretation with that and and you know as much as i again i it's your decision to make but i think it's it's clear that historically that both have been associated with native american customs or traditions dead yes um a question to the mover of the motion is this a vote that you're hoping to take this evening or is this a vote that

052we're hoping to take on a different evening how could you then amend your motion then to state that we're not voting on this motion tonight right thank you i meant my motion to vote at a future meeting thank you and may i suggest with that thank you with the initial amendment which we have to bring the district into compliance for public act 21-2 with a vote to discontinue the use of chieftain and warriors and create a process to adult adopt new measures and for this vote to take place at a later time and want to just propose for a later time we looking at our calendar want to propose the january the 18th meeting date for that to be the time to to vote and just and with that certainly want that to be a

053process from now until then to hear questions from the from our students certainly comments from our students from the community certainly to make use of our open comment section and via email as well so that from then until now we certainly have had a chance to hear from the community prior to making a vote and we still are in the discussion session so i'm going to just ask if we can again restate the motion including the amendment and the proposed deed so the motion is to bring the district into compliance for public act 21-2 with a vote to discontinue the use of chieftain and warrior and create a process to adopt new measures on january 17 18 january 18th so with with that amended motion maybe have a second second and now discussion so so

054as a follow-up i'm sorry to be so technical but the way the motion is worded right now i can't decide i think it means that if if we vote yes right now then we're stating that we are going to be voting yes on january 18th and i think personally i would feel more comfortable if the motion were just that we have a vote on january 18th on whether or not to um change our mascot our names they're not even mascots really but whether or not to change the names as opposed to stating the motion in such a way that is biased towards a yes vote or a no vote on that date does that make sense yes it does yes and so with that may we have a restatement or a question so with the

055current uh question on the floor if we could just restate the amendment to have it to be more reflective of an open process in terms of the voting as has been shared well from my understanding sorry from my understanding in order to bring the district into compliance it would be about the removal of the name right so if the motion is about compliance okay deb i'm respectfully asking that we make the motion be and phrased in a way that allows for more thought by board members because frankly if the motion is that i have to decide now how i'm going to vote in january when we haven't had the opportunity to hear from the public i can't support that motion if we're going to vote now on how we're going to vote in january we

056may as well vote now i'd rather just vote on the process that we will be voting in january yes or no does that make sense i i hear it different i hear what you're saying i hear it differently what i hear is that the emotion on the floor is that come january at that time we vote whether or not we vote to be in compliance with state regulations and at that time the vote would either be a yes or no and so there's no uh there's no um position at this time to make a choice that choice would happen in january either being in favor of being in compliance with what has been proposed or the no answer would be not being in favor and keeping it as is keeping the names um as they

057are so i want to just reiterate uh what i said previously i we listened to 10 parents speak here tonight who feel that the board is not responsive to what they are experiencing and what they feel this is a very big decision in this community i think if i remember correctly somebody can correct me if i'm wrong when this was last brought up this was one of the biggest board meetings ever with parents coming in here i think that we have to take into account what the community feels as well and i personally do not feel by january 18th with holidays and missing meetings and things like that and the information that i personally would like to at least make available to myself that i'm going to have the ability to make that type of

058decision i don't see a rush to run to do this this is a big decision this affects people who live in this town for many many years and have very strong feelings about it and i feel that we should take the time and get the information and i don't feel that january 18th is going to give us that time thank you fair enough and so ethan yes two things one is and i'm not the wordsmith more numbers but when you say in compliance that implies that it's we're out of compliance or in compliance i thought i heard it was an optional type of thing if you if you go with the policy you get more you get the 20 000. if you're out of the policy you don't get the 20 000 but compliance means

059we're in violation of a state oh publicly so i just don't know what the words are i just think if we can word it differently i also think and this may come around left field but if we are saying we are worried about how we define things then we should look at king phillips as well not that i think it should change but you don't if you're going to do one you might as well at least engage the other which opens a whole can of worms but presumably would come later so just you know but but i certainly think if we can change the wording on the compliance because to me it says yeah we obviously want to be in compliance but this isn't like you know it's a yes or no it's a yes

060no or you lose the money so i don't know there's a way to word that thank you i i wonder i wonder if the compliance is with a specific respect to public act 21-2 and so according to that that's where um that piece because i'm just saying can we use a different word following compliance is a yes or no to me and i don't and what i heard was this is if you want 20 000 plus you need to be following this this request public act all right yes other thoughts or questions comments and i know that we still have on the floor in terms of the current um current motion applies to january the 18th however there was a request for the time to be pushed back further and so team what are your

061thoughts on that to identify a different date on the calendar yes i'm in favor of moving the date out especially with the holidays it's a month and a half and that doesn't seem like enough time thank you claire pardon me for not referring to us clear yes claire all right tom um again your decision about the timing it's just if we're gonna have a process to create a new name to create new logos then it is time sensitive if you want it done by the end of this year which is so that's part of the question if you move it out and then you really can't do it at the same time we're doing budgets and budget hearings and everything else so that takes out um that then that you're pushing what would look like

062into april or late april for this discussion if you go through the budget time frame thank you claire um what is the specific deadline it says for the fiscal year ending june 30th 2023 so does the decision have to be made by june with that decision and whatever the outcome may be we know that there are many things that would have to follow based on what that decision is and so many uh collaboration with our account administration logos things that are printed all of that so wanting to allow time for those changes to take place the more time available for that uh the better so yes that date is there for the 23rd but again wanting to try to be planful and how things are implemented and so with that respecting that we certainly do

063as has been shared we have our our budget uh period that's coming up and for our newcomers you will experience that it certainly is one that is quite involved and so with that um with the current proposed date for the 18th however not wanting to go too far into the year what uh teams i don't have the calendar in front of me of all of the upcoming meetings the 21st february 1st february 1st pardon february the 1st looking at agenda items with that what how much time do you need if you are going to change i think that might be a better way to time it than you know so that gives the community time to to look into it i mean do you need a year do you need 18 months do you need

064or we pass that or i mean you're talking you're not talking about not doing it if you do it it's just when so the districts as we say we've seen double digits districts in the past three years make this change and they didn't have the same drawn out process that west hartford underwent seven years ago in terms of the the question and what went into it boards made the decision and then newington for example became the nor'easters and so they got their schedules done for the following year i think that was made the change wasn't made i think that was made last january jason i'm not sure if you know top of your head and then they began competing this fall as the nor'easters and some of the uniforms are still undergoing the shifts of

065the school as you rotate the uniform shifts going through but um basically we would envision giulio and dan of a committee to get together have if the choice of the board was to make a name change if not then there's no reason to do anything if there was a vote to make a name change you'd bring groups together for a group of things to be nominated over a set time and then perhaps what most districts have done is narrowed it down to five names or so and then have the vote on those five names and then begin crafting the logo and the work that goes from that forward so um no it's a lot of work no doubt um that julio and dan and jason and andy would be signing up for um to get

066done in a period of time it's a question of do you want it done for the start of a school year do you want to delay it for a following school year you don't want to do it mid-year i think that's pretty clear you want a clean start for a year so what i'm going to ask is recognizing the february 1st meeting date if we could amend the motion to identify the february the first meeting date and if we can proceed to vote at that point in time whether or not that is the date that we have the vote based on the motion and thank you superintendent moore for describing what process could take place thereafter february the 1st in terms of the implementation process and that would certainly involve things that have been discussed

067here and how that is rolled out before we before amending the motion yes clear um i'm just wondering is it possible to get feedback from the students and and and i'd like to know where the students stand i also am curious um not being a sports player myself not being a cheerleader not being involved in that how much of the student body identifies with chieftain and warriors and wouldn't be upset by a change i mean it i'm just curious where the student body stands and i understand the legacy and the people moved on but the current student body i'd really like to know how they feel it's a very good point and we certainly do want to to hear from the student body and that's why the time from now until then is where we

068want to be able to hear that again what we're deciding on now is whether or not to vote february 1st and that vote at that time will determine which way to go whether to keep the names as is or whether to change the names so what you're speaking of certainly so and we want to be able to hear those voices um leading up to the time that we vote on what to do avery um if i may respond briefly to miss nasserala um i as a student representative i would prefer the february first date because it would enable me as a student and i assume andrew too to speak with more students at our school possibly it takes a good amount of time for information to get through student groups to get to the thousands

069of people well there's thousands of students at school who of those who may have thoughts on this um but also in considering community feedback um it's important that on one point we get the information out to people as quickly as possible so that they can begin that mobilization of those conversations and dialogues outside of board meetings but also that we don't delay this um for the same reasons as previously um discussed because i i wouldn't like to be hasty and stating student opinions since i haven't been able to bring this information we just started talking about two students but um there is some sentiment among students at hall in regards to this name and how we want to present as a community and i think that it would be appreciated by many members of our

070community if we did make that change other questions or comments deb so um i'd like to just make one final request that when the motion is remade it be made in a way that makes it abundantly clear that as we vote tonight as a board we are voting on whether or not to vote to discontinue the use of chieftain and warrior not any other phrasing that makes it seem like we're voting today for something that we're actually not voting on until february 1st thank you all right thank you so jason yes okay um first of all i want to thank everyone on the board for the feedback on this i think it's very important that that we proceed in a way that reflects indeed our policies around equity and uh and about inclusion um and

071hearing the diversity of of opinions the process we we go through should reflect that um and so i think i have a sweet spot here so the motion i'd like to change to is to address public act 21-2 with a vote on the use of chieftain and warrior and create a process to adopt new measures on february 1. is there a second second any question or discussion i'm sorry what do you mean by and create a process because if the vote on february 1st is that we're retaining the names then there wouldn't be a process it could be create a process if necessary that would be fine this is it jason all right this is this is a part of the process thank you so much yes yes yeah i just i'm getting confused i

072i could we restate what we're going to vote on we're trying nope that's all right and this is what this is about so the motion has been rescinded essentially and it's going to be restated and and if there are any questions based on what motion has been put forth then we'll certainly discuss that but yes it will be restated yes yes so to restate the motion as it's been revised is to address public act 21-2 with a vote on the use of chieftain and warrior and create a process if necessary to adopt new measures on february 1. is there a second because measures are named sorry measures i mean you're talking names is there any reason not to say names um i just turned the quarterfly note um i was reflecting the language uh that

073the chair was using okay it could be more than names though because it could be mascots i think you're referring to the met the measures because it would be the measures that would come after a decision that would involve not just necessarily the name but also anything like mascot creation of that kind of thing i mean i'll accept it but to me i mean measure doesn't mean anything i understand so so any other questions or comments with the motion that's on the floor that has been properly seconded with that we'll ask all of you to try your minds all of those in favor say aye aye any abstentions one abstentions all right the eyes have it so a good thank you and with that we know that on february the 1st we'll come together and

074we will vote on this motion thank you thank you so much uh all right moving on to continued with under new business section b modification to the 2021-2022 school calendar superintendent moore okay thank you um this edition came with the as you know we passed the calendar two years ahead of time and for the school year and occasionally there are modifications that are required during the year because something comes up this certainly isn't something that's required but um enough parents came forward and um teachers and i had a discussion with um theresa the president of the whea that the february 23rd is the thursday before vacation i'm sorry february that's my birthday december 23rd um is the thursday before vacation and um that's a full day which in many places actually about half the plays

075around us and typically west hartford would have a short wednesday schedule a regular wednesday schedule ours right now is in as a um full day so the question came forward of whether the board would want to consider making that a short day before the vacation so people could begin travel or anything else that might get involved a little earlier that afternoon again up to you thank you any questions at all you know i will just go ahead and propose the motion and we'll discuss if they're questions at that time so the recommendation is that the board of education approve a modification to the 2021-2022 school calendar to make thursday december the 23rd 2021 an early dismissal wednesday release is there a motion so moved thank you ari a second a second claire thank you questions

076or discussion can ask a time a question i assume since you're proposing it you're fine with it or recommending it i realize you're passing to the school board but i figure ask the question no that's fair ethan um you know i think that there it is a um [Music] our teachers have done an awful lot this year um in the past year and a half um i don't think that the i hate i alright difficult part is i never argue against instructional time because i think it's so valuable so it's real i mean it's hard for me to say i recommend less instructional time with that being said i understand the desire for a lot of families to travel earlier i understand the need for teachers um to do the same and i also understand

077that this is a small measure from the board of appreciation for what they've gone through as we come into this time of year um so so yeah i would be in favor of it yeah yeah just wondering is this a just for this current year or is this going to be going forward it's just for this year's calendar other questions claire i i think it's a really great idea i know that as a teacher and when you're getting ready for the holiday that little bit of a extra time can mean a lot to the families kids even if you're not traveling and it still counts as a full day of school so it's not affecting the school days other questions comments my thoughts are i too am in support of this we certainly know our

078teachers have been through a lot over the past almost two years our students have been through a lot over the past almost two years it seems like it will be mutually beneficial and it certainly is is one of many ways that we can certainly acknowledge that we hear you and we appreciate your effort and so with that if there are no other questions or discussion in response to the motion on the floor all of those in favor say hi hi any oppose any abstentions the eyes have it the thursday before the break is a wednesday schedule continuing on to staff communication and reports superintendents report okay thank you very much um a couple pieces of information our vaccine clinics um continue tomorrow night at charter oak and whiting lane um these would be second shots

079for the those aged 5 to 11 that have already gotten their first shot um these are from three to eight and i just want to thank um you know juan melian and karen cookis but so many of our administrators that have gone to help host these we're not the delivery of the vaccines it's and we're providing the space um but for them to spend that extra time during this during this time and we've had long lines at different times and people have been remarkably patient and it's greatly appreciated our partnership with uconn they the uconn health center is continuing to accept walk-in appointments for those five to eleven um so we we urge people to continue to we're we're up to around 50 now of those age 5 to 11 in west hartford with um

080at least their first shot and while we have seen um certainly an increase anybody follows the letters home from dr morrow knows that um we're in a coveted surge which um happens typically after thanksgiving as it did last year this is when we saw a surge last year's surge was larger than this one as far as not just both cases and quarantines and we've seen our quarantine numbers certainly not where they were last year we were on a call today with the state epidemiologist and they talked about what we're seeing and certainly you know our mitigation strategies the the good news through this is they're still working what we're seeing is family and community spread we if we were seeing spread within the schools we were seeing that dramatic spread happen um that we couldn't

081through contact tracing identify where a child was getting it or what what was the logical nexus of this then we'd be recommending um some changes perhaps but that that isn't the case um the schools still seem to be one of the safest places that um kids can be even when you look at the case rate versus the state overall in our schools when we do have these surges we track them back to family events we track them back to neighborhood events and sometimes sleepovers which it is what it is and that's um that's something that we have seen um boosters open to the town friday and saturday i connored from three to six on friday and ten to three um booster shots are available um our staff has been getting boosters and that's also home

082to the community the state is hosting a webinar on thursday december 16th from 5 to 6 pm this is in everybody's newsletters from the schools this is staying in school safely during coven 19 and evening with kinetico connecticut medical experts for parents and families this is being put on by the state it will be recorded afterwards parents can register that information is in your school newsletter so that's a little over a week from now um and um some really good news to share um that's just becoming public um jamal heinz as you as you guys know who's presented here who um assistant principal at connard high school and truly one of the more decent human beings i've known other great people to be around he makes you feel better about being in his presence and

083he does that for our kids as i'm sure you know andrew anybody at conor does he's um you know he's one of the hearts and souls of conor and he's done tremendous work with our future educators diversity and it gives me great pleasure to announce we had a visiting committee come by interview families teachers members of the leadership team giulio and the kinetic association of schools has named jamal heinz as the assistant principal of the year for 2022. so great news great news for our friend jamal who is jamal heinz is just a just a pleasure to be around i'm going to ask rosina haskins dr haskins and paul vicinus to come forward and one of the things i want to do as part of the superintendent's update is we you know there's there's a

084difference between not listening and not agreeing and i think that's important for people to recognize and um they've been doing work um throughout this time listening to people talking about the work that has created some attention and in terms of how we how we present ideas to our kids to help them explain the world around them themselves their friends their families their teachers in some cases and um so i'm gonna ask paul and rosina to talk a little bit thank you and good evening everyone um as tom mentioned there's been a lot of attention a lot of inquiries that have come whether to the board certainly to the schools and to the district office and specifically even media attention regarding our treatment of gender equity and gender equity is a fraction of our overall larger

085sel curriculum but that is where the attention and the inquiries have been focused and some of that reporting specifically some national reporting from media outlets outside of the state of connecticut have really served to misrepresent the actual content and the actual goals of what is in our curriculum and created i think some of the confusion um and perhaps some of the unrest um and so we're here and we're happy to have the opportunity to try to address this uh and try to uh kind of set the record straight and give some clarity around our work and specifically our commitments good evening everyone uh thank you superintendent moore for including the scl civics curriculum in your superintendent's update and we're happy to have this opportunity to provide larger framing and points of clarification on this topic

086we will speak specifically we can't speak specifically to the identity portion or gender identity portion of our curriculum since that's what's relevant in our public comments tonight and in the past month but we think it's important for the newer board members and members of the viewing public who might be new to the topic to have a little bit of context and brief background so social emotional learning sel stands for social emotional learning during the september 9th in october 19th board member meetings we provided an update and a full presentation to the board in which we shared the intersection between sel and equity equitable educational opportunities for all children not some children but all children so both of those board reports we won't rehash that but both of those board reports are available on our district

087website the full presentation recording is available on whc interactive and you know joining me joined me at the board table that evening were our student we had student voices and we had my colleagues our educators so our elementary scl civics framework is based on the connecticut social studies standards and it is aligned with the castle framework hassle stands for the collaborative for academic social emotional learning and it is essentially a research-based set of competencies that parents and educators can teach and model for students to develop social emotional academic healthy skills for academic for success whether in the classroom or in the community and so there are five essential competencies their self-awareness self-management social awareness responsible decision-making and relationship skills and self-awareness really is promoting the ability to understand one's own emotions thoughts feelings values and

088how they influence behavior across context self-management is has to do with self-regulation and managing and regulating your own emotions your behavior and sometimes stress social awareness or the abilities to understand the perspectives of and to empathize with others including those from diverse backgrounds cultures and contexts responsible decision making is really having the ability to make caring and responsible and constructive choices in your personal behavior social interactions across diverse contexts again and then relationship skills relationships matter and so it's really helping students to develop and establish maintain healthy relationships supportive relationships and to effectively navigate new settings in diverse contexts and situations among individuals and groups we are a very richly robust diverse community and so all of these skills come together cohesively in a program that we use at the elementary level and we're going

089to talk specifically about elementary scl within our morning meeting structure and that program is called second step and second step grounds itself in sel in the progression of its lessons so for example kindergarten apologizing can help a student might have that kind of a lesson or first grade i'm feeling frustrated or fourth grade saying it respectfully so the progression of the lessons they're also adapted from learning for justice and that is an anti-bias social justice framework and it serves as our lever for equity and there are four domains that is identity diversity justice and action and we're going to unpack um identity in just a moment but the terms of the structure the sel civics curriculum it may it's a total makeup of about 80 to 100 lessons per grade throughout the entire year and

090it consists of one second step lesson per grade per per week and one to two sel social justice or civics lessons per week so there are about over a hundred titles that support the lessons the majority of the questions that we have received is positive talked about focus on one individual lesson per year on gender identity and so before we can unpack gender identity it's really important to understand that these lessons are framed under the civic social justice identity domain and based on the sclsj framework and the overarching goal of that instruction under the identity domain is really to promote the understanding of the various characteristics that make up our uniqueness and our sameness and how identity does affect relationships in schools and in classrooms so this concept of identity has you know natural connections

091with the castle essential skills that i described earlier so while gender is a very important aspect of identity our curriculum is much broader than gender identity and does explore multiple dimensions of identity such as race ethnicity language and nationality faith and family structure and more but we we know it's clear that we need to speak specifically to our treatment of gender identity and gender equity at the elementary level and to just kind of clarify some of those misrepresentations and misconceptions so given what i hope you heard in terms of kind of some of the scope which is which has really served to uh to make this issue feel bigger feel like it it's represented our entire curriculum some of the other misrepresentations that that i've heard because i've had the opportunity to read emails we've

092had the opportunity to dialogue we've seen things and and it seems that there are concerns or claims that either conflate or confuse our work on gender stereotypes and gender expression with that of indoctrination and that's a specific quote conflating our efforts to enable students to be accepting and respectful of differences which is our goal with that of overtly teaching students to recognize differences critique differences within each other which is not our goal we've heard claims that seem to confuse our efforts to provide students with the windows and the mirrors for the vast diversity that exists within our schools and to teach them to appreciate the common bonds of our community and respect individual differences with claims that we're asking students to grapple with the complexity of those differences which is not true we've heard concern

093from parents in terms which which i translate into asking for input as to what types of differences might we acknowledge what types of differences might we opt into or opt out of which student groups which cultures which identities which students should be ignored that last set of concerns really reflects conflating our effort to recognize and respect the diverse forms of identity that exists in the community with that of an attempt on our part to impose values um that that would be uh more appropriately placed with the family so we're here to provide hopefully some corrections some clarifications try to clear up some of those misrepresentations of our work and any ambiguities that exist on our own part through through uh we recognize we can do better with communication so we begin with our why and

094it's our shared values it's our mission statement it's our board of education policies and they are replete there are numerous references within multiple board of education policies regarding our responsibilities within our instructional program to and this is a quote value recognize and address the needs of all children as well as to promote student understanding and appreciation for cultural and individual differences all right that exists well beyond our equity policy the simple fact is that we have had students across nearly every single one of our elementary schools who are either gender non-conforming gender questioning or exhibiting preferences typically in their dress or their appearance that are gender non-traditional that's the simple truth we have had families and students who have requested from us acknowledgement and respect for their expressed personal pronouns or to be called by

095something other than their legal name there's clear guidance for school districts from the state of connecticut written in statute regarding our responsibilities to respect such requests so i can talk about the what of our curriculum so we acknowledge that there are differing opinions and for some religious overtones on the topic of gender identity and so that being said our position is not to promote or defend or debate or refute a family's personal point of view nor to engage in discussion of values other than our shared values that paul just articulated and that is really to ensure that every child feels safe welcome valued accepted and respected i'm within our school community so the one of our of our curriculum really rests within a simple set of learning targets within our primary grades uh those targets

096are one i can express who i am so i'm rosina and i'm jim of jamaican heritage i'm happy and proud of that two i can show respect to others when they express who they are i respect paul's active duty military service would be an example i can identify examples of gender stereotypes so growing up i remember thinking that only men could be engineers and scientists and i see that there's a world of possibilities for people just like me and so in grades four and five we maintain those three learning targets um but we add a final one and that is i can be respectful of others and refer to them by their pronouns by their preferred nicknames or salutation so though those are the three learning targets that's the what and then four for fourth

097and fifth grade those are the goals those are the curricular goals the how of the approach and the larger in the larger discussion of identity and diversity of identities how we do it is to offer reflections that foster the development of a positive self-confident self-concept in terms of expressing who i am and a positive view of the diversity within our collective identities to promote empathy and respect for others how i show respect for others we do this through a series of read aloud stories and companion lessons in which teachers facilitate a developmentally appropriate discussion based on the age of the child in support of the four learning targets that rosine identified specific book that was actually mentioned uh this evening earlier pink is for boys it's a kindergarten book the storyline attempts to model that

098preferences of favorite colors game play needn't be limited to any gender that's the storyline of the book within the lesson guide a suggested question for discussion is do boys and girls play different things at recess have you ever been told that you can't join in because of your gender identity because you're a boy because you're a girl you can't play this game with us that's a kindergarten lesson example i heard earlier this evening that i actually i think i heard it potentially misrepresented misunderstood i'm not pleased not casting aspersions that we were trying to teach those gender differences when in fact our goal is exactly the opposite in the kindergarten book introducing teddy book on gender identity the storyline describes a teddy bear who tells his friend that he's actually a girl teddy not a

099boy teddy and wishes to be called tilly instead of thomas within the lesson guide a suggested question for children is how does ava another character in the book react when errol the owner of the teddy bear tells her that tilly has a new name what does she say is ava being a good friend to tilly the teddy and how did it make tilly feel that is the how in a developmentally appropriate way for a kindergarten student for either these read aloud lessons there are also optional activities that teachers might engage in with students throughout most of the two above stories the characters are playing their favorite games riding bikes climbing trees etc to reflect common interests that children would have at this age level optional activities could be things where students create drawings to express

100their favorite things their favorite activities in an effort to promote confidence in their own self-identity and providing them an outlet to express who they are so we hope that this brief framing and you know clarifying points about the equity goals of the sel civics curriculum and specifically we hope that this provides a better understanding about the learning targets for gender stereotypes gender expression and overall gender equity but identity i'm valuing one's everyone's identity and so this really isn't just like we keep talking about our policy yeah our policy grants the right of every student um to feel entitled to an authentic sense of safety and belonging but it's also our promise to our students and um it is our ethical responsibility and so our we do feel we have been listening and we want to

101be responsive um to to families but but our students they're they're on they are our north star um and so our partnerships with our parents and our caregivers and the community stakeholders it continues to be central to our work we're not toned up we want to ensure that we create inclusive and safe welcoming environments for all of our students we want we prefer to do that in partnership with our parents and caregivers so you know this is just brief framing um in clarifying some of the misunderstandings based on what we've heard but families or community members who are seeking to really gain deeper understanding of what we are doing rather than debating what we're not doing you can access more detailed information on our website probably right after this meeting on the whps website we'll

102have make sure that information and communication goes out through all of our elementary school newsletters so families don't have to search for it and we're open to other communication vehicles to get the message out about what we are doing and why we feel so passionate and strong about it all right thank you for the superintendent's report questions uh teammates um ari ari andrew and then ari um first of all thank you that was actually um really clarifying um for a few of the points my question is i know some parents in the past have brought up um that after some of the lessons their children were confused on certain points and i'm sure that's like part of the process of learning new things um i'm just wondering if um and i'm sure you've received like

103more parents uh emails or teachers emails about any possible confusion that's arisen but have there been attempts to respond to um general um points of confusion that may have come up that once the curriculum was like actually implemented you realize maybe there was something that could be made more clear so certainly thank you andrew for the question um a lot of those conversations happen and i've and i've been made privy to some of them if there was a point of confusion or a question that came home and it and it's like any other topic which is either a sensitive topic or you know we have a specific board policy done controversial topics where the treatment if if there's something that's a question that's more appropriately answered at home it is referred to home and then

104at times the parent may reach out directly may be speaking with a teacher or principal and and get that clarification to understand what some of that grounding was to that end we want to be able to provide as dr haskins just said more transparency around some of the texts and some of the books so uh i know you promised right after this meeting i'm going to ask for tomorrow uh that we will have all of that information up and available we have the full list of all of our mentor texts all 80 to 100 of them per grade level uh with a short synopsis so so that so that that information can be you know can be available to any parent we've also been responsive and i'll just mention this because one of the texts

105that was brought up by a very articulate speaker earlier this evening that talked about a particular young lady who was standing in front of a group of police officers you know the part that's misunderstood misrepresented in in some of the concerns that are then shared out publicly and repeated is that those pages were excluded from our curriculum and when we saw it and we had more conversation and around that text the text has been removed it's been removed for several weeks we don't necessarily have kind of the window or the outlet to to express that but there's a lot of misinformation that goes on where we have the opportunities to have the conversations we can correct some of that but you know a lot of a lot of this because it is a sensitive topic

106for some uh there there is a jump to some uh there's a jump to some conclusions that aren't correct that aren't in the spirit with what we're trying to do and they're generally when you listen to what people are concerned about and what they're saying there's generally a lot of agreement around the goal of making all students feel welcome safe and included and that that that's our bottom line goal thank you all right i just wanted to thank you for the further clarification today um i don't really have a question but more more along the lines of a comment um i know there's been a lot of controversy around this particular topic with rel you know with regard to sel but as a professional who works day in and day out with children as young

107as nine as old as 18 who have significant mental health issues such as depression anxiety suicidal ideation self-harming behaviors have been the victims of bullying have low self-esteem as a direct result of their gender identity not being recognized or validated or accepted by peers by classmates and oftentimes by their own family i want to thank you for for making school a place where children spend a good six hours of their day by providing them a safe space and normalizing behaviors that maybe others are not doing for them and i hope through this curriculum and starting as early as elementary school that i see less and less kids coming in as a direct result of not being seen recognized validated for who they are as a person so thank you very much ethan thank you um

108i wasn't here for the presentations before but what you said makes sense the question is the execution which i don't know but i did hear you mention it it would appear from the converse you know the people who spoke and the emails that have come in um on the website although i screwed up on the password now so i'm blocked um is the communication and i heard you mentioned several times we you know the communication isn't working quite and i don't want to prepare put the wrong words in how do we fix that i guess because i come from a world of continuous improvement so my question is we are where we are today um like you said one of the books got discontinued i think i don't know if that's been communicated to parents

109is there a way to improve the communication is it i heard parents forum to me because to me parents are in a way the cost consumers and we that you can't make everybody happy but we should be listening you know and that's my concern is are we responding effectively and i realize perception is always there you're not going to make everybody happy but certainly i'd like is there ways we can improve the communication i guess it's where it's going absolutely no thanks ethan and absolutely you know i think i think we own that i own that in terms of how can we better communicate and uh you know the first step was the opportunity this evening during the superintendent's update to be able to even just provide a public forum for that the next step

110that we're taking as we said first in terms of you mentioned specifically what books are out there the ability to preview the books we'll have up tomorrow on our website um a a newsletter an electronic newsletter that anyone can click on to and they can get kind of an overview of the entire sel curriculum to include the pieces in there on gender stereotypes and the pieces in there on gender identity they'll be able to have the full list of books every book whether whether folks had concerns about you know any questions in terms of our our social emotional learning i heard i heard a concern that was referenced on social emotional learning tonight i heard a concern that was mentioned on some of our social justice and i and i certainly heard concerns on the

111gender they'll be able to see all of those books as well as the books that rosina talks about in terms of how do you ask for permission how do you be respectful of a peer things like that so they'll be able to to see every title and then it is of it is no effort whatsoever for you know to be able to google a lot of these titles to be able to get the full text of the book online through read aloud through youtube or through other through other venues uh we'll also be following up with principals at the elementary level and asking them to provide a short blurb in all of their outgoing newsletters and newsletters that are coming up that say that that announces the presence on the website of this information and

112directing those people who are interested to go and and seek more information you talked about execution and you know uh we're a big district and as we do this uh there's always you know there's always going to be some friction points as people go through this we've heard feedback from parents which i'm certain you know at some at some level comes from some feedback that they've had in communicating with their teacher about you know their their confidence their readiness and some people are already expert at this we have teachers that are that are kind of operating in a train the trainer model that are working with their peers to help support the work uh we have other teachers that kind of need a script and need to stay close to it and that's what we

113recommend that's why we have lesson guides that are there with example questions for discussion like those that i read and that is essentially uh you know the the meat and potatoes of what we're asking which is not a which is not a complex thing which does not require dramatic training if they're following the intent which is to help to make all students feel acknowledged and welcomed that's what teachers do every day but we have the opportunity through our early release wednesdays through our csis to provide professional learning we have professional learning on these topics scheduled throughout the year so we have a lot of pieces that are in place some of which are known some of which are not known by the public at all times and so again i think there's a lot of

114there's a lot of statements made a lot of assumptions about how well or how not well the machine is oiled and how it's running uh and and that's why we're very happy to be able to have the opportunity to really provide some clarification to this board and to our public so if i could just follow up so if you can be proactive because i think i i'm gonna miss i'm gonna script the quote but something there's something to the effect of where there's a vacuum you know there's misinformation or whatever you know a vacuum of information so if there's a way to communicate it to say you know like here's where we've changed the program i think that'd be important because right now i'm not aware that i mean frankly if the way to do

115is go through there i was trying to see how do i read some of these things i hear about it because i don't know well i think that that's important the only thing i'll push back on is i don't think there's been a vacuum i mean we've presented on this previously it's been in newsletters videos were sent out to families this this was communicated this wasn't out of the blue so i'll say that first secondly that kind of goes with that in terms of the controversy in the you know i do want to say it's not all the letters are on one side that's quite clear and when i talked gave a quote ronnie and other members of the media i was talking specifically about a national review article i was careful every other time

116i spoke to people i'm not talking about any west hartford parent i said specifically they can contact their teacher and their principal and have discussions i'm talking about an outside news source that wrote an article that creates controversy as a design that never once contacted me that never once contacted west hartford that put out information from an outside source not from west hartford so the reason we're putting this all up there isn't because we're apologizing for something that's something i want to make clear it's because we express what we do because we're not ashamed of it to anyone we're the only district that sends letters out every night if you think i want to send a letter out with dr morrow saying yeah 13 kids tested positive trust me i don't because i know what

117that equals in the morning we have a district website that lists all of our cases and the number of people that are in quarantine i know that that leads to a loop feedback but that's okay because we're going to be out front of it and we're going to be transparent that's what we're doing with this that's why it's out there not to apologize for any of it because we stand by all of it and that doesn't mean that we don't hear people it means we don't always agree and that's okay but when we talk about who we stand with in the past four weeks the people that have reached out to me pulled me aside talked about how our work has not just affirmed who they are but has made them feel a part of

118the west hartford community i know that there are people that have left but i had a discussion today with a family that moved here specifically and bought their home because of this news i have education week that wants to interview me and post our district as an example in the work we've done a district leader that wants to do a podcast about this nationally we have districts contacting dr haskins every day because this work is so needed so i want to make clear and i understand what you're saying ethan i'm not pushing back on you because i listen when there's a communication problem i'm the first to say i could have done it better if it's a misinterpretation misunderstanding then clearly we didn't do what we should have done but i don't want it to

119come across as well we're apologizing we're rolling back no we're trying to make everybody understand accurately this is what we're doing and here's what it is no i understand but my point was more perception does become reality and but more importantly is you from what you said you've made some changes and i think that's important for people to hear that you're listening as opposed to your you know this is it and because that hasn't you know to me to come through so jason then claire and then gail right yes thank you for um for describing more the details and the process and the pedagogy behind the the curriculum that you've presented and that we can get this this a deeper layer of what you've presented in the past and you know i wanted to ask

120you to um to reflect on some of what i think are some of the most important research outcomes from the castle from the collaborative for um academic social emotional learning to me it sounds like you know as a 25 year old organization that that it's not that some of the the insights to me that feel the most important are about the ways that those different forms of learning work together right um and i think that speaks to to me some of the other misconceptions that i've heard um that um that sel is a distraction that it's experimenting on kids um understanding the research that's come behind these these frameworks i think could could help develop a a deeper sense of the ways that that social emotional learning makes the other subjects deeper and connects students

121more wholly to to the school to their classroom experience um and then you know more as a as a comment um you know my work with the state's hate crimes advisory council um you know we're also concerned with um with violence in schools and the government accounting office has has released reports uh that violence in schools is up and um and gender and sexuality uh based violence is the second most common form of violence in schools uh these lessons are incredibly important and uh in in preventative measures um not all schools have this or do this kind of work um and and and their districts are are working with the consequences so uh i'm grateful for for the the work that you've put into this and i think our our district is better off for

122it uh but i would love to hear your guys understanding of the castle framework and how it situates with um with a broader set of curriculum thank you jason we you know the the pedagogy the frameworks it's backed by decades of research just like hassle is those are research-based competencies and you know essentially it promotes conditions to enable all children to reach their full potential you know we think about students with disabilities gender really encompassing you know opportunities for students to when they're managed able to better manage their emotions right they're better able to access you know information oftentimes are stu sometimes we have students especially in times of covet coming back and feeling that sense of fight or flight and when students feel like that they can't learn and so the this is a

123responsive classroom approach and i think to your point you know we can certainly cite lots of research when we put the information out when i said after this meeting i didn't mean like immediately after this meeting i met after we go to sleep and wake up in the morning and we click on whps.org it'll be on our website but we can certainly include that information but it really is an equity level we've seen we've seen research in terms of like 50 years of research the coleman study for example where we've seen significant percentage gains in numeracy and literacy among students when we apply the sel as a lever for equity and so that's information that we we recognize and appreciate that many people are coming into this conversation and this understanding from a different quadrant

124of you know the compass whether it's intellectual and so we'll make sure that we have that data to back that we certainly have it and that's what we've utilized we didn't do this in a vacuum we did this with you know diverse groups of people including our parents we had many parents on our different parent work groups that come with lots of educational background and lived experiences and so that accounts for something as well too not just you know what the experts out in the field say but hearing from our students as we did at the last board presentation their lived experiences too is also data source we also recognize that there are people who are coming into this conversation and understanding um based on a moral ethical conviction they're people who are just ready

125to act and then coming from it through the emotional appeal and so we truly see sel as an equity lever for all students not some students for all students and it's backed by decades of research claire so i wasn't on the board of ed but i did watch the board of ed with the sel presentation from staff and students and it sounds like a lot of work went into it with parents being involved teachers being involved when it comes to actually implementing though if you imagine 11 schools you might have 33 35 kindergarten teachers so those mentor texts are there for them to select from but also you're giving the script because not everyone has the same comfort level but as a teacher you're always reflecting and as administrators and curriculum writers you're reflecting and

126you're changing and you're adapting and so i like that there is a script for those that might not have it so comfortable and each year you improve your teaching i actually sit in an sel group for 20 minutes every single day with 24 first graders and it's an amazing experience and it's about community and it's about belonging and it's about being accepted for who you are um many things come up and so i think it's really important to see sel as that whole sense of um there's a place for me and i belong here and there's people who care about me and those guiding questions that you have the guiding the guidelines allow any teacher to enter with materials to do the best they can and to change over time so i hope the the

127professional development continues i think the conversations are great but i think it's good work that you're doing and i'm proud to be doing of my part in my school every day thank you um well i'm really glad you're here because we've had quite a wild week with all kinds of communication going back and forth my experience maybe is a little bit different than the superintendents most of the people that um and the communications i've seen have been very concerned about what is being brought into the elementary school in terms of gender i agree with a lot of what you're saying and i agree that we want every child in in the school system to feel welcome and to feel that they have a place but i feel that we from what i'm hearing from parents

128is that we are not doing a good job in terms of involving our parents um in some of what is being taught in the schools i i guess i'm not exactly saying that in the exact way that i want to but i feel that when you i think that parents feel that when they you bring a subject manner that's coming into or now the you know kindergarten first grade second grade revolving around gender that they feel that they should also have something or have a place to discuss that with you and i think that uh we haven't really done a good job in terms of allowing the parents to have a forum or a place where they can bring their concerns to be you or maybe it's supposed to be brought somewhere else so i

129think that we we need to maybe find a way to let people be heard and bring their concerns to either both of you or other places that's just my comment i've received many many communications this week about people being very concerned about what's going on in the elementary school i had one follow-up question also something that jason said about research and mine is probably a little bit more specific are there studies out there in a less general way that do talk about or do show that there is a benefit to promoting or bringing in this material into the elementary school and i'm speaking specifically on gender and if there are is it possible that we can get those research yeah there are several there's the trevor study um more dealing with um more teenage adolescent

130um i know but there's there's guidance from that that we get they don't wake up as teenagers you know um they're living experiences and as they become teenagers we've had our own teenagers say i wish i had this in elementary school this would have been more freeing for me we also have i think one of our most reputable resources is genderspectrum.org and that's filled with lots of rich current and past research and i don't want to just limit it to the to gender because there's also a piece where we use zoretta hammond's culturally responsive teaching in the brain and that has implications too for allowing students to express themselves to grow learn grow and develop feel a sense of respect and acceptance too um i don't know i can't i'm trying to think of some

131of the other studies right off the top of my head but we've amassed a lot we've really dug into a lot of it specific to you know the four domains of an identity diversity justice and action but specific to gender identity gender expression and you know guidance from gender stereotypes we can include that information on our website as well thank you other questions comments all right well thank you all very much for the superintendents update thank you thank you paul yes mr vaisinas please to stay we're moving right on to understaff communic staff communications and reports uh the second piece staff reports and board discussions school day sat results thank you and i welcome ann mckernan with me our director of secondary education and it's a privilege to be able to report i do apologize

132to our viewing public apparently our projector is down so i will make the powerpoint that i have shared in hard copy with our board available to the public as a companion to the written report that is already up on the board of education website i'll be presenting tonight on the school day sat results uh 2021 sat was taken during last school year during the 2021 school year in the month of march or april i believe and if you look quickly at the agenda slide we'll talk a little bit about the background of the s.a.t itself as a as a formal state assessment we'll talk a little bit about the context of the impact of the pandemic on our state assessments as we have in the past we'll talk specifically about how it impacted both the

133administration and the interpretation of results for the sat certainly we'll share with you overall results and trends and disaggregate our results as we have traditionally and then offer any opportunity for questions all right so turning to the slide on background um the sat especially for members of the board of education who are new if you haven't been following kind of the s.a.t i know if if i weren't in education i wouldn't necessarily follow changes to the sat but the sat did have a major overhaul uh back in 2016 when it changed from the sat that i took as a high school student which had three sections it used to have critical reading writing and mathematics it limited it down to two evidence-based reading and writing and mathematics and it changed a lot of the content

134within each of those areas in the english language arts it focuses more heavily on command of evidence analyzing a source and words in context and in mathematics it focuses in on three essential areas that of algebra problem solving and a bucket they just simply refer to as advanced mathematics there is a benchmark score that's given that we'll talk a little bit more about on the next slide but before i go there i want to talk about some of the caveats for the interpretation of the 2021 results these are the same general caveats that we've talked about when we've talked about our smarter balanced results and we've talked about our talked a little bit about the ap result so there wasn't there wasn't a big caveat on interpretation of scores it was really just how the

135test itself changed there was a requirement for the sat in march of last year that if you wanted to take it you had to physically come into the school to be present so there was an impact in terms of our our students who were choosing to access their education remotely in and whether or not they did participate in the test generally as you read in the report we have about 99 participation of eligible students and last year we dropped i think it was somewhere between 91 and 92 percent of students participating in the test it is a free sat that's paid for by the state of connecticut it's exactly the same sat that you could kind of sign up for and take on a saturday administration the big difference between our school day sat scores

136and our saturday scores is that our school day scores are taken by generally again close to 100 of the population our saturday administrations typically about 80 85 percent of juniors are taking that when the state disaggregated results this year for the s.a.t they did so based on attendance patterns for students so they broke students into three categories those who had full or nearly full attendance something in the neighborhood of 75 percent of of days attended in school in person those who were considered partially attended or hybrid students that that had attendance anywhere between 25-75 percent of the time which was the majority of our high school population because we were in hybrid for so long um and then students who were considered remote who had less than 25 percent of physical attendance within the building

137and they have not published those results they've published those results on the state website but they have not published them on ed site secure they're not including them for trend reporting they're not including them for any of the accountability scoring they're basically saying that school was sufficiently disrupted last year that you shouldn't make overarching assumptions about performance now all that being said uh the west hartford results were generally um not that far off from typical so you'll you'll see that in later slides if i if i could draw your attention to the second slide on background where you have the literacy and the mathematics headings and a couple of numbers there i just want to talk about what the state has defined as goal as you know the average score for the sat is is

138uh is determined to be in and around 500. uh the state has set benchmarks for literacy at a 480 and benchmark or goal for mathematics at a 5 30 and they came by those numbers through research basically identifying a 75 or better chance of earning a grade of c or higher in a corresponding freshman course in college all right you will notice when we get to our results um kind of the the difference between the 480 and the 530 in terms of how they stack so if i'll turn your attention to the next slide where it's a school day results and you see a lot of blue bars if it you know what i apologize i'm looking at these bigger ones and they didn't print as nicely as they would have displayed so it's cut

139off looks like some of the right hand side i didn't notice that but i think i think you get i can i can talk you through the important points on the visual first and foremost that you see that overall when you're looking at average score between a six-year trend for literacy or mathematics literacy on the left mathematics on the right with the with the years kind of going from left to right so the darker blue bar represents the 2021 performance for average score first and foremost you can see that the general trend is the average scores are are relatively stable relatively in the same place you see that for 2021 as we would expect we did have a slight dip but not a dramatic dip in the overall average score but what's more interesting is

140you see that overall the average score in mathematics for west hartford students over the six-year trend and the average score for literacy are pretty darn close and that's important to note because the black bar that's drawn is the goal bar and you can see by virtue of the scores that the goal bar for literacy that 480 is substantially lower than the 530 and that's simply based on as was stated the probability of earning a c or above in a freshman course when you turn the slide to the next page kind of the impact of that reflects itself a little bit more dramatically historically we've had about 79 percent of students achieve that 480 goal for literacy last year we had 79.4 percent achieve it the 79 uh the dark uh i'm sorry i said that

141in reverse the light blue is the previous five year average and the dark blue is the 2021 score so historically we've had 79.4 percent of kids get to the goal last year we had 79. very very much on par with our historical permits uh historically we've had just under 60 59.8 percent of students hit the bar for math last year we had 58 percent so very very close uh although you know very modest dips for both what's important to note is it looks like wow we're not doing as well in mathematics uh the the ability for us to get roughly 60 percent of our kids to goal in mathematics is actually a stronger performance relative to the state and the derg than is the nearly 80 percent of students for literacy and more importantly when

142you kind of look just backwards one slide overall the average score on the two tests is relatively equal so this college and career at a benchmark it's an important it's an important number but um i'm kind of here to try to convince you that we are doing a very good job overall on both components of the test there was a question uh that i received or anticipated how did the state of connecticut do so this wasn't uh this isn't on the slide but just to put these bars in context in our general performance in context uh the state of connecticut uh last year uh only had 58 percent of students achieve goal and literacy so we were about 20 points above and that was about a five point drop from the state's typical average you'll

143notice we were basically right on par we didn't have that five point drop and in math last year the state only had about 36 percent of its students achieve goal that's down from an average for the state of about 40 percent so we're about 20 points above the state average and again we had a minus a modest drop of about two points state had a drop of about four points so again we're doing pretty well and as you read in our report while we're not supposed to do comparisons with the durg i did and it was actually the first time that we have outperformed our dirt um and that's really evidence of the work of our teachers and i think the strength of our model last year so i'm very happy about that if you

144turn the page uh the next two slides are going to talk about our performance of our high needs subgroup and our high needs sub group especially for those of you who are on the board high needs sub group is the students with disabilities uh are english language learners students who are not english proficient and are students with socioeconomic need as identified by participation in the free and reduced priced lunch program all right those students have been categorized by the state of connecticut as high need they generally have a significant achievement gap in terms of their performance and so in and this is lost on my poor attempt to have this out because you can't see how far those blue bars stretch but i'll tell you that um the center line at zero the red is

145the performance of the high needs group for the state of connecticut so that in the top bar is 2021 so you can see that the the red bar is much you know not much but substantially shorter than the other red bars that the state had previously had typically the state had about 35 percent of the high needs performance group achieving goal west hartford has had between 45 and 55 percent of its high needs students achieving goal in literacy last year we were at 53.6 we were down slightly from our high the previous year which just hit 55 percent so so we we do have a gap clearly between our high needs group and in the district overall uh but the the level of uh fall off due to due to covid and all the disruption

146was was uh marginal was only a point and a half for our high needs students was about was less than a point for for the district overall so it was not a dramatic you know it wasn't on the shoulders of the high needs group turning the page for math you see similarly historically we had averaged for our high needs population in mathematics we had averaged in and around 30 percent of students hitting benchmark we had 31.6 last year that's a drop off from our high the previous year of 35 percent and you can see the relative comparison the state also had a significant drop off from its high in the previous year of about 15 percent so we're at about double the rate of students hitting the college career ready benchmark in mathematics than our

147state and but we did see a fairly substantial drop in that area lastly we do look at the distribution of scores for students of color for this i put students of color i put our black students our hispanic students and our students identifying as two or more races into one group so that there's a sufficient number of students in the group to be able to make you know make a look at things there was there was relatively no change in overall performance we're talking a point or a fraction of a point for the literacy with 60 percent of students color hitting benchmark last year in mathematics we had we had jumped up to a high of nearly 40 percent of students color and we dropped we dropped down to 33.5 percent so that is a

148a substantial drop and it still positions us well relative to the state of connecticut the state of connecticut by comparison for literacy we're at 60 percent state of connecticut last year was at 35 percent in mathematics we're at 33 and a half state of connecticut was at 15 percent so we still are at levels uh 25 points above in literacy 17 points above in math and um confident of the strength of our program which and and the uh and the performance of our teachers which really kind of speaks uh for who deserves credit uh for the good scores last page are just some um ancillary resources that you can reference if you have interest and at this time i'd open it up for ann and myself for any questions questions yes claire um yeah thank

149you for the presentation um i was curious um you had a six percent increase in mathematics in the 2018 2019 year was that curriculum can you tell explain what happened that saw such a huge increase in that those two years yeah absolutely um first thanks for noting that and highlighting we had seen incremental increases in math um actually since math was named as an area of focus i think that was some four years ago we saw incremental increases uh over a multiple year pattern based on a lot of work that we did both in terms of curriculum and instruction some shifts that we made we saw them not only in the sat but also in the smarter balance testing it is interesting that it was a sizable jump uh for the sat and so we

150we have spent a little bit of time to try to look at that and say okay was it some of the time you can predict those jumps because of the strength of the cohort so we actually did go back and we looked at the eighth grade performance on the smarter balance for that cohort of kids to see uh were they unusually uh you know demonstrably stronger than previous cohorts and the answer was no it was not strength co it was not strength chord i don't want to take anything away from any individual kid you guys did great um but uh but i think that you had some help from the teachers uh from both the instruction um and from some curricular shifts so we we have had multiple curricular shifts over the over the course

151of the last several years we we looked at you know trying to avoid some some of the repetition that we have seen in algebra one and algebra two we've looked at some of the sequencing of topics in geometry where those topics land relative to the sat because the sad does take place in march we've had some other changes that we've noticed in terms of some practice assignments that we've provided that provide direct sat support we've been promoting use of the khan academy for several several years but this group you know at the end of the day we were kind of looking at it we were breaking it down get within the cohort start to look at some of the classes that they took there's there's a group of students that are in the standard algebra

1522 and and and or those that are advanced whether they're in honors courses or they're accelerated by a year and and they outperformed the the peer group before them by 10 points and so that's really the the cohort of kids that's responsible overall for uh for the overall district six point gain there there's also students that are in some of the um some of the level three classes uh some of the students that traditionally have had some struggle with mathematics they they outperformed uh the previous cohort by about three points a lot of that and again it's a lot of the same reasons um in terms of in terms of the pedagogy in the in the curriculum but we are looking to see what we can do moving forward to replicate that uh and we're

153hopeful just like with all of our testing that once we're outside this coved window that we get back on track to those year after year small gains that we've been seeing last thing i'll say about it is it's also not a it's not a question of the group was smaller so their differences made a bigger difference the cohort itself was actually larger by several students so it was so it's a real gain we're real excited about them other questions yes all right i have a question and i don't know who would do this research but um i'm wondering if it's okay well um it's kind of looking across the state though but i'm i'm wondering with um you know with with onset of covid and different districts responding in different manners whether it was being

154remote for two years whereas we've been hybrid especially in the area of math because i really feel that math and science is a more hands-on is there any research being done looking at the difference between what the school format was and then what the scores were on the s.a.t because i think that would be compelling evidence to suggest that like math and science really is that in person requires that in person level of education or academics well the good the good news is the state has reported all of the data in three different learning modes okay as paul i think cited earlier we can see the state data not as this is how west hartford did it's always broken into the three learning modes that students um attended school how they attended school so we

155can look across different districts and uh most you know the vast majority of high schools were in a hybrid but there were some that were that were remote longer and there was there were fewer that were in person longer but we can certainly use that that filter to to look across different school districts and see relatively how that played out in in the math the so there's a national question here too that's always the danger of trying to compare s.a.t state value state because in connecticut all students take it some states only those motivated to take it to apply for college ticket and in some places they're more of an act state midwest so that shifts the number the same thing actually applies to those numbers that you're asking about i don't necessarily trust that

156data that much because frankly we bring all of our kids in that were remote and all of our kids we urged them to come in and take those tests in a lot of places it was only the highly motivated they came in to take the sats because you you had made the decision to be remote and now we're asking you to come in to take it so i i'm not sure we're going to be able to make any dramatic conclusion some people have been and then i've spoken to different superintendents about who took it how took it how they were and i'm not i'm not as confident in that date and i i don't know if you'd agree with me but yeah i know i mean part of your question remote versus in person and

157i'll just speak to that part i would tell you that the state overwhelmingly i think we've said the same thing i've presented our performance as an aggregate but overall when you look across the state and you look across those breakdowns the students that were remote had more challenge in the mathematics saw greater declines in the trend of performance and i think a lot of that has to do with the sequential nature of the curriculum and a lot of pedagogy with math in terms of the modeling that teachers do um i would agree with tom um certainly on the on you know how other states who the target audience for the sat is so it's so interstate or you know comparing across states is a challenge but even you know you talk about a challenge you

158talk about the 32 flavors of ice cream when you if you speak to anybody at the state who does their data jeet or anyone else and the various models that school districts came up with uh for their instruction two on one off you know weekend week you know it was it was it was just different everywhere everyone did it differently and that's not to throw any aspersions it's sort of like what are the conditions under which your buildings are the the size of your community the ability for transportation all those different the amount of spread all that um it's just hard anne had a you know exhibited a lot of leadership across the state getting instructional leaders assistant superintendents curriculum secondary curriculum leaders together on a was it weekly or bi-monthly call and um we

159would talk best practices we would talk about how you know how we're skinning this cat what we're doing to to solve this problem and we did a lot of sharing and that was a real positive for us because that helped us as you know we we talked a lot last year about being nimble being able to make changes and a lot of that was informed by really being able to reach out and talk with colleagues from across the state hear what they were doing why it worked or didn't work and and to be able to get some ideas as to how we might continuously improve what we were what we were trying to do and i and i do think that overall our you know i have looked at some of the stuff and the

160one thing that i hang our hats on is the amount that we dropped and even looked at some of those dirt comparisons the amount that our dirt dropped was much more significant so i think i think we really were able to minimize the impact um in in a in a in a positive way i'm i'm sure that there could have been other improvements that we could make i i hope not to have to relive it to be able to do it but i'm very proud of the work that our teachers did and uh and then the work that our administrators helped lead in terms of a good model and i just also have to say that you know thinking from a student's perspective and you two were two students who had to come in and

161take this big high-stakes test and um the amount of concentration the kids offered last year through a year plus and they were in a year at that point of being home or being half and half and for them to come in and concentrate get these scores on a very high test i think we want to say to them wow he certainly lived into our expectation ethan and then andrew and then jason two questions was curious although i will say the state results are really depressing but that aside do you have objectives or are you shooting for a number i realize that's tired to do but is i assume the goal is always to improve but i didn't know and how did you meet those i mean the numbers are good comparison and i realized last

162year wasn't you know there's an absolutely fair question um so there's there's two different ways we look at uh targets certainly within the um state accountability metrics uh there's a target there for uh they'll take this and you'll probably won't have an opportunity to see this until a year from now because they're gonna suspend the accountability but they uh for this last year but they'll they'll take the achievement level data and they and they do recognize that you do have english language learners you do have students with disabilities so to have the expectation that a hundred percent of students would meet you know the goal every single year well that's of course what we would always hope for in our hearts it's not necessarily a realistic goal so they they break this down and they

163they create this hundred point scale district performance index dpi uh and they'll put the test on it and uh they'll norm it and create a measure that 75 a score of 75 is the standardized is the standardized goal that doesn't necessarily mean um 75 percent of kids that go that you know it's translated so i'll i'll give you a fuller explanation of that when we do it but sort of a shorter faster better answer is uh we do look at some of the dirt comparisons we recognize that west hartford uh folks that that are choosing to live in this community we know they choose it for the schools uh we know that they're also shopping in places like farmington avon glastonbury and and some of the uh surrounding towns and so um being competitive within

164our derg is something that we always want to be and truth be told if you look at the demographics of west hartford by comparison to the demographics of the the demographic reference group the derg we're a unicorn we we look nothing like our dirt and our ability to be competitive with the percentage of uh socioeconomically disadvantaged folks our participation in free and reduced lunch are percentages of english language learners that come here as a destination district with others without with more than 70 languages spoken in homes different than english it's it's a testament to what we are able to provide for education that we are not only competitive and and for the first time really able to beat the durg average but if i look across some of those schools we'd like to beat them

165all um would be our goal well the second question was is it did you guys is it possible not now but eventually to stratify it so you get your first one however you separate it with a first quartile second quartile it'd be interesting to see year over year the changes you know is it all just in one category or is it i'll break it down by perhaps uh elements of this of the assessment itself because like we can break down the assessment like in math for instance into the algebra section or or you're talking about students do you have your top 20 and i'm just like you know could be any quartile or whatever grouping you your top 20 your bottom 25 your second 25 sure to see that it's is it a uniform increase

166or is it i get you um it would just be interesting the only thing with that with the sat that makes a little more difference is it's a norm reference test where you shouldn't really see improvement nationally or here because it's re-centered to 500 based on the number of takers and everything else so that that throws off the sat comparison year to year and this isn't your question but something that i get a lot oh you had an eight point drop remember ten points is one on this which paul does a good job of showing because it's just an 800 scale that could have been made in 80 point scale um but so sometimes people mistake jumps or drops as bigger than they are not not that that's part of your question i just want

167to clarify so that's the the truth is those quartiles should be pretty even based on how they how the test is europe that would be interesting by the way the cpa exam is the same way andrew do you happen to know the percentage of students at connor versus the percentage of students at hall who fall into the high needs performance group or like high needs students i don't believe i actually have that number off top my head but it is available most years on ed site you can go on to ed site it's public public website it's uh it should be referenced in the last paragraph somewhere i can tell you a couple components just from the top of my head that go into this free introduced lunch at connerd is about 31 and it

168hauls about 22 um percentage of um diversity just in terms of students connor's about 47 and hall's about 40 percent so you put those together and you come up with a pretty accurate representation and then um this year's date is not included in the overall trend but every year that's also publicly available and you click buttons and it'll break it down for you all right jason thank you um let's see so uh my question was about is there overlap in the groups between high needs uh category and students of color in particular i'm thinking about english language learners as it so in in this the these are these are overlapping populations right yeah um yeah so certainly so there's there's two different forms of overlap first there's overlap right within the high needs category itself

169yeah uh there are going to be those students that are it's it's not it's not frequent that we'll have an english language learner that's also identified as a student with disabilities because it's difficult to tease out if a student is multiple years behind if it's a language proficiency issue or if it's a learning disability issue but it does happen from time to time but there are students that have a socioeconomic need that are students with this so you have you have students that could be kind of double double identified just within the high needs group but then certainly within students of color i would say you know a significant number of our english language learners are gonna are gonna fall into that category um we're uh you're certainly gonna have you certainly have students of

170color that are students with disabilities as you do uh white students asian students etc what we have found historically to be the biggest driver out of all of it is in terms of our achievement gap for our students of color is not not their color it's it's the high needs and within high needs we found one of the one of the biggest drivers for students of color to be socioeconomically disadvantaged we've done other presentations in the past years typically on our grade three through eight data where if we disaggregate our students of color in our achievement gap by participation in free and reduced lunch versus not uh we see that it's really not a gap based on race or ethnicity it's a gap based on that high need and and and that is why the

171state many years ago went to the high needs category they felt like they were really misrepresenting the issue because if the issue were about race or ethnicity then we must have some bias in our testing we must have some bias in our curriculum that we could seek to fix and and that wasn't really the the primary case yeah yeah okay thank you because that relates to this other question i have i think i asked this last time i can't remember your response so maybe i'll remember this time um does the district have any information about college performance of graduates right to so the the question they extend from that is is does does students of color test scores actually have does that track out to performance in college or or is is there something other

172than the test scores that a a broader set of education that they're getting in west hartford public schools that then leads to higher performance or so i think i can address part of your question anyway and one is a report that we can download and looked at this year called the clearinghouse report which allows us to understand what is the persistence rate for students who go to college so we graduate our students they tell us where they're going but of course now they're individuals and did they really go did they go for a second semester did they go back as sophomores did they not go at first but go second semester did they go not at all the first year and then go and then what is your four five and six year college graduation

173rates for a student who attended your high school so we can see persistence we can see break that down into two-year colleges four-year colleges what percentage of kids graduated at what points what percentage of kids did not continue to persist at what point and so that's a very valuable report report we look at a lot because it is kind of an ultimate like outcome report and i want to i just want to add two things to what you just said before time goes two of those measures uh are included in the report i was referencing to ethan the performance profile report that typically comes out in may the college persistence and the college acceptance and so um as you know we've shared the college where people go apply all that information so this i'm actually

174i'll be in new york thursday for meetings about this very topic so the data with the sats we dramatically outperform and one of the things you could point to is there is a reference the 480 and the six in the 530 hugely controversial as far as why would you pick those they're too high of a benchmark districts are always and the college board has literally millions of item research where they can say no but this is and they can actually track grades because their partnership with colleges in ways that we can't because the colleges don't necessarily report to us but what we do that augments that allows our students to outperform is our advanced placement so the data that shows that not just the scores in the advanced placement which we weigh out performance scores

175the fact that you take an advanced placement course college persistence is dramatic and it's actually one of the strongest predictors of college persistence of did you take college level courses while in high school and the idea being you've proven you can do college work even if i got a 2 not a three or a four yeah but i got c's and b's that means i can do college work and so that's a key element we do here that so west hartford certainly outperforms what the data might suggest if that's your question other questions yes avery a follow-up um for hall and connor our programs can um such as reach and i think there's another one i can't strive um are students in those programs counted as part of the school where their program is housed

176or the school where they are distracted and do we see i know that those two programs um target students who are part of a high needs group um do we see any differences between those do you understand between the schools their house then sure so in terms of uh the overall aggregate report that i provided today we you know you look at the big picture number i am inclusive of connor hall reach and strive so it's inclusive of all of all students when you go on and you look at the results um say on the on the state website uh i believe reach and strive both as separate programs are are listed separately so we can disaggregate the results by those programs they're small programs so i've only got 40 students say enrolled in reach

17710 of whom might be juniors so you look so a lot of the times if you're looking for that that data might actually be suppressed on the public site but we can view it on the secure side to be able to look at the overall performance when i'm looking at the performance of 10 students i'm generally looking at it on an individualized basis because the variability is just going to be so dramatic strive all by itself is a special education program so so realistically 100 of that population is high needs they're not necessarily at strive because it's more of a behavior intensive program not an academic need program so you would exp you know we do have students that are participating in the sat and do expect them to do well but the performances is

178you know we don't have the same average as we do the average score at conor never scored hall thank you andrew i noticed that in the looking ahead section it stated that the 20 the imper the in person in school s.a.t was going to be online and i'm wondering if that is reflective of a decision that the town made or something that college board is making for the town actually that's a decision the state of connecticut made and we were on calls today to talk about all the factors that will go into that administration this year including devices and bandwidth and proctors so this class will be taking online on the class of 20 wait you guys are two 2023 will be online clear and i'm assuming there's a population that does not take the

179sat that is not counted because of high academic needs as well great thank you claire very much thank you absolutely um there is uh what's referred to as the connecticut alternative assessment that's still the name i gave up being district assessment coordinator a couple years ago you're still on top of this um and generally you know sometimes referred to as is the one percent population because uh the percent you know the level of academic need that's necessary is supposed uh is is nationally um only prevalent in one percent of the special education population so it's so it's a very intensive academic need um and those students uh have an alternative assessment that they can take that that's typically well aligned with their iep goals and objectives um and all other students to include students just

180outside of that spectrum there's an expectation from the state of connecticut that would sit for the sat and and and we do have you know we have we have a lot of students within our special education program that do have significant need that on their own might not be considering taking the sat that are that that have the opportunity and do so as part of the state testing program other questions all right thank you very much for the information nope that's all right thank you moving on to routine matters and to our financial report we will be receiving this information by deb hollowan and liz hewitt is here as well yes to you both thank you thank you and um i i'm wondering what's happening with all the number two pencils in connecticut when the

181sats move online gonna take down the whole industry short ticonderoga yes they need a stronger lobbyist i guess okay so this is the financial report for the period ending october 31st 2021 and obviously it's still very early uh both in our fiscal year which starts on july 1st but more importantly still very early in our school year so you're not going to see a lot of variances yet um it does hew pretty closely with our with our budget i'll call your attention to the table on page 13. and that's where you will see a couple of variances the teacher salary line item we are under expended or projected to be underexpended because we've hired in some teachers that that were newer than those who left and so their salaries were lower you'll see a gap

182in the paraprofessional line item as well as teacher assistance and that goes along with the trouble that we've had hiring paraprofessionals and teacher assistants so this is yet one more advertisement for the fact that we need paraprofessionals and teacher assistants here in west hartford so we are projected to underexpend those line items however to make up for that fact and to meet the needs of the students in our district we've been purchasing the services of para professionals and tas through contracted services and that is listed under all other purchase services so you'll see that six hundred thousand dollar variance higher than what we would have projected to spend had we been able to hire those folks on our own i do also want to note the people transportation line 5345 is um right on budget

183at this point in the year that is a line that we sometimes see a larger variance in uh throughout the year having to do with either field trips or more kids being outplaced so we'll just keep an eye on that line item but for now it looks really good moving on to the state and federal grants fund report on page 14. i'll point out as i always do the gray line about 40 of the way down the page all of the grants above that line are new this year any of the grants below that line are grants that we've had that we've been able to carry forward the funds into this year we only have on this page grants where we have the award letter in hand so this page will become fuller over the

184next couple of months as we receive additional grant award letters including importantly the sr3 grant we have i believe our proposal was approved for that we just haven't gotten the official award letter but just to note a couple of the grants you may be very interested in the sr1 grant 502.062 most of the way down the page does expire this year and we are projected to spend all of that the sr2 grant a couple up from that is two-year we'll be spending half of that this year and half next year and so those are two of the grants that are tied to coveted relief that came in from congress specifically for schools other than that nothing major to note on this page moving to special funds again nothing really unusual here i'll just call your

185attention to a small increase in revenue from preschool and that's because as you may remember we established some new preschool classrooms this year and parents pay tuition for their their children to go to our preschools um and the tuition is set by the state on a sliding fee scale based on the parent's income so because we have additional slots we have additional tuition coming in and so we have a little bit of an increase in our earnings there and then a little bit on instrument rental i don't know if anybody else uh used the instrument rental program the way the poland family did but i highly recommend it especially if your kid plays a large instrument like the baritone you definitely don't want to have to schlep that back and forth moving to nutrition services

186fund this is looking so much better than it was last year as a reminder we have free meals for all students that's breakfast and lunch through the end of this school year um and that is again because of covert relief passed by um i believe this was passed by congress yeah passed by congress so there are free meals available and if you look at our daily average student meals you'll see in october the average student meal count was 4604 across the district that is really really high and i'll just compare it i mean comparing it to october of 2020 i think is mostly meaningless because we only had some of the kids in school but i looked up our meal count for october of 2019 and it was 348 and so you'll see that's a

187very large increase from 2019 to 2021 and most of the increase i understand is at the high school level so um it's good that our high school students are taking lunch thank you for doing that one of the items that's a little lower than we would probably want it to be is salaries and benefits and that's because we have eight positions vacant out of the 60 positions in that department so one more advertisement we have eight vacant positions and nutrition services uh and we'd love to get more people to come help uh help with our cafeterias food costs have gone up a little bit uh no big surprise there but you'll see our fund balance is in very good shape for nutrition services partially because of the supplemental grant we got from the state and

188partially because we're just selling a lot of meals or this year and getting that money in from the feds so that's the financial report and liz and i are both available for questions thank you deb questions all right hearing none may we receive a motion to approve the financial report for the period ending october 31st 2021 i'll make the motion to accept it all right is there a second second jason any questions discussion hearing none all in favor hi any opposed any abstentions all right so moved thank you thanks liz continuing on to approval of the minutes and before doing that just want to be mindful of the minutes that we are looking to approve cover our meeting from last time and i know the full duration of the meeting are some of our teammates

189were not here for the full duration of the meeting so when it comes to voting you may want to consider the abstention from that but in regard to the minutes are looking for an approval of the minutes from the november 16 2021 regular board of education meeting so moved is there a second second any questions or discussion hearing done all in favor say aye aye aye any oppose any abstentions extension two abstentions three abstentions the motion thank you very much and we will continue on to information and reports board members communications and reports do we have any reports from our board members all right hearing none and other information discussions hearing none we now have the honor of hearing from our students i'm a proud of you for being so attentive at this hour so

190we will first start with avery please for our report from student board representatives okay good evening fall sports have come to a close to summarize some high points boys varsity football finished second in the league and boys varsity soccer finished first some indian students in hall's community service club recently organized the siwa diwali food fruit food drive for the west hartford food pantry um this week a spirit week at hall with new themes like anything but a backpack and classics like decade day in the same vein this friday is pj day to benefit the children fighting cancer at ccmc on friday hall coral project the whole esports club and hall robotics are partnering to host our next super smash brothers ultimate tournament which also benefits ccmc's extra life project hall's jewish student union is hosting

191a hanukkah party this november homecoming is this saturday december 11th and similar to what we were talking about earlier today fall piece psat scores are being released by the college board members of the public um students and families can view scores on the college board's website and next week um hall's black box theater production of almost maine opens thursday december 16th thank you avery andrew uh lake hall we're also in between or i guess the winter sports season is starting right now um tryouts are wrapping up this week um we have had a number of different opportunities in school during the day um such as the chinese classes had kung fu master come in and teach kung fu and i i got to do that because i take chinese it was very interesting but also

192there was a hackathon our first hackathon where um students got together in groups after school and made apps or at least designed the ideas for apps that could be purposed for social good in the school like hall we're also having a pj day ours is friday december 17th and that's also to show solidarity with children and students of our age who have cancer and we are also having a pink out this friday in a similar vein we also had our first issue of the newspaper come out and i know the yearbook staff is working hard on the yearbook seniors are currently voting for superlatives and then looking forward uh yeah we also have our homecoming dance ours is friday december 10th one day before halls thank you andrew i'm so glad i listened to all

193that you said because i first thought you said hackathon i was saying oh my you know what but app a font hack some whole student it's hackathon i think it's a it's isn't it a national thing too yes yeah is it an acronym no no no it's it's like a marathon but for hackers okay that's how it started and then it's become it's very cool okay oh well that's good it's not all bad all right yeah they're not they're not like crashing our system right now somebody crashed the system somebody crashed aws today the whole world came to a standstill well i learned something thank you so much all right thank you both so much all right continuing on to future business announcements of future meeting dates our next meeting will be tuesday december the

19421st 2021 right here at seven o'clock in the legislative chambers room 314 and then next year we have our meeting tuesday january the 18th 2022 regular board of education meeting right here in our legislative chamber room 314. do we have a request for a future agenda item and i actually would like to make a request earlier again we did have the attempt to have the proclamation to be shared but we certainly recognize all of the multiple tasks and agenda items that our mayor and legislative um our delegation has so would like to propose for that to be on the agenda for our next meeting on the 21st and so i will present that as a motion that on during our december 21st meeting we add to the agenda a time for our mayor and delegation

195to present a proclamation to our superintendent may i have a second second any question or discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye any who oppose nay and abstentions so moved all right thank you any other agenda items comments from visitors do we have any visitors here that would like to make a comment all right hearing none we do not have an executive session and looking for a motion to adjourn so moved second the motion passes we adjourn have a good evening you