November 21, 2013 at 7:00 PM - Bethel Board of Education Regular Meeting

Rationale:  Gifts to School System:

• $1,000 to Bethel High School for an Italy Sponsorship, Stuart Carlsen, Bethel, CT
• $1,000 to Bethel High School for an Italy Sponsorship, Bryan Terzian, Bethel, CT

Rationale:  Congratulations to the Board on winning the CABE Board of Distinction Award - Level II!

The Awards ceremony will take place as part of the CABE/CAPSS Conference, on Friday, November 15 at 4:45 pm, in the Mystic Ballroom at the Mystic Marriott Hotel in Groton.

Rationale: 

Importance to the Board:

The Board began a renovation study two years ago. The ages and conditions of these buildings require an improvement plan. 

Key Points/Elements:

Johnson School should be renovated as new with the addition of a second gymnasium.

Rockwell School should be renovated as new.

There are few to no efficiences in cost or personnel associated with expanding Berry School and closing Rockwell School.

While district enrollment is projected to decline slightly those declines have not materialized yet. We are currently 32 students above projected enrollment in PK-5.

There are significant educational benefits to keeping three-school elementary program with enrollments at or around their current levels.

Cost estimates need to be updated to 2013 dollars.

Once a decision is rendered, an in-depth study of each renovation project must be completed.

Summary:
After a very comprehensive study conducted by DRA and a related enrollment study conducted by Milone and MacBroom, it is the Superintendent’s recommendation to proceed with plans to renovate-as-new both Rockwell and Johnson Schools. With each passing year, the need to address these schools grows more urgent.

Cost (i.e. all-in cost estimate): $43-$49 million estimated total cost. The Board of Education’s share would be 58.21%

What is Requested of the Board:  Review and discuss and accept the Superintendent’s recommendation.

Rationale: 

• Letter from State Treasuer to Mr. Troetti, BHS Principal, regarding CHET Advance Scholarship program. BHS Seniors, Kendra Curry and Megan Wade have beenselected as winners and will each receive a $2,500 scholarship.
• Letter to new Board members Jen Ackerman and Nick Hoffman from the Superintendent regarding the Board's Annual Meeting and New Board Member Orientation.

Rationale: 

Rationale:  Governor Dannel P. Malloy, joined by State Department of Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, announced plans to fund over $24 million in grant requests to bring more computers into classrooms and increase Internet bandwidth.  This investment provides vital support to students, teachers, and school districts as local efforts accelerate to complete the transition to the Common Core State Standards and the accompanying computer-based Smarter Balanced assessments.

Bethel will receive $70,414.

Rationale: 

Key Points of the Briefing: 

 There were major changes to the Advanced Placement Biology program:

•  The curriculum created was submitted and approved by The College Board—a requirement for offering the course at Bethel High School.

• The content of the course is designed such that “Big Ideas,”“Enduring Understandings,”“Essential Knowledge,” “Science and Engineering Practices,” and “Learning Objectives” are identified.
• The “Big Ideas” include:“Diversity and Unity of Life,” “Energy Transformations within Biology,” “Living Things Respond to their Environment,” and “Biological Systems Interact.”
• The revised curriculum focuses on promoting the enduring, conceptual understandings and the content that supports it.
• The curriculum contains much less of a focus on factual recall and spends much more time on inquiry-based learning of essential concepts including the collection and evaluation of data.
• No additional curriculum topics were included.Specific details within each “Big Idea” have been removed to emphasize the conceptual understanding of biology.
• The course requires the implementation of 12 embedded labs designed to give students the opportunity to apply the Science and Engineering Practices.

Summary of the Briefing:  The new Advanced Placement Biology curriculum is fully compliant with the College Board’s prescribed requirements.  

Rationale: 

Key Points of the Briefing: 

There were major changes to the Advanced Placement Chemistry program: 

• The content of the course is designed such that “Big Ideas,” “Enduring Understandings,” “Essential Knowledge,”“Science Practices,” and “Learning Objectives” are identified.Each of these is supplemented with specific classroom activities which are enumerated in the curriculum document.
• The course focuses on promoting the enduring, conceptual understandings and the content that supports them.
• The course focuses much less on factual recall and much more on inquiry-based learning activities designed for understanding the essential concepts.
• The course requires that at least 6 inquiry-based labs are included in the curriculum.This helps develop the “science practices” which are a specified part of the curriculum.
• Certain concepts, such as knowledge of organic functional groups and Colligative properties of solutions are considered “beyond the scope of this course” because it is assumed that this is all covered in college chemistry courses.
• The course requires that, throughout the year, students are engaged in the knowledge and skills that help them collect data, analyze this data, and apply it in order to capture important aspects of the work that scientists are engaged in.
• The curriculum created was submitted and approved by The College Board—a requirement for offering the course at Bethel High School.

Summary of the Briefing:  The new Advanced Placement Chemistry curriculum is fully compliant with the College Board’s prescribed requirements.   

Rationale: 

Key Points of the Briefing: 

There were substantial changes to the Chemistry 31 and 32 courses: 

• The addition of essential questions to each unit.
• To address missing curriculum units because of the loss of physical science at the high school, three additional units on polymers, electricity and magnetism, and acids/bases were added to the chemistry curricula.The units are designed as problem-based units where students are presented with a real-life problem they will have to solve.They must use collaboratively-performed research and utilize experimentation to guide them toward their answers.
• To meet the needs of the new Framework for K-12 Science Education, each unit was designed to focus on one or two specific science practice(s).(There are eight Science and Engineering Practices.)
• A chart was created (pgs. 12, 13) showing how each unit aligns with the Practices, Cross-cutting Concepts, and Disciplinary Core Ideas set forth by the Framework for K-12 Science Education.
• A new pacing guide (pgs. 14, 15) was created reflecting the changes in the curriculum.
• To meet the requirements of the CCSS on Literacy standards, each created unit consists of at least one reading activity beyond the textbook.
• To meets the requirements of the CCSS College and Career Readiness standards, each unit consists of at least one collaborative activity.Numerous activities in each unit require the use of technology.
• The assessments that will be utilized by each teacher were included as a chart (pgs. 16-21) to the document including what each assessment measures, how often it will be administered, the type of assessment it is, who will analyze the results, and what the results should tell a teacher.
• All activities, articles, and assessments that are electronically saved have been placed on the chemistry share folder on the school server.
• Additional online resources that both students and teachers can utilize were identified and included to the document (pgs. 21-23).

Summary of the Briefing:  The new Chemistry 31 and 32 curricula were changed in order to address the Common Core Literacy Standards and the Science and Engineering Practices, the Cross-Cutting Concepts, and the Disciplinary Core Ideas found in the Framework for K-12 Science Education—which is the basis for the Next Generation of Science Standards (2012).  

Rationale: 

Key Points of the Briefing: 

1. This is a course proposal from the World Languages Department at BHS.
2. The course is currently taught at WCSU, and our students will be able to take the course for WCSU credit, but it will be taught on our campus by our teachers.  We are working closely with WCSU to meet all of their requirements so that we can offer it at BHS.
3. It is designed for students who take AP Spanish in the junior year, but then have no other courses to take in Spanish in order to maintain their skills before college.  It is also an appropriate course for students who want to take another high level Spanish class, but they do not want to take the Advanced Placement option.
4. The course will replace the UConn Conversation and Composition course which has very low enrollment or no enrollment in the past few years due to the constraints placed on those who teach the course (certification, special training, and degree status). 
5. This course fills a void for students and is a good option for those who love the language. 

 

 

 

Rationale: 

Key Points of the Briefing:

 

1. The CAPT no longer exists for social studies (Interdisciplinary Task), English (Response to Literature), or for mathematics.  Only science will be tested with CAPT; the other academic areas will be tested by NWEA and by a beta version of SMARTER Balanced Assessment in 2014 and a complete version of SMARTER Balanced in 2015.   
2. We removed the specific references to English and social studies, and substituted “reading and writing” since we know these components of the Common Core will be assessed by the State using SMARTER Balanced. 

 

Summary of the Briefing:  Due to the demise of the CAPT as an assessment tool for reading, writing, and mathematics, we wanted to update the policy for parents and students who will still need to take additional remedial coursework if they do not demonstrate academic performance at the level needed for graduation.       

 

 

Rationale: 

Key Points of the Briefing: 

1. Due to the teacher evaluation statutes, Professional Learning is now front and center in terms of teacher and administrator professional growth, development, and evaluation. 
2. The policy was completely re-written and describes in detail many of the mandated changes to “staff development”—especially changes that state Professional Learning is much more than “inservices,” but is also the work of Professional Learning Communities or any school group working to solve a professional problem of practice. 
3. The policy describes how Professional Learning activities are developed based on student learning and behavioral data at the school and district levels; how the building-based Professional Development Committees and the Professional Development Council bring proposals forward, and how they are responsible for evaluating the activities. 
4. The newly amended statute 10-220a and the teacher evaluation statures make it clear that there must be ONE committee for the planning of professional learning activities and for developing and monitoring the teacher supervision and evaluation program.  In Bethel, we will maintain a Professional Developing Council and a Teacher Evaluation Task Force, but these groups will meet as one body two to three times a year to be certain that we are complying with the statute’s expectations for coordinating professional development and teacher supervision/evaluation. 
5. The new policy refers to the Learning Plans that teachers and administrators are expected to develop for themselves based on their needs.  These Learning Plans are an integral part of each certified person’s summative evaluation. 
6. The Appendix lists the mandated topics for districts.  However, the guidance I received was that we must monitor this list yearly and address the topics on an “as needed or as documented in our data as a need” basis.  It is critical, however, that if the statutes (such as teacher supervision and evaluation statutory language) states we must address such topic yearly that we do that without fail. 

Summary of the Briefing: The Board’s support of Professional Learning is pivotal to the improvement of student achievement in the district.  The policy on Professional Learning epitomizes many changes driven by the new teacher evaluation statutes.