BOE Education Report/Business Meeting 2024-5-13

001Good evening. I call this meeting to order. Note that all board members are present except for Jessica, who is unable to join us this evening. We begin tonight's meeting with the statutory budget hearing, which is a legal obligation regarding the school budget that is upcoming next week. I will pass over to Drew and Andrew for this. Terrific. Thank you. Good evening. Welcome, everybody. So, as I think many people know, if not everyone, the annual budget vote and board election is scheduled for May 21st, and tonight's statutory budget hearing, we're just going to review at a very high level the key things related to the budget. The Board of Education has put before the public an expenditure budget of $184,934,125. to support teaching and learning, provide student support services, and fund district operations for the 2024-25

002school year. That is a 4.03% budget increase over the current school year, and that reflects a tax rate increase in Scarsdale of 4.77%, and a decrease in the Mamaroneck Strip of 8.53%. And the overall tax levy of $170,035,914 reflects a 4.45% tax levy increase. That increase does exceed the statutory tax levy cap. And for that... proposed budget to be successful in the vote requires a 60% supermajority yes vote of those registered to vote who do vote in the budget vote and board election. Andrew, anything you want to add? I think you can. Thank you. I will just point out that hopefully homes in Scarsdale have or will receive the insight. This is a 16-page sort of summary of the key things that are included in the budget, broken out by the major areas of the

003budget, and also includes information related to the date and time of the vote, which is Tuesday, May 21st, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Scarsdale Middle School Gymnasium, and that's on 134 Mamaroneck Road in Scarsdale. Okay. Thank you, Drew and Andrew. I don't think our speakers are on. I don't know if anybody, I mean, I think our microphones are on, but if anybody can't hear me in the back. Please let me know. We will move to item 2.03, public comment on the 2024-2025 proposed budget. Members of the public are cordially invited to be present and to speak about the draft proposed 2024-2025 budget. Members that are in person will speak first, and then we will turn to Zoom. As a reminder, this public comment period is just about the budget. We will have two public comment

004periods at our regular business meeting and education report. which will happen right after this budget hearing. So with that, is there anybody in the audience that would like to speak about the budget? I see nobody in the audience. Susie, is there anyone on Zoom? There are no attendees on Zoom. Thank you, Susie. As a reminder to our community members, you are always welcome to reach out to the board and the superintendent at Board of Ed at ScarsdaleSchools.org about the budget. And I'll speak more about the details of the budget vote shortly. Any wrap-up items regarding this? None. Okay. Okay. Well, we will move into our business meeting and education report for this evening. I have just a few opening comments, mostly about the budget. As a reminder, the budget and board vote is next week

005on Tuesday, May 21st. Voting will take place at Scarsdale Middle School Gym from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Parking will be available throughout the day at the lower circle of the middle school, which can be accessed through the school road entrance on Kelwyn Road. Information about the budget is available on the district website, on the homepage under site shortcuts. And community members should be receiving a copy of the district's Insight newsletter, which Drew mentioned before. I personally received my copy earlier today, which includes significant information about the budget. Just a few important dates between now and next Tuesday when the vote is on the 21st. First, the voter registration deadline. The voter registration deadline is May 16th at 5 p.m. And you can check your registration status through the voter information link on the district

006homepage. As a reminder, like all elections, registration is done by individual, not by household, so each individual must be registered to vote in their local school elections. Regarding early mail or absentee ballot applications, as a reminder, early mail is new this year in New York State. The application for an early mail or absentee ballot must be received by tomorrow, May 14th. if you would like the ballot to be mailed to you. If you are able to pick up the ballot at the district offices, the application can be submitted up until May 20th. As a reminder, early mail and absentee ballots require two steps. First, you submit the application to receive the ballot, and then the ballot must be submitted. Completed ballots must be received by 5 p.m. on May 21st. And of course, as a

007reminder, once again, in-person voting is next Tuesday, May 21st, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Scarsdale Middle School gym. With that, I'll pass it over to Drew. Thank you very much. I will keep it short as I have a couple of long presentations tonight But I add my good evening to everybody tonight will be the final education report of the school year We'll have two topics the first will be the strategic plan draft and then results of our belonging survey So we're excited to share those and discuss and answer questions I also just want to take a moment to thank you for sharing all of that voter information I want to take a minute and just really extend thanks to honor a Adams who's the board clerk and my executive assistant who Coordinates

008and manages all of this the board election the budget vote She's there all day on May 21st and just does an incredible job and I know is embarrassed that I'm saying this but really Could not do it without her. She's truly amazing. Just wanted to say that in public. Just a couple of dates to keep in mind. VSAC, the Buddhist Festival, takes place on May 23rd. That's one of the dates we have in our DEI calendar. And then, of course, Memorial Day is coming up on Monday, May 27th, and our schools will be closed on that day. Thank you, Drew. Are there any board member reports? Bob. Thank you. I just wanted to let everyone know I was able to attend Fox Meadow Multicultural Fair last Friday and very much enjoyed the opportunity to do

009a world tour of all the countries represented by families attending the Fox Meadow School. The atmosphere was very festive as each child in each class was given their own individual passport and they could tour the countries and get their passport stamped. It was fun and engaging, and I was able to meet and talk with many parents and grandparents who managed the tables for each country. Each country chose their own style to represent their country and showed the creativity of the parents and how much time and effort was put into highlighting the unique aspects of their country. It showed what a special place Scarsdale is. Thank you, Bob. Are there any other board member reports? Okay, we will move to item four, cabinet updates. Okay, I'm delighted to turn it over to Megan Troy, who will

010introduce our new high school assistant principal. Yes, I'm very excited to welcome and introduce our next Scarsdale High School assistant principal, Laura Weiss, who's replacing Mr. Welch, who will be moving on to be the principal of East Chester High School. Ms. Weiss is currently serving as the assistant principal at Carmel High School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Franklin and Marshall College and two Master's degrees from Hunter College. While at Franklin and Marshall, Ms. Weiss was a competitive swimmer, which was foundational to her approach to teaming and collaboration. And during the interview process, it was clear that she values her relationships with colleagues, students, and families. In addition, she has acted as the chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and the Scheduling Committee at Carmel. In our conversation, she lit up

011when she spoke about the master schedule being a puzzle to solve. Shockingly, not every person lights up when talking about a master schedule, but I think we knew right then she was the right person for this position. So Laura, we welcome you. We look forward to watching you share all of your skills and experiences with our Scarsdale community. Thank you for picking us and joining us and welcome to Scarsdale. So, likewise, thank you for picking me. This is truly a dream job. I've always admired Scarsdale from afar, and throughout the interview process, it just reconfirmed for me that this is going to be a wonderful place to work and a great fit for me and my skill set. So, thank you. so that's our last cabinet update there is public comment before the consent agenda

012if you want to stay for the actual vote of your appointment you're welcome to but we understand if you want to head out as well all good so thank you so much and congratulations we're really happy to have you on board thank you Thank you, Megan and Drew. We will move to item five, hearing from those present. I will begin with the public comment preamble. Members of the public are cordially invited to speak on district-related items or other non-personnel-related matters during two separate public comment periods. When it is your turn to speak, please set your name, address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization. For those commenting remotely, please mute the live stream voice, turn on your camera, and then unmute yourself. This is now a good time to log into Zoom

013if you have any public comments. Speakers will be asked to conclude their remarks after four minutes and will be given a verbal cue at the three-minute mark. If at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the board via email at boardofed at scarsdaleschools.org. The public comment period is reserved for comments only. The board will not engage in dialogue. The board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion either during response to public comment or at a later time and place. Response to public comment will take place after the first and second public comment periods. With that, is there anyone in the audience that would like to make a public comment? Good evening. My name is Estela Lecuona and I live on Pulse Road. Our

014schools are without a doubt a second home for our kids. Where in addition to learning academic subjects, they develop relationships with friends and trusted adults. I appeal to learn more about an individual who has an ongoing civil action. Who is the district managing this situation with the lack of transparency towards the parents involved? I came here today to ask you to make an extra effort to talk not just with the current parents of the students, but with the families of former students told by this individual. I'm frustrated, but I hope that you, the Scarborough School District, will have more information in the near future to share with Revolve parents. Thank you. Are there any members that are in the audience that would like to make a public comment? Okay, we will turn to Zoom. Susie?

015There is one attendee on Zoom, but she does not have her hand raised. Oh, she just raised her hand. Okay, let me promote you. There, okay. Hi, Myra, you may speak. Hi, thank you. Good afternoon. Maida Kirkendall Rodriguez, Fox Meadow Road. I just wanted to thank you for publishing the strategy or summary thereof and also the belonging survey. I'm hoping that when you get to the belonging survey, you could perhaps give a context. to the 20% of students who reported that they have experienced bias and discrimination. If you could kindly explain a little bit more what kind of bias and what kind of discrimination they're reporting and whether these are verified incidents. And if they're not, is there some other way to see that kind of data? Thank you. Thank you. There's nobody else on

016Zoom. Okay, thank you Susie as a reminder. There is a second public comment period later in the agenda I will move to item six follow up to public comment. Sure. I did see your email Earlier today did not have a chance to respond but I will do so and invite the chance for a conversation if that's okay I appreciate that and to miss Crookendall Rodriguez. Yes, we will address that in the belonging survey report Thank you for that follow-up drew We will move to item Seven, the consent agenda. Just briefly, the full preamble is available on the meeting agenda. Briefly, a consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the Board of Education into a single motion. The items on the consent agenda will have the same background material as ordinary items on the

017board agenda. At this time, would any board member like to move an item from the consent agenda to a separate action item? Seeing no one, we will move to item eight, the consent agenda. Amber. Thanks, Ron. There are five items on tonight's consent agenda. Item 8.01, minutes, business meeting May 6, 2024. Item 8.02, the personnel certified report. Item 8.03, the personnel non-certified report. Item 8.04, contracts over 20,000 professional consultants HR. And item 8.05, accepting the consent agenda. I move we accept the consent agenda as presented. Thank you, Amber. Is there a second? Jim? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The motion carries. Thank you, Amber. We move to item nine, information items. The first one is a treasurer's report and schedule of investments. Lisa? Good evening. Okay, the Treasurer's Reports being presented tonight

018are for the month of February of 2024. Started the month with $47.7 million in cash, generated net inflow of approximately $43.3 million, and resulted in an end cash balance of February 29th of $91 million. Approximately 79% of the total cash balance was invested, earning about $5.23. The rates are staying pretty stable at this point. And at the end of the month of February, the interest earnings exceeded the budget by about $468,000. Any questions? Any questions for Lisa? Okay. Thank you so much. I believe you're the next one, too. Budget transfers. Budget transfers. Okay. So I'll run through and try to give you a quick explanation for each transfer that's presented. The first budget transfer is a large one. It's to cover the salary lines. So as you know, salary adjustments can be necessary due to

019various factors. It can include building and staff changes, salary adjustments and credit increases, hirings, resignations. Another thing that is also included in this transfer is, as we discussed during the budget process, we anticipated a need to cover a budget shortfall for hourly aids. So you'll see there are approximately $495,000 worth of lines that are coming from non-salary codes that are coming in to cover those salary lines. The budget transfer number two is to cover sewer tax. Again, in 22-23, there was a significant rate increase, so we were optimistic that the rate would stay stable. Unfortunately, there was another increase in 23-24, so that resulted in higher than anticipated costs for the SOAR taxes. Budget transfer number three is for homebound tutors. These are tutors that we hire through an outside agency. They're for students who

020can't attend in-person classes. We're hiring them on an as-needed basis, and this year we needed quite a few. So again, higher than anticipated costs. The fourth transfer is for consultant services, and it's to cover the related professional development contract that you'll also see on tonight's consent agenda. Budget transfer number five is for health services. By law, we are required to provide services to all resident students that attend parochial and private schools throughout the state. Those districts of location then bill us for those services that are provided. So this year we had a slight increase in students along with the increased costs associated with it. So that resulted in a little higher than expected. Budget Transfer Number 6 is for Contractual Security Services. This line covers cameras, software, lockdown sensors, and also our Contractual Security Services

021with Aero Security. Budget Transfer Number 7 is for a Special Ed Agreement for tuition for a student that was placed outside of the district. Thank you, Lisa. Are there any questions about the budget transfers? Okay. Seeing none, thank you for the thorough explanation. We will move to item 9.03, what everybody's been waiting for tonight, our education report. Okay, thank you very much. Well, once again, good evening. I'm really delighted tonight to share the first draft of our new five-year strategic plan. What intentional collective impact can we have on our students that will prepare them well for the increasingly uncertain future they will encounter? That's the question that I asked both at the end of last year and early this fall to catalyze a strategic planning conversation focused on a futures-oriented vision for our work in

022the Scarsdale Public Schools. Being future-oriented means having a range of transferable skills and possessing the dispositions to deal with change, disruption, and conflict. Over the past nine months, our students, faculty, staff, parents, and the broader community have been invited to participate in events designed to develop our collective understanding of the forces impacting teaching and learning, identify what we value most about a Scarsdale education, and contemplate new or novel approaches to our work. This input has been shaped into a multi-year strategic plan. Ultimately, the purpose of this plan is to support our vision and mission and empower our students to create their desired futures and successfully meet the challenges they will face in those futures. This provides, the plan provides a roadmap for how we will thoughtfully determine and enact educational changes in a systematic and

023sustainable way that best equips our students to be successful in achieving the futures they desire. So, a little bit about the inputs to this plan. There were really four major inputs to the plan. First, we held a series of World Cafe events held with faculty and the community intended to facilitate open and intimate discussion and link ideas within the larger community to assess the collective intelligence or access the collective intelligence and wisdom of our stakeholders. This area of input is summarized on this particular slide showing literally thousands of responses, suggestions, ideas, and proposals shared in response to six important questions. Those questions were, as you think about the future, what knowledge, skills, competencies, attitudes, and or values are or will be most critical for our students to develop? We also asked, What about the Scarsdale

024High School profile of a graduate resonates with you and what wonderings does it spark? How might your practice or how might our practice adapt to lend greater emphasis to these competencies? We asked what are we not currently doing that we should be doing? We asked what are we currently doing that we should keep doing or improve upon? We asked what are we doing that we should stop doing? And then we ask what other suggestions, questions, or concerns do you want to share? Again, with thousands of points of input overall. And we represent that input on this slide just in graphical form. Second, we deployed a survey to students, faculty, staff, and parents related to belonging. Note the summaries of the survey results will be presented. That survey will be presented separately tonight in part two

025of the education report. That particular survey was designed around the Search Institute's Developmental Relationships Framework, which supports the notion that high-quality, positive relationships with parents, teachers, mentors, coaches, and peers help students to develop resilience in the face of obstacles, to grow, learn, and develop social-emotional skills. Third, the district leadership took stock of what we are currently prioritizing and focusing on and identified which priorities should continue and therefore be included in the plan and which might be redundant or finished. And finally, the fourth input was an internal assessment of our capital assets and financial position. We also incorporated student input through ongoing structures, including our student government, engagement with our student government, the priorities that our students advocate for, sometimes on their own, sometimes through groups. suggestions for course electives from earth that come from our

026students and from our faculty in conjunction with students and of course the courses students actually sign up for and select and also various smaller scale surveys that take place within the student body with that input we created a structure to organize analyze and synthesize all of that feedback I co-coordinated an STI course with high school instructional technology specialist Meredith Dutra. It was called STI 6038 Collective Impact. We had roughly 60 faculty participants representing all of our schools. We held six class sessions formally, plus two additional meetings that many but not all of the individuals attended. In the work together, we developed a knowledge base about the future of education and also about best practices in education, building both on current experiences and imagining experiences we don't have yet. We reviewed and reflected on our past,

027including reading past strategic plans and our existing history of Scarsdale schools, which can be found on our website. And we took the time to organize, analyze, and synthesize that feedback. And in the agenda tonight, along with this slide presentation, is a longer document that includes a synthesis of all of the feedback. that we got and I will take a moment just to share one of the ways that that looks that that feedback was synthesized here's a summary that categorizes six major themes that emerge from our parent and community feedback in response to the first question I shared what knowledge skills attitudes values and competencies are or will be most critical for our students to develop academic skills, life skills, technology and AI, social and emotional learning, global awareness and citizenship, and preparation for future careers

028were the six strongest themes within the parent feedback. And beneath these, there are some examples of the statements or phrases or ideas that came underneath each of those categories. similarly our faculty feedback identified a number of themes as well the overlap is substantial from social-emotional learning critical thinking problem-solving habits of mind lots and lots of things overlap between between the two groups and kind of paint the picture toward a suite of important things to emphasize in our schools So as I mentioned, this synthesis is described in over 15, a total of 15 pages in the report. So it would seem that the task of distilling this feedback into a coherent and digestible summary could be daunting. But the members of the STI course did an amazing job of really homing in on the key elements

029of the feedback. And through it all, we arrived at a clear and succinct vision statement, something we haven't really had, to go along with our mission statement. And three big ideas that seem to strongly resonate and can help guide us into the future. I created a short video to introduce these ideas and once it plays we'll look at the components individually in a little bit more detail. In the Scarsdale schools, we envision a resilient and adaptable learning community that fosters the potential of students and adults alike to live well-balanced lives full of meaning, purpose, impact, and joy. We look to the seal of Scarsdale Public Schools, which consists of a shield, a text, and a torch with the motto non-civi, or not for self alone, to help bridge past and present while emphasizing three big

030ideas that will organize our work for the future. First, we emphasize the big idea of learning and envision a collaborative, future-oriented academic culture. Learning in Scarsdale is a collaborative experience that encourages risk-taking and prioritizes opportunities for students to think deeply about and work to solve problems relevant to their lives and connected to their interests. To achieve this, students develop and deploy powerful habits of mind and effective communication skills. We use the shield to help us think about how we live as we envision educational environments that promote well-being, belonging, and resilience. Essential to living a well-balanced life of meaning and contribution is developing the dispositions necessary to be resilient in the face of adversity. We accomplish this by emphasizing strong developmental relationships, and creating brave learning spaces where students and teachers challenge themselves and each other

031to grow. Finally, we recognize the torch as a symbol of leadership as we demonstrate a commitment to inquiry, interdependence, and innovation. As a leading light in public education, we grow, adapt, and continuously improve through inquiry and innovation. We recognize the forces shaping our interdependent world and share a commitment to the principles of sustainability in our educational, environmental, and economic practices in Hansevi. As we look closer at learning, We set out a goal for our students to promote a collaborative academic culture where confident and creative risk takers bring voice to their passions, think deeply about what they are learning, solve problems in increasingly sophisticated ways, and communicate what they know and can do through a wide range of performance tasks and assessments that occur within and beyond the classroom. For the big idea of living, we

032set out to cultivate learning environments that equip students of all ages with the skills and habits of mind to develop resilience and perseverance, engage others bravely, confidently, and respectfully, grow from setbacks, understand the importance of community, and develop empathy for the diversity of human experience. In the area of leading, our goal is to foster student understanding of interdependence and nurture self-efficacy and agency to make an impact in the world. Elevate the inquiry approach as a means for continuous improvement and innovation in programs, curriculum, instruction, and professional learning. and establish, enhance, and or refine our practices and approaches, facilities, finance, operations, and partnerships to ensure long-term sustainability. Learning, living, and leading. These are the big ideas and touchstones we will focus on as we look to the next five years and develop the resilient and adaptable

033learning community that we envision. In the Scarsdale School, So we'll take a little time to, it's always awkward to hear your own voice, I apologize for that, but we'll take a little time to unpack. I know that's a lot of information, but we'll take a little time to unpack that and kind of make sense of it. So we started with a vision statement and that's we envision a resilient and adaptable learning community that fosters the potential of students and adults alike to live well-balanced lives full of meaning purpose impact and joy and the reason we sought to develop a vision statement was it's it's not something we've had that sort of bite-sized concise Sort of big picture statement that has us all hopefully getting a little excited for what we do Below that is our

034current mission statement. We felt that there's a lot of strength in that mission statement that starts with the idea of to sponsor each student's full development, enabling our youth to be effective and independent contributors in a democratic society and an interdependent world. So that remains the only change from sort of current format as we bulleted some of those ideas out instead of having it be semicolon sentences. Below that are the three big ideas, learning, living, and leading, with a short version of each. What does learning mean? Collaborative, future-oriented academic culture. What does living mean? Educational environments that promote well-being, belonging, and resilience. And what does leading mean? It means a commitment to inquiry, interdependence, and innovation. So, each of those areas is accompanied by what we might think of as an aspirational statement. It describes

035an ideal. It's what we may realize we're not quite there yet, necessarily, but that's where we intend to go in that arena. All right, continuing on. There are those big ideas and aspirational statements again. Here we introduce a goal. And the goal is a student-centered statement. Starts with a verb that speaks to the actions that we need to take as educators to help students get there. And then the final part of the plan includes what we're calling key action areas. There's probably a better term for that, but I think the statements themselves will speak for themselves. But these are the projects, priorities, processes, and deliverables that we are and will be focusing on over this time period in order to meet the goals. So those key action areas are organized into two columns. action areas

036that have occurred recently or are currently underway, and a second that are action areas that are emerging or are under development. The format was intentional in its design because it allows for the work that's underway to be organized and fit into this plan thoughtfully into one of the three big ideas. But it also allows for work that is either not ready quite yet, and work that we haven't even imagined yet to find its way into this collection of goal-oriented priorities. So thus you will see dot, dot, dot, more to come at the bottom of that column, and that's to reflect that there is truly more to come. So if we're to first take a look at the area of learning, here are some of the examples that are current listed here. Sorry about that. It's

037a loose connection. So, for example, we, as an ongoing practice, we are in the process of monitoring, assessing, and adjusting key implementations that are underway. Reveal math, our units of study, and our science units. Edgar has spoken about that. As you know, we're also in the process and will continue to assess our current special ed continuum of services, really with three things in mind. To identify priorities for enhancements and expansion. increase the range of students with access to the curriculum within the least restrictive environment, and focus on our transition services and opportunities for students with disabilities on non-traditional post-secondary tracks. Eric has spoken to that. We've gotten some good community feedback on that, and we'll seek out more. Articulate and implement assured learning experiences that support student development of the Scarsdale digital competencies. This is

038an area that William Yang and Jeannie Crowley are leading with the instructional technology specialist team and carrying the beginning stages of that workout. expand the application of tools and techniques that enable differentiated instruction to support all learners to meet their potential. We've learned an awful lot from our integrated co-teaching six models and some of those practices have life in other sorts of professional development to continue the work of differentiated instruction. Under development, we know the high school profile of a graduate has gotten a wide audience but Carrying those next steps into the practices in the school, that's a desire. And we also envision developing a profile of a learner for pre-high school in our elementary grades and our middle school grades as a way to help articulate some of this from an individual student's perspective.

039We also envision a profile of a Scarsdale educator to go along with that. We imagine, we envision work to elevate the habits of mind. That is a body of research, the habits of mind, Benakalik and Art Costa, that are really well articulated dispositions that students can develop to strengthen their practice. critical thinking, problem solving, through an emphasis on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning and performance-based assessments, including some summer work that's budgeted and planned in that arena. And then the idea to review, and this came up in a number of different cases, to review sort of some of the experience we have right now in some of our unique programs that might be transferable experiences and structures we have in choice in the A school and senior options and things like that that might have threads in

040them that can be applied more broadly across. So we turn to the second area of living. These are just some of the examples of the recent and ongoing work. So you'll hear shortly a little bit more about our work with the Belonging Survey and developmental relationships, but working toward a set of priorities there based on the data is underway. implementing responsive classroom k-5 and developing school-wide agreements this is expansion to touch more teachers and more of our classrooms across all five elementary schools and then another example there's work underway at the middle school who's just created the community council structure this year and continues to work on keystone advisory this fits into this this arena well emerging and under development thinking about what an assured social-emotional learning kind of set of key hallmarks would look

041like in experiences for students in grades 6 through 12 once responsive classroom is in place we are talked about Eric and I've talked about but the district comprehensive approach work we're doing with the Jed foundation and a a essay to support equip and empower students to grow in their well-being and resilience And then developing a plan to embed strategies and approaches for brave conversations. This is professional development work that's underway. And also, we heard a little bit of beginnings from our high school group that we met with last board meeting to thinking about civil discourse as a thread in their work as a government. Again, these are examples. And then in leading, one of the things we're excited to do is we've been in a period of conversation as we went through some leadership transition.

042The Center for Innovation, we imagine a relaunch very soon as the Community for Inquiry and Innovation to aid in the pursuit of inquiry. Inquiry is a formal set of approaches and strategies to identify and solve problems of practice to improve the experience of student learning. That's in a nutshell. We do have the joint field study underway, and we look forward to the outcomes and then next steps on that. That's included in the plan here. Global learning opportunities, I'm going to move a little faster here. The transportation study, examples that you've heard at this board table. And on the emerging side, you've also heard Andrew talk about in the fall presenting a draft long-term financial plan for feedback and fund balance guidelines. That's a key step in this area. process for identifying our capital project priorities

043so we can move toward the potential of a new capital projects bond and then collaborative process for exploring and evaluating potential sustainable energy investments as part of that these are just some of the ideas that are in the in the development in emerging stage there okay that was more than a mouthful So what's next? Well, we're going to create the opportunity for reaction, comment, and input from the community. So a message going out to the community with a structure to invite that input outwards and into our faculty and staff. We shared the plan in the video that I just shared with the faculty this week, and we expect that to occur over the summer and into the fall. Our leadership team will be meeting in July. This will be the theme of the retreat to,

044you know, review and refine those key action areas and have conversations about the most important next steps in each of those action areas. And then, you know, in the fall, you will start to hear at this table in education reports and budget reports and cabinet updates. progress and work that's underway things we've accomplished deliverables through the lens of learning living and leading within that framework of those those goal areas so we'll leave it with for questions with just this this graphic and we're excited I want to express a tremendous amount of gratitude to cabinet, to our administrative council leadership team, all the principals and assistant principals, to the community for their input, for the faculty and staff for their input, and to the participants in the STI course who really rolled up their sleeves and

045bought in. They were really invested in trying to determine what the input meant and touched every single one of thousands of post-it notes. and really developed that in the theme. It was fun, but hard work. Well, thank you, Drew, and everybody in the administration and our faculty and staff that's been working on this strategic plan. I think we'll pause here before we go to the belonging survey. I'll open it up to comments and questions from the board for discussion, and then we'll go into the belonging survey. All right, let me open it up to the board for comments. Amber. Drew, it was really wonderful to see this strategic presentation. I know you've been working on this for a while. So thank you. I love the format. I like the main ideas. I do have a

046couple of questions. So when you're looking at the slides and sort of talking about key areas to consider for or under development, I know those lists aren't complete yet, but how do you decide how to prioritize? Like, what are you envisioning the process there? Yeah. That's a great and important question because if this plan is to be effective, it needs to help us weigh alternatives when we know our resources aren't unlimited. I think one of the things that we've reinforced through the process is that last set of questions, what should we keep doing, what should we stop doing, what should we do more of. Think we want to look back at those things every step of the way like as we are about to embark on something or as we're weighing Something let's say what

047did our stakeholders say about that? Are we sure that that's something that's valued and or did a bunch of people say that's something actually we We should stop so I just want to say that that's I think this will have utility beyond Just this presentation or just having a final report um but i think it's also uh our conversations um you know with our within the buildings um to determine what what the priority are is with our partnerships um you know we're in partnership with the village we're in partnership with other organizations and making sure we're continuously vetting those ideas by those groups and of course and importantly the board of education i think the hope is that by framing choices or ideas within these aspirational statements and goals, they can help us first come

048to the table having thought that through and explain this is why we think this meets this goal more than this alternative, for example. And then we can have a discussion around why do we think that and hopefully have probing questions about that. That's really helpful. Thank you. And a related question. Are you envisioning that all of the ideas would be considered for implementation within the next five years? Or is this just LISP meant to be brainstorming as you start to develop those ideas? So I'd say right now the things that are in writing, that they appear on this, I think right now we expect all of those things to happen. There are also building-specific projects and ideas at each of our seven buildings that I hope to you know fit into this that that will

049see itself as Connected with it or the stakeholders that will see it connected into those three big areas and kind of articulate it that way That's great. And I just have actually two comments. I noticed in the living slide under key action areas that are ongoing right now, it didn't seem, and this is just an observation, but it struck me that there wasn't a lot happening for high school, or perhaps there's not a lot highlighted that's happening for high school in terms of where, you know, you've got the belonging survey which is with everyone but the responsive classroom and sort of the the work that's happening at the middle school so that was just something that jumped out at me i'm not sure That's just there probably is work happening, but maybe it's not identified

050yet on the side Yeah, it's just not identified in this at the sign I think the high school has a couple of active committees including a wellness committee. I mean, I think the work of off in the way and whatever However, that continues to evolve is part and parcel of this the assessed the work of the assessment committee has Components of it that relate to well-being for sure so it was I know. It's a draft right now. You're getting input. And just under, I guess it's under the leading, excuse me, under the leading slide. a similar way I noticed that a lot of the ideas that were reflected here seemed to be a little bit more facilities or business oriented obviously the community of inquiry is a little bit more students in curriculum but that

051was just something that jumped out at me as well yeah and part of that is I really wanted to make sure we reinforced some of those things that this is this is a broad leading as a broad area it really it's where so much of the back of the operation that really holds everything up. sits and lives. And I wanted to make sure those things were at least that people understood that that's included in this, that these bigger, longer term, like capital, you know, a bond potential capital projects were visible to people in this, that it wasn't for some reason left out. So it might have gone a little heavy toward that just to make sure that was clear. Well, it's helpful to hear your perspective. And thank you again. This is a great presentation.

052I appreciate it. Thank you for your questions. Yeah, I also want to thank you. On a personal level, I find the format incredibly user-friendly. It certainly is aligned with the way I tend to think of things in terms of the structure. I have a few, I guess, questions regarding, from a transparency point of view, as you move forward or as we move forward, is there a way to embed in the format potential evaluation criteria that might include some metrics. I think to be able to communicate perhaps more easily to the community and to ourselves, it would be helpful to have some format that allows us to understand how we define success. and failure and to what degree we've reached that success or failure. I'm not saying I have an answer, but from a evaluation point

053of view, I think that would be helpful. That was point one. Number two, the structure of learning, living, and leading, which I find, again, very helpful. whether as we move forward whether it would be possible and also within each category and we start a year and we set our agenda for the year sometimes not all categories are equal in terms of the history of where we are. I think the notion of the well-being became a priority at certain points. Maybe learning becomes a priority for a particular year because it's been triggered by some particular event within society or whatever. So I think it might be good as we launch. per year our goals, we try and articulate that so people understand this might be a year where we're putting more emphasis on one of those

054domains or categories. The other thing, which perhaps is maybe also a little tricky but I think would be helpful, is that all efforts are not equal in terms of energy required to deliver it. So there may be some low-hanging fruit that requires a fairly simple action item to check it off, and some may require years and years, and I'm sure there are, we can all imagine them, that will require years and years of effort where the change is a little more subtle and nuanced. I think it would be helpful if we could have a mixture of both so that people feel that we are checking things often because I think it's always good to see progress, right? And to be cognizant and, again, transparent that this could take three or four or five or, frankly,

055a generation of change, whereas something might take, you know... you know, a three-month effort. So, you know, those are short. Yeah. So those things would help me feel that when the community is reviewing this in the future, that there is some sort of, again, evaluation checklist or format, whatever that is, that we can keep going back to and saying, you know. we're proportioning our energy in a particular way. So hopefully that's helpful. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thanks, Bob. Other comments or questions? Thank you, Drew. I know this took a ton of time and energy on top of the budget, on top of everything else. So I appreciate it. And I also wanted to just take a moment to thank the 60 teachers that sussed through all the post-its to help us pull out the data

056so we can create this. I had two questions. One was... in terms of the student input which i think is extremely important you know you mentioned student government you mentioned some student advocacy groups i'm curious while those kids are very impressive and we've had the chance to chat with them a lot i think there is other students outside of those groups that have valuable input and i'm just curious do we have any Plan to maybe try to extend to rather input maybe kids who are not proactively offering it up I think that's a definite desire and Certainly, there's a direct connection to the belonging survey on that we do We are meeting the summer to plan focus groups for the fall As you know one example and as you'll see in that presentation It might

057seem like just one thread, the belongings might seem like one thread through here, but it actually connects to all three of these areas. So we do envision, that's a very concrete yes in the fall, broader outreach through focus groups at all levels, including our younger students who didn't take the survey in grades K through three, to hear what their experience is and what's important to them. Thank you. The other thing I just wanted to take a little moment to, I kept going back to looking at what competencies are or will be most critical. I just think it's telling, you know, the life skills area of that pie chart is, you know, almost half the pie chart. And I think that's telling us something, you know, with future planning and what's important to our. our community

058and what we kind of need to focus on so i just found that very fascinating i'm sure you guys did too i also you know the academic skills that i've heard a lot about from the community especially especially with reading and writing proficiency i know we mentioned science and math but i have gotten some feedback from the community i think other people have as well that there really is a desire to see a focus on on writing especially proficiency um especially as they move through the district so i would love to maybe see something with that in the future as well yeah and that ass i appreciate that very much and that aspirational statement uh maybe it's not as um forward in it, but that is what is behind the think deeply about the work.

059It's stopping, getting away from this, reading the thick book, having the dialogue about it, and then the communication skills that are at the end of that. That's really your writing and other forms of communication. Absolutely, that is intended in there for sure. Yeah, thanks for the presentation. It's very thorough. I was just wondering as we were reviewing it, I know this is not the final version of these documents. Just in terms of how this gets, I guess, implemented or how it gets sort of pushed out into the... you know, sort of faculty, the students, the community, and does it become part of how teachers are evaluated? Does it become part of how, you know, we chart progress among students at different grade levels? I mean, how does this sort of become a living? document it's

060thought for the future but it's also a thought for the present because you know here we have this draft in front of us now so um i never really felt with the prior plan it was never really clear to me it was so complicated how it was getting how it was getting like uh disseminated as it were um or or embodied in in you know the day-to-day um and this you know there's some very specific things here which is good um that seems like there's at least there could be a way to embody this document in how those who work here and study here, how they do what they do. All good questions and absolutely are like the next layer of work. So I will say it this way. I'm envisioning... June July August September

061like getting feedback making sure this is getting the buy-in we think it has right now we've got you know certainly a group of people who helped develop it who feel good about it there's some preliminary positive reactions administrative councils all on board I've gotten a little feedback from teachers we need more of that more more from the community so taking the opportunities that exist to put it out there and have people react in that little in that window of time however we're meeting in july i'm really going to set the expectation that our goal setting processes as they exist begin to link to to this so as you're setting a goal as i'm setting my goals i want them to speak to this and how they match and and fit into that i'd ask the

062cabinet to do the same hopefully principals do the same and eventually teachers to do the same to have the ability to kind of articulate how they see the connection to the thing they're setting as a goal which is a process that already exists connect to these these three priorities um so that that's just an example of i think where where that that'll go Thank you. Because I think what you'd want to do, since it's a five-year plan, is be able to assess at different stages along the way, where are we in relation to it? Do things need to change? And that kind of thing. Absolutely. Like my other board members, I'd like to thank you and the administration and faculty and parents, everybody who gave, and students who gave input to this strategic plan. I

063think it's, I love the framework, you know, of the learning, living, and leading. It's very easy to understand and it's very comprehensive. There's so many good nuggets in here. The vision statement, I think, is great. The one... Word if there's one word that really kind of resonates with me in the whole thing Is the word brave that that you use several times in in this statement? That we want our children to be brave learners. We want to be able to have brave conversations is listed here and it's not a question but just you know, I I'm excited for us to model bravery to our students. I think what we want to do is forward thinking, student focused, and brave. And if we take risks, which I want us to be able to do. and assess

064them. I like Bob's point of being able to evaluate maybe with some data. You don't want to get crazed with numbers or anything, but be able to assess what we're doing. And if something's not working out, be brave enough to say that too and pivot. I think that's okay. So I want to encourage us to be brave too. I appreciate that. It's inspiring. I appreciate that. Those are all great questions and comments, so I don't have too many others. I think people my fellow board members really said a lot of impactful Feedback for drew questions. I would just add a couple things that I'd like to acknowledge first that while you've been developing this plan, that doesn't mean you've been waiting for the plan to be developed to be taking action on things that we

065know the community wants, that we know our teachers and our faculty want. And I think we've talked about that throughout the year. So I want to thank you for doing those concurrently so that we weren't just waiting for a plan. We've done a lot of things this year that all align with learning, living, and leading. And part of when I reviewed this in preparation for this meeting that I felt really positive about the work you've done is I can hear the voices of the feedback that we've been getting this year and past years from our students, our community, from our faculty members. And I can see that living in each of those areas. And I think that's really important because as mentioned, So much of the work is not just what goes on the slide,

066but really what happens in the buildings in our classrooms And and seeing that linkage is so valuable. So thank you for that The other thing I just want to acknowledge is that and I'm Bob you mentioned this a lot I think it's a really important point this work is going to Not just impact what happens in our classrooms in our buildings, but what happens at this board table in the coming years We have a lot of capital projects. We have a bond rolling off. So possibly a new bond I think this gives us the framework to decide how to prioritize Which you know we heard around the table, too So With that is there anything else from the board or you or anyone else? Thank you again for your work, our administrators, our teachers. I

067think the board has gotten to see what really goes into putting this together. And again, it's so much more than just what lives on the slide to make it a real living strategic plan. So thank you to everybody for all this work. Yeah, thank you and thank you for all the feedback and obviously it's an iterative process so more feedback to come and we appreciate that And maybe we even look to board goals in the future I know it's a different board as of July but board goals that link somehow to this as well. That would be great Okay so second part of tonight's presentation is Sharing the results at least tonight of the student and faculty belonging survey I just want to say we also did a parent-reliant survey. It's completely a bandwidth issue.

068We've prioritized the student and faculty results for this particular presentation. We will follow up. likely early next year with the parent piece and those next steps as well. We have started to look at it, but it's honestly, it's a bandwidth issue. So what we're gonna do tonight is present the results of the belonging survey that our students and faculty took back in November, believe it or not. I need to start by really thanking my partner in this work, or maybe I'm your partner, Dr. McIntosh. Edgar's really been just a great colleague to have along the way with this. And then he's not here tonight, but Dr. Gay has been a very thoughtful collaborator with this. And they've both been excellent partners in this journey. And I think it's just helped inform meaning. a lot of

069information and making meaning of it is not easy. So we're really gonna try to do three things tonight in this part of the presentation. We're gonna start and revisit the role of belonging in supporting our students to thrive. So that's kind of like the case, making the case for why we did the survey. We'll explore the results of the survey and then we'll talk about next steps for the survey. So hopefully pretty straightforward. And to kick it off, I'm gonna ask Edgar just to sort of acknowledge the journey we've been on a little bit. Sure. Thank you, Drew. So we look forward to using the data gathered from the belonging survey to focus and guide our future work. As Drew said, it's important to acknowledge the work in the area of belonging that's been ongoing

070in the district in a variety of important ways. We know that representation and perspective matter in classroom and school libraries, so we have expanded our mentor texts through the adoption of over 70 diverse texts at the secondary level in five years, and ongoing enrichment of elementary classrooms and school libraries to reflect and celebrate the diversity of Scarsdale and the world. We continue to prioritize inclusive curricular adaptations. We do this through program improvement, educator collaboration, committee work across schools and departments. We are energized and inspired through our Scarsdale Teacher Institute courses, which include meaningful global immersions, courses in positive psychology, and our co-support and promotion of responsive classroom. We also have teacher-generated professional development grants with a lens on classroom community and student-centered learning. We benefit greatly from robust partnerships with Scarsdale families who reflect a

071rich tapestry of cultural experiences and who generously share their energy, heart, and resources through classroom visits, engaged parent committees, and school-wide multicultural events. We also partner with outside organizations, including Facing History and Ourselves, Center Lane, and most recently with the international organization Narrative4, who use storytelling to activate empathy across culture through conflict and over continents. And as well, we've discussed around this table, we are intentionally connecting important concepts through WIDE, including the W for well-being, to add to inclusion, diversity, and equity, adding B for belonging. We could call it B-WIDE. Don't quote me on that one. I don't know if that's going to stick. As you've seen, BeWide lives in the living section Drew described in our five-year strategic plan. And importantly, we approach this work with a mindset that is complex, integrated, nuanced, ongoing,

072and as Drew just mentioned, iterative. Thank you. So what just happened is a strategy in pedagogy called activating prior knowledge. So Edgar's reminding you of things you've heard before at this table that have talked about the work that's been ongoing and underway. So it's kind of to your point, Ron, about the strategic plan, that stuff has been happening even though we hadn't had that particular format of the strategic plan. There's a lot of work going on in this area of belonging. and not but, and this survey is gonna help us assess that and figure out where we need to go forward. What are we not doing that we should be doing? What are we doing that we should stop doing? And what should we keep doing? That's really the same framework that I hope you

073see in this. So just a couple of things. This is, I know you can't read everything, but when we started our relationship with Dr. Gay, he shared just a very simple model for how to kind of follow the work. and we had known for a while since a couple years ago that at some point we'd reach the moment where we were going to ask the students and faculty and parents about their sense of belonging and this was the year that we did that and it's a real purpose to connect to our commitment which is to ensure everyone in our learning community feels like they belong and are included so they can learn, work, and thrive. That's really the big picture purpose here. So we ask, what's the extent to which you feel like you belong?

074Okay. So taking a little bit of a step back. you know as we knew this was coming that we were going to reach this point of doing a belonging survey we started having a conversation and figuring out what's out there what are other other people doing and we researched a number of different tools number of different surveys and we ended up selecting the the survey designed by the search institute because we felt it was Though it's pretty complex, it gives us, gives our community, our culture, the kind of insight that we think we can work with best. So the Search Institute tool gives students and youth-serving organizations a research-based, valid, and reliable assessment of two important elements that strongly correlate with the sense of belonging that young people feel. The first element is called developmental

075relationships. You've heard me mention it a number of times. And it's defined as relationships that help young people discover who they are, develop abilities to share their own lives, and learn how to engage with and contribute to the world around them. Those aren't our words. Those are Search Institute's words. And I think you can probably hear in them some of the alignment with the strategic plan pieces there. The second element is equitable practices, and it includes important contextual information about how our students experience the school environment, our staff, practices, and whether or not those experiences feel equitable to them. Okay, so that's sort of the step back big picture. We have a little process. This is, we're kind of sharing. We, you know, we've got the results. We're in a process of reflective inquiry. We're

076going to develop next steps. I'll talk more about that. Implement the actions. Then the idea is to repeat the survey and see where we are in some period of time, probably roughly two years. So just to give you an idea of how that works. So sometimes it's nice to look at the golden circle, knowing it's most important about the why, why is this important? How did we go about finding out and what we were wondering? What was worth investigating in the first place? And here's sort of our theory. By asking students, faculty, and parents about their experiences, we can identify areas of strength and improvement in our quest to create an environment of belonging. So hopefully that makes sense. I do want to spend a second and revisit the developmental relationships framework. You will see

077on some of the slides developmental relationships is shortened to DR. So if you see DR, it's not doctor, it's developmental relationships. So Search Institute has organized these five domains that strongly impact how students feel connected to our schools. Through a student's voice, this is what these five domains sound like. Show me that I matter to you. Push me to keep getting better. Help me complete tasks and achieve my goals. Treat me with respect and give me a say. And connect me with people and places that broaden my world. I hope you find those statements as easy to connect to as I do and I think a lot of our educators do and I hope you find them compelling. But the research is also compelling around this and students who experience strong developmental relationships in school

078also demonstrate strong social emotional competencies, a stronger sense of belonging, and better academic outcomes. In short, developmental relationships help kids thrive. So this is what we're after, and I want to be very clear that that's our purpose, that belonging is a means to an end, and that's to help kids thrive in learning and in life. This is a chart from one of the Search Institute's research papers, and you see a long list of things highlighting the positive impact that strong developmental relationships have on areas of a student's life like motivation, engagement. critical thinking, responsible decision making, I'm just picking a few, empathy, and emotional regulation. They're also shown to impact sense of purpose and civic engagement. So we think that by gauging where our students are, we can better help them move forward. And there

079is a lot of, I won't say much about this, but there's a lot of overlap, I think, between the ideals within the profile of a high school graduate here and... the things we're kind of asking. So if we can work to build as strong developmental relationships as we possibly can, students will be able to accomplish these things. Okay, with that, on to results. Again, reminding you this is students and faculty. So here's a framework. We ultimately asked questions sort of about four things. First, those developmental relationships that we've just spent time talking about. And then equitable environments has sort of three subcomponents. Culturally responsive environments, experiences of bias or discrimination, and then promoting equity. And there are sort of three categories. And you'll see all this again. But creating a safe and just place, teaching

080about equity, and building social capital. So there were questions about all of these things. Most of the questions, just so you have a sense, most of the questions were on a one to four scale. One is low, four is high of agreement. To what extent do you agree with this statement? Search takes that data and they fit it to a scale, a 100 sort of percent scale. And they consider the correlations exhibited as weak when it's between zero and 33% agreement. Moderate when it's between 34 and 66% agreement and strong when it's greater than 66% agreement. So you'll see examples of this as we go through. SEARCH is also careful to point out that they don't benchmark their data. They're not going to give us a report and compare it to a norm of 45

081other schools around the nation that have taken the survey. It's not how they go. Their approach is to benchmark yourself against yourself. over time. Start, see where you are, and then take action and then see where you are at a later time. However, there is a study that they've published that is a large study of high school age, youth from middle and high school, that we will share kind of just a sense to see where we are. The other thing is you're going to see gaps between what the students report and the faculty report higher levels of agreement. That is to be expected. That is across surveys like this, across youth and adults all over the place. And we were pre, our expectations were set accordingly when we worked with search around this. Okay. So

082we'll start with demographic data. I'm not going to read it all, but I will kind of just leave it up there for a second for you to see. So the first is the number of participants. On the left, students by grade level, and on the right, faculty by grade level, but knowing some of our faculty teach multiple grade levels, so you get multiple responses there. So pretty high end number of survey takers. The next piece of demographic data is gender, race, and a few other characteristics. So first gender, then race, and then a couple of other things. Though we only asked the upper grades, 9% of students identified as LGBTQIA plus on the survey, self-identified. although 2% of our students are currently ESL or ENL students English as a new language 10% of students reported

083being in or having been in those programs it's a little hard to will do some of the sussing out of that in the focus groups hard to know whether that was clear that question was clear to the students or not And similarly, 17% of students report having an IEP. That's a little higher than our classification rate, so we think some students with 504 accommodations probably self-identified in that. There are also, people could skip questions if they chose to do that. Okay, all right, so on to the first measure. These are the developmental relationships or DR. Okay, so. Here are some examples of the questions. This isn't all the questions, but some examples just to give you a flavor. So the scale of this, one to four, is... That's a little like me or a little

084like my school or a little like my teacher. Somewhat like, mostly like, or extremely like. This is, you know, we had a whole conversation with them about those labels and how did they decide and is an extremely, an extreme word. And they've tested a lot of language and this is language that helps them get to. as close to I guess the the facts as they can so a student around Express Care would be asked to respond to this if I have a problem I know my teachers will help me that's a little like my teachers somewhat like my teachers mostly like my teachers are extremely like my teachers In contrast, the teacher would be asked, if my students have a problem, I find a way to help them. That's how they match up. So we

085just provided one example in each of the five domains of developmental relationships. Hopefully that makes sense. And so we'll look first at the student results. And they report not only the five discrete domains, express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power, and expand possibilities, but they give an overall score for all five combined. The red bar, if you look closely, the red bar is at the boundary between moderate and strong for all of them. That's because it's the first time we've taken this survey. Next time that red bar will be where our current results are. So the red bar would be on overall would drop to where it says 63 right at the top of that. So we can compare the first round of giving a survey to the future. So I just wanted to

086explain what that that red bar is. So here we see. strongly moderate or moderate to strong developmental relationships described by students across the areas with expand possibilities you have noticeably lower I'm just going to do some descriptions I'm not seeking to make meaning from this in this presentation necessarily This next view is the view of both students and adults together. I don't know why they flip it from vertical to horizontal, but hopefully you'll go with it here. So the gray bars that sit in the background here are the adult responses, and the blue bars, like we just saw, are the youth responses. So some things to note. The biggest gap appears in express care. Subtracting adult from student, that's our largest gap. Our smallest gap is in challenge growth. And our lowest overall agreement sits

087within the expand possibility. So in other words, both students and adults reported that one as the lowest. So with that in mind. At this moment, I'm going to talk about that study that I said we're not really comparing to, but just to give you a sense. This is not purposely orange. This is not Scarsdale's results. But I'm going to toggle back and forth and give you just a sense that it's similar in that those gaps grow and shrink from different. that adults report higher than students and so forth. That expand possibilities is the lowest for both. So there are some similarities between our results and this study. And by the way, the study was about 12,000, almost 13,000 students in grades six through 12 and 1,200 adults, sort of a large scale study that they

088did. So when we first got the results, it's like, do I panic? do i jump for joy what what does it mean and it was helpful to have a sense that well we seem to be um you know showing results that are a little stronger than this this large study and following similar patterns that the the organization finds um so so a couple of couple of other things um What search told us when we talked to them is adults always show a higher level of agreement, as we said, with respect to actions related to developmental relationships and equitable practices. And the richness in the data can be found by noting areas where the gap is smaller relative to the others, where the gap is larger relative to the others, where there's agreement and where there's

089disagreement. So as we look at this, challenge growth. Small gap, also to be expected. It was shared with us that especially in sort of high-achieving school districts, students have a sense that teachers are challenging them to do well, to perform well. Okay, so we're going to take a closer look at that one. We're going to dive in on challenge growth. Challenge growth, we were just looking at one single score for challenge growth, right? Now, we're breaking that one score into five sub-scores, sub-measures. So the five areas that they explore with, I'm sorry, I'm in express care. Sorry, my bad. In express care, the five sub-areas they look at are being dependable, listening, encouraging, believing in me, and being warm. So here's my express care page. So, and at the bottom is the reference study, that

090express care reference point from that large study. So of note here is the near-unanimous faculty result, I think, for each of these. I think our faculty is all saying we feel this way, and our students don't see that that way in all cases. We spent a lot of time on April 10th thinking about this one and what it means and beginning to think, okay, what are some of the moves that we can make as faculty, as educators, to improve that? Also taking a closer look at challenge growth. Again, these have four sub-indicators, so we looked at the aggregate, but now this is four questions related. Expect my best, almost unanimous agreement. Again, that is, we kind of came to learn that's to be expected in an environment like this. Hold me accountable stretch reflect on

091failures you see a decline In those and those are really rich data points for us to explore including in focus groups to try to surface What do you think? You know you're here. You know what are you hearing versus? What's being said and so forth to support support our students? And then we'll also just quickly look at share power. This is notable and it reflects some of the lowest teacher agreements, but also a range in gaps as we go from respect me to collaborate to include me to let me lead. And this is an area of the developmental relations framework that there were a lot of questions about, you know, from our faculty, really good points of inquiry around. Am I supposed to do that? Is that one of my responsibilities? What does that mean,

092let me lead for a fourth grade teacher versus an 11th grade teacher and so forth? So a rich area there for exploration as well. Okay. So now we'll move to the next section, which are the equitable practices part of the survey. So I'm going to share some big picture takeaways to frame your thinking as we dive into the data. And there are three of them. So the big picture is, in general, our students report that our schools reflect a strong, culturally responsive environment. Also true, and this is what one of our public commenters was noting, one in five students report experiencing some form of bias or discrimination. That was a take-your-breath-away moment for us, just to be honest. And we'll dive into that a little bit. The third takeaway is developmental relationships have a moderate

093role in promoting equity. So what they do there is they look at how students respond to the perceptions of equity and they overlay how that individual student responded to the developmental relationships to see how strong they are. And right now it's a moderate linkage, an area to think about. Okay, so for the first of those three sub areas, first is culturally responsive environment. So what did students get asked? They were asked the question of agreement. Again, how much do you agree? At school, we work well with people of different backgrounds. At school, all people are treated fairly no matter who they are. At school, I am encouraged to share my own culture and background. And so here we see in both cases, it's in the strong range with staff being in a higher level of

094agreement than our students in this area. Also in this domain, this is just sort of the breakout. That was the total summary, but as the breakout in this one. Sorry, let me get to my slides. 90% of students and 95% of faculty describe a moderate to strong culturally responsive environment. And interestingly, a majority of both students and faculty agree that adults in our schools reflect the diversity of our students, though 41% do not agree as strongly. I'm not sure what we make of this. It's interesting that it was identical, that both students and faculty kind of reported the results of this the same way. Okay, now we're going to go on to that question about experience of discrimination or bias. And as I shared a moment ago, one out of five students report that they

095experience some sort of discrimination or bias or have. Once they say yes to that question, they're asked follow-on questions. If they say no, it moves on. So the follow-on question allows them to indicate whether that experience was directed toward them from a peer, from a teacher, or from both. So that's a data point we have. And then... They're they're asked this question in a bunch of different domains. They're asked this about gender Are you do you experience? Bias or discrimination because of your gender because of your race because of your religion because of your age because of your economic status and Because we asked at the high school or because of your sexual orientation. That was a high school only question Or they could say another reason and put in another reason. So it's a

096lot of data. I'm not going to go through every single one of these. But we'll start first with of the one in five who said yes. So I'm sorry. Of the one, 23% said yes to one of those, at least one of those questions. And of that. I'm sorry, I'm going to start this one over. So first, the students who said yes to experiencing bias and discrimination, they were asked, is it by your peers? 23% said yes, they've experienced it from their peers. 8% have said yes, experienced it from my teachers. Now we look at what? Well, again, we ask this for all of these different reasons. And then we're trying to think about what's the best way to present this data. This chart is how search presents it. The largest response was in the

097area of other. And the most frequent typed in others that students manually put in were height was number one. Then things like weight, rumors, mocking, learning differences, or exclusion. Those were the things that they described. So of that one in five, 26% gave other as a reason that it happened. And then the other reasons were pre-selected. So you hit that button. People making false assumptions, 19%. I'm treated with less respect, 16%. That's how they experience that bias or discrimination. Treated like I'm not smart, ignored, keeping me from part of their activities in their group, or people threaten or harass me. Now, I want to be clear, this was an anonymous survey. Do not have the ability to follow up with an individual student on this, which is the design of the survey to get the

098candid feedback. Okay, so I know that's a lot, but I have all the individual slides by gender, by race, should you be interested, but that's that. The next set of questions were the role of developmental relationships in promoting equity. That's that overlay I described. Here we're back to the agreement questions. So here the questions are like, at school, my teachers listen to my ideas and opinions even when we disagree. At school, my teachers teach me what to say or do if I'm treated unfairly or see others being treated unfairly. Or my teachers challenge me to consider my biases and how they influence the way I think about and interact with people. So you see here we're in the moderate range for each of these, broken out by the three, create a safe and just place,

099teach about equity, and challenge critical reflections. So again, students here report a moderate sense of equity overall and a strong sense of creating a safe and just place with lower levels of agreement with respect to teaching about equity and challenging critical reflection on race and discrimination. Hopefully the questions help you see what was being sought here. And like we saw in the other slides, development relationships, this is now the overlay of those same things with the adult responses. And we see a similar pattern including, you know, teachers not necessarily agreeing that they challenge critical reflection, that maybe some may question whether that's part of their role, part of their set of responsibilities or not. So again, lots to dig into here. You can... I feel overwhelmed by all this. I imagine to anyone seeing this

100for the first time, and I've seen it a lot, it was really, I think, a powerful session in the morning of April 10th. presenting this to all 500 assembled faculty with Edgar and Dr. McIntosh being part of the conversation. It was interactive and we had the chance to share out and hear from teachers. And then later that day, what we just shared are the district-wide results later that day. Faculties met as a school and looked at the level-specific results, which aren't that different. but they got to look, you know, for elementary school, it's only fourth and fifth grade. So they got to look at those and begin to develop what are the areas that we need to learn more about and want to look at. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit.

101So as we move forward in terms of what's next, what we're thinking about are three key notions, three key ideas. First, now that we have the data. We can be intentional about what we pursue to increase the sense of belonging in our school community. I feel like Jeannie Crowley is so good at reminding of this, but there is perceptions that can be really, really wide and varied, and you don't know who's feeling what until you ask. Once you ask, you've narrowed that range, and now you can really focus in with intentionality, and that's what the survey is going to allow us to do. The second key notion is we must be mindful of making sure the actions we take to strengthen our developmental relationships with students include all students. I know that sounds a little

102like meta, but it's true. We want to make sure that those steps or actions are really thinking about all of our students. And then the third thing is it gives us an opportunity. to demonstrate to students that their voices are heard and lead to actions that are visible and reflect what they've said. Kind of hinting at your question, Colleen, about the strategic planning survey. But we need to show them that we asked them, we've thought about it, and we're taking action. Otherwise, why did we ask them? So some of the things the faculty was thinking about and agreed that these... you know, these are some good next steps and the right next step. We do need to continue to share our understanding of what these developmental relationships are and mean and what are the moves

103that I make as an educator to strengthen them, to make a commitment to engaging in these activities and approaches. So that's the part that's underway right now. Faculties are thinking about what are the things we agree that we want to all work on so that students are experiencing that across the school. The work requires that we really commit to a growth mindset, that this is not you aren't doing it well. It's we all can get better. And then, as I mentioned, with respect to focus groups, we have work to do to identify a protocol and invite students in to get a deeper understanding of what they mean, particularly. as they report these experiences of discrimination or bias, learning more about what that is and what we can do to help prevent and help navigate those

104experiences. And then some bigger things that we think about, assessing who is and isn't experiencing a sense of belonging, being culturally aware and responsive. affirming the identities of all of our students which we've worked hard to do and will continue to do and again continuing to provide opportunities for student voices to be heard and show that support so just wanted one to reiterate that and someone who you've met at this meeting in a previous meeting this year we're going to end with a quote from one of our own this was a quote that appeared in Ed Week a couple weeks ago in April And it was Rick Yang. He's a 12th grader here. And he said to Ed Week, it's our trade publication, I think school administrators, policymakers, community leaders must not only try to

105create platforms for youth to express their views, but they need to actually use that input in decision making. Co-creation and agency are essential for young people to feel supported. And that really, I ended our meeting with the faculty with this quote. I think it says quite a bit about how we can go forward and what we need to do. And I'm going to end it there and turn it over to questions and invite comment. Well, thank you, Drew, for not only all this work, but being open to all this work and having an administration and an entire school system that is open to asking these tough questions and getting the feedback and doing something with the data. So Edgar, thank you as well. I know you have been working on this for quite some time,

106so thank you as well. With that, let me open it up to the board for comments, feedback, questions. I see Bob. Yeah, my first question I think is a simple one, which is when the students, before the students filled out the survey, was there any... Did they have an opportunity to hear, for example, Dr. Gay do his presentation about diversity and difference? That, for example, I know as an adult I went to see him present. And I'm going to ask because I came away with some really profound... observations from that that totally changed my thinking honestly and I'll tell you in a second what it is but I'm just curious if the students heard any of his Well, first, thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that. No, they have not. Some students have had an

107opportunity to engage, but we've not done that presentation. Because one of the things when he was talking about differences, you know, one of the things he said was, well, you know, we all have differences. And I'm like thinking, okay, where is this going? I think I went in with somewhat of a bias thinking that perhaps. We were going to be focusing on maybe gender and race as a primary conversation. And he mentioned the difference of being left-handed and right-handed. And I remember my daughter, who happens to be left-handed, was very uncomfortable in school because she never could find a desk where she could comfortably write. And, you know, she accommodated it in her own way. I mean, she, you know, got through it. And I remember my mother, who is a totally different generation, was

108forced not to be left-handed because the message was they tied her hand and made her right with her right hand because lefties were bad. So it made me understand that, like, in the category of other, I never would have thought of that. But it created a tension for her in learning that people don't think I'm, you're not giving me a facility that supports my physical capabilities. And besides just feeling bad about that. And I ran out to the lefty store, which at that point was in New York City, and I got all these left-handed rulers and scissors and things to show that, no, lefties are okay. So I think, I don't know whether people necessarily think of it that way, like kids. And, you know, the issue of height, a short person, if they can't

109reach something, what are you communicating? Now, obviously, I'm an architect, so I'm very sensitive to the physicality of things. But even things like noise, some kids really can't deal with noise. It really, it's very painful for them to learn. And if we don't... embrace that difference as okay we're communicating that it's not okay and we're not going to worry about it for you so i really again i left that presentation like really thinking about things so differently about being different just the lefty versus the righty which it was even in my own family so i think you know if you can share that that His presentation was amazing. I mean, really, if it's recorded or whatever, the kids need to see that, and everyone does. It's just a... really nailed it for me about what

110this is all about. It's not about black and white and gay and straight and all that. It's much more nuanced. So I was really thrilled about the other because I didn't think you were going to say that, to be honest. That kind of surprised me. But it shows that I think the message is kind of getting out there, that there are lots of different others. So, you know, I really, I think we're really in the right, going in the right direction. I'm really, really pleased about, you know, what I'm seeing here as a board member. So thank you. Yeah, please. Thank you for this. It was definitely eye-opening and I too was shocked with the express care. You know, people become educators because they care, so I'm sure that was hard for people to swallow,

111especially faculty. But I think it just can hopefully invigorate us to, you know, maybe present things in a different way so they see we do care. The question I had was on the slide that kind of broke down. The bias, I think it's slide 34. Were you able to see where these came from in terms of how many from high school, how many from middle school? Yeah, we have that data. I can't recite it off the top of my head, but there is generally, as a percentage, increases toward the high school. but not that much. There are kids, elementary, middle, and high school reporting this in roughly similar percentages. I think that would just be interesting to see because I feel like, I don't know, I have two middle schoolers and it feels like they

112are constantly, you know, one day feeling included, one day feeling biased, one day not. And so I just, I think that would be, I'm curious to see that breakdown. Those are my only two thoughts. Can I say something about that? I think one of the things that we think about is it's hard. It's hard. That one in five is like, it's worrying, right? There's a couple of things in there. One is that is it about getting that number to zero or helping kids understand? It's both. It's lowering that number and helping kids to understand how to navigate. situations they'll encounter as effectively as possible right I also think it's maybe identifying you know where these comments are coming from and educating the kids that are saying them right like sometimes you know the boys will

113all jab at each other thinking it's funny, but it's, you know, we constantly are having conversations about that. The intent versus the impact. Right. You know, somebody who's really tall versus someone who's very short and someone who has learning differences, someone who has weight differences. And I think part of it is just helping them all to realize, you know, the comments might not be intended to hurt, but they do hurt. And I think that's also part of the education process. Thank you. Please. Thank you for this presentation. There's actually a lot to unpack here. So I'm going to start with a couple questions. You mentioned, I think, at the start, Drew, talking about... frequency of this survey so is the plan to have another survey again in two years and then to continue that in

114a in a two-year increment that's that's really the the thing we've signed up for in doing this okay in my view and then the red lines that were sort of comparison or whatever the search Institute gave is their their standard metric you kind of touched a little bit upon I think I think he said 12,000 I'm not sure what number you said but were those public school districts are those districts that might be comparable to Scarsdale or there's really no way to tell okay it's a mixture it's all school-aged students some it's mostly middle and high schools but some of it is like after school youth programs as well. Okay. And regionally, it's all over the United States. It's all over, yeah. Okay. And then you were touching upon the gaps in the discrimination number.

115Are there any metrics for, like, are that number one and five is, like you said, it's pretty shocking. But at the same time, I guess it's disappointing. And do we know, are we in line with what other schools see? So there's not a particular measure like this one that's on the screen right now for that. The overall in SEARCH's research, the number is much higher than ours. It's more common than what we're experiencing. It's unfortunate that it's the case everywhere. And then just in terms of the gaps between the students and the faculty. Is the goal at some point to close those gaps? I mean, I know you said there was going to be gaps in there forever. Are we trying to get them closer together as well as getting the numbers higher? What do

116we do with those gaps? Yeah, I think we still need to think more deeply about that. So just as a basic point, there are two ways to close those gaps, right? One could go down, the other go up. That's true. One could go down a whole lot. You know, I think the goal would be to strengthen the students' responses. Like, that's really, you know, where we are, and that's teamwork. I think part of achieving that is those steps we said before, is raising awareness of what developmental relationships are, what are the moves I can make, what moves work, what moves don't work to help students. what are my responsibilities in talking about equitable practices and how do I talk about that and hopefully even where faculty may be lower on there, that conversation is raising

117their awareness of that and their response perhaps even as it moves students up the chart. But we're not at a point where we're saying we are going after this particular one and to close that gap by 5%. We're not that. specific yet we're really thinking bigger picture what are the high leverage yeah it's a lot to think about thank you I just had a question about the I guess the way the survey is contemplating bias and discrimination it seemed to me like at least when you look at that slide on page 34 This is not like, the concept of bias or discrimination that's, I guess, reflected in this survey is not kind of what you would view as federally protected classes. Yeah. It's when you're at school, people look down at you badly because... X,

118Y, or Z. Yes or no and because X, Y, or Z. Right. So it's not like you're surveying whether it's simply race or gender or perceptions of race or gender or what are causing folks to be looked down on. It's things that are not protected things like height, weight, rumors about somebody. They're not like sort of – that's the kind of things you could bring up. Title VII. We ask all of these things. Yeah. Right. So these things are – These are some of the reasons. So let me give you a sense. The question isn't about bias or discrimination. It's not asked using the words bias and discrimination. It's asked using student-friendly language, which is do people look down at you when you're at school for any of the following reasons? That's the actual question.

119And this happens to be, this is a count now, not a percentage. This is just the number of students reporting. broken out by each of these six different measures. So I'll give you an example. The first one, we'll do the second one. 131 students across the entire surveyed population said that they're looked down on or treated badly because of their gender. Then they were asked, what does that look like? How does that, I'm excluded. You know, it's this whole list of reasons here. So I'm looked down on because of my gender. And the way that looks is people make false assumptions about me. The way that looks is I'm treated with less respect. The way that looks is that people ignore me. Like that's the sequence of questions. It's complicated. So are you looked down

120on or treated badly for any of these reasons? They could select no. They could select all of them. They could select just gender, let's say. And if they selected any one of those, then they were asked the next question. What does it look like? How are you treated badly because of your gender? How are you treated badly because of your race? How are you treated badly because of your religion? Okay, that's helpful. I just wanted some clarification on that because I'm actually thinking at some level 23% seems low if you're going to bring into it things like height, weight, and other things which there's constant kidding around, especially at all levels of school about all of those things. I think there might have been, my own perception is maybe some people might have discounted how

121serious that could be. Because I would think 23% seems low when you factor all of those pieces into it, and not just the race and the gender and the other things. Yeah, I'm not sure, honestly, I'm not sure how to think about that, other than I want it to be lower than one in five. Yeah, I'd love it to be lower, but just anecdotally, it seems like kids are constantly teasing each other about all of those kinds of things. And, you know, yeah. Even... Ideally, there's an effect even just by asking the question, right? An eye-opening or an awareness. Now that I'm looking at it in a little more detail about the bias or discrimination, is there any, maybe I missed it, but is ethnicity part of that? Meaning they feel because they are from

122Asia or they're from a different... ethnic other than... These are the reasons. Those are all the reasons. They could select none or one or all or any number of these. Those are the options. And that's the question. Are you looked down on or treated badly for any of the following reasons? The construct that that question is linked to is experiencing discrimination or bias. Thank you, Drew and Edgar and Dr. Gay for leading the study. I think it's really eye-opening and really powerful data and very important. I think what you started with saying that the sense of belonging, you know, why we're doing this, you know, coupled with the strategic plan. because a sense of belonging is so important to our students for their social-emotional well-being and to their success, even as students. There's so much

123here that I look forward to where this will lead, what conversations this will lead to, and what actions this will lead. And this is really a big part of the strategic plan, so I appreciate that. Now that we kind of have a sense of where we are, you know, where we're gonna go. I think if we're gonna do this again in two years, which I, you know, would love to do, I don't know if we can request or, you know, put in a request with the Search Institute. Would be great if they could offer this in other languages, I think. You know, especially, I know we didn't present to, on the parents tonight, you know, I assume that'll be another night, but I think that would be helpful. Thank you. I also just want to

124add my thanks to the students and faculty members for taking the survey. Without them and taking it seriously, we wouldn't have all this data and people being open to, I know it was anonymous, but still being open to sharing this with us. very thankful for that and also to our parents and community members as Susie mentioned we'll review that data at a future meeting and I just want to highlight that we've talked about the importance about finding places for data and I think this is a really impactful one you know we we have actionable data coming out of this survey which can help decision-making at the administrative level, the board level. So I think it's really valuable. And my last comment is I want to share my appreciation for the linkage between this survey and

125the strategic planning work, especially around the living bucket. So, you know, we talked about one in 20 experience bias here and helping them develop resilience. Well, I think it's also important to acknowledge that that other 80 percent, maybe maybe to Jim's point, maybe they're not just going to take it seriously. Maybe they're not experiencing bias here. But when they leave this school community, go wherever they go next, college, work, they might. And helping that our entire school community develop that resilience will be so important for every student. Is there anything else from the board or Drew before we move on to our next item? Thank you. I really appreciate it. Well, this is for anybody that wants to look at this. This is posted on board docs, these presentations, both the strategic plan as well

126as the belonging survey slides. It's 830. I'm going to keep going unless no, okay. I'm going to take a quick break For five minutes. We've been at it for three hours So we'll be back at 840 We'll move to item 9.04 a board letter to the editor regarding budget information This is me. As we did last year, Susie and I have drafted a letter that we would like to submit from the full board. No problem. Regarding budget information and the upcoming budget vote, we followed similar wording to the letter that is an insight. It's a bit shorter, a bit more focused for a letter to the editor. We followed a similar structure that the board submitted last year in the different sections. So we put it out to the board if there's any questions or

127comments and if everybody's comfortable submitting this from the full board. Thank you for drafting that letter. I'm totally comfortable with it coming out, including my name. I certainly, if there's other places where you can publish it besides Scarsdale 105.83, I think that's perfectly fine with me as well. Okay. All right. All right. Well, thank you. We have consensus. We'll look in the last year we published in the Inquirer in 105.83. We will submit it to 105.83 tomorrow so it could go out this week. And we'll discuss if there's any other places that would make sense. Okay. We will move to item 10, our action items. The first item is budget transfers. And this is Jim. Thank you, Ron. So I'm looking for the part where I'm supposed to say, there it is. Resolve that the

128board approve the attached budget transfers as presented. Thanks, Jim. Is there a second? Colleen? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. We will move to item 10.02, the Westchester Putnam School Board Association Administrative Budget. This is Colleen. Be it resolved that the board cast its vote on the ratification of the 24-25 WPSBA budget as presented in the attached ballot. Thank you, Colleen. Is there a second? Jim? Any discussion? Just as a reminder, this was an information item, and we discussed this at the last meeting. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. We'll move to item 10.03. This is the Westchester Putnam School Board Association, same organization, Board of Directors slate for 2024-2025. This is Bob. Yes. Be it resolved that the board cast its vote on the

129slate of 2024-25 officers and members of the Board of Directors as presented on the attached ballot. Thank you, Bob. Is there a second? Amber. Any discussion? I just want to add my thanks again to Susie who served on the board of directors of Westpac last year, will continue this year and also become, if this passes from all member districts, treasurer on the board. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Any abstentions? I'm going to abstain. Thank you. Thank you, Susie. The motion carries. We will move to item 11, response and questions from those present. This is the second public comment period. The same preamble from the first public comment period holds that we invite people to speak on district-related items or other non-personnel-related matters. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to make

130a public comment? Okay, seeing nobody in the audience, we will turn to Zoom. Susie? There's one attendee on Zoom who I'm promoting now to panelists. I'm trying to promote to panelists. I'm having some technical difficulties. I think the person has to accept, so do you want to, I see a second hand. Do you want to go to the second, and then we'll come back to the first person. Okay, sounds great. Let me do that. Maybe you could send him a message to make sure he hasn't been having technical difficulties. Great. Okay, thank you. Okay. All right, so Mayra, I'm promoting you to panelists. You may speak. Hi, good evening. Mayra Kirkendall Rodriguez, Fox Dutter Road. Thank you very much for the presentation of the data on the belonging survey. I was hoping that Dr. Patrick

131could help me make sure that I did read slide number. 18 correctly. So 18 when it says survey demographics. I want to make sure I understand that those were the respondents for the survey and that looks like to be about 2,380. And if that's correct, and I think we have a little over 4,700 students, that would make it a response rate of 51%. And if this data is correct, that's pretty astounding because normally response rates for internal surveys of all kinds, academic, government, private sector, tend to be about 30 to 40%. So if this is correct, I think we have to applaud whatever the teachers, students, and or you are doing because getting 51% response is pretty impressive. So hopefully you could address that either today or when you have a moment, please. Secondly, I

132was wondering if you're going to disclose the data in a more granular manner. I realize that it takes a lot to put together the responses and the graphs and the diagrams. I get that it's a lot of work and thank you to everybody involved doing that. The problem or the challenge that I'm having is that when the data is presented in such an aggregated way, there's a lot there that can be misinterpreted and or not interpreted correctly. So if there's a way for you to publish the data in a more granular manner, specifically, you know, slides 33, 34, 35 are quite interesting. You say in slide 33 that the question being posed to students is if they're treated poorly due to race, gender, religion, age, economic status. But then the way that the data is

133presented in 34. uh it doesn't address any of that so i'm just curious if any students are saying that they are being looked down because of race economic status gender and all those kinds of issues so i just think that if you present the information in a more granular manner i i noticed that you put up what are two slides that were not in the packet so again i think that uh i i certainly would find that very very helpful and i look forward to your continuing analysis on this and i'm really curious about the parent survey because uh uh i if the survey response is less than the students uh the students will certainly have every right to turn around and get after all the parents who may not have answered all right thanks

134everybody tonight so all the parents will be not available thanks everybody yeah very strange okay i am trying to promote to panelists um One more time. He didn't respond to my chat asking if he wanted to speak. So hopefully it works out this time. Oh, yep, he's being promoted now. Hello? Yeah. Hi, Mr. Rothenberg. Please turn on your camera and give your name and address before speaking. Thank you. Yeah, John Rothenberg, Meadow Road. Can you explain slide 35 a little more, please? I was looking at it, trying to keep up. and just wasn't quite able to figure out what slide 35 was telling us in terms of the red lines, the numbers, the bars. Is that his question? Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other attendees on Zoom? No. Okay. Well, we

135will close the second public comment period and move to item 12, follow-up to public comment. Drew? Sure, I'll try to answer those three questions. So while I'd love to. claim a huge victory for participation rate we do have a captive audience so we we gave the faculty survey during a superintendents conference day where they were required to be there and we did everyone was prepared to take it and same with their students we scheduled the time for students though parents had the option to opt out of it we did do it in school and so it is a large number it's actually a higher percentage because we only gave the survey just starting with grades four so it doesn't include grades K through three. So it is a very high participation percentage there. Second question,

136yeah, I had a bunch of additional slides that were just not included for length of time. I'd be happy to update board docs with those slides included in the PDF that has some of that granular detail. And then to Mr. Rothenberg's question, I'll try to give a quick explanation of 35. As in all the slides, the red line, this is the first time we've given the survey. The red line is... fixed at 66% because that's the first time we're giving the survey. The red line will now move to our results total for each of those measures so that the next time we give the survey we see where we were compared to where we are at that point in the future. The overall item that slide 35 is showing is just the response, the extent

137of agreement. students and in this case students to the questions including questions such as my teachers listen to my ideas and opinion opinions even when we disagree all of those questions a wall on board Doc's along with the slide deck was a link to a PDF file that has the complete report that includes these graphs in there there's a link to every question that was asked so parents can can see all of those questions Thank you, Drew. We'll move on to item 13, wrap-up items. Do we have any wrap-up items? Okay. I don't think so. Susie and I will submit the letter to the editor. Okay. Meeting dates for the coming month. Susie. Thank you, Ron. This is a big one. Tuesday, May 21st, the public budget vote and board elections will be held from

1387 to 9 p.m. at the middle school, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the middle school gymnasium. On Tuesday, May 28th, there will be a special meeting or executive session at 6 p.m. here in this room. On Monday, June 3rd, there will be another special meeting or executive session at 5 p.m. in this room. And on Monday, June 10th. There will be a special meeting and retirement recognition at 5.30 p.m. here in the high school, followed by a business meeting at 6.30 here in this room. Thank you. Thank you, Susie. We'll move to item 15, adjournment. Could I entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting? Amber, is there a second? Jim, any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Good night, everybody.