Board of Education Meeting of September 9, 2021

001my fourth turn it off did you hear it i can hear west hartford public schools board of education for wednesday september 9th and i'd like to ask our clerk to please call the roll [Applause] miss aronson present dr chang present miss poulon dr steinberg here dr thomas farquharson here ms wilcox here mr zadanowitz here student representatives andrew maglio present student representative avery wood weber present thank you and andrew would you please lead us in the pledge to the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we do not have a revision to the agenda order i don't believe we have any student participation this evening anyone correct me if i'm wrong here nope okay so we

002will move on to public communications typically we do have the public speak from the podium but i believe we're having difficulty with that microphone so when i call you to come up to speak you can come up to the table and choose any of the microphones there and i'm going to go based in the order in which you signed up marina creed so you'll have three minutes to speak please start by stating your name and address for the record thanks for joining us button okay is that better okay great okay uh so my name is marina creed i live at 87 outlook avenue west hartford right across over there uh so good evening my name is marina creed i'm a faculty member at the university of connecticut school of medicine and a neuroimmunology nurse practitioner

003at uconn health where i treat immunosuppressed people at the comprehensive ms center i have published papers about zara's covid2 and i have been privileged to leave movement to lead movements to protect the most vulnerable connecticut residents against kovig 19 including many here in west hartford i'm also a mother of two and the proud parent of a west hartford public school student at bugbee elementary i'm here tonight representing myself and my family medically vulnerable members of our west hartford public school community and the parents in our town who believe in the power and innovation of a west hartford education time and again this community under your leadership has ridden above has risen above and beyond to give our students every opportunity to succeed academically socially and emotionally during the pandemic you've also protected their public health

004and by extension the health of our entire town based on the latest science and recommendations by public health experts tonight i ask you to continue leading the charge to keep our children and the community safe as safe as possible and to ensure that in-person school proceeds with as few interruptions or health implications as possible especially in the face of the delta variant and the additional variants falling closely behind i implore you to conduct comprehensive audits of ventilation systems in all classrooms when they are fully occupied to be sure that they are effective and equitable and building upon that to take immediate and decisive action to increase ventilation and air quality in our schools to help prevent school-acquired covet infection by with one of three actions number one bring hepa filters into all classrooms and common

005spaces these turnkey portable units which use less electricity than a portable air air conditioner have been shown by the cdc to reduce sars coved2 transmission by 65 percent and only require a standard electrical outlet these units are recommended even for those classrooms that meet current ventilation standards by johns hopkins public excuse me johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health harvard university and many others the science is clear hepa filters are a crucial in intervention that significantly reduce disease transmission of covid19 and other viruses number two instead of or in addition to hepa filters west hartford public school puts coursey boxes in all classrooms and common spaces these simple effective energy efficient unit units pioneered by dr richard corsi of uc davis are effective tools for keeping transmission lower indoors require only require the electricity needed

006for a light bulb and cost less than eighty dollars per unit i need to ask you to wrap up i'm so sorry okay uh i'm currently exploring a collaboration with the yukon school of public health in engineering to produce them for the west for the connecticut school districts west hartford could be on the leading edge of this partnership with our state's preeminent public university number three if you cannot lead with either of these interventions we beseech you to allow parents and ptas to donate either hepa approved filtration boxes excuse me hepa hepa filtration units or corsey boxes to classrooms and common spaces we have assembled a committee of motivated parents clinicians scientists engineers and community members okay that's it we look forward to further discussion thank you so much thank you next matt downey i

007should have indicated this earlier my apologies you can check over towards where our clerks are sitting while you're speaking and they'll hold up a yellow card when you have about a minute left and then a red card when your time is up okay thank you good evening everyone my name is matt downey i live at 140 webster hill boulevard and i'm a first grade teacher at morley elementary before i read the rest of my statement i'd like to make a few things clear first i am not here in my capacity as a teacher but as a concerned citizen second and i'm aware this message may be misinterpreted but i am not here in any capacity as pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine i'm sure the points i will highlight are being actively addressed and discussed by our leaders

008because they like me are here first and foremost for the students that we serve i simply feel the need to make this statement as a citizen you may know september is suicide awareness and prevention month so i'd like to share a few points first one in four will encounter some type of clinical anxiety or depression in their teen years second major life disruptions such as the upheaval caused by this pandemic can lead to suicidal ideations third there are three states of mind that contribute most directly to suicide a feeling of helplessness a feeling of isolation and the feeling of being a burden isolation and helplessness are ingrained in a pandemic way of life society has implied that those who are vaccine hesitant are a burden how do our young people rationalize this toxic societal mindset

009against the years of stand up to bullying and be wary of peer pressure messages that we teach and that dedicated and compassionate middle and high school teachers like myself teach every day i have a quote have you noticed how strikingly similar both the mindsets and the actions are between the suicide bombers at kabul's airport and the anti-mask and anti-vax people here that is from the national secretary of education from 2009 to 2016. what if one of our students has a parent in the military how can we possibly expect young people to practice critical thinking and self-advocacy when this is the type of binary mindset they face from some of the nation's most influential leaders i want to make it very clear i do not want to be here today frankly i'm tremendously uncomfortable as my

010shaking hands would probably indicate and i'm aware of the possibility that my message will be twisted and in turn misinterpreted those who know me know i live only to improve the lives of those around me and i feel sick at the proposition that i may be labeled as something other than what i truly am but my character right now and my integrity is more important than my personal comfort because without integrity i have no comfort i've dedicated my life to this town i went to school here bought a house here i coach here and i teach here my life is this town and i'm simply trying to stand up for what i believe for some of our most uh um our most vulnerable citizens if not me then who thank you for your time thank

011you [Applause] next alexandra bonani alexandra bonani [Applause] did i press this button oh it's on okay dear member members of board of education thank you for allowing me to take few minutes to share my opinion regarding continuation of mask mandate in west hartford public schools i would greatly appreciate if you could please comment and answer my questions during this session or in a follow-up session i understand that our state has not lifted the emergency declaration yet i am truly hopeful that by the end of september we will be in position to reconsider mask mandates for the children and create a health protocol that makes everyone comfortable one thing i realized that we've been into the pandemic for more than 18 months now and there has not been one cluster randomized study conducted that would prove

012effectiveness of masks in k-12 schools i am aware of one study with inconclusive results should that not make us all think that there is really no benefit of the children to be wearing masks for more than 400 minutes a day with a break for a snack and lunch plus recess early childhood is a very crucial period when children develop cultural language and social skills that includes the ability to detect emotion on other people's faces social interactions with friends parents and caregivers are integral for to fostering children's growth and well-being we are depriving them from that by covering their faces and socially distancing them so connecticut plays a mask mandate for everyone three years of age and older massachusetts has a mask mandate for everyone five years of age or older is there an uptick in

013hospitalizations and deaths for children between three and five in massachusetts no is there transmission rate of the virus higher among four-year-olds than five-year-olds no then why three-year-olds in connecticut have to wear masks based on what data was that mandate created the world health organization does not recommend that children 12 and younger wear masks specifically the advice is against masking 5 year olds and younger most of the european countries follow who and children 12 and younger are not required to cover faces why don't we going back to west hartford schools could you please share with us timelines and the plan for this academic year with respect to masks what requirements need to be met in order for the mandate to be lifted knowing the goals would put and at ease many of us at the same

014time i would appreciate it if any future decisions are supported by data for many of us hearing that west hartford public schools are following guidelines either cdc or ap is empty not enough i greatly appreciate your time and i look forward to hearing your answers and i i apologize i forgot to say my name uh my name is alexander banashik i'm a mother mother of three children ages three seven and nine and they all go to uh west hartford public schools thank you and can you state your address for the record as well please yes it's 329 cumberland road thank you very much thank you [Applause] uh next we have d poli that's all that's written here i'm not quite sure who that is 94 park road is that helpful okay um is there anyone

015else any other members of the public who wish to speak come on up you can state your name and address for the record um six middle brook road could you do that one more time from the microphone thank you gene wiggins middlebrook road thank you all for allowing us to speak today most of us here tonight are parents we care deeply for our children and all the children of west hartford we have reasonable reasonable expectations of public health in our school system we expect as public health risks rise in our schools that they will be weighed we expect that viruses posing the same level of risk will be treated as such when covet hit last year public health and administrators didn't know the impact to children it was minimal administrators took drastic measures to ensure

016our children were safe such as virtual learning social distancing and mass mandates and for that we are grateful 18 months later we do have the data the data shows that covet and the flu pose a similar risk to chil to school children and the risk is mild the data shows that pediatric flu hospitalizations and covet hospitalizations are equivalent additionally 40 to 45 percent of pediatric covet hospitalizations are actually for other illnesses all pediatric deaths are tragic but it is important to look it was important to look at the data pediatric flu and covet deaths are comparable there have been approximately 349 pediatric coveted deaths as of august according to the cdc by comparison pediatric flu deaths average 650 a year there are 73 million children in the united states covid covid does not present a

017significant risk to school children our children need to go back to a normal school experience mitigation protocols like distancing hybrid models classroom barriers barriers hepa filters and masks have shown to have no statistical benefit they don't work the uk guidance follows the data which shows the benefits to children being in a normal school setting significantly outweigh the coveted risks students in the uk are not wearing masks except in isolated instances in the middle and high school they are they were never required for elementary age children in the uk both political parties believe that face covers hinder children's ability to communicate learn and socialize what is the process to get our children back to a normal school setting what is the number of cases we have to hit before our kids can remove their masks what

018is our goal what is our endgame thank you are there any other members of the public who would like to address the board this evening please state your name and address for the record sure thank you robert kappas 50 maplewood thank you go ahead thank you ladies and gentlemen um i agree with what these folks have said about mask mandates and the harm to children but i want to change the viewpoint a little bit on that argument a parent is uniquely situated to understand their child's concerns their child's health their child's mental status their child's emotional status what you've done is implement a policy that says no no parents don't know best we know best you folks and i think that's wrong you don't know my child you don't know if my child has suffered

019coveted and recovered you don't know if my child has been vaccinated you don't know the stress that my child is under mentally emotionally physically from wearing a mask all day the person who's best able to make that decision of whether to wear a mask or not is a parent and and i urge you to reconsider masking these kids it's wrong thank you any other members of the public wish to address the board okay come on forward hi there uh aaron mcginn 1643 boulevard i do have to ask you to keep your mask on okay thank you so sure so um i'm just wondering how many of you went out to dinner this weekend and sat down without a mask and enjoyed a meal i'm wondering how many of you went to a baseball game this

020summer went to a football game last summer went to a concert or went to the fish show perhaps uh this past weekend wearing a mask is absurd the data does not support it i have not seen one study demonstrating its usefulness or its benefit and as a large district you have an obligation to our students and to our teachers to go to lamont and to make a case to stop the insanity we are a smart public we are 80 vaccinated if not higher we're having vaccination clinics at our schools it is time for the masks to come off they are useless and they are detrimental to children learning to read to children learning social and emotional cues they are detrimental to students that are suffering from depression and anxiety i have seen it first hand

021my daughter is a mess and i have been in program after program where these children are suffering they cannot be made to suffer anymore we need to be adults in this school in this state in this country we need to stand up for our children they deserve a normal life where they can see people where they can interact with their friends and they need their teachers and their community to support that thank you [Applause] are there any other members of the public who wish to address us this evening [Applause] if not thank you very much for your participation we will move on to unfinished business we don't have any unfinished business new business there's no new business moving to staff communications and reports we have a significant number of those and i'll turn it over

022to superintendent moore thank you thank you very much welcome back everybody um very exciting time of year obviously and we are thrilled to have our kids back in session to have all of our kids back and over the um next few weeks we'll see reports based on um not just scores from last year but as as things have gone on what we've done um educationally to welcome people back and to shift um to in-person instruction completely in the district over the next few weeks we'll be presenting those so um you know before we get into the uh presentations by the members of the team and you guys can come up now um and i'll be pinch-hitting for uh dr morrow who is dropping his daughter off at college um this is um another summer that

023was unfortunately busier than we thought we'd be with health strategies with mitigation strategies certainly the delta variant presented many more challenges than we were hoping to have come forward at this time so a lot of work was done this summer mitigation strategies a lot of the things that we saw last year that we saw continued this year ventilation systems we've brought in outside engineering consultants we were one of the first districts to do this we've continued to do this we've spent almost two hundred thousand dollars on bringing in um engineers environmental engineers to go through all of our buildings make suggestions for each of our buildings to have the best ventilation system that we can with the understanding that we're dealing with buildings that are between other than charter oak you know 50 and 100

024years old so doing everything we can with ventilation you know strategizing with our principals with cafeteria that are different in each building and how we handle lunches in each building in each location and how we spread kids out both in cafeteria and overflow spaces and using outside spaces when possible masks um certainly you know there's there's um universal masking is something that has been shown repeatedly to limit the spread of covet and that's something that we continue um there's a governor's mandate involved but we have the obligation to do everything we can not to protect every individual child but all 9 300 children within the district and um that's what went into that decision and overall the vast majority of parents have been supportive of that um and vaccination and this is something that i

025think is really important to talk about because it is a dramatic success story for our district when we look at vaccination rates for our kids this has been a focus continuously we had more vaccination clinics this week today as we go forward we have more scheduled for september at the secondary schools and that focus and continued communication this summer about the need and the importance of vaccination that focus has certainly paid off and i'm so thankful to our kids and the parents of the west hartford community i just went through today's data release by the state of connecticut and for children 12 to 17 west hartford's um children and our students are now 82 fully vaccinated and 89.5 of all students have begun the process to put in perspective where that is connecticut west hartford

026is a communities 78 fully vaccinated but for our students we have the fifth highest rate in the state and if you take the four ahead of us westport new canaan darien and greenwich and then west hartford there's not a district that looks like us that has the vaccination rate that we have this is going to keep our kids in school this is going to keep our kids engaged this is going to keep our kids from spreading the disease in the same way that we see spread from those that aren't vaccinated so i am deeply gratified to the parents of the community and to our students for taking this seriously and for going forward with vaccination um with that being said now we look at our mission and how we go about um preparing inspiring all

027students and as we tell you every year as we start this kind of physical upgrade of what we've done during the summers you know we spend five million dollars every summer and a lot of it goes on things that people can't see we had two major masonry projects this summer repointing hall and cedric both and you see this when you get heavy rains where um you'll see um not just pitting on the outside but you'll see at the lower levels of building you'll get flooding in from the sides we had significant masonry work done at hall in sedgwick and the other big thing that you don't always see is the roof and we had major roofing projects begin for portions of the hall roof and the cedric roof and at whiting lane we're continuing the

028process of the security office reconfigurations as we've seen that building by building as we go through and will be completed with the entire district soon one of the things i'll say about planned facilities one of the difficulties is that everything's on back order it was fortunate when this started we we did see ahead of time we ordered picnic tables for outsides before other districts we got those in we ordered shade structures that are going to go up eventually at all of our buildings everything's back ordered with things like that we've ordered tents that we'd like to use pop-up times occasionally larger tents not your pop-up sports events tents but more significant ones again back ordered significantly so we'll be seeing shifts as the year goes on with even more strategies as we get more things

029come in that can help things out to make the outsides more a part of our schools as we've seen over the past year and has worked very successfully for classes to be outside when they can be at all levels i.t a major investment is a redundant internet workaround basically so that if any building loses internet we have a redundant system so that those classes won't lose internet for the day as we know now we're in a different world the internet goes down that's going to affect lesson plans that's going to affect what we're doing that day so now um you know we don't have just one point of failure bringing down our schools that day uh also in i.t security cameras and rapid response new technology and security cameras that allows more focusing higher resolution

030so we can pick more things up outside of buildings when things happen and also these rapid response buttons and um you know work directly with the police department we're upgrading that system also transportation you know this year we're transporting at this point 5 392 students makes us one of the largest transportation organizations in the state of connecticut i want to thank everybody in our transportation office they do a great job trying to make sure this works and i also want to thank first students as we've seen their bus driver shortages and they have prioritized hiring in west hartford we've had to do some double runs we've had some people that are working um that are working multiple runs that wouldn't necessarily be and hoping in the coming days as we add more bus drivers that

031that will smooth out still but overall it's gone very well in a very difficult time to find bus drivers so i want to thank everybody from transportation and um i don't know if you want to stop and do questions with each presenter at each time or if you want to go on to the next section it's up to you i think um stop and do questions yeah part way through sure so are there questions from board members mark yeah thanks tom um internet redundancy you talked about that and we've known some of the issues that happened um does that also include higher security um so the penetration from outside doesn't exist so yeah because i know we had issues yeah everybody did we've invested we've invested in a couple different network systems as well as

032a network administrator that oversees all of the cyber security issues we are constantly under attack as is every district as is every municipal organization every day we get denial of service attacks that we work on and unfortunately last year we had issues at the beginning of the year with that we made modifications i think probably october november you remember we talked about it and since then it hasn't happened we've still had the attacks but we've been able to even locate some of those attacks with the help of west hartford police and move forward with there so um things been much better over the past six months or so in that area but we know it's happening every single day we're getting those attacks other questions amanda hi i'm not sure is the microphone working yeah

033i can hear you okay um i i know in the last storm in the last couple of storms we did well overall with the exception of being a little issue at braeburn there but do we have a strong sense of which uh which buildings are most prone to flooding as we move forward sure we do um there's you know um there's certainly king philip over the years just that area itself has a higher rate of flooding king phillip its lower levels its basement certainly have been impacted by that over the years braeburn that area jason anytime you have only one way of egress kind of in and out you're at the mercy of tree lines or anything else there or that flooding area that happened by braeburn it's actually not typical at braeburn over the

034years for that to happen um but yeah we've looked at it and bob palmer and his crew did great work making sure um that things were buttoned down because we really did not have damages from flooding at our buildings over time i mean some things with flooding that of course affect some things but overall not the same levels of damage that we saw other places other questions i did have a question about the um air filtration are we still doing the windows open when we can doors open to the hallway or doors closed and how how do we feel about the air ventilation in the classrooms so it's one of those things that um there are recommendations that the department of public health give and then there's recommendations from outside and then there's other recommendations

035from outside and again i'm not an engineer and that's one of the things that i say to people so people will often ask why aren't the build windows open in this building and the fact is because we've had in the engineers they tell us that in that situation the windows being open actually harm air circulation in the building because the way the system is designed to work there are some buildings without this without you know air conditioning not to make it cool but conditioning units that shift the air that certainly you want windows open we've worked to design how fans can work in there how doors can be open in there so we've looked at it's like the cafeterias each building has a slightly different element and so so here's a kind of key with

036mitigation strategies and with covet this is just um i always through this entire process i've just wanted to be transparent about everything that we do and why i've said from the beginning we're going to have covid cases in our buildings there is no doubt about it you're going to get letters from dr morrow detailing we had these cases in this building because there's coveted cases in our community now luckily unfortunately that those covet cases have plateaued over the past couple weeks and even come down a little bit but for the past two weeks we've been sitting in about sixty cases a week which means you know west hartford sixty thousand people our schools are ten thousand people so based on that we're going to have between ten and 15 cases a week 10 and 20

037k's a week based on that spread when you take into account also that kids under 12 are the only people that can't be vaccinated so that's something where you're also going to see cases so our concern is how do we mitigate spread in the building so we're constantly thinking about that kind of air filtration system people want these up i asked for these to be taken down but i don't control this room there's other things you know these kind of plexiglass we know they can actually harm airflow in places okay um so there's all these systems so we do not have 100 percent of every recommendation because we can't have that in every building um you know there's five things that the state department of public health says you should try this this this this

038if possible most districts have done one or two of those things we've done four of those five things now over time more availability comes in more information comes in or the department of public health changes their recommendations of what we should do then we'll do those things but again that's the kind of thing like i'm not diagnosing covid you know i'm making decisions based on the advice i get from the state and from state epidemiologists who again and this is something i want to stress to people we meet twice a week with the state epidemiologists we have phone calls twice a week i have another one that was just called for tomorrow about mitigation strategies i don't know if there'll be new advice put out by the state so these are the things that we're

039always doing we continue doing it throughout the summer and you know i think that um realistically we know that the keys are ventilation big key we know um distancing as much as we can with masks and we know keeping kids out of school when they're sick and realistically the biggest thing we can do is please don't send your kids to school when they're sick i mean the cases that we had the first week when you think about it that that was an element of well we weren't sure we didn't want our child to miss the first day the second no you need to keep your child home if you have any doubt whatsoever and if a test is pending certainly you can't um send your child in so a long answer but hopefully that covered

040it you did thank you all right let's uh move on good evening paul vicini's curriculum and instruction i want to begin by welcoming avery and andrew it's a pleasure to have you at the table and a pleasure to report back to the board talk about curriculum and instruction readiness for school as you saw in the report the report begins with continuity of services and continuity of services i think it was june 1st last school year when we presented several of us up here our reopening plan and so as part of some of our federal grants you know they call that the continuity of services plan and it it covered everything from um how we were mitigating academic impacts of the pandemic social emotional mental health impacts um strategies certainly to support equity which has been

041ongoing work here in the district and you'll hear more about from my colleague at my right health and safety which you just heard a good piece about and then of course family connections and staff development and professional learning so we provided a deep you know we we gave you a report on that but we provided also to the state department of education a detailed plan in terms of additional funding and grants that we have to support all of those things as as as just the nature of what we do i'm pleased to report uh updates on that as of uh par part of our piece was to survey our staff and we had nearly ninety percent uh satisfaction with what we were identifying as priorities which which goes a long way and it really speaks

042to the transparency that tom talks about that we try to share what's going on um and in the report itself you saw a number of factors within that continuity service plan that were already enacted over the summer you know things that make sense hiring of the new staff and the positions you supported such as some of the coaching additional social workers additional special education teachers etc uh the outfitting of our additional pre-k classrooms and um and other facility improvements so we're very excited about that and and to tom's point earlier in terms of pending reports this year we'll have reports where we talk about hey how's the impact of that mathematics coaching that'll that'll be something that we put on to the board calendar as a little time has has passed allowed us to mature

043in that and give you a give you a responsible update um computer science workspace i believe you heard about that in the buzz budget presentation last year um you know our involvement with the crack teacher in residency program so these are things that that i'm certain you'll hear more about uh coming but what really happened the bulk of the work kind of stemmed around summer curriculum writing summer programming which is kind of summer school type programs and the school-based activities especially those to welcome back our remote students which was a priority that you identified for us so i'm not going to obviously read you the report but just to highlight some of the pieces within summer curriculum writing specifically as it supports board initiatives we had teams we were so excited to welcome teams back

044to be able to do this work we did significant writing at all levels k through 12 relative to our social emotional learning and our continued efforts with that relative to our work within equity and inclusion and you'll you'll hear more on that you may be aware that there's academic impacts um new legislation that was passed in terms of the inclusion of a closer study of indigenous peoples this has been something near and dear to the west hartford community for some time and we've we had work begun on that at the elementary level uh which is actually well ahead of uh the time frame in terms of when the state wants to see it we had work within our mastery experience program and the graduation credits that you've heard uh heard about in past reports and

045we also had you know other other routine academic work but one thing that i'll just sort of highlight and tease is some work in our mathematics secondary mathematics curriculum that that has to do with uh how we want to make some shifts to align that curriculum in terms of the sequencing of courses freshman sophomore junior senior year to better align with um with the sat and some other things and that's a report that's also a more detailed report just on those changes that will be forthcoming this year at some point in terms of our summer programming uh you know you saw there we serviced approximately 400 elementary age students between our summer connections program which was expanded from just being a charter oak and smith program to being open to the entire district we had

046some expanded options within our esau summer prep program where where for those families that could not attend due to child care issues were able to offer them some remote uh learning uh the hanek program kind of had a very short open open and closed servicing approximately 40 students from the hillcrest neighborhood the real big changer in our summer programming was the establishment the design development and implementation of a middle school summer program we had approximately 125 students join us and and really that was a blend of academic uh kind of some academic remediation and reinforcement in addition to some really specific activities directed at school engagement so we had these enrichment opportunities that spanned any number of things and we took that lesson and we built it into our summer connections as well so as

047i'm sure as you saw in the report there were opportunities at both of those levels for some coding experiences there were some arts experiences that happened and that's in addition to i believe if you saw some of the other enrichment programs we had just under 400 students that were involved in some some shorter one week two week arts programs typically around the music our high school programs big changes there where we were affording the opportunity free of charge to students that needed it to repeat for credit and then obviously if you weren't repeating for credit if you had financial need there's always opportunities to apply for scholarships we had uh lost the number but approximately 575 students this summer in that and there was a blend of in-person classes primarily for remediation and recovery of

048credit and there were also remote and evening afternoon or early evening classes more targeted towards the get ahead type stuff and we figured those those were the environments that we expected if you're trying to recover credit well we're not going to give you just kind of more of online we want to see you in person we want to be able to help you in that way so some of our decisions were thoughtful in that regard you read in there some exciting stuff on our national external diploma program where we're extremely excited to have supported uh uh individuals uh seeking that high school diploma equivalency as well as our english language learner program um and and so happy to take questions that you have on our summer programming and and very briefly just the uh professional

049learning opportunities really aligned to your district goals so as you know we've we've had computer science we had to kind of take it on the back burner during uh covid but we're excited to bring that forward and starting uh really in small responsible pace as we as we deal with any number of priorities coming out of the pandemic had ongoing professional development this summer relating to equity advancement the vision of the graduate relates to the mastery experience and then some work with coaching especially as that relates to us onboarding our coaching final note we did welcome approximately 375 families from the remote experience back into our schools with specialized kind of opportunities for them to have tours to meet the principals to uh to engage a little bit every report i've had from principals as

050we've visited schools in the first week have been excitement uh you know real positive uh positive vibes from those students who have come back how they've been welcomed and and thus far um everything seems to be going very smoothly so pending your questions thank you uh questions from members of the board [Applause] lorna thank you very much um for the update just want to just clarify in terms of the summer connections um was it 400 students that were part of it or a 200 i apologize i was summing up kind of all of the elementary children together with the 400 so it was 200 for summer connections itself about 135 in the esau prep and another 40 or so in the hannick program for a total of 400. still wonderful wonderful to hear that we're

051good thank you oh part i was saying one it's on oh my wonderful thank you uh jason oh okay thank you for that report and uh you know as and really enjoyed reading these reports because um the last time we had a meeting it was about your plan for reopening and the plan that you had for the summer work and seeing all of the work that you put into opening the schools again the continuity of service um and and and bringing you know families that were in remote learning um back into the school system um is is an enormous task and you know i know that just you know these couple pages don't you know uh reflect the months of work that you all have done and uh just incredibly grateful for the the thoughtfulness

052and the sensitivity to different conditions the variety of programs that you we have available it's really impressive and just thank you for for the work that you've done and bringing the schools back thanks jason and i just want to take that opportunity to give a shout out to all the teachers involved in these summer programs we know last year was such a monumental and difficult year on so many different fronts and that was always a concern and so many of our dedicated teachers just worked so diligently throughout the year and then and then additionally those who stepped up over the summer and create you know very creative solutions new programs that they were doing refining their programs and it cuts across i know you know i'm sure that melissa will say the same thing of

053her special educators so i just want to throw throw a big giant thank you out to all of our all of our staff out there for everything that they've given and continue to give i'm i'm glad you asked the question i'm glad you answered that way paul because i do know of districts that had plans for summer programs and couldn't get the staffing to run the plan so either ran it abridged or weren't able to run programs and we had no vacancies we were able to get people in and they were ready to come in and spend time during their summer with their kids and it was it was needed and it was very important work so thanks to them anyone else amanda thank you for all the detail that you put into our report

054and one of the things that i was really taken by is how many of our community partners supported this in addition to all of our our staff and our faculty and that is greatly appreciated and for those who are listening and will continue to be needed so thank you to all of them and when you put together something as robust as this for the summer i know part of the hope was to make sure that we had that level of engagement with the kids and at the end of the summer especially with the the way that you added all that middle school support what's your sense kind of at elementary middle and high school of the amount of kids we still need to work to get either physically back in school if they're not attending

055or who really need that engagement i this was a huge support to that effort but where are we with any kids that we need to make sure we have hold of sure so um engagement it's funny because that was one of the big priorities we talked about at the beginning of the year with all the administrators is how do we how do we make sure that we're hooking children how do we make sure that they're fully engaged right right from the get-go um i would say even um i would have loved to have seen in our middle school programs if we could have doubled the number that we saw this summer um i'm gonna leave it uh to liz to talk about first day enrollments but you know we feel good just relative to attendance

056and participation in getting kids back we have we have kids back in our schools but in terms of how how well are we how well are they reengaging and re readjusting right now the initial the initial reports when we're going around to schools and we're talking it's very positive right now i think we're definitely in that honeymoon period at the beginning of school people are back they're excited to see their friends they're engaged in the class you know we know that over the next month or so we're going to start to hit and we're going to start to identify those kids that are going to have a little bit of a harder time was interesting it was a topic at our we had two different principal meetings today elementary and secondary in it and uh

057we were talking about our vision of the graduate at the secondary meeting and we're talking about determination and self-efficacy and the idea that there are going to be children in our schools for whom it's just a challenge they just have some learning loss they have they maybe have some of those feelings and and how are we supporting them and we have to be paying attention and it kind of goes back to we have to be paying attention to those pieces and the social emotional pieces equally with academics but we need we need we need those two things to be working in concert and they don't work against each other if we don't set those conditions up then the students can't learn academically but if but if we're not challenging the students academically then they can't

058make that growth and feel positive about themselves so um i would i would say long answer short we're kind of in that honeymoon period and we'll continue to monitor that and uh happy to talk to you about that throughout the year but right now we're feeling pretty good about how we have everyone back mark i'd like to circle back if you don't mind because i one of the things i forgot to ask about maybe tom about the deployed loaner chromebooks and ipads hot spots and families i know is that uh one is we had a tremendous amount of our computer assets out there last year because we were what was the how did we get those back and then are these i guess really the crux of this question is are these just a matter

059of it's a new school school year and we're putting them out there or do we are we finding that those families and needs is is a greater number because of covet or i guess a couple you know questions in there no it's good and i and i should have addressed it more specifically so over the summer we tried to because basically all the classroom sets last year were kind of broken apart and sent out to kids we did a great job of getting them back some of them are at end of life anyway or coming into that time we do basically have um not a tracker but basically it's like find your iphone where you know where it is well we basically have that on our computer so um there's one still in europe somewhere

060and there's one still in africa and i think there's two in south america and that is no joke where we did not get all of them back we got a significant number of them back so we recalibrated all of our buildings did all of our um classroom computer carts so basically for people that aren't there kids can go in get their computer for the day and then plug it in that's there tomorrow which is we've always decided that's the way we've leaned instead of one-on-one computing basically for the major reason that when you go one-on-one from districts that i speak to that are engaged in that a child might forget it a child might not have it charged and then when you need it in the classroom you still need another classroom set anyway and

061then there's a philosophical question of providing computers to everyone including those that don't necessarily need it so so we've collected them we put them in then we also had an order of laptops that are enabled so they can you don't need a separate hotspot or anything so the kid can take that home as we see quarantines which is what we're talking about more now like so yes if if a teacher and the principal and this will happen over the coming weeks they identify kids that need this yes we'll provide them with that the bigger question really because we're not doing a lot of work remotely now we're not hybrids there's not that same need as there has been in the past we have sign outs from the libraries if people need those at home but

062now when we get into a quarantine okay somebody might need that fast and so that's where we have a set of them identified help desk ticket to come in which has also been changed we can get that out within a day within two days out to those families so that when the child's in quarantine they're able to sign in and i'm sorry because i guess we didn't talk about it i know we're moving forward is that the some of the um things that were done opening school dates the thing that stuck out with me is the bristol middle school floor replacement of five classrooms it's a brand new well for west hartford it's a new facility i was surprised to see that we needed i don't know if that was in the cip i mean

063i missed it but that just surprised me with a there's a life span to those floors and it's not that young well it's i mean we're at 16 17 years now so there are some that um because it's only five that means it's not a full wing and i can get that information from bob if you if it's just wear and tear in one area that needed that i don't know what off the top my head but yeah you're right for a long time we didn't have to do any work at bristow and now you're beginning to see that 15 to 20 year cycle of work where there's a little bit not the same in other areas certainly that you've got to do for upkeep ari i didn't have a question until we just started

064talking about the computers i'm just wondering now that we no longer have a remote school available what are the plans for each of the different grade levels elementary middle and high school for the whole idea of if someone needs to quarantine that's a great question so in a quarantine situation at the secondary level middle school and high school they're both the same the expectation is that the teachers will make available for students the classroom instruction by turning on their google meet basically allowing the students to choose to access in where it makes sense if you know in when we were doing a remote school for physical education we did a lot of hoops to to make sure now our physical education teachers will probably say hey here's some things you can do but if i'm

065out on the field i'm not actually trying to to go through and and set all that up so that you can so that you can remote into to watch us you know perhaps practice passing drills in soccer or something um at the elementary where kind of remoting in isn't is either a developmentally kind of appropriate for the entirety of the day and all the schedules would be different what we're doing is we're asking teachers to you know send home assignments as they make sense that you would normally do when a student is absent and make your connection with you t with your student as you would and then what we're trying to do is supplement that with some programmed tutoring from an external tutor so we've got folks that are identified to provide some tutoring

066instruction in literacy and mathematics at specific times in the day uh that would be continuous so if i'm a second grader you know i know that i'm going to get a 40 minutes of literacy at say 10 o'clock and 40 minutes of mathematics at 10 45 with a short break in between that's intended to to be a supplement to not necessarily a replacement or a direct one-on-one because it's not a remote learning environment it's it's a supplement to instruction that might be missed if you're going to be out of school for five six days on quarantine one thing to add to that quick is at the high school and secondary level it's not a sign in like last year it's not a dual class where the teacher's aiming at the kids at home and at

067the kids in the classroom teachers aiming at the kids in the classroom in fact there's no attendance taken because that child's absent that day the way the state department of education wrote the guidelines that child's absence now that doesn't mean we're going to use those same absences in terms of truancy as you've had in the past but it's far more of a observing listening to what's going on the other element here that's the biggest advantage of the secondary level a vaccination rate that will approach 90 percent within two weeks once that's completed we're just going to have far less kids in quarantine at the secondary level i mean so it's not the same it's not the same need by numbers as it's been in the past i think at the one of the things that's

068important to remember is also the difference between in quarantine because of an exposure and sick kids that are sick we want to get better and that's one of the things you know there is a little bit of the mindset we want to get back to that was before covet of you're sick focus on being healthy and we can make this up when you come back we've been doing that for years we know how to do that but rest we don't want you signing in with a fever we don't want you know we want you to take that time to get yourself right and ready to be back and healthy are there different quarantine protocols or anything with vaccinated versus unvaccinated students yeah at this point the um the biggest difference so vaccinated students that's asymptomatic

069um they wouldn't have to go into quarantine the biggest difference at the elementary level and really well it's all levels for vaccinated or unvaccinated is that inside the classroom setting which means in the classroom because they've studied transmission in the classroom so this doesn't apply to pee it doesn't apply to the cafeteria necessarily it doesn't apply to the bus or bus stops but in the classroom setting it's been changed from six feet to three feet with a mask so if i'm more than three feet from you and we haven't had more than 15 minutes of exposure immediately with each other then you're not in quarantine the same way that you were last year so again we should see less quarantine from that this year also with that shift and that that's based on cdc these

070aren't you know one of the things i want to stress some people um have questions about have i lessened mitigation if i we're following the cdc guidance and the state department of public health guidance on this what they say is what we do liz following up on the can you guys hear me okay yeah okay following up on the quarantine protocols and letting the kids have a break when they're not feeling well have we considered a more formalized process of having a note taker or having the teachers provide notes i know i know that's being done in some schools or some colleges so that there's actually notes that the students can receive as as part of a process so one of the things we're doing and i think this applies probably mostly to um uh

071i would say third grade and up although second grade's in a transition one you know we did we did make a technology change with second grade this year where we're looking to provide them with thank you chromebooks senior moment versus ipads which they which they had traditionally had which enables them access to a google classroom and so it's a process for second grade as that's getting integrated and as they're learning that platform but we had you know basically last year we had the opportunity that everybody got a crash course in google classroom if they had never seen it and and so that's that's one way by which uh we're we're asking teachers to maintain their their proficiency with that even though they have all students in front of them because it's just a great organizational

072tool if i've got handouts if i've got things that i shared in the class that i had to type up on my computer and print out to hand to you as a hard copy i can attach it just like i would an email and it's right there for all students whether they're in quarantine homesick or you know just want to be able to go back to it a week from now to study for the quiz or the test and and so that that's certainly a strategy that we are uh you know very strongly promoting to to make sure that that's happening as frequently as possible and then that's in addition to like we said when when students are out we are asking um teachers to maintain you know they're out sick if they're under quarantine

073the state is qualifying that as an absence we're asking them you know share work as you would when students are out sick that doesn't mean they need to have um you know transcripts of your lessons but that you know enough and i think it it sort of depends based on the group at the secondary level those students can access that instruction uh they can go in and see it and they should be able to keep pace although depending on what their symptoms are we're telling them you know you you sort of play that based on your symptoms and at the elementary level we're not trying to create a scenario where where the kid has to you know have the nine hours or the six hours of instruction at home but they should be doing reading

074there may be handouts that the teachers sending home or emailing to the parent or asking folks to come by and pick up so we are we are trying to keep kids engaged if they're in a quarantine in those ways i was thinking of it more in terms of upper-level classes like a like a ap science or a cal class or a class that you'd really you know if you're going to be at seven to ten days like yeah i would i would expect they're gonna find that both from their ability to uh view the class directly if they're if they're asymptomatic not sick they're just in quarantine and or they're going to be able to see things within their google classroom and then when they are sexual um you know i think i think that's

075always the case we don't want us you know if if i unfortunately get coveted and i'm you know i'm out of it for uh for for nine ten eleven days and i'm out of school yeah we work with those students to make sure that we can get get them back onto track whether that's peers whether that's the teacher directly whether it's coming back in you know we work on an individual basis with kids one one of the great benefits nationally because of this struggle nationally for advanced placement classes the highest level there's ap daily in ap classroom for all subjects where it's not just your teacher but even if i just i'm fuzzy on some aspect of gdp and macroeconomics i can actually go and find the lesson of the teacher that did it and

076like i know like for macroeconomics janet yellen went in and taught a class last year so it's this really cool um you know things are changing with that in ways that are just very very interesting so there's more more opportunities for that actually at the upper levels than there would be in some subjects any other questions jason all right um yeah so i wanted to follow up on uh part of the uh the summer curriculum portion where you're describing uh the the resource allocation review for the the state curriculum on black and latinx studies and i just wanted to hear more about how that that course has gone as someone who's been who's seen the the back end on circ and the development of the curriculum i'd love to hear how that those courses are

077are uh are being implemented and and other you know uh parts of of how what that looks like here in west hartford sure and um my details tonight will probably be fairly sketchy just because we're so early on yeah but i'll just uh for the sake of uh other board members new new folks and people listening at home west hartford is involved in the pilot of that curriculum uh which is this year so those those materials are the curriculum itself is newly developed our teachers have had professional development over the course of the summer and in curriculum writing time themselves to kind of understand what that framework is we don't get to necessarily deviate that from that but we wanted to provide people with the opportunity to review what the state curriculum documents are the

078state did not assign a textbook to that but they identified a list and a fairly large voluminous list of resources that you might acquire so they had some opportunity to review those resources and to and to select among them and kind of basically kind of get their feet wet with what the lesson planning and such is and so obviously they're just into the first week of instruction on that and uh i would anticipate we'd we'd provide you with some more detail on that as it as it progresses and talk about the lessons that we've learned in the takeaways as we get a little deep into it sorry i'm getting distracted by dr haskins breaking my technology jason it's a good that'll be a good board presentation at some point later this year with the teachers

079coming in and some students talking about what we've learned from it thank you yeah appreciate it any other questions before we go to dr haskins all right you're up dr haskins good evening and welcome back everyone it's so nice to start the year with everyone in person and welcome avery and andrew i'm dr haskins rosina haskins the director equity advancement um we have a lot to look forward to this year we're excited about it but before i go forward i would like to just take a quick look back just to provide some context to what we've been up to over the summer and what lies ahead as you know we start we ended last year with the adoption of educational equity board policy 1800 thank you for that it really was an endorsement of our

080ongoing work for the past several years on building our cultural humility building our cultural responsiveness and practice and really building capacity for skills and dispositions among our staff last year we focused largely on physical safety mental health and awareness and wellness and social emotional wellness we centered a specialized program on you know learning how to better understand ourselves developing and building and cultivating a personal positive personal self-concept connecting with others and working together in support of our community goals to be more inclusive more equitable and socially just we paired the competencies of the social emotional learning framework with social justice education domains of identity diversity action and justice and we did not do that in silos we did not do that alone we did that with multiple stakeholder groups including our parents as our shoulder

081partners and other community members feedback from our students as well as from our educators our peers and so the educational equity policy really was an endorsement and public assurance of our ongoing commitment and our efforts and it's for some people in the public it was new um learning and understanding but it wasn't new work for us but it has renewed our energy and so that energy carried over into the summer and we had a really productive summer the office of equity advancement we provided oversight to the sel social emotional learning social justice curriculum work groups and that was led by my colleagues carrie jones ann mckernan scott ratchford and jocelyn tambora lenovo with about 25 educators i was a little disappointed initially when we didn't have the 50 that we invited just because they were

082committed to the other programs they were really torn like how can i had someone call me when i was on the road how can i do both i really am you know passionate about both and so um you know they made some choices and they'll stay invested in the work but what we did was we reviewed multi-stakeholder feedback about the seo and sj curriculum which is in a short experience for those who may be new to this it for all of our students across the district in our morning meeting program and our morning advisory and at the high school level it's the community block we made some process content and structural shifts at all three building levels in the curriculum at the elementary level we made less incoherence and depth shifts across and within grades

083we introduced a new gender literacy progression and we did that in collaboration with the library media specialists and our lgbt alliance at the middle school those shifts in processing content included more depth and new learning so it was let's go a little bit deeper and let's spend more time in learning new concepts um and in topics before shifting to application before doing it so we wanted to be more respectful and provide more space for peer-to-peer discussion we've provided consistent frames for integration of heritage months that offered balanced perspective in both historical and cultural contexts at the high school level those shifts were very similar to those of the middle school but there was more emphasis on building community very early on an authentic integration of heritage months was honored through that revision process and one

084structural shift that we're making is building in times during our existing structures for for our educators to actually experience what they're expected to deliver and we spent some time before we started before we dug into the revisions we did some experiential learning and kind of exploring this journey that we're all on because it's personal it's sensitive and it's complex too and then we also had a team that worked on the professional learning content for lgbt plus topics which included language terminology policy practice programs and resources and so as we look ahead we're going to continue our platforms for family and community partnerships the one community for equity network that we established last year we learned so much from that we'll continue we're going to restructure that re-engage and and really mobilize that platform and look

085for other structures as well i'm really excited about the expansion of the office of equity advancement and i'm just smiling because um we're really trying to build a more robust arm of family and school partnership and so we actually just hired and she started today kayla lowe she's our halftime outreach coordinator and she shared with the esl department and i think it's just going to be wonderful helping us to really reach out to more families hear more voices and students as well those who have traditionally be been under represented in these conversations and in this work and so i'll conclude with uh i got two slides i'll conclude with uh just kind of reflecting back on my colleague mr downey earlier he referenced that this is suicide prevention week and so last night in partnership

086we kept our focus on mental health and wellness we co-hosted this forum this webinar with the community of concern and it included panelists including our esteemed students who were they were just outstanding and they discussed how to manage stress related to current uncertainties and provided proactive strategies and guidance for adolescent mental health and wellness and self-care tips for for parents and caregivers this is going to be the recording will be on our website um our district website and our secondary school websites along with a compendium of resources to very practical resources and strategies we have been we're going to keep these conversations going too because it is so important we have talked a lot about student mental health parent self-care but we can't leave our educators behind and so we're currently exploring resources and contracted

087services that support our teachers mental well-being as well um and just really they have to be healthy and and you know and well and valuable in order to be their very very best for our students because that's what our students deserve so we have accomplished so much in a year we feel good about the direction that we're going it was a challenging year and we accomplished a lot we're not done yet we're not ready to blow out the candles we still have so much work to do but we're appreciative of all the support that we've had from the board from our community partners and just the expertise of our students to our student leaders so open for any questions thank you are there questions for dr haskins avery i would just like to begin by

088saying that i truly appreciate the work that the department of equity has done and i know that my predecessor lilly particularly supported the new the 1800 equity statement for this board and reflecting the beliefs of the greater hall student body and that we've truly seen the benefits of this program at hall throughout the past year this past year has been monumental and challenging as you've said i would like to ask um through the community block students have been engaging in these conversations um and i would like to ask are there any plans or will there be any talks of the high school students as we know high school students are starting to enter leadership in their communities and you take those positions will there be any opportunities for these programs to be linked together of

089the high schoolers the middle schoolers i know that in some of our arts programs and science programs high schoolers can connect with the younger students and take on that role and continue to build that community will that be integrated into this new equity plan absolutely that is one of so at hall high school in particular there's a startup of the student equity and diversity council at the middle school there is also a students against racism group and so we're looking to really mobilize those students bring those leadership groups together we did we started doing focus groups last year with students educators and parents to kind of really hear how we can integrate student voice and and give us some direction and guidance and so we will be looking to provide opportunities for students to really

090engage in that work more as leaders um and and and consultants to all of us thank you and thank you for your feedback that's awesome i'm so glad to hear that um other questions mark and then lorna um thanks george can you you said the um with the professional learning review and redesign with the lbgtq the k through 12 workshop can you tell us what the k through three looks like and maybe the four and five grades look like for that for in the elementary schools when you say the professional development yeah under the professional learning review and redesign you said the k to 12 workshops so i'm wondering what the k to three looks like in the four to five so yeah mark you want to know about the like the gender identity progression

091itself well you know what's being what what you talk about the the curricula and protocols and policies i'm just wondering what it looks like at that young adult sure younger i'll speak to the curriculum um stick to the pd yep um so so last year we had lessons at the elementary level and it was it was really based around i think a read-aloud book and we used the same book at all grade levels and we got some feedback from staff from students hey you know a little bit of a miss in terms of our younger our younger children so did a lot of great work this summer kind of took in feedback that we had and we developed um and and we're talking about um this is this is uh at least under the gender

092identity it's part of the identity unit and it's one lesson that you know you look at identity comprehensively who are you as a student well you know what is your culture what is your your family background was these are all all elements and so gender identity fits into that at the younger levels what we're what we're looking at are standards that relate to um really identifying stereotypes as they relate to boys and girls you know the notion that oh because because we'll have children we've talked about this with a lot of principles we'll have children if a boy wears pink to school someone's picking on them because oh that's not a color that boys wear so at those younger grades um that's a that's probably the big focus in terms of develop developmentally what what

093are students under able to understand well we understand there are stereotypes and we're we're essentially trying to uh treat everyone with respect and for them to understand that a person's identity is their identity their likes or their likes their dislikes or their dislikes things of that nature um so that so there's a read aloud component with that where the where where that's kind of talked about um i can p i know one in the second grade is uh uh you know about a crayon that you know gets picked on by other crayons because it's not the color that the other crayons like or something to that nature and the lesson just is is one of more around tolerance and acceptance of of varying points of view as the students get older in fourth and fifth

094grade there is a there's a greater emphasis on identity as it might relate to uh if it's the gender identity specific part preferred pronoun um and that's rooted in in uh you know certainly also within connecticut uh state law recently passed hey if a student at any grade level has a preferred pronoun schools are responsible to utilize that preferred pronoun so we try to we try to provide education at a young enough age that's that that just makes people aware of it and tolerant of it in the professional development piece in my report just kind of highlights how we've been supporting teachers and building understanding awareness skills and you know shaping dispositions um to do that to do this work because for some teachers it's it's new learning a shift in understanding and so that's

095really what we've spent the time doing with the professional development professional learning part of it supporting our teachers and that work thank you lorna yes thank you can you hear me otherwise i'll just talk like i'm at home all right so thank you so much for this information and i really appreciate hearing you speak about how there's been the process of learning the information before applying it i think that's a lesson for all of us we can't just teach at we have to teach with and certainly the triad i was hearing in terms of acknowledging the supports needed for the children the families but the educators as well definitely um key definitely important what are your thoughts may i ask you you made reference to uh in in terms of uh wanting quote you said

096authentic integration when you were speaking about um the one of these sections in terms of middle school social emotional social justice curriculum work group but all throughout i imagine that is a theme of authentic integration and recognizing the purpose for the policy recognizing the purpose of being equitable and also the realities that we know outside of this district there are not everyone supports that effort how is through the process is there a congruent process of maintaining the focus on the north star in spite of external stressors pressures and condemnation of what we are doing one way is through student voice giving students more time to interact with each other and learn about each other's histories backgrounds and experiences but the way that we open the door to doing that is by letting them see themselves

097in their histories and their narratives in the context of teaching and learning to kind of inspire that conversation and inquiries and interest in each other and then developing some understanding and empathy and acceptance as paul talked about as well when we talk about in authentic integration i think i was referencing like the heritage months too and some people say well why do we have to have these months and um and it's because for far too long people a lot of people have not been represented in our curriculum in the context of teaching and learning right and so until we can have a fuller more fuller accurate history um in in curriculum that reflects all people we're going to spend time doing that because that's a what those are times those heritage months are times that

098they're assured guaranteed times that everybody gets to hear and understand and learn about people of different cultures backgrounds and experiences right until it becomes more natural right well couldn't we'll always celebrate and honor but then we want it to just be something that's just ingrained in everything that we do in every area of our work policies programs in practice thank you appreciate hearing that because that the integration certainly makes it more than an accessory this is not an accessory this is a part of so thank you so much lorna we wanted to really make sure that we weren't um reflecting tokenism and that was a big that was a big thing so more authentically understanding but part of that for the adults also requires some kind of experiential self-exploration and providing space for that too

099where you can be vulnerable you can ask questions of your colleagues and not feel like you're going to make a mistake and it's you're just going to set everything back so that's the other part of it too thank you other questions oh yes andrew uh is my microphone working okay um so i also circling back to the community blocks just have a question about that i know um in and out of class i've seen classmates discussing what we talked about in community block and then what's worked and maybe like what could be improved so i guess i have two questions one thus far how much feedback have you received from students or teachers and then going forward is there because this is like a relatively new initiative is there a formal infrastructure for feedback yeah

100so last year we we administered surveys twice maybe two to four times at the secondary level for sure and we also had a structure among our our parents our parent work groups that helped us they gave their feedback their perspectives and helped us to refine and we took feedback from them they are parents they have children at home and so we got their authentic feedback too very candid but we did that through surveys they were voluntary surveys the feedback the the response rate was very good you know across all levels when initially when it initially when we first administered it the response rate was really low and we understood from students that they were concerned about responding and being honest about it and um giving critical feedback and having that that submission be tied to

101their accounts so once we you know talked about how they could share that feedback and the platform the portal and how it was safe and there would be no repercussions for that and we're not doing that kind of tracking and tracing we really wanted honest feedback because it's for you and we want it we want to do better we want to do well by you and so we'll continue to do those surveys but we'll continue to do we will build a more robust structure for student feedback focus group fee right we started that in the spring at some pilot schools not specific to to the community block we did have two forums at each school for the community they were really small it was a student council um but we learned something from that and

102so we'll continue to open up platforms we're open to hearing other ways and sometimes it might be better if you know there isn't an adult in the room so there can be honest and open conversation so we want to think about that too great to hear thank you any other questions uh jason and then amanda all right uh you know a similar comment to what i made with mr vaisena's presentation that uh the immense amount of work that you've sustained in the community relations and the process that you've uh that you've set in in place um for the development of new ideas the support of schools and that the development of a community supported curriculum i think that's you know really admirable and i would just like to ask for you to reflect on that

103in terms of what does that look like for other districts um how does uh how does what we do in west hartford compare uh to to other other districts in the state and in this in this regard um and um just to for efficiency i also want to give a shout out to my um my colleague richard jang that you had there uh he's been incredible i'm so glad that you found him he's a new clinical resident and psyc psychiatry and a phenomenal addition so glad you guys found him yeah i hope everyone could go back and watch it it was very rich discussion and i'm most proud of our students for their um perspectives they shared their experiences and their brave voices i'm just trying to buy more time on answering your first question

104because it's really hard it is easy to answer but it's hard to answer and dispense of our humility um to answer that question because honestly we were the only ones in this state and we're in i we're part of a um a statewide dei network that was newly started actually by a west hartford parent who works as a dei director for another district and so she reached out and kind of formed this coalition and we were kind of comparing stories also within the greater hartford interfaith action alliance we belong to we get to come together as well as a region and when we were sharing um what we're doing we were the only ones that was you know pairing sel and sj social justice with social emotional learning those competencies and domains in this thoughtful

105way with an assured um in an assured way there were no programs out there for us we heard the recommendations of all of the reopening schools advisories that you all sat on and we couldn't go and buy something so we we know our students we know what they need we know we heard from our families we heard from the advisories and so we crafted something ourselves we were thoughtful about it and then we said well you know we can't we're so in the trenches we might be we might have blind spots and so that's when we invited our families in and we were particularly interested in making sure that you know it represented diversity um across you know all of the stakeholders and it was what was supposed to be a four day kind of

106process and relationship turned out to be almost a weekly in some areas some building levels a weekly forum with our families and and it just became a real community a real sense of community and partnership i don't we weren't aware of anyone else that was doing it in that way and our district for the greater harvard interfaith action alliance we were actually used as a model for that and i i do want to say and this isn't this isn't um false hubris or anything else we got we've got a long way to go i i mean you think about the yukon faculty in all disciplines and then have them teach a similar program because that's what we have to do at our schools every teacher is in doing this community block so the lift in

107getting a continuity getting the professional development the understanding is massive to do that across all levels we can't just take okay well this fits in with what you're doing in history we're gonna have our history teacher do that that doesn't work it has to be everybody which means it has to be this incredible buy-in across not just one school but across all levels so so it's very hard work thank you amanda i just wanted to add you know last spring we had a lot of interest from the community and we got letters and we heard in our own interactions and people were very interested in how we approach our work as a district and how we do our planning and what the assessment process is like so i think this co this conversation really illustrates

108part of that process and what it means when we say we're a continuous improvement district so that we don't have a strategic plan that's static that we write we follow and then we try to write a new one that there's this constant push and pull of feedback and and tweaking and looking ahead and so for people who are trying to learn more as we go that's what this looks like and you know when we get to mr ludwig's presentation about hr you know we have pages and pages here about the qualifications of our new faculty and when you think about that augmenting our existing faculty the fact that we have hundreds of teachers who are almost all our first choice employees in most cases and have been for decades that they're all the people working

109in these groups together the richness of the content expertise that we have in the district is very significant so to think that in the thinking back to the the trainings the professional development day that we had in 2019 when you really dug in and reported back what the faculty had to say about working together and hearing from each other and using each other as content leaders and how much the faculty liked that model it's really exciting to think that this summer that kicked into gear again but with the stamina that that everyone needed to pull from to be able to do that work while they were still exhausted themselves so this is it's it really speaks to how west hartford structures the professional development portion and continuous improvement by adding the support structures for the

110teachers so that's not something that that i've been hearing from other districts when we're thinking about building support systems because they take a while to get going so i'm really glad to hear that but for people who are trying to pull out how we approach our planning that's kind of what we're talking about and it's wonderful to hear your voices clearly engaged in as we talk and that's when you think about what it means to represent it's adding a lot of value to our conversations so so i just wanted to make that clear for anyone listening who's trying to think about how we plan and assess because it is continuous any other questions or comments before we move on okay thank you dr haskins and uh next miss caballero good evening welcome everyone thank you

111i want to thank everybody for my warm welcome especially this superb executive team who's been so supportive as i get my training wheels off and gretchen deported it's been a very exciting and busy summer um avery andrew welcome i echo everybody said it's it's been lovely to hear your voices i appreciate your engagement um i'm melissa kobler i'm the director of pupil services um i this is my first summer and my first time here too so we have something in common um i want to start by sharing some updates from over the summer and tell you a little bit about our plans for the new school year i want to echo some of paul and rosina's work relative to our summer programming you heard some of paul's numbers we had our largest extended school year

112program to date we had 374 students participating in our in-person extended school year programming that ran for six weeks monday through thursday and we also had additional 90 students who benefited from literacy or math tutoring throughout the summer for four weeks and some for beyond depending on what their individualized needs are so as paul said this is a really big lift in terms of staffing many districts had extensive plans for summer programming for students and i think it really speaks to our teachers level of dedication that we had 38 certified special education teachers here to support many of which that are the students case managers who chose through their dedication to stay on for consistency of programming for our special education students to make all of this work we had an additional 18 related service

113providers that include speech and language pathologists occupational therapists physical therapists our assistive technology specialists our board certified behavior analysts all supporting our students and our su and our specialized programming we did houses at four different locations we used our cogswell building which is located in our asd campus connor high school bristow middle school and whiting lane elementary school all served as sites for our extended summer program and we had 156 non-certified staff members supporting those students based on their individual needs whether they are paraprofessionals teaching assistants or registered behavior technicians over the summer and so as we look to really kind of support our students in the upcoming school year we have welcomed 35 new talented colleagues to the pupil services department some of those are covering retirees leaves of absences and or folks who

114have moved on but eight are new positions that are funded through esser to support the social emotional needs or special education needs of students in the academic world and we have doubled the size of our crisis intervention team we have pat tyler and we've also hired shanna rackmill who will both support at the high school level as crisis intervention social workers and we've also doubled the size our school engagement program which is housed at beachland park and so that supports students who are having difficulty with anxiety and engagement and we support them in a non-traditional way to help them at the secondary level in accessing their education and meeting graduation requirements we are still in the process of hiring team members at the time of writing we had a pretty high number of vacancies for

115our para and tas we continue to work and partner with our department supervisors and principals on getting those folks hired and we have hired 12 more and we continue to work on partnering with our colleagues to to obtain all those support staff colleagues that we are that are needed for our students i do want to provide you some updates we do have some new mandates and changes in special education for the upcoming school year the last time we met i just received guidance i think it was the day before the last board report relative to this bureau of special education had released information on recovery services for special education and so what we have done is developed a process aligned with the state guidelines and guidance that they provided that help us identify students who

116might have had interrupted delayed or disrupted disruption in their special education services to support them in recovering any lost skills we actually are quite fortunate in that our district's very responsive and getting students back in really quickly especially at the elementary level where students programming was really comprehensive and then we also had a very robust remote learning experience so in addition to having full curriculum access we had full special education and clinical teams supporting in the remote learning center uh remote schools and so um we while we do identify that there are some students who might require these services we will be independently looking at who those students might be and how we might support them and recovering any lost skills and regression that might have been um as a result of the pandemic also

117we are anticipating a new special education data system called ct seds it's our new individualized education program software we currently use frontline parents receive hard copies of their students ieps this new new program ct said is going to be uh basically an electronic platform that parents can access independently and it will be a warehouse of all their student archives so at this current time if a parent loses an evaluation for their child that was conducted in third grade and now it's fifth grade and they'd like to look back on that they can certainly request that from us we're happy to provide it but through the new online system it'll be a data warehouse parents will have a login they'll be able to access all their child's records or evaluations any ieps any past third-party releases

118um it it's it looks a lot more streamlined too we get a lot of feedback from parents relative to our current document that it's hard to read it's laborious a lot of jargon the new format is much more user-friendly um parents were on the board of development and i think they really heard um their request for it to be a document that's readable understandable and accessible so we're looking forward to that it is being released next summer and we do have the state training that will be rolled out in the spring currently there are some districts in connecticut that are piloting the new program so as the bugs are worked out and they understand what training is involved we'll we'll be training all of our staff there will also be parent forums and opportunities for

119parents to come in for workshops on how to access the system what that might look like and um you know what that will mean for interpreting their child's individualized education plan as we switch to the new system we also are anticipating new guidelines and specific learning disabilities these were anticipated to be released this summer but i think with a lot of the new initiatives coming from the state i know that the team that was working on it has kind of been wrapping that work up so i do anticipate at some point during the year we might see these new guidelines rolled out um certainly keep everybody informed and parents as any communication becomes available or there's any shifts one of the the most critical pieces to our work in special education is our relationships with

120our parents last year we saw our highest rate of parent engagement and attendance at planning and placement team meetings because we're using the virtual format we think that that really made it accessible for parents to log in from their workplace they weren't required to take a half day they could meet with us from their car they can meet with us from their office and they didn't need to transition to a school location so we're going to continue the general practice of having virtual pbts with the option for in-person pbts and i did send a letter out to families communicating all the updates for the start of the school year from people services including this option so that they um knew in advance that this is certainly something we're able to accommodate if they'd like to

121come in but our goal is to have them there and to participate so whatever venue is most accessible to them we're happy to accommodate also we are partnering with septo this year our first meeting is at the end of this month on september 29th we do have a link for membership on our website and i do encourage parents to attend and join it's a great resource for families support and and provides a wealth of opportunities and activities and you know information for families who have students who have individualized education plans or special needs i'm also offering my time to discuss and connect with families on special education topics with coffee with director series i'm offering it five times during the year it's going to be virtual to start because i think that format will work

122best for parent engagement it's it's designed to address more general special education topics not student specific concerns but i do um hope that parents will attend and i think that based on you know their level of interest or topics we could kind of steer the conversation to really meet parents needs but i think it's important for me to understand what parents see as important topics for them to get information on what they identify as needs as parents for us to be able to provide them resources and so i look forward to meeting with them at those times i want to pause at this moment and ask if you have any questions before i move on to my next slide all right uh questions oh jason yeah likewise thank you for the work that you've done

123over the summer and congratulations on the um the extended school year participation um and i wanted to ask about the uh the eight positions that were brought on um when uh and the use of sr funds and i can't recall all of the conversations we had before but were those were those already um discussed as uh as uses of of esser funds and does it look like those um the resources set aside for for special education or adequate given what you've you've the planning and preparation that you've done over the summer does that still feel adequate yeah that's a great question jason and i have to give gretchen credit for the forethought and planning i wasn't part of the initial conversations about the allocations of the esser funds and kind of came in midstream we

124did continue to look at that process together and so the way that they're set up is it's increasing both clinical and special education support and i do feel at this time the teams are you know are having a really positive response to the additional support staff and staffing models but i think you know to amanda's point that continuous improvement model of looking at what do our students need as they reacclimate for many of the students that stayed fully remote over all of last year many of which had individualized education plans so the first time they did come back in person was the esy experience and so as they reacclimate into a full day full year regular in-person program i think we're going to continue to closely monitor both academic and social emotional progress and if

125we feel that we need to revisit additional staffing we certainly will be monitoring that to determine what interventions are needed and whether that requires additional staffing or additional resources thank you um i'm really curious and not that you'll have you just started with this but in terms of the coffee with the director series i'm really curious as things move along how that turns and develops i say that because with you saying how the intent is not student centered but more so talking about special education in general and i wonder how that may for some parents allow them to offer questions of reflection of their own experiences as we know many times their latent diagnosis in terms of educational challenges so thank you for offering that in any more wholesome way opportunity for parents to engage

126thank you all right uh oh avery i just wanted to shortly ask a follow-up sort of to the coffee with director series i know that at the high school level level there's many students with ips other um any um any other sort of um i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm forgetting the word but there's another plan um there's a lot of high school students with ips and other sorts of plans that might want to give feedback are there any avenues would this coffee with the director series be open to students as well or is there a different avenue which you would prefer students to be communicating their desires to your department avery i love that thought i hadn't really thought about students feeling like maybe they'd want to give input and i really appreciate that idea

127because i think that would be a great extension um maybe you know that would be a good way for me to pull students to feel to get a sense i don't know that coffee would be their preferred choice but maybe there is a form format that would elicit some information and feedback to me as a director as how i could support some of our students and i think the plan you might be referring to is a 504 plan that supports students with accommodations and modifications but i think that would be important it's really important that we empower our students to be self-advocates for their programming and i would love to hear the student voice in that so i thank you for that great idea all right do you have another one more thing to share

128with you and i didn't want to get ahead of myself so i wanted to be able to answer questions about the department before i moved on to this next exciting piece of information before i talk about the story i just want to start with expressing gratitude and there are so many people to express gratitude that have had a hand in shaping and creating and lifting the next chapter bookstore off the ground so to speak and primarily i want to thank all of you for your support um i want to thank dr andy morrow who is not here my predecessor dr gretchen nelson for their forward thinking in this beautiful idea the next chapter bookstore for those of you who are hearing about it for the first time is um a used bookstore that is opening

129um right here on north main street uh for students in our post-secondary program to have a work site to support their ability to generalize work skills and prepare themselves for life beyond graduation and so you can see in these um pictures the completely empty store and the shells filled with books and our students who have been actively using the site um but before i say more i really need to thank our community we hosted a book drive that was um supposed to be what we thought a small book swap um hosted by alana goldberg and jillian puzzo who are two neighborhood books book enthusiasts who all have book clubs and we hosted it here in the auditorium and it happened on i think it was june 12th well the community showed up in support we

130filled the entire auditorium with books and it kept our esy students busy all summer they spent their literally um all summer uh stacking sorting prepping the materials getting the books ready for the bookstore we just recently transitioned them over to the bookstore and started filling the shelves by genre and rhonda merriman who is our department supervisor nancy pro our store manager who else do i want to thank all of the post-secondary teachers who supported the job sites are paraprofessionals and teaching assistants and anna our transition coordinator elfin bomb they've spent countless hours stacking books unpacking boxes lifting boxes and right now our store is almost full and we still have an additional 50 or 60 boxes full of extra books so at this time we are not taking any donations in case the public is

131interested but we will certainly keep you posted um once we are taking donations again and where to donate those books we do anticipate an announcement of our grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony which we would like to schedule in the beginning of october so more information to come on the opening up of our next chapter bookstore i just am so excited about this but i don't actually have any questions does anyone have any questions thank you thank you thanks so much for that update um mr ludwig um are you gonna read us all the personnel actions yes for the next four hours good evening everyone and welcome back welcome to our new student representatives i'm rick ledwith i'm the executive director of human resources and i think you're going to have a very exciting year

132this year so welcome and also welcome to our new clerk of the board charlotte flanagan hiding there in the back who is taking over for cami rogers who has served in that role for very admirably for many years so thank you good luck cami and welcome charlotte i will begin my report with a summary of our summer recruitment results and our leadership team was very busy this summer as we added 62 new contracted teachers and 26 interim teachers to our certified staff in addition we added three new administrators to our leadership team hiring 90 people in addition to the paraprofessionals and teaching assistants over the course of eight weeks was no small task so i really want to take a moment now to thank our leadership team thank our principals our department supervisors assistant principals

133the teachers who served on the interview committees for all of their hard work and efforts and bringing on bringing us these 90 very talented and dedicated uh professional teachers to west hartford the turnover rate this year was 5.9 percent that was up from 3 percent last year but if you see our retirements last year were a record low of 14 and this year they were a record high of 34. so that's what drove the increase in the turnover from three percent up to six percent um we also categorized and exited interviews with our teachers we find out the reasons why they're leaving west hartford and we categorize them into five different categories uh the one that we really focus on year to year is the number of teachers who are leaving west hartford to teach

134in another district in connecticut and that number this year was um seven and that number is consistently in that four to five to eight range so seven uh was not concerning to us this year [Music] all of our you know as amanda pointed out earlier most of these candidates were the first choice of our hiring committee our hiring principal or department supervisor and they come with a wide range of experiences uh 40 of our new colleagues actually worked here last year so if you remember in our interim teacher meeting that we had in the spring and we were unfortunately non-renewing those folks well we ended up hiring a number of them this year so 40 of them were either interim teachers long-term subs or teaching assistants last year so they know west hartford they know

135our culture they know our expectations so the assimilation should be nice and smooth for them the rest of the candidates as i say come from a wide range of experiences this year in comparison to most we had fewer first-year teachers joining west star for public schools this year than we typically do part of that was purpose purposely based on the pandemic last year the remote learning experience all the students coming back into the schools we hired a number of teachers who did have at least a couple of years teaching experience in another district and we are proud to say that yet again eight of our new teachers are graduates of west hartford public schools something we're very proud of probably one of the most impressive things about this new cohort of teacher centers around equity

136in fact and almost to a person these these new this new cohort of teachers are quickly aligning themselves to our educational equity policy which as you know asks us to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers who more closely reflect the diversity of our community and are committed to or share our commitment to anti-bias and anti-racism 15 of our new teachers are teachers of color so we've raised the diversity of our teaching staff from 10 to 11 this year four years ago we were at seven percent so if we continue this commitment our leadership team did a great job this year but we need to continue to build on that every single chance we get when we're hiring new staff whether it's during the year or when it's during the summer when we have larger opportunities

137to bring on more staff let's see we had our new teacher orientation on august 26 which is always a great induction into west hartford public schools we have a number of speakers who meet with our new teachers who talk about our vision talk about our mission talk about our programs like our equity program mustafa who's an english teacher over at king phillip middle school helped us to facilitate our program our new teachers were welcomed by our teacher of the year chelsea smith we did have uh three bugbee elementary school students who joined us um and well joined us on film and actually they joined us virtually to welcome our new teachers and share some of the things that they love about their teachers here in west hartford as well as some advice for our new

138teachers which is always well received if i'm not mistaken uh assisted us in this about five or six years ago and i can't remember if it was you andrew your brother or your sister um one of one of the maglios actually we actually have students from an elementary school join us at every new teacher orientation and there was a maglio there a few years ago we also had dr tracy wilson join us who gave a overview of the history of west hartford public schools and then all of our administrators as well as dead poland and amanda aronson joined us for a luncheon in the auditorium demonstrating why it is why it's a special place to work here in west hartford especially to learn and grow a couple of other things i'd like to highlight we

139do our teachers contract does expire on june 30th of 2022 so we will begin negotiations for that next successor agreement this fall so actually these first round of negotiations begin next week and we will meet several times through the month of september and then early october and then if we're not able to come to an agreement through that process then we would have a mediation set up for the middle of october uh deb amanda and liz will be joining our negotiations team and we're very confident that we will come up with a fair agreement for our teachers that demonstrates the respect and value that we have tremendously for our teachers and then uh finally we did late last week issue our coven 19 mandated vaccination policy pursuant to government governor lamont's executive order 13d so

140by september 27th it will require all of all west hartford public school employees to be vaccinated if they're not vaccinated they will have to have at least had one shot by the 27th with the second one scheduled shortly after now staff members can opt out of the covid vaccination policy through exemptions so they can request a medical exemption or they could request a religious or spiritual exemption if they qualify for an exemption they will be required to submit weekly tests directly to the district in order for them to work throughout their unvaccinated status so as long as they remain unvaccinated they will be required to provide us with a weekly negative test in order to work so that uh summarizes my our school opening report be happy to answer any questions that the board had

141questions for rick mark rick i understand the religious on the the covid um shot yeah um [Music] and i've understand that for many other vaccines and such but you know going through this pandemic and and by no means i a subject matter expert but it was something i read we talked about i heard not we but it was discussed that um the people that do know that the religious exemption is is very very limited if almost non-existent for this one this particular vaccine so i'm i'm interested in what is what is that religious exemption and um what surrounds that because i've had i have conflicting information not my opinion of just people that i've and and things that i've read so so we're we're learning a lot about it mark right now and it is

142you know i we find it more gray um than actually more black and white so it's you know the language in the executive order is a sincerely held uh religious belief um so that's what does that mean so when someone requests a religious exemption we're going to ask for documentation from a clergy from a reverend from a priest from a pastor that will provide some kind of context around that exemption i think one of the important things no i think you're i mean there's no major religious denomination that is against vaccinations people will bring up christian science christian science has made a statement not against vaccinations so this um this question is eventually at some point going to have to be answered in the courts i mean that that's just clear of what's going to

143happen here because even when you get the legal advice over it it's well this well that you know i mean it the truth is it's it's got to be more defined eventually by the courts as my estimation because time you're right the the information that i that had is that there were you know the major religions and even the the sub religions of those you're right they're they're just so if it's handled in the courts i'm surprised it hasn't been handled already because now we're at more than 18 months on this so well not quite 18 months with the vaccines but um actually not at all so but i mean it's not something that just happened yesterday right so yeah 1905's the major vaccination case that we go back to that says that vaccinations can

144be mandated so that so there's that case um that basically supports all of the case law from what you see biden today to everything from lamont and beyond the religious exemption piece actually the tests on it are not as specific still it hasn't gone in front of the supreme court um in the same way so that's something that we may see because you get conflicting legal advice in all honesty lorna what's so funny so thank you pardon so yes thank you very much for for this question you mentioned and so glad it happens in terms of the exit interviews and uh there's like a key area you try to look into was there any indication that and of course not asking for anything specific to be disclosed but in terms of food for thought for

145those who did depart was any of it specifically because pandemic related or was it something else that's food for thought moving forward so in terms of the folks that left to to work in another district it yeah that had nothing to do with the pandemic mostly it was commuting you know the district was in their hometown easier commute so we did lose a couple teachers who did step back from teaching at least for the year and that would have been pandemic related a couple of those and then a lot of these retirements lorna were pandemic related i mean we if you remember our last personnel report which was in may i think we were at 27 retirements i remember correctly after that meeting and then through the summer we received seven more retirements which just

146doesn't happen that late so i think that was a little bit of pandemic burnout yeah and i you know they haven't spoken about kind of the bad news part of our hiring yet but there is bad news is that there's more competition for opening because districts have openings because this isn't unique to west hartford there were huge numbers of retirements in connecticut and that is a fraction of what happened nationally the teaching pool so there's that issue but as you know when i mentioned it with bus drivers there's also certain pools that we're competing over special education right now with the focus on social emotional learning that's happened across the state and the use of esser funds it's incredibly competitive to get candidates right now it's really difficult paraprofessionals it's really difficult to get people

147to do that work right now teaching assistants it's really difficult to get people to do that work right now bus drivers cafeteria workers all those areas the employment we have application we have posted we've recruited we've done that work but gosh if you know somebody who wants to work for west hartford public schools now is the time to tell them to put an application um and certainly melissa's department has hit the hardest with that just because it's got the largest um the largest need and so when we can't fill those positions from bus monitors to classroom aids to teachers social workers that that's an impact on our kids and we're we're fighting hard to fill us i don't know if there's anything you want to add to that now couldn't agree more it's it's those

148level of positions where it's not just west and it's across the state we're all struggling hiring paraprofessionals teaching assistants cafeteria workers so folks in that lower tier unfortunately have to say that the lower tier salary wage positions we're not getting we're not getting the applications the folks aren't coming out to work we do have um we just heard about some flexibilities that the state allowed us to take advantage of last year um they held off on allowing us to take advantage of them this year but we just got word yesterday that we can so i think that will help a little bit with our teaching assistants and paraprofessionals and we have a little bit of work to do i think with our paraprofessional contract we we had several folks that we offer positions this year

149and they were coming in with experience but in our para contract they have to start at step one so they weren't willing to take a pay cut to to come here and and work uh in this role even though it has outstanding benefits so there's a couple things that we can continue to work on to to improve that and that's you know we hire paris and teaching assistants as a feeder for people that didn't get a job yet that are looking to go in and they can prove themselves here we get to know them they work as substitutes and then they're an interim employee and then they get hired here and it's great and they've come up in our system but this year there were jobs out there for them so that's the other competing

150piece of that liz and then amanda i was noticing rick that there was a bunch of on the interim teachers a bunch of retired teachers that you hired is that typical or is that kind of unique to um it is we will a good question we generally will bring back a couple of retired teachers this year um we went a little deeper this year because we were struggling finding some special ed teachers this year to tom's point so um we again a couple this year it was a little bit more than that yeah but it's great you know you're bringing them back they just left they you know grew up here taught here for 30 years and understand us in our culture and it's this year it's great to have them back are we covered

151for bus drivers for the athletic part of the day because i heard some of the coaches saying they had some concerns about whether they had enough drivers for the buses so i'm just wondering are the are we able to get the kids to the away games and do what we've hoped to do with the schedules yeah that that hasn't been a problem we've talked to that bus company they because it's actually separate companies that's not first student um or wait no yes your student does do does that that's the separate space so we don't have an issue there at this point um but it's something we worry about during the year and after the vaccination take policy takes place if there are if there are less drivers that could be a factor okay i think

152there might um there might be some confusion on that um so that's the only thing that there's often conclusions there's with the larger sports like cross country and everything else there's just a mat the number of people sometimes can be an issue where it's not that you can't get a bus there it's a question of can you get five buses there do you do different things during that so so that that could be the uh yeah it wasn't that sport i was thinking um so that was just one thing that maybe there's just you know with parents getting that that message that we might just want to clear that up so if we are so i just wanted to see if we are covered for the athletic transportation needs that we've identified so it sounds

153like yeah those aren't our employees those are employees the first student and they've just been a great partner getting those positions filled and really meeting the needs of the district okay okay thank you all right uh thank you um yeah uh also reading your report was really pleased to hear about the the um the hiring of uh teachers of color and um and that that has um has met you know a board goal uh for for the district and i'm wondering if you can attribute that to particular strategies or particular policies to recruit teachers or the programs that you listed here and the partners was there something that clicked this year or was it a product of the labor market product of the connections that were established during the pandemic uh or during their during

154the previous year and if those are patterns that that led to those hires is that something we can continue is that some a a way of of reproducing that outcome um or is this we don't know what what led to to you know a greater you know diverse pool of applicants um but you know i would love to know if there's a particular policy or strategy that really you know helped out or you saw that you know generate a greater you know higher [Music] quality applicants and more diverse pool i think it's a it's a great question jason i think it's a combination of of everything that we're doing so i don't think this was lightning in a bottle that happened this year it's been something that we've been working on collectively as a district

155for a number of years now and certainly adding rosina's position several years ago as a catalyst to some of this positive change that we're seeing this wasn't just this past year this is we're like three four years in now of of building on going from seven percent to eleven percent um and all of the a combination of all of these programs i mean you look at the future educators of diversity i mean that's something you're starting to see around uh the state now more uh it's it's pop they're popping up everywhere but that's it started here and and that's going to generate even a more stronger future pipeline of educators right here in west hartford by bringing our when i talk about our kids graduating from west hartford and coming back to teach air that's

156a core group that we'd like to focus in on as well our association with craic has paid dividends for the last couple of years a number of the candidates um in this pool this year came out of the correct minority teacher recruitment fair um we have we've been set to go to the historically black colleges and universities career for the last two years that's been canceled because of the pandemic but hopefully that will be back on our calendars for the spring and we can get down there and start to look at different parts of the country and and talk about what we're doing here in west hartford um and i think we're we're really starting to create that brand of what we're really about i think people outside of west hartford don't realize the the

157true type of community that we are that how diverse we truly are i think people who live outside of west hartford drive into west hartford see blue back square see the center and they think we're this you know affluent white community and we all know that's not who we are so that brand is starting to to get out there as well and people are starting to notice west hartford more so we'll keep building on what we've been doing and adding and and growing mark rick have we seen any uh headway with the program that we have at central connecticut state university is that dividends have they paid off yet on having students in that program go through this so we've yeah we've had um what are we up to like 30 students now i should

158have done the research before tonight last year we had a number we had a number of students come back to really help us out as teaching assistants and substitutes and so looking forward to working on their certification so that they can come back and interview and we can hire them as full-time staff yeah it should start paying off at the end of this year based on the timeline yeah and then we'll be having um each year we have a core group of students that's what i was just going to ask about the maturity of the programs i wasn't sure whether it was now or next year because i knew it was that it's like for year four right right now yeah yeah yeah oh no no i'm good sure um thank you so much and

159on behalf of the board i just want to thank you for all the hard work you did in bringing all those new teachers on board i can say i came for the new teacher luncheon didn't realize we were going to have 80 new staff members in addition to all the administrators and ended up having to park like you know basically in farmington in order to get into a town hall that day it was really nice to see such a diverse group of faces and and people in the room so thank you for that thank you on behalf of the entire team one quick question um do we happen to know yet or i suspect we may not know yet what percentage of our teachers and staff are fully vaccinated we will know specifically in the

160next couple of weeks we are because we ran our own clinics uh in the spring and actually right now i can start to see who's been vaccinated in other clinics so i you know doing some extrapolation of that data i'm estimating we're probably about 90 percent of our staff is vaccinated which is i think outstanding we're definitely over 90 of our teaching staff when we look at it overall but we'll have we'll have more data by the 20th i think is the end of it coming in 24th 24th great and we have the we had a clinic today and we have another one coming up at the end of the month as well okay thank you and um i know that that uh mandate is potentially in flux if the governor's emergency powers expire at

161the end of this month um but we'll be keeping an eye on that and there could be news coming in from the federal government as well yeah we heard suspect we'll hear some more about that the federal government is going to mandate that all of their uh employees across the country be uh vaccinated and with no exemption is what i'm hearing i heard today that yeah the vaccine requirement isn't going to go anywhere i mean i think people just have to accept that because if it if it did go somewhere under the governor's orders we would bring it up at the board table and request it to go forward i think what i was referencing on the federal level was the potential for osha to issue a requirement for all employers with a hundred or

162more employees to require a vaccination and i think we would fit under that requirement it's a clarification if it's business though that's the one they use the word business so i'm trying to get more information legally about that but you're right so with all of those things in place it's not going away september 30th we know that thank you anyone else for rick or should we move on to liz hewitt welcome liz thank you very much good evening the last item that we have for you tonight is a brief snapshot of our first day of school enrollments there is the report that i put together in the book and then i distributed to each of you at your see a copy of our by school by grade by section enrollment report as you may recall

163when we presented the long-term enrollment projections last january we're really unsure as to what effect the pandemic was going to have on our enrollment we had lower enrollment than anticipated last year and we were not sure if that was going to be a one-year dip or if that was going to really reset our base as we calculate our projections so at that time we had projected that we were going to have 8 675 k to 12 students and on the first day of school we actually had eight hundred and five or a hundred and thirty more than we had projected um at the middle school in the high school level we really came in at projections um some variances between schools between grades but really right on where we really saw our variance was at

164the elementary school level we have 118 more students at an elementary level than we had anticipated and we're seeing variances at each school at each grade but it's really a large variance in the first grade where we have 35 more students than anticipated and in kindergarten where we currently have 29 students more than anticipated but still have students who are completing their enrollment so we do expect that that number will increase we plan to have 203 sections of elementary but based on the numbers we had to break a couple of sections so we currently have 206 elementary sections that ends up being an average class size of 18.7 students and all of our sections are within class size guidelines you know we certainly were trying to limit the size of classes given the pandemic and

165our desire to have students maintain the appropriate distance and i believe that we're doing that the classes are a little larger than we had anticipated based on the actual enrollment as you know this is really just a snapshot the numbers change during the month of september and we do our official enrollment on october 1st typically you know we have a change of 30 to 50 students each year we generally lose students at the secondary level but gain at the elementary so that may be a challenge for us but we will certainly address that and and place students as needed as they continue to enroll but based on the october 1st numbers we'll have a final an official report for you at the end of october on our official numbers our official class size as our

166official sections so um just add thanks liz there are areas that we've kept you look at whiting lane second grade walcott second grade walk at fifth grade where anybody moving in at this point we're placing at another adjoining school close by and we'll talk to those families individually we did the same thing last year to try to keep classes small you'll see wall kit certainly has the biggest two sections that we've got in the district the issue with wall kit is we can't break into another classroom they have no classroom space left so walk it it's either put on a portable after we took off the portals and i want anybody to think oh you're short-sighted taking those portables off the fire inspector made us take those portables off so or we look at a

167spot redistricting which we've done in the past from one street to another school in the coming year years we did that before with webb hill when we had a boom at one point um and that's something we we could be looking at frankly with um the way walk it space is right now because there's there's no extra space there right now any questions mark liz i don't know my memory i guess isn't as good as it used to be but was it a year or two ago we had like 9 300 91 to 9 300. we drop that many well this report focuses on our k to 12 population so if we look at all of our grades and also include in district students but who are outplaced we're currently at uh 9200 so yes

168we are seeing a drop but that's the 93 good numbers so it has i guess maybe but that's their number how many students we have you know when we look at yeah when we look at our budget it's 93 yeah and that's that's what we would look at this year with pre-k we'll be at 92.50 we'll be in that ballpark because we also include outplay students so the memories are in the district it is not that bad mark and in fact in fact i come here to reassure myself [Laughter] and in fact our uh pre-k population is actually going up as we discussed at one of our meetings we were the recipient of a smart start grant an additional one and so we've added two pre-k classrooms at webb hill this year so the the

169move-ins are there's a function of okay we held our kids out of kindergarten last year but the way you see it spread across the elementary school this and in certain areas where it's home sales we've had young families move in we know that you've seen the real estate market in town we had nine families in one school come forward after one busy weekend of home sales adding kids in august and it's and this is kind of the classic west hartford we're kind of going back to a few years ago and you know we've talked before about the baby boom and then the boomlet and this moving because west hartford it's not a direct coefficient between births because people move to west hartford once they've had kids for our schools and the evidence of that is

170middle school study because people don't tend to pull their kids out of their school middle school high school same thing the area chip was off which i've called him about many times this summer was elementary school and it has to do with the move-ins and the home turnover and to that point i did go back and look um for those students who would be in kindergarten this year i looked at the birth rate five years ago there were 596 students or children born five years ago but our kindergarten population at this moment is 635 and probably growing a little bit and it's usually about a 95 percent coefficient rate so it's usually normal lower than that number and we're significantly higher great any other questions jason yeah thank you for the report um i'm wondering

171what does uh school choice enrollments look like for this year the open choice open choice thank you no that's okay i just want to make sure i was answering the question so they look good this year rosina might be able to talk about it in a little more detail but we um saw that our students have come back we haven't lost many students in the kindergarten level we had opened 20 spots 14 of them are filled and six others are in process finishing the registration i do think that the correct schools overall have experienced some enrollment challenges um but our students seem to be returning and and committed and doing well yeah i don't know if you want to jump in rosina but there's there's less demand in open choice from students from hartford is

172that a reflection of busing that's a significant question is i mean we've regained you know we talked a lot last year about those students that we lost so we couldn't identify we've regained a lot of those students clearly this year the cities i'm worried about um i don't know if they've had that same same numbers but this i i did check because we were have like we're six students show right now roseanne it's very unusual usually at this time we're being asked by the state and by correct if we will open more seats if we can find more seats typically where this would be the end of all of the lottery rounds we're in round six normally we're in round 10 by the end of july we're just in round six so at this point

173many students have already started schools in their home in their neighborhood they've bought uniforms and so it's going to be tough to fill those seats and and then transportation having to you know manage the roots again and i will say i will add that generally we're about 97 of our students that start with us graduate from our high schools and um there's a there's a small percentage maybe one and a half percent of our students that move out of the open choice program because they move into west hartford that shortage here isn't a uni it's not a west hartford reflection we actually have a higher fill rate than many of the neighboring communities that have asked for more open choice students any other questions all right thank you thank you all so very much we

174will move to uh staff reports and board discussions i think we've pretty much covered that and moving to routine matters approval of the minutes um there's a recommendation to approve the minutes of the regular board of education meeting of june 1st can i have a motion so moved amanda aronson thank you amanda is there a second second hari steinberg thank you ari any discussion of the minutes the draft minutes if not i will try your minds all those in favor of approving the minutes of the june 1st regular board meeting please signify by saying aye any opposed saying a abstentions the eyes have it and the minutes are approved moving to information and reports board members communications and reports are there any reports from other boards and organizations any other information and discussions non-staff communications

175and reports reports from student board representatives and we'll start with avery welcome avery thank you so much for having me i'd like to begin with some acknowledge acknowledgements i think that i can speak for the whole student body to say that hall has seen many struggles over this past year but we've also seen many successes and we have our administration our faculty our families our peers our teachers to thank for all of that this year students return to the traditional eight period schedule and students are participating in community lessons as we previously discussed to promote the social justice and social and emotional learning objectives and after school clubs and activities are being held in person once again hall is having a free vaccination clinic for students and staff on september 9th and september 30th open

176from 9 a.m to 12 p.m students and staff can receive their coven 19 vaccination on a walk-in basis the counseling office continues to support seniors in their transition beyond high school with the upcoming senior day grade 12 students will spend two class periods on september september 15th to prepare for life after high school with their school counselor hall's black box theater has begun preparations for the 25th annual putnam county spelling bee which is the school's first musical in over 60 years um and if you may recall the pun this um play was also supposed to be performed in 2020 was postponed due to the covet 19 pandemic so that's one thing to be excited for and all fall sports begin august 26th good luck to our hard-working student athletes as fall contests begin this month

177thank you andrew how are things over at connor um many of the things avery mentioned are the same at connored we return to the eighth period day as you all know but i'll add that just reflecting and contrasting last year with this year i definitely feel personally that there's a different atmosphere this year even though we still have all the risk mitigation strategies and from what i've seen and heard they seem to be working very well and everyone's following them but at least in my classes kids are talking more interacting more and generally it's a more collaborative environment so that's definitely something i enjoy and i'm looking forward to throughout the rest of the year lake at hall sports are starting again clubs are starting again a number of sports teams varsity jv field hockey

178boys soccer girls soccer all had games today home and away and clubs are starting as well as we make preparations for student council elections and a number of other clubs have been hosting their first meetings this weekend will next week um looking forward to the future student or student college representatives are going to be coming physically in person this year to meet with students something that was made virtual last year due to the pandemic but that will be nice for seniors to be able to talk directly to the admissions officers as they make preparations to apply so and we also had a freshman orientation in august which was very successful there was an ice cream truck which was a good success as well but everything at connor seems to be going pretty well and i'm

179looking forward to the year thank you and we are as well looking forward to having both of you participate this year with us future business announcement of future meeting dates our next three meetings are tuesday september 21st tuesday october 5th and tuesday october 19th all right here in this room at 7 pm are there any requests for future agenda items are there any comments from visitors no before we close out i just wanted to thank cami for her five years of service to our board and welcome to charlotte and we are looking forward to stymieing you with long meetings like this one so [Laughter] and if you have any questions i'm sure amanda will be happy to work with you to get everything and straightened out with that we do not have an executive session

180so i will take a motion to adjourn thank you mark uh any second second by jason meeting is adjourned at whatever time that says 9 36 p.m thank you