001[Music] good okay good evening I'd like to call the meeting to order this is the meeting of the West Harper Public Schools board of education for Wednesday September 9th 2020 at 700 p.m. and to begin uh Cammy could you please call the r pres pres Dr steber here Dr Thomas par here M here Mr here student representative L SW here student representative gab here wonderful and before we move on any further I just want to acknowledge that this is our first meeting in person uh since we have four new board members and they are Dr Jason Chang Liz Wilcox Lily Sweeney and M urell so welcome to the board we're pleased to have you with us here in person we're pleased to be here together tonight uh there's no revision to the agenda or uh
002we do not have student participation so we will move to public Communications uh there is one person who's called in to the Google meet what's that oh the pledge I'm so sorry Ral would you please read us in the 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 justice for all thank you a reminder we will move to public Communications and one person has called in to the Google meet uh with a phone number ending in 9 to and if you would like to um speak you have 3 minutes to do so if you have phone number ending in 92 us like to comment can you please hello um my name is BL h go ahead and provide
003some comment and if you could start by giving us your address and then you'll have three minutes to speak H can you hear me yes can you hear us start your address and I'm sorry there's a delay I'll just go ahead um I live at 836 Prospect Avenue in for we're an open Choice family in the remote learning experience I'd like to thank all of you for the work you've put into planning for this year it hasn't been easy on any of us it is of course unprecedented we appreciate the countless hours you put in and the frustration I'm a little frustrated too so I hope you'll be understanding if that shows first I'm wondering how we can build a parent community in this remote learning environment I'm sure we'll get a directory of other
004remote families just like we did at our home school but wondering when that might happen is only day two and it's already so isolating working virtually but it doesn't have to be normally if I was overwhelmed or confused I'd reach out to a room parent or to the PTO who can I contact to find out who those people are in the remote school and if we don't have those roles established how can we work together to make that happen on another front I was extremely pleased to hear last year from the superintendent that West harford's remote plan would be followed by districts across the state and country it was a great plan when deciding between inperson or remote School this year house was our main consideration but we also chose remote based on how well
005it worked for us last time I imagine the people for whom it didn't work chose to send their children to in-person classes so I was shocked that remotes had changed so drastically I have five children and the previous Matrix format allowed me to plan and print out worksheets for the week in advance being able to locate what our children should be working on in a SLE place with pival we will be will we be provided with similar weekly matrices so we can partner with our students teachers and plan ahead for their success it's already been more than a challenge to print out School assignments on the Fly for five different grades my last comment is about devices teachers are currently teaching to laptop Learners several ker3 students are using iPads specifically those students who didn't
006have a computer and needed to borrow a district device their learning experiences are different even Google meets Works differently on an iPad a laptop student can see the entire class in bridie while an iPad student can if teachers don't account for this small but important difference even a simple lesson where teachers and students are silently waving or giving thumbs up to a question becomes inequitable by not teaching with the experience of iPad Learners in mind we are essentially compounding that inequity again I appreciate all you've done in these trying times and I know you'll take these comments in consideration I look forward to working together to find Solutions thank you again I appreciate all you TR times and know that comment in consideration I look forward to working thank you very [Music] much we will
007move to uh unfinished business we don't have any unfinished business uh no new business and so we'll move to staff oh staff Communications and reports the superintendent's report all right thank you and um thanks for this opportunity and it's um good to see everybody in person and it was really good to see all of our students coming in in person um over the past two days and welcoming our second half of kids tomorrow is another first day for us which is a little bit different but it'll be special for them also as they come to school for the first time and really it's just just been um I I have to say more smooth than I would have expected um a lot of attention's been paid to it we've had so many um so much
008planning during the summer that we did to get ready and um my team's going to share that with them and I want to thank them publicly which I have before but um I I cannot thank them enough and it's one of those things where I speak for West Harford I I don't know that um West harford's ever going to know the um the amount of hours um that went into it and just the time you know all along in writing the report and writing the plan implementing the plan and then doing the schedule and really for a new remote learning school to all of a sudden become the largest school in West Hartford largest Elementary School and people shifting out um in into the last moment and I I want to stress to people one
009of the things that's sometimes frustrating is we want to do things the right way here we don't just create a class list we don't just say we the last 20 are in a class together we throw everything out and rebalance all those classes again because we want the experience to be right for the kids and we say we're going to do things the right way so we do things the right way um which means going forward now it's going to take some time now that things have started it's not that same kind of I can just switch in switch out it's going to take you know a up to two weeks to get people placed in because we have to look at class size we have to look at teachers whether they're coming into the
010schools where they're going out and there'll be modifications during that time but it's kind of similar in the past to bus rots when people have moved or shifted there's been a delay in the bus rout just because the mechanics of moving in and out one of the things that happens every year that may not be necessarily as visible is that um somebody may not get their class at the high school get all of your classes we try to hit 85 90% or somehow there's a conflict and there's somewhere to go and Paul and I had this conversation yesterday he pointed out to me that be just so the first few days of school is Conor's principal when I was principal there's always just lines of kids down at the guidance office waiting to see their
011counsel to move their because because that's what happens for the online learning experience there's not that same place to go there's a phone there's the internet but there's that turnaround won't be as immediate as some people might want but the amount of work that went into it the hiring that went into it finding the candidates the exceptional candidates that we found found and Rick's going to detail that in his report and the work we did to really change the district for the better trying to balance class the elementary schools and make them smaller and this is one of the more difficult things to do too in terms of accuracy because not everybody if you're registering for school you have to register to be here but if you're not coming back you don't have to deregister
012and so it's kind of a guessing G with the numbers always especially with kindergarten as there's a coming going and we're guessing and there are there are things that we know about some people that have left the community gone back with their family that we don't necessarily know so some of our numbers don't really shake out it's why the state reporting isn't until October 1st withou the members because they people you know constantly kind of moving in and out at this point in the school year always it's just this year it's a little bit different there's a lot of unknowns um that go along with us um in that vein I want to talk about what we've seen and what people fear and um you know we take this virus very seriously what we don't
013want to have happen our number one goal in the importance of these masks and why I've been a big believer in masks all long we don't want spread in our schools and none of us are enough to think there will never be Corona virus in our schools the question is will it spread once it gets there um and I also want people to know we're upfront with everything we have people right now in quarantine not because of a positive exposure in school but it could be because of travel or before they ever came back they were exposed to somebody made them positive they're not positive and just to make sure we're open and honest with everybody we decided today we're going to put a dashboard up by the end of the week that lists everything
014in every school and number of people in quarantine kids or staff any positive test kids and staff I don't want anybody to think that there's anything that we're not trying to communicate with the community and the reason for that is really because we need everybody's help and one of the things I want to thank people for just immensely PS at drop off and pick up have have been wearing their masks the kids the mask wearing with kids all I heard about July as we began this plan was that kids couldn't wear masks and you go through the schools and frankly it's the kids that are telling us if there's an adult not wearing their mask um that is that is absolutely true um the kids have been tremendous we're talking from 3 years old to
01519 20 years old um so really the start has gone so well it is um you wish it could be um but of course you kind of always waiting I'm on the phone with superintendents that have had positive tests and talk to them about what they've learned from those situations because those you may not close a school right away out of oh no everybody has it that's why we're closing the school the question is your contact tracing how quickly can you do that how quickly can you identify so that's why you're seeing some two-day closures in some places so that they can identify who's had close contact now what close contact means people have to understand also doesn't mean I was in a school with somebody that tested positive it's was it more than 15
016minutes and was there not a mask that's kind of the standard that we're looking at um as far as quarantines go the state releases a dashboard um every Thursday to districts in terms of districts numbers we are still in a very good place in West Harford in Harford County but it's fair to note that has been an uptick in West har um the testing um the positivity rate and I'll know more tomorrow when it's comes out is probably still around 1% hopefully but the numbers there has been an increase and um so we just want to make sure we say that not to put fear into anybody we just want to make sure everybody's being careful that our kids are being careful and that parents are being careful on weekends we're making sure we're making
017choices to protect everyone um and that's really this is a community effort I don't wear my mask for me I wear it for everybody else and that's what we want to the message we want to keep bringing out to our kids and they have um just done a great job the professional development work Paul talk about that we did for a week both on safety and on anti-racism work um immensely important work and I'm deeply thankful to our staff for the seriousness with which they have taken this so um I sit here tonight as superintendent um as proud as I could be of my colleagues um people in this room that I work with that inspire me every day to try to be better the the work ethic the hours and their still is second
018to know and now there are things that we have to get back to normal which is one of the really good things about Connecticut and they shifted testing a few years ago is the SAT became the high school assessment and it became free for all students seniors this year across the country are struggling and are um fearful in that a lot of them even though so many schools are test optionals scholarships aren't necessarily test optional and different programs aren't necessarily test option yet getting sight to offer the sat in May every site every state M room was over 100% capacity book they were trying to get hotel ballrooms and other things to give the SATs fortunately we were able to have one sat at the end of August offered in West Harford so that people
019could have access to it on September 23rd all seniors will have in school SA 18 so all seniors will go to school that day they'll be the only ones at the high school at the school that day so we can spread them out um Wednesday September 23rd this guarantees every senior no matter they well no matter where they're from gets one opportunity um at least and then further opportunities that may come down the road if they so choose um but I wanted to get that out there and just remind people both principles have communicated that with their students and their School Community but I want the um Community to know that so that's kind of that news piece that I usually just give here and um with that um Mr Mr vicus is going to
020talk about this and this is during the summer we've kind of done it where everybody presented and it was easier to ask questions at the end just because the mechanics being in person it's probably better to stop after each presentation and ask questions about that and if that question bleeds into somebody else topic they'll just say you know what I'm sure that lers or Andy will be presenting on that so with that Mr Vice Tom good evening everyone good to see everyone um I'm going to add just a couple of caveats on what Tom mentioned about the SAT announcement uh for our public uh viewing that the September 23rd sat is the free sat in school sat that uh the state would typically give to all Juniors as part of the State Testing program so
021there is no charge for that and the schools will be in contact with the registration information I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention uh that uh some of our special education students that are in the Intensive Academic Program uh while they may not necessarily be participating in the C their their classes will run as normal on September 23rd so they'll be the only exception to the rule that otherwise it is only seniors on that day and again there'll be a lot more information coming out from your School principles to ask questions on [Music] um so I'm here really to talk a little bit about what went on in the summer and uh in preparation for the opening of school and also uh I'm sure you probably have questions about the opening of school I
022was assuming that perhaps you had tired of all the descriptions of the plan um which which have been uh many but I'll try to interweave that because um I will say that in conversation and it's kind of a tale of two schools right it's it's the inperson and it's the remote and in my conversations I had a great conversation uh Tuesday afternoon with all the elementary principles just to hear how the first day went and as Tom said just overwhelmingly uh dramatic amounts of the anxiety and everything else just melted away when they saw the students and and to a person I just received positive comments from all the principles in terms of their estimation of how smoothly it went with the parents with the drop off uh with receiving kids with how kids behaved
023uh in terms of understanding how to wear masks and it was really some of our younger kids that we were most worried about how would they acclimate to this and and so far it was very positive um just to to reiterate what Tom said tomorrow is another first day so at the elementary level uh the students in the red group they came in for two full days or you know their full days and the teachers did have the opportunity to give kids in the blue group a first day online and and a lot of our activities in these first few days are really just acclimating students paying a lot of attention to the social emotional recognizing that this is the first time potentially for some of them that they've really had the opportunity to be
024outside of their homes and so the teachers aren't rushing to give them any kind of a test to place where they are or anything else the teachers are really just very interested getting to know the children uh welcoming them walking them through a lot of the protocols and things and you know I'll mention some of this but I'm going to leave um a fair amount of the great work that we're doing on social emotional learning and and our social justice piece to Dr H Haskins who's going to give a phenomenal update on that um tomorrow at the elementaries our blue group will come in and this will be their first opportunity for for the in-person piece they'll have two days essentially very similar to uh what the students in the red group just experienced and
025it's the test opportunity for our red group at home to make sure that they can log into the platforms make sure that they can find that Google Classroom um get to it at the appropriate time of day and all of the rest um and then and then kind of classes and our cycle at the elementary begins in Earnest the following week with the red group attending in person and the blue group having uh the small group instruction in the afternoons and again in the afternoons that's going to be um a 30- minute block with their classroom teacher and that's going to also be a 30 minute block with their specialist teacher um so that they're receiving both components of that instruction throughout the week um in our in our middle schools and our high schools
026slightly different uh the students came in um and they went they're going through an AB day in the red group where they get to essentially in an AB day run through their full schedule they have their first four classes in in the first four blocks on the a day so that was like a first day of school on Tuesday and then another first day with the second half of their teachers uh the following day and now uh the blue group will come in and experience that uh beginning tomorrow and again in the afternoon periods very similar kinds of things so everything that I've heard thus far um in person has gone has gone very very well and and in the remote learning I've also heard positive feedback but you know I we always talk about
027being transparent Paul personally uh you know I want to I want to make a public statement to our parents to our community to our teachers just thanking you for your flexibility um the remote the remote learning you know as Tom mentioned uh with the changes in in enrollments which continue this week which which continue we have we have a number of folks kind of settling in on their decisions some changing changing of heart at the last minute and and we're here to serve the community so we're here to respond to that uh but we you know we finally on I think it was Thursday of last week let the high schools and the middle schools the elementaries know we need to put a temporary hold on any new changes because we have to now finalize
028all these placements and each time we get two three more students overnight that causes us to to rework some of our groups and just just so that there's an understanding of how that worked say at the elementary level where it's not driven by course uh requests as it is at the secondary level uh we're looking at students and uh obviously uh one of the first looks was we want students in the remote experience much to the caller uh much to what the caller said we want them to have some feeling of connection because you are at home you're very disconnected so we wanted to make sure that there were some children from their neighborhood School in those groups that they were going to have we wanted to then look at gender we wanted to then
029look at race ethnicity we wanted to look at uh how many students um who potentially had support services such as 504 plans individualized educational plans English language learning supports things of that nature so we looked across all of those variables and set class lists reset them as we close down on the week and then right at the last minute we had an uptick in enrollments in grades K and one I went to Tom and said uh we need another teacher it the the class size has come up um it's it's not going to be possible to run this uh and we were able to get that and then reset class lists again uh and again all of that is because we're not trying for the fast solution we're trying for the best solution for our
030students um and so I do appreciate that that uh it it took right up until uh that Friday evening for us to publish those lists and I can tell you a dramatic thank you to my staff and all the folks that I work with uh and there were many late nights here uh and early mornings um so and it was a dramatic team effort and overall I'd say it's a success but we have a we have a significant punch list uh great one that I you know how do we work the PTC the parent teacher Council into the remote School an outstanding question uh that we can begin to work on immediately but we're fine-tuning some things working working on our advisory classes in the remote we did start with some advisory but we need
031to formalize that we work that plan out today and publish that uh either tomorrow or the next day uh working on our Quest working on finalizing in you know some of our special education uh classes and our e Services kind of a small small stuff where it's always difficult to schedule and it's more difficult in the remote setting so now that those we're kind of doing that fine-tuning and we are seeing some students who are saying um you know what I got this class or I wasn't able to get into a particular elective because it wasn't offered or didn't land in my period uh that's going to happen our high school setting is only 300 students we have typically 1500 students to, 16600 students at Hall at Conor we have a lot more very we
032have a lot more places a lot more sections you know a lot of classes are running they're Singletons so if they're up against something else or if the teacher is borrowed from Conor or Hall and it's the only place they'll fit um you know this is what we said when we went into it we would not be able to guarantee every experience I'll tell you this I'm dramatically impressed with the number of experiences we are able to offer we have a significant number of AP classes that we're running we have honor sections we're running developmental math uh we have a big array of special education classes for uh students based on their individual needs we we've got a pretty full plate but uh I would be I would be lying to say it was perfect
033uh but we are continuing to do everything we can to get it into the best shape possible as it relates to my report uh I think I've shared this in the past uh the model uh especially for our elementary where we take those groups uh which typically are ranging anywhere in the low to mid 20s and those are typically breaking down into groups of three so if I have a class size of 24 say in grade two I'm looking at a particular teacher uh I can break that class size into three groups of eight and those groupings are based uh pretty much on looking at reading levels so that the teacher can customize some of that instruction based on where students are at and they have either a morning uh a late morning or an
034afternoon session um that was based entirely on how we ran in this summer our Summer Prep program for our Esau students which serviced 160 students as you saw in my report and the summer connections program which for our new board members these are two programs that run in the summer that are free of charge to help students to basically sustain their skills to avoid that summer slide um they're targeted for typically you know um students that may not you know that may have greater need in their in students are identified that way from those populations or those schools we also had the ability with the closure of school this past summer we had a lot of students that were either potentially in a reading or a math intervention or just kind of on a watch
035list for some concerns we had 150 students that we uh provided um extended uh access to the DreamBox and the Lexia platforms which are math and reading platforms to provide them additional practice over the summer and then we had teachers check in with them at several points throughout the summer monitoring their progress asking them questions in terms of their comfort answering some questions and things of that nature um so that really is the model upon which we built our uh Elementary program uh it does break down into from whatever the class size is into three groups with approximately 2 hours of direct instruction and that was a change you know to the College Point um it was it was very much all laid out for parents with a heavy burden on the parents in the
036spring uh and a lot of that had to do with our expectations of what was going to happen with coid uh that didn't happen and the overwhelming feedback we got from parents was that we wanted more direct instruction so as you know as we we've laid out in our plan previously we we altered in that direction um I did want to mention Tom referenced our professional learning uh we've had a significant amount of professional learning uh not only in these five days which have focused heavily around uh our our social emotional learning and uh We've adopted the castle framework and again I I'll I'll let Dr H Haskins talk to some of this um we've also had a significant amount of professional learning under social justice on the curricular end the part that I did
037want to mention and highlight from the report is that we have established a partnership with the Amistad Center um and they are working with us to again as we've done in the past when we didn't have books at a child's grade level that reflected the contributions of people of color uh in that authentic way or when we didn't have those texts um regarding Native Americans we went uh and we commissioned some pieces so we have commissioned uh some online pieces that that were representative significant persons of color that we' used last year during uh Black History Month we commissioned the writing of a textbook uh about native peoples that was written at a grade level accessible to our younger students and we're doing the same thing with the Amistad center it's exciting work we've got
038a couple of districts uh that are also partnering in that work because they're hearing what we're doing and they want to be involved um and we're happy as we as we did with the Native American piece we're happy to share that wealth because this is just this is just the right work that schools in general need to be doing and uh we're excited to be at the Forefront of that uh so that is going to help feed our curricular connection and continue that work uh that has been ongoing in The District in real and authentic ways um the only other thing I wanted to mention about the online piece is uh throughout the summer uh despite the coid and despite the travel restrictions we did have the opportunity to uh maintain some very important training
039for our teachers relative to their Readiness to teach AP and do some of those things online and we had a very very robust professional learning uh that is also now in anytime learning with recorded webinars uh resources from professional workshops that were given by teachers here in the district over the summer on their own time and typically on their own dime um there's a compendium of that that's that's stored in uh in our on our website uh and we've been doing workshops with parents uh as school has begun to train them in the platforms so that they can be ready uh to help their children whether they're at home on that off week or whether they're in the remote learning so um just dramatic amounts of work dramatic thanks to so many people uh I
040can't possibly do it justice here in five or 10 minutes um but I'm happy to try to respond to any any immediate questions that you have thank you uh [Music] Mark so car and the uh commissioner piece that you talked about that's pretty exciting stuff I know that you talking about sharing it is there any shared cost CU I'm sure it doesn't come cheap Amad right now my understanding is is they're partnering with us writing these lessons for at no charge oh good it's outstanding yeah all right want to hit question mark in the com in the chat and I just pick me back I'm sorry once we have some of those thing I'm certain this will be a board report where will highlight what those look like for all of you I didn't I
041shouldn't just uh just just want a clarification for I've gotten a lot of questions um from parents about kind of why did we switch to a block schedule so just like a explanation as to why that was the best fit for our hybrid model so that people have a better understanding of why we went that right absolutely so in looking at it you know at the at the elementary uh we had the ability to cohort I mean you're already in cohort with classrooms so it's it's you and your and your say 19 or so peers and the thought the safety measure there was to bring the specialist teachers in to eliminate uh this passing and these shared spaces and and any potential exposure should someone be asymptomatic and sick at the middle school we were
042able to do that potentially through teams and then we thought about it at the high school it's like boy what do you do because the students come in and I'm in this first period class and and then I go in I you know we we leave as 16 students and we go in 16 directions so the idea that one student if they were potentially infected could could then be spreading symptoms throughout the school and it would just be very exponential so we were looking for a way to uh to reduce the number of Transitions and and and therefore uh when you couple that with the uh a group B group in the hybrid in the 50% it really is going to give us the measure um now mind you I I understand hey on on
043on an a day I'm going to see this group of students and in a bday I'm going to see a different group but at least I've cut down those uh transitions by 1 half uh and then again realistically by another half when I cut out half of the alphabet uh so it's strictly a safety me yeah if if I could jump on with that too because that plan was developed before the hybrid plane was developed and that's probably the that's probably the singular thing that the most districts after they heard about said that's a good we're going to do that I mean that's no matter the type of week Monday Tuesday that's something that many high schools have gone to and really I don't think you know we all remember our high school and we
044all went to different size high schools come in h of big high schools you know when I was there at drop off yesterday I'm watching and then at dismissal today I'm like what does a 750 person High School look like it looks like a big high school I mean the our two high schools are two of the 20 largest high schools in the state of Connecticut so to have 1,500 1,400 1500 kids in that one building at one time in passing in the hallways I'll be honest that lunch the two biggest problems I still struggle with solving for everybody being in session and that's why I mean places like glb um similar larger 2200 theyve said they'll be in hybrid their their plan is in perpetuity at the high school um we haven't said that
045but there's a lot of things we still have to solve to get to that point where even just the lunch waves I mean the pure lunch wave and people think about I said this to somebody CU they said um well you can line up and bring by class and I said said okay you you're right you can bring back class do you have 40 yards outside the cafeteria I said what do me I said well if there's 20 kids 6 feet apart I need 40 yards um that's those are the things that we have to come to still so um that's a long way of jumping on the answer but it that plan wasn't a part of hybrid that was a plan all along when we came back thank you that L just a followup
046to that Tom there's no intention to continue with the black schedule once we're done with Co right no I I appreciate that and I put it right in the first video I made and I described the block schedule this is not some secret plan by me to Institute the block schedule I'm not anti-block schedule I'm not pro block schedule there are True Believers in Block scheduling there are people absolutely to it it's never been one of my driving forces it came up years ago when Paul and I were teachers at Conor and um the district ended up not moving that way um so no I'm glad you brought that up li because people are you know this is this is for this purpose of this year uh Jason all right um let's see so uh
047first I I just wanted to thank everyone for the work that's um I got to tour uh W with um with uh with Amanda and um and I was just struck by the level of improvisation that the teachers went make their classrooms workable um and to incorporate as many Learning Materials that's possible under conditions of Sanitation um um and hygiene and um and it it it just really struck me that that this is you know a collective effort even though that you know uh we look at the administration of the district this is it really felt like like everyone pulling from the ground up um and I just want to recognize that as as a teacher myself um the most difficult mode of instruction to prepare for is hybrid because you're preparing two forms of
048instruction and um and so you know seeing that that that this has come together in such a way it's really um uh um I'm I'm really grateful and just want to you know point out the work that the teachers have done uh to to to pull this together um and um I wanted to also ask for a a kind of clarification on the the K through 5 mode because I I remember early on uh Tommy were talking about the um to to think of this as two week kind of blocks of instruction and that it's not really like one week off one one week on one week off that there that the online portion the remote portion is is complimentary to the inperson and if if you can map that out you know cuz I
049think before sort of conceptual and now you know fam students they're in it now and they're kind of seeing how to to connect those those things so that that that's one one question certainly and first let me begin I just I want to thank you for the comment on the teachers we'd be remiss if on behalf of the whole team I didn't say what an amazing job our teacher their flexibility their creativity their patience and what they're doing so I I want to just get that out there to them a huge thank you um absolutely that's that's that's something that uh not only do I want to continuously reinforce how we're delivering that with our with our parent Community but uh it's it's equally important that we reinforce it with our teachers because i' I've
050said it at every level uh this is a part that if if if you don't have it right in your head and plan it correctly you're going to make it much more uh dramatically more work for yourself and and and potentially you know uh harder in terms of keeping your students together paced together so begins with the mindset you know as a teacher when I was always a teacher I would think about the students that were coming into my class tomorrow and I would be thinking about how they did yesterday where they sit relative to my long range plan what I need to do uh we need to take the teachers from thinking about just the students that are sitting in front of them and we need to think have them think more about let
051me think about the students that are at home and let me start there let me think about where can I get them in the home setting uh from from next Monday until next Friday uh and have a goal for that and then the students that do show up to class I'm going to be able to potentially accelerate them through that plan work quickly but all of my planning needs to be what are the instructional resources the uh what are the lessons look like what do I need to videotape what might I need to send home with them as they prepare for their home week if there's some concrete materials that they need to take with them that needs to be upfront in my mind um and it was one of our Elementary uh uh teachers
052that uh coined the phrase boost and build uh so when when they are at home uh there's kind of two phases to their learning there's the synchronous piece that we are still able to provide Al be it in a much shorter Block in those afternoon sessions uh where I'm going to Zone in on literacy Andor mathematics and as the teacher I have the flexibility based on the group that I'm working with and I take that at home group and I break them into two smaller groups so um I can be deciding if this week I'm I'm doing a heavier push on literacy a heavier push on mathematics an equal split that's really going to be based but I'm I'm zoning in on those two fundamental areas at the younger grades and I'm doing my synchronous
053instruction in and around that I'm tying that in with whatever videos or other learning artifacts that I've posted in my Google Classroom that they have access to um and and then I have a different set of asynchronous materials I have the independent reading that the child might be doing I have their daily practice on math facts and fluency that they will accomplish through the DreamBox platform I may have uh I may have some reading intervention work that they're doing with literacy I may have some extension uh things that they're doing in science uh through a digital platform called Mystery Science I may do either some handwriting or some keyboarding uh practice and I was having this conversation with a parent who wanted to know how how can we equate the short amount of time they
054have in the afternoon with the lengthier amount of time that they have in the school day for that week and and it's twofold answer I mean first we're not trying to equate them we recognize they're going to they're going to get boosted much more quickly when they're when they're here and we're going to play that game of leap Rog but we're not looking for for learning to end on Friday they need to continue to make progress uh to to a probably what I'd call a midpoint of that and and um it's it's very much you know it's very different if if if I as a parent have the perception that when I Dro My Child off for second grade class that they're sitting in their desk for the entirety of the day from 8 until
0552: quite honestly the teacher is was always in Traditional School breaking the students into two or three groups doing centers and doing some direct instruction with a small group up front and then there was a group off in a reading Corner doing independent reading and a group off in a math Corner playing math games so we're trying to make that at home experience and and try to share the materials and communicate the intent with the parents that you're going to build that routine at home so that the students can be doing those things and then they get their Center time with you the direct instruction time and and so kind of during the hey boy I do that piece I do some physical education some art I do some science I do some keyboarding oh
056it's time for my small group with my teacher I do that for a week then I come in and I get much more of because now our group under the hybrid much smaller I'm going to get a lot more of the FaceTime than I even normally would if everyone were in school and I'll boost ahead and we'll play a little leap Rog but we will make definitive progress with our students parallel progress because that's where the planning needs to be built I've got that end goal in mind I probably get my students in school a half a step you know two steps further and then I I play Leap F and catch up as the weeks go on one of the things I'm happiest about now that people are in is I think people will
057get a better understanding a week into it two weeks into it it would have been far easier for us to say just flip on a camera in your classroom and not school it would have been cheaper and I'm not here to criticize other places it would not be pedagogically as strong as what we're doing and um the time when we people want to focus on time and Paul's point is exactly right we have to move away from the idea that teaching is me standing and telling because that's not what even at the high school level that's not what happens anymore not as far as demr there's days when there's pieces of that but when I look at our class list now that I see and hybrid and whether it's for a month I mean I've
058got six seven kids eight kids in that class now during that day I mean when I think about what I can do with that few kids during that time th that's a dramatic shift also that I think we're not necessarily think we think of seat times as instruction time and that's something education's tried to move away from over the past few years when we talk about real experiences when we talk about um you know internships and things like that I'm hoping that that's one of the after effects of coid 19 that we see instruction isn't necessarily what we've always pictured so really I hope that answered it but I hope people will see this over the next few weeks too laa thank you very much for for what you shared and two two comments one
059I very much appreciate your transparency in acknowledging areas of growth in terms of the planning uh specifically with the remote learning and what I appreciate hearing is that the efforts are there to maintain a sense of Integrity with this C from wrong maintaining a sense of Integrity with the class list and I also appreciate recognizing that those families that are choosing Al be at last minute to change you're honoring that as well so collectively it seems like that has contributed to the delay and sharing certain um classes and who the teacher is because of possible changes that families have made which they have that right to but you're trying to honor that we're also trying to honor the overall class structure for those who um decided beforehand to do remote learning 100% and uh and
060I say that with no uh no judgment or anything I understand and we've said to parents this is a really big decision we don't want you to make it light uh because we can't we can't easily uh easily entertain changes you know it's not as as quick if somebody said oh I'll just try it out for a couple days and and maybe in a week I'll go back and we we've said that from the beginning that that ability to move a child back to to reconfigure their schedule um and based on which direction they're going you know when when they're going from a home school to the remote learning school it's a it's a little bit of a narrower funnel in terms of the variety of classes that are offered when they're offered um so
061it's so it's greater challenge so I thoroughly respect that some parents took them quite a while and I had conversations um I had several conversations with several families over the course of a week or more talking to them about the choices and talking to them about um what it before they before they made up their mind uh but but we were responsive to that we were also responsive you know we borrowed a significant number of staff from the home schools folks that are teaching uh four classes in in a brick and mortar school and one class uh in the remote setting and so we're also uh in need of waiting for the schools to finish up their scheduling and they were equally crunched so the remote school was the last possible it wasn't like wasn't
062like we weren't thinking about it all summer along we weren't able to PL to do that schedule in Earnest until two things happened we had we had all the committ from the families and we had uh we had the the schedules done at the schools who were also waiting on the committal from the families and we readjusted their FTE multiple times taking students away uh teachers away from them and saying okay I know you thought your schedule was done in July you need to start all over again because we're taking the equivalent of five six seven FTE away from you in small pieces um it did not help to have a hurricane and a power up outage and a lack of Internet throughout the throughout the process that that certainly was U an added bonus
063to to our stress but we you know we did get it done uh and and again um I appreciate folks patience in the community and our teachers more than any as we were calling them up saying you know slight change to your plans for for next week um but uh but I am impressed with uh the fact that we of what we're able to offer as a district under these conditions I think I think we have a we have a solid solid product good thank you and in second piece and I I look forward to hearing more on the Dr raskins hkin is going to share more in terms of the efforts to be culturally respon more efforts additional efforts to be culturally responsive and student centered and I know reference was made to Black
064History Month um P we certainly know that is something that is recognized year round so certainly glad to hear the collaboration with am that's happening with that and certainly I look forward to seeing how it's going to unfold so thank you for being responsive to that absolutely as as I shared a little in the report we had as you know we've had some other curriculum writing that's been ongoing and I think um we'll have a we'll have a bigger sort of unveiling of that at some future board meetings I'm smiling at you can't tell your eyes Amanda okay thank you I just wanted to uh tell you that as a board member and as a parent and a Community member um I know that I am not going to lose track this year of the
065fact that we are delivering pandemic education and I think that's something that's going to be some something that we can all continue to remind ourselves of in the community because as it I know it's going to be like this we're going to have to work really hard to remember that it's pandemic education and I think that as a with my Consulting head on and knowing about what it takes to open a school the fact that you've opened a remote learning experience that is actually an entire School in and of itself um is just an extraordinary effort that was done over the summer and I think that's another thing that we're not necessarily always going to remember um so the work that you have done to put that together is extraordinary and I think think that
066the community is going to see that more and more as we go on um I think the teachers um I know we're going to talk more about this when Rick um talks about faculty but the fact that they you know may have just been getting some of the teaching assignments and their curricular assignments or if they switched grades I hope the community can remember that the teachers are also getting settled um they're working hard to keep the kids getting them acclimated after the summer um so there's a lot that's going into the next couple of weeks that I just hope that we can all remember if it wasn't already clear while you were doing the planning um that this plan and the structure of the hybrid plan and the elements are somewhat different from other
067places it has become crystal clear for me in the last two days as the kids have gone back to school my kids have both gone back um I've talked to a lot of kids and a lot of people in other districts who as they listen to My Children's Day day and thought about their children's day started to understand some of what's different about what's here if you had to pick out maybe and whether it's you or Tom um maybe like three or four things that you're really proud of as far as the quality of the plan and what may be different um from other places sometime it's going to be hard for the community to know those things if they don't understand what other people are doing but there's a quality to some of these
068components that we have in place that is not necessarily in other places and it might be good to just spell that out for people sure I'll I'll offer one or two and Tom can add on uh and and again I'm not casting aspersions at any other District uh but I would I would say as I've heard about other plans the notion that our plan uh provides for school every day as opposed to uh some places where you know you're you're in two you're out two you're closed one or something like that and and for very potentially legitimate reasons in in that setting uh but I think the ability to provide for school every day and and I think the weeklong chunk and we we talked about this in the planning is um I hope more
069respectful to to parents in terms of being able to plan for uh what do I do with my child when they are home as opposed to having to piece meal together 2 days at a time or every other day or something that that's our intention that it is easier for them to manage and and better educationally in terms of building some educational momentum um the uh the second thing I am more I am proud of with our plan is uh definitely the notion that we provide direct instruction to students whether they're physically in our buildings or whether they are remote in their setting I was talking with a friend out of state who was explaining that their remote plan uh was was Edgenuity was an online product that was all self-studied with no teacher interaction
070whatsoever and their hybrid plan was uh Google meeting with their teacher and they weren't even attending in person at all and uh I I was I was forward um I think the the idea that we do more as Tom said and and I've said I I don't have any problem turning something around and watching a demonstration but I don't know I don't know how to make that meaningful for 6 hours um and so the ability for the teacher to have time to provide direct instruction to their students in small groups um is to me an essential element and while it would be great if if I can do that with equal time among the groups um you know that's not a logistical possibility but I'm I'm proud of what we are able to do and
071I think I think we've got a great we've we've got a a great model that that our teachers our teachers are skilled and they'll do great things with it um the i' add um the overarching thing that I'm proud of is that we just didn't do what everyone else is doing um and some like Paul inspired me we had lunch one day and a long drive and we talked about a lot of different things and you know we've worked together unfortunately for 25 years now and um there's certain things that you know I think we can build off each other in ways and instead of just looking at well this is this just what we do we make your work I you know I his work ethic inspires me his Brilliance when it comes to
072scheduling inspires me in the fact that he's willing to take that challenge on because that's I mean the scheduling you know that's that's is the best in the state at it um and that so just the fact that we don't just take the E out but we're West Harford and sometimes a pain the West harf do I way I think the other thing Nick's going to talk about this is every everybody talked at the beginning and everybody nationally just says well teachers that have pre-existing conditions we have them teach the online but it didn't happen most places I I am 99.9% confident we placed more teachers online teaching than any other District in the state of canut that other places it was well either go on leave or this and by the the way we
073designed our at home learning we also honored a professional staff that through no fault of their own are at a higher risk and would have been faced with not continuing their career and would have robed kids of the opportunity for some unbelievable teachers unbelievable wust Harford teachers that are doing this now that have that opportunity to meet with those kids and they're not just getting a canned program that anyone could buy for $10,000 a kid and boom we're done or actually less than that but boom we're done and the way we've honored our professionals which people which I think is important um and I think it'll have long-term dividends for West Hartford about the way we've treated our staff um with care and that's you know Rick the meetings Rick had the Deep conversations with
074people going through tremendously difficult decisions I'm really proud of the way we treated our people through this too so that's a that's another piece that parents won't necessarily see they'll get the benefit of it from who's teaching their kids and I think that they'll see too um with the the reason why you put the for the children who are doing hybrid for the remote portion of the hybrid why it's a short block in the afternoon versus a long period of time online because as the southern schools and districts Across the Nation who have started maybe a month earlier they're already starting to change those things because the especially the youngest children they just can't they don't have the stamina to sit in front of a computer and just watch what's happening so we it's been
075reassuring as those schools have opened and we've been able to see how the kids are responding to know that you had already planned it with some of those pieces in mind so I just think that some of those pieces can bubble to the surface for parents when they're realizing why you chose the structure you chose um if it wasn't obvious right off the bat and you know I'd be remiss if I don't mention you know I have to credit Carrie Jones I have to credit Ann McCaron there there are so many names of so many people uh who have been working behind the scenes but who contributed to that to that Vision um it's just a great team here so um I have two questions uh one is can you talk a little bit about
076the level of flexibility that would be provided uh if people make an error families send their kid on the wrong day or the wrong week or kids end up in the wrong classroom because they misunderstood the block schedule I think people would really like to hear some comforting words about um flexibility in the beginning of the school year if you're able to provide them sure um I'll I'll tell you my intent and I'll tell you I can probably point to a story where we've already missed on this uh once and I hope it's only once uh or twice here or there um you know I I as as we've you know we thought at the beginning we're going to have some child who's who's in a you know who's in a b group that's going
077to show up on an a day and um uh I don't have the graphic for it but even at our in our middle school and our High School uh more so in our high school where we've got a 4day rotation because of the lab periods and such um there's going to be there's going to be a student you know who who forgets what day it is for forgets what group they're on um our our goal in the beginning of the year on the first day of school and the first you know we have another first day of school tomorrow but I think everybody kind of knows where we are and when to show up tomorrow I think we've kind of crossed that bridge but the goal the goal would be you know work with the
078children that are in front of you um and provide them that flexibility provide them an Avenue um I'm aware of one story where where we had a Miss on that you know and that's regretful because that's that's not what we are but I'm aware of uh a lot of places where um you know I I think one misstep out of a thousand you know I hope we I hope we get the Forgiveness but 99 999 cases out of a th000 our goal is to work with families now all that being said um you know now we talk about okay moving forward uh we're not talking about say a mistake uh but I you know I heard Tom mention and I think it Bears repeating if if I want to uh change my program um we
079do ask for some lead time with that and and our goal uh it it it's it would be nice if if you could call me right now and say you'd like to change from uh the remote School and go tomorrow and be fully enrolled at Sedrick um but there's you know but there's a number of things that need to happen uh and so you know those are the kinds of things where we will need some lead time and we'll ask parents uh for some patience with that you know if it takes up to I heard Tom say two weeks uh we can probably make that happen in nine cases out of 10 shorter than two weeks but there might be a case if it involves Transportation specialized Transportation or things like that so you know
080if if we're talking about what's the outside chance um that would be something that I'd repeat yeah the only thing I'd jump in with Paul is when it's an honest mistake we want to make sure we're there for the kids and everything but I have had discussions with with people that some of that said well I'm not going have it I'm sending my child every day no you're not and I me we have to so there is that piece too it can't just be this is my way that I'm going full day every day so is that balance with that peach too great thank you my second question I'm not sure if you're the right person for this so gladly yield my time to someone else can you talk a little bit about clubs and
081activities whether they'll be occurring after school clubs yeah I mean we've we've had discussions with this that'll be occurring there's there's two pieces with this that are difficult with in school because you'll get the people that say well Sports is occurring um so why can't clubs and activities occur in school the sports ones we can close off the building and get involved in cleaning the rest of the building with the other piece being that when school ends those teachers are still in class now with the kids that are in hybrid so we've said that clubs and activities will meet they'll meet virtually at least for now we may change that now if a club and activity and a teacher decide we want to meet outside wearing masks at 3:00 we're not saying to people no
082not to do that we just don't want it to be the expectation because the building we have to clean the buildings at the end of the day and we um we have to get on that basically as soon as teachers are out the building so we're even telling teachers you can't linger the way you have in the past just cuz we've got to get into our deep cleaning every day so that's really the reasoning for it great thank you any other questions for Paul you guys all right thank you Andy you're up all right I will tell you that Dr marrow was delivering plexing glass Shields this weekend still and was bringing masks and more gloves and one thing that I will say we had so many people tell us well so many kids aren't
083going to come with masks everybody had masks when they came to school I don't think we had to hand out more than a handful um total and that was just over a mask that may not have been we're going to be we're going to be looking at different crafts that we can start doing in art classes and such because we only have about 20,000 left that we were anticipating meeting so we're we're going to get creative come the holidays um so again uh as as Tom said this has been a very busy summer uh for us all and uh I wanted just to take a quick second and run through some of the work that we've done for plant and Facilities uh normally as you know this is the time where we go through and
084we talk about uh all of the different construction which we still did we had a normal summer based on all of our capital projects uh I won't go through all of the all of it but you know if you get a chance the high points really are the uh reconfiguration of the braburn offices and the entranceway as you know for the past 3 years it's been a focus focus of ours to reconfigure uh entranceways with the man trap so they are secure so that they are fully buzzer and so uh this summer we were able to do that at brayburn we were able to do and finish up the bugby offices and their extensions which came out just wonderfully and uh we're able to reconfigure and do the same for Smith at their offices and
085so next summer all we have left are norfeld Duffy and Whiting Lane I believe our last three and then we will have converted all uh 16 of our buildings for that so we'll be done for that we'll get to start with the next project for that um I do want to take a second though and I normally go through and thank uh B Palmer and Paul edland and Mike Longo and Bill fibs and and and their folks and such and and I certainly want to go ahead and do that this has been an incredibly busy summer um yeah I was joking with Bob I think I spent more time with Bob this summer than my wife um we have it's just been a very very busy time uh with lots to do to outfit 17
086buildings to make sure they're safe for students and for staff to come back I also wanted to thank Eric deny who uh in addition to relying on him as a security in the district really this summer has been instrumental in helping us distribute uh PPE to summer programs helping us distribute technology helping us distribute grab and go lunches he and his staff have been been working all summer long and Eric has just been side by side Eric and I spent the weekend together getting last minute stuff done in the schools and I just really wanted to thank him for for all of that work as well I also wanted to take a minute and I want to thank the people who have really done an incredible job this summer all of our head custodians and
087our maintenance workers who really don't ever get to hear their names and so I wanted to go through and I apologize I'm going to mangle some of them because I don't usually call them by their last names um so I want to go through and I want to thank uh John Ferrera Jill Bernard Rob seavoy Tyler Moren Jamie Gomez Daniel Rodriguez Jason theion vas kcus I got that right uh Alex Johnson barington Gardner Larry Bowman Maria Rodriguez uh Lewis uh Lebron Rodriguez Mike Johnson Steve tokars and Jason Tellis our head custodians have been working non-stop this summer really since March to be candid and have just done an incredible job in getting our buildings clean getting our building set up we have asked so much of them as we've reconfigured classrooms and moved Furniture um
088one of the things we also did this summer was evaluate uh most of our mechanical systems and so I want to also thank our maintenance and trades people uh Bill B Smith uh Dean cfig Leon Sean Cunningham Mike Ro Nick Domino Mike Gilberto Doug Krauss Don krinski Peter oconor Shan oconor nick kazuko uh Glenn spilman and Bill Wentworth and we have uh all of our trades folks all of our maintenance and all of our custodians have really stepped up and and done some incredible work this summer and worked a lot of overtime to make sure we're ready um in addition to the work we've done in Plant Services our information technology staff has been working all summer Distributing uh materials home getting ready for this uh for the hybrid plan we've created three new websites
089to support at home learning the hybrid School staff telecommunity uh we've been uh purchasing uh Liz Jared and I over the summer uh purchasing and then Distributing various equipment Chromebooks uh we have uh 500 hotspots that were purchased through the state that we been Distributing to families uh with an adequate internet access to address that need we've also updated uh Chromebooks for Middle School teachers to help them with the instruction as well special thanks to Craig Diamond uh Kimberly uh NE uh Shan Nigo and Amy truskowski uh for their work over the summer in keeping all of our it working and running uh Transportation has been interesting to say the the least over the summer as we've been getting ready for a lot of different scenarios and a lot of different unknown um you know
090Paul talks about how many times we've done the schedule I think I made dearis Cry three or four times this summer when I went to her and I said okay we got to do this again um and so I I just a huge huge thank you to uh the work that dearis and dearis Tes and Jenny Murphy have done this summer and as a two-person office they have just done a incredible amount of time in putting together Safe Transportation and working with our bus companies to make sure that our students are are safely transported to make sure that drivers have the extra PPE that they need to make sure that they're being safe to make sure the drivers are following our staff protocols every morning to make sure that they're not ill all of this
091um all of this has been a huge job we've also arranged and coordinated uh bus monitors for most of our elementary runs for the first 3 weeks and these are great because they help the kids establish those behaviors that we're really looking for to carry for the year as far as boarding the bus as far as sitting uh separate from one another and as far as exiting in a safe Manner and keeping their masks on so uh it's quick I know but we have done a fair amount this summer and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have I know that you you're were able to tour Amanda and Jason were able to tour W kit and really get a sense of uh what's been what's been done there and really get a
092sense of uh the work that that we put in place and I can assure you the other schools look the same uh hopefully our our High School uh friends can can share uh that the high schools as we've been through as Tom and I were through uh yesterday and today uh really I think kids feel comfortable I think teachers feel comfortable and I think uh it's amazing just in two days the anxiety level how how far that has dropped and so I think that's a real positive so any questions I can answer I uh I just want to say that I greatly respect you and the team uh especially with the first two minutes that you took naming each person who has helped us get to this day and I think by doing that speaks
093volumes of the level of respect that we collectively for everyone who is helping to keep this school system together regardless of title I think many times that certain attention can be played one way and not paid elsewhere and I think it's important for all of us to recognize how uh everyone plays a role in helping us to be here and I think it also speaks volumes for our young people as well as they are exploring different Avenues in life and exploring different professions for them to know that they are a value uh and we certainly have seen that with the pandemic outside in in the world in terms of people having a new sense of appreciation for that custodian who is walking by in the hospital getting ready to clean the room that you may
094need to go into to have a procedure or if the restaurant is closed but you have to drive through the drive-thru at fast food to get something to eat so thank you for doing that I know you apologize beforehand and no I I think no apologies is necessary and I think my colleagues would appreciate that as well so and just so you know that's that's only that's only the head custodians we have another 40 people who have been working uh over the summer as well with them and and under their their Direction at each of the buildings so it's it's been important to know large sum cians you value all value pardon me I I me to cut you off Y no go ahead I'm sorry I'm good thank you uh we'll do Mark and
095then Amanda thanks Andy um you know I think I've asked this question before and I'm I'm not quite sure um were there any projects that were done because of the empty schools above and beyond I I know you've put a ton of PPE in and things like that but something on the CIP because you don't normally get empty schools for almost 6 months so I was wondering if there's any additional projects yeah we didn't do anything additional but what we were able to do and again we didn't do anything additional just because of the unknown quite honestly we we got to a point where it was we don't know what the fall may may not look like and so it was it's difficult with a lot of the the timing uh to commit to that
096what we were able to do was to get in earlier with some of the projects and uh we were able to get a batement done for example in April when there weren't students there U and so we were able to get a a jump start on some of the projects and so that did help us then later on because we weren't then working around flooring construction as we were trying to move classrooms around and such and in complete tand inir us we the CIP we don't control as you know it has to go through the town and so anything that we do we need the town to be pain uh yeah y yeah I mean but again yeah exactly but we don't really have them as much in the CIP cuz it's the town [Music]
097yep uh I think from a facil planning standpoint it it's been reassuring to see how the classrooms are set up especially the elementary schools I know you saw a and two Deb and there's been other people like Ronnie Newton has been in and out of some of the schools at different levels um and the feedback overall for the most part is that they they feel pretty similar and um I was really surprised frankly that the Elementary classrooms felt um the way that they did the the teachers by putting both of the CL desks together for red group and blue group um you with everything still on the walls and books and plants they didn't feel sterile in the way that I thought that they would um and also we toured um with this in mind
098looking at other schools too thinking about which classrooms you know had doors in and out um and knowing that the classes were entering the building in the morning through those doors and they were going out to their outside learning and having lunch and doing things outside so that it was easier to picture how if we do have times when we need to do a quarantine or we need to close down certain areas how it it's really possible to do that and more controlled ways because the the kids especially at the elementary level really are going in and out of their classrooms to the outside in ways that are so much different from how they were before but in in ways that almost feel I I frankly liked a lot of the things that that we
099went through as far as all the time they're going to be outside doing some of their classes the way those areas were set up um entering into your classroom that way some of those things um you know are are things I hope the kids do enjoy but it certainly makes it easier to see how we can manage things as we need to as health things may come up and that was I thank you man that's a good point that was a lot of a lot of design and planning working with each of the principles as well we actually R up relocating some teachers to different areas so that we could have third grade together because that's important from our cohorting models and so we wanted to to maximize that um and when we looked at
100where are different entrance points if we bring in the second grade through this doorway here what's their pathway through the building how do we minimize that kind of traffic and so that's been really a building by building design and then you also had some elements there for the faculty so that they're not all in the faculty room um some of the libraries and putting a fridge in there that might have been in a different area Li rooms some of the music rooms some of the areas that are now going into the classroom we're able to use those spaces for for multitudes of of of restrooms for staff and for work rooms for staff um and so we were able to go ahead and purchase different equipment to outfit them because again we don't want it
101to be you know we want it to be comfortable for the teachers working as well we want them to feel safe I appreciate you bringing it up Amanda because those are the kind of things parents can't see because they're not I mean we just can't have them in and out of school I mean frankly when I'm visiting school I'm standing outside because the last thing we want is me or Andy to go building to building and then find out we've been exposed to something now we wouldn't spend more than 15 times we'd always have a m 15 minutes we always a mask but still just the perception so that is something that you know I think and our principles have done a great job of communicating making video and our teachers are doing that and
102I think the more we can do that the better to let parents know this is what it's like yeah yeah the systems that they put in place even for hanging coats and bags you know by red blue to the kids it just looks like everything's full sure but the other part of it isn't there so the whole thing just felt especially for the kindergarten in first grade um Plants and Things on the walls they felt warm and just like you'd want them to well we had that conversation with especially with Elementary principles that you know safe doesn't need to be sterile this isn't a a situation where we need to be tearing everything down where it needs to be you know we talked about your signs let's make sure the signs make sense it doesn't
103I don't want it I still want it to be brayburn I still want it to be wilen I don't want it to be kids bombarded with this direction this direction stand here don't stand here wash your hands turn around that kind of thing and so I think there has been a real understanding of of these need to be our schools and they're going to be our schools and they can be our safe [Music] schools Jason okay um yeah in addition to to those notes um through in wott and seeing how some of the other schools are utilized in the outdoor space too really made me appreciate the kind of grounds and uh and other improvements to to make those all of the kind of spatial resources of the school and put those into play um
104and the kind of planning um that went into that you know um when we were at wow you were receiving things you order once before and having that in place and having that to have them now um where other people are waiting I think is is really special um so thank you and it's been see those those those choices play out for for the different schools um and I I a different question too that and I'm not sure if this is if I'm jumping the calendar or not but I was just noticing the um the the um the list of of improvements made the Capital Improvements made and then you you just stated about the plans to improve the entrances for North uh def Lan is that right yes yes and I'm just thinking you
105know going down the road with you know a potentially thinner budget in the future uh is are you already thinking about ways to um to uh um um are you really thinking about uh priorities forend in terms of what you did the previous year kind of you know sure no absolutely and that's that's a good question Jason we'll get to when we start doing the uh the budget cycle you'll see that the way that the CIP works is actually that's already uh designed and planned and allocated in 2-year increments and so that's already taken care of for that we've already budgeted all of that and the nice thing also in doing this over three years is that we've learned some things we've learned where it's where we can save a little bit of money in
106a design where frankly it makes more sense to put uh security places and such and so we've we've redesigned these buildings a couple of different times based on that and so I think we'll be will'll be well positioned uh with the budget we have for those remaining buildings okay yeah sorry about that oh that's okay and um and then I also noticed that there was some possibility for federal and FEMA reimbursement and I'm wondering if that if you see that coming through or you know how you that um there's been a lot of of work and and one of the things that Liz can talk a little bit about later on if you'd like as well when she talks about is um we've we've been working with the town we've been working with the state
107and we've been working with uh with fima on a lot of the the tracking of expenditures everything from the extra overtime that's been put in from uh from maintenance the extra work that we've been doing with [Music] PPE and [Music] also we're doing for this pretty comfortable that uh the numbers that we're we're tracking and and we've got some ideas of the percentages that we're we're anticipating thank you [Music] yep are there any other questions for Dr [Music] Morrow all right thank you thank you and W you I've already said one nice thing about works when speak that's about it that'll be it for the year but I wrote it down and I'm going to remind him every chance I got so welcome everyone it's good to see everyone and not in front of a
108computer screen like we've been looking at each other for the last 6 months and Welcome to our new student board reps look forward to working with both of you I'm going to uh start my report by summarizing about some of the challenges that Paul referred to in our summer Staffing um but in the end resulted in a very talented and diverse cohort of new teachers that we are welcoming to West Harford so we're excited about that so from a challenging standpoint which which Paul talked about I'll read I'll talk a little bit more about so back on July 31st essentially the last day of July we made the decision to go start the school year in a hybrid model and uh at the same time we're offering families the opportunity to um for their students
109to go completely remote so as we worked through August we had 1,500 students over 1500 students choose to go remote so as Tom mentioned we had uh and I think I mentioned in the last boarding board meeting this summer as well we had uh over 140 staff teachers and Par professionals request some form of accommodation because of coid we were able to move a majority of those teachers into our online spots so we did uh a very good job of accommodating most of those requests for those we weren't able to honor we uh some did very few took a leave of absence and the remainder felt safe enough in our hybrid model to go back into the hybrid setting so with the movement of those 1500 students from our in school model into the out
110um the remote learning uh model uh that resulted as Paul said a number of reductions in sections across the district so that impacted our elementary schools our middle schools and our high schools and we literally had to move through the month of August dozens of teachers from their normal setting so imagine how unsettling that is for a teacher who you know as we all know spends half their summer getting their school their room ready for the fall to be having me come to their room on August 31st saying by the way we need you to to go to a new school or you have to do part in School part um High you know online um so but in each of those conversations they were honestly so understanding of the situation that we were in
111and they were ready to do whatever it takes to get these two models off the ground and do what's best for kids I've been doing this for a long time I've had a lot of those kinds of conversations with teachers who had to move back in April or where they had plenty of time to prepare and they they didn't go as well as these conversations went so really appreciate the uh flexibility that our staff showed as we uh begin uh began that school year yesterday so uh so the good news of all this movement is we did uh welcome 30 new contracted teachers and 17 interim teachers to our professional staff uh this is a little bit lighter than our our normal year our turnover as you saw in my report the last couple years
112last year was 5.9% the year before was 5 1.2% this year dropped to 3% so we had far fewer retirements and far fewer resignations than we had expected and we think this might have been due to the pandemic so with that as we we did some hiring in the spring for for assignments that we knew we we needed to fill and then as we moved into the summer we had to kind of wait and see where all of this movement ended up before we went out and started recruiting and we were a little apprehensive that since we didn't have a lot of movement out of the district would we be able to recruit people into the district and we read stories around the state where folks were struggling finding teachers that wasn't the case with
113us uh this pool candidates that we were able to recruit from was outstanding uh so we had over a thousand people apply for some of for our openings um and most of these folks were the the first choice of our principal or department supervisor who was doing the hiring and if if any of your our children are in in these uh new teachers classes I think you're going to be classrooms are going to be very happy uh 16 of these candidates came with a prior West Harford experience so they were a long-term subash year or a teaching assistant so moving as simulating back into West Harford they understand our culture and our expectations which is very good um and then a number of our uh proud to say a number of our new teachers are
114um themselves products of the West Harford Public Schools one of my favorite things I love to say every year at this first meeting uh as five six seven eight of our teachers every year are themselves products of what start for public schools born ways coming back to teach here uh very proud moment for us um as we discussed uh year year over-ear um we're going to always keep the board up to date on our colle Collective goal of increasing the diversity of our teaching staff so it more closely reflects the diversity of our student population and I'm very pleased to report that this year uh onethird of our new teachers our new staff are teachers of color um last year we started the year at 9% uh we finished the year with some unfortunate resignations
115we dipped down below 9% at the end of last school year and then through this new cohort we've increased back up to 99.9% so almost 10% so we're happy with that but I think you know our executive team our leadership team our Board of Education and our students certainly would say we need to do more you know we do we need to we need to build on the success that we've seen this year uh our student diversity um is at 41% so 10% on our teachers 41% with our students that disparity is just way too large and that number changes every year that 41% goes up by a half a percent almost 1% a year so we need next year to be at the table talking about at least a third of our new teachers
116being teachers of the color so that we can continue to close that Gap we've heard we've talked a lot about our programs like the future educators of Diversity Program certainly our association with um the correct minority teacher recruitment Consortium a recent Association of the historical black colleges and the university and um we were planning to go to their college sh last spring which was canceled because of the pandemic hope hope we'll be in a safe place this spring and we can um head south for that as well so we feel collectively as a board and as a leadership team that um a coned uh effort like we've had over the last couple years will allow us to build and get from that 10% to 12% to 13 and 15% over the next couple of years
117we do think that's a very uh attainable goal so um kind of finishing up on the discussion on Staffing I'd be remiss not to thank Joselyn Tambo Noble who's a World Language department supervisor and I McCannon who's our director of secondary education those two came to us in early part of August and said what do we want to do for new teacher orientation and uh I know we got to do something virtually but I I need a little help with that so those two came in they developed this Google Classroom um it much different than any orientation that have' ever run in the past but honestly in a lot of ways it was probably one of our best orientations we had the opportunity through the programs that they set up um they had asynchronous and
118synchronous activities for our new teachers to take part in and as an executive team we Gott to sit back and join in uh on these learning activities that our new teachers were participating in and watching and listening and reading that deep and Rich conversation that was taking place so we learned a lot you know it's one of those silver Lings through this whole pandemic thing we can take what we've learned this year um through the Google classroom and and next summer we'll have a summer long orientation program that we can take advantage of from a technology standpoint while welcoming them back in person for that first week before school [Music] starts um quick update on our teacher an administrator evaluation you may remember um back in the spring when the entire stat went online uh
119the governor and the commissioner of education did allow districts to um wave the end of the year evaluation requirements which is good um because obviously everybody was home at that point so this year we're happy to report that the state is providing districts um with some more flexibility with their plans this year for the uh 2021 school year we've talked to our professional learning and evaluation committee about these changes and we're going to implement these changes is to uh to start this school year our PLC group is a group of teachers and administrators from around the district who uh a lot of curriculum work that's done throughout the year but one of their um primary roles and responsibilities is the oversight of our teacher evaluation administrator evaluation plan so they have had a chance to
120review some of these changes now the flexibility pertains to certain parts of our plans that will give teachers the flexibility from an evaluation standpoint to focus on social emotional learning uh student engagement family engagement it allow our administrators to have that same kind of evaluation flexibility in terms of for them to focus on things that are important this year like opening up our schools safely uh providing support to our distance teaching and learning uh and most importantly ensuring that our students are remaining safe and healthy throughout the uh entire school year the observation process will will change a little bit and we'll take advantage of that so we will have more shorter more frequent observations in the classroom um vers in L of you know if you remember under the old plan we'd have that
121um with our non- tenure teachers we'd have three formal observations 45 minutes to an hour uh we'll have the opportunity to get in the classroom more frequently uh with more opportunities to provide feedback to our teachers on how things are going from a social emotional learning standpoint another big change that is being afforded districts is we uh we have the ability to wave our Summit of rating so we'll still do a summit of evaluation with our teachers but we won't tie a number to the evaluation that allow us to um really focus in on the emotional well-being of our students and not tying what we're seeing and a number to what that is and and really having deeper conversations about what we want to see from that perspective for those this year um and then
122just a final quick update on our employee workplace and Safety Committee um this committee was as we all know is one of six committees uh that were formed at the beginning of the summer um and we had we had over 100 volunteer serving on all those committees uh so we had teachers we had staff members we had administrators all of our Board of bed uh family and community members healthc Care Professionals everyone working hard all summer to get us to where we were yesterday and that was opening up our schools um safely so a big thank you to to all of those six committees our particular committee Deb and I and and Andy served on this among others uh our mission was to uh ensure that our staff was coming back to a a work
123environment that was safe um and that involved the development of uh multiple policies to ensure that that did happen uh we have our um Co 19 staff screening screening Tool uh that everyone has at home and asks a series of health related questions that they they need to review every single morning and if they answer yes to any of those questions then they must stay home not have you know it's an absolute must um and tied to that is our Co 19 we policy that this committee worked on as well so we want folks to know that if they're not feeling well and they have any symptoms they don't need to worry about what they may or may not have may not have for Sy time if we have new fers that are coming in
124and don't have any sick time we don't not want them coming to to work potentially sick and um potentially putting others at risk so this lead policy provides us with the flexibility provides our staff with the flexibility um to stay home when they're not feeling well we have our um safe workplace policy which includes measures we've taken to address health and safety in in all of our buildings um and then of course we have our Co 19 travel policy which incorporates Governor Lamont's uh executive order which requires uh anyone who's traveled to one of the um high-risk States and that number fluctuates between 30 and 35 every Tuesday uh anyone who travels to one of those States is required to quarantine for 14 days upon return to Connecticut so as Tom mentioned we do have
125a number of Staff who are quarantining right now and some of those quarantines are related to travel um we have a bit with 1500 employees we had a lot of folks who needed to get their kids back to school down south and in some of these states and unfortunately when they came back we had to let them know you're going to stay home until it's safe for you to be here and we provide coverage for their classroom so um those kinds of things are going to are going to come up uh all fall along as well as folks as Tom mentioned we had folks who who have been exposed um potentially been exposed so again we we monitor that keep them home for 14 days keep keep in touch with them over those 14 days
126until it's safe for them to come back and right now there are no positive cases uh among our staff in West Harford which is uh which is good for now but this committee will work together we're going to meet every week uh through the pandemic and as issues arise in any of our buildings we will uh work together as a committee to address them and and ensure that we're keeping uh everyone as safe and and healthy as possible so that's it for me I'd be happy to uh answer any questions that folks have thank you uh does anyone have any questions um am Jason um I just want to publicly thank our teachers for teaching um it certainly not something that we take for granted and there's a lot of different ways just keep gone
127and and talking with people from other districts um I would fly appreciate how how other districts aren't necessarily honoring requests for needs um even under three extreme circumstances so that's something that didn't cross my mind um in the way because we can hearing from you all summer how things were going so I really appreciate that um as a board member especially that the way that you've been able to handle the reest and placement in the online school has helped us maintain our teaching staff um and it's a high quality teaching staff so that um that's a very significant thing that I just wanted to stop and recognize um and to think the teachers and them how how are we doing with the substitutes Andals I know they can be aial issue finding T and teras
128it is yeah so we have um we've been hiring additional Subs all summer long um we have over 100 75 Subs that are in the pool right now um the question which uh remains to be seen you know yesterday and today were quiet days everything went really well out in our schools um once we get into the thick of this and absences start to pile up that's when we'll you know hopefully we're going to get those subs to come in and work um and that's that's what we will uh will continue to monitor we've shared with all of our subs all of the policies and procedures that we have in place um so they know that they're coming into the safest environment possible um so I'm hopeful that we'll we'll have the staff uh ready
129to support some of those absences that may uh increase as we move through this PA professionals we did have um you know almost a third of our pair of professionals request an accommodation um and and those who are harder to accommodate than our teachers we accommodated a large number of them but we couldn't accommodate all of them so we are still actively hiring par professionals every single day have been for the last several weeks and we'll continue to do so over the next few weeks um the fortunate thing is our schools are half the size that they normally are so we're making it work right now but we do have some more PA professional hiring to do and it's a priority for us and a lot of the substitutes I know some of the hires
130that you've done know that they're just going to one building or two buildings and they're going to be there most days um is that the model that you so we're starting to do that right now so we're starting to place people into one school and right now they're not doing much for these first two days but um you know as as things increase they'll be busier so we we won't be able to do that completely across the district but we're finding additional teaching assistance and Subs that are there for that overflow yeah and how many about I I don't even know if you know but how many teachers about um are teaching in both the hybrid model and in remote learning school so I want to say it's got to be around a dozen Paul
131um I think it's more than that now is it more than that doing both yeah it's especially special education so I mean significant number in special education class not sure if this is the right time to ask but in looking at one of the questions that came up talking about parents decided to hold off the kindergarten we do notice they sh the number of kindergarten teachers so there was a large shift to online for kindergart so we have um some sections ons side that we're addressing right now and we' seen a reduction school that are hard I mean to get to your question another way it's hard to know what we're missing because they hadn't registered yet but we're usually pretty accurate with our long-term projections the chip board does and we're short about 50
13256 60 kids um right now from what we expected in kindergarten that was that was definitely the grade we saw more hold out where it's not just they're in onl school but they're not in school whatsoever um because they can vot a year yeah so they expect a bigger kindergarten next year yeah and I think in October we'll probably have a better picture of if we lost something's issue but they might come back how that's going to work for planning yeah I think one of the things I do want to touch on that you asked about what substitutes one of the things we're seeing will communicate this more with the online school then you know to replace somebody to put in a substitute for kindergarten teacher that might be having a half hour meeting that
133may not happen in the same way it may just be the work okay do this when I'm not here today because I'm not going to be in this session rather than you don't need the same physical presence online so substitutes online are going to be different of course if it's a longer term we' have somebody in there but if it's for a day or something like that it would be more here's the work you need to do on your own today than necessarily a sub just kind of going in saying hey you do this work you know [Music] so uh Jason all right um yeah uh thank you for for that that update and the question I have is about the the teachers doing remote learning and if there's a plan to differentiate the PD
134for for those teachers or if the district overall is it it has a plan for PD that that um that incorporates their specific instructional mode um CU I I I mean I can see you know the need arising for to address concerns you know um you know say across a grade level or across across you know several grades um that might not be shared with with h you know the teachers doing the hybrid plan um so I'm just curious if that's if that's coming to conversation yeah absolutely it's already started I let Paul kind of that's his uh expertise Comm on um but last week we had PD occurring at both online for our online schools and and in school for our hybs yeah and that'll continue all year so there certainly is a differentiation
135among uh among that prob uh basically delivered through the building setting so typically we have building CD and we have District uh or Department based CD so teachers that are engaged in the remote learning plan um their building csis are going to focus heavily certainly in and around uh especially at the beginning of the year a lot of the digital tools we did a lot of that work with people up front in the first 5 days but there's ongoing work um there's ongoing work for uh teachers at all levels uh especially at secondary level teaching in the block there's ongoing work for teachers uh that are teaching in the hybrid in the buildings at the elementary kind of what are some of the strategies that they need to use to have small group instruction and
136still maintain you know the Safe physical distancing practices so the complimentary work for the elementary teachers how do you how do you have small group engagement through uh through me um when they're working with those students so that level of differentiation will exist and then also in our department structures teachers that are in the remote School are still retaining connection to their disciplines um so that they can get some of that content based PD um and stay current with whatever th a science teacher what's happening with Next Generation science or what are the things that I need to know about relative to you know unit 4 uh in the townwide curriculum or something like that thank you one other from I want to add because it's kind of between you and the Indian that you
137is um first thanks to Grace Johnson our nuring supervisor um who's worked all summer with us with the health protocols and one of the things you did differently that now I will say publicly normally superintend share a lot of our great ideas this is one I didn't necessarily want to share we because I didn't want them out to disappear we contracted with outside certified nurses AIDS um to work with our news in our building especially as we focus on each building has to have an isolation room and to have somebody that's a certified health professional working there and outside contractor something we've done that's a little unique there so we want to add that too thank [Music] you any other questions for rck L know if this is the right time to ask us but
138but um if someone up the other districts that are getting their first Co cases what is our protocol as far as when we do get that first case so we will as Tom certainly can expand on this and this came up in our safety committee meeting a week ago we will do a um full out communication to the entire District so when when it does happen um we will be updating the entire District on um what happened where it was I W be mentioning any names uh and then certainly addressing health and safety protocols again um and ensuring that that will consistently happen um always monitoring ourf so given us that opportunity to talk again about our our safety protocols uh Tom had mentioned uh the dashboard that we will um working on right now
139we'll have it up and running by Friday and that'll be on our website and every day you'll be able to click on it and see okay how many teachers are quarantining in each building are there any cases where it words the status of that and um we'll monitor that and keep that updated um throughout the entire pandemic um yeah and I think it depends on where the person is so if it's somebody in central office where that doesn't really affect our schools necessar that that would be handled a little bit differently if it's somebody at an elementary school that's just been with that cohort um that's a little bit easier in terms of you may not have to close the school down for 2 days to contact Trace in that case if we know these
140the only people but what would happen let's say that um let's say this was a large classroom where we've all had masks on during this time we've been distant you we reported to the Department of Public Health the Department of Public Health would work with us on contact tra that everybody in this room would be notified that it turns out so so I'm the one I I tested positive the Corona virus on Friday you know I get communication from us saying somebody here with um we want to let you know has tested positive for Corona virus now that does not mean you would all go into quarantine because at this point everybody's been in a mask we haven't eaten together we haven't taken off our masks or anything like that um we also couldn't say
141who it is um but for example if at one point um Ari and I had been next to each other and I have my mask up to take a drink that communication to Ari might be different if we knew that was the case and we'd say you please monitor anything else if there had been a lunch or something else involved in this or we had had a mask break together then that might be different so there's not a there's not necessarily a one siiz fits all um with what the communication cuz at the high school it may be very different CU they may have been around different people so that may be something where you might close for a day for a deep cleaning of areas you might close for two days I mean this
142the CDC recommendation would be 2 to 5 days sometimes so it's not a definitive in that way um depending on the situation so we've had some people during the summer that have and this is this is also an important point for for people somebody leaving sick is not the same as somebody telling positive we don't notify everybody hey somebody doesn't feel good in they're testing um because even in those cases we're even a 1% test positivity rate um so you don't want to send that out there so we treat a positive test with as much open communication we can we tell people those with cases now if it's a um there's you know the key is we want to make sure it's contained so if there was something where it was a teacher and they
143had eaten in a classroom you know this wouldn't happen now but it could happen four weeks from now with the class eat together The Masks were out during that time okay at that point we might be in a situation where these 16 people are in quarantine for 2 weeks during that time the teacher could actually teach that class during that time [Music] Mark Tom how far do you deviate that information you gave some examples but like say is it going to be Hall 9th grade uh Hall 10th grade we send information out to everybody but like do you mean like the contact tracing specifically no so when you say you're going to let us know if if Hall has one right that's has a CO positive test is it all ninth grade positive is it
144or just all be the school be at this point we we rely on the Department of Public Health to clarify if they change that but right now right now as far as I know the advice has been in school Andy have you seen anything else say that all of that is in the guidance that the Department of Public Health contct tracing and participated on there and Grace and I as well so that's the website contct scenarios about how all the different scenarios play out correct me if I'm wrong but so we're part of the West Harford Bloomfield Health District so what's which at one point in time we were talking about if there's a significant number of private schools in the area so if those private schools have a a student who tests positive and
145is it still the case that that positive case would show up on our health district books or their H town or both I believe it depends yeah it depends frankly at this point what we're hearing from the from D is where the test is being conducted and so if it's being conducted and their home address is westart fre it's being conducted in West Hartford as they because they're a resident at that private school they're living student there then it would go here if they're traveling back home and it's being conducted there then it would not but that's that's the guidance we're hearing because it's the same issue with some of the universities and whether or not those numbers are are showing up on ours and if being backed out at the health district level [Music]
146okay so just to follow up if you in the class where the positive Co CL case was are we going to be recommending that those other students get tested I know we can't we can't demand it but is there going to be a recommendation all again all of the all of the guidance on the contact tring is if a student is in that situation and it's being again it's our when if there is a positive case the first thing is that we sit down with the health district and that's where we work on the contract traces okay where was a person is considered inous and so position look at that what time involv if they were in a classroom at that point and it was deed based on the the number of students are based
147on the nature of that it was deed that that was considered what considered a contact by BPH and again a contact is you're a contact you're within 6ot distance of someone for 15 minutes or more that they can that a contact or you have a direct connection with any sort of s or anything from that person um so if we consider that that person contact recommendation will be that those students are period :00 That's the current and again it's all it's all for the for the D it's pretty cut dry you know if this happens we do this is and that's the and that's the important thing is that it's not us deciding hey you know what you guys should it's the Department of Public Health that's telling us this is the rules this is
148what you do this group's okay this group is not this is the group that needs to sit for 14 days this is okay here and then and then it then it gets a little more complicated and I won't get into all the dphs of all of their Cascades but then the question always comes up what about a sibling of well according to phph a contact of a contact is not a contact so then you get to they're they're the ones who sit down and and figure all this out and figure out where the ones that are responsible for that we simply assist and because we never kid work or the adults for that matter you know all of our maintenance all of our all of our workmen are keeping daily logs so that we know
149exactly where they are on a daily basis in one of them gets killed we're able to track that as [Music] well any other questions thank you thank you all right Dr Nelson I appreciate W's complicated explanation because For the first time in my career there's something more complicated than pupil services [Laughter] all right so um welcome new board members I'm actually seeing you in person for the first time so that's very nice um in pupil servfaces we have been really busy and of course there are complications um you know uh through all of this even more so than than our our typical process and so I wanted to start with talking about what we did um over the summer and so at the the end of the school year typically we prepare for our esy
150season our extended Year services for those students with IEPs who qualify for um for summertime instruction and so at the time that we were doing our planning um we have a a very large group of students who qualify for esy services as you could see we had 392 students participate this year and so we made the decision um for the sake of safety to keep it um in a remote environment and so in order to make sure that our students had um as much consistency in programming as they possibly could we extended more opportunities for our teachers to teach and so you can see that we had a large number of Staff members that participated in esy this year and what we did for the very first time was offer part-time opportunities and so were
151able to give um you know small chunks of um of case loads to teachers if you will in order to maintain that consistency of programming that we felt our students so desperately needed from the spring and so um esy went really smoothly uh in this remote environment and the students were able to receive their IEP Services um from as many teachers that they were familiar with as possible um additionally we also provided 68 students with online tutoring um in one or more isolated areas those students didn't necessarily qualify for full comprehensive programming uh but just needed tutoring and so we were able to facilitate that as well and it also went very smoothly and then we also provided um some in-person Services outside of the IEP for students and so what we were able to
152do is we were able to do some in-person assessments oneon-one starting at the beginning of July which was fantastic so Bristo opened their doors to us our teachers signed up for classrooms uh communicated with families and brought students into the building to have assessments that we had missed over the course of the year or new referrals and so we were able to complete about 140 assessment sessions and that was very helpful in US kind of making up with our backlog but as well as uh addressing students needs that were in referral and then we were able to offer a two we um optional and I think it's important to know that this was optional acclamation program for some of our most impacted students the number of students that we were able to provide services for
153really directly related to the number of teachers um who wanted to come in and teach in the acclamation program with the understanding that many of our special ed teachers had already taught 6 weeks of ES why and so um they need you know most of them need a little bit of time off in the summer so we didn't have as many teachers U available to us in August but based on the the staff that we did have we were able to provide 35 students with that experience and these were students um that really qualified for an invitation to this program because they had the most difficulty accessing in a remote environment uh due to their individualized um needs and so those students we brought into the building in three-hour blocks for a two- we period
154of time to really learn about masks to learn about how to come back into the building uh to really engage them in social skills and communication skills and to really reintroduce them to the school setting and so uh we're I think that that had a direct correlation with some of the things that we saw yesterday you know as I walked through some of the schools and I saw students wearing their masks um and being very comfortable sitting in their space and being with their peers and and so the students that I would have expected had the most difficulty had participated in this program and they had really assimilated um very well yesterday it was very very exciting to see them so it was very positive and so that kind of gets me into what the
155school year has been like um and as as everyone else all of my colleagues have said there's been just a tremendous amount of planning um that has gone into making sure that all of our students have the programming that they need to start this year and as you know in in special ed the key is an individualized program so we have to look at each student um separately and um and parents have made some choices about being in school versus being um remote and we've honored those choices and it's been our goal to make sure that we're also honoring their educational plans you know that we're able to provide those Services um you know as they as they've been recommended and so the state has provided us with some guidance um we've kind of joked
156about it because it's often come in on a Friday night at 5:30 um which is always which is always very interesting um you know and they've worked worked very hard with the federal government um and it was very clear that we we have not been absolved of any responsibilities when it comes to Ida and so students it is our responsibility to make sure that we're developing a plan for students as though we were not in a pandemic okay so that that is our directive and then it's our ability uh our Our obligation to um to make sure that that plan is serviced in our schools um what they have given us some flexibility with is in our ability um to creatively plan how we're delivering those services and so we are um we are working
157hard and I have to say that that the the number of teachers who came forward and said I want to help I want to help creatively problem solve I want to help figure out the schedule I want to help figure out um how to do this can I work with you was astounding and so we had a lot of special Educators over the summer who came to us and participated in our planning uh with the Department supervisors and it's been intrical um you know to our ability to make sure that this works for all students and so in the hybrid model uh we have well at the time that I was writing this we had 997 students participating in person in the schools that's about 70% of our population and um and so you know
158the the scheduling I you know just for I think the the public to understand some of those hidden things is that in a typical school year our specialed teachers mostly at the elementary level and our related service folks so our speech and language Pathologists our OTS and our pts and our clinicians they really do have to wait until the first day of school to figure out what a student schedule is so that they can then put their services in and so it usually takes us the at least the first week to week and a half of school to create a schedule um for for those particular um folks the high school and the middle school teachers tend to be scheduled as courses are scheduled so their their schedule is a little bit um more concrete
159but this year um because of of all of the changes um you know we've had to wait even longer to take a look at that schedule so and then put our services in and so in the remote learning school we needed to wait we needed to wait until all of those sections were were figured out and so our folks are now reaching out to parents and speaking with them and talking to them and scheduling so it is just one more layer um you know in which we're so incredibly appreciative of the flexibility of our families and understanding that and so our special Educators and our related service folks are reaching out and just saying hi right now they're just you know they're waiting for all of this to come together and then they'll be sending
160out um individualized learning plans with the times uh that that our IEP goals and services will be met but the state has always also asked us to do something else they have asked us to create an implementation plan and that implementation plan is um a document that describes the difference in how we're meeting IEPs in comparison to how they're written and so if there is a change in how we're delivering Services remotely that's an IEP isn't written that way we need to outline that difference so it's very clear to parents that they know exactly how their IEPs are different than how they're being delivered and so those plans um will you know will be due to parents by the middle of this month and so that is another kind of heavy lift for special educ
161ators and related service folks but we want to make sure that we're being as transparent as possible with our parents so that they understand yes we're meeting their needs it might look a little different in this model and this is what it looks like and this is why so that we can have those conversations with parents so that's important to not um and then in as far as our students um who are participating in the parent choice remote learning model we have about 289 students which represents um a little over 20% of our population and so a lot of those the reasons is for um for health um and safety for medical reasons but also just general concerns for health and safety and so we are working with those families to make that um you
162know the most enriched program that we can um and make sure that all of those IEP uh goals and objectives are being met um and so that's also taken some creative Staffing changes and shifts so we had a number of people who early on teachers and staff members who um who have requested remote learning and we have been able to honor almost every single one of them and so we have at this point Let's see we have nine staff members that are providing full remote learning but we have 48 staff members in pupil Services alone who are doing some in-person and some remote learning and so that's taken quite a lot of creative scheduling to make sure that that happens but I have to tell you I I I I can tell you how many
163emails I Reed from teachers saying I want to keep my kids I want the students on my case load I know them I want to be the ones that support them and so again it's just another example of how the staff just it is just they put kids first um and they have that ownership you know and they have that sense of responsibility and they want to see this through so our teachers are happy to be doing this they're happy to make to be making sure that they're supporting students um we did H we did fill a number of new positions some of which you approved in the spring as additions to our department and so we didn't have any one particular person that that um included those FTE they were spread out over all
164of the different schools but we did fill a number of positions due to vacancies the new um FTE that were um generously um approved by the board last year um we did need to fill a few leaves of absence and some interm and to replace some interm remote um teachers that we just couldn't schedule for in an in-person environment and so I'm calling them the hybrid teachers so they're doing both um and at the time of this writing we are down uh taas and Paras and so for the first time we had per vacancies this year um just vacancies and then we also have additional vacancies from those folks who went remote not all of them they're not being replaced in the you know in the um inperson um but we did have some pair
165of vacancies and then we have quite a few ta vacancies we always have ta vacancies at the beginning of the year and I've mentioned that in my report before um this year we're not filling them at the same rate at the same Pace that we have in the past um but we are filling them and so we actually have filled some of the positions that were listed here on this report um in the mean in the just in the last few days and so it does help as Tom mentioned that our our buildings have fewer students in them and so we are able to utilize the staff members that we do have um in much more effective ways in and so at this point we are meeting the health and safety needs of our students
166which is the most important thing um we have reallocated some of our staff to different students to make sure again that we're meeting the health and safety needs um but that is something we're going to continue to work on filling those um those vacant positions um and then I did want to mention that um over the spring and into this summer um I was had the the fortune The Good Fortune of working with the social and emotional impact committee and I know Ari was on that committee along with a number of teachers administrators and um and parents and we were able to really make some strong robust recommendations and um I passed the Baton so I'm excited to hear that about Rosina um rosen's work because she really took on uh the bulk of the
167implementation of the social and emotional impact recommendations you know with the except of what we do with clinicians within pupil Services um but I'm I'm just so um thrilled to have had Rosen really combine that with her work and take that on it's it's been incredible um and that's all that I believe I have other than the fact that we uh we have goals we're going to get through we have we have M this this year it's not all to get through Co we are going to continue with with our our plans for um for improvement and we will continue to do what we do and get better at it um through professional development through spec you know um very focused PD um and making sure that we're keeping our students safe thank you are
168there questions for Dr nson all um I would wonder you could clarify um I just I'm thinking about parents um of kids with IEPs um and probably a preference to have their kids in every every day of the week you know on both um blue and red days and I know that there were some students who are identified to be able to kind to be in school so I'm wondering can you clarify what what the criteria is to to meet High leads that would offer that um opportunity for students mhm so so uh the state did put out addendum uh 11 which had to do with special ed services and uh identified at that point um kind of a definition of what a high needs student was and based on that definition we we took
169a look at the students that we have in our buildings and those are are primarily those students who are in our intensive programs so our intensive academic and our intensive behavioral programs they have a Learning Center as a home base and they spend um either a a good amount to the majority of their time in that Learning Center and receive extensive Support Services throughout the building and so those are the the students um that were afforded the opportunity at this point um to participate in the what we're calling full access and so those students um will be in on their in-person week um and participating with some generalization opportunities if it's in their IEP um you know in the the regular Ed classrooms and and classes on their the week that they would typically be
170home um with their their uh typical peers they will stay in the Learning Center and receive all of their support services and specialized instruction there to ensure that we're not doing any cross cohorting and so safety was a reason that we decided to um select this group of students okay thank you welcome any other questions Jason yes thank you for that I had a similar question um um I'm I'm struck by all the changes that you've made and incorporating um you know the the IPS into the remote learning models and I'm wondering if there's anything that you've learned or invented or done that you want to carry over into the after times when ever that happens so the first thing that comes to mind is our virtual ppts um to be honest with you we
171are are doing all of our ppts again for for the safety um of students and for families I don't know what PPT is so okay so a PPT is a planning and placement team meeting and so in order to make a change to an IEP you have to conduct a a full team meeting and so there are specific members that are required to be at each PPT meeting as part of that team and so you know we have an obligation to meet once a year we um but we often meet more than that especially if there's a change needed and so in order to uh facilitate those meetings we've been doing them all remotely uh through a Google meet and um I think that's a process that has worked really well and it's enabled our
172staff um I think to use their time more efficiently uh to not travel from one place to the next to make a meeting they can still meet with parents it's much easier for parents to come you know to meet at that time rather than get transportation to come into the building or take time off from work they're able to do to do that and so that's been that's been one thing that just popped into my head right away it's um I think that's it's helped facilitate a much more effective um process but in terms of um I think that our special Educators have uh improved so much with their technology skills and with all the tools that are out there we are reaching students in ways that we've never reached them before we have seen
173students thrive in that environment um in ways that I don't think we had expected and so that is definitely a positive trend that we will continue is leveraging Technologies in ways that we couldn't have imagined before and realizing how effective they are with certain segments of our population thank you thank you and and I'm glad you asked your question before mine because of good St first of all thank you very much for the information shared and thank you also for I know that there are certain guidelines and and mandates that have to be followed with respect to our our special our young people but I certainly appreciate hearing how even if those mandates were not there you still would want to um optimize and provide the best quality of services to young people where the
174survey comes into play my question was going to be the population of those students who may have had uh difficulties with respect to Trancy or School avoidance prior to the pandemic what may have surfaced even more so I know we just two days into school but it sounds like from what you said the level of Engagement for traditionally or or what used to be rather difficult students has been the inverse of what I was thinking um I'm sorry so we have found um through the spring and I I'm going to predict um based on that that that it will happen through the year that some of our students who have traditionally been less comfortable with being in a building for various reasons and who we would probably categorize as school reluctant um they actually preferred
175the online types and then this is a generalization not all students but many prefer the online format and we're able to be far more engaged and productive um than we've ever seen before and so that was definitely a a positive outcome uh for some students you know we still have students who we want to make sure that we're engaging they might be reluctant to engage for very different reasons uh but they're not your typical school um reluctant student okay thank you and also I know from one of the meetings we had over the summer pardon me last um a question um I asked in terms of uh students where if there were areas of concern within their home them being able to have someone to reach out to and and and you shared that that
176certainly was there I'm assuming that those opportunities are still available to students if they need someone to confide in um when they're at home absolutely so we have a full clinical uh team that's working remotely and some of them are full-time remote clinicians and some are again our hybrid um providers that are working both in school and out of school we've also done a lot of work reminding teachers when they're engaging with students in any remote um condition whether it be through hybrid or it be through the remote learning school to look for signs uh you know that a student may need some additional assistance and so we've reminded them that the referral process we've always had in place is still in place uh and that that over the course of the spring and through
177the summer we did do a number of um interventions if you will uh in working with students and families who might need additional support so I feel confident that we're we are definitely reaching students um and we'll continue to make sure that we're reaching even more okay good thank you and thank you for clarifying that school of void and school elected yes thank you are there any other questions um Amanda um I think it was about this time last year when we were talking about enrollment numbers there were about 76 or 77 kids who had or families who had moved into the district and that was a significant number of whom had children who um had special needs and had an IEP coming in and then in March we saw some families choosing to come
178into our district based on our plan the plans that we had placee how many kids have come into the district since um cuz I know every year we're going to have people moving but under these conditions so I can tell you that we have continued to get the same patterns of movement we have students moving in and we definitely have students moving out um we have seen a slight uptick in the number of families that are requesting to homeschool um which is another um path that some families are choosing I unfortunately do not have been number for you Manda um there's so many other numbers that I'm chasing that that is not one of them but that is definitely something that I can find for the next meeting yeah I guess remember what question was
179if it was about the same pattern more so than exact a typical pattern but I don't know if the the numbers would exactly correlate okay I was just thinking about if those families who are coming in with an existing IEP then are you having to write a whole another IEP from scratch or can you so it depends it all depends so if it's a student that's coming in from another Connecticut town then we we have a lot of we usually have confidence in what what they're bringing to us if it's a student that's coming from another country um or another state um and we're not absolutely confident with what they're coming to the table with um then we may opt to honor that IEP as it's written and then move right into an assessment phase
180where we're Gathering our own information so that we can make really well educated decisions and have a lot of the kids who were with a a par who the match might have been working well it sounds like many of them have been able to stay together we have tried to keep people together as often as we possibly could as long as the the people continue to be employed by our district um and but we are trying to match and pair uh not only for the benefit of students but also for their families and when we're engaged families in the remote environment it's another benefit uh that I I think I I didn't mention is that we have been able to engage in ways that we've never been able to engage in partner with parents you
181know before and so we know that when a parent is doing a lot of the help in structuring and organizing at home that it's imperative that the parent has a lot of trust in the adult that's working with their child as well and so for the benefit of both the families and the students we've tried to keep people together thank you good evening everyone and Welcome to our North board members and our student board reps sorry I have my back to you I'll try to project um it feels good to be in this space with all of you um and feeling healthy and hopeful it really has been refreshing to see our Educators reconnecting um with our students and um you can just see the smiles in their eyes and hear the smiles of their
182voices and so they're forming new connections and renewing old connections uh whether it's in person or virtual so you know that's been very very uplifting I am pleased to be able to share the this evening some highlights and outcomes from our summer reopening schools work relevant to uh equity and anti-racism through social justice education and social emotional learning Vin was awfully generous in uh her recognition because the uh social emotional impact committee gave us a great solid foundation which to work with and so you know just to share a bit of a chronology of activities our reopening theme was one is one Community one year and we have really centered all of our work um in that theme our anti-racist and Equity work around that theme and so it's been the focus of everything that
183we do and all of our Planning and Development activities um around full safe Equitable student participation for all students not some students all students but we're really a team to students um who have traditionally been marginalized under represented and underserved so it's really been a large um focus for us just to provide a chronology of some of those activities last uh month early August before the storm we convened selected and selected a group of change agent Educators um Specialists and administrators we gathered them to come in to write uh lessons to look at to look at our current curriculum develop design revise and align our curriculum with our focus on equity and anti-racism we then invited parents many of our parent leaders of our parent Community groups to help us to reach other more diverse
184representatives of our community in particular our bipot community black indigenous and other people of color to participate in our your real in schools activities and planning relevant to equity and anti-racism and that's through social justice work and social emotional learning and so the what's what's been really really great is even though we were convening gathering around this curriculum design and revision review we think that this has really opened a pathway to strengthen our family and school Partnerships and so we have had some groups form as a result of it across the elementary middle and high school levels and so we have some ongoing work and we're developing some structures but some really great outcomes have come Paul mentioned you know the parent technology workshops we hope to develop those into more robust workshops that link
185um to in align with our work our focus on anti-racism and and uh social justice and you know really linked to learning and partnership together and so that's one of the things that we've been doing we have a meeting tomorrow with our high school group and uh we'll continue to ask them to help us to reach other people make sure that we look around and see who's missing from the table who's missing from this work that we really really hear all voices and perspectives um we have asked our Educators to really reflect on a lot of what has happened around the world and what has impacted us right here in West Hartford and so we open our Di with acknowledgement that you know to your point Amanda it is pandemic education but we are still
186facing a double pandemic of coid and racism and so we really had to sit and think about like what are the implications for us and our Educators in our classroom and our practice in education and um we realize that we just simply need to be better prepared to help our students to navigate um Sy systemic racism and all of the other social injustices um in real time these real world realities um and so we really had to think about this is a big charge and we need to make sure that we have all hands on De and we have to make sure that we have common understandings we have um everyone in our district to see themselves situated in this work and have an individual feel like there's an individual resp responsibility around a collective
187and shared Vision so we have the guidance of the EDC we have a not the social emotional learning piece isn't uh new for us we're just really linking that finding ways to link that to our anti-racism work and so we have had the fortune of having you know two great institutes and sets of standards and domains and competencies put out by cast that's the collaborative for academic social emotional learning and they offer a set of competencies and skills that students need to have in order to really engage um in social justice work to be Advocates and and agents for change um leading to becoming anti-racist in our ways of thinking believing behaving and just being um and in our systems and then we're also supported by social justice uh standards or domains by teaching tolerance
188and teaching tolerance is developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center out of Montgomery Alabama and so they focus on anti-bias education and ways to support students so that they can be active change agents giving them agency in in our work that we're doing and so you know we recognize there sets of skills just to give a little context because this is going to be I'm eager to bring some of our team members to the board table this fall to really really share what this all means and the implications it has for us and um and our our our vision our long-term vision and commitment but essentially if you kind of weuse the metaphor of a bridge and if you see seal social emotional learning on one side of that bridge those competencies are having um
189self-awareness and having um you know self-regulation of our behaviors in response to unpredictable events that happen and then also having um just being aware of community responsibility your role in the community right and so that all bridges with the domains of social justice being um identity it's kind of the windows mirrors and sliding glass door metaphor if you know the miror of identity is like who am I being aware and feeling confident about who you are and then I and then diversity the world around you that's that's the window looking out at the world around you um and having empathy and respect and perspective taking and then there's Justice feeling like you have um a moral imperative to take action right but and in action being that agency feeling like you have built relationships and
190you have a role where you feel like you compelled and you feel influenced and leveraged um to take action in kind of a collective Society so that's just kind of like a brief synopsis of social emotional learning and social justice education and how they uh link together so that we can work toward becoming an anti-racist organization um we also had to identify we wanted to make sure that um we focused on community building within our classrooms I me giving students both in person as well as uh remote learning opportunities to engage in this work and and build community with each other so we identified the the best settings to be able to deliver these lessons and that would be in our community settings at the elementary level they are um it's morning meeting at the
191and that happens every day at the middle school level it's the morning advisory and those lessons will probably be about two times at least no less than two times a week and at the high school level it's called Community we've moved away from advisory but it's more of a community setting and so they happen during the community blocks and sometimes they are attached to a classroom it's not to say that that is the only place where that will happen but it's you know an opportunity to ensure a guaranteed experience um and common experience for all students across all grade levels all building levels so then we think about we centered our students and everything that we've been doing but you know there's an educator on the front line right and so we had to really
192think about you know this the care and nurturing of our Educators we really want them to be their very best self for our students and we also want them to be their best for their own personal families too and so our professional development in addition to the new teaches that we brought in um and this is they were a highly competitive um candidate pool who came with like varied sets of um cultural competent skills and knowledge and um we're just so happy that they CHS West Harford and they're going to um they're going to bring a lot of great assets to this work that we're doing so that was refreshing too but we thought about care Educators who are coming back after 6 months and I and for the most most part they never really
193left you know they've been thinking about this um you know they've really been in the trenches with us but we wanted to like really make sure that we set the conditions for their well-being too so we opened the their opening day with some community building and some self-care and really just giving them those opportunities to reconnect with each other to learn about the health and safety protocols and um just to kind of reac but we wanted to be respectful of this charge that we've put in front of them in terms of responding to the realities of everything that's been going on um in this double pandemic and so we wanted to give them an opportunity to look at and engage and understand and unpack the lessons that their peers have created um and there in
194the month of August and so what uh my partner my new partner in our Equity advancement office uh Dr Scott Ratford and he'll be at the board table with me later this fall um to share more details of our work we uh opened uh with a live stream one hour overview of our work and thanks to WCTV whc interactive they allowed us to be able to bring together you know teachers and teaching assistants and Par professionals and security staff members to um hear what our Folk and what our focus is superintendent Moore opened um with a greeting in our charge and um he was very clear about where we stand and where we're going as a district and so we had the opportunity to provide this to the extent that we could in interactive overview
195they all have the PowerPoint in front of them during the hour and we embedded um some interactive links in which we've asked them to like kind of ponder imagine and reflect and ultimately um we really wanted them to understand that we're asking them to embrace discomfort to be okay to experience discomfort to lean into it because these are we're going to have uncomfortable conversations and so we want them to have permission to feel that way but we wanted them to understand that we are going to do everything we can to provide them the tools that they need um to help students to for everybody to really exercise their exercise and develop their Equity muscle in the classroom and out in our community so our 1hour live stream presentation F was followed by two our break
196small group breakout sessions which were led by our teacher leaders um as facilitators they had a overview a training and orientation on how to facilitate these conversations but they have the opportunity to unpack the lessons to engage with them to interact to get feedback because we're not done you know we're going to monitor we're going to modify as we need to um again in real time and so you know that that was a really good experience we got a lot of good feedback on that we got a lot of useful feedback of what we could do differently um and kind of informing us about what people feel that they need what they don't really know and um ways of giving feedback that's helpful way of giving feedback that's productive and ways of being vulnerable too
197feeling safe and when we talk about creating safe spaces explaining and unpacking what do what that means and the difference between a brave space and a safe space so just our commitment and our responsibility so there's a lot lot more to come with that but I think we are moving in a really good direction and our parent Partnerships that are forming really helping us um just a lot of Social Capital among our parent groups and so we just we look for everybody to situate themselves in this in around this shared Collective Vision so that's the uh my highlights of our social emotional learning and social justice education work um I don't want to be outdone by Andy but I don't have two hours to to um acknowledge over 500 people people since March since the
198um School closure that have really answered our call for help I mean from delivering meals and um Distributing devices I mean I now have a database of over 200 Community parents and partners that I can just call at a moment's notice and say help we need help and they're so eager and happy to do it um or or suggest resources so that's been that's been great it it just flaws back on our one Community one year and even though we say one year we we really feel confident that we'll sustain all of the great work and positive outcomes that come from that and so with that we've also really looked at um something that has been pretty effective and that's you know addressing food in security and so our grabbing go L breakfast and lunch
199operation which we literally set up in like 24 hours um when schools closed because we were waiting for the usda's waiver and the state's approval of the waiver but that has been really really effective um and it's we've paired it with other local food programs and we've strengthened those Partnerships so that you know we really really try to make sure that nobody goes hungry when students are hungry they can't learn and so we will continue to offer grabing go um for students who are in person as well as remote Learners and hybrid at home week Learners too um in a couple of locations and we may expand them I think next week we're going to we have them at Hall and at Connor right now but we're going to expand that to Charter R that's
200where we're seeing some need there um just Transportation barriers and we'll address those as we as we learn about them and try to get some feedback open more of a two-way communication feedback loop with parents through surveys and talking with them I think we got our most useful information when we were in person at our grabing go sites because they were multi-purpose sites where people could come and get information more than just food but education and and starter pots for growing their own vegetables and nurturing something that that's their own right so we'll continue to do those things as well to the extent that we can and um we had a little practice with being Innovative over the summer um because we did have a pretty robust summer school high school program um even though
201it was limited to just West Harvard public school students uh we had about 374 students that attended um virtually and we got to look at we learned some things from it we offered morning and evening classes and uh students were able to students who needed jobs needed to work during the day we're able to keep those jobs and still gain credit or enrichment um experiences over the summer so that's something that we learn that we you know we learned about flexibility and Innovation we'll continue to learn and grow from that so I'll will open the floor for questions because you will hear a lot more on this topic and you'll see some parent some of those parent uh leaders here at the board table with me too we'll need a lot of space thank you
202Rosa and I'm sure we're all excited to learn um so much more over the course of the year and um on behalf of the board I'll express my uh gratitude for your commitment and um the whole leadership team's commitment and the board's commitment to the direction that we're heading to help our district become anti-racist to help Empower our students and families in this way um so I know we're all looking forward to hearing that I'm recognizing the late hour and that we still have more on the agenda so I'm going to ask my colleagues around the table to be very sensitive to the time uh if you have any questions for Dr H Haskins and as she said she'll be presenting again shortly more detail I'll say really fast thank you for continuing to have
203the same Vigor now as was had months ago because this certainly is a charge that we certainly need to take forward endlessly so thank you thanks all right as Liz comes to the table and this will be the quickest of all and I would I would remind everyone that we've gotten used to every one of us presenting this summer over the past it's not always like this we wanted two and then that's it um we don't have the same depth from every department and we spread it out and you'll see that at the next meeting where we'll see no Paul will actually talk about sat results of the next meeting so there's different things that come out and we get into more of a routine as Liz begins a lot of the information is on
204here and again it's just a snapshot of where we are as we start um really October 1st is when we get highed numbers but Liz maybe just talk about the general choices of people wrap up our first day of school reports we did want to as Tom i' give you a snapshot of our K to2 enrollment as of the first day of school we've really spent a lot of time over the summer um projecting not only our overall enrollment but also looking at how many students we expected to go remotely um with the goal really of making sure that we are allocating our resources to the appropriate um method of education and so we spent a lot of time on it and you can see that on page 29 of your book it shows where
205we ended up at least for the first day we are expecting probably some changes over the next couple of weeks and as we report on October 1st but what you have here is by each School you could see the number of students and the number of sections of hybrid learning and at the bottom of each section you'll see um a remote line which is the total number um by type of school that has elected to go remote so on an overall basis on K to 12 we have approximately 8,900 students 16% of which decided to opt for remote learning on an elementary level and on a middle school level we had about 19% of our students choose remote and at a high school level we only had about 11% um on an overall basis not
206only were we looking at who is going remote but we were trying to compare that to our projections um that we put together each year as to how many students would attend in total and when we looked at our enrollment estimate um we have 170 fewer students overall than we had expected which is a pretty significant um variance probably about almost 2% and when we looked at that we can see that it's really across all grades across all schools and uh so we're able to adjust um our staffing levels and our sections um accordingly for that um when we look at the variances um by type of school most of them occurred in elementary we had two fewer students than we had expected and then at a middle school and high school level we had
20731 fewer and 36 fewer respectively um as I said these numbers will change typically you see um our enrollment numbers decrease by October first but this is a very unusual year so it will be interesting to see how that varies as we really get a better feel for who's coming to school and then what ultimate choice they make between remote learning and the hybrid method so the October first report um as you may recall gets done uh at the second board meeting in October it will go through it'll have our final enrollment numbers and then also information and a report of class size um at an elementary middle and high school level and really provides kind of our official data for the year that being said I'm happy to answer any questions that you have
208kind of at our first snapshot look thank you does anyone have any questions or want to wait until the October report Amanda yeah I'm just curious when when we do get to the October report are you going to have a sense of the reasons why people why our numbers are what they are cuz I'm thinking about the budget and and based on some of everything that's going on right now um not being able to look at the patterns in the same way as far as who might have left who might come back and the planning of that becomes very different so it does we're really going to have to look at that you know we think that um because of the pandemic perhaps some people have just you know left town either to move closer
209to family Etc we also think there's been a little bit of a move towards private schools perhaps because they were offering um a different type of instruction or a different um model of instruction but we really have to look at that um you know as I said it was really kind of across all grades so we're not we're not seeing like a big dip in a particular grade um but we we will try to identify those Trends because it will enable us to um provide better longterm projections so when we do those uh in January we will try to get that information in order to inform those uh those projections as well okay I didn't have something you had access to as people were talking so I just curious what that I think it's somewhat
210anecdotal I don't know Tom if you've been talking to people yeah the the issue like we know with the people that are report we know from talking to some people and we also know um and you know all of us Indi and I more specifically because logistically end up talking to our private school counterparts more so we'll get some more information from them as the year goes on and we'll get their enrollment numbers also so we'll have a better idea if that was a if that was a key and then you can also see some Trends by location you know um Smith over the past couple years has had some out movement um and that's also has to do with housing stock in the Smith neighborhood and some shifts that have happened there so um
211there's some I'm curious about what some of the results will be there the other um information I wanted to give you Amanda when you had asked earlier about kindergarten we certainly think that the kindergarten class is smaller than would have been had there not been a pandemic and perhaps an indicator of that is we had about 20 students who started registration um or at least notified the district that they were eligible for kindergarten but did not follow through in complete registration and so we believe it's because they're going to hold their kids and and go next year so that's another thing we'll look at as we look at projections to see if there's any sort of a a small bubble there that we'll deal with is it okay just this is short is can you
212just clarify the Food Services piece because I know when they um with everyone being able to get food the paper things went out after they you know there was a timing lapse there so some people were confused about if all kids get free food and how that came about could you just clarify that certainly so the um federal government actually passed an act I think it was called the coid 19 uh nutrition services act and what that did is it enabled um us to allow free lunch and free breakfast to all students the state of Connecticut decided to adopt that waiver and to implement it and we filled out an application and actually were approved d uh either yesterday or this morning so that we could qualify for that so any student um can get
213lunch and breakfast it's still in a grab andgo methodology because from a logistical standpoint we're trying to keep students moving along and then we are able to seek reimbursement um at a set rate it's about $2.80 for breakfast about $415 for lunch um based on how many students elect to take uh breakfast and lunch from each school from a paper standpoint are you referring to the forms or just information that went out yeah I think it just they found out about it after some of the things they were mailed so people questions exactly it was kind of a last minute um notification both by the federal government and then Connecticut's um willingness to adopt those waivers and then we just had to get our application in so I believe it's just a timing issue yeah
214and part of it is how just truthfully and how we talk about it with people um we want to avoid labels I mean the fact is grab and go since March anybody could go get we're not cing people as they go get it this is different because now this involves students in school also um so that is a shift that we have to communicate Mark communicate a little bit about it and it's just yeah it's this um a little bit different um but if you have a grabing gr model is kind of how you have to work that model we're happy that the federal government and the state recom that Mark Liz um in October can you compare our numbers here with what the surveys indicated uh that we took just so we can compare
215and contrast because they seem to be off and we can talk about it in October but the the enrollment surveys or no the coming back to school survey the oh okay because your numbers just I'd like to just compare the two if you don't mind certainly yes the the only piece of the comparison that'll be off Mark is that um we never had a final survey because we had so many people choose not to respond and say they weren't sure so whereas I mean the initial rush it was like 7% and then we had this x of 2,000 people that said we want to wait and so the survey was yeah we were building off of that it certainly shifted over time and I think the longer people waited the more likely they were to
216Shi so that's fair we'll talk about that but yeah yeah and just from uh Thomas right it started out at s or 8% that said that they were going to totally opt out then even of the ones who responded there was I think it was about 15 or 16% who said they were undecided and basically about half of those elected to go remote leaving us at about 16% overall that decided to those so leave all but I'm happy to recile those for you I'll just chime in and ask um when you present the report in October if you could also include the race and ethnicity for the students who are hybrid versus remote certainly thank you it it's fascinating we've talked about about said it's um it's a Statewide and a nationwide issue as far
217as off dos um fascinating look at it what what's kind of fascinating in another way to me so you're Hartford you're at 50% op rate East Hartford we've seen numbers like that in New Britain um we have a significant population of um um of race of students that have oping out by larger numbers what's interesting is we're still lower upd out rates than any of those places but we're also lower upd out rates than our um do B peers and the avons Farmington Sy they're all in the 20s basically so so we're sitting 16% I'd say we probably have one of the lower op out rates in um Central Connecticut [Music] certainly I'm glad I'm glad you said that because I think uh in terms of recognizing those that have been opting out more and
218how it it um it's seeming to be more with our black and brown families I think that touches on many issues many of a systemic issue um as well that was made reference to so again I look forward to continued conversation about this because it's something certainly cannot avoid as we're looking at how the school system is run thank you very good thank you all right moving on to item 16 staff reports and board discussions I think we've tired that out uh we don't have any more of those roue matters um approval of the minutes we have several uh minutes sets of minutes to approve and some of them have been modified from what was originally delivered to us on Friday so at this time I'm looking for a motion to approve the minutes from
219the June 2nd regular board meeting is there a motion so moved Amanda Aronson Amanda second by Mark um are there is there any discussion if not I'll try your minds all those in favor please signify by saying I I I all those oppos nay abstentions uh Jason abstains and the eyes have it uh moving forward to the minutes of the July 17th special Board of Ed meeting do I have a motion to approve those minutes move thank you ollie second by Mark um any discussion all those in favor of approving these minutes please signify by saying I I all those oppose no extensions you guys have it uh moving to July 21st do I have a motion to approve these minutes so moved uh Lura seconded by Liz um any discussion on these minutes I'll
220try your minds all those in favor of approving the minutes of the July 21st special Board of Ed meeting please signify by saying I I I all those opposed May extensions the eyes have it moving to August 4th special Board of Ed meeting can I have a motion to approve these minutes so moved thank you Amanda seconded by second thank you any discussion if not I'll try your minds all those in favor of approving these minutes please signify by saying I I I all those appros n any extensions the eyes have it great thank you moving to information and reports uh board me Communications and reports are there reports from other boards and [Music] organizations I just have one which is that we were asked to announce that um the welcoming World voices and West
221Hartford Film Festival will be occurring by Zoom this Sunday September 13th at 3 p.m. and you can watch it online through wh CV thank you to whct TV for that okay um non staff Communications and Report reports from student board representatives and Lily you can lead us off okay so I'll just start by introducing myself because I'm new um my name is l Sweeny I'm a senior at Hall I'm very excited to be my school's um representative on the board of education this year uh the school will be mully lots of changes and uncertainties but luckily our school is prepared and our student body is flexible um I personally have not been in school yet this year my first day is tomorrow but um I've heard the first few days have gone very well um
222with only half the student body in scool of time and the implementation of oneway hallways hallway traffic has been drastically reduced uh students are also encouraged to enter and exit the school from five different entryways and to maximize their free periods at the start and end of the day by coming to school late or leaving early uh it's probably my favorite part of this hybrid schedule is getting to sleep in every day um and there's also a new um B device policy students are now encouraged if they have um like a personal laptop or something like that to bring it to school uh we usually use Chromebook carts but obviously we want to minimize the use of those this year there are also new picnic tables in the courtyard where students can get fresh air
223during free periods um L crew provided nth graders with a virtual orientation two weeks ago and although it was very different from previous link cre events um it allowed new students and ninth graders to familiarize themselves with upper classman at Hall and get to know some of their peers and the nth graders were also were welcomed to tour the school last week in small groups uh right now all F sports are happening at some capacity but football's games are not happening right now obviously all of this is uh subject to change at some point uh typical practices are completed in small cohorts of 10 students or less rather than in full-size teams with minimized contact between players and the wearing of masks whenever possible this is an idea that athletes and coaches are being very
224flexible and want to make the out of the situation while still being safe um that's about it um but I just wanted to thank all of the teachers administrators uh custodians and staff for being super flexible and putting so much effort into this year I just want to speak for behalf of all the students and say that we really appreciate it and we just really want to make most out of this year too thank you I'll also start by introducing myself my name is relle valy and I'm a senor Conor high school and first off I would like to thank everyone for making this school year possible from the board members to our principles to our teachers to our staff we really as a student on behalf of the student body I really appreciate and
225the hard work and the dedication in this for what I'm sure was an extra busy summer preparing for the school year and making sure that it's safe for both the staff and the students um just like um just like um really I think what I also wanted to say is that I'm also in the blue c heart so my first two days have also been online as well so my first day in person will also be tomorrow but I would also like to just sort of Express that the feelings of our student um body is that I think we're all very excited to be back and aside from that I think there's also a level of gratitude that we have preo I think that normally normally there's this routine that you go to school you
226participate in activities outside of school sports and then you come home do your homework and there's this constant routine but once everything shut down in March that that routine was sort of lost and it was when at that moment that routine was lost where we started to appreciate the fact of going to school every single day and that's when we started to appreciate our interactions with our teachers in person and our collaboration that we had with our peers working on projects together and also things of that nature as well and so for these like sort of past 6 months where we didn't have that iners experience it was really at that moment where this excitement starts to come that like we can actually come in person and meet with our friends while also while also
227creating that safe sort of environment and really on behalf of that I think our entire sort of student body um also is very grateful to have this opport as well I'm grateful for the experiences that we had in our past and as a result um also a lot of what really said about what's happening at Hall is also really applies to Conor as well so I'm not going to like repeat all of those and also what I'll say is that my experience for the past for yesterday and today online has been very smooth and very seamless I think both on like the perspective of the teacher and as the perspective of the student in terms of the teachers I feel like my teachers were able to get through all the materials that they wanted to
228get through and that there was like yesterday and today there was like perfect attendance in all of my classes everyone was on time everyone had their cameras on and I think everyone was genuinely ready to be back ready to learn and I think this is really what makes this um it's what really makes this school year exciting to be back and to have a nice school year ahead of us and I think that's what we looking forward to and I'm really looking forward to my first day um in person tomorrow good luck to both of you thank you so much for those kind words as well and I think it's so important for us to hear your perspective and we're looking forward to hearing the perspective of all students um at all of our board
229meetings coming up which are as follows uh we have a meeting on Wednesday September 23rd right here in this room at 7:00 p.m. and then starting in October we switch back to our normal schedule which is first and third Tuesdays so it'll be Tuesday October 6th and Tuesday October 20th uh at 700 p.m. also likely to be here in this room but stay tuned for that are there any requests for future agenda items um Mark yeah um given the circumstances we find oursel into Winter's coming up fairly quickly and I'd like to talk about snow days at some point and how we manage those and how he can take advantage of this situation um for snow days uh because we always talk about the uh limits of uh starting and ending school and Heat and
230the stuff in the um uh the heat in the uh buildings and we talked about air conditioning this that and the other thing uh here's an opportunity to potentially at least have a discussion about it and that we could be on time every time on our schedule so yeah a group of us actually just brought that up with the commissioner so we may be getting more guidance within the next month about what we could do because we'd still need a waiver from the state for that um as far as the day which seems silly because it's being granted in one way so I assume it will be in other ways um so I appreciate BR that but I once I get that information I'll share with you too thanks great thank you any other requests
231for future agenda items okay um does not appear that we have any visitors uh who've red with us on the phone so no comments from visitors we do not have an executive session uh do you have a motion for adjournment motion uh LNA and seconded by Jason uh without objection the meeting is adjourned at 10:15 thank you very much everybody