April 23, 2015 at 7:00 PM - Bethel Board of Education Regular Meeting

Rationale:  Letter from Senator Chris Murphy regarding the NAMM Award.

Letter from State Department of Education regarding RFP #813 - District Technology Upgrades to Support Transition to the New Standards.

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Bethel Middle School will be moving to a standards-based report card for grades 6-8 effective next year.  Standards-based report cards:

• List the high leverage skills students should learn in each subject at a particular grade level
• Provide more consistency across classrooms because students are evaluated on the same grade-appropriate skills
• Provide more detailed feedback about each student’s performance
• Help guide instruction through differentiation

Rationale:  Policy 5114, Suspension/Expulsion/Due Process is being submitted to the Bethel Board of Education for its first reading. 

Public Act 14-229:  An Act Concerning the Expungment of a Pupil's Cumulative Education Record for Certain Expulsions provides new statutory regulations regarding expungment of expulsions from a students cumulative records under certain circumstance. In addition to the statutory requirements, all administrators also reviewed the policy and provided input to revisions.  The recommended language is included as part of the revisions. The policy has been reviewed once at the subcommittee level. 

The major changes regarding expungment include:

1. erase the expulsion before a student graduates if the student was never previously suspended or expelled, had the expulsion shortened or waived upon completing a board specified program, and met board requirements.
2. erase the expulsion for students in grades K-8, involving firearms and deadly weapons, if the conduct and behavior of the student in the years following the expulsion warrant it.  

Rationale:  As Melanie requested, as part of the review of all safety policies, Policy 5141.3 - Health Assessments/Immunizations is presented for a first reading. 

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Rationale:  Policy 5131.911 - Bullying Prevention & Intervention.  This policy includes the teen dating violence legislation and requirements and is submitted for a first reading.

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Rationale:  Regulation 5123 has been revised and is being submitted to the full Board of Education for informational purposes only.  The revisions to the regulation are directly linked to the switch to standards based report cards for Bethel Middle School for the 2015-2016 school year.   

The  changes include recommending a K-8 system for retention, promotion and the elimination of "credits" as a requirement for promotion at the middle school and updating the class placement for standing and graduation at the high school.   The K-8 model incorporates the following factors when considering retention:  

1. identification of grade level standards not mastered;  
2. opportunities for skill remediation; and 
3. input from the intervention team, teacher and parent.  

The policy itself does not need revision.  

Rationale:  As discussed at the regular Board of Education Meeting in March, the proposed calendar reflects the setting of the graduation date based on the school calendar.  The proposed date is June 17th, which allows for five (5) built in snow days.  If there is an excessive amount of snow days, the Board can revise the graduation date after April 1st.  

In addition, when reviewing the calendar with the administrators, the following issues were noted and changes recommend:  

1. The April vacation did not align with the regional calendar, nor most of the surrounding school district's calendars.  Most surrounding school districts have the week of April 18th as their Spring Recess. Alignment to other districts is helpful for not only for our own employees who live in other communities but help mitigate transportation issues and expense for special or regular education students who attend school outside of Bethel.
2. In several months, there were a lot of early dismissals (conferences, professional development, etc.), holidays and professional development full days, which leads to a constant disruption in instruction. We looked at moving the early dismissal for professional learning days to help mitigate the issue.  

 

Rationale:  This calendar has been drafted as a preview to the staff and community about how we anticipate we will schedule this school year.  The Board will be asked to “accept” this calendar