On Wednesday, September 1st, the Connecticut State Board of Education held its monthly meeting. The meeting agenda can be found here.

Meeting Agenda 

 This month’s agenda included:

 Commissioner’s update

 The Commissioner’s update included brief updates on:

  • Health and Safety Priority for schools and students

  • Internal Ops-New Comms Director Eric Skoville

  • Virtual Meetings w/staff ongoing

  • New Commissioner’s “Monday Message”  with staff every Monday re: noteworthy info and upcoming events

  • Commissioners Back to School Member meeting with superintendents

  • Tuesday Health and Safety meetings-close to 700 participants, including epidemiologists, reps from the governor’s office.

Also discussed was the Advance, Adapt, Achieve health and safety measures that will be implemented this school year, including:

  • Voluntary weekly covid testing for all unvaccinated students starting 9/13/21

  • Vaccinated teachers and students are no longer required to quarantine unless testing positive

  • All kiddos 12 and up are encouraged to get vaccinated

  • New 3 ft guidelines in school buildings

  • Masks required in school building thru 9/30

  • Updated ventilation, cleaning, and disinfection procedures in place

Lastly, addressed was the impact of Student Learning During the Pandemic (link here)

  • Students who learned in-person lost the least academic ground

  • In-person learning was also impacted by Covid

  • Academic growth during the pandemic was weaker than growth before the pandemic, particularly in math

Other Noteworthy Highlights:

  • Pandemic EBT (P-EBT), in partnership with DSS, $248 million in food benefits were distributed to over 330,000 kids in CT

  • Since schools closed in 3/20, school nutrition programs have served 60 million + meals to CT students

  • SBE Goal 1 College enrollment, credit attainment, and remediation

  • 40 of CT high school graduates attend CT state colleges/ universities

  • The number of CT students requiring remedial courses in college has decreased across all student groups

  • Common core standards, reduction of remedial courses, and dual credit programs for high school students have contributed to the decrease in remedial courses taken

Fiscal Items

 Discussed were midterm budget technical adjustments.

  • 1.7 mil adjustments Grant program (educational/enrichment activities)

  • Interdist Magnet School Account 1.2 million (due to appealed enrollment caps in the last session)

  • DOE approved $110m set aside from American Rescue Plan for LEA’s.

  • Funds are available thru Sept of 2024

  • 55m dedicated to loss of instructional time

  • 11m Provide Evidence-based Summer Learning and Enrichment Programs

  • 11m for Comprehensive afterschool programs

  • Staggered timeline over the next 18 months for implementation of all programs

Upcoming Meetings

 The next SBE meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 6, 2021. We will notify you should this date change.