001good evening and welcome to the final Board of Ed meeting for the year coming at the roll call please mrs. banks here dr. Greenberg here mr. Levin here mr. Park here MS Poland here dr. Thomas Parkinson here student representatives Gray Sanders here Marilyn Plissken here investors of danowitz I think it honor the last meeting can we have a simultaneous thank you we have no student participation this time but there is a revision to the agenda order meets with everybody's approval which is to have the equity and excellence update before the public communications I apologize but there are many people eager to do the presentation and we wanted to start with them so without any objections let's move directly to the excellence equity and excellence update as you know a few years ago we started capping
002the year with this presentation on our efforts for equity justice inclusion and what we've done over the course of the year because each year there's some new things that come up that are come that some schools do that some individual students do that some leaders do that really are examples not just in West Hartford for that school but for our other schools that end up copying some of these ideas that we've seen presented at the end of the year and also actually gain traction the state and these ideas of inclusion range run the gamut from the topics and I'm thinking of unified theater which was last Thursday and Friday night he's an example of inclusion kids coming together started here by a connor graduate it's a combination of Connor and Hall students together Makayla Connery
003started it and almost you know almost 20 years ago and now it is in actually 20 states the same program so just great success moving forward and that's what we're looking for with these kind of things so with that said Rosina thank you Tom you sold a little bit of my thunder but as you said each year we are pleased to bring to the board in the viewing public report and presentation that showcases the equity and excellence in the West Hartford Public Schools and as you know the district has been fully immersed in the cultural competence equity and diversity work and it remains an ongoing commitment and priority for all of us and aligned with our district in our board goals so it is so inspiring for me to bear witness to so much of
004the exciting and often bold and courageous work being done in our schools and I go home and talk about it every night and you know my husband and son tell me you're repeating yourself again so I'm excited to have this platform in this forum so that you can hear from our front line change agents yourself and the incredible courageous work they're doing so tonight you will hear three short presentations from whiting Lane will code in Hall High School students staff and parents that reflect our commitment to building our cultural competence and engaging a wide range of stakeholders in the ongoing work now as a matter of general logistics some of our speakers and their families have conflicting commitments so after each presentation we'll leave we'll open the floor for your questions and your comments so
005that anyone who needs to leave after they're after they present and respond can do so and we have created a PowerPoint presentation as a visual enhancement but we really want the voices the experiences and the reflections of our presenters to resonate with you most so the first group here at the table with me our presenters from whiting Lane principal Karen cook ish has taken the podium just to briefly introduce this team and frame how students staff and parents have worked collaboratively to promote dialogue and will show justice inequity thank you good evening I am so proud to be here with you this evening I'm proud to be a part of a district that puts so much energy and so much focus into raising awareness in terms of cultural competence and equity diversity and inclusiveness for
006all I feel very blessed to be a part of the Whiting Lane community specifically where I learned something new each and every day where we practice what we preach and we work so closely together students families and faculty members to do our very best to teach our children how to be better human beings how to be more aware more accepting of differences how to be good citizens and most importantly how to be good people we are so proud to be a part I'm so proud to be a part of this incredible team before you tonight who will share the background and the highlights of our efforts that we've taken in terms of racial justice training for this school year including sessions for fourth and fifth grade students and their families and a separate professional development
007training which was held for all staff members which was very well received I am honored to introduce to you miss Carrie Niswander whiting Lane parents and racial justice trainer and presenter someone whom I deeply admire and respect mr. Chris Haddad whiting Lane parents and PTO co-president who has a great enthusiasm and insight and has been instrumental in terms of organizing our efforts for this year and last but not least our two fifth-grade students who attended the training and who are excellent role models who embody all of the character traits that we are trying to instill in our young people today gianni de wander and Miss Mary Haddad so with that I turn it over to the team okay my name is Carrie as Karen said and I'm delighted to be here with you this evening
008and I want to start by doing something a little bit different for a minute I want to ask that you pretend that we are all farmers so we have these plots that we are in charge of cultivating and we need to grow food in order to feed our families in order to feed our children in order to feed our community so what are you growing so think about it a minute what would you grow on your farm and tell me one one fruit one vegetable what would you grow on your farm tomatoes potatoes potatoes corn corn apples apples wonderful okay so we've got some Tomatoes potatoes corn and apples and and as a farmer you want to grow a lot of that food you want to be sure no one is hungry you want to
009be sure that you can store some food away for leaner times and you learn that there's a fertilizer it's a fertilizer that's going to help you grow lots and lots of food and it's going to help your farm produce an abundance and so you decide you're gonna use this fertilizer now over time you realize that this fertilizer is filled with toxins but you keep on using it because it helps you to grow lots of potatoes and tomatoes and corn and apples and so despite those toxins your children start using that fertilizer too and then their children start using it and pretty soon that fertilizer has been used for 300 years 300 years that fertilizer with those toxins with that poison is in the ground and after 300 years of using these chemicals using this fertilizer
010what is the soil like the soil is contaminated it's depleted and it's toxic and what is the groundwater like that runs through that earth it is contaminated it is depleted it is toxic because the poison has leaked into the water and to the food and into everything the poison is everywhere and so finally the government realizes that this particular fertilizer is filled with toxins that harm the water the soil and all things that are growing and so they ban its use and now for almost 50 years we have had laws that prevent the use of that fertilizer after 300 years of poisoning our water our land and our food we've had 50 years where it has been illegal to use that fertilizer and so now what is the soil like after 300 years of poisoning
011it than just 50 years without that poison is it better is it still contaminated absolutely so it's still polluted it's still toxic and the groundwater that runs through it is still contaminated it's still dangerous to drink the poison is real and it is still in the soil of our society and as you have probably guessed that toxin that poison is racism and it is pervasive in our world it is in the soil it is in the water and it is deeply rooted in our land and in our institutions and so until we can see these connections the reality that racism is in our water in ourselves in our schools then we cannot effectively fight racism the training is based on the principle that we have to unmask racism in order to dismantle it and so
012this is the illustration that we use to begin the trainings and I want to go backwards quickly to talk about how that training came to be so when my oldest son was in fourth grade he did the Connecticut history project and as parents we were invited to come in and to see all of the students present important people from the three of Connecticut and as my husband went around from presentation to presentation from student to student we saw that every single important person from the history of Connecticut who was portrayed was wiped every single one the students were learning that the only people who mattered in the history of Connecticut were white and this is teaching white supremacy its unintentionally doing this but it is part of the racism that is in our institutions that
013poison that runs through our society and so we spoke to the teacher who said that there were just no resources written at a fourth-grade level on people of color in the history of Connecticut and so then we met again with her and then with the school curriculum specialist and the district curriculum specialists and they were very responsive they were not defensive they agreed that this was a problem and so we talked more about ideas to address it and gathered up 12 people who were historians writers and teachers and together we created fourth grade resources on people of color in the history of Connecticut we wrote them ourselves and wrote them at a fourth-grade level they were used as a pilot that next year and then the following year they were used district-wide so that students
014could learn about people of color in the history of Connecticut no longer learning that the only ones who mattered were white so in conversations about this project as it was going forward we thought it would be exciting and important to train the students and the parents and the teachers so that they too can be involved in unmasking and dismantling racism because the fourth-grade history project is just one example and so training the schools and the people in the schools to unmask and dismantle racism can help us address every instance where racism poisons our schools so we did a kids training fourth and fifth graders and with their parents and with the kids training we used the farming analogy we did it much more interactive than I did with you they had to give me many
015more answers than you did but we did the farming analogy with the children so that they could understand that from that analogy level and then we discussed what racism means and used a simple definition with the kids then we discussed racism in our history and racism now and we talked about overt racism and covert racism the kind you have to look for the kind you have to unmask and we watched a video with them called the bike thief and the bike thief it presented a young black man who looked like he was stealing a bike and a young white man who looked like he was stealing a bike and the kid saw the difference and how those two individuals were treated which very visibly demonstrated the racism in our society and then we spent some
016time with the kids talking about how we can unmask it how we can dismantle it how we can get rid of that poison that is in our soil and I asked the kids if they can do this and they resoundingly said yes yes we can and so it was really exciting to be in that context and we ended it with with these quotes from Martin Luther King jr. and an African proverb about doing this work together and finally encouraging them that they truly can become agents of change in their schools so then after that we did the teacher training and the teacher training we did a more in-depth definition of racism and racism in our society we used images like this one and then the next one as well to show the racism that is
017very visibly still real and then we talked more specifically about the classroom context we talked about intent versus impact when you are a teacher we talked about microaggressions in the classroom and this slide just lists a few of those microaggressions in the classroom that website has even more and we handed out all of them to the teachers and then we talked about racism and white supremacy and homework stories and tests and even offered them a sample quiz to take and to look at these questions and see the implicit bias that is within these questions and talked through each one of these questions as well and so finally we talked about strategies for challenging in the status quo strategies for discussing racism in class and for reworking problematic materials for example the fourth question in here
018was a real question and we talked about how the teacher actually reworked it to be about a living wage and fair wages for farmworkers so we can rework these materials afterwards I know that students and teachers were talking about racism in their classrooms and new ways cuz I teachers talking to me about that I had a teacher contact me about different approaches to curriculum materials within a couple days of the teacher training and I know that students and teachers were talking about how to unmask and dismantle racism so we can be healthy and get rid of this poison that is in our soil so thank you for your time and Chris is gonna talk a little bit now thank you for having us here tonight again my name is Chris Haddad I'm the co-president of
019the PTA waiting Lane school and I think I'd like to preface my brief comments with the thought first about why we decided to make it a priority in our school to provide an opportunity for the students and their parents receive this racial justice training that carrie has described if you look around our country whether you're looking at Washington DC and the void of leadership on issues related to racial justice or to Charlottesville for examples of frightening efforts to turn back the clock on what progress we have made or to the multitude of news stories in our cities around the country highlighting the failure of law enforcement to be colorblind or even more recently the abandonment of Puerto Rico as a latest example of deep-seated institutional bias and these are just a few examples of many
020one might conclude that we're too late but as I sit next to my youngest of three who is a fifth grader at wedding lane I also think back to the first days of kindergarten watching all of the students interact in the most wonderful way generally oblivious to the things like skin color and I realized that our greatest hope in making an impact with respect to things like racial justice is by working with our children before much of the darker spirits working in our world have rubbed off on them or to use carries analogy before the poison in our soil has had too much time to soak into the roots so as a parent and as a PTO leader it was very important for us to provide this opportunity for learning and dialogue and I know
021I echo all of the other parents who attended the training with me that it was an eye-opening experience for us as parents and for our kids for me I think one of the most important takeaways was this none of us are immune to the impact of living in a culture where racial and justice is in the water in the soil built into our institutions all around us and the first and perhaps most important step in combating this impact is awareness and it's having our eyes open a bit a bit more as to the nature and extent to which these kinsman's to which the conditions which allow injustice to thrive all around us all the time and that is decidedly not the environment in which I want to raise my children so it's important that we
022do it here with our kids in the schools where there is the greatest hope of making the impact we need that we address issues of racial justice it's equally important that we do it now there are too many ugly voices of injustice and hatred that have seized some of the most powerful bully pulpits and we need to push back by telling a different story and reinforcing the right priorities of love of equality and racial justice and the program such as the one you've just heard about tonight are so important not just because they reinforce the right message but also because they provide the right vocabulary to understand the issues at a deeper level and they provide the tools to help promote a competence in the kids to address these issues as they encounter them in
023their lives in an effective manner and providing that education is as important if not more than anything else that we teach our kids so to the greatest degree possible I'm encouraging the board to support program like programs like caries in all our schools so we can continue that work of nurturing those values that are critical to a healthy community that I know we all want to see continue to grow in West Hartford and beyond and you know one of my favorite quotes and I can't it's an old old Chinese proverb the best time to plant the trees 20 years ago the second best time is now we it would be great if we had done this a long time ago but we are where we are and I would just urge that that board can't
024it they think about continuing to promote these cyclic programs because they are urgently needed and I have the privilege of turning this over to my daughter Mary I'm Mary a dad and I'm a fifth grader at wittingly our school had a racial justice night and I went with my dad at first I didn't really know what to expect but I learned a lot it's unfair to treat people of color differently racism is shown all around the world even though it should have been eliminated a long time ago it's not it's not fair that just because you have a different skin color you should get pushed around or bullied or even ignored at the racial justice night there was an awesome analogy that mrs. Niswander already mentioned about a farmer accidentally planting poisoned soil in this
025garden I really thought about this after the event and what every part of the story represents it's a little different than what Miss Niswander said it's kind of my viewpoint but the plans are the people of color and the soil is the white people surrounding them the farmer planting the poisoned soil is kind of like the first person the creator of the chaos and the soil represents the more people bullying and the plants die after a while of sitting and growing in that poisoned slate I think we could all learn from what we see and even what we do because a lot of the time even when we don't realize it we're being racist and we've all done it once or twice even if we don't want to admit it to ourselves if we do
026admit it to ourselves what we will do or what we did do or what we can do better then we can all change that little bit of racism in our life even if it's not you step in if you see someone getting bullied because of their race or if it's Dave call it trusted adult or even the police we can spread the world deliver the message however you want to think of it but if you do change and help others change then you're helping the earth and all the people who are different on the planet just one word at a time thank you and now it's Johnny hi my name is Johnny and I'm in the fifth grade racism has been a part of our country for a long time and is still part of
027our nation in the training how it's a bike beep video I saw how a white boy is trusted while black boy was not this made me think that some people believe that white people are more trustworthy than black people it also made me think that there are people who just want to get black people in trouble to prove that white people are better I've experiences in my life some children not play with me because I look different than them they says because of the color of my skin I believe racism is real and we have to do something about it I believe a very important part in making a difference is educating people about racism they can take action by protesting going to rallies and pointing out when things are racist being aware of racism
028and noticing it in ourselves - we all have pieces of racism in ourselves sometimes without even knowing it so we have to change it in ourselves if we all work together on these things we can fight against racism and make the world better for me and everyone else thank you thank you Kerri Chris Mary and Johnny last month you heard a presentation by dr. moral principles Danza tune and Giulio - we're talking about our discipline data and you know we said that we're really taking steps there were some things that we really need to address and examine more carefully and closely this we're not this is an example of how we are not just hoping for change but we're actually taking steps to make change and some of it is uncomfortable but it is necessary
029so you know I want to thank our true collaborators for this work and for being so courageous and and open to the work as well and we'll open the floor for questions sir comments from you thank you so much questions comments thank you for the presentation is wonderful and I really appreciate everything that you looked at especially the analogy the other piece that resonated with me is not only holding ourselves accountable but also checking others whether it's a good friend or a family member or even a colleague because sometimes we take for granted or we say things on the flip and we don't realize the type of impact that that can make on somebody else and not only that but if it's a child or teen or what-have-you they hold on to that until they
030become an adult and then it comes out in other forms so I just really wanna thank you you know as a board member and as a parent that you're really looking at this issue and you're really taking it seriously I have a couple of questions the first question is in terms of the training is the training district wide or will it be district wide instead of you know the three schools that you've done it and do you plan to do it and all the other schools as well in the district so one of the things that the equity and diversity Council does is we vet our community partners people who reached out to us all the time and want to support our work but we have to make sure that we're it's aligned with our
031mission our vision our goals and the work that we've already been doing with cultural competence and what we want where we want to go so we had this fortunate opportunity as Carrie described to work together on curriculum you know and it wasn't because there was a blind spot it was just there was a lack of resources even in the Connecticut Historical Society that collaboration led for let open the door for more communication and talk about our work what we're doing and maybe piloting it at one school and so we have had such favorable response that we have other schools that have been calling and asking how can we bring this to our schools so we're looking to expand the work and sustainment at least have the conversations open dialogue um to it so you know
032it really is looking at the fit and the timing and our readiness to I may be doing a little push to be ready and the second question I had just on the material that you provided us with in terms of the training when you do extend the training will the training be extended to all of the staff and the faculty in our school so in other words not just the teachers and the administration but entire office staff and some of the other staff as well that is something we can certainly look at we have a few models that we've used them worked really well you may remember the year we had Calvin Terrell and we had something for our students for the secondary students for our teachers for community members board members Town Council and
033then for our parents and so we want to make sure that we don't leave anybody hat behind and so we're thoughtful about that as well if I could jump in with that it's important that that this things aren't compliance tasks like this you know I mean that buildings communities this is these are parent groups that are really the partnership which is I mean one of the great parts of this is the partnership with parents and the school that we keep talking about that that's what we need to have and so we're doing cultural competency training throughout the district and I am I almost don't want to use the term training because it's really what comes out of our conversations and where are we at a building and where are we as a staff because we're
034all in a little bit different places that you know as you know we're not cookie cutter schools so your the question about okay what about office staffs what about bus what about security all those pieces are exactly the kind of things that we're talking about that we identify what are those issues that seem to be common and where are we at and it's also part of the welcoming environments that's clearly going to be a focus as we move forward continuing next year which has been but we'll continue to talk about I just want to add one more thing that for the past two years we have provided training to our Paras our office staff on cultural competence on a variety of topics on cultural competence 101-102 LGBT matters and just looking at even supporting students
035with the curriculum through that equity lens so we have expanded those efforts I also echo the appreciation for what all of you are doing thank you so much for taking this on and whether it be 20 years later or whatever the case may be it certainly is a subject that needs to be addressed so hats off to you and a special hats off to you young people so proud of you wonderful presentation and thank you so much for taking on a subject matter that some adults don't want to take on so I commend you and I encourage for you to keep doing what you're doing and I'm a mommy and I have daughters and unfortunately I have experienced my daughter's being told by other students that they don't want to play with them because of
036their skin color and in those moments it's important for you to know that you are a good person for who you are and just because other people may have negative thoughts does not mean that you are a negative person so continue to do what you're doing we're all so proud of you [Applause] thank you I also of course want to commend you and commend you in particular on talking about all the different aspects of it if we don't challenge the curriculum teachers aren't gonna be aware of the ways in which they do these things sometimes inadvertently if we don't talk to parents we're gonna have home lives that are not necessarily going to reinforce these messages and if we don't talk to kids then you don't learn how to stick up for yourselves and how
037to stick up for each other and how to really build a new community in the future so I think that that's great and thank you all I just had one quick question which was about the participation rate I know it's an evening and so that's often hard for families to get out was there a good turnout for this sort of this sort of event you know I think initially we were going to limit it because of the nature of the conversation but we chose to open it up there was a good I don't remember exactly there were yeah so I was in say 40 to 50 people in attendance which we were very happy with and and not only were they present but people were very active in the conversation so we thought I think
038we were very pleased with the way that evening that's great and I think having 20 or so students is really important because you guys can help each other teach other kids as it goes so Bravo to all of you thank you so much for the presentation it was really wonderful [Applause] next I would like to invite my colleagues from what kind of elementary school to the table joining me tonight are Scott Dunn and principal Scott Dunn and library media specialist Sarah Lynch we certainly don't need research to tell us that students thrive when they see reflections of themselves in the context of teaching and learning and further that all students can develop a greater appreciation and respect for diversity when they are exposed to people and and cultures around the world so Vulcan elementary school
039wanted to inspire students not only to read more but to see and learn more about the diverse world around them through literature and visual arts so I will turn the microphone over to my colleague Scott and Sarah good evening thank you so much for inviting Sarah and I on behalf of woke at school we're thrilled to talk to you about the opportunity to share what our school community has been doing this year committed to how we foster respect for cultural diversity for inclusion for awareness and you know our district mission we all know is to prepare students to realize their full potential and to enhance our global community but that global community really starts at the local school community level and when we talk about one of our district goals about nurturing you know that
040social emotional well-being you know we at Wolcott we've been really talking about what does that mean to have a self and respectful learning environment and hopefully tonight we'll briefly be able to show you what we've been doing this year to create that nurturing community because I frequently say that Wolcott really is truly representative of West Hartford and not only what start for but also the world so Sarah is gonna start us off tonight sure sorry I just want to apologize in advance if I'm stuffing I'm dealing with allergies situation here so hopefully I'm okay don't have any coughing fits thank you so much for having me tonight I just wanted to give you a little history I've been purchasing diverse titles since I started at Wolcott as the librarian and when I first started I
041got to know my collection and started looking over what types of titles we had and I found that many books about the african-american experience were about civil rights in slavery and they were not contemporary titles and then I looked at things a lot of other groups including Native people in literature and the picture was and is much worse it was like they didn't exist many of the books even still today I find speak about Native people in the past tense they it's not like they even are around anymore which we obviously know they are but if our students aren't aware of that that's a problem so we wanted to expand upon the idea of diversity through the literature in the library murals that we have in our school as well as events that have taken
042place in the library and the school so I felt that it was important to change this so I've been working diligently to diversify our collection there's a movement actually you can see on the sorry on the slide here called we need diverse books and I have had all these great books and then I realized kids are checking them out they I had great student responses they would say this book looks like me this book looks like my family and really really excited but I noticed that we started looking at the titles and our curriculum and it's back to what where they were just speaking about it the first presentation which was we needed to look at our curriculum and make sure that that was reflective of our not only our towns population but this global
043society so I hosted a book tasting and these are some just a few of the titles that we had Scott was kind enough to give me time at a faculty meeting so staff really had a time to sit down look through preview the books take notes on what might be a good title for them to add to their classroom collection what they could use as a read aloud I always try to suggest the teachers when they come in as well into the library and they might ask for a certain group of titles I will say here are some great new titles that still meet your curricular needs but feature a more diverse group of care and I just wanted to point out that it's not just me that's doing this you can go through sorry
044a couple of others there sorry it's not just the books but the other piece of it is our author visits that we have so we've had authors and illustrators and when we've had those these are just some photos of some of our author and illustrator visits which two of you Rob and Dave were able to come to one of ours this year thank you for coming to that and we when we've hosted those we've had authors of yeah you can see yourself in the photo so we've had authors like I said of mixed-race children of immigrants we hosted author Graceland and her parents both emigrated from Taiwan and on that day we hosted her a couple years ago but one of the students came to me and said mrs. Lynch I didn't know that authors
045could be Asian like me I didn't know I didn't know that and she was shocked and she kind of hung around a little bit like a groupie that day and got to talk to her a little bit so it was a really great experience in connection for her and sorry if you can go back just one the author here who visited this year he spoke about Alex London both of these have visited this year but Alex London spoke about another piece of diversity which is not just the racial diversity but he spoke about getting in trouble and being sent to the principal's office multiple times he spoke about hating to read that was his big secret he told the students he hated to read it until fifth grade and you should have seen the looks
046on their faces wait a second he's and he's like me I had students come up to me afterwards and say oh that's like me I can still I'm not a bad kid right he made wrong choices but turned it around so that was a great other piece of diversity they like to highlight as well and then the murals Scott is going to talk about the murals a little more but I did want to say just one last thing um that I as well as other librarians in the district have been working with Ashley Callen which is the town wide curriculum specialist for literacy and social studies and a big focus has been the past couple of years to select titles for our ela units and social studies units that reflect and honor the lives of
047as many different groups of people as possible and I just wanted to give a special shout out to all the other librarians that without their help in this it's really been a group effort that's been a huge change Rosina can attest to that that we have sorted to change things within the curriculum as far as the titles that we're using and that is district-wide okay so when I had transition to walk it part of that was a transition plan where I wanted to meet one-on-one with all the adult members of our woke-up community so that was 83 people in total and over the summer having conversations some short some longer and really hearing about walk at school what made it so special and all 83 every single one of them talked about the vibrancy of
048our school community with a tremendous sense of pride and so that kind of led me for a few weeks into some reflection on how do we embrace that and how do we build upon that for something that is clearly so felt by all the adult members of this school and as I was walking down the hallways one day we just had bare creamed walls and then the murals idea came to light and so I partnered with Sarah and obviously her dedication to diversity in the in literacy and text is well known tonight but we work together and asked all of our adult members of the local community to choose their favorite children's character from literature so you can imagine we had 83 probably a few fewer because we had multiple of the same but it
049was surprising or perhaps not as surprising to Sarah when I came and talked to her I'm like let's talk about this was just the lack of diversity and some of those characters and yet Sarah had built such a vibrant collection within the library from students from which to choose so that's when we partnered and show some of those great books to really increase the circulation of those books already that Sarah had been doing and that brought us to some of these that you see year last house last stop on Market Street the Graceland books let's see if there's another one - right here yeah and then the next one yep there we go and that's that's where the mountain meets the moon so all of these you know we're wonderful because they were visual representations
050of what was in the library that sarah already had done so that really turned into you know like I said an increased circulation but what we've noticed a lot this year with kids is not only an increase in the circulation of those textile library but it's seeing students either identify characters in the hallway or to be honest see themselves in some of those we have multiple conversations about that as adults in terms of students either alone or together looking at these and either embracing you know their heritage or wanting to know more about somebody else's you know these murals truly are you know windows and and mirrors relative to you know their lives and their experiences not just the characters in the books that they're reading so that those murals really allowed us to really
051broaden the definition of diversity and in an effort to raise awareness and promote appreciation so not solely about race but also lifestyle gender social model of disability so this has been a wonderful jump start for us I woke it to get people excited about really that vibrant community that we were talking about and then you saw there's some quotes from students you know it's obviously been a huge source of engagement so I'm thrilled for the work that we've started and for students really get excited about seeing themselves and seeing others and wanting to know more about others so thank you for having us Sarah wants to say one right thing sorry I forgot to say thank you to all of you because I wanted to say thank you to the Board of Ed for supporting
052our schools and allowing me and others to do such an important work that supports our students ultimately right because it's not about me it's about how well I can support them and I couldn't do that without your help and here's me jumping in again all of those murals and if we welcome you to come to work and I know some of you haven't have seen it's quite impressive and it spans quite a large area of our school but that was completely funded by our generous pto some of our here tonight one of our PTO presidents but also the West Hartford foundation so that would not have occurred without those two organizations so we hope that you feel inspired to go take a visit reach out to Sara and to Scott visit and see the murals
053for yourself they are so incredible it really enhances what's already a vibrant school community and the inspiration for students to want to read more to talk about literature I heard students talking about Harry Potter today and the girl the boy said did you read the book and the girl said oh I watched a movie he said that's not good enough so we invite you to to visit and we'll open the floor for any questions or comments from you thank you well thank you Scott you you got me on one of the questions I was gonna ask where did the funding come from so that's great both the foundation for West Arbor Public Schools and the PTO were able to team together on that that's wonderful because this this time you know as members of the
054board when we're talking about the budget we don't get into such minutiae is the wrong word we don't get that far down into it so it's great to know though that that although we're not able to particularly support something like this there are avenues to help that out that's wonderful and in Rosina I want to just point out I'm aware that what we've had a couple of schools as examples I know I had a chance to visit Duffy on a night where they introduced some similar books and and one of the books that Scott mentioned again was last stop on Market Street and and and they talked about all the diverse characters on the bus and for me one of the one that struck me you know you see the different colors of skin and
055stuff like that but there was a guy with tattoos you know he and and me growing up as a kid I only know one person with the tattoo that was my grandfather you know and so anybody with tattoo might be a little scary for me but this book kinda says you know this guy was actually pretty nice on the bus and so it's neat and then at the end of the night we all got a copy the book to take home and my wife stole it for her classroom so I said but thank you all for the efforts you're doing in all the different schools thank you thank you thank you all so much I'm gonna follow up as you all did as where else oops I just want to piggyback on Dave's point to
056just say what of course you know but just to to point out to the audience that while it is so important for students to be able to see themselves in these examples and in and in the curriculum as well it's also so important for white students to see that for male students to see the girls can be engineers for white students to see that african-americans can be right that all that that diversity is not just feel good for individuals who are those groups but that in fact everybody learns that everybody can do anything so thank you for both those those perspectives last oh I'm sorry I just Dave said we don't really get into the minutia and the word are the details but you know sometimes we do and you know we have a painting
057budget that we have to pay someone to paint it white where we could just go with this in all the schools and save some money there we go right there is a way to segue that in right we can implement this in all the schools again thank you for that question for me and I just got to know that you just arrived so I guess the question is for both of you have you seen in the short period of time that you've began to look at the books and change them around to reflect a lot of the students have you seen any differences in the students behavior overall towards each other being a little more inclusive to other students who kind of you know are usually a little more isolated or you know standoffish or
058what have you definitely because I incorporate it into lessons so for instance we do talk about things like is this a girl book or is this a boy this or trade or whatever career right and I actually had students just the other day talking and I heard someone say well girl can only do this and someone said but we read a book about that remember and they actually spoke about that we also had there's a title it's called Trombone Shorty it won the Coretta Scott King award a couple of years ago and I read that with all 2nd graders when we intro unit about famous Americans he's an african-american trombone player from New Orleans grammy-nominated amazing musician if you ever get a chance go see him live uh-huh and the students and that's one thing
059we talk about is he grew up poor and they asked well so how did he do it he found a trombone literally that someone else was throwing away and I've had other kids say oh I can do that he's like me he's growing up like I do and they do see themselves and see it's a your painting a map that is not that shows greater possibilities than they may even know at this point but when they see it in a book it's to me and also for them I've definitely heard and seen changes and behavior for that does that kind of answer ok and for me like you had said you know this is my first year so don't have much of a historical perspective but if I compare it to the other districts that
060I've been in in my 25 years I'd have to say I've never been in a building where students really think of use their their words and their actions relative to how they treat each other and their differences so I'm very impressed and I'm very excited and I think that goes to a lot of our PBIS work a lot of the work that Sara and the general ed teachers do to partner to really foster that acceptance and appreciation you got me thinking when you said oh girl can't do that I think it was two years ago I'm a little league world series fan and there was a african-american woman and they said throw like a girl and what that really meant was like rolled the best baseball you could ever throw could she was incredible and
061I think the Little League came out with something and I don't know if it's a book or video or something but it was it was pretty inspiring because you know throw like a girl didn't mean you know it really meant like wow this girl is awesome and I think that was the title of it but it might be Monet Davis was yeah she was incredible and and I think they actually made like a video or a book about it it's pretty incredible and I just when you said I thought of that we do have a book that's called throw like a girl yeah so once again thank you and please thank you so last but not least I'd like to welcome our guest presenters from Hall High School to the table and assistant principal Shelly
062Solomon will introduce the high school presentations in presentation and guest speakers briefly from the podium while they're getting set up yesterday Tom Moore and I met with several graduating seniors at both high schools as we do every year and they reflected on their favorite grade levels and their most tricky grade levels if they gave us really useful information that made us think differently but they also made us very proud of them and of our district and we know that high schoolers are very busy and this is a very busy time for you right so we appreciate that they're taking their time out to be here tonight with everything else that they have to balance but for this group of leaders they thought it was really really important to have their voices be heard and in
063a way that would foster growth for our teachers and help them to be more culturally responsive in their practice and so recently during their their early release Wednesday they led an engaged adults in professional learning and I'll let miss Solomon in our speaker's talk a little bit more about that thank you good evening and thank you for having us here tonight to provide you with a glimpse of our work around building our cultural competency at Hall we are indeed all of us on a journey to ensure that all of our students feel safe secure and valued and that as a faculty we are providing students a learning environment that is culture responsive and inclusive to that end this is our second in a series of start led CS is where we because we believe strongly
064that stupid voice is an essential component in our work to increase our cultural competency and so what all most recent si si this year and I April 18th world world a pair of students representing our students of color our ESL students in their LGBTQIA community members of each of these groups were asked to respond to specific questions that served as guiding questions for the panel discussions that each group had with the faculty in addition we created powerpoints for the staff that incorporated the student responses included instructional strategies that can be used in the classroom at lacers for resources excuse me for each of the group's the guiding questions that the students responded to were one do you feel that you are a welcoming order of our community why or why not do you feel that
065being a student of color an esau student or a member of the LGBTQIA community has played to world and your experiences at hall please explain and has your identity affected you in positive and or negative ways at school please explain what do you want your teachers to all about you as an individual in the last question what do you need for your teachers to be successful as a learner it is now my honor to introduce you to three of our panelists who will share with you some of the salient points that they shared with the faculty while Marco Leo is here representing the ESOL students Jase Hamilton is here representing our students of color and Charlie turns ouack is representing our LGBTQIA community hi everyone my name is Jase Hamilton and I'm a sophomore at
066Hall and tonight as Miss Alden said I'll be representing the students of color at ha so a lot of kids might be sports kids and music kids but personally I've always been a social justice kind of kid for as long as I could remember and I were also experiencing racism since maybe the first grade is when it really hit me how it impacted me as a kid at my school which was predominantly white and I went to Morley so recently there was an incident in one of my English classes because we have an assignment where someone brings in an article that has to do with the lens that we have in the English class which could be class or race or gender and we had been doing race so during the assignment someone brought in
067an article and a lot of racially charged comments were made and I felt extremely disrespected so I took myself away from the situation and I went to my counselor and I explained the situation and my teacher who had not known what would happen she felt so terrible and she helped me go to administration and I talked to assignment about it and we come up with a solution which was a presentation for the faculty so I created this PowerPoint for the faculty and I actually have it with me and it we presented it at the last CSI along with a student-led panel of other students a race of different races and I think that it made me realize how most of our teachers are so unaware of how big a problem that racism is in our
068school even though racism is obviously a problem but it's kind of sometimes might be like swept under the rug or seen as kind of a taboo or controversial topic to talk about in classrooms which made me more upset because even though it may be uncomfortable to talk about I still believe that it needs to be talked about so one of the questions that we were asked is essentially what do you want you to know about you as an individual and I have some student quotes which one of them said don't be afraid to speak about it it's not taboo and it's okay to ask questions another said I want my teachers to know that I am just as capable as everyone else and those two quotes really spoke to me because even though it doesn't
069say the name of the students a lot of our students we spoke about it as a group and they all agreed that this is how they all felt and that really resonated with me and personally I wanted my teachers to know that all of the especially all the students that were on the student panel and a lot of my other peers at my school that are of different races would be so happy to help teachers educate our peers on how race impacts us or how race is seen through our perspective so that they can further understand it thank you hi representatives of the West Hartford Board of Education my name is Charlie Townsend and I'm a junior at Hall high today I'm gonna be speaking about the climate of the LGBT community in Hall high
070school and how we handle issues of homophobia and transphobia of course it's no secret that these have been rampant since far before I was high school age but recently discussions of LGBT rights in the news for example the Supreme Court case about the gay couple and their wedding cake have brought a lot of discussion of LGBT events specifically to Hall High so this has propelled lots of activism among myself and other students with the administration who I believe generally want to help us so through raising our voices we've done things such as gotten gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students a hall high school succeeded in changing the National Link Crew application to have a non-binary option and link who is an organization of which I'm a member and it's formed of upperclassmen who guide freshman and
071new incoming students so that's a really big deal and we've held workshops and panels like Jason said educating faculty about certain issues because I truly think that we do want to help we're also working on other things such as ensuring that in the new science building that's built we have gender-neutral facilities for trans students who want to use them then and creating an environment where Hall high school LGBT students feel safer general as an openly non-binary openly lesbian student I think that many of my teachers are understanding and respectful and still more of them want to be able to help me and support me throughout um being a student but don't quite know how I think I feel welcome in theory because Shelley Solomon and other administrators have told me that they want to help
072the LGBT community but I also still face problems of harassment with other students so I was asked what I would like to tell what I would like faculty and teachers a hall hi to know and so here are some things the number one thing I said was to be sure to always use the name that we specify in class I changed my name legally to Charlie and I'm very thrilled that no one remembers my previous name honestly but my peers generally get their names used and that's very good not that doesn't happen at most schools so that's something that weps does very well on teachers are in a position of leadership and they're role models for everyone so if a teacher miss genders me or calls me the wrong gender in class then my peers
073are gonna do it as well and many of my teachers try and make mistakes and that's always better than just making the mistake I would say so it's very important that they practice pronouns for example I use they/them and so teachers over the year always get better I using them for me and that shows me that I'm respected at all high frig's and sometimes teachers call me he by mistake or they call me she and they always correct themselves the teachers that I have better relationships with and that is something that I think Hall height is very well the other couple of things that I want to say are for example a lot of efforts to include current of as a topic of discussion in class can often if it's about LGBT topics it often
074turns the class into the classroom into a place of debate on the humanity of LGBT people unintentionally and so they also assume that nobody in the class is LGBT which can put people like me feel on the spot and make us feel kind of pressured to stick up for our community when other people are saying like oh well why should they be able to get married or oh why should they have civil rights and so a lot of teachers like Jay said don't intend this but it happens and so in cases like this I want our teachers to know that it's always best to kind of stick up for us and kind of keep the conversation on track in history classes for example I think that there are fit a lot of opportunities to include
075LGBT curriculum that have not been used something that I liked that a teacher did last year was we were learning about President Roosevelt and she mentioned that he had affairs with other women because it was relevant to the class and then she's like oh Eleanor Roosevelt also had affairs with women and I was like oh that's like such an easy way to acknowledge that LGBT people have always existed even though what having affairs is bad there was also an a recent class that I took we were discussing the Red Scare and I'm like oh this is a perfect opportunity we could be talking about the lavender scare which is a form of the communists scare that happened specifically to LGBT people before that so there are always opportunities um to bring up LGBT history because
076we've always existed and I'd love for my teachers to take more advantage of that yeah the last thing I want to say is that I really appreciate when my teachers take the time to call us students that use hate language and slurs especially in the hallways or even when like a teachers not on duty if they still hear something in the report it because lots of my friends and I have reported certain people for safer using hate speech in the hallway and for harassing other people and it doesn't always sometimes it's hard to give these people consequences and they can get away with a slap on the wrist but if a teacher hears it as well and helps me out then it's very helpful towards making sure that we have a safe environment and that
077not and that people don't use hate speech so thank you so much for listening to what I had to say and I really appreciate my allies on the high haul high school staff who stick up for the LGBT community and strive for an environment that is safer and more accepting and inclusive especially in June during Pride Month so thank you hi my name is Omar Khalil I'm a junior at Oh high school I came to Hall High School this years after being in Harford school for 1 years I'm a refugee from Syria but I spent four years in Jordan before I came to this country I love being at Hall because the learning burgum is more useful than when I wasn't the learning program isn't in how high school more useful than when I was
078in Hartford public high school I love living in how in West Hartford because there's so much to do I have learned so many things since I came West Hartford I like being a member of the panel of T for teacher and helping the teacher understand about year so student weeks learned that ESO students are unique and that we come we came to this country to for different reason some refugee like me some our immigrants come in to come in to be with family for better life and some because their parents have have work opportunities in this country and that some of us have had more educational opportunities that said I can tell you that ESL students all feel welcome at Hall high school but sometimes we feel bad that we cannot always birthweight in class
079because we don't know the language and things move too fast we told the teacher that we have want them to know to help us be successful some of the things some of the things that we told the teacher that we need them to do is one be patient and we are trying to slow down so we can understand what you say three explaining the indifferent world not just repeat what you have already had what you have already said four understand that we don't feel comfortable with the presentation or that we when when you say work with a partner and don't and we don't have one we feel lumbers thank you so you know it's hard enough as lord I said for adults to have these conversations but our youngsters are teenagers they show that they
080have the moral courage and they've got the intestinal fortitude to speak up and they've been great models for us we hear them recognize the adults as mentors and and sources of empowerment but you know they find that this is so important and we say that there's an art and science and education to teaching and I think that just listening and hearing students voices and understanding their experiences it's just a real simple thing that we can do it really doesn't cost anything just ask and just listen so I want to applaud them for being here tonight and for speaking up and for the courageous work that they have been doing with the with the teachers we wanted to we're trying to figure out a respectful way to present this because this is part a longer presentation
081and so what we've done was we have taken excerpts from their presentations just the cover screen of their slide of their presentations but the extensive presentations are on the equity and diversity council web page of wh it's under wh PS work slash EDC and just as a um sorry I say yeah I missed your slide but I'm sorry but but that goes to what what Charlie talked about that when you have a misstep just acknowledge it when you have a question you don't know don't make assumptions and just apologize and move forward we staged that but most importantly let's talk about it so this is where you can find the full version of our PowerPoint presentation so we'll open the floor for questions from you thank you thank you all so much but thank you
082also to the teachers and to you who had the insight to ask students to actually say what they needed instead of as usual us trying to figure out what the students needed by guesswork so thank you guys for sharing and thank the teachers for for listening and making a difference comments so as a board member and a parent that you know has three kids in the school system I'm always very proud of our school system and our diversity and and the things that you guys do and there's board members we often brag about just just like this this thing right here is that you know the the equity and diversity and the work that you do and and we and we and we proudly talk about it I also had the pleasure of meeting with
083about 10 to 12 students at hall yesterday after mr. Moore had warmed them up actually it was a different crowd actually he put him to sleep thank you and I saw so but I it was a great it was honor to be there and I spoke with 10 of them for about an hour and and I really wanted to get what their high school experiences were like not senior year not even Hall in particular but just their school their system and we went around the table and everybody was engaged and it was a conversation and it went fantastic right they went really well and went one way and then it one another and and it was really good and at the end of it a woman a girl student came up to me and said
084you know I didn't really say much because I didn't really agree with everything they said I am a student of color and my experience is much different and so we went on to talk for about 5 6 more minutes and I wrote some things down and that is really I don't know I don't know if disappointed is the right word but it just it really kind of touched me a little bit because you know you guys everybody put so much work into this and that you know and I always kind of hang our hat on like you know not in our school system you know our school system treats everybody correctly and does well right so no ifs ads right word either but it's just I was concerned very concerned about it and she talked
085about how you know as a student of color you know she's not looking at the teacher in the front of this the same color and things like that and that you know sometimes people say hey are you an open choice student and you know she lives here in West Hartford and so it was just it concerned me and I talked to the appropriate people about it to make them aware and and I know that every day that teachers go to that school and rosing of the work you do and just the administration I know that everyday you know it's a continuous improvement model and we're always there and that really wasn't a complaint when I talked it was more of just you know this is what I heard and then you know and then you
086know as I delved into the problem or probe that the issue at hand you know I was getting stories about and I didn't even realize this but their school systems around us like Simsbury I think Avon in Farmington that do an ABC course where they take underprivileged kids from Boston New York Chicago and they have a home here in the city or in it in that particular city like Simsbury and they live with a family for four years and such and they and I've heard the story how you know some of those students you know they do very well and then they'll get asked o are you in the ABC program no I live here in Simsbury so it's it's you know not only our school system it's out there and I know that world
087we're doing everything we can but I share that just because kind of I don't know you know it was a great conversation with the kids and they I wanted to walk away with a great smile and I couldn't because I knew that that particular student was hurting a little bit and she didn't have the same experiences and we need to get to a place where you know we don't even have to talk black white brown it doesn't matter right where people write and that's where we have to be at some point very very soon so that we don't have that we can talk about issues right you know you know Rob and I may not get along on that issue but that's all it is it's an issue so someday in the near future I
088hope we could just talk about issues that you have with people and not race you know and and you guys are you know really at I don't even say the forefront but continuing that effort and I applaud you for it and thank you I just want to say I appreciate your comments and leaving I wouldn't leave disappointed we heard some of the same things and when I talk to kids and I hear that I'm thrilled that they have voice to say it and because institutionally the one thing I don't want us ever to be and it's so easy to be as defensive I feel the plenty of time you know somebody says something to me and all I want to say is don't you know what we're trying to do don't know what Dan's trying
089to do don't you know what Shelley's trying to do that is what keeps us awake at night but that when we do that we don't listen and so the key element to this program which I love so much is listen and that doesn't mean that I agree with 100% of everything that every child says because I don't agree with a hundred percent of what anybody says but do I hear it do I hear it and do I see somebody else's perspective and so for these kids to have the courage I just want to say superintendent to help us and to make us see things that we might not SIG's when you do something every day it's easy not to see it and so I just thank you so much for doing this and sharing with
090your staff I can't thank you enough thanks Tom because you know and I struggled for a word there and courage really was a great word and that that that you used because she had the courage doesn't know me I'm the board of that she'd have no idea what that you know and doesn't know my name or anything but she had the courage to come up to me hey you're right you know it wasn't disappointment and that's that I did I struggled and then you heard me struggle but it was and I felt like I walked away and I really did I actually walked away kind of happy because there was someone that reached out that I am NOT in that chain of command whatsoever I'm not involved in everyday you know I went in actually
091I did it kind of on purpose as I went in in shorts and kind of a t-shirt I think so I didn't come in with its high and you know and so yes courage and and I was happy when I walked away it's like wow you know that was a great group and and I'm glad that conversation came the way it did I also want to thank you for coming forward tonight and in your school as well I think the easy thing to do when you encounter a problem in the classroom or in the hallway anywhere at school is to just get upset and complain but what you three have done is to get upset and do something about it in a very appropriate and mature way and we will all be the better for
092that so I want to thank you for that I think this has been a great idea to start a conversation with the teachers and administrators of our schools to help them see what you need to be successful as learners in our school and I think the next step seems to be helping your fellow students learn how to have these complicated conversations that need to be had in your classes if you're going to have an English class it looks at literature and news articles through lens of race or gender identity or class then you need to be able to have an appropriate conversation about those topics without offending the other people who are in the room and this is really hard for adults and for kids but there are models of teaching people how to communicate
093their experiences their opinions and ways that are more inclusive and are not offensive and I hope that we can continue the dialogue that's begun so that eventually it trickles to the student level where our students know how to have these conversations towards a more robust learning environment for everybody and I really appreciate the work that you all are doing and keep it up good I also want to thank you guys so much and commend you and I want to say that also as a high school student I know how it feels to try to change the minds and make realizations to adults and I do that a lot and I understand and it's really hard and it's it's amazing that I see other people at all doing it so thank you guys for also being
094advocates and activists and in your community and are any of you seniors you guys are all okay so as I graduate I really want to tell you guys to finished like keep working really hard and keep telling the adults and trying to progress the community that you're in and inspire other leaders to come up that are younger than you as well so yeah I really just thank you for everything that you guys have done and it's really it's hard and it takes a lot of courage and it means a lot that you guys are standing up and you feel comfortable enough in your community that you can do this and that just says something about West Hartford Public Schools as a whole that there are students that feel comfortable and they're brave enough to step
095up and try to change something that needs to be changed they comment and then a question it comes is to all of you and also to the kids that were here earlier I wanted to see something I didn't but I just want to commend you guys and people are seeing courage but a word that just kind of strikes me as guts like it takes guts to cook and to speak out not just in front of a group of people like this but in your everyday lives and so I I hope you continue to do that people often like use the phrase it takes a village but I'm a big believer and that it takes individuals to step up and and do the right thing and to and to be that voice be that change and
096so to each and every one of you and also to the kids they were here earlier because they were fifth graders I mean just amazing great great thank you for coming out tonight my question is to overseen the we heard a lot about different groups and racism and in trying to open people's eyes to things out there how do you incorporate our special needs community and in this way as far as the racism of the the things that they face from people well this year we have started to talk more about the intersectionality between race and disability special needs communities as well and so when we talk about inclusive environments it's not just limited to you know race but it's about ability religion faith sexual orientation your identity so we they're there we sometimes refer
097to them as the other group that we look at other groups beyond just race beyond just you know LGBT population communities and so we do take an account for our special needs population in I mean Unified Theatre is one of those platforms that we really access and try to promote even more so that we can raise awareness and get more people to join in the work and raise awareness so that we are truly living to our philosophy of inclusion and that includes their students who have special needs I think that's great like you know if I Pierre and Unified sports are two great ways to incorporate that community but are there other things that are being done or ideas that are gonna be incorporated along these lines that that would be helpful and it's just
098a community that gets I think there's a tremendous amount of ignorance and and how we treat that community so I would just hope that there are more things besides unified theory invites bores them no absolutely I don't mean to limit it to that but that's one of the that's one of the avenues that really gets people's attention get them to come out and start listening and thinking more about it but I mean we have our mandated programs obviously but beyond that just getting students more aware of their peers their abilities and I guess when we look at our cultural competence continuum we're looking at our own biases about all people and in privilege and in access to opportunities and that includes our special needs population but then trying to reach out to more of the
099general education population to practice to put into practice some of the philosophies some of the strategies so that we can be more responsive to their needs as well when we talk about cultural responsiveness we're talking about all people not just you know not just people of color not just the LGBTQ community but all people um something we do have our we have practice around reaching out people of different abilities I think it's I'm really glad you bring it up Rob if I could jump in right yeah I mean to interrupt because this is an area that I think we've seen a shift in education just like you know schools have changed somewhat since you're in kindergarten schools have changed since we are in school and the notion of special education students the idea that those
100are your kids you're the special education teacher and this is my class and well how are you getting them up that's the thing that I think we've seen a dramatic shift in just in practice day to day there's there's other groups as you said Unified Theatre Unified sports circle of friends we go through that list but there's a mindset that I think American education has an issue with in terms of ownership of who our kids are and are these are these kids labeled as our kids or do we use labels to separate and that's that's the danger that I think you know we don't want to get into that identity where everything divides and I think having general education teachers having ownership because each child is their child I think after school activities we are
101seeing more and more where it's not justin unified where it's not just in a club but we have somebody on the baseball team sitting with the team on the bench these kind of things that we're seeing more of we're not there yet part of it is meeting with parents part of making sure we have enough support but it is something that's a key part of cultural competency that we need to make sure we're always focus on not just the things that we see every day or we have somebody saying I want to speak up for this we want to make sure that we're doing that I'm glad you brought it up because it is something we can always certain do more in defense and this would be an enemy there we've had we've had a
102presentation this year both at both of the high schools with student representatives who received special education services to hear their voices - they're not at the table tonight but they're not forgotten and we have them at the table for equity and excellence presentation this time last year just so that we could hear their voices - and that they feel included we I do believe I stronger the leave and I my background is special education as well that we have a very strong inclusion philosophy and just bridging that gap between general ed and special and I often refer to it as general it not regular ed thank you Rosina you've done a fantastic job I mean I'm just sitting here and I'm just like boiling over with everything that you've done with the equity and diversity
103Council and everybody that you've brought forth tonight and just everything that you're doing all year and to the group of young students that are sitting here before us I just want to say it just it warms my heart because one everybody talked you know gave you all the comments the bravery the leadership but you're representing your student body so just keep in mind the number of students that you're representing for some reason who are unable to step up you're stepping up for those students and you're representing them and as you go forward this is going to give you a platform and a voice so you've got you have a story to tell and I want you to hold on to that and just continue to improve it so congratulations and just continue to keep up
104that good work we appreciate that you have prioritized this presentation on your agenda tonight we thank you for your support I didn't invite you to continue to join our work in the upcoming year thank you thank you so also very much [Applause] and now we return to our regularly scheduled program of Public Communications if the public is still here and interested in speaking I have one person on the list Sarah Raskin but if there are others you should feel free to come up afterwards first say your name and address my name is Sarah Raskin and I live at 193 North Quaker Lane in West Hartford I'm happy to speak to the board the superintendent and the members of the rethinking school start time committee I want to first thank you all for your careful thoughtful
105work and speak just a little to the survey that they're gonna be presenting you but it's hard to follow that amazing one of the first rules of Survey Research is never give no change as an option humans don't like change change is hard and let's face it nowhere is that more true than in the land of steady habits what's more on this survey no change was contrasted with huge unknowns how much later is later how much earlier is earlier what about the extracurriculars and yet despite this only 26% responded that they wanted no change and 68% reported they wanted later start times at the high school level this in addition to the petition signed by 600 and the 35 separate people who spoken to you says that you have the support of a societal number
106of stakeholders and at least we can say there's no evidence of overwhelming opposition but the truth is I'm much more concerned about the health of our children only 16% reported getting the required amount of sleep this is shocking and this is a true public health crisis in our town the survey also asked what people think that the effective start time change will have on things like the ability to stay focused behavior in the classroom physical health safety academic performance we have so much excellent data that tells us the actual effects of changing start times that we don't need to ask what people think we don't ask parents if they think we should serve beer at football games or if they think kids should take PE it's really important to hear parent concerns on things like
107schedules but not on things like scientific effects of start times on health I know what you're thinking you're thinking it's just bad parenting enforce a strict bedtime but the science is clear and I hope that you have heard it teens are not biologically able okay your kids different but most teens are not biologically able to fall asleep before 11 or 12 and the survey data holds that up I know you're also thinking we're coddling kids they should get ready for work but the Department of Labor says that US workers get to work at 8:18 and start work at 8:30 not 7:30 what a bunch of slackers but if we want to get our kids ready for work we just need to get them to school by 8:30 what about screens screens are important not looking
108at screens before bedtime is important but it's a separate issue it's like saying I don't need to exercise if I have a healthy diet exercise serves one purpose diet serves another oh they're important you have the chance to make a difference in the lives of all West Hartford public school children to affect rates of illness immune status mental illness motor vehicle accidents sports injuries and maybe even suicide change is hard but sometimes we have to do what's hard if there was lead in the water asbestos in the hallway mold in the walls person on staff who is a threat to our children or an infestation of those tiny little weird red bugs I don't even know what they are but I hate them you would not hesitate to act you would acknowledge the difficulties the
109cost and you would act the science here is clear given the science there is no choice but to act thank you can I just say real quick I know I'm out of time I'm sorry we're holding a France on October 16th at Trinity College that will include speakers on school tour times and transportation companies that have told us repeatedly for every district there is a no cost or a low-cost transportation option to moving start times so they'll be at Trinity it'll be a free conference I strongly invite welcome warmly any of you to attend and I can send you all more information thank you sir other that's fine just come state your name address and speak to us Jane Robinson 21 Ledyard Road I've spoken before I'm on the last of my three kids and
110I just want to reinforce that the school system ultimately is for our children and I noticed there was a divergence and in the responses of the teachers that are used to coming in at the same time and I understand that it'll impact their lives but I am concerned about the health of my child and the health of the children that will continue to come through the school system and I also recognize that people have said sports it's going to be a problem because of the other towns or a town that leads not a town that follows and that's just something that I want people to remember if we do the right thing other people will probably follow us if we do the wrong thing they'll be like what West Hartford didn't do it so why
111should we do it so let's be the leader let's do the right thing let's change start times for our kids thank you thank you anyone else okay hi I'm Joey Snyder sophomore at Hall High School do you need the address 665 Lexington Road and although I'm a sophomore at Hall I'm gonna be advocating for King Phillip middle school here because I feel like middle school is often part of the school system that can get overlooked seen as just you know the transition between elementary in high school but actually serves important purpose and building a foundation for the education in high school so problem with King Phillip right now is the infrastructure of the school is very poor shape and it's actually posing threats to student safety with ceiling tiles falling down and water leaking through
112the ceiling these are only patched up with jerry-rigged patch of cardboard and duct tape or bucket to catch the falling water I I sent out a survey to the students of King Phillip and I got many responses about the state of the school lot of them being negative students are saying ceiling tiles are coming too close to falling on students and they should be and this doesn't just pose a threat to student safety it also poses a threat to their state of mind as studies have shown that a general atmosphere of dilapidation can affect their you know motivation and commitment to their work you can imagine if your I mean imagine if this room were in much worse shape it would be hard to be taking everything seriously I it would be hard for those
113kids to take their work seriously in a school that's in poor shape as well so I just like to make the point that I think there should be more focus on that area thank you thank you very much other comments observations please and while you're coming up I just want to remind everybody while we can't respond to anything from up here we do hear you and we are paying attention hi there Lance Goldberg 26 brenway Drive and I spoke to you before about later school starting time and wanna reiterate again what Sarah said and how important it is for our kids to be healthy to be safe this science is clear and as I said to you many months ago I trust that you guys will figure out a way to put it all together
114because it is complicated it is scary we know other districts have done it they've been successful in Minneapolis again 20 years they've done it that's a big city somehow they pulled it off and they've stuck to it and I do think that if we were to do it other districts would look and figure out a way to do it I really think that there are a number of districts in the area that are leaders and as one of them I think the other ones would look at us and be very interested to see how we pull it off so thank you again thank you anyone else okay thank you so much I have everybody's name if you don't mind I appreciate that there's no unfinished business and we've already begun our new business so now
115let's jump right into our second piece of new business which is the topic that was on so many of your minds rethinking school start times and hearing about the survey with mr. Paul of iciness and MS Ann mckernon oh did I skip you I'm sorry sorry I circled big and skipped a good evening we're back to share with you the results of our survey and I believe that you have a copy of that short document for you to look over your spare time we'd like to hit the high-level point to the survey because as you can see that there were a lot of groups and there are a lot of questions so we'll try to hit all the high-level points certainly open to any questions you have and I think you have an abundance of
116information to look at as well so let this start off by again I always like to start by thanking the committee these were volunteers and just as a reminder there were 22 people on our committee that was teachers parents students and some administrators and I was privileged to work with them I asked her a group of open-minded folks to come to the table and take a hard look at this and and I I got my wish so they were great to work with moving through our presentation start off with our timeline our stakeholder impact subcommittee was the group that put this together and they were I believe five people on that we worked from September through April initially looking at well what kind of questions would we ask and how would we ask and looking
117at samples from Massachusetts and other Connecticut districts and eventually we found a partner in Hanover research group which we actually are a member through a consortium so this was a terrific opportunity because it was a cost that was already spent it was something that we are part of so this was no additional dollars to get a group to help us and they work with schools and nonprofits and corporations we went through a question design process with them in March and opened our survey for approximately one month and so they delivered the raw data and the preliminary results in May and we've been spending time putting together your report in presentation that's our background this was our response rate by group we did have seven thousand two hundred and eighteen total responses to this survey of
118those we had we we surveyed all of our secondary students and had a homeless to 70 percent response rate we had approximately thirty percent response rate from our parents and that is elementary middle and high school parents which is in line with what mr. chipboard tells us is common for our climate survey so it was pleased to see that and we surveyed our staff beyond our teachers we asked her t A's office in Paris to respond and we had approximately 45 percent respond sir oops going too fast already ok one question I was most interested in after all this work was high do you know what we're doing and what we found was about a third of people did not about a third of the people had some understanding and then the last third actually
119were either moderately very or extremely familiar with what we were doing so I didn't know exactly how to take that but I know people's lives are busy and this may not be the center of their world but I thought that was an interesting thing to share with you we did look at we asked the children directly about when they go to bed and we found that with twenty nine hundred respond a little over twenty nine hundred responses to that high school question and we are seeing about seventy percent are going I'm sorry when they wake up I'm sorry we had about seventy percent of our kids waking up before 6:30 remember high school starts at 7:30 so it put that line there to recognize about it about seventy percent are getting up reportedly by by
1206:30 every day but that's a you know they're getting up because they have to be at school so what time are they go to bed is our big question and we are finding that there's a wide a wide range but only about 20% are going to let's say with that eight hours before that by 10:30 and then there's a variety of times as you can see with some people is seven percent of those children reporting going to bed after 1 a.m. this is disaggregated so these were just high school responses initially I had them with the middle school we're going to show you the middle school separately because it is very different pattern with the middle school the middle school we had students waking up later obviously they start school later they do wake up
121a little bit later they start school at 8 o'clock and you have a great group waking up between 6 & 7 large percentage of children when do they go to bed you know the pattern is different than the high school here with more children going to bed before 10:00 and then next largest group 10:30 by 10:30 and and as you can see on the way down so a very different pattern initially had that together and I thought they didn't tell a good story so we separated that out for you we asked them probably my most important questions you would be interested in is how satisfied are you the current high school start times and this question went to high school students high school parents in high school staff so I want to be clear that
122elementary did not answer high school questions middle school did not answer icicle questions and and vice versa and we disaggregated by that and so our parents are showing that there's a group about 20% are completely dissatisfied in another group about 30% that are also slightly too satisfied there is a group that is neither they didn't kind of comment on it and then showing you under 10% somewhat satisfied and then a group completely satisfied so you kind of see a range you know kind of a break out there but the students showed some significant dissatisfaction a lot of students somewhat to satisfy maybe a minute to kind of take it in because there's a lot of groups there and I think the difference here we see is the staff is more satisfied with the start time
123at 7:30 if you add you know the two right bars there that's it's a larger percentage if you had the two left bars it would be I mean get your populace to it post it if you want to see it that way you want to take a couple of minutes so you can okay so we ask the next question is what would be your preferred start time and we did not give times because we are still working with you on what those might be but we did say well what wouldn't would you prefer and you know the preference came out the strongest percentage for the high school parent came out as slightly later second was where they are now and the third was much later so you see the same pattern with the children that
124slightly later is seen is preferred and then kind of now and very later is even almost even the staff is again you know like what we showed in the previous site pretty content pretty happy with where we are right now again I'll give you a minute to take that hand and I just said this one had this was question number 80 it had over 3000 or so close to 4,000 responses all together had the same two questions now at the middle school level let's start to see some differences the middle school level you know you see kind of a wider range but you see some more completely satisfied parents where where they are and if you added the right two bars you'd probably be getting to about 45 48 percent people are more satisfied they're
125the children you know you're seeing the highest bar at somewhat dissatisfied that's kind of weird joke and I have a middle schooler kind of every answer all right all right a lot of answers in the middle school because you know a lot of you know you know maybe kids who are not struggling at all in kids who are hitting that other listen period and are struggling more so we saw a little bit of everything and again I am a middle school parent I understand the staff again shows the same kind of satisfaction with where we are so then we asked what's your preferred time in the middle school current for parent current or slightly later for student slightly later and for staff current times this had about 1877 responses we did have higher response rate
126at high school level both of students and parents and staff so our highest numbers are at that level because we have the highest response rates of you know all of the groups there so we ask the same two questions for elementary school folks and there you're gonna see much more satisfaction with the current start time elementary parents are pretty satisfied where they are in the second and third bars are either a little later I'm sorry or somewhat satisfied or or this middle bar and the staff is pretty satisfied with where they are the preference here is the parents kind of where we are or a little earlier and the staff where we are or a little earlier this is where we saw the two kind of come together right there and I just remind you
127elementary school start time is 8:30 all right so then we moved into a series of questions that ask people's opinions what effect did they think this was going to have and we did feel it was important to see what their perceptions were did they feel get based on what they know right now that it this might hurt the children they did they they have a sense of it's hard to get the children to school on time or heart you know if it impacts attendance they hear their children talking about their alert their levels of alertness so we asked this this question there were serious questions here this one to secondary students parents and staff and what we found I'm going to display the data a little bit differently is on a on a more negative
128to a more positive scale we saw later heartstart times had much stronger positives with 70 percent of the respondents feeling both morning and afternoon focus would be improved with a later time and 66% thinking academics will be improved and 65 percent feel getting to school on time I looked also at the negatives and I only included things if they start to reach about that 30 percent rate and the only one that rose that high was homework 29 there were some others that were lower maybe 13 percent I think was the next level and it was much it was much lower but I tried to give you the highlights here so then we looked at well but what about a later middle school time and again the positives of a later middle school time worship much
129stronger than the negatives we saw again the students feeling that the focus especially in the afternoon would improve I guess they're feeling if they get more sleep they'll feel stronger throughout the day they feel getting to school on time would be improve and academic performance overall will improve they also cited homework as a negative so then we switch again to what about earlier middle school times what do you think there we still see the same positives and what what we see and here we start to see more negative so I started to see you know students they feel there might be a negative effect on their focus in the morning and afternoon but they'll be more tired in the morning and remain more tired during the day they thought there'd be a negative on getting
130to school but they did have there they felt they'd have the positive someone flipped that they'd have more time in the afternoon to complete their homework so it's almost like a complete flip in the elementary school again it was kind of more spread out at the elementary school there it wasn't like one you know the negatives outweigh or the positives outweigh so a later elementary school time we saw some a lot of nots not these high 70s and 60s and 70% is for more than the 30s and 40s with about 30% of the people thinking later elementary students times will help focus and will help kids get to school and then worries about homework and interesting focus came up in both ways so I can't really explain that one to you I did show this
131to someone else in like what did that mean I'm like I'm not sure but people have different opinions I guess is what it means and finally what about earlier elementary school times and there was concern about focus in the morning for the little the younger children and feeling like you know getting rushed and getting to school on time so those I was a set of questions mostly focused on school related things attendance getting to school and staying focus and then there was a set of questions about the if what they believe the effect of these things would be on sleep and health and stress and mood and social time and safety and again we only looked at the highest the top two or three responses in each group but the again the pot the perceived
132impact of later start time so you see on the positive list the numbers were very high and very strong and the negatives perceived negatives were much lower and many fewer things not rising up to that almost 30% level so the kids and they teach everyone believed sleep mood and physical health will improve at high numbers again all perceptions but we thought important and the social time with friends they thought might be a negative for changes in middle later middle again very similar to the high school they felt that the positives would be sleep mood and physical health but negative being social time in earlier earlier middle school times they thought sleep would be affected negatively mood might be affected in minute and stress level probably getting to school stress we looked at the elementary on
133the numbers again they were more in the middle here they were more 30s 40s there was some negatives of earlier though earlier elementary on sleep mood and stress level we asked questions about what about on your family routine you know how will that be impacted how do you feel about your work schedule your time spent on campus for teachers I was a specific teacher question your childcare needs before and after time spent with your your children and home traffic and commuting so these were parents and staff questions who did not go to the students and sorry you went the wrong way this was an interesting side we thought about it one in five people reported they don't feel they have flexibility at all and then about a quarter with slight flexibility about another quarter with
134moderate flexibility and then up to about 10% we're saying that yet we do have full flexibility to change our schedule some key findings of later um start times the most highly cited benefit came from the teachers later start time they'll be on they believe they'll be on campus before school and parents said they think their routines where their children will improve the most other most commonly cited concerns if family did feel some disruption in routines I'm sorry yes they did and the amount of time on campus in the afternoon came up as a big negative for the teachers there they're feeling like if it's later they're gonna have to get going pretty quickly which could impact their ability to be an advisor coach or provide extra help everyone was concerned about traffic I think that
135was you know that always concerns people in the middle school again the idea that you know it kind of flipped if we say the middle school is going to be later than time on campus before school the teachers feel they'll be there then parents do concerned about family routines and with time with their children teachers concerned about getting home and spending time out and you know leaving quickly to get home be to beat traffic and to be with their families early middle school start times again very similar concern if you move earlier the morning commutes they're worried about that they're worried about time spent on campus and time with their family so it was there was a lot of different concerns I would say the biggest trends here were the almost clear where teachers worried
136about where will they spend their time it will flip if we if we change everyone a little bit worried about traffic and and then we saw some in the elementary we started to talk about student transportation to school as you see under the big benefit again for the teachers they think they'll be on campus before school but the student transportation to school the last item started to come up which is I was looking for see if parents had big childcare concerns that came up here for later Elementary and transportation to school for elementary so you can see that there's a pattern to these the way it changes they've kind of flip-flop back and forth the concerns if we go earlier start times they're concerned about then Chocula after school they're concerned about the opposite traffic
137so just before we jump into questions and discussion a couple of comments first and foremost I want to thank in publicly here at the table for her work and the work of the Committee on this it's it's honestly a very daunting task and I credit her for the diligence and and really the depth I want to make sure that you know we reiterate a couple of things within the survey discussion it is a survey it is it is perceptions of parents and certainly we've never as the committee and Anne has stated this to you many times we've never really had any challenge to the research the scientific basis has never been in question but I do think that this data is very important for us as we figure out what our next steps are in
138our next courses of action because it defines work that we may need to do while I appreciate that you know no one here is trying to debunk any of the science or anything there are there are public perceptions that we need to educate our parents about should you be trying to make a change there are important metrics as to how your parents feel that you'll need to consider as you charge us with some more specifics on courses of action and and to not have asked these questions or to consider that you know the parent input isn't somehow important I think would be a misstep for us so so I want to credit you as well for allowing us to if this works slowly and to be able to take some time to consider this feedback
139so that we know what it is we're going to need to do and even even the staff results I'm not surprised at all either that staff doesn't want to change you know change but certainly we wouldn't want to make a sweeping change for staff without a asking the question considering you know providing the voice and then providing time to respond to that and educate and identify obstacles and see what changes that we can make so that we can preserve the outstanding dedication and work relationships that we have and the professionalism of the teachers that we have so I just want to compliment you as a board in terms of in terms of how we're attacking this and really ask you to to look deeply because you've got some interesting stats in there as I look
140at it some of this and and and see different groups where you have 50 percent certainly in favor of one side or another and we can change which side it's on based on which group we're talking about but then you've got a third 33% on the opposite side and say wow those that that's that's a big number you know if this were plurality or majority we'd have an easy case here but but it's not and it's fairly significant numbers and how are we going to best now address both of the science and in the politic of the change so we look forward to your questions and we certainly look forward to your input so that we can continue to to provide some direction and some leadership to this issue that you've brought to us um
141thank you first of all before we talk about anything I do want to thank certainly you pull but unbelievably you and the committee and I just when we asked for this we knew it's gonna be a big job but we didn't quite realize it's gonna be a second career for you and really you and the committee did unbelievably prodigious amounts of work and very carefully and thoughtfully so thank you for that I also want to say that we do completely agree with you Paul about going slowly and not only did we do this over the course of a year we're not even voting tonight we're gonna have a discussion tonight after we're gonna ask you specific questions if there are any then we're gonna have a discussion about the general merits and then we're gonna
142talk about a couple of specific scenarios to see if we can then move forward on what would this actually look like and only then will we make a decision so thank you for reminding us that going slowly is the the safest course as they say so before a general conversation which I hope we do have are there any specific questions that you want to ask or pose okay let's have a general conversation thoughts comments comments some people at home know this entire thing as I destroy this place is comments yeah hold it this is all there's a hold on let me show you the pages of this is I feel like I'm in court or something about trial this is the survey and these are the comments and believe it or not I got through
143about 2/3 of them on a Sunday morning in 6:30 in the morning with a cup of coffee and it was interesting so you know I think it was Tom's idea said do you know what they asked for it give it to him and suddenly we got it yeah but it was interesting so I don't think it was a waste at all it was I thought it was it was pertinent and it was interesting it was an interesting read on a Sunday morning with coffee it's better it wasn't better than The Hartford Courant but almost anyway so thank you I appreciate the time everything that you've done every angle you're looking at it I often you know it was said you know there is a time to lead and there is a time to follow and
144I said this before and you know we'd like to always lead from the front and you know we can get into this later too but you know if you take a lead in something and no one follows then you're out there alone and that affects many more things in this school system and good leaders know when to follow and good leaders no one to lead and sometimes you have to follow because if you're out there alone let's just use an example of sports that and no one's coordinating with you it's gonna be a problem for a couple years until the other school systems come around so you know when you take the anxiety the mood when I said this before and the stress from one group 70% is the number of athletes we have you
145move it to another group so something you know I saw comments in there a lot about that too so just something you know we could talk more in detail when we discuss it more but just kind of thoughts in my head right now so mark unlike you I got through some of it but I'm still making my way but I want to thank everybody for participating in the survey and all of the comments that we see we received electronically and this is a difficult decision to make and again it's not one that we can take lightly we really have to look at this carefully and weigh all sides of the argument those who are in favor you know based on the psychological impact is certainly you know overwhelming and we know it to be true
146but then on the flip side of that as well in terms of being realistic with schedules young children sports our teachers you know in their current schedule so it's going to be a massive change and modification to people's schedules and we have to take that into consideration as well so there's a lot of things to look at where when we sit down and make this decision it has to be one where we take everything into consideration but again there's districts that have done this and they've done it successfully so I'm sure there is a way that you know we can make this happen and it might be rough in the beginning but I think eventually it will kind of smooth out I think the ideal thing is for our legislative body to look at this
147issue and perhaps change it statewide and then we wouldn't have to worry about our sports teams you know arriving late or what have you but I want to thank you and you put a lot of work in terms of leading this charge you with the committee and the staff time and everybody involved so I just want to say you know kudos to all involved I also want to say thank you so much for for what you've done and I think that the progress or the process rather that certainly began in the fall and allowing us to be a part of it and presenting it to us in stages I appreciate that because it allowed us to absorb the information as it was coming I must say as well and I know it's been described many
148times that it is irrefutable in terms of the science and I will say for me that speaks volumes now that does not undermine at all the impact of the changes the difficulties of changes the process of changes who was involved I certainly recognize all of that and yet still I think it certainly does behoove all of us which I think we do recognize the science behind it but I appreciate the process we still are gathering information absorbing information because it's important to make a decision that's well-rounded and certainly that's taking all accounts and all perspectives into account so for that reason as our madam chair has spoken of a decision is not going to be made today because we want to respect all that has been shared so thank you so much for your work
149and your input and I look forward to the continued discussion I just like to add to that that um you know we are taking our time to Liberty think deliberately so and and thank you so much for all your hard work and everyone on the committee volunteering their time to do this one thing that that binder that Mark displayed shows is that we're definitely listening no one can say that we didn't listen where we're listening and but there will come a time when we do make a decision that some people may not like it please know that it's not an easy decision but that's why we were elected to make one at some point and when we do I know that you have will have been well thought out and tonight you'll leave with more
150instructions of options for us and we look forward to hearing the results from that so I don't know when I was gonna bring this up but I promised you I would in an earlier conversation and I'm not here to debunk science or anything like that but what I've asked for earlier on and we really never went down that path is the the blue light and the technology and such and how it really affects that and and this isn't refutable science too so you know you have to look at it from from all aspects and again I'm not debunking but there is a biological component to this behavior that the brain reacts to cellphones as if it were a drug studies have shown that both the phone ringing and the alert of a new text causes
151the brain to release dopamine and that's from Moreau 2017 very reasonable and those are the things and this is all about sleep studies so this is a much broader study I just kind of brought some of the highlights and so the the other thing too is 92% of teens part of the addiction reported going online daily and distributing 24 percent of those teens say to go online constantly and again that's from 2017 and what that relates to as well is is depression anxiety some of the things that we talked about before teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy those who spend more time than the average of non screen activities are more likely to be happy then they talk about social anxieties about the technology it's
152changing rapidly different to keep up the tensions in society for teenagers and they often rely on social media to keep in touch lacking real interaction with others isolation is critic can result in learning critical social skills they need to learn in life there's just these things that in these you know and I mentioned that the iPhone came out in 2007 so this is data that's this isn't ten year old data or anything like that this is relevant 2017 2015 but it talks about the interaction between schoolwork sleep exercise and how it negatively affects using of the smartphone and again that's from 2015 so you know I'm not the bunking any of the data that was available but when you leave out a component I think that technology and some of those the the science was
153rather old it was 2011 2009 12 I can't remember exactly I talked about at the last meeting I'm not saying it's old or new and I'm not saying it's wrong or right what I am saying is that the component of the cellphone and the teenage use of it at nighttime as they release the dopa men and such changes your physiology so I just that is another component and I just want to discuss that and mention it to you I told you earlier I'd bring in you know and so there it is thank you for that I just want to say I think you have raised a really important question and I think next year maybe we can have a committee to study banning all cellphones from students because I think that might solve that problem
154I don't disagree with you at all and banning no no no no no I'm at I'm at home no absolutely I was just teasing you I'm just saying that you're absolutely right that's another problem that's keeping them awake but it seems to me that whatever the problem is that's keeping them awake it doesn't change the fact that they're not sleeping and so if physiologically they can't go to sleep before midnight and they're on their cell phones that's even worse but if cellphones are in fact a part of their lives then we have to deal with that to the point is that one thing has nothing to do with the other in the sense that if they're not sleeping they're not sleeping like I guess I'm getting to the point where and I made this argue
155I didn't want to go through my my lengthy conversation I had ly I didn't want to reiterate everything but Mike to segue into this is that we again we own the kids 10 percent of the time throughout the year and we are legislating we don't they don't sleep on school time they sleep at home and what we're trying to do through or what we potentially can do is legislate what happens at home and I don't think that's that's not my intent to do and I don't want to confuse the responsibilities of things you know it was said to that you know well cell phones are part of life we just have to deal with it and manage it from there okay that's fine but I don't think we have to manage what happens at home
156it's the parents that have to manage that at home and although it's a new technology and this might be a new concept parents might be but it's we're talking about what happens at home and we're trying to legislate what happens at home and some of that cellphone usage is what I'm gonna it's not about this stuff banning this that or anything else no I was only teasing about about banning but no I absolutely I guess what I'm saying is that I think there's two different things going on and one is can we ask that people try to encourage more responsible use of cell phones absolutely but there is this science that says that regardless of everything else brains don't shut down adolescent brains don't shut down it seems to me that that's what we need
157to address that's what we might be able to address here and I have to disagree just slightly with the with what people have said so far because I actually don't think it's that that difficult the overwhelming response has been that high school is starting too early it seems to me parents said that students said that the survey said that the letters have said that the people have said that the science says that the challenge for us it seems to me is not what whether we should change it but how can we change how can we change things so that the disruption is as minimal as minimized as possible that we keep the costs down that we keep the athletic competition problem as much to a minimum as possible until everybody else catches up and then
158we could deal with the rest of it so for example if I had my way I would say let's start high school at 8:30 seems to me that is the absolute clear scientific answer we can't but my view it is impossible for us to move it to 8:30 we would lose half the students in their seventh and eighth grade seventh and eighth period classes we lose teachers it would just at the where we are that's not it that's not a reality but it doesn't mean we can't something specific we can't move a little bit it seems to me that we can adjust things and that's what I would like to I mean at some point direct you to look at is can we look at some alternative alternatives that would be changes that wouldn't be
159as massive as the disruptions but that we can still manage and get respect the science and the findings that most people would be in favor of if I could Cheryl I think it's important to know at the end really the direction needs to be okay we're done with this or moving forward in a different way the task that and did so Abele and I'm glad you guys have expressed your appreciation and the committee is to present the work do the legwork and the overall information about this topic and then now it's okay go forward and let's give us specifics and you can give a couple parameters the fact is I don't think that precludes us from looking at something else that comes up that when you know Greenwich actually just made a shift at the
160end of this year going into next year with their schedule because of some of the struggles they've had with the 8:30 and they're changing their overall schedule you know we do have as I've said a credit issue coming up with 25 credits so there's there's the straight move this no cost this is what happens then there's other things we're gonna continue looking at during the summer at the beginning of the year so we may have more information than even what you just we're not just gonna say okay you gave us two ideas these are the two ideas that's right I just meant that we also have to be realistic that if if we said okay check out a 830 high school time personally I think unfortunately for the science it would not you come back
161and say it is prohibitively expensive it is prohibitively a detriment to keep to kids education or whatever so and it is still possible it seems to me that even if we do lay out specific options that you would come back and say okay any option is gonna cost us half a million dollars and we're gonna say well then sorry about the science so I mean it doesn't even directing you to change doesn't necessarily mean we're going to support it I completely agree with that it gives us a parameter in terms of okay if we do this X is impacted we know this from the survey but this is also if there's a financial cost and and we can kind of build option so in those options and if we're gonna hang science our hat on
162this science piece and look at that specifically we have to look at the age groups and adolescents and we can't in we can't our own right minds I would imagine not shifting middle school earlier because the science won't agree with that right so science so middle school can't go earlier to support high school going later because you're the health of the children what I'm hearing overwhelmingly from the science is that we need to look at that middle school piece and not affecting it going earlier because of the science that is in front of us that we all hanging our hats on well I think it's something I think that's I think it depends I think it depends on the time frame again I'm just gonna give you dollar amounts kind of that that will be
163up for you to debate that in terms of different amounts so there's some parameters like for instance we haven't talked about like let's bump elementary an hour earlier because that's not we can't do that because the light and kids walking to bus stops it's it's actually we do not have the capability of doing that because you wouldn't want first graders walking to bus stops at 6 s 7 6:45 7:00 a.m. that's impossible so these the kind of questions that yes when we have parameters then we'll give you kind of those issues that go with it but I think mark no I think your question is is legitimate what we I'm sorry yeah so the science not talking about when elementary schools but if we look at and say okay we're going to move high school
164back half hour forty-five minutes and also we're going to move it forward and we're going to move element middle school back a half hour to support the buses so there's no low cost or little cost the science doesn't support that right so that's you know that's what everyone's hanging their hat on and is the sciences is that so if you want later start times for high school you need to have either the current start time for middle school or later start times you can't go earlier because it won't support it that way I believe that that's incorrect and I understand that no no I understand your question I'm just saying I think that the science says and I cuz I keep asking this question that it's it's right so that it may be eighth grade
165but it's not it's not 6th and 7th ID it's your population and when you're when you're born that year you know and so it depends so there's 7th graders year 12 and 13 year old seventh graders no no I I understand understand that he that the impact on middle school in general no in middle school kids in general is not as severe as the impact on high school kids it wasn't it didn't say high school or middle school kids the science said adolescence twelve and thirteen-year-olds that's that's what was mentioned so we could rehash that but again I don't you look into the audience for something I'm looking at am cuz you all know we're having you know the same discussion and and the research we read was proud using the term adolescent primarily which
166is I believe they meant about 13 years old 12 to 13 years old generally your eighth it's a lot of your eighth graders my kids 13 or some kids some at the end but you know then you look at the sixth graders are coming in at 10 and 11 and maybe not so much for them so so two thirds of your and we and we have not seen just a middle school study for instance I've looked for studies and maybe there I can continue to look for studies I haven't seen one just on middle schools the term most often used was adolescent and your middle school splits it right down the middle pretty much maybe a little heavier to eighth grade but it's supposed to down the middle I'm just trying to use that science
167to say that we really can't touch middle school times to go earlier if that's what I'm getting it so that we need to keep in mind that if we're doing this for high school that we have to pay attention to the middle school students in those adolescent ages and and correctly adjust accordingly if that's the examples that we need for next semester or in September if I may say I respectfully agree instantly disagree I think in terms of conceptualizing how the impact it may have on high school students in middle school students certainly so but I don't think we can make a hard stop that definitely middle school it the scientists is is saying that it will directly impact them as well therefore no changes can be made I think we have to be careful
168how we use and how we referred to science and data and statistics I think the science is overwhelmingly referring to yes adolescents but primarily the high school age yes it will impact middle school students but I think it's going to be a trickle down impact so to speak but to say conclusively that it will undoubtably impact middle school students therefore we should not I think that's it quite a leap to make should I just that the adolescents we never talk middle school and high school students we talk to adolescents and how it affects them and adolescence starts in middle school that's why I'm I'm you know leaning that argument that's all I'm saying I'm not saying we can't change it or we won't change it I'm just saying that if we're looking to do the
169high school the impact on the middle school should be zero to minimal because those we have to keep those kids in mind as well it's all I'm saying grace um if we also look at the survey that we gave out just to the West Harper perception that actually organized it it from middle school to high school so if you take a step back and not look at really like science we can see that more in middle school West Hereford is more like satisfied with the start time there they didn't really want it so that kind of is a way to separate that I think the West Hartford kind of embodies like a more middle school more neutral about the start time saying but I do think that marks point we have to keep in mind
170in the sense that we would be talking about middle school earlier and that is a common I think it's a it's a lower consequence than not moving high school later but I do think it's a real it's a real issue and I think it's it has to be not about so yeah that's exactly what I'm talking about and I hear what you're saying grace and and and it's a great example of us listening to them it's just that you know I often look at our school system if you look at it as a house and you look at elementary you dig the foundation you build the foundation and then you build the house and our school system is not unlike that you know from pre-k now through senior year you're developing these kids and you're
171giving them a base so that they can go and use everything they've learned and excel in high school and beyond and in the middle school you're giving you're providing those tools still to be successful in high school and you don't want to minimize that so it's a big piece of the building foundation to get the high school in the middle school and I don't want to take light of that that's all I think it's important years and those the kids I don't want the effect to be felt and affected years later that's all let me get concrete for a second and maybe that will help move the conversation along yet concrete for the foundation exactly and not crumbling not a crumbling foundation we're gonna build a strong foundation one suggestion that had been put forward
172that I also want to reiterate here is since we can't move elementary school realistically and since we want to move high school later would be in fact to flip middle school nln high school right so that not keeping and finding marks caution is one option right that we might think about that would solve middle school a high school problem it might add a little bit to a middle school contribute to a middle school problem the second alternatives that I would propose is what if we did that flip but move everybody forward 10 or 15 minutes that would minimize the right that would minimize the backwards going however you say that of the middle school give the bulk of the advantage to high school which would now go from 7:30 to 8:00 10:00 or 8:15 and
173only move elementary school back 10 or 15 minutes so that elementary school would stay roughly the same middle school would go back slightly but high school would get the bulk of the advantage it's not the 830 I want but is that a is that a plausible scenario to run by there yeah that would be something like looking at 740 middle school or 745 middle school 8:10 8:15 high school 8:40 8:45 elementary school so let's say the biggest impact is certainly on high school between 4045 minutes say you're 35 50 minutes somewhere in that and whereas the other groups are 10-15 minutes right and I would I mean again this is just this is my thought about a request to say what would the impact of that be and again there was gonna be an impact
174there's gonna be an impact all over the place but and I also I seem to recall somebody saying so I'm just asking that there had been an initial outreach to some private schools who said they might consider that they are open to it possibly and yeah the the initial discussion there's a couple places that have said yeah we've that's something we would certainly think about so once we have more parameters we'll spend the summer we'll I'll write letters and contact all the private schools and say if we do this two things one if this we're done what would you do in terms of your busing and would that you change and if we did this and you didn't change what impact would it have on you in terms of busing because that's something that again
175that would be the financial consideration that we'd have to get a better study of that I'm sure they wouldn't be able to give me an answer in July but they may give me likelihoods and and be able to move forward we could talk not just what the financial impact on the board is but the Town Council in their support of private schools because as we know they I don't want to phrase it in a way that's productive towards private schools in some ways they over support in terms that so what would that impact bake I mean would it be a no big deal to make that change that's can I just ask just structurally cuz I don't really understand it so our buses are there are two separate buses one group of buses transports the
176private school kids and another set of buses transports the public school kids but at the same time like is no reason to separate them out no because the private schools the private schools aren't like Northwest Catholic elementary Northwest Catholic middle North West Catholic high school there's just Northwest Catholic high school so their timing may be pairs with Schechter's and then that pairs with Kings with Oxford in some ways and so right but what I mean is if the if none of the private schools changed aren't those buses the same anyway if you did a clean switch yes if you did a just flipped middle in high school no I'm I'm not I'm being incoherent because I think I don't understand okay don't we have aren't there some buses that transport our public school kids to
177public schools and other buses that transport private kids to private schools regardless of of which schools they are and yes so that bus that transport to Northwest kid at 7:15 may transport a sedgwick kid at that was my question okay okay 30 is okay okay so that's why we can't just separate them out okay that that was my completely ignorant question right no I was gonna say think of it as runs a 7:30 run and eight o'clock run an 8:30 run the middle run might be a private school it might be a public school they're not at the same time they're not on the same bus at the same time but it might do private and then do a public school run and do a private school run so it's the same bus so think
178of it as runs that that is going where it needs to go get the kids behind I said I guess I'm confused now cuz you said the town council supports that is I thought it was a state is it state law it's state law that they have to spend two times chip two times the cost of what we spend to transport one of our students so if we spend $500 to transport you know when you do the math West Hartford Public School student that means there's a thousand dollars per student in Northwest Catholic that can be spun that can that has to be spent but if we're only transporting four kids for a school say and we have to transport those kids that live in West Hartford and go to a private school in West
179Hartford so if we're transporting only four kids on a bus inherently that cost that four thousand dollars say you're done with by September 30th October 15th but that transportation goes through the year for Northwest because of size Northwest Catholic the buds are basically full there would be little shift but that other schools Kingswood Oxford doesn't have as big a footprint you know so those are where the shifts are so each school the Town Council treats each school the same you know what I mean in terms of the private schools I guess I'm confused even more now so they're supportive if we're done paying for them by state law in september/october the town council goes goes above everything in one individual case it could be okay but it could also be so the town in so
180to make this easy the town of West Hartford spends more than it is obligated by state law that is correct private school busing that should that is Concord thank you so there's some models in some places where it's I'm giving you a voucher for a thousand dollars for transportation that so that's that's the issue so uh a lot of discussion um it's hard to be patient hunting you're coming in an earlier meeting I I want to back up the proverbial bus a little bit to what some things you said Cheryl earlier because I kind of felt like you've already made up your mind based on your comments at least you can correct me if I'm wrong about the direction the bus is going I'm a big stats guy I've been studying statistics for over 20
181years and whenever you say a statistic but you preface it by saying like I think you've already basically made it invalid the statistic needs to stand alone you can't interpret it because now you're putting a perception on it and the perception is incorrect so everybody here pretty much did that where they were like looking at the numbers and they're saying well based on like science or the data of them you know I think this is what the statistic is saying or the perception is so we have to back all that up as a group our responsibility as a board is to analyze the statistics as it's been presented to us and then make a decision based on what that tells us there's two totally different things okay so everything you were saying to me is
182is incorrect in the sense that and let's just take a take a minute if we if we look at some of the things here I don't want to rush over the fact that on one page it talks about and and mentioned it how familiar people were with this whole process a third not at all familiar so we can't say for example that an overwhelming majority of people support this and are aware of it and aren't and know about it when a third are not at all familiar and only another third are only slightly familiar we need to me right right well these are statistics within this survey right so you can't you can't state that it's a fact or its second it's your conclusion my conclusion is different okay well I read that statistic and
183my conclusion of my perception is well a lot of people don't know what the heck is going on here so as a town we have to be careful to say that everybody's aware of this an overwhelming majority of people are in support of it which is what I thought I'd be saying no I mean I hear what you're saying and actually as of who has someone who's a father who is a statistician he bought a book for me called how to lie with statistics so I do actually know that everything we do is statistics we couldn't we can't alter so I totally believe you yeah there's no there's an old phrase that um figures don't lie to Liars figure right right so it's exactly no no but what I was saying was in the survey
184itself regardless of whether they knew about the work of the committee the survey itself showed a majority of people in support of changing that's what I meant okay so I you know I have some other things I just wanted to mention because I I mean I I didn't go over this with coffee cuz I don't drink this but uh that I had some things I feel like this is important stuff that we can't just gloss over because I feel like we're already going into options like you know do we want to flip on middle school for high school times or do we want to push back it's like well I feel like we should really it's our job right is to review this data they've done a great job collecting it and some izing some
185of it for us but and if it gets too late and I apologize maybe we could always table it and talk about it more in the fall I I'm not totally comfortable giving them options at this point because I don't know that as a group we've even collectively discussed the data I mean there was a there was a brief presentation but we need I think is a group to review this thing and I mean it's it's 935 so I mean I don't know how lay people want to be here I mean we could start talking about it but you know to give parameters when we haven't as a group collectively talked about what we think in any detail I feel is paying short shrift to the year-long work that they've done I simply am uncomfortable
186saying that we're going to give them options tonight when there's a lot of data here folks there's a lot of interesting things here that we didn't even talk about what we're kind of brushed over with a broad brush and so I don't you know I'm happy to start to go into some of this but if if at the end of the night we're telling them I don't exist anymore that's fine people know who I am by now you know I I think we need to be more thoughtful and spend more time really reviewing it because I keep here he I don't know how anybody else feels about this buy keep hearing like we're being beat over the head with the science and there's a lot there's a there's a lot more to this decision folks
187than than just the science especially because when you read this this body of work which is just a certain amount of perspective anyway of the entire population of people that we should be concerned about the the sought you can't use science incorrectly you can't broad brush and say well everybody benefits or this isn't this is a this isn't even up for debate about the benefit of course the science points to the benefits of this and I'm not disagreeing with that or debunking that either but if you read this and then we've also received how many emails it hasn't all been in support and there's plenty of comments in the comment section of people saying they don't support it either so again yes I understand the science of it but there are plenty of anecdotal stories
188in here and we've received it and I feel like that isn't enough that we should take pause that not everybody is over only saying like yeah push my support start time back that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it but you also have to say then if we do push it back is there enough of a benefit too right so we can't just say alright well there's a larger percentage of people that would benefit so that's a logical conclusion we make even though there are people that will suffer that's how it works but also if we're going to push it back we have to make sure that it is is enough of a benefit that we're not just jumbling the entire town for a benefit that is minimal because remember the science is telling us one
189thing but the change has to match in order for the benefit to be worth it so if we're only gonna push things back like 20 minutes or 30 minutes I'm actually in agreement with you Cheryl that the hour is what it should really probably be it we want to try and tackle it but I again one I want to talk about you know some things in here and and you kind of answered this earlier but on one of the charts it says Q 15 when do you want to usually go to bed at night and maybe this was before you divvied it up that I audited that fifty percent of kids go to bed by 11:00 a.m. 11:00 p.m. and then you know the other half are after so it was that just everybody and
190then what you showed us was a broken down between high school and middle school yes originally when we were looking at the data like I put it together yeah and then I realized wait we can disaggregate this it's aggregated showed if it wasn't different I probably would have kept it together but it was different it wasn't very different than middle schoolers go to bed earlier by this is the middle school one do you usually go to bed and that was significantly different than the high school when do you go to bed so I thought it was worth just aggregating it no I agree and then there's a another chart q30 I wish there were page numbers on this sorry guys where the question was what effect do you think a later middle school start time
191would have on your or your students of course you know most people are like pause effect no effect and then you go to the next page you know what effect do you think a later school start time would have on your on your on your kids on your child students you know the the pause effect versus no effect where the or two of the bigger responses so I mean I really feel like I want it I personally feel like we need to have a more in-depth discussion about these individual responses because I found something striking the biggest one one of the three ones on cue 39 was the effect in early or middle school start time would have on your on your kid and a lot of people were very negative in that so I
192you know reading that stat makes me feel like okay well to Mark's point like then we're just moving the problem you know for me adolescent but I I agree with him that you know that's I have a 13 year old that would be in seventh grade I have a 11 year old is me 12 and in sixth grade I me a lot depends on birth birth month so you can't also just say adolescence starts in seventh grade or a degree I think we have potentially some sixth graders that fall into that cohort as well and so again I think this data requires more review and that's probably something that we should do before we're telling these folks these are our choices but to one point that that was brought up by Tom and you guys
193I would love love love the outreach to the private schools to happen now so I know that it helps when you have an exact well these are the three options are available but you can come on you can still have discussions like hey you know obviously if you follow in the newspapers all in our town or if you're if you are really bored at night and watch one of these meetings that you know they're considering moving the start time if they're gonna move the start time back it's gonna be probably a minimum of half an hour what's your response to that you know I I would just like to know some of them are like it doesn't matter what you do West Hartford we ain't moving I'd like to know if that response is out
194there I'd also like to know like well yes we would consider it X those discussions that have happen now because to your point about the budget that's a huge driver into a an individual spoke earlier I I appreciated his comment that it's like well but that shouldn't be an absolute note kind of like what you were saying well if it's half a million dollars a little forget about it because you know in to defend you like I kind of thought that earlier too but then I'm like well but if we are the leaders and it is a half a million dollar cost maybe we should have to find a way to absorb that without necessarily just increasing our budget half a million dollars if the science is telling us to do it and that's what
195the ultimately the cost is going to be but we don't know because we need to be told that then as leaders should we then maybe consider doing that so you see how it's like difficult and complicated and all over the place so I feel like those discussions need to be had and we haven't done that all you know I really actually appreciate this process and we did get a lot of data in the last couple of days and the good part is we don't need to vote tonight on whether or not to move school start times we don't need to absorb all of these comments and make it a firm decision tonight about moving school start times what we're hoping to do is ask the administration to examine some more firm options so that we
196can figure out what would be the real consequence to transportation before and after school care professional development sports for both students and for the teacher coaches and on and on there are lots of different things to look at and I think the committee though it has done yeoman's work over the last 10 months or so has been somewhat limited by the fact that we haven't provided more specific parameters around what the impact would be and that is demonstrated so clearly in the survey by the question that asks about would you prefer the school to start slightly later a lot later like well what's slightly later is it five minutes is it ten minutes is it thirty minutes that is a matter of perception I think if we were had been able to ask parents well
197what do you think about a 30 minute delay what do you think about a 10 minute delay we may have gotten different answers and so the advantage of the summer is that we can put together some options tonight we can ask our our administrative team to plan these out as if they might actually happen and come back to us with here here are here's a plan for option a this is what it looks like this is what it looks like for elementary school families this is what it looks like for middle school families this is what it looks like for high school families this is what it looks like for private school families this is what it looks like for teachers and on and on and this is how much it costs then as a
198board we can examine that and say okay we have these survey results we now have a detailed plan we can decide as a board if we think the benefits of option A are outweighing whatever the detriments of option.i are and if we think it is worthwhile to spend whatever money it costs to to implement option A or option B whatever the different options are so I actually really appreciate the opportunity to come up with some firm ideas tonight and ask the administration to to plan out for us so that we can really take a look and then use the survey results to inform how we look at the plans that are developed by the administration later on this calendar year so I would recommend that we put some options on the table and add to
199Deb one of the options would be no change okay so so even though we're asking our staff to to give us some variables plug in the variables another one is no change so we're not making a firm decision tonight we're asking for more details we also have the summer to further review this and and discuss the survey results give more input oh good in to this point is that I agree with Deb saying given what rob named Dave said so that you know we make the agenda right so we don't have to come back in September to make a hard vote we don't have to we can we can review this stuff again and our first meeting doesn't have to be do we change time sort of state we don't have to do that we
200we have the ability because we're the governing body to take a little more step back and look at it more objectively or subjectively and figure it out so you know there's no hard lines in the sand here so we should be aware of that as well so as a group we can you know with time you look in I'm glad you said that because we want to do this right no matter what because I may not say in September we have this financial cost exactly figured out I mean we want to do things I want to give you information that is really helpful and is complete not a guess and so well and Depak we pat ourselves on the back that's exactly why we're not voting tonight right I mean we already we already made
201that that agreement I think people thought we were gonna make a vote tonight we thought we'd vote tonight we think the absolute oh I think the time is on our side yes it is to quote that famous rock star rock song okay so then specific proposals I had put two out there one is switch middle school in high school and one is switch middle school high school but move everybody back 10 or 15 minutes are there other possibilities that we might want to consider so I paint as a governing body should we try and limit if we forget I don't think we should do this today but if we if we're gonna if we're going to give them options today which I just said I don't want to do should we be giving them options
202that we just think we would never like like make them waste their time because I don't understand how we would just say flip middle and high schools that means the middle schools going back to a 7:30 start time and that's something that this body would consider voting on I say yes that I don't think we should know and I I'm not dictating your votes that's that's the example of the cleanest I know it's no cost that's the that's the reason that that's but that's CA my argument earlier is why I wouldn't consider that because if you're gonna hang your hat on science and not money it affects a I'm saying two-thirds of the students at a tosses and adolescence is it a hard number ladies and gentlemen it's not 12 it's not 11 and a
203half point seven it's when the body tells you it's going through it but it's certainly all four years of high school but but that's the beside the point if in fact I'm the only one who would consider it then we should not even bother the administer you're absolutely right if I guess my point is I feel like we're putting the cart before the horse a little bit because as a body we haven't really discussed you know enough of the results I saw the huge problem with the fact you know I was really jarred by the fact that a third of the population was like what was this you know that ami extrapolate that out to maybe the whole town I mean I you know who knows how much the town is even aware of this
204I mean if you if you just go by the public comment for the last year it's been underwhelming to say the least we've had we've had the same people by and large and I admire them in that in their in their passion but we've had the same largely same group of a small number of people I don't wanna say a number because we did that once and got yelled at they're coming in to voice their their opinion about the issue it's not a big number on either side of the issue so they've had almost a year to respond and give us their input and and we're just not getting it and then you hear that a third of the people aren't even aware of this so it's like I have real concern that you know
205we could be contemplating a change that a huge portion of our community is totally unaware of that's chilling to me I I don't disagree except that if I understand and again I may have misunderstood the numbers if 7,000 people could have answered it and 3500 did or four right half the people who could have answered it did answer it right but I mean overall right if you put it all together of all the people who could have answered it of all the interested parties and somewhere between a third and a half of all the people did answer it those people a third of them had not heard of it before but they did weigh in on the question that's all I meant so that if in other words we've we've heard from roughly half the
206people that would be affected may 40% sometime doing math in my head here quickly but and heard from them but they and they have sorry right but they how many didn't know let me know this right oh right but now we but they have had the survey and that we have asked them what they think and now they've said what they think now may not be long I mean it may not be well thought out we I have no opinion but in fact we know what half what this this group of people whether they knew about it before not what they think now that that's all I meant but the point but that's not neither here nor there what I do understand and and Tom both saying is that we can't move forward on our
207decision we can't get more specific information that we've asked for until we give specific parameters that we've been too vague so all I'm saying is ok let's get some parameters you're absolutely right let's not given the parameters we're not going to support so if in fact people would not support the flip then we shouldn't do that and we should only stick with the flip plus 15 minutes or whatever it is but so I told Lee agree with you about that okay so I didn't know if that was something we wanted to do tonight because we could just like we were saying in Mon ago we don't have to decide anything of September we don't even have to do this tonight like we could spend less the only point here is is our last meeting until
208September I don't know the legal ramifications if we were to meet an executive session and come up with it wouldn't be a topic for executive session okay so then it would have to be a public meeting and then so then it would and I don't can you schedule another public meeting in two weeks from now three weeks and while you can yeah right so we just do whatever we want to do well yeah I'm just putting that out on the table so well right you see what I'm getting at see what you're getting at but because there is the no change option I'm comfortable giving some direction tonight for for research okay and and I know that I'm open to voting for no change if the research comes back says it's not gonna work so
209then let's have the then let's have the discussion right now about like am I the only one that doesn't like flipping 7:30 8:30 or you know first I'm not trying to pigeonhole you or like you're low in the likes it I mean should we do that I mean I would give them that direction because to your point I liked it you're saying no change because I think that should be considered but but then we also I don't think we should just say without saying how every individual feels right because then that gives them better direction so what are the options let's all say what we feel about those options and then they know if it's a viable thing that we would consider some day so if that makes sense yeah right so we only give
210them options that I think as a board we would even just consider because if we're not gonna consider like your point why I mean why do Pollyanna in the committee need to spend time on looking at seven-thirty versus a 38% come back in three months and for a baseline I think we could all I don't want we could all decide as no change being like a option right so so we agree on that so then if I could just one thing this won't preclude us from looking at something else that comes up in the internet I mean that I just want to ensure it shouldn't yeah exactly okay okay so then let me put out a concrete one that people seem to at least find plausible if it would work is a flip with 10
211or 15 minute delay so so just spell it out exactly so we're all happy right so that would be flipping having middle school start first and then high school and then elementary school but moving everybody back from the current from everybody later from the current time 10 or 15 minutes depending on what yes so you're looking at instead of middle school starting at 8 middle school starting it out of there 7:45 750 high school instead of starting at 7:30 goes to 810 or 8:15 elementary school goes to 840 4845 and the only reason I'm equivocating is because I want to look at the transportation routes and make sure that it absolutely still takes 30 minutes in between each route so sorry so is that a is that a plausible option to consider very open-minded yeah
212are there other options and options are there other options that we should look at still do in middle school earlier only by but I mean no so that's so are there other options that you want to throw out that we could well I'm just saying that again back to my original argument that middle school it's only 15 minutes well absolutely that's and you may decide it so if we move high school ups 45 minutes it's only 45 you know we don't want to get into that right so think about concrete right so just are there specific are there other specific time proposals that you want to make that they should investigate I'd like to propose something much different than that just as another option which would be to change high school only and only on
213Wednesdays so it would still be a short Wednesday and high school would start at approximately 9:00 o'clock that day so elementary schools no change at all Monday through Friday middle schools no change at all Monday through Friday high school no change at all Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday sleep in on Wednesdays to clarify that with Devon you brought this up with me before that would let's say high school then goes to 2:00 2:30 which puts the bus runs then a middle school 1:30 to 2:30 solves that and then high school professional development we're not moving that to the morning we're moving that to 2:45 after school that would go till say 4:45 you could decide that okay that's up to you guys I don't I don't think that's a board decision to be honest but I
214have always looked at as our professional development as a keystone to our why we always have these accolades of why West Harford is so great our teachers are administrative things like that right now I'm joking about that one but you know not the teachers administration you know but we always and I clearly you know friends and families and people that I talk to throughout the country you know why is West Hartford so good and I always go back to and I think we all agree is that our professional development on Wednesday separates the wheat from the chaff for the that's why I think West Hartford is one of the successful isn't it and it's the almost the the Midas touch that I don't want to touch I want to leave that I'm not sure I
215understand that either with you but but I don't think I don't want to mess with you no I think that's a key element there and it's why I clear fide yes what Deb and that listen Paul will beat me over the head if we tried to move it to the morning because then that separates us by discipline and you can't do some of the things doing the afternoon there are certainly accommodations that could be made that's that's something we could look at and get back to you know I'm the surface I think you know I'm listening to you oh that makes sense but then the professional development days and I don't want to harm that model I guess I don't want to fringe that model and again that's why we would have the administration look
216into it over the summer and get back to us and if they say look the the problem with the Wednesday option that you came up with is it would completely disrupt we couldn't find a way to keep our model of professional development where we go across the whole district we just couldn't find a way to do it okay that's information for us to have as a board when we make our decision about whether or not to make a change and what that changes so we're talking about a one day we change I have not in favor of that and on Wednesday they have a system that works really well maybe I'm just not knowledgeable but I don't understand how that seems like a hugely negative impact to the to our teachers to have to push
217them that much later into the afternoon hours their contractual issues that would come up if we did that Wow I'd have to look at it to be honest with you my inclination would be no there isn't because Elementary currently is 2:30 to 4:30 because their P because it's staggered already and it's one contract but we'd have to look at I mean there's questions that I can't answer off the top of my head now but I understand and I appreciate your point that would I'd need to look at it and make sure there wasn't the impact and Paul and Anne would certainly and it's not a wholesale change like I thought we're trying if we're going to do something we're trying to do wholesale change one day a week right I just want to clarify that
218I'm presenting this option not because I don't think I could vote for a wholesale change I think I could potentially vote for wholesale change I just looking for a backup option that gets us a half a loaf of bread if you would if if we can't make a wholesale change for some other practical reasons I think it's there there are some schools that have a one-day later start Kingswood Oxford for example is one of them I consider that many people sleep in on the weekends and this would be just another opportunity for students to sleep in teachers too if they want one day per week or if they want to get up early and and use the time some other way they could do that so I'm not presenting this option as the only idea
219I think I'm very open minded to the idea of changing for five days a week if we can make it work but if we can't I'd like to see if this might be a back-up plan yeah so I don't think it again it goes with anything that we've been discussing tonight because we've been trying to talk about if we can somehow afford a wholesale change teachers won't get up later and I I think it's just wasting the committee's time because it's it doesn't to me at least see like something I could support as any sort of significant change so that's not something I would recommend they do for me can I'm when I first jumped in okay I'm real quick though my initial reaction is I don't think that would work but I go back
220to what we've talked about in previous meetings and I think Rob you recommended or we look into the bus situation for example what if we did the buses ourselves instead of out sourcing everything what if we had our own fleet of buses or maybe we hired the drivers or or something of that nature and the initial reaction of the administration is a is probably not going to work but as a board we said when the time comes can you take a look at it you know and then we could make an informed decision and this may be another one you know get us the numbers we'll take a look then and see maybe it totally doesn't make sense but then again if we can't get everything we wanted this may be something to consider I'm
221is doesn't mean right now that I would vote for it but I don't have the information so I can't make that decision so this is the opportunity for us to provide some options we might not look we may not like all the options and I love the option on the table as no change because that's an option but I think this is the opportunity today tonight for us to give the administration some information so you have an idea of what we're looking at so you can come back to us with some facts or some hard data to say okay this may work this definitely isn't going to work and because and you would tell us why and then you can say well perhaps you might want to be able to combine combine this a and
222B but C is definitely out so I'm in favor of us presenting some options to you all so that you can come back and then give us you know some engineers and give us the information that we need to eventually decide or vote I'm gonna throw a huge monkey wrench into this thing so if we decide as a group to change the high school times so that these adolescents get more sleep do we as a governing body tell the football team they can't they can't go out and practice in all of August at 6:30 in the morning before the heat do we tell the track team that's getting ready for or the cross-country team getting ready for the fall but they can't go run 6:30 in the morning before the heat things like that because
223the science remember you shouldn't be waking up that early and they are students I just you know you want to change school times and then and if the science is so critically clear then it affects a lot it does markers I don't see anybody else even suggesting that maybe you're just playing a hypothetical I'm just you know you're put it we're putting science on the table as irrefutable I heard that thing three thousand times and you know if it is that irrefutable these things matter right but you know I'm just saying I just want to throw things out there we can talk a one issue at a time here if that's something you want to consider it make a motion for you know go ahead but otherwise if we're just throwing things at the wall
224I guess what I'm asking are we going through science we were going through money what's the decision-making process I actually appreciate you saying that because I think it's important for us to at least for me I think it's important as we discuss this to get a sense of what framework are we looking through so oftentimes a metaphor of building a house building a foundation was used so in applying the science to that we know that many times there was a time where houses were built and when paint was used lead paint was used and it's a matter of deciding okay are we going to continue to live in this house with lead paint are we going to do something about it so I think it's a matter of are we looking at options from the
225perspective of should we or how do we make it work so that's where I am I appreciate the discussion I appreciate things that are happening but we've received information for a long period of time we have plethora of data information I think at some point we're going to need to move towards some type of assertive direction and so for myself from what has been shared my lens is okay we need to make it work I certainly want us to continue to discuss how to make it work certainly we need to be thorough with that process I'm Carol I never say we shouldn't do options I I'm an agreement we should actually do options but I want to give them options that will actually consider supporting so to just give them options to Specht go off
226into the woods and review is a complete and utter disservice to everything that they're doing I'm saying then let's talk about what options we want to do and I agree with Mark it's like what's driving this train there's two main horses or science and there's money and so we have to factor that into the decision making process that's really what it's all about and so what are those options going to be and you know I'm hearing options that at least from my perspective no disrespect to you it's your right to to bring up that option but then I based on everything we've heard for the last year with the science being being over our head and and I understand it but also much less time with the budgetary is you know we need to give
227them options that we can actually at least say well once we get more information we can consider that so that's what I'm saying let's give them options we'll consider not just any options right so just to pull this together are there other options that people might consider I have to say that everything that's been on the table I am at least open-minded about there are some I prefer more than others there are some I have doubts about but I am willing to be educated and find out that might work or might not work but are there other options that we might consider that we might that we might in fact consider and we can we should ask them to look at I don't want to over - I don't want to overlook any opportunity now
228to have another solution so just a process question I'm wondering Rob if you would feel more comfortable if each of the options was presented as a motion that we voted upon individually as a board and then if one of the options has enough support then the administration will look into it if it doesn't have enough support the administration won't look into it and I would consider these votes not to be a board member indicating support for the idea but a board member indicating support for the administration looking into the idea would that make you feel more comfortable I think we just need to give them clarity whether you want to go Robert's Rules and in and do a motion or if we just want to be more last a fair about it and just say
229to them they're here like this is what we support or this is what we don't support and if there's a majority that supports it then then go do it I don't care I just I don't think we've given them any consensus so it's like we've all expressed some opinions about but okay jumps around to different options and people said they'd like some people they didn't so I want to guess we're getting close to there I just want you to recognize - given all this science we are some of the best high schools in the country we are we are at a exercise of excellence what we have on the table right now is some of the best schooling the best teaching the best administrate the best scores and we heard that the scores won't go
230up any incrementally what we have is a model of success here right now so when we go and try to manipulate and change make those decisions with we have one of the best models available so when you make those decisions you are putting a change in a model that people are trying to emulate and I I feel that's a great point and we're taking that into account by no change being an option totally like you know so your point is good we've addressed that we're also addressing changes do and that's what I made that appointment and and that would be something we consider what you just said please repeat that in September when it comes to this because that's that's good stuff okay so as an informal show of hands not a Robert's Rules of
231Order would everybody who would be in favor of considering a swap of middle school high school except moving in 15 minutes later as an option to ask them to check out just okay how many people would be willing to consider hearing the answer about whether what it would what it would be to switch wednesday for high school to move everything by roughly an hour and a half everything back just as an option the that's the the the dead proposal just just sorry I'm listening right I'm not saying I'm in favor okay are there so the I'll throw at the third one but I don't think that anyone other didn't be is gonna raise their hands does anybody want to hear the results of a straight swap middle school high school and then leaving elementary school
232as it is justice waits yeah in other words high school at middle school at 7:30 high school at eight middle elementary school at 8:30 just a straight swap of middle school in high school anybody be willing to consider that just two of us so don't consider that one if get that are there any other proposals that people can come up with knowing that something else oh no option of course of course we're going to figure out yeah I spend a lot of time with ya even though we've kind of we've kind of dismissed it but I mean especially since I feel like that's one thing I got from all the discussions in the science the most was we talked about it being too expensive but what if we move high school from 7:30 to 8:30
233I mean we've talked around it a lot but we haven't really drilled down good so we need to know what that means okay so if high school so would that mean I mean maybe we can leave this up to them I don't know how much you know need but if so what would that mean Elementary goes to 7:30 order doesn't mean everybody moves to later just you can't because at the same time what no you do know we do know no that's a massive cost to point something million so I don't know what the option is then that if you wanted to push high school back an hour what that means then for elementary elementary would have to go if you moved high school to 8:30 the easiest to switches element 9 goes to 9:00
234middle school stays at 8:00 okay sure the point is to try and get the high school kids d30 right absolutely right don't want any and you don't want to shift anyone back to 7:30 because I think that's the problem I have with like all this swapping and switching it's like if we're if we're determining that 7:30 is just so awful for high school kids it's like I just don't know why we think anyone should go start school at that time amen you know I mean I understand the science of it and it's worse for the high school kids but again how you're qualifying that statement it's worse for those kids it's not really not good for anybody right so I would like to know what that's gonna cost okay so third option yes the only
235thing I do want and just for clarity purposes when we talk about moving the morning starts we're also talking about moving the end so high school would then be 830 yeah this is yeah yeah and everything cuz we could take minutes off period l2 but that's I'm not advocating for here for education Tom yeah thanks but that would make high school 8:30 to 3:15 an elementary school would now be 9:00 to 3:45 350 and the impact and what it would cost and sports all that right so that but I think fair and you're absolutely right I wasn't even I wasn't nervion ufff to go there but you were so Bravo let know that you're absolutely right let's try it I mean let's find out because if the if the daycare daycare shifts to earlier but
236it's the same hour and a half let's ask does everybody Oh is there enough people we have three options on the table bingo no option no is no change right yeah that's right okay can I make a radical proposal in the spirit of letting children go to sleep at a reasonable time could could we switch the student presentations and your report or you be fine I knew you were they're graduating they're gonna go out afterwards I gotta get up in the morning you're so right you're so right now that's fine okay is that okay just okay I'm the promised you go to bed early that's right no blue screens none okay so at Connard senior athletic awards were last night and we awarded lots of seniors who have played sports all three of their years
237in this Pete this week we awarded 211 11th and 12th graders and three hundred ninth and tenth graders a different upper classmen and underclassmen Awards there were also student council elections last Friday which was my your skip day but I was sitting there running the booth and we elected yeah we elected all of the members who were really excited and the Board of Ed rep for next year is also super excited and I can't wait to see how everything turns out with him also do you get to tell us who that is his name is Gus bacon love ya anyway so graduation is obviously you guys know on the 19th and we're all super excited for safe grad except we don't know what it is and all of the parents are plotting he knows yeah
238so we are very curious the Unified theater show was last week and everybody says that it was one of the best shows ever and that's something that Connor dan hall prides himself on it's such an amazing production and personally I just want to say thanks to you guys it's last meeting and I grew so much here like public speaking and just everything like municipal politics I really am interested in it and I grew a lot here and I love it so thank you guys so much this year is quickly coming to a close it's very bittersweet as a graduating senior and so there are the usual end of your events such as the junior prom which was hosted at the Hartford Marriott for the first time and it looked really fun and it looked like
239a great night this past weekend was my senior prom at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Massachusetts and it was really fun and exciting and a great way to like celebrate the end of the year with all my friends last week was senior outing and more than 50 seniors went to Six Flags and then the next day the fit all the physics students took a trip to Lake compounds for physics a later that night the annual award ceremony was held and many scholarships and awards were distributed congratulations to all who were recognized in the special congratulations took coal canary and keeper net who are going to West Point and the Coast Guard Academy respectively they got special recognition at the ceremony congratulation two boys Outdoor Track and Field for winning States and girls for placing
240a second and congratulations to hall class of 2015 grant O'Connor for winning the division 3 5k race and being named one of the top Division three athletes of the year and graduation is coming up soon and I hope to see some of the board at ha the superior school hall and thank you so much Esther gray said thank you so much for this year it's been such a pleasure and an incredible opportunity and I'll miss it and also I'd like to announce that although we haven't had elections yet the Board of Ed rep for next year will be Megan strip cave she's not I'm not guessing she's running unopposed so um she's an she's incredible and I'm just so excited to see what she'll do she'll be amazing thank you well now we're gonna put
241you off for another minute um Tom because Maddie and grace I'm we're totally looking forward to Gus and Megan but we as a group agreed that we wanted to thank you for your incredibly tireless and I emphasize tireless given the time service not just because you you guys stayed up late and not just because you kept your finger on the pulse of high school you organize petitions you turn every single story into a triumph which is sometimes a challenge in high school but really you reminded us of why we're here and we particularly wanted to commend you on your faithful and energetic participation in all of our conversations we can't tell you how important it is to have student voices in this conversation we think a lot of stuff about what we think should happen
242but we really really need to hear from the students themselves and your contributions have been absolutely incredible and so helpful to us it makes us better and stronger as a board and we have learned a lot a lot from you you both are amazing and you're going to be amazing gifts to your colleges they're really lucky to have you and we were lucky to have you this year we wish you the best of luck and our deepest thanks for everything and we have very small tokens of our love and appreciation [Applause] now stay if you will but now you can go thank you backtracking from dare I say the sublime to the ridiculous the report of the superintendent I think we've won like eight more awards while I've been waiting no first off last Thursday
243night and I want to thank charile and we have the whe a for speaking to the teachers retirement banquet which is all which is always a great night for our teaching family to come together and and we had three unbelievable finalists for Teacher of the Year and in a very difficult decision I want to congratulate Sonya stemmer West hartford's new teacher of the Year language arts teacher at Sedgwick who her first line of her application I mentioned previously she considers that are privileged to be a teacher and it comes through and everything she does we were very excited to have her represent West Hartford through the state Teacher of the Year this coming year and moving forward but Sonya is very excited but not as excited as her students that were observed and did the
244work they were thrilled for her tomorrow is Morley's 90th birthday party at 9:30 a.m. and actually the Hartford Courant and Michaela put together Morley stories through the years that are really interesting so it's a it's a good read I'm so thank you Michaela for that Maddy mentioned it I want to thank and I know Dave and Mark will talk about but thanks mark for speaking at a military induction ceremony last Tuesday night that Paul does so much work to organize what a special night for our kids Shelly Solomon was here earlier she cut out like a slacker but she was the keeper of the light Award winner from the pupil services department this year which is a great testament to Shelly's devotion to kids and to all kids from all backgrounds so congratulations to Shelly
245and with that graduation is June 19th pray for good weather so looking forward to it it's been Awards celebrations and this is a special group of kids moving on from both places who have taken the legacy passed on to them and continued to build on it and Rosina and I and I know marked it after just had a great time yesterday talking to kids from both hall and Connard about their experiences K through 12 and really learned a lot and there were things we called Giulio and dad immediately after hey do you know this and so we'll be following up with them also thank you see what's worth waiting for that's the key okay now to go from the cue lisbeth to the sublime let's get to the financial report can I have a motion
246that we the Board of Ed approved the financial report for the period ending April 30th 2018 so moved second discussion please this is me we're starting on page 12 of our booklets there's a very little action again this month because we're in the middle of year this is for the period ending April 30th you look on the far right column the difference an increase or decrease in different accounts here and you'll see you know although it always pains me to say the $140,000 increase it's not a big change in our large budget picture but let's go to page 13 the general fund report and we'll we'll look at some specific numbers probably the one you want to look at the only one that really stands out is 51:16 technical support is up $30,000 this is
247security over time but the security over time as a whole is down for the year so that's a small change everything else you just see in the the right column change from the prior month is just minor updates let's see yeah we can go to if we go down to 53 45 under purchase services will see pupil transportation and it's looking good not as high as we'd projected great job chip thank you with the good projections there so we had some extra wiggle room there for those amounts let's see next page is state and federal grants funds and you'll see if you look at the bottom portion all the money's been spent we're gonna closer to the end of the year so we're getting a better idea of what will carry over from last year
248or from next year excuse me carry over to next year the good news here is there's no lost money anything that's left over here will carry over to the coming year special funds nothing to talk about there on page 15 so then our last one is on page 16 the Nutrition Services budget the food services continues to look stable it's close to break-even and the big driver right now is salary and benefits as we've discussed that's under negotiations so with that that was a quick run through any questions for chip that sends my report before we vote to accept it are you still doing it next year or is there a shift will continue until November at least okay and we'll see if there's another interested person from our party who who would like to
249take over that perfect okay um can i oh so all in favor of accepting this report he's sorry opposed okay surprisingly the eyes have it thank you that's right worth it okay Communications and reports what oh I'm sorry I turned the page you guys keep missing things you're absolutely alright sorry I thought this came before the mission yes exact thank you okay can I have a motion that the Board of Education approved the minutes though the regular Board of Education meeting of May 15th I make a motion second okay all in favor aye aye opposed I abstain since I wasn't here Rob do I assume you did too yep okay two abstentions okay so that's that is moved and accepted now board member communications and reports sorry I I just really want to give a
250shout out to the West Hartford foundation of public schools to the board members and all the other members what I want to say is this is a very hardworking group and just the partnership between the foundation and the school's just goes without saying I mean we heard all the great things that were presented tonight and a majority of those things just wouldn't happen without that board and all the hard work they do in terms of raising money and providing grants for the various activities so the other piece that I wanted to say this is really for the general public for others who haven't of the big fundraiser which is the West Hartford cooking if you haven't had a chance to attend please put it on your calendar for next year and try to attend West
251Hartford cooking I mean great food entertainment and just a great time socializing and getting to know the people in and around town who makes our schools what they are so good job if anybody's still up watching this thank you hey I'm getting my second wind here I don't know let's keep going I was losing it in the middle of meeting mark give myself Paul and and Tom and if I missed anybody else forgive me we had the honor to attend the recognition of the 22 West Hartford seniors who will be entering the military this year now these were students not only from Connerton Hall but also North West Catholic Kingswood Oxford and Loomis Chaffee and it was neat to have everybody get together there's a third year we're doing it Paul thank you for everything
252you did it was just wonderful gets better every year in the past two years has been at the American Legion this year moved to town hall which gave us more elbow room it was really nice we had the Connard choir come and sing it was beautiful everyone was recognized to each individual was brought up on stage to a round of applause got a red white and blue chord they will wear at graduation some of the students are going active duty so I'm going National Guard others going to ROTC so it's a great mix of what's happening and and and marking myself got to sit at a table with Malik Brown who's going to train at Fort Leonard Wood where Mark and I have both served lost in the woods it's called and so that was
253really neat to tell some stories about that and here Mark's got great stories to tell of his days in the military I can tell you about changing flat tires yeah it was good we had opening comments by Tom closing remarks by Mark and the Medal of Honor winner recipient buddy bucha was the featured speaker and what an honor it was to hear from him a dynamic person about leadership and and the key the keys to effective leadership which was a good message all around so thank you to the American Legion and West Hartford Public Schools for this event didn't have it back in my day when I joined so I'm really happy to always be a part of that just want to echo the buddy was I have not the only time I have seen
254speakers that done such a job like this is the guys that get paid $100,000 to come and speak to you at big sales events and things like that this guy was unbelievable I mean and his we're lucky to have his daughter at Connard next year as a lacrosse coach right yeah yeah he's he's from down the southeast part of Kenneth West part of Connecticut and I just Tom if you can get him here convocation I'm telling this guy I'm actually feel bad for you guys that you didn't get to see and talk to him I have not personally ever met a Medal of Honor winner and I was just kind of in awe just to even shake his hand and say hello so unbelievable if we could and I I had the I had the
255job of following him it's like that was the worst job in the world so but anyway it's Dave you did a great job just that if I know Tom and I talked afterwards you know because the his speech on leadership it just it would bode so well at convocation and you know I would certainly give my time up for that yeah that's awesome thank you thank you both other reports information discussions okay so announcement of future meeting dates sorry those of you who are addicted but the next meeting is not until September 4th which is of course at Tuesday our next regular Board of Education meeting as usual at 7:00 as usual right here on 50 South Main Street in the legislative chambers a request for future agenda items I think we have an action-packed
256agenda coming up anyway comments from any Hardy visitor is still with us hearing none and with no executive session I do I have a second all in favor aye thank you