001Good evening. I call this meeting to order and note that all board members are present. We are also joined by Dr. Patrick in the administrative cabinet. Thank you to those in the audience who are watching the live stream for joining us this evening. It has been an incredibly difficult past two weeks. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, the board condemns this heinous act of terror, mourns the lives lost and hopes for the safe return of the hostages. Given the deep connection many of our students, families, faculty, and community members have with Israel and the region, the impact in our community has been especially profound and heart wrenching. We understand that these events have not only impacted us emotionally, but that there are concerns for our safety in our own community.
002We are not immune to incidents of antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of hateful action or speech. The Board of Education does not tolerate any form of hate in our schools. We have worked over the years to proactively put in place policies and structures to support an inclusive school environment. These policies also ensure our administrators have the appropriate tools and guidance to address inappropriate behavior. Over the past two weeks, along with the administration, we have been actively engaged in the wake of this attack to support our schools, students and family, faculty and staff, and the entire school community. We are all here each and every day for our students. In this district, we will not be indifferent to the wrongs that occur in the world. We live by our mission of non CBI, not for
003oneself, and are fortunate to have the students, families, community members, administrators, faculty and staff that make it possible to come together in these difficult times as one community. Thank you to everyone for the support, care and comfort you have shown each other and to our students. I'm gonna now turn to some more routine matters of the board related to a few different business items. First, a meeting with the village board of trustees that occurred earlier this evening. Earlier this evening, the board met with the mayor, village board of trustees and village manager to discuss a number of joint topics. Topics included safety, security and emergency management, the joint field study, telecom or cell service in and around our schools, bathroom access during athletic events, and strategic planning. In addition to these items, there are many
004other areas and projects with collaboration between the district and village. The district and village also have many additional joint meetings between administrators as well as board officers and village leadership throughout the year. Thank you to the village board of Trustees and Village Management for their continued partnership with the school district. A quick note on our annual building tours. As part of our state mandated responsibilities, the board Board of education conducts annual building tours of each of our seven school buildings. As part of tonight's consent agenda are the board members that will be attending each tour and these tours begin this morning at Greenacres. Jim, Jessica and I took a tour with principals that Sharon, who's here, and Sharon and Jim will be reporting on that tour shortly during the board member updates. As the building
005tours continue, board members will report back to the full board after each tour. Later this evening, the board will hear the first education report for the school year on responsive education and the annual assessment report. As a reminder, education reports are scheduled every other month throughout the school year, and these reports are an opportunity for the administration to update the board and community on various education related topics around our district. A copy of tonight's presentation is available on board docs either to view concurrently or after the meeting, which can be accessed from the district's homepage under site shortcuts. And lastly related to advocacy, which is one of the board's goals for this year on the ballot during the November election is Proposition one, which relates to small city school districts. Scarsdale is not a small
006city school district, so it does not in directly impact the Scarsdale school district, but I wanted to highlight this to the board and community because the New York State School Board Association or NYSSBA, which this district is a part of, does support this proposition which would update the current financing rules that small city school districts face. If anyone would like to learn more about this proposition that's on the ballot in November, one resource you can review is NYSSBA's website at N-Y-S-S-B-A dot org. And again, this proposition does not impact the Scarsdale schools, but since it is educational related, I wanted to mention it. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Drew. Okay, thank you, Ron. I'd like to offer you my appreciation for your opening remarks. I'd also like to add my
007own welcome to those who are here tonight, in person watching from home, or who will watch later on demand later on. It has indeed been a profoundly difficult two weeks for our community. I will confess to have struggled in recent days to decide how best to use these few moments I am privileged to have as superintendent. At the beginning of board meetings, I found myself reflecting on other critical moments and events that have occurred during my own lifetime and how those events often mark a time of before and after. Friday, October 6th, just one day before Hamas' deadly incursion into Israel was the 10th annual global citizenship day at Scarsdale High School. Author Colin McCann was the keynote speaker and he took the opportunity of the committee's invitation to share his message of fearless hope
008through radical empathy. Mr. McCallum is a brilliant writer and a storyteller whose message to young people is to encourage them to know the grief, happiness, love, and sorrow of others to expand the world and grow more deeply empathetic. Through his work as co-founder of the narrative four, he and other authors and artists have run programs in schools and communities all around the world, helping those who share their own stories to use them as a means to foster a sort of human reciprocity quote, you take responsibility for my life. I take precious care of yours. I'm gonna share a picture. Gimme one second. A picture of Mr. Mc Colum on our stage on October 6th with our students exploring the idea of story as a means to quote, "Step into the shoes of others in order
009to be able to step back into our own." This is a message that we as educators take to heart. We are working every day to support our students and our families by listening, building empathy, building understanding, and fostering belonging. To that end, I'd like to take a moment to point out two important initiatives that are launching in just a matter of weeks. We are launching a survey to measure belonging as part of our wellbeing, inclusion, diversity, and equity efforts. Faculty and staff will be taking the survey in early November with students in grades four through 12 and all parents following shortly thereafter, we'll be sharing more information about this with the community shortly. We also have our Community World Cafe Dialogues scheduled for the evenings of November 15th and November 29th in person and December
0106th on Zoom. These conversations are perhaps more important than ever and we urge the community to come participate and be in dialogue with others. A reminder about these events will also be sent later this week. And now I'm gonna pivot. And next, I'd like to take a few minutes to recognize the contributions of our seven Board of Education members around this table. October 16th to 20th last week was School Board Recognition Week across the state of New York NYSSBA, which Ron just mentioned, an organization. We are members of sponsors this week as a way of recognizing school board members for their commitment to New York Public School children. It serves as an opportunity to raise community awareness and understanding about the crucial role school board members play within their respective school communities. Our seven Scarsdale
011school board members start their service by taking an oath to uphold the constitution of the United States as well as that of the state of New York. But as they each know, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Above the surface are these meetings, board meetings and other events, but their services volunteers who provide thoughtful, responsive governance for the education of our students extends deep below the surface. They take training, serve on committees, act as liaisons, read contracts, memos and resumes, learn together in board retreats and much, much more. Their service to the public is demanding and they're dedicated to improving the education we provide to our students. They serve as a vital connection between the community they represent and the educators who carry out the mission. So tonight we have a small token
012of appreciation for your service. On behalf behalf of a grateful school community, thank you for all you do. Thank you. (audience clapping) Okay, just a few more happenings from around the district as we like to to do enhanced with a little slideshow thanks to Michelle. So one of the things that happens and we don't always think about in terms of school safety is our bus safety lessons and students learn how to stay safe on the bus, whether it's rainy or slippery or the weather's good or bad. A lot of rain recently, where to find the emergency exits and the many things a bus driver needs to be aware of while they're driving. And of course this is the fun part, learning how to jump out of the back and even the adults participate in in
013that as as an exit. So we take a moment to thank our bus drivers for taking care of those safety moments. Here's a picture from Heath Coat Elementary celebrating World Math Day. This past Friday the day was full of math trivia games, activities and books about math. MS style brought the estimation jar around to each class so everyone could examine it and classes could make their best estimates about how many cubes were in the jar. Ms. Conklin's class put their math goggles to help here focusing in, but congratulations go to Ms. Edwards fifth grade class who won the estimation contest. Fox Meadow students, the art students are working with ceramics. Students have jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, and even scary trees. Many of these are this one waiting to be fired in the kiln, but many of 'em
014are on display in the hallway and they're a a treat and a pleasure to to look at. And then a big congratulations to our girls varsity tennis team for their three-peat as section one champs. Our Girls doubles team of Emma Ha and Kay Cuttrell, we're also Section one champions. They'll be joined by singles player Charlene Dong to compete in the state championships later this week. So we're really happy for the continued success of our athletic teams and in this case, our girls tennis team. And finally, a reminder about a few important upcoming dates. Obviously, we're looking forward to the annual tradition of Halloween costumes next week. Lots of excitement around that. We have our Superintendent's Conference day on election day Tuesday, November 7th. So that will be a no school for students that day. Staff
015will be in. That Friday November 10th is Veteran's Day. Our schools are closed on that day and over that following weekend, November 12th is Diwali and I want to acknowledge all in our community who observe the Hindu Festival of Diwali, which next year occurs on a Friday, which will be a school holiday. So thank you very much. Thank you Drew. We have a number of board member updates tonight. Who would like to kick it off? Amber. Thanks Ron. I have the pleasure of serving as the board liaison to the district safety committee, which held its first meeting of the school year last week. This committee includes many stakeholders including district leaders, principals, faculty and staff, parents and emergency responders. After discussing items on the agenda and answering any questions, members of the committee were invited
016to raise any other safety concerns, parent representatives ask questions relevant to their respective communities and receive thoughtful responses. I appreciate the shared commitment to the safety of our community and want to extend a special thank you to the emergency responders that attended the meeting. As many of the topics discussed required cooperation between our district and village partners. Thank you Amber. Who'd like to go next? Jessica. I have the pleasure of being the board's representative on the Safe Coalition and this month they are, the coalition is recognizing both National Bullying Prevention Month and National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. There's a social media campaign that is active on both right now. Additionally, they are hosting, the Safe Coalition is hosting an event with the Pace Women's Justice Center on October 27th. It will be virtual from 12:00
017PM to 1:00 PM. It is the, Everyone Knows Someone event talking about financial abuse and the dynamics of domestic violence. It's a type of abuse that's often overlooked. And so this is an interesting zoom that you can get to through the Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling Service webpage and be able to learn more about this topic. Thank you. Thanks Jessica. Jim. Thank you Ron. So this morning, Ron Schulhoff, Jessica Resnick-Ault and I visited Green Acre School for our annual board inspection and it was a very nice visit. We met with principal Sharon Hill and principal Sharon De Lorenzo. and toward the facilities, including spending time in with the kindergartners, first graders, and second graders observing classroom activity. Just generally having a tour of the grounds and the building and all its amenities and things seem to
018be in fabulous shape. Not a surprise given fairly recent extensive renovations and new building that occurred there. But what we were able to observe was students and teachers actively engaged and in a collaborative and wonderful learning process. So it was a great tour and you all walked away marveling at how well things are going at Greenacres. Thanks Jim, I'll turn to Suzie. Thank you Ron. I have a few brief updates, I wanted to mention that Ron and I attended an in-person. Westchester Putnam School Boards Association event on October 12th. Attended by board members and superintendents from throughout Westchester and Putnam Counties. It was a round tables format where we discovered, where we discussed a whole range of topics and shared information and best practices. I found the conversations very helpful and informative as I believe
019Ron did as well. Next, as the board liaison to the PT council, I wanted to repeat my PSA from the last board meeting, the Joint PT Council, Scarsdale High School and Scarsdale Middle School, PTA programming event, November 8th at seven 30 at the Middle School auditorium. This will be a two-part program presented by district administrators and we'll speak to the upcoming belonging survey. Drew mentioned as well as the results from the technology survey conducted district-wide this past spring. I believe Jeannie will be giving a cabinet update this evening about it. Thank you Jeannie. And finally, I wanted to thank the Scarsdale forum for inviting the board to its annual October Fest held yesterday, October 22nd. Many of our district leaders such as Shelly Mayer, George Latimer, and Ben Boykin were in attendance. One of the
020highlights of the day was an amazing talent show that featured talents from rising young stars, longstanding forum members and district leaders, Amy Pollen electrified the crowd with a show stopping ballroom dance number and I myself was thrilled to perform a little piece on the piano. Thank you to the forum who helped organize this wonderful community event. Thank you, Suzie. Unless there's any other ones. I actually, I have one board member report. I attended the middle school PTA event the other week on Social awakening related to digital and social media use by our students. It was presented by Max Dosel who had earlier that day, presented to the seventh and eighth grade students a version of what was presented to the parents. It was tailored to the students and the parent one was tailored to parents.
021And speaking as a parent of a seventh grader, I found it to be a very informative and really fascinating presentation that helped me understand the current landscape of social media a little bit better and the things to be able to discuss with my own children and an informed and productive way. The PTA has sent out materials from Max a presenter, which if you're a member of the middle school PTA, you would've received over the weekend. And I just wanted to give a plug for reviewing those. I know speaking to lots of friends, this is a topic for many parents and it was an excellent presentation. I'd also just like in addition to thanking the middle school PTA thank interim principal, Chris Coghlan and faculty members, Megan Lahey and Dan Ello for helping to organize the
022event for the students. And then that follow that later that week, faculty member Jennifer Cronk for doing another presentation on sort of tangible actions parents can take around social media when working with their kids in that realm. And so just a great partnership both for the students for then the parents to get a similar presentation and then being able to take action steps being presented from a faculty member. So I just wanted to thank everyone involved, it was excellent. Okay, with that, I will pass it to Drew for cabinet updates. Thank you very much and we'll start with Eric with a quick update on the lockdown system. I am happy to report that our lockdown system will be fully operational tomorrow and we will be starting our new, our drills under the new system the
023first week of November. So thanks to the automation, thanks to Mike Bedley specifically and all of the building Burt teams for rearranging their schedules to accommodate the training and get us all up and running. So very happy to report that. And thank you, Eric for all your work on that, project management, all that good stuff, appreciate it. Thanks. Next, I'll invite Jeanie to the microphone to give a little preview of November 8th. All right, can you hear me? There we go. In June, 2023, the technology department administered a survey to parents, teachers, middle school students, and high school students. I would like to express my gratitude for the work of the PTC Technology committee for the collecting the feedback to design the survey and bring it to life. It was an immense amount of work
024from many, many parties. The draft results of the survey have been posted to board docs for public preview and are available for download tonight attached to this evening's agenda. On November 8th at 7:30 PM in the middle school auditorium. In partnership with the PTC, I'll present a selection of data with an opportunity for Q and A. As Suzie mentioned, also presenting on the eighth are June and Edgar for the belonging survey. And more information about both of these presentations can be found in the recent PTC newsletter. As you look over the data, you'll notice there are no narrative interpretations on the survey, and that's intentional. We'd like the data to serve as artifacts for collaborative inquiry rather than standalone conclusions. Ideally, the results will be used in a variety of settings throughout the community to
025dive deeper into shared questions about technology experiences at Scarsdale. As community members review the draft data, I would like to highlight a note about participation rates. After many rounds of feedback to create the survey, it was administered in June, a particularly busy time of year, which was also after seniors had left campus. This timing was not ideal for robust participation for high school students and will be corrected in future surveys. Finally, later in the fall, I'll come back to the board with a presentation on the survey and share feedbacks and questions from the MemberEights xxx presentation. Thank you, Jeannie. Any questions? Okay, Andrew. So after 39 years with the district, our internal auditor, our claims auditor, excuse me, Vinny Sciascia xxx is finally retiring after an extension as a contract vendor for us until we
026could complete the RFP process, which we did in September, I'm happy to report that after completing that process, reviewing the proposals, and interviewing the candidates, including interviews by Suzie and Ron. So thank you for your time. We're happy to appoint, recommend the appointing of Linda Pizano as our internal claims auditor going forward. And on resolution 8.09, you'll see that appointment in the consent agenda. We're really excited to have Linda back in the district and helping us to continue to improve our internal internal controls around purchasing and accounts payable. So that's on the agenda tonight. Thank you, Andrew and that concludes our cabinet updates. Thank you Drew and everybody, we will move to item five, hearing from those present, I will first read the preamble before opening up public comment. Members of the public are cordially
027invited 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 state your name, address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization. For those commenting remotely, please mute the livestream voice, turn on your camera and then unmute yourself. And if you would like to comment remotely now, it'd be a good time to log into Zoom and raise your hand. 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 into the board via email at board of edit scarsdale schools.org. The public comment period is reserved for comments only. The board will
028not 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 in place. Response to public comment will take place after the both the first and second public comment periods. With that, I will open it up to anybody in the audience who wishes to make a public comment. Good evening, Leah Dembitzer, 354 Merrick Road. I'm President of PT Council. I actually have two comments. So the first comment is an appreciation of the Board of Education for New York State School Board Recognition Week. This year, New York State School Board Recognition Week took place from October 16th through 20th. This week serves as an opportunity to highlight the work of volunteer school board members. On behalf of Scarsdale PT
029Council Executive Committee, I would like to publicly recognize the dedication and volunteer service of the members of the Scarsdale Board of Education. Thank you for giving your time and service to our community. The PTCEC appreciates the board members' commitment to our community's children, our school system, and public education in general. Your work is noticed and appreciated, thank you. Okay, and I have one more comment. So this is the Scarsdale PT Council Executive Committee statement on the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7th, 2023 in support of our Scarsdale School's parent and student community in a time of shared grief. This statement was released on October 13th. The Scarsdale Parent-Teacher Council executive Committee was horrified and deeply saddened by the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7th and the continued violence in the region. We offer
030our strength support and shared grief to the Scarsdale School's, Jewish community, and to all others who have been touched deeply and indelibly by these tragic events. The PTCEC strongly condemns terrorism hate and antisemitism in all forms. The PTCEC takes seriously its missions of creating and nurturing and inclusive community and of protecting the physical, mental, and emotional health of Scarsdale schools, students, parents, families, faculty, and staff. We believe that wherever and whenever innocent people are persecuted or terrorized, we need to stand together in solidarity and surround them with compassion and strength. We understand that families in our community are struggling to navigate through this extremely disturbing crisis. We thank our schools for their commitment to supporting all of our students and ensuring that they feel safe emotionally and physically in these troubling times, we linked resources
031shared by the district to our statement and our PTCDEI and wellness committees are available for resources as parents for parents. Please reach out to [email protected] if we can support you in any way. Thank you, Ms. Dembitzer and the entire PTC executive committee. Is there anybody else that would like to make a public comment in person tonight? With that, we will turn to Zoom, Suzie. There are no Zoom participants at this time. Okay, we'll just give it a second. Has anybody joined? No one has joined. Okay, with that we will move close the public comment period. There is a second public comment period later in the meeting if anybody would like to make a comment later and move to item six follow up to public comment. I don't believe there's anything. Okay, we will move to
032item seven, the consent agenda. The full preamble of the consent agenda is available on board docs. As a quick overview, the consent agenda is a way for the board to conduct routine matters in one vote without discussion. However, any board member is able to remove any item from the consent agenda and move to a individual action item just by stating they would like to do so. At this time, is there anyone that would like to move an item out of tonight's consent agenda? Okay, I see nobody we will move to tonight's consent agenda. I believe that's Bob. Yes, tonight there there are 12 items on the agenda. 8.01 resolved that the Board of Education except it's minutes from the October 2nd, 2023 business meeting as presented. Item 8.02 resolve that the Board of Education accept
033its minutes from the October 19th, 2023 special meeting executive session as presented. Item 8.03 resolve the Board of Education. The Scarsdale Union Free School District hereby accepts the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign the following. Instructional personnel is listed in the consent agenda. Item 8.04 be it resolved that the Board of Education of the Scarsdale Union Free School District hereby accepts the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign the following non-instructional personnel is listed. Item 8.05, resolve that the board accept the attached claims audit report for September, 2023 as presented. Item 8.06, resolve that the Board of Education approved the collective bargaining agreement between the Scarsdale Board of Education and the Association of Scarsdale Teacher Aids and Assistance dated July 1st, 2023 to June 30th, 2026. Item 8.07 resolved that the Board
034of Education accept the building committees for school visits towards the district for the 2023-24 school year as presented. Item 8.08 resolve that the Board of Education appoint Michelle Verna to serve as acting clerk for the 2023-24 school year when the district clerk is absent or otherwise unavailable. Item 8.09 resolved that the Board of Education points Mrs. Linda Pizano as internal claims auditor effective November 1st, 2023 and approve the attached agreement. Item 8.10 resolve that the Board of Education accept the attached contracts and authorize the assistant superintendent for special education and student services to execute the contract as presented. Item 8.11, resolve that the Board of Education approve the attach invoice for the payment of the district's membership dues for the period 1/1/24 to 12/31/24 to the New York State School Board's Association. And lastly, item
0358.12 recommended action accepted consent agenda as presented. Thank you, Bob. Is there a second, Amber? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. We'll move to item nine. Information item, the treasurer's report and schedule of investments. I believe this is Lisa. Good evening. Okay, the reports presented this meeting are for August of 2023. As you can see, we started the month with approximately $37 million and we ended August with approximately $29 million. August typically represents the lowest cash balance on the books due to the timing of the tax receipts. So that's also reflected when you look at the schedule of investments. Again, as we've discussed, we have to keep certain balances in accounts with lower interest to compensate for transaction fees. So that's why you'll see a little bit lower percentage of
036the investments in the higher interest earning accounts. That will change once the once the tax money starts coming in in September. Then you also have the revenue report and the expenditure report. You'll see on the appropriation status report, there are negative accounts at this time, the majority of them are salaries. Our current software takes a lot of manual review and updating. So at this point, at the end of August, I was still in the process of reviewing all of those. So before I present budget transfers, I just wanted to finalize all the numbers. So for September you'll see most of those transfers will be corrected and you'll be presented with any that exceed the $25,000 limit that you would have to approve. Any questions from the board? Okay, thank you Lisa. Are you the next
037item two? Yeah. Budget transfers? Yes, thanks. So there are two budget transfers that are being presented. The first is to add money for contractual physical therapy that's due to student IEPs. And the money is, there's excess money that's budgeted in tuition for student placements that are unknown at the time of the budget. So we're requesting that those funds be moved over to cover the additional PT costs. The second is for records management. We do archive our records and the state mandates a certain time period that we have to retain records for. So part of this was budgeted in a contractual fee and we're actually using the services through BOCs. So we have to move the funds to a BOCs code and record it that way. Thank you Lisa, are there any questions on the budget
038transfers? These do come back to us as an action item tonight if there's any questions. Okay, thank you so much. I will pass it over to Drew and Edgar for the education report. Terrific, well, tonight is our first education report of the year. We do four of these annually. We label these meetings education reports to try to keep a sharper and clearer focus on teaching and learning in these meetings. And I'm excited to have the chance for the board and the public to hear through Edgar's voice, some of the positive assessment results. That's part one, part of it. And then also how we are responsive to the needs of students and the design of our curriculum, our acts of instruction and decisions around assessment. So I'm gonna turn it over to Edgar. Gimme one second
039to queue up. Thank you Drew. Great, welcome. Tonight I look forward to a two-part presentation. First, I will review the results of many of Scarsdale school's 2023 benchmark measures and standardized assessments from third grade state testing through APs, ACTs and SATs. Please note that all these slides and additional supporting data are attached and available online. The second part of the presentation will be dedicated to a description of how we make changes with student learning at the center. This section I've named responsive education, creating meaningful improvement in curriculum instruction and assessment for student learning using research, collaboration, system-wide support and patience. What will be evident throughout the assessment portion of the presentation is that Scarsdale, continues to maintain and demonstrate high levels of achievement through several standardized means, consistent with previous years. Before we proceed, I
040do wanna review some key points. The assessments are that are reviewed in this presentation represent tested knowledge and skills that are measurable in a standardized format. The data is summarized and represents percentages and averages. Many of the assessments were either paused or greatly amended in the 2020, in 2021 years for those who will be looking at assessments from 2019 and before as points of comparison. For the sake of consistency, we have loaded the graphs and charts that have been used in the past year's presentations. We have, however, attached additional assessment data that has been requested or could be of interest. As I move through the slides, I will note the key places when additional information is included in the supporting documentation. So as in past years, we will begin with the high school and some
041college data. Nearly a 100% of our students go on to four-year colleges. This slide represents the percentage of students who were accepted into what Barron's rates is most competitive in the US. This percentage remains consistent with past years, the list of 87 schools in Barron's most competitive category is in the supporting documentation. Here is a review of our student performance on SAT tests, which demonstrates a continuation of high mean scores. Please note that the 2020 SAT test was not given and the 2017 test was redesigned and reading was restructured as ERW or evidence-based reading and writing. All these slides and additional supporting data are again, attached and available online. This graph shows the percentage of our students whose performance in the ACT correlates with college readiness called the College Readiness Benchmark scores. And as in
042past years, we have put up the national percentages as a comparison. As has been our practice, here is comparison data with local high performing districts in both the SAT and ACT and 2023 Scarsdale students, continue to be leaders in the region. Here's a chart that shows the history of our student participation in performance on AP exams with the number of exams taken by students broken down by those exams that received three or above, four or above, and finally a five or above. The next slide puts this data into a graph and provides a visual for the consistent AP performance of our students over time. A question was raised about the trends in taking AP exams, given the AT or advanced topics course alternatives offered in Scarsdale. The trend is that our students are more likely
043to take AP exams in science, math, and world languages as the content most closely aligns to our AT curriculum. This chart shows the percentage of our students who have overwhelmingly successfully passed the required regions exams. A slide that we've traditionally shown, but one more about state compliance than a measure that provides any guiding data. At the elementary and middle school level, we appreciate standardized assessments and have their place and provide broad measures of topic coverage and concept understanding they are especially inconsistent and reliably and accurately measuring individual student abilities. When a student does poorly on an exam, however it sets in motion team review. In the vast majority of cases, when a student struggles with these types of exams and receives a one or a two, it is not a surprise to the educators surrounding
044them. And in many cases, the student has some form of educational support already in place. This was reconfirmed when the first scores came out without a CAT score to determine mandatory review. And we were encouraged to use internal assessment data to make determinations about who needed extra support. And our educators report that there were very few surprises. I've used the iceberg as a metaphor before and it's appropriate in a few different ways here. First state assessments are just a small tip of the iceberg of the ways we assess our students. For a fuller picture, please take a look at the first section of supporting documentation. These pages describe the multitude of ways we assess, monitor, and evaluate our student performances through common benchmark assessments, formative assessments, progress monitoring tools, and performance assessments. These assessments are
045much more meaningful than the snapshot. These assessments, the state assessments provide performance assessments, especially provide us with in information about how our students are progressing and learning, not easily captured in a standardized testing format. I look forward to highlighting, some powerful performance assessments at an upcoming education report. Second, icebergs can be dangerous to unsuspecting ships. The interpretation of these snapshot measures, which lead to generalizations about schools, grades and instruction is misguided. The purpose of this is to underscore that our schools are well above state and lower Hudson averages and have historical fluctuations of percentage points between schools. The reason for fluctuations that have happened predictably from year to year can be explained through the learning needs of a particular cohort. The number of students assessed and other factors. They should not, as I mentioned, be
046interpreted to be a measure of curricular attention or instruction at any given school, regardless of the current order and the air quotes on purpose. On this slide, you will see that our students continue to perform within the historically high percentage of ELA on state exams. This slide highlights five years of the exam in which the format of the exam was the same. As described there are no scores to report for 2020 and the flawed 2021 scores do not provide helpful comparison. Please know that we have included the longer history of performance in supporting documentation. As in past years, we have provided comparisons to an average of high performing cohorts in the district, the lower Hudson region and the statewide percentages. The statewide percentages you'll note right here have not been released to us yet. So
047there it's blank. Here's a graph demonstrating our state test performance in comparison to Lower Hudson and recently released state scores are not, I'm sorry, which do not include the state's scores. Like ELA, here's a proficiency comparison chart for math. Again, all of this is available in the supporting documentation if people want to take a closer look. And here's our graph for the three five proficiency rate in math note again, the undulation from year to year across the schools. As I mentioned, we value standardized assessment tools from the state or nation. They give us broad information about how our systems are supporting student achievement in certain areas. Data this broad, this successful from year to year is less helpful in motivating a system like ours to make necessary changes to our curriculum instruction and assessment to
048best support our students' academically, socially, emotionally, and ethically. For that, we rely on a responsive approach to create positive change in our curriculum, instruction and assessment. You may ask why focus on this now. For the first education report, we are on the cusp of some important strategic planning. Strategic plan will suggest a pathway forward, one that will benefit from a responsive approach. So responsive education is most successful when the following elements are present. It's no surprise changes should come from research, both in the educational field using external scholarship, but also importantly, we should rely on our practitioner's internal research to respond to the specific needs of our district and school community. It should be collaborative, especially engaging the educators who are closest to the work. Responsive education needs to be supported in a variety of
049important ways. And finally, educational change needs to be appropriately patient. For this presentation, I've chosen four areas going through curricular evolution, primary reading, interdisciplinary learning, K-5 math alignment through Reveal Math and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, which we will refer up to here as DEIB. I'm gonna start with a focus on our youngest, our primary readers, and for them I'm going to talk about the role that research plays in the changes we've made throughout the last several years. I do wanna acknowledge that there has been a great deal of foundational research, that all of this is built on and it is not new. Despite the headlines about reading wars, scholars in the field have for many years described the importance of teaching both language comprehension skills and word decoding skills in order to produce skilled
050readers. This is something that Scarsdale has long valued and promoted and that continues to this day. That said, the way we align support and balance reading instruction has grown and has been informed at every step by internal and external research. A driver in this has been the research supporting early and explicit instruction and phonics, phonemic awareness and word study to develop student word decoding skills. There you'll see there is a phonics assessment and a child holding up a phonics shield. As well, instructions should also include a commitment to learning progressions in language comprehension for clarity. For a definition, learning progressions are thoughtfully determined agreements about what should be taught by grade and includes in comprehension the development of background knowledge and vocabulary, literary knowledge, practice in reading different genres and rich opportunities for verbal reasoning.
051And there's an example of the progressions right up there. I think that's for non-fiction reading. So we're gonna take a time machine back. Take a look back in time, not too many years, this is about Circa 2016 at all five elementary schools. Educators were responding to the research that emphasized teaching both word decoding and language comprehension skills to students. At this point, there was some variety in how teachers across the district and across the grades were attending to this as well as vertical alignment within some schools. Important research went into changes that happened in 2016. Reading specialists were added at each school to respond to the research that showed that positive, the positive impact of early targeted intervention for young readers. As well, the district recognized the power of district-wide learning progressions and language comprehension
052and chose to engage and adapt the teacher's college reading and writing project materials in the units of study and enlist professional development support, through assured grade focused professional development. Please note decoding was being taught but in a variety of ways across the grades. All the while internal feedback was being provided by the district-wide ELA committee. This slide notes the differences color coded to reflect the applied research. During the 2019 year, we enlisted the Tri-State Consortium, a diverse cohort of high performing districts that act as collegial research and critical friends to conduct its own examination of our district and look at the RTI or response to intervention support structures, specifically on how it meets the needs of our young readers. The group had specific recommendation related to classroom reading instruction. Most notably, that classroom phonics and
053phonemic awareness K-2 and Word Study 3-5 should enlist common tools by grade band and by school. Through this alignment of structured tools and coordinated learning progressions, students were more most supported in moving from grade to grade and less likely to be placed in remediation for decoding difficulty. As well, they had helpful recommendations for RTI, including encouraging the update, updating to MTSS, multi-tiered structures of support, a wider scope to include supporting behavioral and SEL needs, social emotional needs and recommended a focus on coordinated benchmarking and collegial sharing. Meanwhile, teachers college reading and writing project was responding to cognitive reading research and embedding phonics and phonemic awareness directly into the units of study. Our reading specialists were using student data to expand the practices they were using, including additional research backed tools. Notably a tool called Haggerty
054that provided more targeted practice with phonemic awareness. Here is a chart that reflects these changes. Please note that K-2 and 3-5 alignment is still in pilot process in a few places and a final determination will be made by the end of the year. And here, and just for fun, here's a time lapse look at the research driven changes that have occurred from 2016 to the present. And the research continues. As a learning organization, we will never stop researching and adapting to support the needs of our students. This year, we are looking at differentiated professional development structures in which teachers are working in cross grade learning groups with topics most responsive to their needs. As educators, we are exploring a new partnership with Teachers College advancing literacy, staff developers who have an expanded repertoire of ways
055to support teachers. One big area of interest involves adapting our primary assessments to best measure the growth of our students. Time was dedicated to that summer program improvement days and recommendations for revised assessment tools and timing are being piloted by a group of educators and the results will be analyzed throughout the year. Our dedicated ELA coordinators and teacher committee members are in the process of selecting a full Saturday in November to dedicate to this important work and set themselves up for the rest of the year. Connected to this work is a new district-wide MTSS steering committee to review effective tools in cohesion and a reading specialist subcommittee to describe the expanding parameters of the work in early intervention and remediation. Responsive education is collaborative. We collaborate with learning organizations, including universities, consultants, as well as
056local and global partners. Much expanded with our new partnership with the Global Education Benchmarking Group in Round Square. Key collaboration, however, is right here in Scarsdale. Scarsdale educators and administrators within and across departments. There are several structures set up to facilitate this collaboration. Certainly team, department and grade level meetings are key among them. Ideas are generated and shared and curriculum grows and is adapted. There are also district committees and leadership meetings that impact changes in practice. Summer program improvement days are never done in a vacuum and involve collaborative teacher projects, context and specific collaborations and the development of interdisciplinary curriculum. So for this, I'm going to zero in on interdisciplinary learning as an example of the power of a collaboration to fortify and build curricular change. Our example is a junior level class called American
057Study or Am Stu for short, a course that is built and rebuilt on collaboration. With this, I'll let the experts do the talking. Mr. Mounkhall and Ms. Claussen. I'm Kendra Claussen. I teach social studies here at Scarsdale High School. Do you run any clubs? Just one. I'm the advisor to Maroon. Steve Mounkhall, I teach English and I advise Literary Magazine. So juniors who are enrolled in American studies take English and also US History. But what makes American Studies unique is that they, we end up sharing the same students. So the students that Steve has in his English class, I also have in my US history class. And from the student perspective, that's helpful because as one of the students said yesterday, I really like how when I have a test in history, I don't have
058something to do in English. So we get to do that kind of thinking about scheduling. But from the teacher perspective, we really love it because we get to do much more abstract stuff as well. So one of the things that we do is some of the similar things that all American Studies classes do, which is for a particular unit, students might be reading a novel in English and then studying the same period of history that that novelist set in, in US history. One of the things that we like to do in American Studies is to think about the chronology of the US history more thematically. So for example, we start with World War II and the Japanese American internment, and that may not be the most obvious place to start, but we've learned to start
059there because it brings up big constitutional issues. And constitution is a big thing at the beginning of US history. And it's also we've found a book called "When the Emperor Was Divine," which brings in an empathetic sense for the students of who these people actually were, who were being displaced, who were being put into camps and allows us to follow their lives for several years. Then we went on this year, although it's the first time we've done it, we've tried to do it differently every time we went on to the Vietnam War as another through the movie, "The Post," another way of thinking about constitutional issue of freedom of press, the degree to which the government should allow, be allowed to have secrets or whether they need to be entirely transparent. And I'm teaching the
060things they carry to Vietnam era, war book while Kendra's doing the Vietnam War as a history, a piece of history study. So those kinds of links we will try and continue throughout the whole year. I just want to be in that class, I'm saying. Okay, so now let's shift to support. Responsive education is supported. District resources are primary to change. In many instances this means human resources, having the right people with the right experience and focus to support change. Resources include items, texts, hardware, software, and materials. A resource we talk about never having enough of is time. Time needs to be dedicated to initiatives and curricular change. Finally, it's important for us to think about bandwidth as a finite resource. Meaning that with everything else in place it's important to not overload with too much
061change, too fast. Supported means that the district encourages the change in a variety of ways through funding, verbal and written expectations and affirmations and taking the time to engage in their own leadership training. The admin team has undergone training in this room recently on the next gen science standards, Reveal Math, and Wednesday, we're having a full day workshop on responsive classroom, designed specifically for district and school leaders. Those familiar with the research and institutional change are not surprised when we say that support also comes from granting professionals appropriate levels of autonomy over how they engage in the training and the exact pathway they take to meet the expectations connected to student learning. And for this, I'd like to highlight a great example of supported change by zooming into math alignment, through the adoption of Reveal
062Math resources. It also gives me a chance to provide an update on these changes. So what does math alignment support look like? Math alignment support means that we are dedicating the necessary resources and time to research, training, implementation, inspiration, reflection, revision and adaption. Resources and time for research was essential and spanned the years from 2016 to 2021. It involved a multiple year collaboration with the math learning organization Metamorphosis, in which several of our elementary teachers across the schools were trained to be math leaders. There was an extensive assessment and alignment review of current math resources in which math leaders looked across all the rigorous next generation math standards, content skills and practices, including mindset and held them up against our current tools at that time, primary or formerly Singapore Math, and identified the gaps and
063deficiencies. Afterwards, there was a review of several programs where math committee volunteers who worked literally for bagels and fruit, reviewed several math programs after school from across the country with vendor representatives. And then the exciting part, we've talked about this before at this table, 41 of our educators representing every school and every grade piloted lessons of the top five contenders, a real nailbiter, but coming to consensus with Reveal Math. Resources in time for training, implementation and inspiration is also the key way we support this alignment, perhaps the most pivotal was the increase of two full-time math coordinators with funds for additional consultation. We made the implementation rollout strategically, over two years, starting with K-4 and then fifth grade, choosing not to double down on fifth grade. In the same year, they were implementing the Next
064Generation Science standards back to bandwidth as a resource. We provided assured professional development over the summer and across the school year. And current professional support structures include a rotating math residency and a geographically flexible math coordinator to provide responsive in the moment district-wide support. We also provided responsive, differentiated professional development, through Scarsdale Teacher Institute survey informed workshops and math coordinators. On November 7th, Superintendent's Conference Day will begin with strategic planning, but then lean into some math inspiration, through a keynote presentation from nationally recognized math scholar, Dan Finkel and dedicated time to work on collaborative math projects in the afternoon. Support means resources and time for reflection, revision and adaptation. The math residencies have onsite plan, teach debrief structure, which leads to meaningful reflection and impactful professional learning. We're also putting time into adapt adaptations to
065assessments, report card sequencing and prioritization during summer program improvement and had a recent district-wide grade level meeting dedicated to collecting feedback from educators on report card indicators, all led by teacher leaders across the schools, each survey and student data driven for our next steps. Here's an element that is so very important to meaningful change, but often overlooked. Responsive education is appropriately patient. That means it's responsive versus reactive. Responsive engages new information and takes a thoughtful, critical, and measured approach to change. Reactive is an about face, a hastily adopted program, rarely student-centered or well-matched to a community. The tree is an apt metaphor, collaboratively grown rather than planted whole. An example I'm used is when people think of something being top down without levels of collaboration, nuanced research and flexible support. The journey related to diversity,
066equity, and inclusion and belonging in Scarsdale is a long one, including a course on civil rights taught in the STI over 50 years ago. For our timeline here, I've begun during the board's truly essential and important adoption of the Board of Ed Policy 0105. This policy has affirmed and protected important work that we have done in the last few years. This work is both urgent and requires patience. If you look across the eras, you'll see that we continue to move forward in targeted and assured training and vocabulary, courageous conversation and implicit bias, and the adoption of dozens and dozens of texts and resources that reflect our families and multiple perspectives locally and globally. And the thoughtful inclusion of families. Currently, we are in the final stages of survey design on belonging for students, faculty, staff,
067and families with the search institute and guided by our consultant, Derrick Gay. Critical Analysis will follow and determinations about next steps and how they impact the strategic plan. While four changes were highlighted here, we know we have many ahead and are inspired by an opportunity to engage authentically in a strategic plan. We look forward to this work and appreciate your vision and your support. And now I'm happy to answer any questions about part one or part two. Can I say a few words first? Sure. I'm gonna physically do this. It was a lot, you'd be forgiven if you thought you heard four or more stories in there, but what you really heard was one story and that story is about how leaders and teachers work together in a loosely coupled system to make meaningful change
068to help students. I would note that while the story of primary reading and the story of the math and the story of the way we inter engage in learning in an interdisciplinary basis and our work around DEIB seem maybe like distinct journeys, they really all depend on a very basic structure is thinking about first and foremost why, what's the reason behind the need to change or to keep up. And the first part of Igor's presentation, in my view with the the standardized testing results, they're very high comparatively showing success of students that might not always drive a system to make any change. What we're doing is working, why not keep doing it? But I think what we, what I value, I think what Edgar values and all of us value about this being able to
069be in this incredible environment is that there's really a relentless push to make meaningful change, to continue to challenge our students in ways that are relevant as we learn more and as the environment around us changes and evolves. So I think Edgar did, he included a lot and there's a lot going on, but it does all connect through why, then the how, how do we do this? He shared these four ways that we think about research, that we engage in collaboration, that it has to be well supported and that's where the board and the community come in, supporting the kinds of staff positions, but also research and development and speakers and summer curriculum time and then to stick with us, to have the patience to do it. That's really the how we go about it
070and the what is everything we teach, it's every subject. It's the non-tested subjects, it's the through lines like diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and sustainability and other things. And it's all the social, emotional and wellbeing related pieces. So my hope is that you hear this as one story, not four discreet stories. But I also hope you have lots of questions. And thank you, Edgar. Well, thank you Edgar and Drew for that presentation and commentary. Let's open it up to board feedback or questions. Jessica? Thank you, Edgar. That was great, and thank you Drew, that was a helpful framing. That said, I'm gonna drill down on two specifics stories within the broader context of the story. I really appreciated your sharing of the interdisciplinary learning and I thought it was really helpful to see how that
071American studies class is doing it at the high school level. I guess I'm curious about how we're thinking as a district about interdisciplinary learning throughout in older, in younger grades as well as in the high school and maybe in areas where they don't pair as naturally, right? So, I've seen in school visits and other places, great work across, for example, art and social studies or social studies and English, but I'm curious about, for example, math and science teachers working together, or math and social studies or at the elementary level, a classroom teacher pulling together, for example, math and literature portions, ELA portions of their curriculum to kind of approach things differently. And I'm wondering if there's anything in the works on that end or maybe stuff that we as parents and board members aren't seeing
072that's happening behind the scenes in those conversations. So, you know what? Drew knows this, there was actually five stories that was, I actually had to say. I was like, I've had have mercy on. Just the length. And also what's really difficult too is not difficult. It's a blessing is that there were many, many, many choices of interdisciplinary work across the grades. Some of it's really baked in because it's a course like American Studies and other times it is a little bit less obvious, but it's reflected in some of the work that goes on in the summer around integration. So there's been a great deal of work where it's even one of the buttons that you can tab when you apply for summer program improvement is, are you doing something that's interdisciplinary? Because we value those
073projects and people are motivated to work together and across disciplines. You do have the advantage, and Megan knows this of a team structure at the middle, which is another structure that supports that. And you see opportunities where teachers are talking. I mean, even when he was talking about when we know when not to give tests on certain days. I mean that's, it seems very about the logistics of it, but it is about looking at these kids as they move from class to class and how they can coordinate what they're teaching and how they're teaching. And then at the elementary, there are certain project based activities that naturally happen in a classroom where you have a generalist, but also somebody who is an expert across, and also our librarians and our art teachers and our PE
074teachers, and they lean in, our music teachers to work. So you, it's no surprise that you see examples of that. It is something that we signal through the resources that we provide through program improvement, that this is valuable. We know that actually when you go out and in the world, it isn't that, okay, now I'm gonna do English, now I'm gonna do science. And the other story that I wanted to tell was about performance assessments. And I'm gonna tell that story later because that's how we value and assess how students are doing in authentic problem solving, which isn't in a silo. That's really helpful, thank you. I had one other, I think, more concise question. Obviously there have been changes that have been much discussed in the community about the approach to early elementary reading
075instruction, reading and writing instruction. And as that evolves and as theories on that evolve, are we also changing programs for students throughout the curriculum, throughout the grade structure? So for example, are we finding that there are students in older grades who need to be caught up because there are holes that were left by the previous approach? Are there things we need to do to close gaps? Are you talking specifically about reading, writing? I'm really talking about writing more than reading. But I'm just curious broadly, anytime sort of a foundational system changes, I do wonder about knock on effects of it. So, I guess to rephrase, are there any knock on effects that we've seen or major changes that need to be made as a result of changes to early elementary reading and writing? Well, you
076know what we did, we did find, and we got feedback, and this is a little bit before my time, but when, if you look at the evolution of changes and that was really focused on primary reading, but the adoption of common learning progressions in writing was something that was noted by middle school English teachers as they received it. Because when the progressions were different, depending on how they were put together, then it was less likely that you would receive children who had some common experiences in non-fiction writing, for example. I don't know if me, Megan, you want to talk about it? You were more around that. (Megan murmurs) I mean, I think right, middle or high school, I mean throughout, because sometimes I think if there's a building block that changes, right? It can. Well,
077I mean there have been questions and really I think valid questions about something. Reveal Math, for example, is an approach that leans very much into the mathematical practices as they're described in the next gen standards. And we have had opportunities to do articulation up through the middle school, through the math coordinator there and talk about, well, these skills that these students are gonna be coming up with and talk about how we can meet them and support them as they make transitions and the expectations that certain kids have about how lessons are structured. So that is something that is definitely on our radar and something that we think about, not in terms of gaps so much as making sure that we are articulating an alignment of expectations, that the progressions don't suddenly change midstream. So that's
078why the conversation that the articulation is so important between levels. Great, thank you. Other questions or comments? Yeah, Colleen. More of a comment. I thank you for this. It was, you know me, I love this stuff. So I was, I enjoyed all the stories in which they kept going. I can give you the fifth story later. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. You and I will go over the fifth story, so I appreciate it. You know, I had the pleasure today of meeting with Melissa Feinberg, she's my buddy and we were observing a classroom using responsive classroom, which I love. And she has shared with me that other administrators have reached out to have teams come and it sounds like responsive classroom is really being embraced, which I appreciate and I just wanna thank the teachers for
079all of this because education is constantly evolving and we are doing things very well, right? Why change things are going great, but that's why things are going great and I appreciate all of the teachers, kind of just going above and beyond to continue to evolve with the research and supporting the growth of it. 'Cause I think our students are really benefiting from it. I appreciate it in the video, the American Studies, them communicating about, they mentioned assessments and I do think that's one area where sometimes the kids can feel overwhelmed when multiple assessments kind of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So I think that is an area as we continue to evolve and move forward where we could maybe be a little bit more thoughtful because they take assessments a lot per, they make, they become intense
080sometimes for some of the students. So I appreciated that partnership, that interdisciplinary partnership. And I think that's an area where maybe we could continue to build off of that. It would be my only area of feedback. But the other thing, you know, principal Feinberg and I were talking about was how we both actually use responsive classrooms in our homes. There are a lot of strategies for a responsive classroom that actually work well when you're working with your kids at home, even adolescents, and possibly in the future providing parents with some of these resources to make that home to school connection even stronger. So that's just the other area I thought might be beneficial for us to look into as we grow the program. I was just gonna say, Wednesday, the administrators will be in this
081room getting much more familiar with the responsive classroom for that third area along the top so we can be supportive and play the role of support as this goes forward. So well timed comment. Thank you. Other questions or comments, Amber? Thank you Edgar. I also enjoyed the presentation and I just wanted to comment that it's interesting because I had a similar question to Jessica and I think it also resonated with Colleen, the interdisciplinary learning. That's really what jumped out at me, the Am Stu relationship and how effective it is for our students. And I was actually wondering, are there more, are there classes like that in the high school? Other ones besides Am Stu where there' that kind of learning? Yes, so there are other ones. Like that and you know, we've talked about them
082a little bit, but courses like social entrepreneurship are interdisciplinary in that through design challenges, they have an opportunity to go across all different areas of science, math, english, social studies, science research. While science is in the title, if you look at what the students do and how they research, and we've talked about power skills and how those are developed through some of these interdisciplinary projects. Linear algebra is actually one that it's quite interdisciplinary as one is using applied high level math to engage in real life problems. So even if it doesn't involve that kind of collaboration between two, there are opportunities at the high school and at the middle school. That's great to hear, I think that for students, I imagine it resonates to see that things apply in more than just one area. You've
083said something about, you're not just gonna go out and do math, you know? So I think that's really, it's fabulous. So thank you for sharing that this evening. Other questions or comments from board? Thank you. I wanted to thank you for this excellent presentation. We don't like to talk about assessments too much in terms of, it's not everything, it's not the whole picture as you said, right? It's like that iceberg. But it is reassuring to see that we did so well and so congratulations to our teachers and our students. And I do appreciate the innovative and creative look at how we teach our kids. Not just like in these paths that you outlined, which I think are very interesting. But it also made me think of like the approaches to assessment too. You know, how
084we are doing piloting like rolling grade book in the high school. I appreciate that that's intent to look after the whole child, you know, not just the test score, but you know, the mental health of our kids too. I'll be curious to see how that works out in the future. Anything else from the board? Bob. I have to say, it's a lot to take in and I'm trying to process it as not being an educator. One of the layers of nuance that I'm trying to think a lot about is the presentation as I'm perceiving it, really emphasizes the really stellar teachers and deliverers of the information and the pedagogy. But as someone who's in a profession that also has been dramatically affected by technology and what becomes important at one point in your career or
085in your life, I would love to see at some point in time, and maybe it's after the strategic plan to see the threading of the tool of technology throughout the learning process. The one thing I personally have started to lose sleep over is AI and how that impacts problem solving. I mean the stories you hear about, the tools that help, where at one point you had to solve the problem. Now there's technology that does it for you, but you know, to me it's like a calculator. You still have to know how to add and subtract even if you have a calculator that does it for you in order to really navigate life. So, I think one of the things that I, as I think about Scarsdale of the future, how we provide sort of leadership
086within, in this discipline of showing the balance of technology because it's obviously not going away. And some of the just really beautiful examples you gave that you know are in the skill of a teacher. But let's be honest that the technology is coming, right? It's already here to some degree. And I'd just be curious to see, how that all kind of fits together at some point in time. I know, we studied it in terms of somewhat of the impact of the child, but just even in terms of learning and what at one point was very tedious, maybe now can be very quick and does that leave time for other things or should it leave time? It's a big, big question in my mind. So I just raised that as something to think about. I appreciate
087that. It's interesting because when I think about, engaging with technology, my connections go back to some of the things on the board right now. And I'm thinking specifically around the approach to math that focuses on being a flexible problem solver and taking things that are disparate and bringing them together. Those are the kind of, that's the kind of regulation that we're going to need our students to have and continue to build those kind of skills. But I look forward to talking more specifically about how we use the tools in a way that is cognizant of AI and how we would work with it and not be controlled by the robots, which is what is keeping a lot of us up at night. Any other comments or questions from the board? I have one. It's a
088bit more of a challenge than a comment. Okay. Maybe for a future presentation or for next year, I would love to see a little, if there was a way to overlay on the assessments, especially for the older kids, high schoolers, sort of the, what it took to get these achievements. So the slide that I'm struck by in a good way, but also something that I think I'd like to know more about is the AP exam slide. So there was a quite a increase in both the number of students taking APs and the total number of exams this year. And it just makes me think so, and our students did fantastic on them, which is excellent, right? For me as a board member, the next question I would have is what did it take for them?
089We hear anecdotal stories about what that takes and I'm not asking you to respond to it because I think, and it would be great to be data-driven. I don't know how you get that data, but I just, I feel like it's a piece of the story that I hear about, especially for our seniors, sorry, our high school students and what it takes to do this. Then the question is, what are they not doing? So is that taking away from time to just read for enjoyment, to get to Edgar, you make a great point. I think it was Edgar who made it or it was Drew that, this is just a snapshot of certain grades or exams, but there's other education that's really important and how are we ensuring that's happening too? So I started out
090saying it's a bit of a challenge because I'm not sure really how you answer that. I'm not asking you to answer tonight, but it would be I think, really helpful in the future if there was a way to overlay some of that. Okay, I won't answer it tonight then. No, I wouldn't put you on the spot on that one. Is there anything else? Well, thank you so much for this. Thank you. This presentation. And also, I just wanna echo Suzie's comments for everybody around this table, but for all of the faculty and staff that are doing so much that led to these great results that lead to all the responsive aspects of our classrooms for our students, we hear about it all the time. We see it when we do the building tours and it's
091really nice for the community to be able to see, do a presentation. So thank you. You're welcome. We will move to item 9.04, a policy update. And this is Drew. Thank you very much. Maybe an abrupt transition, but this is what's presented to you this evening is the first reading of a policy update and an accompanying new regulation, recommended regulation related to non-discrimination and equal opportunity. So just to back up, our sort of progress through policies has recently, in the last two years been driven through the recommendations that we get regularly from NYSSBA. So I think I've mentioned it at this table before, but our practice is to review those recommendations and make determinations about which apply to us differentiating between required versus recommended versus suggested, engaging legal counsel when and where appropriate and so
092forth. So this is one of those policies and what's really driving this recommended change is the, I think, improvement in the expectation that all policies that relate to discrimination are aligned and are basically saying the same sorts of things in terms of how one might make a complaint or seek a remedy. So one of the things that's changed in recent years at the state level is workplace sexual harassment, but the recommendation is those, the evolution that's happened in the sophistication of that law and those regulations really need to be trickled through any other discrimination policy. So that's the bulk of what these changes include here. I'll point out a couple of things. One is to be explicit about discrimination protected classes. So it's articulating those clearly. And it also I think does a better job
093of linking how this discrimination policy connects to Title IX sexual harassment and bullying and other policies. So it's trying to make a more explicit connection to that. It may seem like maybe better placed in a different policy, but it isn't our, also our accessibility obligations, vis-a-vis our website and communication. So that's also incorporated in here. So there's a lot in here, but it's, we think it's getting us closer to clarity to help our community understand what the standards are for comporting themselves and when that's not happening, how to seek remedy for it. So there is a marked up version that we kept the NYSSBA notes to help the board kind of see what's being recommended, the original policy or current policy is there, and then the new regulation that provides those definitions and so forth.
094Thank you Drew, are there any questions from the board? Okay, so this will come back to us as a second read at the next business meeting. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Great. Oh, Amber, yep. I just see like one typo, a word misspelled. Yes, please. There's, it's, I don't, I'm in the document, it's the word applicable. There's a P instead of a B, I got my cursor on it right now. If you go in the document and you find wherever I am, I'm not entirely sure. Which, are you in the policy or in the regulation? I'm in the, well I'm in the sample policy that honoree edited. Yep, okay. You got it, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you Amber. We will move to action items. Item 10.01, the budget transfer, Colleen. Be it
095resolved that the board of education approves the attached budget transfer in excess of $25,000 as presented. Thanks Colleen, is there second Jessica? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. We will move to item 11.01, gift proposal to Greenacres Elementary School and this is Amber. Thanks Ron. I move that the board accept with thanks the gift of $8,595.04 for grade level grant requests and playground toys as presented in the attached letters. Thanks Amber, is there a second? Bob, any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries with thanks. Item 11.02, gift proposal to the middle school and this is Jim. I move that the board accepts with thanks the gift of $400 grant for a glass grinder for the seventh grade art class as presented in
096the attached letters. Thank you Jim, is there a second? Jessica, any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries also with thanks. We will move to item 12.01, the second public comment period, the same preamble from the first public comment period holds. And if you'd like to make a comment over Zoom, now it would be a good time to log on and raise your hand. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to make a public comment? Okay, seeing nobody, we will move to Zoom. There are no attendees on Zoom. Okay, we will close the second public comment period. Thank you Suzie. And move to follow up to public comment. There was no second public comment, so there is no follow up. We will move to item 14. Wrap up items.
097Drew, do you have anything? I don't think so, not tonight. Okay, I will hand it over to Suzie for meeting dates for the coming month. Upcoming meetings include on Monday, November 6th, a board retreat at 6:00 PM at the high school here in this room. Also November 13th there will be a board meeting with the Scarsdale Principal Association at five o'clock in the high school learning commons, a public forum for 2024-25 budget priorities at six o'clock here in this room. And then a business meeting at 6:30 following the public forum. Thanks Suzie. Could I have a motion to adjourn the business meeting? Amber, there second, Jim. Any discussion? All those in favor, aye. The motion carries, I hope everybody has a nice evening.