Enfield, CT - Board of Education - March 26, 2024

Of education to order on Moment of Silence and Pledge of Allegiance. I'd like to give up a moment of silence for the people and families affected by the tragedy early this morning in Maryland at the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I hope that they find the remaining missing people and that those who are rescued will be OK. And the pledge pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for

all. God Bless America. All right. Fire evacuation in the unlikely event of a fire. The exit doors are at the back of the chambers. You can go out to the parking lot or you can go out these double doors to the left. The stairs, Double door stairs down and back out to the parking lot. Kathy, can I have roll call, please? Missus acree here. Doctor Kalman here. Missus Cushman here. Mr. Gennidis Here. Mr. Kober. Here. Missus LeBlanc Here. Missus Pickett here. Mr. Ryder here. Chairwoman Riley here.

OK, I'd like I'd like to make a motion if we could move item 7B to before item 6 Board guests. Can I have a second second All right motion made by Miss Blank second by Mr. Ryder to move item 7B to before board guests so that our awesome students can come on up earlier. Can I have a show of hands in favor there is I'm in favor. I'm against. OK. So Mr. Drasic thank you Chairman Riley 7B. So if you may have figured out, you guys get a month March is Board appreciation month. And at this time, we re

cognize members of the board for your devotion and dedication to the students, families and staff from the Anfield public schools. In front of each board member, several items prepared by our students and staff members. But we also have some very special guests tonight to decide to deliver their gifts in person. So at this point, I would welcome our students from Eli Whitney School to come up and tell them why you're here. Don't be shy, Brother Mike is like so close to me. The students and staff

of Eli Whitney would like to take this time to thank you, the Board of Education, for all you do for all of us. You spend time away from your own families to come to meetings and advocate for us and help us be the best we can be. The first gift we made for you was created during art class. Students from 4th grade recently created Bottle Buddies on Famous Americans, so we thought we would include you as well because you are famous to us and we appreciate all that you contribute to our community.

For the second gift, we used your campaign photos to create portraits and used what we learned from our study of characterization and literary essays to include attributes that we felt best described you. There were so many wonderful traits to choose from, so we picked the best of the best. You know you know that you are receiving gifts from all the students in Enfield, and that is because you are loved by all. For your generosity and kindness toward all of us students, we believe that Enfield

is the best district around. Thank you for everything and we hope you enjoy your gifts. There it is. Thank you very much. Oh, no. I got my arm. I got it. I'm OK. OK well well that was. I don't even know if I have words for how like this is awesome. You guys thank you so so much. And we should be thanking you. You don't have to thank you don't have to thank us. We should be thanking you guys and your parents and all the teachers that make en feel great. Anybody else want to. I don't know if we ha

ve tissues up here. Could we have your name. Could we have your name. Yeah. Well, I recognize once the kid governor for sure. Who are you guys? Jacob Doyle. Gabriella Diaz? Taylor Swift? Haley Anderson? My goodness. Oh my goodness, thank you. Does anybody want to say anything? No, I just want, I want to thank my Whitney friends and all the Whitney wolves and and all the students in Enfield across our district. There's the presentation that you guys made was amazing and there's flowers here from

HMS and we got a a gift bag and and some some shirts from Central office and the Enfield High. And we just wanted to thank thank you guys very much and you guys know why I'm up here and you're four of the reasons why I'm up here and thank you guys and thank your parents too for bringing you out tonight. It's very cold out. Go ahead Tina. I just want to thank you. And when I looked at the picture of of a Miss Pickett and Mr. Ryder. And then the words that you picked when you thought of us is so i

mportant because we don't often see how people view us through others eyes. And to hear kind words and have these thoughtful things about us is just really rewarding and just a wonderful evening. And we thank you for your kind words. So thank you for coming out. I will know when they came up, they were very professional. They got the microphone set, they pressed the red button, they were moving it. You guys are pros, but thank you again. This is really just heartfelt and touching. So thank you.

I'm quite speechless. This is probably my favorite night and I totally forgot it was tonight. The gifts from last year still like hang in my office space in my basement. So now I have many more things to bring. So thank you for all the schools, but I'm really touched by the thoughtful and personalized work by the Eli Whitney students. So thank you so much, it means a lot and appreciate your your hard work. So thank you to the staff for putting that together. Thank you for the students, for your

work. Anybody else? Go ahead. May one or two of you someday sit up here. I just want to say thank you. I love, of course, children singing, but I even love children's art. This is just, like, down my alley. I love it. It's amazing. It's just like, wow, It's like Christmas in here. Thank you so much for all your efforts and creativity. To all of you, thank you. Go ahead though. Yeah. So I'll just start off and and obviously you're welcome, but also thank you guys for for taking time out of your d

ay and the gifts. I mean, this is my first time being up here, so I wasn't expecting this at all. And it's, you know, it's awesome that you guys were able to use the creativity and and put stuff together and it's it's it's awesome seeing it come together. So like it just echo what everyone else said. Thank you guys for coming out and thank you for the support. Anybody else? Go ahead, Janet. I do want to express my appreciation to you and to all of the students at the school, that all the schools

that have made this a really special night. Your gifts are creative and they're beautiful. And I'm just gonna. I can see myself spending about some long time just going through all my cards and and finding special places to put all my gifts so I can remember why I'm doing this. So thank you. Go ahead, Doctor. I can only add to what everybody else has said. Thank you so much. This, this means a great deal to all of us who attend these meetings and participate in them. We don't often get to see t

his kind of positive feedback. So again, thank you very, very much for this, these wonderful gifts that they're much appreciated. Awesome. Well the only thing I'm going to say is what I already said. But all of the other gifts that are underneath my desk here were amazing and I already read through them all and everything is beautiful, the plants, the everything. I just. I'm totally speechless. And it's further solidifies that I know exactly why I'm here. And it's because of you four there and a

ll the other 4000 something that are out there. So thank you. All right. That was. I don't know. We can't. I'm good. We're good. I'm done with me. We're good. We're good. Motion to adjourn. We're good. Let's go. OK. All right. Well, thank you guys can definitely go and have some dinner and sleep up. You got another day of school tomorrow. I think someone was being bashful. That's Mayor Diaz to all of you guys. OK. All right. So we're going to move on to board. Guess Increasing educator diversity

presentation. Thank Chairwoman Riley. I guess read the room. You should end on a high note. But I'm only kidding. Tonight we welcome our Director of Educational Equity Ultrasound, Cox Blackwell and members of our increasing Educator Diversity team and our 20/22/23 Teacher of the Year, Amber Venutos. Might be the last time I get to say it, so you lose. There will present the district's ID Action Plan and request board approval in order to submit the plan to the state Department of Education, whi

ch we're required to do, but I'm sure they will explain all the intricate details. So welcome. Good evening everyone, and thank you for having us. Happy Board Appreciation Month. As Mr. Dreszick just said, our purpose this evening is to share with you the work our increasing educator diversity team has been doing, as well as our action plan and then ask for your approval of the plan. So as Mr. Dreszick said. I'm a Tresa Cox Blackwell and I want to point out that the work that we are still doing,

we started last year and highlights of some of that work. We participated and committed to six months of training by the state Department of Education consultants and also Region 2 comprehensive Center network consultants. That work consisted of meeting three times each month from January to June. The first meeting was a training session and then we had homework that we had to complete. So we had two additional meetings and the list of names represents the team from last year. We were a team of

eight last year and I just want to acknowledge all of them. So who you have sitting before you joining me are three members also from last year's group. Everyone couldn't be here, but we're now a team of 6. I just wanted to give you a little bit of background about some of the information that was used for the training. And all of this information is on the State Department of Education's website under the talent office. So we had two big manuals that we had to go through and we we completed qu

ite a quite a bit of work. I'm I'm very proud of the team that I that I worked with. So because I'm going to start getting into more specific information, let me go back and introduce who I have sitting up here with me. So I have Bethany Collado, She's the assistant principal at Enfield Street School. I have Emily Hollabich. I said it right. She's one of our technology teachers at two different schools. And also joining us tonight is Matt Murray and he's one of the Dean of students at the high s

chool. So why focus on diversifying our certified workforce? So looked at data from our district profile and performance report from last year and you can see that of our students, over 1800 of them are students that fall in the categories of Asian, Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino or two or more races and that equates to about 37% of our total student population. So Matt and Emily will discuss the next two slides. So can everybody hear me OK on this? Alright, thank you. The the data we

get a little more deep into the data here. You can see that we have fairly strong representation among our white certified educators 95.2% of our certified educators do identify as white that's slightly above the state percentage total of 88.7. So certainly, you know, when you look at that data compared to our student demographic in the district, there's a bit of a disparity, OK. So we have 27 educators that identify as Asian, Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino of any race and tha

t only equates to 4.8% of our staff so far below the student population. So working with the state Department of Education consultants and as I said Region 2, again we trained for six months from January to June and it was referred to as an increasing educator diversity coaching series. Part of this training included writing a vision statement, coming up with the theory of action, and then the actual action plan that we're going to be presenting to you. So why increasing educator diversity matte

rs? Well, all students benefit from the talents of teachers from a variety of different backgrounds, races and ethnic groups. There we go. Here is the vision statement that we came up with. We recognize and strive to close the gap between the 37% students with diverse race ethnicity that's reported, as well as all of our students and the 4.8% certified staff with diverse race ethnicity reported again, increasing educator diversity benefits all students. And we were chatting earlier today. It als

o benefits all of our staff. So Matt will talk about our theory of action. Thank you. So one of our tasks at these meetings which were really well attended and and very you know pretty fascinating to be able to meet with different districts from across the state and see how they're dealing with with certain things. But one of the one of our tasks was to create this theory of action. So you know we put a lot of time into it and I'm just going to read it because I I think we we're pretty proud of

it. So because Enfield Public Schools believes representation matters for all students, we and by we, I mean this team, the increasing educator diversity team are developing a plan to establish more diverse recruitment, hiring and selection and retention practices. If we are committed to hiring and retaining ethnically, culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse certified educators because we believe representation matters and research shows all students benefit from diverse educators for

their academic success and overall well-being. And if we read and apply research based strategies as they relate to the recruitment, selection, hiring and retention of underrepresented groups, then we will have a better understanding of barriers to diversified recruitment, selection, hiring and retention that can be identified and addressed, which will lead to revised practices broadening to include a more diverse pool of applications. And as we move forward, will result in the increased likelih

ood of hiring a greater number of ethnically, culturally, racially and linguistically diverse certified educators as well as our students benefiting from the wider range of perspectives coming from furthering educator diversity. Now that's a lot of words, but essentially we kept going back to the fact that we believe that representation matters for all students and benefits all members of our school community. And I just want to point out that the State Department of Education has a call to acti

on, which is to diversify and strengthen Connecticut's educator workforce to ensure that all students have the racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse teachers and leaders who can provide them with high quality education. So we've been working on the action plan and then found out that there is Public Act 23-167, Section 10 entitled Increasing Educator Diversity Plans. So what does that entail? This actually became effective July 1st of 2023. However, the information wasn't shared until

about August, September. But anyway, it requires that not later than March 15th, each local and regional Board of Education submit an increasing educator diversity plan. So I'm going to pause there because obviously it's after March 15th. So we applied to the state Department of Education for and were granted a time extension. Our new submission deadline with board approval is April 15th and then it goes on to say if the plans are not approved, they will make suggestions, give it back to us and

we have to resubmit it by May. Once it has approval and it's submitted, it will appear on the state Department of Education's website as well as on ours. So our action plan consists of three focus goals, addressing recruitment, hiring and selection and retention. We put in a lot of work to come up with what does Enfield need, not generic goals. We conducted a root cause analysis to assist with developing goals again based on the needs and we kept coming back to that. What do we need? So first is

our recruitment goal and I'm going to share with you what we've been doing this year. This year we participated in the Connecticut Teacher Residency Program or abbreviated as CTTRP or just referred to as TRPI. Want to give a little additional information on this? The Teacher Residency program encourages districts to increase the diversity of certified educators through a Grow Your own model. This program is an alternate route to certification that embraces a different approach to attract and re

tain teachers of color. The Teacher Residency program provides hand on hands on training by crack for underemployed or unemployed adults with a pathway to a lifelong career and economic stability. Candidates participate in courses for 14 to 18 months and work with a mentor teacher for one school year while receiving pay and benefits. So I want to pause right here because I want to provide everyone with additional information regarding the teacher residency program. And at this time, I'd like to

invite Amber and Paola to join us. So in giving you additional information of this program, back in March 2023, building administrators were given information about TRP and asked if they had anyone currently working as a paraprofessional, behavior technician, or substitute with a bachelor's degree who would be interested in elementary certification. This program also required the commitment of a mentor, teacher and the building administrator. One candidate met the criteria and was willing to go

through the program. That's Paola Castillo. Palace started with Enfield Public Schools as a substitute, then teaching Assistant at Stowe Early Learning Center. She came to us from Venezuela with not only a bachelor's degree but also a law degree in April 2023. The initial commitment was to participate in 1/2 day selection process consisting of a demonstration lesson, reflection group activity and final interview. I attended and participated in the selection day with Paula. Then in the summer of

2023, Paula began her training. My only other involvement has been a monthly check in since September with Paula, Amber and one check in meeting with Memorials Principal Fitzsimmons and Assistant Principal Tate where they joined us. At this time, I'm going to let them share additional information. Great. Thank you so much. Good evening and thank you so much for including us in this conversation and for the introduction earlier. But tonight I'm here with a far more important title and that is to

be the mentor for this fabulous future educator sitting next to me missus, Paula Castillo. My hope tonight is to briefly share a little bit about the structure of TRP and the impact that this program has had on our Hazardville Memorial community. Like Altresa told you, this is an alternate route to certification focused on diversifying our current teaching workforce. It's a statewide program that has been around for about 5 years, but this is the first year that Enfield has been involved and Pow

ell and I are the first and only mentor and resident combination in the District. For the teacher resident, the program consists of three years of training. Palace started with classes every single day of the summer last summer, followed by her full year residency with me in our second grade classroom at Hazard Memorial this year. And taking two nights of classes through TRP while she's doing her residency. Followed by more classes every day next summer. And then her own classroom in the fall wh

ere she will have her own class but still have mentor support under what's called a wreck. It's a resident educator certificate. And then the following year, then there would be no more mentor support and she would be like an official year one teacher and start going through the initial educator certificate and team and all of those things. One of the best parts about this program is the layers of support on both the district side and the TRP side for both the resident and the mentor. For Paola,

she gets two to three training days a month with her cohort from TRP. So other residents who are working in different districts across the state who are going through some similar experiences and they all get together twice a month to learn from their coaches and talk about practices and things like that. Paula also gets observed formally twice a month, once by me and once by her coach from TRP that happened today, and daily observations by me or our building administration for me. TRP also pro

vides support in a monthly training that I get to go to down in Hamden with other mentors from around the state that are participating in the program. We talk a lot about coaching competencies and strategies to support residents, but also a lot of our conversations wrap around cultural awareness and recognizing that a lot of our mentors have different cultural identities than the residents and how to navigate that within the classroom. I also am provided with monthly one-on-one virtual check ins

urance with RTRP Coach to just make sure that everything is going well. So a lot of things are in place to make sure that it's a successful placement. I have to commend Enfield for their participation in this program as a true grow your own. As Altresa alluded to, Paola was already a valued member of our Enfield Schools community when she came to us. She served as a teacher assistant at Stowe and was recognized. They are all ready for her dedication and her commitment to connection with our fami

lies and our students. This is a win win for everyone involved. It gives Paula a chance to launch into a career that she might not otherwise have had the ability to pursue, and Enfield gets the benefit of her skills for years to come. Not every district operates with TRP in this way. Some districts opt to have TRP find the resident and the district finds the mentor, and they put them together, and it's not always the most successful of a match. But Enfield worked very hard and diligently to find

both of us who would be a good fit for this program. And I think it's safe to say that it's been fairly successful. There is so much power in the district looking at our existing staff and saying we see your potential and we believe that you can help us move forward in the direction that we want to go. And that's a huge factor in why I agreed to participate in this program this year. So Fast forward to where we are now. Over the past seven months, I've done everything in my power to teach Paula

about every aspect of my job as a second grade teacher. She knows more than she ever wanted to know about lesson planning, report cards, parent teacher conferences, curriculum, assessment, progress monitoring, tiered intervention, special education, accommodations, student engagement, bus duty, PBTS, every meeting under the sun, and everything in between. And I can say without a doubt or hesitation that she is ready to be an elementary classroom teacher. But I will also tell you that it is not

Paola who has learned the most through this experience. It's me. Paola has taught me what our schools can look like when our students recognize their own identities in the teachers that they work with. The first week of school. I knew that this year was going to feel different when one of our students stood staring at awe and Paolo with her mouth wide open and we were like, are you OK? Like everything good. And she says, you say my name like my mom does. And of course, this was just the beginnin

g of a year of impact. That has changed our class and our school for the better. Our second grade class that has room memorial has 21 students with many different backgrounds, needs and experiences and Paola has found a way to connect with every single one of them. And because of her they have all made tremendous academic, emotional and behavioral growth this year within that group of 21. We are also lucky enough to have 5 multi language learners in our class this year, so their families speak b

oth English and Spanish at home. And Paola has taught me so much about the representation for these little learners. There are so many little things in her teaching that I never realized were missing in my classroom until I saw them in action this year. Things like giving whole class directions in English and then repeating them in a small group in Spanish for kids who need it. Things like referencing ingredients during a math instruction called tomatillos, which I am not familiar with, but one

of our students shouts out, Hey, my grandma uses those. Our class discussions regularly celebrate cultures and have become a natural part of our school day because of her involvement this year. And she has a gift of being able to communicate with families in a way that I cannot. This past Friday we had a student who Paula was at her cohort meeting. But I had a student who came up to me, one of our multi language learners who said Mrs. V you know what Mrs. Castillo did? I said no. He said she cal

led my mom, her and Mrs. Tate. They called my mom and they told her I was doing good and I said well you are doing good, but how did that make you feel? I said so proud. And of course, Palace Impact extends far beyond just the walls of our classroom. Because her residency is a full year, she's made deep connections with our HMS staff, students and families and truly become an embedded part of our school community. She has seamlessly become the 7th member of our Grade Two team. She's built connec

tions not just with me, but with all of our grade level colleagues. She shared her valuable perspective on our school's Equity Committee. She recorded her first, our first ever bilingual read aloud that all of our students got to enjoy during pause time this year. And she's made herself available to so many of our new students who have come into HMS not speaking any English, not able to communicate with new friends or new teachers, but able to talk to her. One of our parents earlier this year sh

ared with us that her son is in second grade in our class this year and she had never been into our school building for any event up until this point. Not because she didn't want to be there, but because she didn't feel like once she got there she would be able to communicate with staff well enough to understand what was going on. Paula translated the invitation to one of our events earlier this year in Spanish, followed up with a phone call to that Mother assured her that she would be there to

support her and that Mom has made it to multiple school events this year because of that additional effort. When we say that in our Enfield schools, all are welcomed, accepted, respected and supported. That is what we mean. I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to mentor for TRP, and my hope is that the program will grow in Enfield someday. But for now, on behalf of myself, Room 18 and all of HMS, we are so proud of you and so lucky to call you. Our colleague, our teacher and our friend.

Thank you so much. Oh, my God. Good evening. Thank you. Oh my God. Good evening. My name is Pablo Castillo. I am a resident teacher in Enfield and Hazard Memorial School. Before I'm coming to United States I was a lawyer in Venezuela. But when I moved to Connecticut and I started working assistant teacher and STO Amazing place there I'm working with is Extraordinary peoples and starting with their principal Miss Valley Jacqueline. Yeah. And. And I began feel patient about becoming a teacher here

in Enfield. I want to say too many things. I write letters, but I just want to tell from my heart and I love working with kids. I love see their face smiling with the learning something new. And I love helping dance and get started excited for learning about learning and is especially rewarding for me to connect with bilingual learnings because I know how hard is to learn when you don't fully understand English. TRP changed my life. He gave me the opportunity to follow my patient to become a te

acher and I I learned a lot from true old classes, cohort meeting, conference and working and from with my mentor every day. I want to say thank you Amber because she gave me this year and a special for me and learn a lot from her. And she gave me the opportunity to share the our students and we are committed every day to get the best for our students and day ones people give me extra motivation to keep doing this work. I just want to say the language of the heart or the good manners of making o

ur children be successful is universal and and learn so much from this years and can grow like a person and like a personal professional. Yeah. I'm so excited to have my own classroom in the future and just thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. So I want to share one more thing. As I mentioned, at this point I just do monthly check insurance. However, in January, Amber asked me to allow additional time to also meet with the principal and assistant principal, so I thought I would be meeting

with them individually. However, I discovered the purpose of that meeting was for everyone in Palace presence to share what a wonderful job she's been doing and to give examples of how supportive and helpful she's been to students, staff and families. For example, Patala has attended and participated in every evening family event. She joined the school's Equity team and makes herself available to translate into Spanish for families needing it. To say this has been a successful match is an under

statement. When they talk about attending the cohort meetings they shared with me, some of the other districts did not have successful matches and did not continue like Amber and Paula did. I do need to share with you that there is an expense to this program. And so due to budget constraints, we're not going to be able to continue with this program next year. But hopefully after hearing what we've had to share, you can agree that in the future with available funding, we can partner again with TR

P. And I too want to thank Paula and Amber, thank you so much. I know it's. So then what are we replacing our recruitment goal with? We have also been partnering with Central Connecticut State University for their next Gen. educator program. Well, these tiny words give a little bit of information about it, but basically it's an additional pair of hands in the classroom that allows students who are preparing to start the educator program certification program at Central to get some experience. So

what I shared on this slide was how you can find out additional information if you haven't already done so. This does not have the budgetary expectations that TRP does. We also don't get out of it what we get from TRP, but it does give us the opportunity to have diverse student educators come into our classrooms for substitute teacher pay, partnering with Central as well as the state Department of Education. All other fees are taken care of through them. It has been a challenge because we found

so far to date students don't want to come all the way out here. But I stay in contact with those involved with Next Gen. to ask them to please make us a priority and encourage central students to check us out and consider joining us. So Bethany will present the hiring and selection and the retention goals, followed by Emily summarizing our increasing Educator Diversity Action Plan. So the second goal pertains to hiring and selection and our goal is to diversify our interview plan panel represe

ntation to help increase Enfield's hiring of employees who represent a broader range of backgrounds and experiences. So in doing So, what we have come up with is an interview team participation form in which the lead person, usually the administrator on the team is to fill out the form which you can see on the slides right in front of you, which indicates those people that are participating within the interview team. And we've created this to monitor the representation and it also provides valua

ble data for our team and determining if representation and diversification is happening. Our third goal, it pertains to retention. And So what we're like what we would like to do is to retain our currently employed teachers who are ethnically, culturally, racially and linguistically diverse. And by doing so, we have come up with what we call stay interviews. The purpose of stay interviews is to discover what staff values about their job, what can be improved so that they feel that they matter.

Gain insight into what makes them stay and how we can build their capacity as an Enfield public school educator. We currently have 27 certified educators who are Asian, Black, African American and Hispanic Latino. And these would be the people that we would be hoping to have an in person interview with a central office staff beginning in January or so of 2025 in which we could gain some insight and hopefully retain those individuals who have been hired to stay here at Enfield Public Schools. So

to recap our IED action plan summary, our first goal is recruitment. We are going to participate in CCS US Next Gen. program goal two hiring and selection. We're going to encourage and monitor the diversity of interview teams through the submission of an Interview Team Participation form and Goal 3 Retention Conduct stay interviews targeting our teachers who are ethnically, culturally, racially and linguistically diverse. So with board approval of this action plan, our current team, they're all

the members, will submit the plan to the state Department of Education portal and then monitor and build on the goals of this plan. So here's our district equity statement and we present to you for board appreciation month a banner sized district equity statement is our way also of saying thank you for all you do for our district. And at this time thank you for listening and if you have any questions or comments we will do our best to respond to them. OK, go ahead. Mr., I just had a quick clarif

ying question. So the CCSU Next Gen. program, similar but different, less personal than the TRP program, but you said that the students would have the option to come and work in our buildings and they would get a substitute teacher rate. Is that something that we pay or that's paid for through the college like to to send them here that would be our financial obligation. So that being the case, do we know the difference in price between keeping the TRP program versus using the next Gen. version?

I came prepared just in case. So this year district participation including resident and mentor recruitment and evaluation, training, coaching and support was $10,750, mentor stipend $6000, resident salary and benefits of about $49,000 and in addition there are two $2000 resident summer stipends. Now the like the the larger number, the 10/7 is that just to be in the program itself, is that like a like a membership fee? I'm not sure if they call it a membership fee, but it covers what all I liste

d and is it was it only good for one year, the one year that we participated so that would be renewable that that fee, Yes. OK. And then do we know what the number is for the substitute teacher? Or is that something that you just don't have calculated? I don't know what substitute teacher pays. But then they wouldn't necessarily be here every day. Right? OK. All right. Thank you. OK, Mr. Janitas getting to Palace program. Is what she doing right now the same as or is it much different than doing

student teaching? Both because we're paying her because there's no way they could have an outside job? This consumes all of her time, both during the day and in the evening, so she's taking courses in the evening as well as over the summer. However, during this school year, she began helping out, and then there was a gradual release of responsibility by Amber until Paula took over the entire class. And then they're going to do it in reverse, transitioning back to Amber having complete responsib

ility of full teaching. But does she still have to go on and get a bachelor's in education? No, she has her bachelor's. Oh, OK, yes. And and certification. State certification. So the purpose of the coursework that she's involved in is to fill in the gaps. Because she didn't have, She wasn't in training to become a teacher when she earned her bachelor's, so now she's. So it's not a bachelor's in education then? No. Which is why she has the coursework this year. I'm trying to see if I brought the

list of courses that she's been taking this year. Yep, So the requirements were a bachelor's degree and then a minimum of 39 semester hours in English, Natural Sciences, Math, Social Studies, a world language, and Fine Arts. So the classes that she she'll be taking it, are those similar? I don't even know if we still have these or are you still calling by this the method classes? I would say yes. OK. OK. Thank you, Amber. Thank you very much. I hope you're enjoying teaching. OK, Thank you. Than

k you. First, I want to thank you and commend you. I know that this has been a lot of hard work. I know. So thank you for your commitment and willingness to do this. I do want to ask, sorry more questions about TRP versus on the next Gen. And I think the reason I just want to like add my personal reason why I think it's really important for us to think critically about this, really looking at a grow your own. I don't know if you have this data on you, but do you have what our data is in our unce

rtified staff and how many staff of color we have for uncertified staff? I I do not, but I know that our behavior techs and Paris we have a very large percentage. That's why we're only focusing on certified staff. And so the reason I asked that question and if it's really one is providing pathways for our staff to actually become certified educators. We know there's lots of personal benefits to become a certified staff versus an uncertified staff benefits pay ability to grow. So I think providin

g that equitable opportunity for for staff to grow. Also the importance of having our staff who know our district, know our students, know our families and are able to stay here and stay connected. I think it's nice to be able to have college kids from Central, but the reality is they're not and fields kids. You have our data point, Emily. You look like you're hard at work over there. It's OK, no worries. So I just think of the importance of providing that pathway to really grow our uncertified

staff to our certified staff to our admin and really build a pipeline of diversified staff and that is what TRP provides. I also think the importance of the connection of the community. So I want to do, I do want to like shout out Stowe here. I think we can give lots of kudos to Stowe because I think many of our diversified staff probably have started a journey there or have had great experiences there. And I've told friends maybe you want to come and work here in Enfield. And I think that proba

bly goes to some of the retention goal around how rebuilding communities where people just feel valued, want to come to work and be. So I I do think they deserve a shout out there. I also just want to share, Paula, the impact that you have on the entire school community. Being able to show students that representation matters and that they have somebody in their community in their school directly that can speak their language, know their experience, know their grandma cooks that at home, and kno

w how important that means. Miss Caldado, my daughter, has a new student in her classroom who speaks Spanish. She came home quickly and said the power of Mr. Mesa coming into her classroom and being able to make that personal connection it matters. It also helps us grow and like close gaps in much quicker ways. The reality is our student population is changing and being able to meet students needs and having staff who make them feel valued and welcomed is really important. So I'll hold the rest

of my comments, but I think really looking critically at our data point around our uncertified staff and I would like to know a little bit under. So we are paying her salary plus the 10,000 plus the $6000 stipend and then next Gen. would be a substitute rate for however many days they actually come correct. OK, can I just respond to the commitment of our non certified staff. So TRP began to as a program to certify for elementary certification. Then this year it expanded for special education and

they're also looking at secondary math. So I had two behavior techs lined up for the special education certification and had to go back and tell them that we're not going to be able to do it, but shared with them that this program does exist and they could partner with another district and they didn't want to. That's their commitment to Enfield. I'll go ahead, Doctor Hellman. I just wanted clarification about those staff that qualify for TRP. What percentage of them already have bachelor's degr

ee you have to have? It's they have to. So it's 100%. OK. Thank you. Go ahead, Phil. All right. I just want to say thank you guys for coming out and for for what your team has done. I know this is kind of new to us, so I just started looking at it when we got the agenda. So thanks. You answered the first question. It came up because when I looked up the public act, I noticed the deadline of that March 15th and looking at the date, I'm like, well, we're already not in compliance with that. So it'

s it's reassuring to know that we did get the extension and you know we do have time to submit it to the state. So a couple of questions I I wanted to ask because I noticed you you mentioned you know staff demographics and seemed centered on racial background and ethnicity. Is that voluntarily collected like how is that information sourced or when staff are hired do they check a box and does everyone check that box or can they leave it blank. I guess that's a my first question. So they self iden

tify but then this information is part of the district report card that's shared that you can look you can get it from Ed site. OK. So when staff fill that out is there like an option that says like prefer not to respond or anything like that like is there a margin that we possibly don't know about of ethnic and racial background. I don't know the answer to that. OK no that's that's fair. And I did also want to ask because I noticed the the demographics you mentioned again we're we're kind of li

ke racial and ethnic backgrounds. Do we track and does this plan addressed like other protected classes, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, stuff like that, Is that tracked and is that being addressed through this plan or your team not through this plan? OK. Just ethnically, racially, linguistically, are the three categories OK? And then I know Missus Pickett kind of asked this and you guys are only tracking certified staff, which is approximately 37% of our total staff. Make sure I un

derstand correctly. 7% were the students, OK, certified staff is 4.8. Yeah, I'm just talking like the proportion of certified staff to our entire staff. Like how many of our staff are certified? Do you know that? I can't, I can't remember if I saw that number. Not not talking about that, but it's like out of EPS staff or half of them certified, half non happened. Somewhere more than half would be certified. More than half would be certified. OK. All right, That that's fair. Thank you. And let me

see. So the last questions, I don't know if this is more of a maybe a comment just kind of on the plan, but kind of looking at it, one of the things I noticed is, you know at the beginning you guys were were talking about the disparities, disparity between the student proportion and then the current staff proportion on the plan. You, you know, it's kind of small, like I kind of wish we'd got this sooner so we could, we could look it over. But you know, at this point it is what it is. But the st

eps, I didn't notice any like benchmarks in that plan or any quantitative increases. It just kind of says we're, you know, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. So are there. You know, my fear going forward is if we submit this to the state, the state's going to return it and say it's not sufficient because it doesn't comply with the mandate. If there's nothing quantitative like you know, do we have a year to increase it X number of percentage? Is there A10 year plan where the communit

y and the staff are going to meet? Is there anything like that that's part of this plan or that could possibly be incorporated into this plan? This is the first time to stag an answer for them. This is the first. The legislation was just passed this first this past July. So the first phase is you actually have to submit a plan 1st and I'm I'm this is a as I trust I were alluded to earlier this is a commitment from the state department of Ed through this legislation. So my assumption would be as

your plan grows along with the needs of your community the benchmarks will be improved. But the first step in the process is you have to submit a plan. There's nothing quantitatively as far as the plan is concerned. It's having a plan first and foremost. I I would like to add that on the talent office site there are frequently asked questions and top of mind questions and one of the questions was do you have to resubmit a plan every year And the answer was no, at least not, not not currently. OK

. Yeah. And and understanding the state may change and and stuff like that because it, like we said, this did just come into effect last year. So all right. I think that's all I have. Thank you, guys. Good. Thank you very much for that interesting presentation. Two things right off the bat that I noticed is just different things about the state Department of Education and the state because I've been unhappy with them for a long time. And I know Mr. Drezek, if we had Alliance funding, this could

go towards funding this program, correct. I was anticipating a question like this. And I believe it was alluded to earlier that our commitment to TRP was March of last year, which for those of you who are sitting up here, we are under the assumption of March of last year that there would be alliance funding. So a lot of the plan to not only create this program but to build on it and sustain it was connected to the commitment of the alliance funding that we ultimately didn't get. Now within the a

lliance designation, there are grant opportunities. However, I think part of the hesitation at this point in time is fool me once. So I don't want to commit to anything now without having you know because we're we're some of it will make sense when I get down to my report. But yes you're 100% correctly when when we committed to this originally there was an anticipation that we would be receiving alliance funding and there is even carve out within the alliance plan excuse me to support a program

exactly like this. And I noticed in the listing of towns that you that participate in this program only two were not alliance districts, Newington and Cromwell, correct. They're not alliance districts, but Waterbury is in Britain. Bristol, yeah. Newington is not. Cromwell, I don't believe is there are other non alliance districts who participate in TRP, but a vast majority of alliance districts do because they were able to utilize some of their funding through their grant. Yes. So I just have a

couple of questions and I would like anybody to correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is, is that we don't have a lot of racial or ethnic groups that go into the teaching profession. Is that correct? Correct. And I've heard that often times when they do go to college, the curriculum is not a curriculum that they can relate to. So they often times don't necessarily finish off as a teacher when students go to college. My question is, and this might be a little bit off from what you're saying,

but like when you were talking about Grow Your own, is there a way at the high school to create like a future teachers club with all students, but especially the black and brown Spanish students, Asian students who might have an interest in teaching, to learn a little bit more about the teaching profession and go forward to engage the students now who might want to go to college for that? Yes. And there are programs that do exist like that. If I can just say one thing further. Yeah. I just think

I, I didn't turn it off. I wasn't close enough. I'm sorry, The percentage is even lower when you talk about gender, male versus female, right. So that's kind of where you know, it would have to start is, you know, I'm getting the kids that are in high school that are thinking about a teaching degree. One of the things I also want to mention, and I mention it every year that I'm a board member, so I'll mention it this year, is having the peer modelling happen between the high school and the youn

ger grades, like Paola's experience. If we could have, you know, students of colour that would be interested in peer modelling or Spanish students or Asian students. To go to schools and be that voice or be that person, be somebody that looks like them or can speak their language, I think would be amazing. I know it doesn't have anything to do with your work, but it's something I think about often of what we can do within our district to make connections for our students. I really appreciate see

ing what how diverse our student body is and I appreciate that diversity. They bring a lot. Having a very diverse student body, student body brings a lot to our district. Let me see. I guess I'm disappointed that we can't stay with TRP because it was such a benefit for Paola Amber. I can never say her last name right, but it's disappointing that we had two behavior texts that qualified that we had to to say no and and they're staying here in Enfield. My question is if a person goes through this

program that goes through TRP, is there a commitment level that they would have to stay at Enfield for a certain amount of time or 4 year commitment, a four year commitment? And lastly, if if we were able to get Alliance money, is this something we could walk back into for TRP or is it just something we just can't do right now? Well, that is certainly something that would qualify under the plan, yes. And again, the plan goes along with the funding. So that is definitely something that is highly

encouraged from the state Department of Vet. This is a big initiative from the state understandably. So We were really excited about it in March of 2022 when we signed up for it with the hopes of expanding it. So yeah, that's definitely something that the Board can revisit in the event the alliance funding were to eventually come through. OK, thank you for that answer. Thank you again for your presentation. I look forward to hearing the progress and I'm going to hope that we get Alliance funding

so that we can continue TRP. We can't plan on it, but I'm hoping for it. So thank you. Chris, just a ballpark guess, how does it look like for Alliance district funding for next year? Is it too early to make a call or what? I mean if we were to present this program and saying we'd love to do this if we got some extra funding from the state sends us, the state sends us information like weekly trying to get us to participate in the program but they don't send the check. I I'm not in AI want to be

honest like I'd I don't have a high confidence level at this point in time that the alliance funding because this don't forget this is a biannual budget So we're in year 2 and I'm sure most of you have read the headlines that the historic funding in public education that was introduced last year that we got nothing from is in jeopardy right now. Chairwoman Riley and I sat through that conversation with with at the legislative breakfast. So if there, if the leadership at the state is already con

templating reducing the commitment they made last year in this biannual budget, the likelihood of them adding additional funds to it to make us whole or districts like us whole to me doesn't appear to be realistic. But I mean that's certainly something we have not stopped advocating for. But you know we've been burned twice in a row now so I wouldn't be comfortable having them. You got to remember these are people's lives that we're dealing with here. So I, I I think it's a it's a hard conversat

ions that have had to be had but I think it's the the only the fair thing to do is not to be able to commit to something unless we have an absolute certainty that we can. So it it pains me. It does. I'm unhappy about it. But those are the cards we were dealt at the present time. OK, Gene, go ahead. Now. I would like to congratulate Paula and Amber for great job effort. Being courageous 'cause I know English is not your first language, so that's a lot right there. I do have a question for the tea

m. Do you already have some student educators from Connecticut Central ready to go in the fall? And if, you know, because you said you were pairing with Connecticut Central and said because we might lose the TRP. So do you have people lined up for the fall for our school district? I was actually contacted by Central that they had a student interested. And you know, they have to go through the interview process. We don't just take them, OK. And then they changed their mind. Oh, so once again, I'm

just hoping, and I'm going to continue reminding them that we are really interested in getting students in our district. Have we contacted like Westfield, State U Conn, Any of the other universities in the area other than Central? The Next Gen. educator program belongs to Central, so I have not reached out to other colleges and universities to see if they have something similar. Anybody else? OK, sorry. I think the other reality is that the pipeline of educators of color are just there's not li

ke there's a huge graduating class ready to to come and many districts are in the same boat we're in. So I think that's where growing our own is really the best, best route. I wonder that I have and I just think of community partnership and I know how we might be able to leverage some of the community work. So I know Kite had done a community conversation and then they had like synthesize some themes. I wonder if that's part of our next steps with some of this work and thinking about how we part

ner with our our local community to continue this effort. Thank you. OK, I'm going to go now. Is that OK, you guys good. OK. So so first of all, obviously it does not surprise me that Hashville Memorial is in here. You guys always consistently knocking out of the park. So thank you. It's a testament to what you do over there. You guys are amazing. So questions I have for the TRP program, when when you go through your classes and the mentoring and all that, when you're done, do you get a teaching

certificate, Do they and then they give it to you or just take a test or or how does that work? Amber had mentioned what it's called REC. So it's a resident educator certificate first year with her open classroom. But yes, she will have met all of the requirements for certification in Connecticut. OK, and then does the time spent in our school system as soon as she gets that certificate does that time already? I hate to put it this way, but does the time served count towards tenure or does that

only start after she gets that and starts teaching here? Correct. OK. All right. And then for the the plan. So the actual plan is the next Gen. route. And we're having a interview form that our staff fills out. And then you choose interviewers that meet the racial, ethnic and linguistic qualifications. Or do you just pick anyone? Is there, like a ratio you need to have? Like, how many do you have when you do an interview anyways? I guess for next Gen. For next Gen. yeah. Unfortunately, I haven'

t gone through it. OK OK All right. That's fair. That's fair. You know, we're hoping to gain diversity, but any student interested in this program wanting to come here, we would entertain an interview with them. Right? But how many interviewers would you have in an in an interview? Is there like a state mandate of how many you have to have like on an interview team, like an interview panel or so. It's like a one on I I participated in interview teams with four or five. OK, all right. OK, all rig

ht. So then it's the interview, the next Gen. and there's there was one more piece. What's that final piece? The stay interviews. The stay interviews. OK. All right. And those are far our currently employed full time employees. OK, All right. Now I get it. OK, thank you. The presentation was very informative. I really appreciate your hard work very much. Does anybody have any other questions? OK, ask him now because I'm going to let them leave and you have to vote on this later. So thank you eve

ryone. Or you can make a motion to do the approval now if you want to go, did it once already today. All right, hold on, let me go back. OK. So, so I'd like to make a motion to move item 11 A up to replace to follow 6 a second. OK. Motion made by Mr. Rider, seconded by Miss LeBlanc to move 11 A to after board guests. Any discussion? One minute. Sorry, I'm just going to say representation matters. This work is really important. I really wish we could invest more in growing our own. I just will pu

blicly say I will be abstaining from tonight's vote, not because I don't support this work. I think it's clear how personally invested I am in ensuring that we're creating school communities that affirm, include, and represent our students. It's an important effort and work. My assumption is due to my professional role, not due to my personal beliefs and support of this work. OK, any other discussion? OK, so can I need a hand show of hands on moving the agenda item? Those in favor your hands. OK

. None in favor. None against. OK, so I need a motion to approve submission of the increasing educator diversity action plan to the state Department of Education. Motion second. OK, motion made by Mr. Rider, seconded by Miss LeBlanc. Any discussion? Go ahead, Mr. Culver. So thank you. And I know I mentioned obviously I would have liked to seen this sooner and as it was mentioned, there's some information on the state website. So I did flip through that real quick. There is a guidebook for hiring

and selection and I I did kind of jump through it. There's two things that stood out. There's Appendix 8 that talks about action planning and SMART goals, which is specific, measurable, attainable. I forgot the Rs and and and the timeline. So it does look like the state is looking for quantitative data on this. I flipped to Appendix 9 and that talks about monitoring progress, which is another term for benchmarks. So I I think we need more details in our plan. So for for that reason, I'm going t

o be voting now. OK. Anybody else? No. OK. So, Kathy, can I have a roll call vote? Missus Accree. Yes. Doctor Kalman. Yes. Missus Cushman. Yes. Mr. Gennitis. No. Mr. Kover. No. Missus LeBlanc. Yes. Missus Pickett. I'm saying Mr. Ryder. Yes, Chairwoman Riley. Yes, motion passes. Thank you for coming. All right. OK. So I've got a lot of arrows on my paper here. So we are, we are actually at 7A Superintendent's report. Alright, Izzy, turn it over to Izzy. Good evening everyone. For EHS we have a fe

w things. Mostly some of it is centered on the juniors. For our juniors we just finished up our SAT's so congratulations to them and also our junior prom is this Thursday, so hopefully everyone that needed to get their permission slip signed to leave early got them. We also have no school on Friday because of Good Friday, but our grades close this Thursday. So before the day that we have off our school we have grades closed. Also our second grade mentoring slips are due able first. So if there's

any HS students that are wanting to mentor second graders we go to different elementary schools & up for their for our out of school stuff we have. Our drama production of Mary Poppins is officially on April 26th to the 27th. Our outdoor track did a fundraiser at Red Robin yesterday and they had their first inner squad meet today that doubled as a can and bottle Dr. fundraiser for their season and they have a upcoming car wash fundraiser this Saturday. Is Girls Lacrosse first real game of the s

eason? So wish us luck. Tri M is performing at the Arts festival April 19th to the 20th and our French National Honor Society is also doing a car wash That and all their proceeds go to a French associated charity, so learn more about that when they send out. The e-mail covered some of it so I get to jump to C As a reminder, schools and offices will be closed on Friday, March 29th or Good Friday. Additionally, there will be no School for students for board action on Tuesday, April, April 2nd, whi

ch is next Tuesday for primary voting day in our schools. And a reminder that students and staff will not attend school starting on Friday, April 8th through Friday through, I'm sorry, Friday through Monday, April 8th through the 12th for spring vacation. Hope everybody enjoys the wells their time off. Students and staff will return on Monday, April 15th and the last update I had for the board which probably ties a lot of what you heard earlier. As a reminder, later on in your agenda, the board

may take action regarding the April 9th board meeting on that the board typically will cancel that particular meeting because no one's going to be here. Well, you guys can be here, but staff won't be here, Students won't be here. So this is a reminder because this isn't something we haven't done for quite some time. But given the level of budget uncertainty, and again, I'll, I'll go back to a former chair chairman who used to argue from that pulpit all the time that this is done backwards, that

the board has to submit a budget, then the town submits a budget and the state submits a budget, and it's all reliant upon what the state actually comes through for. However, Connecticut law doesn't work to the Board's favor either because every teacher, whether they're tenured or not, does have an obligation to know if their contract will be renewed for the following school year. Particularly for there's a separate process for tenured teachers, so I'm not discussing that. But there's a process

for non tenured teachers that they have a we have a legal obligation to inform them or an assumption made that if they don't, if non tenured staff do not hear from the Board of Education in writing prior to May 1st that they have a contract for next school year, they can make the assumption that they do. It's a non renewal process. It's awful. If the board were to do what they have typically done in the past, that would be its past practice of the board to non renew all non 10 year staff members

. So you don't pick and choose which person, which particular level, anything along those lines because and I don't want to make this part very clear, we have a lot of non tenured staff members. So in years past and we haven't done it in quite some time. So Tina and Charlotte, Peter you're probably here for that. In years past it was a long list but it was not as long as it could possibly be in a year like this. Just to put an example, we have over 120 non tenure staff members. So if it's the bo

ard's desire to non renew all teacher, all non tenured staff because you have a legal obligation, you know the headline the next day can't be Enfield Board of Education lays off 120 teachers. That's not what you're doing. What you would be doing is notifying your non tenured staff that at this present time by the legally required date of May 1st, you don't have a budget adopted that can guarantee them a position, so you legally have to send them that horrible letter. I'm saying this now because

we ordinarily would have this conversation at the next meeting because your obligation would be to authorize me to send those letters out by May 1st. But because in all likelihood there this was the last meeting before the final meeting in April. I just thought it was important with the chair, with Chairwoman Riley's blessing, to at least mention that this is something the board's going to have to consider unless we get a definitive budget number between now and April 23rd, which by town charter

you're not required to get anyway. So it's no one's fault. It's no one in Enfield's fault. The state isn't adopted yet, but you have this legal obligation to tell non tenured staff members whether you can guarantee them a position next year and unfortunately no one has that ability to do that at this present time. So we haven't done it in a while, but we've, as we've been through this budget process this year, has been a little bit unprecedented for the amount of funding streams that have come

and gone. And and this is LeBlanc, you mentioned one big part of that earlier. So with the uncertainty, that is something that the board is going to have to consider. I will communicate that as we set the agenda with with Chairwoman Riley. But I don't want to take anybody off guard coming back from April break and then your first board meeting and you have to take this terrible action. Staff members know we have some staff members that were in the audience earlier that it was almost a rite of pa

ssage, that everybody got that horrible letter every, every year. No one's proud of it. No one's happy about it, I just got to be very clear. This doesn't mean you're laying off 120 people because you can't function, but if you were to follow the practice of the board that they have followed in years past, you would not renew all non tenured staff members. I can't even give you a reasonable assurance as to if the event there were reductions where they would be based on non tenured teacher certif

ications. People leave voluntarily. We have certain openings, we have this. I won't mention the name or or position because people can identify who it is. But we have a non tenured staff member that you can't non renew or not or or you can non renew but you can't layoff because that whole program's gone. But then you get in the position of do we do a particular or not a particular. So the board's past practice has always been just send the non renewals to everybody. And as we go through budget d

eliberations, we figure out who we can keep. I I just ruined board appreciation night. This is a terrible message to send. But given the time, I thought it was important that I shared with the board of what to expect the next time you meet in these chambers. That will conclude the superintendent's report. Thank you, Mr. Drzek. All right. So we are on audiences. So in case people haven't known, OK, after last meeting our whole agenda changed. A lot of our whole agenda, but a lot of our agenda cha

nged. So in audiences, I'm going to read the whole thing tonight, but going forward, I probably won't read the whole thing, but I just want everybody to be on the same page. OK. So for audiences now it says board meetings are held to conduct the board's business in public and are not meetings with the public. Nevertheless, the Board does welcome public comment as it represents an opportunity for the public to express views to the Board on matters within the Board's authority. Any resident or tax

payer of Enfield, employee of the Board or stakeholder in our school system may address the Board here. Those who wish to speak will be requested to sign in prior to this period of the meeting. In order to move efficiently and maintain proper decorum, the following conditions apply. All speakers must identify themselves by full legal name and their relationship to the District. 4 minutes will be allotted to each speaker. While it is not the Board's intent to stifle public comment, speakers are e

xpected to express themselves in a civil manner with due respect for the dignity and privacy of others who may be affected by their comments. No disorderly conduct shall be permitted to any board meetings. Persistence in this type of manner shall be grounds for summary termination by the chairperson of that person's privilege of address. No oral presentations. They'll include charges or complaints against any specific employee or student of the Enfield Public Schools, regardless of whether the p

erson is identified in the presentation by name or by another unique reference that tends to identify an individual. All charges or complaints shall be submitted as outlined in Board Policy 1312, Public Complaints. This portion of the meeting will be limited to one hour unless extended by majority vote of the Board. So that's what the new audiences says. And I just after sitting here for the past couple of meetings, I just want to interject something and you can choose to take it or not take it.

But the back and forth with, you know, people's families, our families didn't ask to be up here, we did. So I would ask people to leave family members out of it. And I would also ask that people not call other members of the community out by name either. So going forward, we're going to give this a go. So #1, Walter and Debbie, you're going to come together. OK, Walter and Debbie Crizell. I don't know if you get 8 minutes though. I think it might get 4-2 and two. I've got Chairman Brock Chair i

n America this Friday so I can Walter J Cruzell. Official name. She said 21 Charmie Road. Oh, Walter. Walter J Cruzell, 21 Charmie Road. Debbie Cruzell, 21 Charmie. We are here because she's going to be out of town next month and we wanted to present our Superintendent a little gift, which he's already got, but he's got to open now. That's why I'm doing it. And and while he's doing that, he did mention a former chairman by name, and that wasn't me, but not not by name, but a former chairman. Ano

ther thing that former chairman always said was we are getting screwed on special education. He didn't say the S word like I just did, but he meant that we should be getting 100% money for social education and we're not. And that was one of his big things that he always said too. So it's not read what it says if you can. I know it's hard to read all that Gray hair. Twenty O 4 to 2024. The Gray hair nailed it and the the other part of it is pens and pencils that are shaped like golf clubs. Thank

you. And you guys are all getting a bill from this too. So. But no, no, no. We just wanted to wish you all the best, Chris, for its Enfield's loss. And I told my wife when we're moving S down to Old Saybrook, but she says we're moving S to Florida. But what I said, I said, I said Old Saybrook, I want to be by the shore, not the Connecticut shore. But you know the Gray hair reference from the one graduation that we were pleading with, the rain gods. The not rain. Grain, not rain not rain. But it

was my pleasure to serve with you as as deputy, sorry not assistant deputy Superintendent and as Superintendent and you will be missed and what else can I say? You have to do what you have to do and that's what you're doing. So your family comes first like always. So and it's the least we can do for you. So and on the final note, as you noticed the paint color in here, just remember that was the former town manager's budget that was passed for that. So and also remember we we are this, this boar

d is a guest to this chamber. This we used to meet before my time, but they used to meet at JFK cafeteria before the cameras and everything. So Please remember you are guests in this chamber. This is the town council chamber. So that's it. Thank you and we are going. Bye bye. Thank you. OK. So, Maureen Sun here. OK, I don't see her, but you can. OK, so Maureen is not here. And was there somebody that wanted to speak, but they forgot to sign up? OK, you can come up. That's fine. And wasn't wasn't

the name for that graduation. It was either. It was Mr. Drizzle. So now you're instead of Mr. Drizzle. You were Mr. Drizzle that day. Go ahead. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. OK. Hi, my name is Monica Ogums, AKA Coach MO around town. I live at 55 Walnut St. in Enfield and my role in the community. I work at Enfield High as a behavior tech. I coach Enfield High's track team and I am the head coach of the girls flag football team and I sit on our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee as

Vice chair. I also teach the CD for our community and I'm a mom, so there's my intro. I just wanted to speak from the heart. I'm a native Enfield ex student. I went to Enfield Public Schools. I walked the halls of JFK and I sit here in front of you now as an Enfield Public Schools employee. So not only am I an Enfield native, I'm also a dual citizen, bilingual Nigerian, and at home my parents said you'll get English in school so you don't need it here. And growing up it was different. It was ver

y, you know, there were good days and bad days. But I can't express to you the amount of gratitude I have watching and listening to this work that all of you guys are working on and taking into consideration on the team that presented tonight. It moved me and warmed my heart because when I grew up in Enfield, there was not as much diversity in the student body. We did a great job with crack introducing that into our school system at the student level, and now we're moving to certified staff, whi

ch is great. But I actually graduated from Enfield High in 2007 and then went to college and ended up coming back to EPS at Stowe under the awesome Jaclyn Valley, and I worked with the very talented Paula. We became very good friends and I stayed there for eight years. I grew there. A lot of our team in Enfield raised me from a crazy young 20s to now a season 35 year old mother of three, including Mr. Jezek, who I will miss dearly. Don't even get me started. I'm postpartum six weeks. OK, so I ju

st want to say that I left reluctantly. I I didn't want to change. But sometimes when there's bigger things in store for you, you either move or you'll be moved. So my faith moved me to Enfield High School last October and I didn't want to leave Jacqueline. I was comfy. I grew up there. I I had great staff and families that I built relationships with to this day. And I walked the halls my first day at work and I said this is so cool. I'm back in my old high school. I'm it's so weird to call my o

ld teachers by my their first name. And I said so much has changed with the renovations. This used to be my favorite, my band room. And so much has changed in Enfield, except one thing. I never had a teacher that was black or brown ever. I never had a teacher that looked like me or knew what a bad hair day for me was. Nobody understood me. I had great teachers that moved me to go back into education. I can name a few. But so much has changed in the high school as an employee, except that one fac

tor. And I craved that. I went to a black college that had a lot of diversity and there was so much power in walking in a seminar, walking in a classroom and being a majority for once instead of a minority. There's so much power in that. So somehow I realized why I had to move to Enfield High and it it became very clear very quickly, quickly that I was needed at Enfield High. It's almost overwhelming to be that self representation for those students who are not just black, not just African, Lati

no and so all kinds of diversities, Asian and people who celebrate different holidays that aren't recognized that I still have to go to school on these holidays that are celebrated at home. And trying to get through traditions and being that one beam for these children, excuse me, is overwhelming. So I told my dad, doctor Raymond Ogams. I said dad is nothing's changed. I don't know what's going on. I said my son's at JFK he's going to have the same turn out I did and my dad said, well if you don

't like it, do something about it. So I did. I didn't know about this beautiful program that Paulo went through. So I signed up for school and I made it a mission to go back. And I said, well, what do I want to do? I don't know. I don't know what I want to do. I don't know. So I went through the K through 12. I'm currently a student at Western Government University for my K through 12 special Ed. So I'm making the change and being the change I want to see and putting my money where my mouth is.

But I just want to thank you guys and just stress how important it is. Thank you very much. All right. And thanks for coming back to Enfield. That's awesome. You too. OK, so we are at hold on paperwork here. OK, #9 board member comments. Who would like to go first? Any takers Mr. Ryder? I will save my school update for our liaisons reports which are coming later in the evening now. But one thing that I just wanted to mention that affects the whole community is the Enfield Town Wide Tag Sale. Thi

s is something that Parent Leadership Academy which is another project through Kite. I'm a proud graduate of PLA 2014 Class 9. This started before me, but this is something that myself and another mom in town have run for many years and just wanted to make sure everybody was aware. If they go to theenfieldfoodshelf.org/enfield Town Wide Tag Sale, you can sign up and I would encourage everybody to sign up. And of course 100% of the proceeds as always, go directly to the Enfield food shelf. You ac

tually make your donation of $25.12 since this is our 12th edition. Directly to the food shelf and then they'll send the addresses over to Leslie Lawler and myself and then we make the maps and get all that done. And I just wanted to say since its inception in 2011, the Enfield Town like tag sale has hosted over 800 tag sales and we have provided over 80,000 meals to the Enfield community just doing this one project. So I encourage everybody to take part. And again, this year's town Wide Tag sal

e will be on Saturday, May 18th, rain or shine. Obviously if it rains, you want to hold your Sunday that that's up to you. But we advertise just the one date because that's what our signs say. And without extra money we can't make more signs. But no, we just. I want to encourage everybody to take part. And thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ryder. Who would like to go next? Go ahead, Miss Acree. Good evening. There's nothing like the sound of harmonies voices, and that's harmonious children's voices. I h

ad the pleasure of attending the Infield Chorus Festival on March 16th. The performance by the elementary, the junior high and the high school students, of course, was excellent. Congratulations to the student performers and the music specialist Melissa Clark, Kimberly Jocks, Elizabeth Gagnon, Amanda Tilgman and Elizabeth Tomsic for their hard work, talent and skills for producing such a wonderful music program. Also would like to say I attended Screen Agers that was introduced to me by Miss Cus

hman. That was an event that took place March 19th at the JFK library. It was an event given by the Infield Together Coalition. It addressed the impact of students and of the students and their extended use of cell phones. It also talked about the use how social media can cause depression in teens because of less face to face interactions with other teens and also comparing themselves to others on the social media platform. The event was very informative and it fits right in with my interest and

concerns with our infield students mental health. Thank you. OK, thank you Miss Acree. Who would like to go? Go ahead Miss Ping, one question I have, I've seen parents posting about the kindergarten assessment if their child is not 5 by September 1st. So my wonder is, do we have any update on how many assessments we're looking at doing and the impact on Stowe yet? So to you, Mr. Chairman, maybe to the Superintendent, not an immediate answer, maybe something for us to have an update on at some p

oint. Yeah, I'm sure he can get you an update later on. Perfect. And then the last comment I'll make during my commentary, I'll see my school reports for later is that I know the town council approved job descriptions for the armed guards. I don't know the status on our MOU, so I will continue to ask about that. I continue to hope for careful consideration, especially around student behavior, training of those armed guards and especially in relation to our school policies and protocols. I also w

ould like to have, and I don't know, I know town council's doing their own budget. But the cost of that program, I think it's important for taxpayers to understand that cost, especially outside of our budget. So it's the last comments on me. OK. Anybody else want to go next Mr. Cover? All right, thank you, Madam Chair. So I'll just kind of reiterate for the those in the audience and viewers what Mr. Ryder stated. We did do a procedural update. So school reports and liaison reports are now a sepa

rate item in the agenda which frees up board member comments, talk about board member business and and ideas. That being said, I do have some stuff I want to bring up tonight and I want to balance my desire to be brief with getting a couple points across. So hopefully this is not the first time anyone has heard it, but there's a couple of themes that I think are important for for government and and this board being a a arm of government that we should be following. The themes are responsiveness,

efficiency and transparency. Again, they should be something at all levels, all branches of government and they're 3 principles and should be implemented harmoniously. You can't have one without the other. They all need to be kind of coming in sequence when government strays away from these. I think that erodes the foundation of public trust and confidence in our institutions. So hopefully most people watching this are aware of of what those are, but I just want to give a couple tangible exampl

es of what they're not. So when I say what what is responsiveness, Taking 120 days to answer emails between board and administration is not being responsive. When I'm talking about efficiency, being a public school district and whether we are actually or allegedly running out of paper, that is not being efficient. When I'm talking about transparency, having salaries and operating expenses, not being fully visible to those that are voting on the budget itself is not being transparent. As you are

aware. In the spirit of transparency, I like asking questions in open meeting rather than kind of going through other channels. So to reiterate some of the questions I have for this board that I think is important for for policy and budget is how many students do we have, how many staff do we have and what are our staff salaries to date. And we're now in on month 4 here. I haven't received the tangible black and white answer to any of these questions. It's interesting tonight where we talked abo

ut the improving educator diversity and one of the themes that came up is retention. And interestingly enough, one of the questions I'm asking is the retention rate of our staff. So it's interesting that other people are also trying to get that information and and understand are we retaining staff, are we losing staff. So I have a couple questions to the chair, to the Superintendent whether we answer them now or after we can figure out. But the the first question that I know is we've been referr

ed to the Connecticut Department of Education Ed site and I wanted to know where Ed site gets their information from. Awesome. OK, so being that it comes from Enfield Public Schools, how is that information transmitted to Ed site Various forms? OK. So one of the things I would like to see is, is possibly a policy recommendation is having the board carbon copied in those forms when information is sent to the state rather than having board members that are on the board of the organization go to a

different organization and get that information. Some other questions, again through the chair to the Superintendent is, do we have a software system that we use to track and manage human capital? Could you be more specific? So in human resources systems like PeopleSoft for tracking employees, ADP, Payroll are common examples of human Capital Management software. Yeah, we don't call it human Capital Management, but we have a, we have a software, Yes. OK. Do you happen to know the software that w

e use? Munis. Munis. OK, so let's see. In regards to budget prep, same question, do we use a system or software to prep our budget or is it manually prepared multiple ways? OK, so some other questions. And again as we threw the chair to the Super, I was looking at some of our empowering statues and Connecticut general statues. The CGS 10 to 20 paragraph C talks about school districts submitting to the Commissioner of Education, a strategic school profile report for each school or school program

of alternative education. My understanding is this information does get submitted to Ed site. But I also want to ask is this information provided to the board directly when it's sent to the state? Go ahead if you want to answer it. If you have the ability to answer it, I'll get back to you. OK. Another question again through the through a statue is, can I jump Sanchez 10 to 21 C requires superintendents within 30 days of the end of a school year to provide the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles a co

py of a written record of all complaints received for the previous 12 month. This is regarding motor vehicle safety and bus accidents. I know this is something that's come up through joint security. And again clarifying that the statue requires this to be submitted annually from the Superintendent to the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles. So through the chair of the Superintendent, do we have the most recent report that could be shared with the board? We are in compliance with Allstate laws. All ri

ght, thank you. So the last question I have is Connecticut statute 10226 talks about reports to the Commissioner of Education. Again kind of a generic one but this covers in a snippet of the law reads each local and regional Board of Education. So annually before the 1st of October return to the Commissioner of Education the name and address and employment and contracted annual salary or equivalent thereof of each teacher, principal and Superintendent or certified person to which it employs. Eac

h regional Board of Education cells submit to the commissioner within seven days of receipt after notice of accept the contract of employment as a Superintendent. So again this is a another statutory requirement that needs to get sent annually before October. So it doesn't have to be answered now, but through the chair to the Super. Could we get a copy of the last report that would presumably have been submitted before October 1st 2023. And kind of as I said, I do like being brief. So I do do wa

nt to wrap this up. So some of the questions and information I have is, is is we're you know here on the board and I, you know we we talk about we're we're implementing policies, we're passing a budget. You know there's certain critical analytics, business intelligence. I think that was it, is it within the purview to the board when we make decisions. I know I've looked at other school budgets, several other towns. I've sent some information to leadership of the board about some examples of stuf

f that other towns are doing that I like. I know previous meetings I mentioned transparency at the state and federal level when I was talking about the state, the open Connecticut, which is run by the Connecticut State Comptroller. Also at the federal level, there's what's called the DATA Act. It was most recently updated in 2014. It maintains a website calledusaspending.gov that the public can log on to and see financial transparency of of federal bills. So one of the things that I'd like to sp

earhead and and have this board work on is what I want to call the Enfield BOE Transparency Initiative. This is not to reinvent the wheel or create work for administrators, but this is something that I think should carbon copy. Open Connecticut right here at the local level with an end state of sharing Open Access to the budget, Open Access to payroll and other aspects that the district spends money on that the the public should be Privy to. So I have at this time. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Kover

, who would like to go? Go ahead Doctor Kelman. Just a quick, just a quick update on kite. The week of the Young Child is from April 1st to the 5th. Please see Kite's Facebook page or website to check out free events and opportunities to celebrate your Young child. Kite is supporting Anfield public schools for Anfield Gets Ready for Kindergarten Night. This free evening will highlight important information for your incoming kindergartner and you will have a chance to hear from the Superintendent

, Nursing Director and Administration and PTO. You do not want to miss this. It's at JFK on Tuesday, April 16th from 6 to 7:00 PM Registration is not required to attend. Please note that there's no child care available for this event. And finally, Kite would like to wish us the entire board a very happy Board Appreciation Month and that's it. Thank you Doctor Cowan. So moving forward, because I know this is like the first new one, so kite reports are going to go under liaison reports. OK, cool,

perfect. No worries. OK, Yes, Mr. Janice, you can go next. OK. I'm not quite sure everything the rookie said, but there are some things that I wanted to say that there are, I think I identified as overlapping a little bit. And I only say this because of the the budget crisis or the budget time frame that we're in and plus the fact that we still have to meet with the town council. There are some things that I would like to see too, information on and I'm sure the town council would like to see so

me of these things. The number of teachers we have in each department and the steps that they're on, The number of administrators we have and the positions they hold. Also, the steps that they're on and their job descriptions. The number of coordinators we have in the positions they hold and separate them between 10 month and 12 month coordinators. The number of students in each school by grade level, identifying the students each specific school and the number of special Ed numbers that they ha

ve in those buildings. The number of staff members at the central office and the departments they work in and their job descriptions. The number of special Ed teachers and or those receiving services. Number of special Ed students and or those receiving services. And also the number of people certified who work or have contact with these kids. And the copy 4 Copy of the copies of the last four contracts of each of the bargaining units that are under the Enfield Public School purvy. And also in t

alking to with a former board member, he had mentioned something about some sort of budget software that he tried to introduce years ago. And I have no idea what the name of it is, but is there something that you use like that software that just kind of keeps the budget rolling and the information about it? Munis. Oh, that's that's what that is. OK, OK. So those are some of the things I I would like to have and when it comes time to sitting and discussing things probably with the town council qu

estions that they may have because I know a lot of people come and say you know we have to give 8.68% to the budget. I want to know or see or have you guys justifying where we need more money or where we don't need more money. If it's possible to see a more in depth look at things, not just saying this is how much money we need and you get a 10 or 12 page print out that isn't really identifying anything. And I think we do need a lot more transparency when it comes to the budget process. Anybody

else want to go next? Hi Janet. Miss Kushman. I just wanted to follow up on what Misses a Cree shared about screen agers. It's a film series that's presented by our Enfield Together Coalition, Mental Health and Wellness and Part 3 Under the Influence will be shown on Tuesday, April 2nd from 6:00 to 8:00 PM in the Enfield High School Library. So I just really want to encourage community members to attend. Thank you. Go ahead Mr. Mike, just a quick, a few quick updates and then a couple questions.

Charlotte and I attended the PLA government class and we had a great time and we got to meet with community members who were very engaged in town government and looking to get involved. And I think the mom's name was Katie. She shared some of her experiences with her special Ed students here in Enfield and certainly gave us something to think about. Thank you to the schools and the PTOS for all that you did for us tonight. But that all that you do every day, all your kindness and hard work, nev

er goes unnoticed by me. April 8th, when you're on April vacation, is the solar eclipse and so hopefully you can go out and view that. But you need special glasses. Don't look at the sun, Miss Chairwoman Riley. It was Mr. Drizzle that was the 2019 graduation. Mr. Drizzle because he said if it was going to Mist or Drizzle we would still have our ceremony. So it's Mr. Drizzle. OK, so I have a couple of questions based on an e-mail I received. So the e-mail we received said that the following infor

mation was requested. IRS tax forms W2 for tax years 2023. The total number of W twos issued. The total number of corrected W twos issued, if any, The total number of W twos outstanding to be issued, if any, along with a spreadsheet containing at minimum the following columns. Data points exported from all individual W Twos issued by our organization, Export of Box E employee full name, Address and zip code Export of Box 1. Wages, tips, and other compensation If the requested summary data points

above are two burdensome, I will accept bulk document scan of all organizational W twos and PDF or another type of format and securely transmitted via teams or a Dropbox, and I'll disaggregate the desired financial data points accordingly. That was one e-mail from Mr. Kober and the second e-mail was a seven-year look back on a total number of MP public school staff, respective growth, loss trends and a current listing of all district employees. Total number of EPS staff on the first day of scho

ol for each year. Total number of EPS staff on the final day. Attrition or increase rate percent for each school year. Current list or roster of all EPS staff at minimum should show full name, job title or position. Status is full or part time, primary location, building facility, years employed and or original start date by district and unadjusted gross salary. Can you, do you feel comfortable answering why you were looking for that information on such a granule level for staff? Yes. That ties

into in the example I gave of open Connecticut, it's the same information that the state does for employee payroll if you go on. And there's an example I sent to leadership regarding the. Current Commissioner of Education, if you go in, you could look her up and you can see exactly what her 2023 earnings are and how that comes out of the state budget. So you want AW2 for every single staff member under Enfield Public Schools. So the request is from the data off the W2, not the W twos. But you sa

id you could just get them in a bulk. But I'm asking why you're requesting that. Like for what purpose are you going to need that information for the transparency and the understanding of the budget line items for those positions, for full time, for FT, ES paras, nurses, secretaries, library aides, tutors, all staff that are employed. OK. And that's what you think that you need on a granule level. You're going to study that and have a better understanding on a granular level of what our staff is

by wanting very private information. Is it legal to actually ask for AW2 of a of an employee? Do we know? I don't know. I I sent my, I sent my response to the board, right. I thought the best response was go back and look at the board training with the different scenarios. Because my question, I guess at the end of the day to both Peter and Phil asking for all this information, I mean you guys to speak of transparency, you guys said when you got hired or elected that the 1st order of business w

as getting us out of an alliance district. How is that getting us out of an alliance district? So I don't want to keep the back and forth going, but the the goal is fiscal responsibility. And when we talk about Alliance district, we're talking about funding and if there's funding that we can better utilize, that would negate the need for funding from the Alliance district. So first of all, that's not necessarily our decision and it would never be our decision on what staff to cut as a board. If

the town, what whatever the town council passes and we've had this conversation before, we're going to get the number, whether it's 4%, whether it's 8.62%. And Andy and Chris will go back to the schools, they'll talk to the administrators, they'll look at class sizes and they'll decide where we can reorg and where we're going to be cut. Is that something that is understandable or because we don't have any say in staff cuts and we don't know the actual needs of our students. And like there's cert

ain things we cannot cut, like special Ed and certain classes we have to offer at the high school level. So we can like look at a salary and say, well, this is too much, let's let's get rid of them without knowing. That's why we don't make those decisions. So I I don't want to keep the back and forth going, but we as a board are responsible for approving a budget and that is the intent of that information, OK, but it doesn't serve us any purpose. I guess the question would be is if we are it it

it just it just blows my mind. We could ask the same questions of the fire departments in the Enfield Police Department. We could ask can we have the W twos. My taxes are going towards their salaries. The town council could ask that. We could ask about attendance in meeting minimum qualifications at the time of the employment. You know, I'll say this, Gene, MSC Cree and Dr. Kalman, you have made a commitment to work on the Mental Health Committee and you have made active steps in helping us unde

rstand why we are in Alliance District and what we can do to help. And I appreciate those efforts because you're working very hard and that's what we should be doing as board members. All of the information that you guys are asking is available. Teacher salaries, it's all public information. And I just have to say that when we sit up here, there is a delivery or an assumption that things aren't being handled correctly at Central Office and we are audited and accusatory and adversarial deliveries

does not make it a cohesive board. And asking for information that I wouldn't even have known you asked for because I only found out because the Superintendent responded to all of us. I don't know, I think it's it's it's safe for everybody to review their role as a board member, go back and look at those scenarios from Tom Odie's training. And lastly everyone have a safe and happy spring vacation. Thank you. I'd like to respond to that. OK, go ahead. And since since you did a little to me also,

I think the more information we have as a board when it comes to determining what amount we're going to add to the budget is important. You just don't walk into any organization that's spending 70 to $90,000,000 a year and say, well I need another 8% and that's it. No, I want to know why you need it, what you need it for. I want to know is there any place that money has been saved or can be saved, not just a blanket write a check. I mean if they if you can't justify it, then I I I wouldn't spen

d another penny on it. But if you can justify it then I would go all the way up to 8.68. It's I I just want to see some numbers and some some stats. I don't think it's ridiculous to ask. So so my question would be how was it not justified the and it's 72 million, it's not 90 million it's 72 million. I've seen so many different numbers. It's incredible. Well, all you have to do is look at the budget packet. I've seen so many and it's got $72 million on it. So how is that, I guess that's my questi

on how is that not supported that figure? We had a budget presentation. We met in leadership. I don't understand saying that it wasn't supported. I'm just going to say this is the disrespect that goes on on this board and I'm just asking questions because I feel like that information is out there and I don't feel like having it's a good use of taxpayer dollars having these guys go on a wild goose chase for information that's available and information that we have no say over. We can know that th

eir staff but it's not up to us to tell them they have too much staff. We can say it but they're not going to do anything about it. We don't know. We are not in the schools and that's it. I'm not going back with the back and forth. I don't think. I don't think anybody said we have too much staff. I just want it things justified. There are are there areas that I think we do have a couple of too many people. Yep. And that would fall in the the administrative category for sure. But you know you wan

t disrespect. I'm tired of being lectured by you. I'm going to finish Charlotte because I'm just going to say Andy and Chris, thank you to all the teachers, Thank you to everyone that's actually in school buildings, Parents, teachers, even me, even though I don't have kids in there, I get invited to school events and I actually go, we, I appreciate you. And thank goodness we have the educational leaders making decisions regarding our budget. Could I just just one real quick, just looking at the

grand picture, I think board due diligence is is one thing, but micromanagement is is another. And this is just what is being expected of our staff and our Superintendent is is absolutely unrealistic. It's enormously wasteful of time and it's incredibly expensive and I think at some point the line has to be drawn as I said between due diligence and micromanagement. I have a hopefully a helpful quick tip. So I know some of the information that was requested is publicly available on Ed site and it

does come directly from our district. So I know some of the general statutes you are referencing and even some of the data Ed site is a reputable source. It's direct data coming from our our district and I don't think it's a good use of our administrative time to give U.S. data that we have readily available to us. So things like number of students, how many are special Ed, number of staff, all of that is publicly available on Ed site. The other thing is I'm going to save my budget comments for

I hope we don't have to come back to have a discussion about budget. I really hope town council understands that our budget is not a fake number. I think it was clear in the budget presentation at the 8.6 is really just to account for our status quo plus inflation and contractual agreements. So I think my concern is when we start pulling apart numbers or making it seem like these numbers don't actually mean people in our buildings and services for our students, it seems like it's something that

can be ripped apart and this budget cannot be ripped apart. This just keeps status quo. And we actually, Peter, to our point, when we talk about tiered interventions and support for our classrooms, we actually need more and this budget doesn't give us more. OK, There's. OK, I'm going to go now. All right. So I'm going to go. All right, well, I'm sitting in the middle, I think because I got. I have feelings about both sides of this coin. On one side of the coin, I think it's important for us to

have at least at the minimum like the number of like staff and students, maybe the trend over a couple years and their salaries and more importantly what step they're on for future planning to know what you need to budget for moving forward. Because how many, how many of those are going to, how many of those teachers are going to move from a step or admin are going to move from a step up and then will cause a larger budget number later. So I think those numbers are reasonable numbers. On the oth

er flip side, it isn't my personal opinion that we do not need to see people's W twos. I do not want to be responsible for that deeply personal information. Salary is fine. What step they're on, you know what, you know, what school they come from is fine because I think that helps in future planning and getting a grasp on the magnitude of the budget that we are approving. Because in the end we are agents of the state and if the budget does not balance at the end of the year, they're going to com

e knocking on our door personally. So those are good numbers to have. Maybe not, you know everything, but I think some of those are valid points. So I did put on a leadership meeting, a future, our future leadership meeting, which is like next week to kind of discuss where we want to go in this in like how we can satisfy multiple needs without, you know, breaking the bank here and causing too much craziness. But at least actual information that you know, I'm sure people in the town council are g

oing to want to see also at least you know numbers of staff and students and where we, you know, what's the progression. And a good number to understand, which I was in that presentation earlier, which only pertained to racial and ethnic and linguistic, is I thought it was a good, you know, a stay interview is a good thing to have for everybody because we do want to keep good teachers of any race, ethnic background, any of that. But anyways, I digress. So I'm, I'm in the middle and we're definit

ely going to have a leadership conversation about it and hopefully we can get something you know tangible that will satiate most of everybody's needs. And then the other question, because I've heard it come up multiple times tonight, is newness, Is that, is that something that is just provided to all municipalities or do we pay for that use? Or is that like part of like the line item that we share with the council for the technology, That's the town system that we're on, We're on. OK, gotcha. OK

. There was nothing I wanted to know. All right, So on to the good stuff that I had to say, well, no, I'm going to go back really quick for one second on the Alliance district. So yes, my major point of getting on the board was I wanted to help us out of the Alliance district and going through all these indicators and seeing all of the numbers of students that we have that are in the special needs category and free and reduced lunch and everything like that. It has become apparently clear that e

ven if we were to blow all of the indicators right out of the water, we're still going to be an Alliance district of things that we can't we have no control over. And don't take it as I'm blaming any specific groups or anything, but I'm just saying the reality of matter is we're never going to get out of alliance status. So we need to shoot for being the best alliance district that we could possibly be, get all the other indicators way above state level, and then the rest is what it is. And then

maybe the state of Connecticut will, like, figure it out and, you know, maybe they'll actually reward people that, you know, strive for academic excellence Anyways, That's a pipe dream, all right. But anyways, Speaking of indicators, I fully understand why Enfield totally is above the state indicator for arts. I went to the Enfield Chorus Festival and ladies over here I was watching my own kid, but that's beside the point. But let me tell you when they say that, you know, it was lovely music an

d everything, I don't think you really understand those kids at the high school level who are in like, I think it's the chamber choir. They were absolutely amazing stuff that you would hear like at Radio City Music Hall. Like it. It was phenomenal. So I just really wanted to thank all those teachers in the music department for all their hard work. I mean that was I was blown away. And then even today, I went to Prunes, Crandall's Pride Assembly and part of the assembly, they had two students pla

ying clarinet with the music teacher who played the trombone. And those kids got up in front of a room, a gym full of all of their third, 4th and 5th grade and teachers and parents. And they played a song and they didn't mess up once. They weren't nervous and it was just, it was great. It was just really phenomenal. So I also wanted to congratulate all the National Junior Honor Society inductees. It was a really quick but awesome ceremony. There were 29 students and they had a words of wisdom se

ction that was read by the chapter advisor and it was all the lessons learned by the students that they wrote in their essays for qualification. And some of the lessons learned were things that like, you hear adults talk about. So I just want to say even today in here in in Chambers, I've just been really impressed and I'm just so very proud of all of our students. They just never ever stop impressing me. They always push the bar of excellence then I don't know that's like a test to the parents

and the teachers and the kids own will to succeed. But I have not met a student yet that didn't completely just blow the doors off of anything was great. So and then also congratulations to all the 160 Ish First readers that were certified and celebrated last week at the ceremony. And I'm also proud of you too. OK, moving on, on finished business, we don't have any new business. We are on 11 B discussion and action regarding the April 9th, 2024 regular board meeting. Mr. Drizek, you kind of alre

ady. Yeah, I kind of already said it. And you guys can have the meeting if you wish there. There probably will be less people in this chamber than there is right now. That's a promise. So traditionally the board has opted to cancel that meeting and now would be your opportunity to do that. And if we needed a meeting, we could have a special meeting, 24 hours notice you can always schedule. So I need a motion to approve canceling the April 9th regular Board of Ed meeting and notifying the Town Cl

erk with any changes to the schedule of regular meetings for 2024. So moved. Moved by Doctor Cowan. Second by Missus Cushman. Is there any discussion? No discussion. OK, So, Kathy, I need a roll call vote, please. This is a Cree. Yes, Doctor Cowan. Yes. Missus Cushman. Yes. Mr. Genitis. No, Mr. Colbert. No missus labon. Yes, Missus Pickett. Yes. Mr. Ryder. Yes. Chairwoman Riley? Yes. Portion passes OK 11 C Policy Revision First reading on Policy 6111. Miss Christian, I'd like to make a motion to

approve the first reading of Policy 6111 calendars. There were a few amendments made to this particular policy. Since there is not currently a correct regional calendar, the words if available were added and then the all of part three was omitted. And that's to better align our policy with the most curtain of our teacher contracts. OK, so any of them did you did you make a motion? I did. When I oh, yeah. I second that. OK. So motion made by Miss Cushion second by Mr. Ryder. Any discussion? So M

adam Chair, just a couple comments. So I know this is a policy and I missed the last policy committing meeting where this came out of committee to the floor and I and I know this is a bill or you know, policy update that we need just due to obviously issues. Most recently we, you know, we've had to waive this policy in order to to get our calendar approved. That being said, I got some thoughts that that I'll share with the board, obviously the correct calendar. I think that's good verb. It's par

agraph 2 striking. I think is a good idea. Because we that is addressed in teacher contracts striking paragraph three. However, I'm personally against that. I think I've mentioned that when we talked about the last calendar adjustments and also just you know historical trends in in New England from you know a family standpoint or from a school standpoint that school has historically started after Labor Day. I think we've seen with with calendar adjustments that even when we move start dates up t

o August we're we're still not getting out of school earlier. Then there's been variations where if we remove this policy, I mean there's there's been proposals where school starts almost the middle of August and I know that got a lot of pushback from staff. So I think we still need that control in the policy in in paragraph 3. So I I would support either returning this to committee for amendments or, you know, voting no for this change. OK. Any other discussion? OK. So can I have a roll call vo

te, please? This is a Creek. Yes. Doctor Kalman. Yes. This is Cushman. Yes. Mr. Nidis. No. Mr. Culver. No. This is the block. Yes. Oops. Sorry. Yes, this is Pickett. Yes. Mr. Ryder. Yes. Chairwoman Riley. Yes. Motion houses. OK, all right. So now we're on board committee reports. And so since it's a new format, it's only curriculum, finance, budget policy and leadership for board committee reports. So curriculum committee up first. This is the shortened version, the last curriculum meeting. Deb

Gaskell, Adrian Snow and two classroom teachers, Laura Wineski and Andrew Snyder were in attendance. We were given a presentation on the piloting of two reading programs for our district. They were titled My View and Into Reading. The process started the fall of 2022 and it lasted up to, you know, with everything. February 2024, there were twelve teachers involved in the K to five schools. And after the six week pilot program was finished, teachers met and rated the programs and the program that

had the highest rating was the Holton Mifflin Harcourt Program program into reading. So we will as a district be moving forward with this particular reading program. The next meeting is April 18th. Thank you. Yes, go ahead. I was really excited about that meeting. Jane, you did a great job. I wrote down some things and I'm like, oh, she's saying it all. I just wanted to add that the the new curriculum, which is a lot and I think big news needed news, also complies with legislation. But our data

also showed we had to do something different at tier one. There were some other next steps. So it's not just about a new curriculum, but there is going to be some significant professional learning for staff and administrators, some curriculum alignment work to ensure how our social studies, history, science curriculum, all those pieces supplement our new ELA supplemental materials that staff can use. Our report card alignment and our assessments will have to be adjusted as well. So lots of work

. It's not going to just be a one and done, but really proud of the curriculum and of our staff for taking that on. All right, anybody else? OK. So Finance, Budget Committee, so Madam Chair, Finance and Budget Committee hasn't met. So there's no significant update since the last committee report. Our next scheduled meeting is for Monday, April 1st at 5:00 PM. And there is committee consensus. I know last time there was an item regarding rearranging bonds. So I don't know where we need a motion,

if it's just through committee, if it's going to be through the whole board. But there is consensus, I know to move that forward. OK. So I just wanted to check are you guys OK with moving and the bonds all right so they're fine too. So we're just we'll just you guys can do it. We don't need to take a vote or anything we just need to make sure that everybody was OK with it kind of a thing. Yeah, I think just just to be sorry and and Phil correct me if I got this wrong, but the recommendation from

Wolf was that we move 5% of our, let's see where is it. Thank you. It's one of those nights that we move. Currently the portfolio has approximately 10% in short term bond funds and the recommendation was to take half of that or 5% and move that into intermediate bond funds. And in terms of expenditures, they recommended sticking with three to 4% of the the principal not, not going up on that just yet. That's correct. Doctor Kellman, that was the recommendation from the finance and analysts. Awe

some. All right. Policy Committee, our next scheduled meeting is Wednesday, April 17th, OK. And leadership committee, our next meeting is April 3rd. And there's a lot of items on the agenda, OK. So now item 13 is liaison reports. So this is where I was going to talk about their other committees, kites, school reports, buzz, stuff like that. So first up, we're going to have joint facilities, so I'll cover that one. The last meeting was two weeks ago and there wasn't a quorum, but we had discussio

n regarding some of the school roofs. There is a really cool thing now on the Department of Public Works website. It's called the DPW Project Tracker. So for anybody who's watching, you can go there and you could see all the projects that are currently and what status that they're in, all the projects that are going on in town. We talked about Alcorn's roof, parkman's roof, the library roof, the PD roof. So I'm going to be quick on that one. That's about it. And so then the next meeting was supp

osed to be this Thursday and they cancelled it. So I don't know when the next one will be. April 11th, April 11th currently. All right. So JFK Building Committee, well Randy had reached out to leadership recently and offered Randy Daigle that is our Project Manager JFK and he has offered to come before the Board at one of our next two or three scheduled meetings date to TBD perfect joint security. The next meeting is on April 5th. Enfield Mental Health Committee for April's meeting with Doctor C

owlin and I, Mr. Longy, will set up a meeting with David White, head of Counselors, and Julie Carroll, who's the head of social Workers, to implement a plan that will address a district wide approach for handling the mental health crisis in the Enfield schools. So we don't have a date yet, but it's in April. OK? All right, Enfield Cultural Arts, The next meeting is Tuesday, April second. OK, school reports and updates, who would like to go first? Oh go ahead for Crandall. On Thursday, March 26th

, the 5th grade committee will be hosting its annual dessert for dinner to help raise money for all the exiting end of the year events for the 5th graders. Prudence Crandall had their assembly today, the Pride Assembly that was mentioned by Chairwoman Riley and announced the winners of our Teacher Experience raffle. Students purchased raffle tickets for experiences with teachers, for example, like Munchkin and manicures decorate your own cupcakes, lunches with staff, origami and a silly string w

ar. We can't wait to see all the excited faces during their experience the nurses in need of extra clothes. If you have any gently used clothes that you are looking to donate, please send them in with your child and Maddie Tomalonis, a fifth grade student dedicated her time fundraising to purchase gifts for cancer patients at the De Cuatro Cancer Center in Manchester, CT. Maddie followed through on her kid governor platform to help bring smiles to the faces of cancer patients. Great work, Maddie

. We are very proud of you. Good job, Maddie. That's where my mom goes for her cancer treatments. That's awesome. All right, who would like to go next? Go ahead, Mr. Ryder. All right, so some news from Eli Whitney, as well as some general EPS news for all grades three through five students. First, Whitney. There's a Red Robin fundraiser on Wednesday, April 3rd. That's all day long from 11:00 AM to 9:30 PM. Mention HMS or Eli Whitney and bring in the flyer that'll be coming home this week to both

schools. Also for all grades three through 5 buildings, the one book three school kickoff is at the Middle St. library this week. That's Wednesday, April seven. I'm sorry, Wednesday, April 17th. Not this week. There'll be a flyer going home about it this week, but that's actually Wednesday, April 17th. That's for all Grade 3 through 5 schools. You're invited to the one book, three school kickoff at the Middle St. Library. Specific to Eli Whitney Bingo, we're having a bingo night on Thursday, Ap

ril 18th, and they're also going to be extending the invitation to incoming second graders at HMS. That will give families the opportunity to come see the building without the pressures of, you know, looking at classrooms or you know, having a schedule to follow. You just get to kind of get a sense for the building. If you don't have an older sibling that already goes there or went through there, gives you a chance to kind of see the building on a casual level, meet, meet a lot of the staff and

enjoy the bingo night Flyers again coming home this week with details for all these events. And also I'd mentioned the PLA tag sale coming up. Their tag sale Flyers also are going home with all students at Stowe Eagle, all K2 buildings, and all three five buildings. And those Flyers should be coming home, so check your backpacks. Otherwise they'll sit there all Easter weekend. So coming home this week, Thank you. Awesome. Go ahead, Miss Pickett. I had the pleasure of attending an assembly at Enf

ield Street School for Room 7 and 12, where the students performed with my own two hands in sign language and then read statements about how they could change the world with their own two hands. It was very powerful. There also is a gift, a gift card calendar, fundraiser, and lots of PTO things planned. Again, please check the principal newsletter and pto.com Parkman picture day coming up. Lots of fundraisers as well. Another gift card calendar, Urban Air butter braids, lots of things going on w

ith spring, so please make sure you're checking those principal newsletters. OK? Anybody else? Mr. Cove? So some updates for the Henry Barnard parents, friends and family 1st grade Math and Literacy night. This is going to be tomorrow evening and the 2nd grade night will be this Thursday. RSVPS for 2nd grade for grade two should be in by Monday, April 1st. Next week HBS is going to participate in Spirit Week in the anticipation of April break. The week after. As a reminder, Kindergarten Family N

ight with the CT Science Center is scheduled for April 18th with the grade One night being April 25th and grade twos will be May 13th. Spring Pitcher Day for Barnard is April 19th and a reminder that Trimester 3 report cards will be sent to families on April 30th. Also a reminder that the week of May 6th are the Family Resource Center partners will sponsor visits to Riverside Reptiles Education Center here in in town. And on May 21st, there will be Family Music Night with Miss Renee, who is a lo

cal music teacher. And as a reminder, obviously Friday's The Big Cat newsletter comes out, so make sure you're keeping an eye on that for important updates. Thank you. OK, anybody else? OK, so crack council. They also just approved their diversity proposal. They are asking for support to pressure the state to keep magnet and crack funding as it is and not reduce it. They are also asking school systems to support House Bill 5003, which is an act concerning education funding in Connecticut by stre

amlining the funding system by simplifying it and aligning monies to student need and other things. I have a letter that Canton Public Schools put together if you want to read it, and they all signed it. I haven't read the whole bill, so I don't know if I support it or not, but I definitely support, you know, fully funding education. I'm trying to push fast because we only have like 1/2 hour because meeting ends at 10. So Buzz Robotics they this is amazing. So they went to University of Rhode Is

land, their district event. They placed eight out of 28 and they also took home the Gracious Professionalism Award for sportsmanship, which is positive attitudes and support of other programs in Enfield at elementary middle school levels and outside of town. They are currently 9th in New England out of 185 teams and will be in the District Championship at the Big E So everybody's invited on April 4th through the 6th. Also, I don't want to see your Thunder if you are going to talk about it, Tina,

but Enfield High had a stock market challenge hosted by Junior Achievement and they came in first so congratulations to them. And then the last thing is Hasville Memorial. April 3rd is their Red Robin fundraiser, so go and get dinner there. April 3rd and April 4th is their superhero day. They get to wear superhero gear and donations that they've collected support Connecticut Children's 111th Annual Superhero Day. And the monies will be used to buy books and shirts for patients at the Connecticu

t Children's Center. OK, anybody else? I just have a question about Kite really quickly. Usually we get updates about what is it ready, Rosie? And rocking chair readers. So I always love those. So could you give that on your next update? OK. I attended the faculty versus student MPL high game, which was fun to see. That and my daughter played. I hadn't seen her play on the gym floor since 2017. She's a lot slower now, but she did score some baskets. But that game was a lot of fun to watch and th

ere was a lot of student participation in that. So that's all I have. Awesome. Any other reports? OK, so #14 Approval of minutes regular Board of Ed meeting minutes, March 12th, 2024. I need a motion to approve. Moved by Mr. Ryder, seconded by Miss Cushman. Can I have a show of hands in favor? There is none in favor, none against. OK, Mr. Cobra, do we have approval of the council apparel this evening? There is no items for this item. And Mr. Ryder, do we have correspondence and board communicati

ons for tonight? We do have one. So Kathy will e-mail this to all of us. But this just came in this afternoon. So I just wanted to let all the Board of Education members know that we are invited to celebrate the arts at the 58th Annual Arts Festival, which will be held at EHS and the cafeteria Friday, April 19th in the evening from 7:00 to 9:00 PM and then Saturday afternoon, April 20th the next day from 12:00 to 3:00 PM. Featuring artwork from students and all pre-K through 12th grades. I've. I

think we've all been to this in the past. But if if you haven't make it, make it a point. And when Kathy emails us around, make sure you save the dates on your calendars. But just want to let everybody know about that. That's the only item we have. OK. Thank you. All right. Executive session. We have a need to go into executive session matters related to personnel motion. So I have a motion made by Miss the Blank to go into executive session seconded by Miss Pickett. Can I have a show of hands

to go into Executive session and approval We're going to exercise there are 8 in favor and is there any against abstentions against one against. So we are going to go in executive session now and then we will adjourn the meeting afterwards. Thank you. And you guys have a wonderful holiday weekend and a good April vacation.