Board of Education Meeting of June 1, 2021

001is everybody okay everyone ready welcome good evening i'm going to call the meeting to order welcome to the west hartford public schools board of education meeting for june 1st 2021 this is our last regular meeting of the year and we will start as we always do with the roll call ms aaronson present dr chang here ms poland here dr steinberg here dr thomas farkasen here ms wilcox mr zadanowitz here student representative lillian sweeney here rasheel your belly here thank you and rasheel will you lead us in the pledge please yes i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we do not have a revision to the agenda order tonight but

002i am pleased that we do have uh for the first time since last march uh student participation so i would like to welcome the hall deca student association all right um hello i'd like to start with a hypothetical so jane doe just graduated college with a bachelor's in business administration and around 30 000 in student loan debt even though there's a tough job market out there she was able to get a starter job with a salary of around fifty thousand dollars but jane soon realizes that that thirty thousand dollars she took out as a loan was not as easy as it thought she would be and after the fifty thousand dollars on a twelve month basis after taxes she realizes she has less than three thousand dollars of take take home pay um per month

003less than three thousand dollars to pay all her bills her food her medication her transportation and her student loan payments realizing this unfeasible situation jane is forced to put her expenses on her credit card bill and she's also forced to make payments but only minimum payments on her student loan bill racking up interest rates and racking up credit card debt as the months pass on jane is forced to declare bankruptcy and jane can't even think about retirement because she's too busy trying to pay her own bills despite this being a hypothetical this is a reality for many as of 2021 the student loan debt has reached a peak of 1.71 trillion dollars with about 19 of bankruptcies being identified as a cause of student loans in addition the average college student has about a credit

004card balance of one thousand one hundred eighty three dollars so seeing these financial crises the hall deca club would like to present to you equity and finance i'm abhinavita and i'm the president of deca i'm tina chen and this is equity and finance and we are health deca so a few things about deca deca is an international organization that prepares emerging leaders in four career clusters at the college and high school level and a couple of things we've done are community and school outreach along with participating in competitions at the national and state levels in addition with fundraisers and we own our own school-based enterprise called the warrior warehouse so financial literacy a skill everyone needs so some might ask what is financial literacy well financial literacy is attaining the key knowledge and ability to

005make important financial decisions examples of this include loans credit card debt insurance taxes and even mortgages so financial literacy helps students become more educated and aware of their future statistics show that nearly half of americans over 55 have zero dollars in retirement funds and if that wasn't enough for warning banks have pocketed over 34 billion dollars in overdraft protection in just 2017. [Music] and luckily we learn all these things in financial literacy education foresight and being financially aware in life we learn all that and more in financial literacy so in our research we decided to focus on three main determinants of financial literacy uh race wealth and age um today by the way is the 100th anniversary of the tulsa massacre in which tens of millions of dollars of black wealth were stripped away from

006the african-american community which still affects black household households today this image here shows the great disparity between um and wealth between black latino and white families their research shows that the africa the average black median household income is wealth is projected to drop to zero dollars in 2053. we have failed minority students they are more likely to borrow more student loans acquire more credit card debt and drop out of college due to their finances thus starting off at lower salaries in harris's and yellowed studies black borrowers incorrectly believe that they have a higher credit risk creating outcome where black borrows under invest in home equity basic skills like budget budgeting reconciliation goal setting are all tools minority students absolutely need to build wealth these are skills that you learn in financial literacy although our system

007fosters racial wealth inequality we can give those with disadvantaged backgrounds of financial education we can greatly reduce the disparities in wealth through representation and education found in these classes and help those who are close to no median wealth so we've discussed a little bit about the national data in terms of how these statistics impact our students but the hall daca club also initiated a student survey in which we asked students to assess their financial literacy on three questions we felt were most relevant to students concerning student loans budgeting in terms of salary and a credit card question in terms of debt and we found that the average student only scored 21 percent and we found that students who said no to financial literacy or students who said they haven't taken financial literacy tended to score

008lower than students who supported financial literacy or students who have taken financial literacy so it's clear that many students lack a basic understanding or grasp of financial knowledge that they will need in the future in addition we surveyed parents um and we found that 91 percent of parents supported making financial literacy a graduation requirement and more than half of these parents are worried about their child's finances post-high school and they do not believe that the whps system currently prepares its students for the financial future we see this sentiment echoed out through many parent testimonials where they don't know if there are options or they don't know if the school provides equitable financial education to everybody and they understand that the skills aren't in financial literacy are essential and can be applied to almost any aspect

009of their lives ct is ranked number 37 out of 50 states in terms of financial literacy in addition a study done by champlain college gave an f to connecticut in terms of financial literacy for educating its students as whps by pioneering this course and making it a graduation requirement for all students we can trailblaze a way for other schools to make this a graduation requirement and we can help increase our financial literacy rating which in the end only helps our students so some key takeaways we want to mention that um there are some positive really good positives like college financial literacy is such an important tool when taking out loans and applying for financial aid building wealth and there are building wealth for basic financial foundations to retirement having kids and investing in property and

010there are minimal prerequisites you don't really need a degree to be financially literate everyone can learn how to be financially literate we thought we could take some time to address the cons about making this and address some refutations towards it we understand that the whps system already puts immense stress on students taking classes in terms of what they have to fit in their schedules but once again we ask you to consider what students will have to do in their real lives they won't have the option to do their taxes or to not do their taxes or to budget or make a plan because these are things they have to do so there should be a thing they have to learn in high school to prepare them in addition we understand that there's a logistical component

011in terms of creating new classrooms or having teachers to accommodate the new student body taking financial literacy but we see that in the end this will pay off because we're educating our students and to be prepared for the real world and we understand that it's a con that it's a commonly thought belief that many parents will educate their children in financial literacy but we find that in many of the parent testimonials that we surveyed many parents didn't talk about financial literacy with their children because they didn't know how to a classroom provides an objective way for students to learn about financial literacy and it makes sure that it makes sure that they are learning about financial literacy and another study we found that parents 50 of parents were afraid to talk about their finances with

012their children so back to the jane doe situation so if jane doe had taken financial literacy she could have reduced not only her student loans through grants and financial aid she could have also paid off her interest while still being in college she would have been known to check her credit report and fico score and manage her bank account preventing overdrafts and missed payments she would have also increased her human capital through internships and gained the ability to negotiate a starting starting salary for a better future thank you and we will now open it up to questions if you have any i'm sure we do thank you do any other board members have questions jason thank you guys that was incredible um really appreciate the research that you did with the students and the parents

013i think that's really um really great if you have like a a summary of the research with the findings and stuff it would be great to have that so if you could circulate that somehow that would be wonderful barbie can do that thanks thank you lorna thank you very much um wonderful presentation uh all that was highlighted and certainly talking about the benefits and value of generational wealth if you can please share what is one thing that you learned from this experience where you feel more empowered now than you may have prior to taking this this class this course um i can't speak for the other two on this panel but i think one of the biggest things in financial literacy that really helped me was the fact that i could actually learn negotiation skills

014in terms of asking a future boss or a future supervisor about like salary and things like that because my own teacher in financial literacy was telling me how she didn't negotiate and how she wished she could have and to never sell yourself short in terms of that so i definitely feel that those skills i learned in terms of confrontation when you really need to are things that you learn in financial literacy that many other people don't necessarily think that oh maybe i shouldn't accept the first offer i just wanted to add also um before i started taking financial literacy i was just another kid who you know enjoyed to play video games his whole free time and all that and after i took financial literacy it actually motivated me to open a bank account and

015actually go find a job and get work in because i actually like the idea of being smart with your financial savings and like investing and all that and it got me really into that kind of stuff and helped me mature a lot quicker than usual so i haven't taken financial literacy yet but this year has been i my family owns a family restaurant and they're struggling a little bit and they had to apply for ppp loans and while i was looking through it i realized i did not know anything on that and it really um made me dishearten because i my family was struggling but i did not know anything about like their struggles and no like any of the specifics so i that really motivate motivated me to take it next year so i'm

016really excited to start financial literacy and advanced finance next year excellent um i i think i'm not stepping out of line by saying we are all very proud of you and continue learning continue learning amanda hi thank you very much for your presentation um your research is very consistent with a lot of um a lot of what other students are saying who are in similar situations with their clubs at schools and when i've done focus groups with students over the years this almost always comes up as one of the things that they most want to learn so i'm just curious do you have opportunities to connect with students in other districts and in other areas to talk about these issues and do collaborative learning or are any of those opportunities available that you're aware of

017our deca especially we have these programs at state levels and national levels where you talk to like members from other districts you collaborate and they have these like um uh competitions where they do these um team building and they teach you how to be leaders and you win awards and and sometimes it's really fun we had this one um thing where you try and guess what was it um well basically you learn a lot about becoming a leader in the financial world and being an entrepreneur and some of it is really fun i think so i think you do have the opportunity to connect with other districts in deca but i don't think the opportunity is extended to the general student body population in terms of learning financial literacy or looking at um you know

018understanding this in terms of the other districts of connecticut thank you so much that was a wonderful presentation it's so nice to have students back at our board meetings and i know i learned a lot and hopefully we'll be able to use your research moving forward good luck [Applause] all right we're going to move to public communications and we did have some members of the public sign up to speak so i will ask first um kate capps if i'm pronouncing your name correctly i hope um can you let me know if you're here and ready for public comment i'm here great so um each member of the public will have three members to three minutes rather to provide public comment our board will not respond directly to your public comment so i just want to

019lay that out in advance and okay you can go ahead and get started okay um after listening to the first reading of the proposed equity policy i'm concerned and disheartened that west hartford plans to adopt and implement curriculum and policies that use language such as that in the equity policy words and phrases such as equity privilege historical systems of racism and lived experience all stem from critical race theories which is marxist and ideology this language is currently being forced on our children daily if the u.s adopted an equity-based form of government it would be the end of private property individual rights and freedom of speech what will equity look like in our schools the bedrock principle and found the founding of our nation is equality equality needs equal treatment no matter race creed or sexual

020orientation equality demands unbiased competition and leads to outcomes which are based on one's god-given talent and desire for excellence equity equals outcomes which are achieved by preferential treatment based on race creed and sexual orientation equity will not allow children to reach their fullest potential equality will a high performing school system in northern virginia has just eliminated accelerated math courses for 11th grade before 11th grade in order to improve equity in mathematics learning for equities sake all children in that school system will be confined to grade level math instead of flourishing and true ability how long before this form of equity comes to west hartsford i'm concerned that it will not be long before having a difference in opinion or certain religious beliefs will be seen as hate speech and all who do not conform to

021approved language will be seen as haters dissenters or racists this is already happening across america and beginning to enter west hartford school currently few of any organic conversations are happening in classes and often only one position of an issue is being presented to children almost no counter arguments are represented this is what policies like to equal the equity policies lead to teaching children what to think instead of how to think by weighing issues and forming judgment equity destroys critical thinking in the recruitment section of the equity policy it says equity means that west hartford will now show preferential treatment especially to those from underrepresented backgrounds this is how equity mass parades itself it's racism in disguise will west hartford now forego supporting and retaining the most qualified educators for our children in lieu of a

022quota system schools and universities across the u.s who have implemented equity policies are now offering graduation ceremonies based solely on race and ethnicity and the name of equity segregation is being reintroduced as good i ask you to rethink this equity policy and not adopt it tonight in the end equity will not unite it will divide and confuse children and it will limit or obliterate free speech and will have our children focus on skin color ethnicity and gender rather than the inherent dignity we have as children of god thank you thank you and my apologies i forgot to ask you to start off by stating your name and address could you state that for the record please my name is kate campus and my address is 50 maplewood avenue thank you very much next we have

023brian fleming hello this is brian fleming i live at 34 lindenwald west hartford after the first reading of the uh policy i sent out some questions to the board that i would like to read into the record uh the questions that i sent on may 4th i'll list these real quick number one do you believe that people should be treated differently in our school based on the color of their skin number two anti-racism which you are promoting as an official school policy holds that all white people are racist and all institutions of society are racist do you consider yourself a racist if so what specific acts of racism have you committed did you not consider yourself a racist or cannot confess to a specific act of racism can you explain why you are innocent of

024something everyone else is guilty of number three you've announced that our school will now be an anti-racist organization anti-racism explicitly calls for discrimination on the basis of race the leader of anti-racism movement the brahm x kendi writes that quote the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy for present discrimination is future discrimination end quote what specific racial discrimination policies are you adopting in order to become a quote-unquote anti-racist school number four you have grouped a number of new school policies under the concept of advancing social justice can you define using specifics what social justice means you believe that people who disagree with social justice policies you support are advocates of injustice since you are working to introduce a new curriculum and policy that sees education through the lens of race it

025could be helpful to understand how you define race how exactly do you define someone as black white latino or asian is someone with a black or hispanic grandparent a person of color what about one grandparent what metrics do you use number six are all white people inherently more privileged than all black people regardless of individual circumstances it's a white child who drops out of school and lives in poverty more privileged than a black child who attends an elite private school and has wealthy successful parents number seven there's a statement made by the board of education the last reading stating that our school system and community at large are systemically racist what specific incidents led you to make this statement and what actions were taken to remedy those incidents number eight we disclose publicly how much

026money our district in school are spending on new rates gender and social justice initiatives how much is being spent on teacher training programs edi consultants and quote unquote audits of the school if you hired someone to carry out an audit will you release it to the public so parents and students can see it if not why not number nine how will these anti-racist policies positively impact student achievements and test scores number 10 how will these policies prepare younger students for rigorous academics in high school and high school student for rigorous studies in college and finally number 11 what evidence do you have to show that implementing these policies will increase our test scores across all grade levels and in conclusion one of the uh my main points here that i'm mostly concerned about this policy

027is that there's not clearly defined what metrics in in which you're going to implement this policy how are you measuring the success of this policy and is this policy easily um can be replicated i think that's the the most troubling part about this is if this gets rolled down to the educators on the front lines this policy in a sense just seems like it's relatively uh open-ended for interpretation it just in a sense it makes it feel like this is we just need to try harder but there's no metrics nothing's being measured and i i think can you wrap up please thank you sure as a closing um i'll just leave it at that i know there's other people that want to speak tonight and i appreciate your time thank you very much next we

028have frank frisoli all right can you hear me yes so that's frank brazilian island will drive i live with my wife catherine and tucson's central second grade puppy and terrorists thrown in princeton kindergarten officer buddy i've spoken over 50 parents for the feedback on the policy and this is their voice we must explicitly state within any policy for west hartford public schools whether we label it equity or otherwise that we shall not provide preference nor discriminatory prejudice regards to race gender or any protected class in accordance with the 14th amendment the civil rights act of 1964 and the connecticut constitution declaration of rights and code of fair practices we must be very careful not to institutionalize discrimination in the name of equity for example race cannot be considered in the allocation of finite resources preference

029to one group is prejudiced to another we cannot state the race will be one of many considerations as this admits that all else being equal two students the same every other way will be treated differently based on something that cannot help the color of their skin failure to specify the mechanisms by which this equity policy operates and the metrics by which this policy will be measured in addition to comments by members of this board that have been interpreted by many as the consideration of discriminatory practices with respect to the allocation of resources has already created feelings of fear and alienation within this community for example i received a comment from an asian parent asking if their child would be valued as three fifths of a student as well as similar comments from more than one

030jewish parent there could be no reasonable objection to deduct languages any pulse failure to do so along with commitment to full transparency will be a red flag for all to see and will create an unrelenting environment of charges of racism every time a student does not get the help they feel is needed or is treated differently in any way they and their parents will be left to wonder if it's because of the color of their skin this will poison the classroom as well as interactions between parents teachers and administrators no one wants to be in that environment we have a wonderful school system with top ranks in the state of achievement including fourth in the state for equity according to niche.com if it ain't broke don't fix it irrespective of cause be the aptitude home

031environment economic disadvantage of other reasons asparagus and achievement are detected by a current system we trust in our teachers to work with parents and special support staff to tailor the need to help me the individual not to groups based on skin color in order to give each student regardless of background the best chance of success we need to be very careful in consideration of any proposal to abandon this tried and true approach you must meet with great skepticism any changes that takes decision making away from the excellent teachers and engaged parents you trust determine the needs of each child thank you i don't believe there's anybody else on the call so we will move on thank you to those who've called in we will now move on to unfinished business and our first item is

032item a a motion by amanda aaronson lorena thomas farkasen and elizabeth wilcox to accept the due policy 1800 regarding educational equity this is the second reading the recommendation is that the board of education approve as a second and final reading the following new policy which is proposed by the board of education policy subcommittee policy 1800 educational equity and i'm going to turn it over to my colleague liz thanks deb tonight is the second reading of the west hartford public school educational equity policy we will address modifications to the policy and provide clarification connecticut general statute section 10-4-a creates a statutory duty for west hartford public schools board of ed to quote reduce racial ethnic and economic isolation end quote after the first reading of the west harford public school educational equity policy language acknowledging the

033statutory mandate was added to the introduction so some background in 2015 2016 as the district began its strategic work in equity and diversity dr rosina haskins was named director of diversity advancement in her role dr haskins was tasked with among other things looking at our policies and procedures under an equity lens during this same time the equity and diversity council also known as the edc was formed the edc is comprised of members of the west hartford public schools faculty and staff who partner with parents caregivers and a host of community agencies this was the start of our formal work as a district in the area of equity and diversity this work continued during the 2016-2017 school year when west hartford public schools committed to the building of our cultural competence a framework was developed which

034included a continuum of cultural awareness cultural responsiveness and cultural advocacy the edc subcommittees were created at this time the west hartford equity diversity and inclusion also known as the edi parent parent groups began and parent groups at many of the schools were formed our educational equity research began in 2017 and continued for the next few years we partnered with recenter and followed developments of their equity assessment which ultimately helped inform our work we continued to work with circ the state educational resource center and crack the capital regional educational council in the areas of equity and inclusion during the 2019-2020 school year dr haskins was appointed the full-time director of diversity advancement signaling our firm commitment to our work in this area which resulted in the office reorganization during the 2020 2021 academic year dr haskins

035new title was director of the office of equity advancement and three new supporting positions were created edc was also reorged and three subcommittees were formed to better align with our commitments the equity and anti-racism vision statement was adopted one community for equity a group that combines members from parent-led organizations and members from community groups was created since policy creation is under the purview of the board of education it was decided during the 2020 2021 school year that the board of ed's policy committee should begin drafting an educational equity policy all of the work from the office of equity advancement was utilized the edc formed the educational equity policy work group to aid in the development of the policy during this period and over the years since the creation of the equity office many suggestions from

036edi parent groups community groups and individuals were taken into consideration we also used data from experts in the field of equity like cirque and crack as well as guidance from our legal counsel all of this work has resulted in the policy before us tonight clearly our work in the realm of equity advancement has been progressing for some time many hours of outreach research and collaboration have led to the creation of the west hartford public school educational equity policy the codification of our work as a district over the last six years in the field of equity we did not create this policy hastily but rather it was a deliberate process involving many interested members of our community this policy is neither the beginning nor is it the end of our work in this area instead it

037is a living document meant to create the governance necessary to implement the important work in the area of equity so as has been shared with the process we have over the course of time taken in a lot of feedback a lot of suggestions a lot of criticisms a lot of input in terms of this policy and just want to to give an overview in terms of the management and and the governance of a policy because that has certainly come up in many ways with some feedback in terms of where we are today but first off just in terms of the board of education's overall role as we know the board of education derives authority from the state constitution and the statutes of the state of connecticut furthermore we know that the board of education acts

038as an agent of the state government with all authority and limitations imposed by the general assembly and state constitution now there are three primary roles of the board of education one is in regard to the budget we certainly know that as a process we have gone through for some time now are you glad we are at a place now saying we are passed wonderful uh how with the final approval by the town council so glad for that another role of the board of education is the honor of selecting retaining and evaluating our superintendent but it's more than just that it also is important to establish a good working relationship with the superintendent and a third role of the board of education is to develop implement monitor district policy this policy gives direction to administration and

039staff and becomes the foundation for accountability and that is what brings us here today in terms of policy now we know that policy serves as a road map for the school district we know that policy is a course or method of action in light of given conditions to guide and determine present and future decisions we know that policy is a breathing living document in response to conditions breathing livable document it's not one and done it's something that is a continuous process but we are here today talking about the educational equity policy now in terms of governance versus management it's important to know in terms of governance we know the governance is a strategic task of setting district goals direction limitations and account accountability framework in comparison to management which is the allocation of resources and

040overseeing day-to-day operation of the district the board of education operates or is guided by a governance and we entrust our administration and staff to implement the management think of it in this way for those of you the very first time you may have rented an apartment or maybe the first time you purchased a home and you went to that apartment complex and they showed you a model apartment just the walls the bare essentials of it just giving you the overview kind of foundation of what potential there is in your apartment it is up to you to select and personalize what you want in your apartment what decorations you may want this is a way of distinguishing between the governance which is the model apartment which is what we're striving to do here and the implementation

041of what you want in that apartment is the management aspect of that and we say this not to minimize or trivialize where we are but we say this honoring a lot of the feedback we have given in terms we've received rather in terms of ah this was not included or that was not included yes we hear that and we welcome that we thank you for that and please know again this is a living breathable document and this is just the beginning the work has to be done please don't be mistaken by whatever policy is approved or not approved but hopefully approved that that's just the beginning it's not a one and done and we know in terms of good governance it's important that there is openness transparency accountability responsiveness integrity effective collaboration that is our

042role as board of education members in terms of implementing policy in terms of guiding with a lens of governance but it's up to all of us collectively here and all of you to support and implement the management of that that is where the work is to be done so with that passing it off to my colleague okay thank you very much okay good evening everyone i'm going to do the actual second reading of the policy and note the changes that we made as i do so and i will also provide a little insight into why we made the changes we did and why we did or did not incorporate the feedback we received after the first reading and thank you to everyone who took the time to offer feedback it came from the online form

043that the district sent to all families via email to us as a group and individuals through phone calls in-person interactions um and hard copy mail so okay let's start with the title of the policy educational equity some people suggested we swap out the word equity for the word equality and we did not incorporate that feedback we use the word equity intentionally because equity helps achieve equality and you know this might be a good time just for of it's not the best example but it's a simple one for people who are new to this work or who are just starting to learn about equity in the in an educational atmosphere if you think back to before the american with disabilities act and just use that as an example if you had a child in a wheelchair

044who was trying to access the building to have equal access to education but there wasn't a ramp that child doesn't necessarily have that equal access the equity work comes in by identifying that we need a ramp and building it once it's built that child has access to the building and equal access to the education available but also other people can use it small children learning to walk people who have strollers seniors people who have crutches or all kinds of people can use that so built into the very essence of equity is strengthening and that is really what this work is all about it is the path and the process to equality so the equity piece or the work lies is very important so we use that word intentionally and we invite people to keep learning

045with us along the way so that we can keep understanding um what that means together here in our community so in the introduction um thank you very much if we wouldn't mind pulling that up dr haskins thank you people were curious about legal issues and we were also asked to separate out sexual orientation since it's different from gender identity and expression and in the first reading we had the phrase ability difference in the introduction and we were asked to expand that phrase to state more clearly that this policy includes support for our students who qualify for special education services have a 504 plan who may have a physical disability etc so this led to extensive discussion about how we could craft that language to cover all the ways one could interpret ability difference and it

046became clear that it was going to be hard for us to do that in a way that was appropriate at the policy level and there are a lot of factors for us to consider in this introduction and it's important to note that a policy like this relates to many other policies not just at the district level but at state and federal levels also so after much discussion uh and considering what we heard from our legal counsel we decided it was best to use the legal language to state the characteristics that are protected by law now some of these words aren't words that we are hearing on a day-to-day basis but they are the legal definition so we did receive feedback that this policy was hard to understand in some places so we want to acknowledge

047that we do realize that this now leans even more heavily to the internal district user but it became important for us to write it this way so we did and this is the revised introduction with the actual legal language incorporated so miss wilcox would you mind reading that for us every student in the west hartford public schools has the right to access opportunities and educational programs or activities that cultivate their unique gifts talents and interests regardless of race color religion age sex sexual orientation national orient or origin alienage ancestry disability gender identity or expression or any other basis protected by state or federal law every student has the right to an authentic feeling of belonging and safety we acknowledge that current and historical systems of racism privilege and oppression impede student progress therefore it is

048our moral imperative and statutory charge to identify and eliminate barriers and equitable practices that perpetuate disparities across student groups as an anti-racist organization it is our collective responsibility to ensure full safe and equitable participation for all students in every area of our educational programs as a board of education we have a statutory duty to implement the state's educational interest which includes the duty to reduce racial ethnic and economic isolation of our students we strive to reach these goals in the following ways thank you next slide please thank you so moving on to the sections you're going to notice that all of the subsequent sections start with west hartford public schools that's just for consistency so i won't mention those again now there's no changes to the budget and resource allocation section dr farkasan would you

049mind reading that whps will strive to allocate resources and funds to meet the needs of all students while directly targeting interventions and supports that address identified inequities and help maintain school cultures that support our mission to enhance our global community thank you so we were asked about why we chose to use the word strive in some places instead of the word commit here we chose strive because if we use the word commit that would mean that we were promising that we would be able to meet every single need that every single child has a hundred percent of the time and we all know that no school district can promise that financially it's not possible for any school to meet every single child's need at all times and it's important that we're honest about that beyond

050that we know that each of our kids have all kinds of needs and schools are only one part of meeting them we just we can't do it all but we are striving to do the very best we can with what we have to work with at all times and that we can promise so please don't see the word choice there as something that worries you we just wanted to make sure that we were very honest about the conversations that we need to have equity work is going to be a process of constant conversations and decision-making and it's just something we're gonna have to talk about as we go okay um you don't need to change the slide because it's there okay recruitment and retention um would you mind reading this one miss wilcox west hartford

051public schools will utilize innovative approaches and strive to recruit and retain highly qualified certified staff across all areas and leadership levels who reflect the diversity of our community and share our commitment to anti-racism deliberate deliberate investment strategies will be vital to recruit support and retain all educators especially those from underrepresented racial ethnic gender and linguistic backgrounds thank you we just reshaped the first sentence here and added the word recruit to the last sentence for consistency okay moving on to high quality curriculum instruction and opportunities there are no changes here people had many suggestions for how we could make this this area more specific but as dr thomas farkas noted we can only include things that relate to governance but on a global note i just want to take a step away from this particular area

052and talk about all of these areas in general i want to confirm that last summer we received many suggestions from some of our strongest equity advocates for specific policies to research and we did research every single one of those we read them and considered them and many of those policies blended governance and management in a hybrid style and that was the approach to that some of them use the equity policy to speak to some of their strategic plans in areas that we'll see here like curriculum retention professional development recruitment discipline and that's not necessarily a good thing but some districts need to do that if they don't have other policies in place or if they don't have a comprehensive planning structure that's ongoing so it's a starting point for them we have specific standalone policies

053that speak to many of these areas here and we did work with our edc to identify policies that we might like to review if this one gets passed so we can ensure that those continue to make sense in this context but we wanted to slow that process down and do that with the community so that's why a lot of those things aren't in here so even though as people are looking at other policies it might be very reassuring to see the metrics and to see the plans they're much they're written in plain language and i can see why those would would be very appealing but we have a mature policy book here that goes deeper than a lot of other districts and because of that we have many policies that allow us to manage our

054district a little more easily with more clarity and we have more tools at our disposal for accountability so i just want to mention that when it comes to specificity some of the accountability things people hope to hear more about we'll address in a minute but i do want to just address that piece globally dr parkerson would you mind reading the curriculum area please whps will commission resources to ensure the narratives lived experiences and perspectives of students from a wide variety of backgrounds are reflected in the curriculum and provide an authentic voice to reflect diversity and inclusion in order for underrepresented students to access the full curriculum including in the areas of arts and computer science education students must see the value of these fields of study as central to society special care will be taken

055to ensure that students have ongoing opportunities to see their identities represented positively in the curriculum curriculum review teams will include educators from historically or traditionally marginalized groups thank you and you can change to the next slide please so for professional development we were asked to include language about bias in in our policy and this district already incorporates an understanding of human bias in its work so we added that in this section to confirm that ms wilcox would you mind reading professional development west hartford public schools will design professional learning training and support to foster understanding of human biases as well as the historical and systemic root causes of inequity and offer research-based means of intentionally countering trends of predictable disparity and disproportionality thank you okay for family and community partnership we were asked to change

056the phrase foster and man maintain as it pertained to opportunities for communication people are very interested in talking more about how we can structure communication moving forward so we reworked that to say create and maintain and we added in the word school to the area that clarifies that communication loop so there'll be a lot more discussion about that when we you know when we get into our work in the coming months and years as well okay so for do we read community and family partnership dr farkasan would you mind reading that please certainly whps will create and maintain ongoing opportunities for communication among parent caregiver school and community partnerships that honor and celebrate the strengths and assets of diverse identities and experiences to support student wellness and success a balanced representation of home school partnerships

057will help inform identify and address challenges encountered thank you in this section we use the word strive and while we wish we could promise a perfect environment where everyone would be free from bias discrimination and harassment and one that promised all people would feel heard and valued at all times we all know that we cannot promise that humanity is is not capable of perfection when it comes to how we interact one another but what we can do is commit to the work of striving for it that we can promise we also clarify that we want to help people develop a feeling of individual ownership in our environment we had the word possess in the first reading and if we're really honest we can't force someone to possess a feeling of ownership and trying to create

058a good community for our kids to grow up in but we can strive to help them develop it so there's a lot of thought in this area in particular with our word choices and again just having that honest conversation about what we can do to try to build the kind of environment we all want for our kids so um environment and climate miss wilcox would you mind reading that please west hartford public schools will strive to ensure that students staff and families are valued respected and heard we recognize the ongoing need for anti-bias education to support the healthy development of each of our students discrimination bias or harassment toward any individual or group will not be tolerated and we commit to our work in this area we will encourage all members of the school community

059to develop a feeling of individual ownership of this responsibility to ensure safe and nurturing learning environments thank you okay for accountability and this is our last section as part of our policy we made one change to the beginning of this section to clarify that our district uses a process of continuous quality improvement and we also reshape the last sentence slightly so this sent for accountability here west hartford public schools through a process of continuous quality improvement will delineate structures accountability systems and metrics that enable the identification and analysis of any inequities in access opportunities and outcomes for all students and in particular those groups who have been traditionally and historically marginalized west hartford public schools will collect data using equity conscious measures to support clear reporting on goals and outcomes so one of the things

060that you're gonna you can see in this paragraph is that there are a lot of conversations to be had about planning and accountability the metrics people are looking for all of those things live within the management side of the district's work and we are part of that accountability process but all of the things that people are hoping to see in this are not appropriate for the policy level which is why they're not in this it also is better in the long run for all of us to have a continuous quality improvement process and mature school districts who've been at this a while and who are very solid in their planning do utilize this kind of process because you can work with the data and it's much easier for the community to follow in real time

061as well so i know that that's not as satisfying initially when you see a policy like this but you can see that this really holds a lot of accountability and specificity in it it's just not at the policy level dr morrow and dr haskins many people are interested in what this policy looks like in practice especially as it pertains to how we plan as a district how we hold ourselves accountable and how family engagement is going to be managed so would you please speak to those areas for us sure good evening thank you for that uh detailed synthesis of the reflections of community feedback of allergies so pardon me i'm gonna have to clear my throat first i do want to acknowledge i want to echo acknowledgement and gratitude to our young people of uh

062the high schools deca club because they are a true testament of how our work is being felt and realized they are sharing responsibility and advancing equity advancing outcomes and access so that there are successful outcomes that are equitable for all so in turn they're also a testament of our commitment to our equitable equity based practice and programs and policy enforcement and we intend to do that with full transparency and integrity so we have several existing structures and vehicles that allow for us to reflect to set goals and objectives to determine the best metrics to measure um and to assess and to monitor and to fully transparently report out on outcomes and impact that this work is having all of those structures and measures live within our district's continuous development improvement development plan as well as

063our schools development plan and so some examples of those include we have a curriculum review and revision process it is a it is a formal process we also have a performing a professional i'm sorry because i'm nervous because this is so important and i know that the community cares so much about it and we do too so we have a professional learning and evaluation committee as well and those are just two of our structures but they have undergone a lot of revision refinement and reshaping as we've continued to build our capacity for cultural competence and we've applied an equity lens to that and we will continue to do that we also have an edc structure that holds us accountable we have a new arm of the equity and diversity council one that supports policy and

064one that holds us accountable as well and helps us with the professional learning professional development so that we continue to build our capacity so that we can continue to enact our equity practice and promise um rosina covered most of it but i just wanted to two thoughts sort of jumped out at me as as we were going through this one is really the work that we do in these settings makes this visible and makes makes this visible going forward in the reports that you hear not only from us about curriculum and diversity but also from our human resource department on hiring practices and success that we have there as well the other piece i i that struck me was really going back to to lorna's uh explanation at the beginning of really the duties of

065the board and the work that you do not only in setting policy but also the the value that this work has in the budget is is something that that makes this accountable and makes this transparent for the public and for the town as well as the goals that you set through through the supervision of the superintendent so really i think that this lives in many places and i think that the the work that we're doing everything as rosina said through the through the accountability processes and the checks that are set up with the edc through the the surveys that are currently out to our community for each of the schools and and how they're feeling valued and such for parents i think that this is definitely uh something that is that is inherently seen in

066our in our district and will continue to be so if i could um i typically defer on policy to the board i don't write policy i don't get to vote on the policy you all do there's a couple policies that are my favorites um this represents what we do and it's important to go through and make sure that what we do in school is backed by the elected body of a community there's another policy that i always that's my favorite all-time policy it's the controversial issues policy and it's that the west hartford board of education supports our teachers in not shying away from a controversial issue in class and not just saying well we can't talk about that because some people are going to disagree because that's not what education is about so um the

067wording of this is really important and there's a part of me that will always be blue collar and i want to kind of put in blue-collar terms as to what this means to me in school when we enact this policy i say enacted continue to enact as we've said this isn't new work this has been going on yet things come into a cultural zeitgeist when we are a split country where people say you're trying to do this and so you hear words like critical race theory brought up at school boards across the country right now for a reason okay what this is about i can speak for myself rosine and every educator in this room in our district we know about age levels with kids we know that we don't try to teach calculus to

068kindergartners but we also don't spend time in 12th grade talking about shapes and colors there's a time and place for things there's a time and place for discussions there's a maturity level to what goes on in this am i trying to indoctrinate kids you are correct i'm trying to indoctrinate them in kindness decency caring for each other that's what this policy is about at different levels what does it mean to live here in west hartford what does it mean for our kids to come to school here what does it mean for our educators to teach them so yes making sure that i reach out and say are you okay how can i help you and trying to indoctrinate kids in that that's what this tries to do this tries to make sure everybody knows we

069are welcome everybody you can come here our schools your home because for too long too many kids because of who they are have not felt welcome and that could be because of the way they treated it could be because of systemic issues that existed but whatever it is we need our kids to come in and feel they're at home because we cannot have kids that are so worried and disgusted with their lives because of what goes on outside that we have to worry about their safety from self or others and finally we get to those higher levels we're talking about our town our country who we are now i think about memorial day i look at paul i look at mark and we should absolutely celebrate the military what it's done over the years i

070mean you guys left your families because the country asked you to to serve the country it's stunning to me what they sacrificed not to mention those like my former student larry phillipon gave his life in fallujah because the country asked him to and i can still picture him from coaching him and we should talk about what we did to liberate normandy we should talk about what we did to uplift villages to uplift other countries at times of need but we should also talk about japanese internment we can't talk about equality and say the united states is based on equality when it was at its inception profiting from slavery of others and that progress meant three-fifths we have to talk about that and what does it mean and we have to talk about things like the

071sand creek massacre and how we treated native americans the cheyenne and the arapaho we certainly have to talk about the tulsa massacre and what happened at black wall street which i'm a history major i don't know if you have the same experience jason a history major a masters in history i did not know about it until 15 years ago after my education was done brown versus board of education we celebrate as we should we don't look into it we don't talk about the notion that after brown versus educate board of education we did disperse students forcefully we didn't teachers we closed the schools throughout the american south half of black educators and much of the south stopped teaching within 10 years because there were no jobs for them we have to talk about what does

072that mean the gi bill after 1945 when soldiers came back who profited and benefited the most from it and why and what does that do to housing patterns what does that do to wealth these kids are ready to have those discussions not talking about that in third grade but to talk about that and really look at what does this all mean that's what this all commits us to and making sure that we have teachers that are committed to making sure that all kids know they're safe they're welcome that's what equity means here to make sure that we don't pretend that things are equal for every child because they're not but what it means is those kids are home here we're going to work with them and we're going to lift them up instead of tearing

073them down so i just wanted to talk about what this means in practice and certainly what i stand for as a superintendent thank you i think we have a motion that's been appropriately made i don't think it needs to be seconded because it was made by the policy subcommittee do we have questions or suggestions for amendments mark um first of all i want to thank again i said this for the first reading i sat on the uh policy board for many years actually didn't want to do the financials so i i uh i sat on the policy and and we uh and it was a lot of work so i want to i want to thank rosina and um andy and the rest of the group lauren i i will say names today lorna amanda

074and liz for all the work that you guys have done i i know there's a tremendous amount of work that goes on behind the scenes and i appreciate it um it doesn't go unnoticed at least by by me and others out there should know that a lot of time is spent on these things um and having said that um i just have one um maybe piece of advice being the elder statements on this on this is that we have we have a long-standing practice and this really kind of threw me for a loop this um this weekend normally i try to read obviously our booklet and i did not know really changes were being made i'm fine with the changes it's just that our policy of uh best long pres last long uh standing practice

075for tracking changes with bold italics and crossouts of how we track policies we've done this for years and this is the first time it's changed and it kind of threw me for a loop because i didn't know there was being changes made because they're hard you can't tell because there's no line item so if we can get back to that long-standing practice i appreciate this was um put in today but it would have been like nice to read where things were crossed out and added and things like that so if we can just get back to that practice for the policy committee because that's how it was always done and if we're going to change it let us know you're going to change it if you're not going to change it let's get back to

076what's supposed to be on and how it how those changes are tracked no criticism not at all i just something that i think needs to be tracked as well as the as we go forward so there'll be other policies and i'd like to see if we can get back to a standard practice so that's it thank you yes thank you mark amanda yeah i just wanted to um own that one mark um thank you for that feedback your spot on um that's my fault i when we were working on it on the as a policy committee we thought we'd do it in google docs so that we kept updating the most we always have everyone had access to the most updated version so as we were incorporating all the feedback from the committee community we

077were trying to do it up to the minute to make sure we always had a live document and when we submitted it for printing i submitted the document but i should have highlighted the changes not just for all of us to make it easier to read and understand but so that um we all had that when the community saw it posted so i apologize yeah i'm not playing fingers and i didn't want someone to come up and admit it that's not my point on that i get it right you know we're i i just wanted to continue going forward but you know how we italicized crossout and then bold for changes that we you know so i didn't need to appreciate you coming forward well no i just wanted the community know too that it's

078not just helpful for all of us but just as if because we attached it it would have been easier for people to kind of go back and forth so thank you for so that we could acknowledge it too other questions i have a question and then i'm going to make a proposal for a small amendment my question relates to the word alienage i know that threw me for a little bit of a loop and i'm just wondering if one of the members of the policy committee can address that term paragraph oh yes this is in the opening paragraph it's the fourth line and it's one of the protected um statuses that's listed um just wondering who can provide some information on the term alienation amanda if you wanna it's a little off-putting is all i

079can take that one um that yeah that's a word that we don't often hear so i know it took all of us for a loop when we saw it we thought what because if you google it you get all kinds of different interpretations but um the way that it's meant here is in its legal terminology which which relates to citizenship and immigration status so we got that directly from our legal counsel that's how it's interpreted in its legal wording and that's how it's implemented here thank you okay um so i have a suggestion for a small amendment and it's in the recruitment and retention paragraph and i'm going to read to you [Music] the suggestion so um right now if you look on the screen it says on the second line who reflect the diversity

080of our community and share our commitment to anti-racism i would like to add and anti-bias and then on the next line it continues deliberate investment strategies will be vital to recruit support and retain all educators and i would like to eliminate the word all and add and support staff so that sentence would read deliberate investment strategies will be vital to recruit support and retain educators and support staff comma especially those from et cetera et cetera did everyone understand those two changes that is my motion uh for an amendment is there a second second thank you mark does anyone have any questions about that proposal or concerns that they want to express if not we can go ahead and vote on that amendment um all those in favor of the amendment please signify by saying aye

081aye any opposed say nay any abstentions the eyes have it and the amendment is adopted thank you for your support on that are there other suggestions for amendments and any other um so back on the policy as a whole as amended are there any questions or um concerns that anyone would like to bring up before we vote on the policy okay if not we are now voting on policy 1800 as amended um all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed say nay abstentions and the eyes have it thank you very much and thank you to the policy committee our our staff dr haskins dr morrow our legal staff i'm sure there's other folks on the subcommittee that i'm not thinking of right now and yeah staff attorney and all the

082members of the public who have contributed to this policy either directly in the last four weeks or over the last several years by providing their their insight their wisdom and their perspective to us thank you so much [Applause] all right we are now going to move on to unfinished business item b discussion and vote on the superintendent's contract and the recommendation is that the board of education discuss and vote on a new employment agreement with mr tom moore to serve as superintendent of schools for a new term of three years july 1 2021 through june 30 2024 and that um ms deb poland the chairperson execute the new agreement on behalf of the board of education is there a motion so move thank you mark and a second second thank you ari um discussion so

083um i'll state for the public's benefit that in connecticut we are not allowed to have a superintendent contract that goes longer than three years and so because we always want to have tom moore working for us what we do is every year we renegotiate a three-year contract that pushes out his time with us ad infinitum hopefully and the board actually has met an executive session we were able to provide mr moore with valuable feedback receive feedback from him and uh and in executive session we agreed that we would have this motion at the board meeting tonight um any further questions or comments if not i will try your minds on the motion all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi any opposed say nay no one say that any abstentions the eyes have

084it thank you looking forward to negotiating that contract with you tom uh we have no new business so we'll move on to staff communications and reports and start with the superintendent's report three more years all right um yeah for those of you that were hoping sorry i'm stuck here three more years we'll be we'll be stuck together happily um so i want to um you know we're coming to the end of the year and there's been a lot of um great things that are going on as we begin to reopen from proms to student events and i i know these two will talk about those events and i'm not sure if because it happened late today i don't want to steal your thunder lily but um the boys uh track and field team at hall

085won the state title today the um class double l i'm sorry what are you saying eight yes yes um just fantastic news for hall so congratulations to them um also today in today's news andy and gretchen brought me over the lease today for the new bookstore and as they met and the former omaha steak location right across the street will officially be the location of our new bookstore opening tbd we'll give you a heads up ronnie um gretchen will tell you earlier than that but that's because she's not gonna be here um a couple very important recognition awards um the keeper the light award is from pupil services and um there were so many unbelievable nominations this year and the ideas that award that just keeps uplifting people and um this year uh the the

086nominations i read them they were unbelievable and gretchen provided them to me and they were across the spectrum of educators and people that work here and this goes to i think you're one of your points deb that you just had in the amendments um the winner of the keeper of the light this year um is joe bernard the head custodian at hall high school which is a great testament joe's a great guy and all the things written were about how if you asked you over something to say what do you need when do you need how can i help you and that kind of spirit is how he uplifts others and has done that throughout this time when everybody knows the pressure our custodians have been under for the past 16 months so congratulations joe

087and then in a very difficult we had tremendous teacher of the year nominees as you know when i read out their bios a couple weeks ago it was announced on thursday chelsea smith english language arts teacher at bristow middle school is west hartford's teacher of the year and chelsea is just one of those people that is beloved you cannot find someone that will say something bad about chelsea so it is um it is great recognition we are um very very happy for her and um finally in staff news um i am thrilled to announce um that we have come to an agreement and hired a new department supervisor for school counseling one of the most important positions um we have in that i'll lay out for people that um one of my goals with high

088school kids is to be able to say to them um no there's no reason for anybody to ever need a private counselor for as they move on to college and um i've been clear with um this candidate and we went through a many interview long interview process and then i met with her for two hours separately because this is a big job she's taking on and melanie thomas from manchester began her career in manchester um her recent leadership work includes coordination of manchester high school's imagine college program which in which she led equity discussions with the college and career readiness planning team so that all kids from early on can have this pathway designed as they move to college and that was something really she spoke of so well to the members of the executive

089team and when i met with her her commitment to kids her excited her excitement for this challenge in west hartford to make sure that um our school counseling department is everything that it can be in the future and to make the changes that we need to make um to help kids plan not just for college but what are their other options and how many pathways are we able to guide them down um not just two paths not just three paths how many different paths and how are we doing that creatively to meet them where they are um so we we are very excited to add melanie and um she'll be here um to be introduced to all of you my team's going to come up and talk about summer work and preparations for next school

090year which is typically kind of what i would do here in the last so i'll defer to them but as this is our last meeting i want to thank all the teachers all the students all the staff members um all the administrators my team all of you for your support this year in what has been um a most difficult year but a most rewarding year um because i'm beginning to see some of the some of the shifts happen as we're finding people and bring them back and creative solutions and people are coming to me with ideas we had a um brainstorming session with the principals last week where i gave him the week's notice ahead of time and i said i want you all to come to me with one idea that i haven't thought

091of yet um and which maybe i just haven't thought of many things but to have 16 people that have discussed with members that advised them and come forward and said tom why haven't we tried this and my my promise was as you present them i won't tell you all the reasons why we can't do it we'll just listen and then we'll talk about that and some really creative thoughts we're going to continue that process as we go through the summer we're going to meet with you know our teachers union we're going to meet with our paraprofessionals union we're going to meet with community groups to talk about what are those things that we have the opportunity to do um with the american rescue plan and how can it set us up over the next three

092years for a better future while also keeping in mind that we want that investment in our children um so um we have a lot of work to do but i know we have the right people to do it and people that are very excited to do that work so with that that's it for my report all right thank you we will move to staff reports and board discussions and our presentation will be on the 2021-22 planning for the opening of schools [Applause] now this is an important event not that it is not that the topic isn't important because the topic is of course very important you see the member of my team coming forward our team our west hartford team and um this is i guess the official handing of the baton in that it

093is gretchen's last meeting and melissa caballero's first meeting in front of the board and first presentation as director of pupil services so with that i'll turn it over to all of you as you duck down don't let the questioning of them getting hit in the head judge the validity of their presentation thank you tom thank you and uh it's a pleasure to welcome forward to the table uh melissa cavallaro for her first opportunity to present to you as well um our presentation as tom mentioned is on uh planning for 2020 21 20 22 summer programming in our school year and it really highlights not just the summer programs but school safety protocols our scheduling recent announcements we've made there the reintegration of students from the remote learning environment not to mention our ongoing work in

094social emotional learning professional learning and many other things and if you could hit the slide the agenda kind of maps out the big areas under which we talk the big areas uh that were identified within the written report but it also you know is intended specifically so that we can address not only things that are that are included in the ongoing budget that we've recently put forward to you through that process uh budget priorities for the coming years but also uh in some ways how we're making use of federal grants such as the esser funds and the american care zach as tom mentioned slide please so i'll turn it over to dr morrow who'll really introduce for us school safety and risk mitigation for both the summer and the upcoming school year thanks paul um

095if you think all the way back until last summer when we were here talking about how we would open the schools and such we took some time to thank uh all of the people who made that possible our custodial staff who worked so hard over the summer ball palmer and all of his people who just did an incredible job getting schools ready and so certainly i want to to thank them and really to thank everyone who made this year possible and helped keep our students in school and keep them safe and that goes from our custodials staff to our teachers to our bus drivers who rarely get credit to our principals who who sometimes don't get credit um but especially i wanted to call out and thank our school nurses who we really have been

096sort of the unsung heroes in all of this and i wanted just to mention them by name and thank them so i want to if i could indulge me for a moment to thank eileen mccormick carrie anderson beth fossler kathy winook molly sapporos julie schwartz kathy condon lisa marie vitelli heidi hobert glenda mckennie eileen flaherty karen burnett allison schmidt melissa wren megan evgen angela kolosal sabrina denko lynn foley helene hanrahan tracy kuffara cofardo and tracy roberts and especially to give thanks and credit to our nurse supervisor grace johnson who will will tell you that you know we kid but i have probably spent more time talking to this year than my wife um as far as the the late night calls about quarantines and cases and so forth and grace has just been a fantastic

097partner in this and we'll continue to be as we go forward some data to share a little bit we have managed this year positive cases amongst our student body and 110 additional cases among our staff members and we have tracked with these nurses at the schools and with everyone involved we have tracked 4 700 individuals this year who have been absent who have been sick who have been under quarantine and that continues you know as thankfully as we've seen the numbers are are dwindling down our number actually right now if you check the the dashboard and such for the past uh the past two week period from the state is we are below five and they don't give out numbers below five which is kind of nice to see um and so hopefully that will

098continue going forward but it really is is impressive i think if you look at that data from a year's standpoint of 4 700 cases 4 700 individuals and families that were impacted by this and that have been uh that have been managed and that have been um worked with so we're very proud of that um as paul said one of our our goals in in moving forward is to make sure that we're able to safely reopen our schools full in the fall we continue to operate under the guidance that the state has provided i would expect it is going to change uh in that they have been uh working under under the idea that they are going to be modifying some of their guidance uh going forward but what we're currently planning for based on

099what were our conversations with the state is a full reopen of our schools back to our regular schedules no block uh schedule as tom has shared in the past because again our current expectation is that we will not need that level of mitigation and that mitigation strategy we've always talked about and you've heard us say many times that we employ a suite of mitigation strategies and hand washing and and block scheduling and all of that we don't expect at the secondary level that block scheduling will be will be necessary so we will have the traditional schedule we don't expect there to be a need for any changes in our bus transportation we expect that to be traditional as we we do for uh for lunches and sports activities and everything else that goes forward with

100that we expect at this point that we will still have to implement a contract tracing protocol and a quarantine protocol i expect it will be different than what we're currently operating under the state realizes that uh continuing what they're doing especially at the secondary level doesn't make a lot of sense but are at this point they're they're not making changes obviously for the rest of the year and perhaps they will continue this through summer school at this point we we don't know and we're waiting for further guidance on that and again as i i think really becomes apparent we'll we'll continue our emphasis on on hand washing as we've done especially at the elementary school we'll continue our emphasis on all of the the good practices that we've put in place our outdoor education spots

101we're spending more resources over the summer to enhance those because again they're very popular and it's a great thing to get kids out and we've seen that since day one and encouraged kids to get outside and so all of that will continue uh hopefully we will continue vaccination efforts we've had great success with our 12 plus for that and hopefully that will uh continue over the summer as well so really where we're at now is where we're following the guidance that we've been given and we will continue to follow the guidance working with the department of public health working with the west hartford bloomfield health district who have also been great partners in this and we will uh make modifications as needed uh as the summer becomes a little clearer for us so to to

102not answer the question that we keep getting asked so will masks be mandatory in the fall we don't know yet i mean there's there's been some signals sent there's been discussion made my expectation is that it will probably well i don't know i have a feeling it'll be left up to local districts just as much of this has been left up to local districts so um we'll talk um we'll look at the numbers then we'll talk to the experts if it is left in our hand and then we'll make an informed decision before we move on since you asked about or referenced whether or not mass will be required we don't have any news about vaccinations being required either i just we get that question a lot i figured i would just bring that up

103that's correct yeah nothing about vaccinations no no hints that that's going to be mandatory i mean we see things shifting as we know in may how quickly things shifted previously and as we saw our case numbers decline so that there are things you know you're looking at graduation in two weeks and you're looking at a heat spell um that it looks like we're going to be in the 90s for a 10 to 14 day period and everybody's going to be outside so it's not going to be a mass policing type of environment that that you know i mean so things are shifting every day andy was on a call with the department of public health this morning and luckily there's some districts going ahead of us so that are graduating a little bit earlier that

104i was speaking to today so we'll see as they push the envelope on something we're getting also some indications from the state and from the department of public health that they are looking at differentiating between different levels and so we may have some different uh requirements in place at the elementary level that we do at the secondary level going forward for next year just as a note at the cic today they didn't require masks for the uh track meet for um visitors so i i was really kind of shocked by it quite honestly being a school event so good i'll start off and i'll share some air time with gretchen on summer programs but beginning at the elementary level with our esau summer prep most of you should recall that this is this is a

105traditional program that we've had in the district for many many years and its purpose really is exactly what as we think about what we're trying to do for other students in the district that's exactly the purpose of the esau summer program it services our english language learners not every not not every single english language learner you're recommended into the program but the whole point of the program is if you're language proficiency is at an area where it's just blossoming it's just beginning if there are indications that you potentially do not have english-speaking parents at home so there's a genuine chance for some regression of skills over the summer without additional practice we provide a program at no cost to families serving our elementary and middle age middle school aged children and so there are very

106few design changes that we felt we needed to make to this program we are hosting the program in person uh one of the things we felt strongly about is is the need to have that face time with children one of the changes was we did see the need to increase our number of classrooms by one just based on an increase in in relative student need and then we were responsive to feedback from families who said that coming in in person over the summer was going to be a challenge for them really based on afternoon care because it is a half day program so we did open up an opportunity within this program specifically for an online classroom within rising grades one two three four and then i believe a combined five six but other than

107that there are approximately 16 classrooms of students so there will be at least 10 10 to 11 that are meeting in person and that program will be hosted at smith elementary school as it's been second and very similar in design is our summer connections program which again is a traditional program that we've hosted here in the district however historically that program was a feature specifically of our two magnet schools smith and charter road again it was a program servicing students under a recommendation basis typically for remediation within literacy and numeracy so students that may have had supports from from a math coach or from a literacy coach during the year for whom their teachers felt they needed additional work over the summer in order to ensure their readiness in the coming grade what we did

108for a change with this this year two major changes first we expanded the program to service students from the entire district all right and obviously transportation being provided so we've we've more than doubled the number of classrooms that are available for that and secondly in in terms of the spirit of uh what's out there for the state we look not just at remediation but how we can accelerate learning so we modified the program slightly to include an exploration block within within the program something in and along an arts block that's going to really attend to not just students literacy skills and numeracy but their engagement with school doing our best to try to re-engage students we have over 200 students enrolled as of as of this morning for that program uh roughly 30 to 33

109percent of those students are from our remote learning environment um as well as students from uh across the district there are a total of 26 classrooms programmed currently and then lastly our middle and high school programs i don't know if i gave the middle school program which is a new program enough description within the written report we haven't had a middle school summer program for a number of years we did pilot something this spring with a saturday goal academy that worked with sixth graders where we were looking at those students that were attending that that were having engagement issues and we designed a program that would have kind of a morning meeting would have some literacy and numeracy remediation but structured within the context of goal setting collaboration communication uh note taking some of those

110student skills that we saw you know we we recognize are vital that students were struggling with and we built a bigger exploration block into that program as well that's the model for our middle school summer program students will be grouped in small groups of between 12 to 15 they will rotate among three teachers one of whom will provide them some literacy instruction probably with reading and writing things that are that are really targeting more of the skills less of the content uh there'll be some numeracy work and then there'll be an exploration block and that can be coding that can be visual arts or performing arts that could be world language it's kind of more of a school meets camp approach that we're trying trying to achieve we have a total of 18 classrooms and

111that's going to service rising sixth graders through rising ninth graders and again that's on a recommendation basis all of our programs all of those summer programs will qualify through state funding state grant they can get a free lunch to go uh as well as we provide snack and transportation and at this point i'll turn it over to gretchen who will describe uh some of the people the variety of pupil service programs so we typically provide extended school year every year and so students in pupil services who qualify have very specific guidelines around regression and emerging functional learning really allow and enable a student to qualify for this more comprehensive intensive summer programming and so per state guidance we're going to continue that and so every student with an iep who would qualify in any other

112summer is is going to continue to get that comprehensive esy programming and so i outlined a description of the programs that we've that we have traditionally presented in the whiting lane building as well as the bristol building and and then the middle school and the high school will be at connor and then our post-secondary students will continue their learning and on their campus their own campus and in their own building at the cogswell campus and so we anticipate a little over 400 students accessing esy this summer and then about three or four years ago we started enhancing our single subject tutoring for students who really didn't need or qualify for a large comprehensive esy program but would really has demonstrated a need for single subject tutoring to make sure that they're keeping up with their

113skills and their they are as prepared as they can be to start the new school year and in that this year we expanded the number of students that will be eligible for those that tutoring service that happens in the afternoon at bristow for four weeks and so we have hired additional teachers to make sure that we have appropriately small enough class sizes and we're probably looking at about a third to a half or 50 percent increase in the number of students that we are providing for tutoring which is is very positive and then paul i have to say thank you very much because i uh when we talked about what he was going to do over summer school i said you know please make sure that that we're looking at all students equally and that

114our students with ieps are also included in your summer connections and the summer middle school and high school programs and i'm really pleased to see that a lot of our students with ieps who wouldn't traditionally qualify for esy services are going to be getting that acceleration as well as you know reinforcement that that's going to be happening through the regular ed and so i mean we're thrilled just absolutely thrilled a lot of our students are going to be touched by great curriculum enthusiastic teachers and continued learning for the summer if you look at numbers just pure numbers that are coming in every day during our off summer our district will be larger than 80 percent of the districts in connecticut are during the regular school year all right so i'm going to transition and talk

115about planning for the fall for the next full school year um and the first thing that bears mentioning is reintegration activities we do have a number of students that were attended school remotely for the entire year and specifically of concern among them are students say who are in kindergarten who are in sixth grade or who in ninth grade who have potentially to this point never really set foot in the new school that they would have otherwise transitioned to in a normal progression so we are planning uh very specifically with that group as an emphasis but certainly all students would that that were at the rle to make certain that in the fall prior to the start of school there are specific reintegration activities programmed at the individual schools for them and so we'll bring in

116some teachers we'll be working with the principals over the summer time to kind of plan that out a little bit but essentially the focus of those activities is certainly welcoming opportunity it's the opportunity to uh to walk to school to tour the school to meet the teachers one-on-one before the big scary first day of school to understand at that point any protocols that are in place that they would not have seen obviously if if they hadn't attended school all last year and you know for some of our students if if i've had a foothold in a school if i'm returning next year to fifth grade and i've had multiple years that that's not going to be as much of an issue but for some of our children uh it will be a new experience and

117so that pressure of our first day will be a little bit larger so we wanted to make sure that we had something that was both welcoming that was you know appropriate and uh and and uh you know help to reduce any anxiety that folks might have as we return and we'll have greater detail on the very specifics of those things that will communicate certainly to the board and to the public as as those plans firm up over the course of the summer in terms of school engagement i'll just talk briefly and then turn turn the rest of the slide over to to the variety of presenters here but one of the things we're looking at are you know opportunities for accelerating learning um and so as we've mentioned in the past a couple of things

118that we plan for within our budget we do have our department supervisors who will would have otherwise typically been teaching a course in the coming year and we've eliminated those teaching duties for the coming year for our mathematics and our english language arts department at the secondary level so that they can have a greater foothold kind of working across the department in those areas that we're more concerned about in terms of the supervision of of high quality instruction and any potential learning loss that students may have and their need to accelerate learning we've also brought into the district math coach which was something that all of you supported through the budget but through esser funding we're going to bring forward two math coaches at the middle school and we're potentially planning as we look at

119that sr3 grant if we'd like to do something in kind at the high school but that grant application is as yet not due and we're just just got the application recently those math coaches will work directly with teachers in terms of their pedagogy the intent is to mimic our elementary model which we've presented to you uh we think that we have a very high quality model and it has more to do with with being that set of hands and that that teacher in the classroom that gets to know students than it does with with strict intervention we certainly have funding within esser and within our district uh budget to support our literacy coaches and math coaches and things like this but but our intent is really to work uh very directly with teachers to be

120able to identify and address any learning loss and any opportunities for learning acceleration finally i mentioned the goal saturday academy at the middle school level that we piloted in sixth grade our intent is to continue that to help with engagement of students throughout the year at the middle school level and just to as way of segway we are maintaining structures that we've built this year such as advisory and community at the secondary level obviously the morning meeting at the uh at the elementary level so that we can continue our work with social emotional learning or social justice um and so with that i'll i'll turn this over to rosina to talk a little bit potentially more about those efforts sure so we've reflected over the year on things that we've had to reimagine things that

121have worked well things that haven't things that we should keep stop and change and so one of the things that we continue to value are community sessions um that we offer for students to be able to really build their own social emotional learning show empathy and kindness toward each other but also to understand and embrace diversity in their own identity and so that will continue to happen as paul said in our community sessions morning meeting morning advisory in community our edc members are already planning for summer work beginning immediately when school finishes to regroup and then engage in their own professional learning so that we can support our students in going forward with pro-social education you know safety is our number one priority and so ensuring that students feel value seen and heard that is

122a provision of safety and wellness so that's the work that we'll continue to do on this slide i'll also talk about family and community connections because this year's equity office staffing and restructure has allowed for us to expand family partnership we're going to continue to build on the one community network that we've started so that we can bring in more perspectives um to the table in in diverse experiences and then we'll continue to build our capacity for true family school partnership um we want this work to be realized and felt not just at the district level but within our schools so we're doing some deep equity work within our schools relative to family school partnership and we've got we've built equity with so many stakeholders that will continue to capitalize on that and move our

123work forward and finally of course we'd be remiss not to talk to you in depth about our pupil services planning our students uh who may face other obstacles and and what their educational planning will look like so melissa caballero will be leading that work next year very excited to welcome her thank you good evening everybody um and i just want to thank gretchen um for her partnership in preparing for next year she holds a lot of this information i really appreciate her leadership and guidance and helping me see the vision that she has started and moving our work forward but as we get ready to welcome students back to a more traditional year next year we certainly know that there has been some disruption for some of our students and we've seen that through our

124data and the feedback we receive from parents and so we want to be proactive in our approach providing support and so we're looking at adding additional staffing elementary through the upper grades to ensure that our students are well supported in their return back to school and so that looks like the addition of additional staff members in the world of clinical to support their needs at the elementary level including three additional social workers and aim curriculum which is a social emotional curriculum training for the entire elementary clinical team to support not only students who have individualized education plans in the reacclimation process for all students so that our clinicians are ready and prepared to support students as they return in in supporting them as they reacclimate at the secondary level we have additional staff joining all

125of our middle school and high school buildings to support both academic and social emotional learning and we have an additional clinician who will be supporting pat tyler's work in the crisis and trauma field we also in that same partnership want to be providing parents with resources tools and community agencies so we will be updating our website to include important information for families who are seeking to find additional resources as they also reintegrate back into a more traditional school year and are supporting their students at the in the home we did receive guidance last week on thursday from the state regarding recovery and so new information we're still processing it but the state has provided some guidance on how we can look at recovery services for students who've experienced disruption to their learning that has caused

126a lag in their ability to progress as they have typically done so so we're processing that information we're putting together procedures for the fall for us to look at students we feel are eligible and certainly will be communicating with families who might see that their child has had difficulty over the past year and a half given the covid situation so we'll partner with families on recovery services which are not minute by minute however they are a short-term recruitment for students to get back to where they should have been should there have not had there not been a pandemic so with that we open it up to any discussion or questions thank you so much for that comprehensive uh report i assume we do have questions i'll look around my colleagues we'll start with mark and

127then jason all right um thank you appreciate this i think um my obituary's gonna say that we have slide packets in front of us when i uh this is fantastic little kid in a candy store with this but anywhere later so thank you um and and first i uh gretchen i want to wish you a happy retirement i remember your first day you were here and uh you know i know you've got grandkids and things look forward too and so enjoy you've been a welcome addition to west hartford and i appreciate it so thank you and and welcome as well and i'm sure you'll uh you'll you have big shoes to fill but i have pro have no question that you you can film easily so thank you um you know i the one thing

128i have on this is you know for every bad situation or negative occurrence um that we encounter there's cloud always has a silver lining and we i guess would i would like us to look back at all that we did in the past year plus what and how can we take advantage of those um learning environments you know if someone were to be say sick for an extended period of time uh but not so much that they couldn't sit in front of a computer um and for whatever reason and it was a board and i guess as a state we can talk about eventually snow days maybe every other one or something like that because you know we went through a sharp learning curve and we got there right and we did well and i

129wouldn't want to lose that i guess and i think there's a way there's an opportunity there's a silver lining that we could take advantage of some of those things um you know i just remember uh one of my son's friends went to uh spain for an extended period of time like two weeks or something for a family vacation for family occurrence or something happened and there was nothing you could do we had to make up the time and things like that and i was like well you know if we had that online piece you know i don't mean recreating it all together you know i know in some uh rooms we just had a camera right and that said student could get into that camera and and look at those classes so they don't fall

130further behind i don't know what the solution is but i there are creative solutions out there for what we went through for the last year and a half um and i wouldn't want to lose it you know there are ways that we can take advantage of and i just hope that we're looking at all that so um thank you for that mark and there is a comment that i failed to mention i put the bullet in there but then forgot to talk about it one of the things that we're looking at within our high school summer program this year and and students that typically attend summer program attend for one of two reasons they're either remediating a credit that they lost due to uh whether that be attendance or academic failure or they're accelerating and

131trying to get ahead in their credit to free up some room in their schedule for other courses so while we feel strongly that for the summer program if students remediating we really want them to be kind of face to face and in front of us so that we can address their individual needs and and get a quicker understanding of that we did implement online classes at the high school level for get ahead credit and we're typically we're also trying to uh offer those at you know non-routine times something in the later afternoon we'd love to be able to get into the early evening kind of that something where we assume students would be able to still do some of the things they want to do during their daytime and then and then maybe you know

132have that opportunity to take a class so that is actually an effect that didn't make it into the board report that's my fault um other thing uh that that definitely is a takeaway in terms of the instruction and the pedagogy across all grade levels is is hopefully number one uh that use of google classroom so it really was a jump start to make sure that kind of all of our teachers could get more proficient just in that basic tool which is a great tool for warehousing your student assignments organizing what things are do um i'll gladly you know let our student reps either talk to the uh the power of that tool or or or potentially you know their their disdain for it i'm not sure which that might be but uh we are we

133are also looking at um introducing that tool um currently we do that down to the third grade level and we're looking at finding the opportunity to be able to introduce that down in the second grade level because we're finding that this the teachers were clamoring for it the students were clamoring for it and it is you know it's a logical step for us in terms of being able to build some of those keyboarding skills at that age uh one year prior to their introduction introduction to the state testing platforms which as you know are all online as well so those are some quick lessons learned but absolutely uh mr moore dr morrow talking uh with me and my team about what are some other opportunities for some of that online learning some pieces where you

134look at something like connord has that automotive wing but but hall doesn't have that how can we arrange or or other low incidence high interest classes you know but you just don't have density at a school to always be able to run it how can we share a staff member that can teach a week at one building and then teach a week at the other building and the students remote in on the off week when when the teacher's not standing in front of them so that's an ongoing conversation things that were we're looking at what are the lessons learned that we can take away and bring forward into the coming school years awesome i'm just going to take a minute to say i love that idea of the non-traditional hours for the high school students

135who are looking to take classes to get ahead i can speak for just our um own experience and those of people that we know and a student in that situation in the past has had to decide whether typically to have a summer job or to be able to take these classes or sometimes even miss a sports practice so this is great thanks jason thank you um i just want to extend my gratitude to everyone for this incredible year and you know as a newcomer to the board it's been incredibly uh humbling to sit here or at home and witness all of the work that has happened in in this district and um i'm just incredibly proud to be uh to be here to to support the work that y'all are doing um and you know

136i'm i also think that this is you know really fortuitous tonight to have this reopening plan that you presented uh combined with the conversation voting in our new equity policy because i see equity all over this reopening plan and um and i think you know it demonstrates you know if people want to know what this policy looks like this is it looks like this reopening plan the ability to uh to be you know to empower the district to be curious about students and families find out what their needs are and to generate the resources to and the expertise to meet those needs is just tremendous and you know i try to think of what you know like the the most transformative educational experiences i've had you know if you could just imagine the teacher that

137you had that experience with that you didn't have that experience because because you were treated exactly like everyone else right the importance is to be able to see individuals and to be able to put them in a context and um and so you know i think when i see the work that's happening here and then today in the the state house uh past um sb1 which declares racism a public health crisis the ability for us to see those those disparities and to be able to meet them and in our public institutions is so important and so i'm really grateful and i see that sensitivity to those those uh conditions in in the reopening plan um and so i'm incredibly grateful for those insights and the expertise you bring to thinking about these things because i

138can see reopening being just as difficult as as the you know going remote last year in march there's a number of challenges that are going to require us to be equitable and those are going to uh we're all going to benefit from that and i'm just really grateful so thank you any other questions or comments ari um i first want to just thank each and every one of you for keeping our schools up and running during this pandemic i still tell everyone i don't think any of you have slept since march 2020 and you look awfully good so i just want to thank you for that i feel that west hartford was really kind of the trendsetter in all of the patterns with regard to the pandemic first to close first open like i just

139think the work that you guys have done um is remarkable so i just first want to thank each and every one of you um including tom um gretchen i just wanted to say i'm really sad to see you go i've enjoyed working with you over the years so i hope you enjoy retirement and all that comes with it and melissa i look forward to getting to know you and working with you in the upcoming years um so i had one clarification question um and then just another actual question so the summer connections program for middle school is for regular education students correct that's not a pupil service program it's open to all students unrecommended so it's not it's not only for regular education as gretchen mentioned special education students may tend to right it's not

140extended school year so it's not designed in terms of the recommendation process if i'm a student with disabilities and i would qualify for extended school year there's specific criteria that gretchen has if i'm just a struggling learner whether i have that identification or not i may have been recommended into the middle school summer program and then my question follow-up question for that is given that it's um a teacher recommend recommended program and in middle school they have numer number of teachers is it kind of a consensus is it just one area that a teacher could recommend they had conversations at the team level um based on looking at students that may have had either engagement or achievement slumps throughout the year and some degree of consistency of need and then they set priorities kind of

141high moderate low priority for students okay and just one clarification so students who receive esy programming we primarily work on their iep goals and objectives whereas students with an iep who would be included in summer connections are working on general curriculum not their individualized iep goals and objectives it's very important to make that distinction okay thank you and then my other question was more about fall planning and re-integration activities i'm wondering what are the options for students and their families if they're not comfortable coming back to in-person school and they're not comfortable returning to in person in terms of are there measures that will be taken to kind of help reintegrate or increase their level of comfort to come back to school and then obviously if that can't be achieved what are the options for

142those families in the fall i can talk specifically to students that we work with in pupil services it's probably better let me start with all right and then go to the mitigations overall we believe children need to be in public schools we believe children need to be in school um and that we're going back to the system prior to pandemic that um your comfort level may may make you search out something else but we're going back to the public school setting in the way that we're providing education for everybody the state of connecticut on the side maybe and is developing a online learning platform of some sort that isn't all completely out to us yet so i'm not sure what it is and there's a lot of questions that go with that then does if

143they provide this platform is that student now a student of the state are they withdrawn in a homeschool student and they're a student of the state are they students still a student of west harbor public schools that hasn't been delineated yet and i know that there would need to be a large legal component to that too so that's kind of the big picture in terms of okay we we believe students need to be in school here's what we're going to be able to do so then i'd go through the components of how do we reintegrate that both for those who will have some difficulty be it nervousness be it anxiety be it all of those elements so i think paul you're definitely working with your teams on reintegration kinds of plans and reacclimation for all

144students right correct and so that you know in terms of uh the piece that i mentioned will plan for something prior to the opening of school um and and some of that you know it's getting inside the building meeting the teacher understanding being able to walk around the classroom understand how uh what it looks like but as you know within our budgeting process uh you know we have class size guidelines we're trying to operate under those guidelines in the coming year we don't expect we're gonna have um the same level of intensity and all the risk mitigation factors that we have but we have you know we can talk to parents and you can have that face-to-face conversation and you can talk about um you know in real time the low incidence rate and and

145try to you know provide that that greater level of comfort for uh you know obviously uh school safety is the number one thing in education it's it's a head of it's a head of reading it's ahead of literacy it's ahead of everything and we wouldn't be reopening if we didn't feel places were safe so some of that baseline reintegration is to try to provide the opportunity to have that one-on-one conversation with a parent try to work on that credibility of that message with them allowing them to kind of see the grounds um from there in in pupil services everything is individualized i mean that's the the eye and the iep and so we've also worked traditionally with students and families who have health concerns that don't allow them to come into a school building safely

146and so we will work within those parameters of individualization and health concerns to make sure that all students needs are being met whether they have an iep or not and so we're able to work with a few families this summer who have some concerns and have some medical documented medical concerns however they're very few and so all of our programming is going to be done in person and so at this point we're anticipating again all of our programming is going to be provided in person but we'll work with each individual family if a need arises thank you anyone else lorna i'll be brief i just wanted to again echo what my colleagues have shared and just want to extend appreciation to all of you for us even being in this position to talk about uh

147reopening for next school year and i say that because of your steadfast diligence and dedication to following the north star being committed to following guidelines and recommendations but certainly being committed to wanting to get back to this place so thank you for for your as the young folk you know say just just keeping it real and and just being hard about it and just focused and and all of that i digress but i certainly do thank you for that i also thank you andy for sharing and reading all the names of the nursing staff i recall you doing that last year with all the custodian staff and i held back tears then and i held back tears this time as well because it certainly recognizes how everyone is a part of our system and certainly

148having had many conversations over the years with nursing staff um you know yes you yes we certainly value them so thank you for taking the time to read each and every one of their names and just again thank you to all of you gretchen wishing you well as you start a new chapter in your life don't like to say goodbye just say see you later but certainly you're passing it off to someone who's well received so welcome melissa again look forward to collaborating with you thank you any other questions amanda thank you and i echo all my colleague sentiments um thank you gretchen and welcome melissa we know you're ready um as we start looking at some of the pieces for going into next year i i saw something online the other day a teacher

149friend of mine wrote you know i hope everyone as parents remembers that teachers are not on break this summer they're recovering and i laughed when i saw it because i thought that is so true but then i thought i don't think they're recovering because they didn't have i don't know if people really have a sense of everything that went on in this district last summer and at every single person in every single position of the district was working at max capacity non-stop and really hasn't stopped since that there really haven't been recovery periods and so it got me thinking about how people really don't know what this summer is going to look like i mean i certainly feel like i have more of a front row seat to because of the health district piece that

150we share to andy's work and then rosina to your work because we're in close contact about that through policy um but could you help us understand um for the community too kind of what what is summer gonna look like for the teachers and for all of you um you know thank you for your stamina because we know that that this is going to be an intense summer we can hear all of the planning that's going on but um it just might be good for people to just get a sense of what that's going to look like because at all levels there's really no there's no break sure um i'll try to start and i'll welcome any other comments so uh first and foremost you know i wish i could spend time reading the names of

151every teacher the commitment of the teaching staff the para educators of everyone in this district this year is nothing short of commendable and uh and i would be remiss if i didn't just open my comments with a with a gigantic thank you for all that they've done i know that many of them i'm certain all of them are look greatly looking forward to the opportunity to simply exhale after june 17th that being said there are a number of staff we talked about summer opportunities we talked about summer school and and trying to build and expand on our summer programs and there was a lot of talk like will people come will teachers want to work and we do have a number of folks that are very passionate very exciting excited about it this whole new

152middle school program that we've developed there's a dramatic amount of energy from the folks that applied into that program because they really see the opportunity while they may want to be able to take some time and and and you know refresh and recharge they see an opportunity for something that they really want to do and an investment in children that they think will pay dividends so between the esy program all the extended summer programs there are a number of staff that will continue to work in those programs we have a number of curriculum writing teams and projects in equity work in our content areas new courses that we highlighted potentially there weren't that many new courses this year but in the budget process we've got that new state course on african-american and latin studies that

153we'll be offering and there'll be a curriculum team that assembles to do that um so so there's work um and and then there's work i'm sure that rosina and others will describe uh but by and large there there are there's down time for teachers as well uh we're also looking at all a variety of professional development opportunities that we can offer for teachers over the course of the summer and one of the positive outcomes of the pandemic to go back to kind of market comment earlier is we've there are a number of department supervisors not the least of which i should thank jocelyn tambarillo and lisa daly who have worked to warehouse a number of our professional development workshops that we've that we've offered over the course of the year put them up online to

154have an on-demand anytime professional learning repository uh that others will be contributing to this summer we talked before the pandemic about computer science jackie coracelli is offering a kind of a computer science boot camp for educators doing one at the elementary level one at the secondary level that's going to happen over the summer so there's there's certainly no shortage i don't know if anyone has things i don't know if that addresses your question but there are there's also opportunities for people you know some of this individuals will select into the things that they're willing to do individuals select into summer school it's not it's not a requirement they they they ask to they apply to all the programs that i was describing in the esy program teachers apply into that to teach teachers volunteer to

155work on the summer curriculum projects and then other teachers take time to be with family take time for themselves which which well deserved the the irony amanda of the single single most avowed workaholic i've ever known in my life replying to your question about how people will take a break because but i think it's important i want to use paul as an example here paul's not energized unless he's doing something i mean and that and that's the case so we didn't assign any teachers to come in during the summer we didn't beg any teachers to come in during the summer we posted this and said you're welcome to we're not assigning that professional development we're saying you're welcome to come in because every person has that different kind of need of what energized them of

156what gets them going what you know is what do you read what do you watch what do you experience and for some people that can be time at the beach and other people it can be a documentary that they watch it all of a sudden gets things going um so we want to be respectful of that with all of our staff with our principals and make sure that they get um that time to reboot and part of that reboot is really and and you touched on this re-centering how we think about next year and re-centering this kind of thought of getting through you know there's a countdown certainly okay so once that countdown ends june july august okay what during those weeks are we not counting down to how are we reframing next year and

157being excited for that return to school i think i think that's really important one of the key elements you're getting to there so i did have one other question about um about the kids you know at the beginning thinking we can hear the dedication um from all of your comments of the faculty and staff at all levels and early on there was a lot of personalized outreach to the kids and families whether it was through food or through other kind of human service needs that the community at large didn't necessarily always hear about for privacy reasons to be respectful but when we think about some of our kids who weren't able to engage as much as others you know i remember some of them needed to stop doing a lot with school because they needed

158to work to support their families and that was a very real concern for them did you see a lot of the kids who weren't able to engage as much for a whole host of reasons was it spread evenly among ages or did you find it more with the older students or the younger students and just thinking about you've got a lot of layers here to try to catch and re-engage the kids do you have a sense of if there are a lot of kids we haven't caught or you know if they're the older kids versus the younger kids yeah i'll start i know gretchen has a piece certainly um as she oversees some of the homeschool planning parts of that i had i had a great conversation with susie sinatra who's our elementary principal for

159the remote learning environment she was talking about a we were talking about the number of kids that were engagement challenged with engagement throughout the year um and one of the things that we ended up doing at one point if students specifically in the ramon environment were were having trouble attending and likewise on the other end if students who said they were coming to school were not showing up to school consistently we we performed outreach to say look uh we're gonna we need to change something we've had multiple interventions we've had multiple house visits we've had we've tried to put certain things into place and if if this isn't working we don't want this to be lost time for you and your family in terms of your child's education so we may have you know had

160some hard conversations with folks and talked about you know switching that assignment whether it be a movement into the rla or moving away and and that sat that seemed to um satisfy some degree of need but there were still some students in talking with susie she was describing a child where um you know she had to make just a weekly phone call to to the child every thursday afternoon and and and be that adult voice that was going to run down and see how was school progressing that week from the child's perspective what goals were they going to set and even to the point where at some of her meetings she she told me she was driving around houses to deliver prizes from a recent a recent meeting just whether it was most improved attendance

161or or whatever it might have been to try to build that incentive so it's certainly been a struggle in terms of how well distributed it is you know i i can't say that i can i can quote your numbers in terms of this many at this grade level or or these schools because it it happened in pockets and there were certainly places where a particular grade or a particular school might have had a collection more than another but but a lot of those were due to individual circumstances and and i'll say this much i'll say that no school was immune from it there was need everywhere and but a lot at the root cause and in talking with both tim and with susie a lot of it just had to do with some of those

162family dynamics some of those issues that cropped up if mom and dad you know had to work or you know didn't have that kind of time that they might need to invest with a child specifically if that child were they were not able to put them at the school to where they could kind of provide that hand off to to to the school personnel to take charge of their family and take care of them if they had to be in the care at home and try to receive that education it was just difficult with some home scenarios to to provide that structure but by and large at the end of the day i think susie said in terms of retention and things of that nature uh there were three that she were aware of at

163the elementary from the rle and two additional that that may have been retained um so i so i those metrics to me tell me that um there was a degree of success uh in re-engaging the majority of learners but i know that gretchen can speak to some just on pure numbers before you go to gretchen because i am curious but um certainly being remote learning doesn't mean that you're disengaged and those but we've seen that excitement about coming back i've spoken to leaders of districts that have not had the return even in the high school when they've moved out where kids just stayed away just in our official remote learning number of students since we've reopened all year i've said we're 16 to 17 remote that's been consistent all year long liz just gave me

164the june 1st numbers today we're at 12 now and that's with us saying you're probably better off staying with that teacher probably staying better staying off those classes yet we've still seen 25 percent of our kids come back in the past five weeks so there is this kind of you know as people see this re-engagement there is a clamoring to come back so while i am concerned about the people that are very nervous and there's going to be that population i think the untold story is how many people are excited to be back to normal also to say briefly in pupil services we've had concerns about engagement and often in a student's ability to engage because of their disability in an online format especially early on and so you know this really falls into two

165lanes students that that we've kind of kept an eye on we know that they're there but engagement is difficult and then students that we kind of lost you know our eye on them and we weren't quite sure you know where they went um and so in the in the first category we were able to really get engagement going over the course of the year especially in thanks to all the building principles for expanding what we called the purple group and so when we were putting our our cohorts together for students with ieps who qualified for that more intensive programming that we saw a huge jump in engagement when we were able to expand that that purple group of students who really were able to get in every single day to get the instruction that they

166needed that was the first part the second part which i thought was interesting is we track in our office the number of families who request homeschool paperwork and so we've seen some trends over the years that it's slowly increasing but last year we had 19 requests for homeschooling this school year we had 55 and so that was a pretty significant jump but i'm really pleased to know to be able to tell you that nine of those 55 students re-enrolled over the course of the year and that we've been notified by 15 additional families that they will definitely be re-enrolling for next year so that kind of brings us back to the number that we had in 1920 which is very good and another great sign of people feeling more comfortable and wanting to be here

167so that was very positive trend [Applause] thank you anyone else all right thank you very much [Applause] moving on to routine matters and our first item is the financial report the recommendation is to approve the financial report for the period ending april 30th 2021 and i will turn this over to my colleague mark zudanowitz to provide the financial report um in partnership with liz hewitt all right thank you so as far as the general fund goes and salaries if you could turn to page 17 in your booklet i'll kind of go by line item about some of the um the numbers here so if you look at teacher salaries line 51 12 a slight savings of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars um and that's just just um supervisors there i think it is and

168then right below that 249 000 two libraries um that are working in classrooms so we see a savings there and then if you go down to the just the next item down 250 000 uh graphic designer retired and there really has been no after school activities with that as well so there's a savings there too if you skip two lines go down to the 125 for the custodian regular there's one vacancy in there and we're seeing a savings and then if you go down two more lines 154 the maintenance regular again um or that was a custodian regular this is the maintenance regular sorry and then uh we have um two two maintenance missing there so there's a savings there um if you go down to teacher substitutions 5180 we see um 500 000 having

169troubles getting subs given the times that we have um and same with the teachers assistance the 250 000 there too um so we're looking at a balance of uh one million eight hundred and sixteen thousand dollars if you go down to the next you know no real changes here this is the unemployment and social security um fifty thousand dollars on social security given that we're not um having those teachers above um employed uh so for the the total benefits the next line um if you look at the 750 000 what that is really it's a savings on pupil transportation no field trips outplacing students they're using remote so we're seeing that as well and then if you look at the 150 000 for special ed professional teacher services that's for special ed and then if

170we go down to um supplies and maintenance too on uh if we went back to um supplies and maintenance we see 828 thousand dollars we we've more supplies that we needed about two hundred thousand and we have to buy some computers devices chrome books and servers which is about five hundred thousand dollars that's why that number represents that as well [Music] special funds report not a lot of changes there in fact no changes from last month at all and then if we go into our nutritional services you'll see in april and that first line the bottom one we were showing a profit for sixty seven thousand dollars it was 67 1997 which is which is good news um our per meal reimbursement is up since january 1st and um school's back in full and lunches

171are up so that's a good thing and then if you look at the operating loss income about three quarters of the way down the page 331 as you remembered we are going to offset that number with the sr2 funds of 350 dollars and offset that that will make it whole um so that concludes that piece obviously pending any questions that you may have or liz if i missed something that you can end yup thank you mark liz can you just give everyone a brief update about the various grant funds that have either been approved or or are in the process of being approved or applications are coming soon certainly um as you may recall during the current year we have already received our sr1 grant which we used to fund teacher positions that was 900

172000 and we also received a 1.2 million coronavirus relief fund grant which we used really to get our our schools in shape and to buy our ppe and fund some of our certified nursing assistants to make sure that our schools were safe for students and staff to return subsequent to that excuse me we were notified of an sr2 grant in the amount of 4.3 million we applied for that and received award notification in mid-may those funds will start to be used over this summer and then for the next two school years the only thing that we'll be doing this year with those funds is as mark alluded to is reimburse our nutrition services fund 350 000 the next funding that we're receiving is called the arp esser grant or the sr3 grant we've been notified

173that our allocation is 9.7 million you may recall that at one point the estimate had been 10.3 million that was a preliminary estimate but based on the amount that state of connecticut actually received and our portion thereof uh west hartford will receive 9.7 million the application just became available for that and is due in mid-august has a very similar framework to sr2 it really is based on the same structure as that has the same priorities and we're working through now our application and our plans for those funds the sr3 grant is available for three school years so it'll be available through 2024 school year so just in context so like the sr3 we anticipate that's where we would use the um pay for play would come out of that over those three year period um

174and so we got nine point three nine point seven nine point seven million the town got how much so the town received directly approximately 25 million but then they also are receiving what's called a county allocation because since connecticut does not have counties and most states do the state i believe still got that allocation and it'll be distributed on a per capita basis i don't have the final figure i believe it's about 10 million great thank you i really appreciate your giving us that context because since our financial report only goes up through april 30th not all of that is included and since this is the last meeting of the year we won't have that information great um so can we have a motion to approve the financial report so moved thank you and a

175second second thank you jason any uh further questions about the financial report i just wanted to add them since you had mentioned that this really only goes through april um just as a reminder that at your second meeting in september we will go through the financial results of the entire school year at that point in time we'll have more information regarding the rfs or sr3 grant and we'll be able to walk you through that as well which will actually be the first meeting because of the jewish holiday when we would have our first meetings right secretary of the first meeting yes and um with that will be will be our application the first stages of it are june 23rd when our reopening plan will post online and get feedback for it the truth is that's

176a function for those states that haven't reopened yet i mean our reopening plan is kind of what we've been doing the past two months except maybe more open um and then august 20th when in august it's mid-august i believe august 16th august 16th is the um files we'll be getting some feedback like i said those ideas about what are some unique things we can use this for with the idea being we want to be a little more general so that a year from now we can pivot if we need to great thank you are we ready to vote on the acceptance the financial report okay all those in favor of approval of the financial report please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed say nay abstentions the eyes have it thank you moving to

177approval of the minutes i'm looking for a motion to approve the minutes of the may 18th 2021 regular board of education meeting is there a motion so moved thank you amanda in a second thank you liz um any questions or discussions about the minutes if not i will try your minds all those in favor please signify by saying i i i any opposed saying a abstentions the eyes have it thank you moving on to information and reports board members communications and reports are there any reports from other boards and organizations no other information and discussions at this time moving to non-staff communications and reports and reports from our student board representatives and lilly we'll start with you this evening thank you hall's athletic teams are nearing the end of their seasons as state tournaments begin

178the track state championship meet was today and results have come in throughout the afternoon and i'm excited to announce that the boys track team of hall is the class double l state champions this year certainly not the first time that they've won this achievement um and i think that's a testament to the strength and the spirit of that program baseball is hosting their first round of states tonight and boys lacrosse and volleyball will have their first round tomorrow softball is advancing to the second round of states tomorrow night and girls tennis went to the ciac quarter quarter finals this afternoon girls golf won the ccc tournament last week for the third year in a row and will continue on to the state championship even as the year comes to an end the theater department has

179been busy with many different performances and activities fictional character day for students in specialized performance studies occurred last week students dressed as various fictional characters including willy wonka the wicked witch of the west rapunzel and many more and spent the day in character interacting with their peers additionally hall's improv troupe the answer will be hosting their first and only in-person show all year on thursday it is free to attend and will occur outdoors outside of hall senior prom occurred last sunday and there are still a few more events left in the year to celebrate the class of 2021 a car parade for seniors will take place on the evening of sunday june 13th and graduation itself will take place on the following tuesday on the turf students families may sit in socially distance pods of

180four on the turf an additional guest can stand in the bleachers or in the area surrounding the stadium in case of any severe weather weather the rain date for graduation is june 16th we are currently in the process of selecting next year's student representative for the border bed juniors have been emailed about this opportunity and interested students can submit a brief essay of why they believe they are a good fit for the role next week a committee which includes myself will interview the applicants and make a final decision and i'm sure you will be notified as soon as that decision is made and finally i want to give thanks to the west hartford board of education superintendent moore and hall principal mr zatun for my experience over the past year i'm so grateful to have

181represented hall at the board meetings this year and i'm so honored to be able to voice my student body's questions concerns and especially their accomplishments i've learned so much about the hard work and dedication that it takes to run a school system especially during a pandemic and have gained even more respect for the educators who have devoted their lives to teaching west hartford students so once again thank you very much thank you russia this past week conor's students wrapped up ap exams after a month of testing and for the senior the month was capped off with the senior prom where 200 connor seniors took part in prom at the farmington polo grounds while mother nature did not cooperate with the cold weather my peers were very grateful for this opportunity to have this once in

182a lifetime event spring sports have gone well for conord and are wrapping up as the school year draws to a close connor has and will be running several equity focus groups two staff focus groups have already taken place and tomorrow and thursday student focus groups will occur where senior input is especially valued um parent focus groups will take place next year mr duarte and the connor staff look forward to hearing the conversations and the feedbacks that come out of these focus groups to help the high school foster a more equitable environment insight from the focus groups will be used to design future lessons planned in the community in the community block and foster further classroom discussion tonight is the conner national honor society induction ceremony where current conor juniors will be inducted into the ceremony

183or will be inducted to be part of next year's academic next academic years national honors society last thursday conor seniors picked up the graduation cap and gowns and tomorrow connor seniors will be receiving their yearbooks and also have a chance to get them signed tomorrow outside tomorrow evening is the senior connor award ceremony where 140 students have been selected to receive awards the award ceremony is live for the students and can be streamed online for the parents to watch on that note i would like to thank the board of education mr moore and mr duarte for giving me the opportunity to experience something that so few are able to enjoy i've learned what it takes to make sure what it takes to keep the schools running and what it takes for students to be in

184school and to learn and form bonds and with teachers and friends especially in a year like this one i'm so incredibly thankful for all of my teachers and the staff at conor and across west hartford public schools for their dedication and hard work this year it was so amazing but unsurprising but still amazing to see how quickly my teachers adapted to the situation this year to see teachers who have been so used to teaching on the whiteboard to all of a sudden quickly adapt to teaching and using powerpoint slides and sharing their screen was so amazing to see and i'm so grateful for their work and to be able to engage students online and in person at the same time was quite masterful i'm also so incredibly proud of my students my peers and my

185classmates for their work this year to have learned so much in a year like this one both in the classroom and through experiences with everything that's going on um in the world it's quite amazing and it's it this this year's a year where it's easy to just give up but to have persisted and to have lessons um learn like independence but also compassion and empathy and really understanding um people and this idea of togetherness are lessons that we all can really bring with us in the future again i'm so grateful for the board of education and for giving me this opportunity and i'm honored to have contributed to it thank you thank you and i'm sure i speak for my colleagues around the table when i express our gratitude to the both of you for

186your commitment to representing the student voice which is so important for us to hear i mean we aren't in the schools every day we aren't talking to students every day unless we happen to live with them and to have you representing the voice of the students at um at the schools has been incredibly valuable for us and the fact that you've been able to be so nimble about like oh this board meeting is going to be online this one's in person but it's on the fourth floor and you have to wear a mask now we're on the third floor and you can sit over there and now you can sit here um we're just really grateful to have you with us um and so on behalf of the board lauren is going to bring you

187a small token of our esteem so thank you best wishes moving forward thank you and you can take your name tag too oh they get to take the name that's the best part thank you you can put that right on your uh your dorm room door next year actually don't do that i don't think it's a good idea all right um future business announcement of uh our future meeting dates as mr moore indicated our next meeting barring any special meetings that come up over the summer which i can pretty much guarantee there'll be at least one but our next regularly scheduled meeting is tuesday september 21st right here in town hall at 7 pm followed by a meeting on tuesday october 5th also at 7 pm are there requests for future agenda items tell us

188how the school year is going we don't have any new visitors who have signed on for public comment so i do want to just take a moment and you know this has been a really unusual year and so many of my colleagues have already expressed their gratitude towards the people in our community and our staff but i just want to be sure to add my thanks as well first to tom andy paul rick gretchen and liz you have led the team so strongly this year you've been such great role models for i think for the staff but also for other for us and for families in the community and and just members of the community and i've learned so much from all of you i know the rest of us have as well and just

189so proud to have you leading leading our district also of course want to thank the teachers our administrators and all of the other support staff in the buildings which you know from the time you walk into a school building and you meet the people who work in the front office or the security staff who are there to make sure that you are appropriately in the building but also feel welcomed i mean that is a tough balance our school nurses our occupational therapists our speech-language pathologists our physical therapists our tas and paraprofessionals i know i'm leaving some folks out but our custodians you get the idea this is truly a team effort and i want to make sure that people recognize that they're valued in the contributions that they provide also to students and families again

190the fact that people have been able to adjust this year to fully remote hybrid we're getting out of school early there's lunch you can pick it up if you want to now we're coming back in with the amount of support that you've offered the understanding the patience i just really want to say thank you to families for that and to students for for jumping in and continuing to want to learn and be enthusiastic about that also to members of local media and i'll highlight ronnie newton sitting out there it's really been so important to have you to help communicate out all of our messages throughout the year and we're very grateful for you being able to put that out there in plain language and making sure that people in the community know what's happening and

191what's going to be happening so thank you for that a well-informed citizenry is partially due to a an experienced professional media and thank you for your contributions i also want to make sure to thank our colleagues on the town council this year has really demonstrated um the need for an even closer collaboration than we've had in prior years and i feel grateful to all the members of our town council for their partnership this year working together to help our community through this pandemic and also notably for their support of the schools throughout the year and as demonstrated by their budget vote last week and all the very kind things that were said were noted and appreciated as well and finally to my colleagues around the table um you guys are great and i don't know

192if everybody in the community knows how much work goes into being on the board of education but it is many hours a week and um lots of talking to members of the community reading emails talking to each other um to kind of assess what we've heard and how things are going staying in touch with our with tom and our team here so um thank you for your commitment to this volunteer role um so that is uh those are all of my thank yous for right now and to our families as well because they're i'm sure you've missed many family dinners uh we do not have an executive session so do we have a motion to adjourn thank you lorna is there a second second thank you jason uh any objection meeting is adjourned 9 48

193pm you