BOE Business Meeting/Education Report 2022-4-25

001Hi, good evening. I call this meeting of the Audit Committee to order, and I note that all board members are in attendance and are joined by Dr. Hagerman and his cabinet. Can I have a motion from someone on the Board to appoint the secretary pro tem? So moved. Second. All in favor. Aye. Honoree will be our secretary pro tem. As we stated at our April 4th board meeting, the Board has called for an audit of the district's payroll tax process, including a review of internal controls. As part of this process, we asked our current auditors to prepare a proposal. The service is proposed to be provided by our internal auditor, Cullen & Danowski, LLP, is a potential option as we determine how best to conduct a review at this time. The purpose of today's Audit

002Committee meeting is to discuss the scope of the contract before us and ask questions about it and the potential services to be provided by Cullen & Danowski. So the contract has been posted and the Board has reviewed it and I believe our auditors are here. Okay, do you mind coming forward, and thank you so much. Sure. Hello, my name is Don Hoffmann, I'm a partner with Cullen & Danowski, with me is Rich Coffey, he's the Director of Internal Audits. Each year we've been the internal auditor for Scarsdale for a number of years, each year, we ordinarily do two engagements, both as required by law. One is an annual risk assessment and the other is detailed testing in some area of the operation. We've completed the field work for both of those engagements over the past

003month or so, and we're in the process of drafting the reports on those two engagements. We were asked to put together a proposal to look at the internal controls, processes and procedures, and do testing of all of the payroll withholdings that take place as part of payroll, and to look at the process and controls and the accuracy of the remittance to third parties. So the proposal, one is to interview staff and go through how things are done on an ordinary basis, consider the process, consider potential improvements for internal controls and then test each of those transactions for all payrolls since January 1st, 2020. So probably 60 or so payrolls, there's probably eight or 10 types of withholdings that we would schedule out and verify the accuracy of the remittals to the third party based on

004the total amounts that were withheld from payroll. We're not proposing to do detailed testing of individual amounts within the payroll, just the aggregate amounts withheld, and then remitted to third parties. Do any board members have questions? Thank you for that introduction about the scope of this project. Before anybody asks questions about the scope of this project, could you please review with us the scope of the engagement services related to detail testing that you had provided for the district (indistinct). And then maybe we discuss a little bit, or you can discuss a little bit how this contract differs from those tests? Sure, each year we work with the administration and make a sort of a joint recommendation to the Audit Committee of what areas to test. So this past year we looked at some of the

005controls related to IT. We've looked at financial operations of special ed in the past, various topics. We last looked at payroll in 2014. So it's been some number of years since we looked at detail into the payroll processes. Thank you. Hi, good evening. Can you tell me, describe how the area, two questions, I guess the first is how many different areas in a general ballpark sense would there be, which would be available for you to look at? And then the second part of that is how is it determined, which items you look at in a given item or items, area or areas that you look at in a given year? Yeah, in a route there's round numbers, a dozen, sort of major app, some in the business office, some outside the business office, and some

006a combination of both business office activities and departmental activities, if you will. Each year based on the risk assessment and conversations, we work with the administration and try and figure out what area would be most beneficial, whether it be most value for the district based on our input and their input. So you look at things like complexity of the area, what's changed related to that area, if there's new staffing or new procedures, and we talk it through and we make a recommendation. You also consider how long it's been since you've looked at an area. So each year we've done that and as I said, we've just finished up looking at some of the controls related to IT operations. We are intending to report to the Audit Committee in June on the two engagements we've already

007done. We anticipate being able to complete this engagement so that we can report on that in June as well. And at that point that we would make recommendations and a decision could be made about what areas to test in detail next year, next winter. (indistinct) Yeah, we presented last June for the reports that we did last year, the engagements we did last year. We put together an engagement letter and it ordinarily, they dated July 1st, each year. I don't know if it was July 1, but I'm gonna say it was sometime over the summer, that engagement letter for the testing that we just performed was put together last summer. Sure. Could you talk a little bit about, I know you have a lot of experience in internal audits, obviously you've done a lot for this

008district, but just specific to this area, can you just talk about both the firm and the team's experience with other K-12 public schools? How many of these, again, for this specific one, we're talking about, types of audits you typically do a year. Sure. So we say this specific area, I'm gonna include payroll in the aggregate because this is a subset of a payroll audit. In the course of any year we have somewhere between 25 and 30 internal audit clients, payroll, we look at every five, six, seven years at each of those clients, so we're doing three payroll audits a year, round numbers, three, four, it'll vary by year, but we have great experience at doing this. Rich and I have done whatever 25 times 12 is 300 detailed testing reports in all areas of school

009operations, payroll activities is a significant portion in any district. So for any client that we've been with for 8, 10, 12 years such as Scarsdale, we've looked at payroll at least once and maybe twice at this point. And you mentioned how, what we are talking about for this specific engagement is really a subset of a broader payroll internal audit. Can you just help us understand what are we not looking at by not doing the broader? And if we did wanna do that, what does that timing look like? Sure, what you're not looking at is all of the calculations and payments of individual amounts. So are you paying the right salaries? Is overtime being processed properly? Is it approved in advance? Are you applying the right hourly rates to hourly employees? Are you deducting the right

010amount from an individual employees? Once that done, is there procedures in place to make sure that the total payroll is accurate compared to the prior payroll and anything that's a one-time payment in this payroll? So that's the main, big bulk processing of what's related with payroll and payroll-related expenditures. What this engagement is, is simply taking the amount that the payroll system says was withheld from employees for specific purposes, and were those total amounts accounted for properly and remitted to the third parties accurately and timely. So when you have a payroll, some of the deductions are, federal and state income taxes, social security taxes, employee retirement system contributions, teacher retirement system contributions. that can be garnishments, that have to get turned over to a third party, health insurance contributions. We're not gonna do any detail testing

011on an individual basis to make sure that's right, we're simply gonna say, all right, you withheld a hundred thousand for X amount for teacher retirement system costs, did you pay $100,000? I'm gonna verify that that's what happened. Okay, I understand, thank you. And that piece you just spoke about is sort of the operations, but of the financials. Can you just talk a little bit about how you go about during this 30 to 60 days? So sort of May to June period, about looking at purely the operations, forgetting that the numbers made sense, but what is the risk that they're getting done accurately or what is the risk of all the different operational aspects? Well, one of the first steps in the engagement is to interview the staff about how things are done. So we've got

012some documentation of that, we've got some idea how it's done, but we'll verify that and we'll get into it in detail to actually see how does the remittance to a third party take place. We'll actually observe it for part of this engagement, show us what the website looks like, show us when you're making the transfer, who does it, can you do it on your own? Does somebody else have to approve it? We'll go through all of that. In terms of kind of accuracy over the numbers, we will be able to look at the appropriate general ledger codes that these withholdings are accounted for when they take place as part of the payroll process, identify that those postings are accurate, which they should be, because it's coming out of an integrated system. So we'll know what

013that is, but then the second piece of that is to make sure that the actual remittance matched what was withheld, And the way this proposal is structured is to do that for each and every payroll, throughout the two plus year period. At the same time, we'll be looking at the general ledger accounts to see if there's any aberration or unusual items within those codes as well. I just had a few quick questions for you. When was the last time your firm was engaged to risk assess and test payroll withholding specifically in this district? I know you've said you've done it once or twice. Here we did in 2014. Okay, and will this assessment include not only payroll itself, but also the general submission of forms to the IRS and making sure that all forms are

014included in each quarterly tax payment? Or do you see that as a separate engagement? Yeah, we've not proposed to look at the forms to the IRS, we've simply structured this to look at the remittances. It's something we could do is to verify the 941s and quarterly filings. Thank you. I'd like to ask a question about timeline. So the letter says that if you begin the scope of work in May, 2022, that the engagement should be complete by June 30th. Do you anticipate having the report ready in July based on that timeline? Or would the report be ready before the end of June? We've got staff allocated that if the engagement goes well and we get cooperation we don't run into problems and we get a good turnaround, quick turnaround of our draft report, that we'll

015be able to report to you in June. Okay, thank you. As you're going, we don't typically do frequent check-ins with the Audit Committee, typically we figure out what area we're gonna test and then your firm will come back. But you talked about, you're gonna look at different areas, do numbers match up? What are your finding? Is there a process? Do you do this where you have more frequent check-ins throughout the process with an Audit Committee? We've not done that in the past, I'd be happy to, if that's what you want. I wouldn't anticipate anything being, if something was significant, let me put it this way, if something was significant, we would get in touch with you if we found errors, But I can clearly check in with any person or group, through the process, if

016you wanted to. I prefer to do that by phone, unless it's significant, I had one quick followup. You mentioned that this function was last reviewed in 2014, is there any way in which this year's proposal would materially differ from the 2014 proposal? Given the idea that there have been some errors in this function that presumably did not exist at that time? Yeah, this proposed work is substantially different than what we would do, if we were doing a standalone payroll audit. If we were doing a standard payroll audit, we would select one or two pay periods and trace the withholdings and the payments. We would not look at all 24 payrolls for the year, we would do a sample. Here because of the problems that you've had, the proposal is to look at every payroll for

017the two years. And again, you're seeing these as payroll problems, not as IRS or tax submission problems? Well, what we were asked is to put together a proposal, to look at the withholdings from payroll and remittance to third parties, Federal tax withholdings, and the district share of social security would fall into that. Into the remittance category, exactly. So we would be looking at all of those, through the period. Now I understand, obviously there was an error made at some point and that there's people looking at exactly what that entails and what's involved in that. I was not intending to spend a significant amount of time in that you've already got people looking at that. So we're gonna check the two years to see if anything unusual that you wouldn't expect comes out, both in federal

018and state withholdings and all other withholdings from employees, for payroll. But if we run into discrepancies or problems, substantiating something in a time period that you don't already know about, that would be a significant finding that we would talk to you about. Thank you. I just wanna clarify you've mentioned, so at one point that you're reviewing it in the aggregate versus individual, but then you said, you're making sure about each payroll. So I'm just not clear what that distinction is, where you're looking individually at items and where you're looking aggregate, and that seems wrong. So what we're not looking at individually is to see that the federal withholding of $300 from Janet Jones is the right amount. What we are looking at is that when you withheld $200,000 from employees, that that's the amount that

019was remitted to the government, that's the difference between individuals an aggregate. In terms of the scope of work, in an ordinary review of payroll, where we're looking at everything related to payroll, we look at a sample of transactions. So we would look at a sample of the monthly or payroll withholdings to see that that was remitted properly, here, we're gonna look at all of them for the two plus year period, so that's the difference. Yeah, that answers it, thank you. Okay. I just want to follow up on one of the piece. I feel I have a good understanding on the numbers part of this internal audit, checking the discrepancies. The piece, and I know we've talked about it a little bit, but you can just spend a little more time on this more the operational

020controls piece. So in the past, we'll get a report on other areas that say, here are 10, 20 recommendations. Is that what you're expecting to do in this report as well? From the operational piece? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we're going to understand what's supposed to happen in the accounting records with the amount of funds that are withheld as part of the payroll process, and how those are paid. And we're going to focus on the internal controls that would essentially limit hopefully to zero the likelihood of an error. What reconciliation can be done? When should it be done? How timely can it be done? My understanding is that the error that took place was identified in a bank reconciliation, and that's some mechanism to identify it. And I also understand that there may be new procedures

021in place to try and identify that type of discrepancy earlier on in the process. Those would be good things, so we're gonna understand if that's in fact, the case, and if we have another way of doing it or a different way of doing it, that might help ensure accuracy. And if there is an error to identify a timely response to the error. Can I just play back how I hear sort of a report will look? I just wanna make sure my understanding- No, that's fine. There'll be really two main components of report. One that says for this period, do all the numbers in aggregate match up for each of the periods? And the second piece is operationally, here's what the current state is, and here's what best practices might be and here's our recommendations. And

022does it, that's a question, does it include those recommendations to get from current to best practices? The answer is yes. During the work, I would anticipate we will have conversations, with the administration. We always, by the, provide our draft report to the administration to make sure that we're on the same page. They understand our findings, and we make sure they understand it and we discuss recommendations and potential improvements at that point. So, we would go through that process, but the report would, as you said, we will list the significant controls related to each of the areas of withholdings, and we will make recommendations if we have any for improvements. Thank you. You're welcome. I have a question if I'm correct, the period that we're talking about includes the period during our COVID situation in America

023and certainly in the school, which was an atypical period, it wasn't business as usual. So I'd like to understand how the complexity and variations in behavior in terms of just school open and closed and partially open and hybrid might relate to this? Unless I'm missing something that even if we have set protocols within the system, there were changes out of necessity that occurred. I mean, in terms of where people are and- Yeah, of course. So maybe if you could just elaborate just about that a little bit, I'd appreciate it. Sure. So we will make specific inquiries during our interviews with staff as to what happened during COVID. So if there is a controlled step that had to be modified in some way, we'll understand what that modification was and we'll identify what the documentation of

024that modification was. So the most common one is approvals. Approvals, for 50 years were done by signature, during COVID a lot of 'em were done by email, but we'll find out if that's what happened, we'll understand it and if that's in fact, the case, we'll review the documentation and see what happened. That's related to the processes and procedures, as you pointed out, the numbers should match. (indistinct) There could be some procedures that change as a result of working conditions. But the basics of running payroll periodically, accounting for it and remitting the funds that you withheld from the employees and remitting it to the proper people, that shouldn't have changed, and we should be able to identify that. Thank you. And the staff we've lined up, we've changed our schedule around on the assumption that we'll

025be doing this work. The staff that I'll be working on is one of our good staff, and he's worked at Scarsdale before. So we've got an experienced staff who knows his way around the district a little bit lined up and ready to go. And Rich will obviously work with him day-to-day. Any additional questions? So I heard a couple of potential changes, if the Board decides, or as we look at this, I know Jessica mentioned verifying 941s and quarterly filings, does the Board want to add that? I don't know, do we think it's 12 or so additional, I guess, reports that they'd have to, and remittances that they'd have to verify, I mean. Because how does that affect your timeline? Doing something like that? It shouldn't affect a timeline, it may affect the hours on it,

026we may have to put an extra day worth of work on it, but within the timeline, we can get the work done, but it's probably an extra day's work, assuming that it's accurate, we can trace the numbers. Again, if there's any apparent discrepancies that need to be reviewed with the district, this whole timeline, is gonna require real cooperation to figure out why there is apparent discrepancies in the numbers. Now I'm not saying we're gonna find those, but if there are, we're gonna need real activity and real turnaround so that we can understand and meet these deadlines. I think it's not only the numbers, not to minimize numbers by the way, but from what I can tell there's of variety of methods, and a variety of pieces of information that get transmitted in various ways that

027then facilitate the application of the funds by the IRS is the best way I can put it. So I think part of what we wanna know about whether it's 941s or the other is when you go through or to me anyway, is not only the dollars, but that the proper information is transmitted in the proper way and will be in the future and safeguards around that. That's where the 941 I think, is partly of interest. And I personally don't see any downside to having that verified. I don't know how anybody else feels. Other input? I mean, I personally think we would definitely need to do that in this engagement, but for me, I think this has been really helpful to take the words of the proposal and sort of understand exactly what we'll be getting

028back. So, I mean, for me, I would like to just consider this a little bit, maybe have us be able to discuss, make sure this is getting us what we are looking for. So yes, I say, yes, I think we need that, but I'm saying, I think I just wanna make sure there's not other things we might wanna include in this scope. Actually, to that point, can I ask you a question? Would recommendations potentially include what options exist, if any, for outsourcing to third parties, certain of these functions? I don't know whether K-12 public schools do that, but- I don't know any school district that we deal with as a firm and the firm deals with over 90 that outsources any part of the payroll process, both of the major financial systems that are used

029in New York State WinCap and Envision have robust systems that are integrated into the general ledger, if you will. And the payments to third parties, as a result of withholdings should be pretty straightforward. Thank you. I agree with the idea of potentially adding Jessica's recommendation to the scope. And I like Ron's point about perhaps considering if there's something else that we may want to add. It's just the fact that we came up with that at this point, I don't know how others feel about that. Well, so I think that I'm not sure what would come to me over the next few days or whatever, whatever time period, I am a little bit encouraged to move forward and add on in the future, if I think of anything, but given sort of our, to all the

030different timeframes that we know about, I wouldn't mind to have them get started sooner. I had one other question though, while I have the floor, you mentioned something about, you said you have a top rate person, which is great. I imagine you have many top rate people are made available for this, which I appreciate, and you mentioned his knowledge of the district. And I think generally speaking, that's, obviously I think a plus, but I'm just curious. Sometimes I've seen where they, even within a company, they rotate auditors to get a fresh eye on things. Now, at this point it's been since 2014, since payroll's been audited, so I'm guessing that it will be a fresh eye under any circumstance. But I just wanted to put that out there, 'cause I think there are some general,

031I just wanted hear what your thoughts were, to have other people hear your thoughts. Sure. Yeah, particularly, I mean his experience with Scarsdale is limited. He's been here a year or two, working on the engagement. So where I said, he's kind of familiar with it. He's been through your systems to some extent, he knows where the building is. But it's not something that he's looked at before and is likely to overlook something, particularly in an engagement of this type where we know the sensitivity and the timeliness and what we wanna have. We wanna be in a position to be able to tell the Audit Committee and the Board about what we found. So we're confident that his day-to-day work with Rich's oversight, is the right team to be looking at this. So it seems that

032there was consensus among the Board that we would want to include a verification of the 941s and quarterly filings. And I know Ron had also mentioned more frequent check-ins along the way with the Audit Committee, I guess, as you're progressing. I guess I ask the Board one, if you have any additional questions on this contract or for the auditors in general? And if not, oh, sorry. Sorry, I have one other question. Oh, sorry, did you? Go ahead and then I have one. I believe all these reports to any public school are public, so tell me if they're not. But in the last recent years, do you have any examples of similar reports you've done for other districts that may be facing similar issues that we could review and just understand, just make sure we're understanding

033exactly what we are getting from this engagement, that it's meeting what we're trying to achieve here. I'm not familiar with any engagement or any issues with any of our clients that match this closely. Okay, in terms of seeing what the report will look like, you can look at last year's, detail testing report that we did for Scarsdale. I mean, that's what it's gonna be, it's gonna have a background section, which in this case will lay out some of the key controls for each of the areas tested. It'll be an expanded background section, we will list the procedures that are in the engagement letter and we will report on our findings and then any recommendations, so it would be the same report as that. I guess, what might be helpful, and again, I normally wouldn't ask

034this, but I believe they're all public is if there's any examples of reports where you did payroll, and since we ha we haven't done it here since 2014, if you could, and it doesn't have to be, I know you may not know off the top of your head, but maybe you could send us a note with some districts that did payroll and we can go look up their public reports, just to see what those look like. If they've posted it. These reports are not required by law or regulation to be posted on district websites, some districts do, some don't. Okay, thank you. Yeah, well, let's see what we can find, I understand the request. Thank you. We would take the client's name off of it, understood. Thanks. And my final question is you offered us

035a range of the fees for the services. Is it possible given that we are asking for some additional things that you would check with the Audit Committee here, or the Board or the officers of the Board before proceeding above that cap? Yes, we've in 12 years, 50 engagements a year, we've never once charged a client more than the amount that's in the engagement letter. Okay, but this is also a case where we're asking you this circumstance (indistinct)- Absolutely, I'll be glad to contact somebody to let you know that we're running into time issues and is it okay to spend an extra two, three days on your engagement? Sure. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. No procedurally like what were we thinking beyond looking at it tonight? So I was just about to ask the question. So

036then the Board needs to determine if we would like to get going now and move this contract to a proposed action item under eight action items, or if we would hold this and move it as a discussion and put it forward as a potential action item for our May 9th meeting in two weeks, that would also allow the public to provide comment. So I'd like to know the Board's thoughts on that. I mean, I'd like to move it forward tonight, taking into consideration Ron's comments, because I think we're quickly gonna end up potentially in a timing situation. And I'm familiar with the reports from the past couple of years, I do think as a slight aside that, and I understand why the process has been in terms of the internal audit, picking one outta 12,

037et cetera, and how that's done. I think that's something that we should be also looking at maybe separately to try and get a little bit more comprehensive, feel for the district on a year-to-year basis, or at least on a more rigorous schedule, let's put it that way. But I would like to at least give them the authority to get started tonight and then if consequently we, or subsequently we find other things that we're interested in having them look into one way or another, that we could then address it in two weeks or even four weeks or whenever. I don't know, I'm not making it official motion now, I think I have to put it- Yeah, no, that's okay, though I'm curious to know other thoughts. I very much feel a sense of urgency to do

038an internal audit, but I also feel the need to make sure we fully understand what we are asking you to do, and that is achieving what we are hoping to achieve so that all expectations are met. Given the fact that it not starting till sometime in May, I don't know if you had a sense whether it was early May, mid May or late May. I think we have some time to get some examples, and perhaps have discussion amongst this board, whether it's at May 9th or an earlier time. The other piece that I think about is just even here, throughout this brief and limited discussion, based on Jessica's question, we determine, well, we need to add these forms. I would like to make sure there's not anything else that we might want to add to

039the scope before we move forward and make sure that we're doing this inappropriate way. So I would not be in favor of tonight moving forward, and the other piece is that, that is the primary one for me. But the other piece is that this will give the opportunity for our community to share their views on this. We have a lot of experts in many fields in this community and just be very interested to their feedback on this work. So can I just ask, we have the source right here, so if we delayed and did make a decision tonight, it went until decided on May 9th, would that still be sufficient time for you to complete the project by the end of June? Yeah, yeah, we will schedule our staff and our work, assuming that you're

040going to approve this on May 9th and we'll get started on or about May 10th, and that's when we're gonna get started. Okay, then I don't see any reason to rush through, especially if we can have a better, even a more robust proposal if we have any other things by May 9th. Other thoughts? Yeah, I had one question Karen for you, that is a procedural question, which I am curious about. Would it be possible if we wanted to move with speed, but also did not feel prepared to act on this tonight? Is this something that we could take action on at the special meeting or is that agenda too limited? We have to notice it, so that's something we could decide also to call special meeting next week to determine this. Okay, but it would

041not be possible to get it on the table for this week's special meeting. Nothing's been announced yet. Yeah, sorry, or for any, it is too short notice to get a meeting for this. Well, that depends on the Board and how much time, I would want feedback from the Board on that. I think I feel a sense of urgency to move forward, but I see the value in being thoughtful before we take action. So I would be in favor of delaying action on this to no later than May 9th. If we have a meeting before then, that gives the public opportunity to give us their feedback right now, that's out there. so then I would be comfortable taking action earlier than that. So I guess I'm curious to know, would you be able to provide what

042Mr. Schulhof is looking for by sometime next week, if we were to call a special meeting to the Audit Committee to address this? I think what he's asked for is a copy of one of our internal audit reports on payroll. Yeah. Yeah, but of course we can, sure. Okay. With the understanding that the work that you are having performed is a very small subset of that report. Got it, okay. And this work is going to focus on very specific processes and procedures. And as I said, I will document them in the background of the report that might not be documented in other reports that were done for routine purposes. Okay. I think what you'll find is all of our detailed reports followed the same. We have the scope of work and then underneath, within our

043findings under each one of those procedures and processes, both interviews and meetings, talking about internal controls procedures, as well as the specific testing, we'll have results in the finding section under each of those that'll follow. That's kinda our, for detail testing. Thank you. So then I propose then that we, I haven't heard from everybody, but I propose that we do hold this and look to hold a special meeting next week, or at the latest, bring this to our meeting on the ninth. And in the meantime, look at the copy that you will provide and hear from the community and make sure there are no other questions that we have on this contract, this proposal. Is there a consensus? Can I see everybody, everybody agree with that? Okay, thank you so much for your time and

044for explaining and answering our many questions, we really appreciate it. Glad to help. Thank you. Goodnight Thank you. So can I have a motion then to adjourn this meeting of the Audit Committee and to move into our business meeting education report? So moved. Second. Second, all in favor. Aye. All right, so hi, good evening. I call this meeting to order and I note that all board members are present in addition to Dr. Hagerman and his cabinet. I would first like to start this evening by providing an update on the investigation of the IRS matter. Last Monday, April 18th, the Board met an executive session with counsel to discuss the need for an investigation of the IRS matter before us and potential investigator services. We reviewed three recommendations from counsel and two additional options put forward

045by board members. the Board met with Attorney Anthony Brock in executive session on Wednesday, April 20th, and determined that Mr. Brock is the most appropriate individual to lead an investigation that focuses on timeline and communication. And he began his investigation today, April 25th. His contract is posted on the district website under IRS matters, which is this page is located both on the Board's homepage and also on the district's homepage under site shortcuts. We expect that Mr. Brock's investigation will assist us in determining appropriate next steps. While the exact timeline of the investigation is not certain, we do expect that Mr. Brock's work will be done thoroughly and expeditiously. And now I would like to turn and give an update on the tax payments, penalties and lien. Our tax council has provided the following update on

046the status of the Q4 2020 matter. First, the appeals officer confirmed that the Q4 2020 tax payment of $843,558 has been posted to the district's account and has been properly applied to the outstanding Q4 2020 tax. Therefore, as of April 13th, 2022, the outstanding balance of Q4 2020 is a total of $460,609,000 comprising a failure to deposit penalty in the amount of 410,178,000 plus interest, a failure to pay penalty in the amount of $38,138 plus interest and a lien fee of $80 plus interest. As instructed by the appeals officer, the district has made a payment in the amount of $85 representing the lien fee plus interest. Tax counsel has been told by the appeals officer that the appeals officer is in the process of drafting a final penalty abatement recommendation, for the manager to approve

047and sign. This process takes approximately two to three weeks. If and when the final penalty amount recommendation is approved, the appeals officer should instruct that penalties and the related interest be adjusted to zero. This process takes approximately another two to three weeks. Once the district's account for Q4 2020 is fully paid, meaning the tax is paid, the lien fee plus interest is paid, the penalties are abated and the interest is adjusted to zero. The district should receive a notice from the IRS stating that the balance of the district's account for Q4 2020 is zero. The appeals officer has advised that the lien should then self-release 30 days after the balance of the district's account for Q4 2020 is zero. The district should receive a notice from the IRS when the lien has self-released. After receiving

048this notice, the district anticipates pursuing the additional steps of having the lien fully withdrawn from all records, by submitting a petition to the appeals officer who has agreed to assist in submitting the petition to the Advisory Office. After the Advisory Office considers and hopefully grants the district's request for lien withdrawal, the appeals officers should issue a written decision, which will comprise only a very brief summary of what occurred over the course of this case, as well as the final disposition of the matter. The appeals officer predicted that the decision will be issued no later than mid July. Now, I would also like to inform the community about an additional IRS notice received by the district, the Board and the district's tax council have recently been made aware by the district administration of another notice received

049for a similar issue to the Q2 2021 issue. On April 4th, 2022, the district administration received a notice CP 207 dated March 28th, 2022 for Q3 2021. Specifically this notice alleged that like in Q2 2021, the district failed to submit a properly completed schedule B with its Q3 2021 form 941. However, we note that unlike the Q2 2021 issue, this Q3 2021 notice is only a request for more information, not a penalty. The district's administration submitted a response to this notice on the same day that it was received. Both the Board and the district's tax attorneys were made of both the notice and the response to the notice after the response had been submitted by the district administration. The district's tax attorneys have reached out to the revenue officer with which they have been working

050on the Q2 2021 issue to also discuss the Q3 2021 issue, but have not yet received a response. The district's tax attorneys will continue to provide updates to the Board on both the Q2 2021 and the Q3 2021 matters as they arise. And now, I will address the work that's being done on the process for an internal audit, enhancement to internal controls and accounting. Earlier this evening, or just before this meeting, the Audit Committee composed of the seven members of this board met with our internal auditor, Cullen and Danowski, LLP to discuss a proposal for an internal audit. As stated at our April 4th board meeting, the Board has called for an audit of the district's payroll tax processes, including a review of internal controls. The services proposed to be provided by our internal auditor

051is a potential option as we determine how best to conduct a review of internal controls. Regarding the accountant treatment of this issue, district administration has advised the Board that the district's external auditors EFPR Group have stated that the matter is being accounted for correctly. the Board is scheduling a meeting with the district's external auditor to discuss this matter as part of the Board's oversight responsibilities. The Board will continue to discuss this matter to determine the appropriate next steps. In addition, the district is working on an internal controls report, which outlines enhanced steps that are being taken such as additional employee verification of submissions, or will be taken to prevent the circumstances that gave rise to the IRS matter. And I have some concluding remarks. The events of the past weeks have been very difficult for

052all of us, but I want to assure the community that the Board is committed to investigating the circumstances of the IRS matter, reviewing and improving controls to limit the chance of similar issues in the future, providing oversight, and also providing as much transparency as we can within legal constraints. We thank you for your patience and for sending your feedback and questions, which we will answer as we can. the Board has created a page on the website entitled IRS matters, which can be found on the Board's homepage and also on the district's homepage under site shortcuts. Members of the Board and Assistant Superintendent for Business and Facilities, Mr. Mattey, have begun attending PTA, PTC and SNAP meetings to review budget, highlights, and answer any questions. Please also reach out to us via email with any questions

053you may have. The budget vote is set for May 17th. Members of the Board will also attend the Board Coffee scheduled for this Wednesday, April 26th, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m in this room, 170. I also, as I close, I do want to take a moment to recognize our faculty and staff in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, next week, I would like to acknowledge on behalf of the Board, the wonderful work that they do and thank them for the dedication to our students and our schools. Thanks so much, Dr. Hagerman. Thank you. Good evening, and welcome, we appreciate everybody being here tonight, joining us to learn more about the ongoing work of the district. Tonight, we have a pretty full audience and in part that's because we have two education reports. And so I'd like

054to echo Karen sentiments about national teacher appreciation. Not only are these folks in the classroom everyday, doing the good work, but also making themselves available to provide this kind of information and reporting to the Board of education as well. So the first of the two is gonna be focused on a review of Advanced Topics or AT courses, as we know 'em at the High School, which resulted from a Tri-State Consortium consultancy visit recently. Edgar will be joined by other district administrators to share this new analysis. The second report is entitled Technology and Innovation With a Focus on the New Technology Plan presented by Jerry Crisci, and he'll have a host of faculty who'll help support this presentation as well to talk about how this work is being implemented across the district. We welcome all of

055our presenters tonight and appreciate all the work that you've done to prepare for these two reports. Although you really can't see most of the legs of the Board members, you will note that some of them are wearing denim tonight. This was by a specific request. This is in recognition of course, of Denim Day, which is this Wednesday, April 27th. Wearing jeans in recognition of this day is a visible means of protest against the misconceptions and victim blaming that often surround sexual assault. As the longest running sexual violence prevention education campaign in history, Denim Day asks community members, elected officials, businesses, and students to make a social statement with their fashion by wearing jeans on this day, as a visible means of protest, again against the misperceptions that surround sexual violence. We ask everyone to consider

056also wearing denim on Wednesday at school this week to show your solidarity and support of this important issue. On another note, I'd also like to acknowledge some of the exciting events and notable accomplishments around the district over the last couple of weeks by our students. First, the Scarsdale Wind Ensemble performed at Carnegie Hall on April 19th as part of the 2022 New York International Music Festival. This festival celebrates high school and university ensembles from around the country and globe. Invitations are extended to just six ensembles following a very rigorous audition process. This is not the first time the wind ensemble has been selected for this great honor, but it will be the last time they'll perform under the direction of Dr. Noble, who'll be leaving the district at the end of the year, so a

057very special time. The All District Jazz Band, which is comprised of students, grades four to six concert was conducted by Dr. Jessica Slotwinski Thursday at the Middle School, simultaneously the All-District String Orchestra Concert was conducted by Amedee Williams. This was performed Thursday, also, at Heathcote Elementary School. Both concerts featured students in grades four through six, and I wanted to recognize and congratulate all of these folks, as well as the conductors for these outstanding performances. the Middle School also had some good news and that the Middle School Science Olympiad competed in the New York State Championships earlier this month and became the New York State Champions. As a result, they will represent New York in the national tournament hosted virtually by Caltech on May 14th through 16th. Our students have worked extremely hard on this, and

058they are the first team from the Lower Hudson Region to make it to this national tournament. We congratulate all of our students on this truly impressive win, and we thank their coaches for all the hard work they did to make this happen. Finally, Scarsdale High School students also performed well at the Regeneron-Westchester Science and Engineering Fair competing among 560 projects from 44 different high schools in both Westchester and Putnam counties. 15 Scarsdale students were honored with awards ranging in topic from psychological research to expanding knowledge and science, to biomedical science research. Scarsdale students also received two honorable mentions in animal science and behavioral and social sciences. Our students continue to impress both locally and regionally with their extensive research and analytical skills. And finally, just a quick reminder about tomorrow, many of you have likely

059noticed that Dean Field is up and running and I wanted to mention that we will be having an official ribbon cutting ceremony for the field tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. to officially commemorate the extensive and much needed renovation that happened over the last years. With that, I'll turn it back to Karen. Yes, thank you for letting us know about all the exciting events and achievements and on behalf of the Board, I too extend our congratulations to our students. So at this time I will ask our board members if they have any reports. Okay, Amber. Thanks Karen. Last week on April 21st, Jim Dugan, Karen Ceske and I, attended the first Board Coffee of the year. The event was held outside on a chilly afternoon at the High School and was attended by two members of

060the press, eight current parents, and one future parent. Topics ranged from technology to the IRS matter, and we appreciate all those in the community that took the time to engage with the Board. On Friday, April 22nd, Stuart Mattey and I attended the Quaker Ridge PTA meeting to discuss the budget with the Quaker Ridge parent community. Thank you to the Quaker Ridge PTA for providing the Board with the opportunity to present the budget and answer questions from PTA members. I mean, Bob, go ahead. Sure. One of the responsibilities of board members is to observe teacher tenure and probationary reviews, which are internal discussions between Dr. Patrick, Dr. McIntosh, the principal of the school of the teacher, and often other members of the mentoring team, such as an AP or subject matter chairperson. Over the past two

061weeks, I attended four such meetings, my role is only to observe and not comment. I suppose I'm literally a fly on the wall. I was left with a number of reactions that I wanted to share with everybody in terms of this opportunity I had. The first is how thorough and detailed the discussions are and how rich in teacher information. The range of comments are from subject matter knowledge to teaching styles and student input to parent feedback, which is now part of the process. The takeaway for me was that it is not luck that the teachers in Scarsdale stay in their jobs for a long time, or that families flock to Scarsdale for the quality of the education our children receive. It is literally by design that teachers are nurtured, continually and serve as continuous learners

062themselves. The second takeaway was that a challenging and what a challenging and demanding role the principals and assistant principals have. They are responsible for observing, critiquing and helping all teachers hone their teaching and interpersonal skills, when you include Dr. McIntosh, Dr. Patrick in the mix that highlights the tremendous range of responsibilities our leadership team has. And my third and last takeaway was how unfortunate it is that the community cannot observe such a discussion or observe our teacher mentors in action. I left inspired by the quality of the discussion, the amount of time devoted to help our newer teachers achieve success and deliver an excellent educational experience for all students, regardless of their learning differences or personal challenges. To say our kids are in good hands is an understatement. We can all rest assured that the

063teachers that are being hired are simply amazing and worthy of all the accolades they receive. Thank you. I just wanna follow on Bob's comments. I have very little to add, but I too have separately attended for such reviews in the past two weeks and am consistently blown away, not only by the work of teachers and administrators, but also by the diversity of work being produced across the spectrum by our students, from the youngest learners to those who are seniors in high school. And the caliber of work that is shown is quite impressive and teachers' abilities to gear the work directly toward the students at that particular grade level, and really to reach each student where that student is, is quite impressive. It's truly an honor to be able to sit in on those meetings as

064a fly on the wall and there are many very difficult, very public parts of board service, but that opportunity is one that is truly special. And I appreciate the administrators for being so open and encouraging board members to join and really take those meetings on with a lot of enthusiasm. I have a few updates tonight. The first is on Friday, April 22nd, I had the pleasure of attending the Middle School and high school PTA multicultural lunch. It was held outside this year at the 10th in the village. This event is typically held during Thanksgiving, but it was pushed back into the spring. We had a beautiful day and it was just a fantastic turnout of parents, as well as administrators, the principals of the High School and the Middle School, the assistant principals were there,

065a number of faculty members were there parents with kids of all ages, and it was just a, both a wonderful event to be at, and just another example of the great partnership between the PTA and the district on putting community building events together. And also a thank you to the PTA sustainability committees for making it a zero waste event, even with hundreds of people, there was no trash at the end of the event, it was all composted or recycled. I had also the pleasure of attending the Heathcote PTA executive meeting, as Amber mentioned to present the budget last week, and thank you for having us and allowing us to present the budget and answer any questions. A brief update from the Safe Coalition first, a thank you to the safe coalition and all the community

066partners that organized the community book read recently with the book, "Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence" by Anita Hill. A recording of that event, with Ms. Hill's available on the Scarsdale family counseling services website. A couple updates from the drug and alcohol task force, the DATF, their next node to prevent speaker series is tomorrow, April 26th at 7:00 p.m. via Zoom. Steven Hill will present and this is an event open to both teens and adults. And lastly, one more from the DATF, April 30th is Prescription Drug Disposal Day on April 30th from 10:00 a.m to 2:00 p.m. at the village hall parking lot, there is a drive through disposal for any prescription drugs. If you cannot make it then, there is always a prescription drug disposal box at the police headquarters on Tompkins

067Road. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you all very much for those reports. Now we'll move to item three, the personnel report, Dr. Patrick. Thank you very much. Tonight, we're a little bit later on in the consent agenda among other actions. You'll see the recommended appointments of three individuals, and I'm delighted to call attention to that at this moment. First, and I believe she's in the audience, we're delighted to welcome Lauren Weiss Holtz as the new librarian serving at Fox Meadow, starting in September. So welcome Lauren. (audience clapping) And Lauren, of course, succeeds Jan Shore, who's retiring and will celebrate a little bit later on as we get toward June. Second as I mentioned in our last board meeting, we have reached the conclusion of our searches in the area of technology leadership two positions.

068And as I had mentioned last time, we're delighted, absolutely delighted to welcome our own Mr. William Yang, to the position of K-12 Coordinator of Digital Learning and Literacy. (audience clapping) So congratulations and welcome. And our third person tonight, and I don't believe she was able to make it so we will get her here at a subsequent meeting. But Jeannie Crowley is our recommended candidate for the Director of Technology and Innovation here in Scarsdale. And she most recently has served as Director of Technology at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. So we are delighted to welcome Jeannie as well. How about a round of applause, even. (audience clapping) So very excited, so thank you. Thank you Drew very much. So now we'll move to item four, hearing from those present. At this time, the members of the

069public are cordially invited to speak on district-related items or other non-personnel-related matters during the two separate public comment periods we'll have this evening. 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, we ask that you mute your livestream voice, turn on your camera, and then unmute yourself. Speakers are asked to conclude their remarks within four minutes and will be given a verbal cue with the three minute mark. If at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the Board at [email protected]. Again, the public comment period is reserved for comments only, the Board will not engage in dialogue, the Board also reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion

070either during response to public comment or at a later time and place. And there will be a response to public comment after the first and second public comment periods this evening. Thank you, my name is Leah Dembitzer, 354 Meranac Road, President of the Scarsdale Middle School PTA. I too would like to thank the faculty and staff in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week at the Middle School for all of their work and support everyday for our children. I would also like to announce on behalf of the Programming Committee for PTC, Scarsdale High School, Scarsdale Middle School, and the five elementaries that on Wednesday evening, April 27th, this week, we have Reverend Dr. Brian Marks speaking. His speech is entitled the Hidden Biases of Good People, the Next Step is at 7:30, following a 7:15 PT Council

071Business Meeting. Thank you very much, Leah. Hi, my name is Robert Cox, I actually live in New Rochelle at 10 LeCount Place. I'm a reporter and I wanted to come here because I had made a freedom of information request back on April 8th, asking for information regarding the IRS matters, I guess, is what you're calling it. And I didn't hear back, so on the 21st I filed an appeal to what amounts to a constructive denial of my request. I got an email from Dr. Hagerman saying that they didn't see my request, then I got a subsequent email that they had actually got my request on April 8th. There was some reference to Google and spam filters, but not really material to the fact that I filed a request on April 8th. And I got a

072response basically treating it as if the response had come on time from April 8th when it hadn't, I had already filed an appeal. So the way it works in New York State, for those of who don't know, once the appeals clock is ticking, we're on the appeals clock, which is 10 days from filing the appeal. So I sent that back as a response, I didn't get a response for any of that last week, and that's why I'm here because I'm not clear what exactly the district is intending to do. But I made a request for all FOIL requests made about the IRS matter since March 25th and all emails about the IRS matter between the administration and the Board. I think the whole point of the investigation is there aren't a whole lot of emails

073that actually were gonna fit that description, so I didn't see any real good reason for any kind of delays. And while I'm here, I would just mention something else, which is, I don't know why you have this policy about that you're gonna try to charge me for machine work, but my understanding of the law is you can't charge me for computers, converting files from one type to another. And I don't understand the idea about a down payment, I've made probably, I don't know, several thousand FOIL requests and FOIL requests, I've never been asked to make a down payment in order for somebody to begin processing the work. So I found your whole process a bit confusing. I would just ask that whatever's going on with my FOIL request, if somebody could gimme a clear answer

074tomorrow, I'd appreciate that, 'cause I do wanna do my own investigation into what happened with the IRS matter. I appreciate that you're publishing stuff and I'll go look at that link, but I just found the whole thing a bit confusing. Thanks. Thank you Mr. Cox. Anyone else from the audience wish to speak? Now we will turn to our remote participants. We have two people with their hands raised. (indistinct) Yeah, here she is, okay. Hi, are you able to hear me? Yes. Yes we are. Yes. Great, thank you so much. Good evening, I'm Kendal Rodrigez, Fox Meadow Road. It's been one month, March 25th, 2022, since the current school board announced that the Board reportedly only found out about the payroll errors and the IRS lien on Scarsdale school property. Since that date, unfortunately not one

075of my single, over 40 questions primarily about budgetary recording practices or accounting has been answered. And to my knowledge, you're also not answering other residents questions. And those parents who took time from their afternoon schedule last week to attend a BOE coffee, not only did they not have their questions answered, some of them were snapped at, by a member of the Board who recently referred to us as parents as adversaries. It's taken over three weeks to hire an investigator and also three weeks to propose hiring the same internal auditor to look at payroll. Your documents in your own BOE library show that there are aspects of payroll that were looked at by Cullen & Danowski in 2017, not 2014. How often has Cullen & Danowski worked with the administration? I urge you as good as

076they sounded and yes, they sounded very professional this evening, they are not independent precisely because they have worked with the administration and that came out this evening, even more than it had already come out in your own documents. So the question and my question still remain, what does the budget consist of presently? What are the exact cash outflows due to payments to the IRS? What are the payables due in penalties and what are the receivables? And if you are claiming that the IRS is gonna give you money back, where are the documents to support this? Hoping that money is coming back is not a strategy, and if ERP, your external auditor, says that the accounting is correct, then where are the records showing that opinion and showing that explanation? How will the IRS matter impact

077the district's ability to provide educational mental health and social development resources to our students? That's really what this all boils down to for me. At our schools, teachers work tirelessly to teach our kids to be analytical and to be quantitative. And here you are asking us to accept this budget and to accept your explanations on faith. Frankly, there's less mystery in the Holy Trinity than what you are asking us to believe. The auditor has worked with the administration, it cannot be independent. I urge you to treat us taxpayers and parents with the respect that we deserve. Please stop ignoring us and please answer our questions, especially about accounting and about budgetary practices. In a town like Scarsdale, where professionals in law and in finance are a dime a dozen, it's very troubling that the one

078contract for Anthony Brock is so redacted that we all have to try to guess what it's about. I'm counting on my fellow Scarsdale friends and neighbors to continue asking about everything else related to the IRS matter. Who, what, when, where and why? Thank you and good evening. Thank you, Myra. I'm seeing that there's two attendees, but I can only see it's like somebody's hidden. (indistinct) Oh, here it comes. Hi Bob, you've been promoted to the panelist, you can begin speaking, Bob, we can see you as a panelist, we can't see you, please turn your camera on, you can begin speaking. (indistinct) Wanna skip him? No, he's the only one with his hand out. So I'm gonna send him a message in the chat. Here he comes. Bob, you've been promoted, could you please speak? It's

079not showing that he's muted. Bob, could you begin speaking, please, turn on your camera. Thank you. May be he's not there. It looks like I'm looking at the logs and it looks like he has logged in about 20, I mean, logged off and logged back on. I have a suspicion, he's traveling based on what I'm seeing. So I don't think this is on our end, I'm not sure how we can help. Did he come back? One more time. Wonder if he's traveling. I keep hitting loud to talk and that sort of seems to work, but... Hello, can you hear me? Oh, yes, yes. Okay, great. I'm sorry, I'm at the airport in Doha, Qatar. I wanted to... I'm Bob (indistinct) 17 Blackbird Lane. Please, put your camera on, can you please- I wanna argue against,

080yeah, sure. I can't do that here since I'm in Qatar and connection is bad, that's okay? Yes, I will allow you to speak. Can you hear me still? Yes. We can still hear you. Yes. Okay, so I strongly object to hiring this Cullen firm to do the audit of the internal procedures since they missed the boat entirely during the relevant period. Why would you hire the same people to do an investigation of what went wrong since they were responsible for overseeing and looking out. Have you lost your signal again? Ask him to send us his, yeah. The Board has asked you to email your comment, please, to them, you can't seem to have a consistent signal for you, it must be to you being at the airport. Thank you. Okay, any additional hands raised? Okay,

081so at this time, then I will close the hearing from hearing from those present. So I just noticed that this agenda does not have a response to public comment. Am I looking at the wrong agenda? (indistinct) Okay, I'm sorry, I must have printed out that before. Okay, so now we will turn to item five, response to public comment. Mr. Cox, I guess we will ask our, is it our attorneys who will follow up with you. And Myra, just again, many of the matters you've raised involve consultation or advice from counsel or are under investigation, please know we are working to answer your questions and we do thank you for your patience. And again, Mr. Berg, if you could please email the Board, your comment from this evening. Any other followup? Okay, so now we will

082move to the consent agenda. Item six, the preamble, the Board may conduct some of its business using a consent agenda in an effort to achieve greater efficiency at board meetings, the consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the Board of Education into a single motion. Items are selected for the consent agenda, when officers of the Board and the superintendent believe there's no controversy regarding them. And any member of the Board who fills an item requires discussion prior to action may remove that item from the consent agenda. Would any board members like to do that? Okay, so then we will move to the consent agenda, and that is Jessica. Thank you, Karen. Tonight's consent agenda has nine items on it, perhaps most notable among them are the personnel issues that Dr. Patrick flagged earlier

083in the meeting. And we are going to take a resolution, be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby accepts the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign the following instructional personnel as well as, what is that? I apologize, that is not... As well as the other items included in this consent agenda. I'm gonna put forward a motion to accept the consent agenda as submitted with the nine items listed in the agenda. So moved. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor. So I second it. You second it, all in favor. Aye. Okay, so the consent agenda passes and then I'd like to take this minute to congratulate William Yang and Jeannie Crawley and Lauren Weiss Holtz and welcome you. And we're very excited to work with you. Congratulations. (audience clapping) So now we will move

084on to information and discussion items in our education report. And the first report up is the Tri-State's review of Advanced Topics. And I believe Edgar, you're leading us on this? Thank you very much. Thank you all for the opportunity to describe the process, discoveries and outcomes of our in-depth evaluation of our model of Advanced Topics commonly referred to as AT. I wanna thank my co-presenters Chris Welsh and Ken Bonamo, for their leadership, flexibility, tremendous effort and thoughtfulness throughout the process. We have provided written copies of the Tri-State report for those presented today, right at the table over there. For those of you not physically present, the full report will be available online and honoree will link it directly after our presentation. So can I interrupt you for a second? Sure. Is it possible for the

085Board to have a paper copy or you see the... Sure. Michelle, would you mind? I dunno if all board members want that, but I'm a paper, okay. (Edgar laughing) (indistinct) It's not linked, it won't be linked until last action. (indistinct) Thank you honoree. Okay, thank you, sorry. Okay, no worries. Okay, we'll start with some history. Three years ago, we began to prepare for a review of the Advanced Topics Program. The AT Program at the time was 12 years old and we were going through some notable changes. Specifically we were introducing new courses that did not have analogs in the Advanced Placement Program, and we were seeing many of the faculty members who were part of the creation of the AT Program retire and welcoming newer members of the faculty beginning to teach AT courses for

086the first time. At the beginning of this endeavor, we knew that we needed to solicit feedback on the AT Program from students, alumni, teachers, and parents, to see what members of our community thought of the program and their experience in the program. We needed to reaffirm our commitment to the AT Program and address any shortcomings, a rigorous review might find. A comprehensive review would allow us to identify areas of inquiry and aspirations to grow the program and make it better. And if the outcome reaffirmed the commitment, we have as a school to the program, it could also provide a new sense of ownership to the next generation of teachers who were entrusted with maintaining this flagship program. We began in 2019 by adding questions to the periodic survey alumni that the district conducts of three

087graduating classes every few years. As we began to review the answers to these questions that were specific to the AT Program and designed the program review, we closed in March, 2020, when we were able to return to this endeavor, we brought in the Tri-State Consortium, the Tri-State Consortium works as a focused auditing cooperative made up of trained members, teachers, specialists, administrators of similar high performing school districts in the Tri-State Region. The team curated for our visit was made up of educators and leaders with a deep understanding of advanced curricula across the content areas. Their charge was to examine the strengths of the AT Program and identify areas for growth and inquiry. The Tri-State consultancy protocol required us to select essential questions. Working with the leaders of Tri-State and our high school teacher leadership, we developed

088and posed the following questions to the team. To what extent are there clear and consistent expectations for success in AT courses? To what extent do our AT courses promote critical thinking, creativity and deep learning? And to what extent is our AT approach preparing our students for post-secondary education? Now, I would like to invite Chris Welsh to take it from here, to discuss the process and begin to talk to you a little bit about their feedback. Thanks, Edgar. The protocol of a Tri-State consultancy also asked the host school to identify performance indicators in the Tri-State Consortium model of systemic performance. The three indicators we selected were shared vision, performance-based assessment and curriculum and instruction. The visitors interviewed focus groups of students, alumni, teachers, administrators, parents, and Central Office administrators and Board of Education members to learn

089from them, with their experiences, with the program, according to their different roles in our school. The visiting team also visited AT classrooms and reviewed student work to answer our questions under the lens of these three performance indicators. Finally, the visitors presented their findings and questions to members of the faculty and asked us clarifying questions and gave us preliminary feedback before preparing a final written report, which we received late last month. Tonight, we'll summarize the 18-page report into commendations, recommendations and areas for inquiry that they identified for us. First, I'm happy to report that the alumni survey revealed that students feel that AT courses prepared them well for college introductory courses. Specifically 53% of our alumni said that AT courses provided excellent preparation, and 30% said that their experience was good for a combined total of

090an 83% positive rating. When asked how they perceived their preparation for college compared to their college classmates who had taken AP courses, Advanced Placement courses, 40% said they were better prepared, and 46% said that they were prepared about the same. These data points show strong support for the program among our graduates. The visitors also complimented us for not only introducing new courses to the AT Program that do not have an AP analog, but also for having a process for reviewing and developing these courses at the department level, and then having them approved by the entire high school cabinet as a gateway to offering them and adding them to our AT offerings. Our visitors review of student work and classroom activities show that our AT courses are in fact, promoting critical and creative thought and deep

091learning. And they also found that by and large, the courses promote student agency, independent learning, and self-advocacy. Our Tri-State colleagues found the curriculum to be rigorous and compelling in the AT courses they visited, and in the student work and teacher documents they reviewed. In interviews, teachers spoke of the importance of teaching students the habits of mind of each discipline, something the visiting colleagues found to be of paramount importance for college preparation. Students and teachers in interviews, praise the flexibility of AT courses to explore current events and topics of shared interest of students and teachers. And this flexibility of course, was an original motivation of course, behind creating the AT Program in the first place. These last three commendations are also data points that we can be proud of. In the time since 2007, when the

092AT Program was initiated, our college acceptances have remained in line with historical trends. Indeed, overall participation in our AT courses has increased to the point that now almost three quarters, 75% of the seniors have taken at least one AT course, by the time they graduate. Overall, the visiting team reported that they found broad support and enthusiasm for the AT Program among all constituent groups, and that is of course, a testament to the good work that teachers do in planning these courses, as well as teaching outstanding lessons and devising challenging and rigorous assessments. Ken. Thank you, Chris. The visiting team also made several recommendations and impressions for our consideration As we take this program into the future. While we mentioned that they praised a review process for new courses, they recommended that we have, as a

093matter of course, a triennial curriculum review of all AT courses, ideally in partnership with the university professor, for each course, to ensure that our college level courses are in line with what students are experiencing in introductory courses in college. Our visiting friends also recommended that we publish a Q&A document or an FAQ to help students and parents who are new to the school and perhaps new to the district, better understand the motivation and philosophy behind Advanced Topics. The visiting team also noted that the relationship with the AP program is still a bifurcated one, and that while our curriculum is completely independent, we do have a caveat enshrined in the original Board of Education resolution that requires us to prepare students for AP exams. The visitors recommended that we explore the feasibility of making a complete

094break with AP exams in order to foster a greater degree of independence and creativity and in the design of Advanced Topics courses. Of course, we know that the political implications of these are significant, but I am grateful that they raised the question for us for further inquiry. Our visiting friends also recommended that we develop a new vision statement for the Advanced Topics program that is reflective of developments in education and in pedagogy over the past 15 years, for example, including global interconnections, student voice and choice and student agency, along with the original themes of critical and creative thinking and deep learning and incorporating these more recent trends into a refreshed philosophical statement. Our visiting colleagues recommended that we have a clear definition of success in AT courses and to review student work to determine what

095standard students are meeting in these courses. They also asked us to look at the entrance criteria we have for AT courses to determine if those criteria are predictive of success in these courses and are serving as appropriate tools for us to determine which students should be placed in AT courses. Finally, our visitors recommended that we do some more work with performance-based assessment and try to increase opportunities students have to engage in these assessment opportunities. This is directly linked with the continued role that AP exams play and I believe that these two recommendations are connected. They also asked us to develop more interdisciplinary opportunities within the AT Program. Our visitors also recommended that we consider additional AT course offerings, for example, in English, having different areas of specialization for students to select from. We are seeing

096additional courses with AT linear algebra in mathematics, and there might be room in science to consider additional courses as well. Finally, our visitors challenged us to examine and be specific about the pedagogical shifts that have happened and may well happen in the future that are necessary to help students meet the expectations of these courses. The extension of this recommendation is that if we can be clear about the nature of what it means to teach and learn in an AT course, we might think about how we can provide teaching and learning opportunities along the lines of AT, specific pedagogical practices in lower courses in earlier grades to better prepare students for AT coursework that they will encounter in the future. Of course, this is a lot to digest and there's a lot of work before us

097if we are to address some of these questions meaningfully. To begin several of the teachers who met in the focus groups with the visitors, were so pleased to have the time together to talk about what they do across the different disciplines in AT courses. So we are going to sponsor a summer curriculum day for AT teachers across the departments to have those conversations, to think about opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, and also to review the report that you have before you more fully to prioritize areas of inquiry that they think we should explore to enhance the program even further. Some of the other takeaways that I'd like us to focus on in the school would be to create a Q&A document as they mentioned for the AT Program, and we'll do some work on that over

098the next few months. We should also continue to look at performance-based assessments in AT, that is always an annual goal of the summer curriculum days. Finally, as I mentioned, the report does ask us to look at the role of AP exams and whether the mastery transcripts, for example, will allow us to better communicate student outcomes. We are going through a time of great change in college admissions, where many schools are test optional, not withstanding the latest report that MIT is reinstating the requirement. Certainly the broader trend seems to be away from standardized exams, both the SAT and the ACT and perhaps even AP exams. But in their place, we are obligated to ensure that our students have opportunities to demonstrate in meaningful ways to colleges, the level and quality of the work that they are

099doing. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to take that on as a challenge, knowing that a single letter grade cannot appropriately convey some of the amazing work that students do in these courses. We are energized and affirmed by this report and appreciate the opportunity to do this exciting work, to explore new opportunities and to strengthen our AT Program. Thank you for this opportunity to present to you tonight, and we look forward to your questions as well. Thank you, Ken, thank you, Chris. Board questions. I have a few. Yeah, go ahead. I appreciate the time that the panel took in reviewing classrooms in an observational capacity, as well as the interviews they conducted with students, alumni and faculty. I also appreciate the time the administrators put toward putting this report together, so thank you. I really

100do appreciate the time that the faculty put into developing these courses and the opportunity that we're giving AT faculty this summer to more deeply delve into these issues. I do have a few questions. First of all, as part of this review, I understand what the overarching three questions were, but one of the goals of this board this year and of the administration has been to deepen DEI. And I'm wondering if the diversity, equity and inclusion goals of AT courses were weighed against those of AP, which have been updated annually, for example, in English to include more contemporary literature and more diverse voices? Yeah, I think you can look at that in two ways. Certainly one of them, as you mentioned, is looking at the curriculum selections across the Board. That is something that is happening

101across the English curriculum, I would say nine to 12 with the addition of additional voices, underrepresented voices among literature selections. It's also something that we could look at, we have not, to be honest, we have not looked at if there are disparate selections or outcomes of students of different backgrounds in the courses. We have not disaggregated the data, that might be an area of inquiry worthy to look at. So I would say that there's not a concentrated effort and it was not part of the review, but I appreciate the suggestion to make that maybe an area of focus for the summer work that the teachers are doing, perhaps interdisciplinary work, as well as maybe, looking at some of our student performance data as well. Thank you, Ken, and while you're up, I noticed that we

102offer one physics AT right now, and you were talking about expanding the science offerings. I believe that for the AP courses, there are actually four different levels of physics. Is that the kind of place that we might be looking to expand? Yes, I know there's been a conversation I've had about chemistry and perhaps offering, for example, a class in organic chemistry or physical chemistry, which students often find particularly challenging, you may recall in college. I think we could look at that in the other sciences as well. And has there been a consideration of having both AP and AT courses, so AP in certain disciplines and AT in others? We have, over the years that has been something that's been banded about. If I remember the anecdotal feedback we received from colleges, at the initial stage

103of the work was that if we have a college level class moniker, that it would be best to have it consistent across the disciplines for clarity in transcript reporting and in student concept, so community understanding of what the program is. And I ask that largely because some of the designations of AT classes like AB calculus, are similar to the AP designations. So that was what gave birth to that question. When you said that there were 50, you or Chris, I apologize, I was taking notes and I don't know who said what, but one of you said that 53% of alumni found themselves prepared at one level and 33% at another level, what was the range of levels they could choose from? I'm sorry, you were going quickly I missed it. If I remember the question

104formulation, it was much better prepared, as well prepared, or not as well prepared, I think that was the formula. I see, and so those upper two brackets had 80%. Okay, and I guess just from a college admissions perspective, I'm curious what, I understand the dropping of the SAT, but particularly now that the SAT two subject tests have been removed pre-COVID, and there is no question about reinstating them. Do you perceive that the importance of AP courses have changed because they offer the sort of standardized review bracket that SAT twos once did for depth of knowledge of a subject? Yeah, that's a great question, it comes up a lot. When people think about what colleges might be looking for to help them, frankly, sort students. At Scarsdale, and in many schools across the country, AP scores

105are not reported to colleges directly from the college board, they're self-reported by students. And often they are taken after the college admissions decisions are made. And so, for a senior taking, for example, an AP exam in calculus or chemistry or English, that scores coming in July before freshman year of college. Maybe you have students who are taking, here, for example, we have students who take the AT U.S. history course who may decide to take the AP exam in U.S. history, but because it's inconsistent across schools, my understanding is that colleges have no meaningful way of using AP score data to evaluate applications. So I guess my followup to that would be, I would very much like to see in this summer review, if there's a way to look at the number of AP scholars that

106is to say students who are entering their junior year with a certain number, oh entering their senior year, rather, their college admission season with a certain number of threes or higher on APs who are getting that scholar designation nationally, because that is something... So those are our students who are coming from schools, where they have either been offered AP classes younger, or who have simply chosen to take the courses younger and have accrued three to five to seven AP scores of a three or higher prior to beginning the college admissions process. And if that is a high percentage of students in schools, outside of Scarsdale, I feel like that's something that it would be valuable to them. That's an interesting inquiry point, sure. I would weigh that though against making curricular decisions to gain the

107college admissions process is one that is one I would urge us to approach with great caution. Sure, and I'm not one for teaching to the test. But by the same token, some of these courses like Calculus AB, statistics, physics, (mechanics) do sound more akin to the standard AP curriculum. Yeah, and those are also senior courses. So I don't know how calling them AP or emphasizing the exam more would again, impact our college admissions if those exam scores are coming out in July after the kids have graduated. And I guess my question there is how are other schools accommodating it so that kids are taking them earlier? Yep. And that's all from me. Yeah, go ahead. So I had a question, sorry. Keep going. So I didn't quite understand the discussion about whether the AT courses

108should remain tethered to AP exams. I wasn't under the impression they were not tethered to AP exams. And I know anecdotally that many parents and children in our district go outside our school resources to study for the AP exams, precisely because the AT exam courses are not tethered to the AP exam, so they go outta pocket, because their feeling is that our AT courses do not prepare them. So I don't understand what it is that's tethered right now between the AT classes and the AP exams. Thank you for the question. Let me clarify that my reading of the Board resolution in 2007 is that although the curriculum by and large can be independently developed in AT courses, there was a requirement included in that resolution that said that teachers of AT courses are required to

109prepare students for an AP exam experience, either through the coursework, it doesn't say this part, through the coursework itself or through review sessions offered after the course has ended during the senior options period. That has happened with varying degrees of fidelity over the past, what is it? 15 years, and I think the report was asking us to think about the identity of AT, as a brand, if you will, or as a moniker, as an independent program. And whether the fullness of independence that would foster through some of the creativity that we're looking for is inhibited by this remaining component of AP exam preparation. Does that- It does. I guess I'm concerned as a parent, putting aside my membership on this board, I'm concerned as a parent with a child in high school, that colleges do

110look at AP exam performance, they do consider AP enrollment and in their admissions decisions, they do factor in performance on AP tests, in their admissions decisions. And my concern, as a parent of a freshman in high school, is that increasingly as we lose the mooring of AP in the AT world, I mean, it's great to get in depth learning about things. On the other hand, it seems like the AP world is still a set of requirements that are important in the upper academic world of college. And we've got to prepare our kids if we care about that in some way, shape or form, and we're doing it practically on our own with our own resources because it's untethered. So I have concerns about that since I think people come here hoping that their children are

111as prepared as they can be for the requirements that colleges are demanding of them for their admission to their programs. Sorry, go ahead. I would just, I understand that there's the focus on the role that I think we should first evaluate more fully the role that AP exams play in college admissions, because I think we may have a variety of responses and I would welcome the opportunity to engage with the relationships we have with college admissions officers to get, as we did, 15 years ago to get a fuller accounting of what that role is, if this is a priority area of focus for the Board. So I'd like to, oh, sorry. Well, my point was similar to Jim's, we just got this report, so I haven't had a chance to really study it in depth,

112but it jumped out at me at the beginning where there's a comment. I highlighted it that says something like, the number of students that are taking our AP exams is decreasing, but we were sent information that shows pretty consistently for the last three years, there have been about 300 students taking 500 exams. So are we saying that in the past, there were more than 500 exams? Okay, and so I guess it still seems to me with 500 exams being taken annually by our students, I can't understand why we would consider not having some kind of AP tied to our classes. So maybe you can expand a little bit on what the reasoning was behind that? Yeah, so they raised the question that there seemed to be an opportunity of getting greater coherence around what the

113definition of AT meant, or to give teachers greater latitude and license, to be creative in creating courses. That if there was still some connection to AP exam preparation, and I don't think performance is more about preparation than there might be an inhibition in that creativity because of that remaining requirement. I think that was the thrust of what the discussion was if I'm remembering it correctly and that if we prioritize creating an environment where there is greater creativity and greater latitude, we would have to seriously consider removing that connection to the AP program overall. I think also in light of the new courses that are being developed that don't have AP exams that we... If we had a program that was completely independent and separate, there wouldn't be a sense that, well, some of the exam

114and some don't and some teachers are constrained and some aren't, that if we wanted to make that complete break, what would be the benefits and drawbacks, I think was the question. I guess I understand that, I guess I'm struggling a little bit with, if we're talking about how can we provide this opportunity for more students to think creatively and dive into issues, why wouldn't we offer more AT classes and then keep the AP classes for those that are tied to exams? Spread the philosophy more broadly throughout the school and still give, I mean, clearly there's a number of students who are interested in taking the exam, so why would we eliminate that option all together? I mean, I don't think they were necessarily recommending that path. I think they were recommending having the conversation, that

115the people who had the original conversation, the Board members, district administrators and teachers from 15 years ago that we have a new set of faculty, we have a new Board of Ed, that we have new members of the community, maybe the decision is to remain the same, but that these issues in light of the change in testing that was alluded to, I think, it would be what we would do well to revisit it and either reaffirm or recommend a change. But they really unearth that specific question and frankly, I think it is the point, one of the tension points in the program and they were quite candid in unearthing it and including it in the report for our further inquiry. I dunno if there's a recommendation to do one or the other, they just raised

116it and asked that we examine it as fully as we can. Is there just a, one I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead. I think a lot of the discussion boiled down to depth over breadth of coverage, and they found that in our Advanced Topics courses, students were engaged in the type of work that really allowed them to dig deep, to dive into topics at a level that the AP may not. The AP curriculum is very prescriptive, you kind of have to check the boxes, what you get through our AT courses, allow teachers to identify areas of student interest, to identify areas for further inquiry, that the Consortium was very much impressed by. So for them, I think, we curated so many documents for their review, curriculum documents, syllabi, and so forth. And I think consistently they

117found that our Advanced Topics courses went above and beyond in terms of that critical and creative thought component compared to the AP. I can see that and I apologize to keep harping on my point, but I guess I wonder if you offered, AP Calc BC and AT Calc BC. I don't understand, but I guess I wonder if you offered AP Calc- (indistinct) It was super weird, thanks. I just wonder if that would allow more the student choice there, because we do have students who clearly are interested in that? That's just where I'm coming from. Understand, and the other piece I'll just add is our students who do take the exams do incredibly, incredibly well. The one course, you just mentioned calculus, especially off the top of my head, pretty much all students do take that

118exam, and the average is very close to a five out a five. Do you know if of all those students who are doing well, how many of them have gone through their own resources to prepare for that exam? Is that anything you could track? I'm not sure short of surveying them if that is information available to us. Again, I'll just refer back to the specific calculus example here. I do know that that course is providing a great deal of preparation. So I have a question, so I understand pedagogically, the rationale for AT, and our teachers do a tremendous job at fostering critical and creative thinking. I guess, I encourage you to explain or bring a review to the parents that discusses, as I think Ken mentioned at the philosophical and the pedagogical rationale for AT

119versus AP. But I also encourage you to really kind of look at the, I wonder how much alumni response you had, because when you're looking over the summer and studying and digging this out more to look at the role AP plays beyond the classroom and beyond Scarsdale. And by that, I mean, the stress that it places on our students to be, because it hasn't gone away yet. So as Ken points out, it's a tension that's there, how do we address that tension? How will you address that tension? The stress on students to study, the cost for students to prep. But beyond that, once they get to college, the flexibility that having AP credits may provide them to graduate early, save money. We can't assume everyone here has similar resources. We know that from our college

120fund, the Scarsdale High School PTA College Fund for college, and also some colleges allow registration based upon standing on your credit. So I just wanna make sure that we are also considering the effect of AP, AT, aside from the pedagogical base, but that the real effects, because for me, it's not even just the college admissions process, it's what is its stress-wise for kids and what happens when they get to school? So I was curious, like, what was the alumni response rate or how you will or I encourage you, maybe you don't have to answer that now, but encourage you to really look at that tension, especially, I think you made the statement that to explore the feasibility of breaking completely with AP exams. No, thank you for that question. So I would say, I don't

121remember exactly, I think the alumni response rate was in the teens percentage wise. If I was guessing, I would say about 15%, but I can get more specific there. In terms of the the post high school benefits and drawbacks of AP exams in terms of registration or other goodies that colleges may offer that are not core curricular related. We find that seniors because they often have their intended college known by the spring of the senior year, are making the decision to take the AP exam based on the benefits that they're aware of that their college will place on having more credit via AP exam. But I think your point is that they may not know of these other pieces, that they may think only be thinking of credits. So certainly we can make that part

122of the package that we put together in terms of an FAQ. And I would think that that figuring out, maybe if you're when those AP exams come or you're on a wait list, or even knowing that I'm now going to college X, 'cause I got in and now I have to take a whole bunch of exams, puts a stress on a student. So I just ask you to, I know you will, but I hear the word tension and I think that that tension is very real and I know you know it's real. Yeah, well, I mean, we've been talking about this particular question, since I got here. My understanding is that it was a last minute concession to get AT approved by the Board of Education, 15 years ago. I appreciate that the Tri-State's Consortium

123raised the question to us and what I would like if nothing else, no matter what the answer or the outcome is, that we have clarity and understanding on the account of all constituents, about what our path forward here is. Because right now we're always kind of talking around the issue and I'd like to just put it on the table as we are right now and say, where are we as a community, as a school. And how will you do that? Will you engage more parents feedback. = I think I would like to use the Summer Day with the teachers and the work that we'll do administratively over the summer to map out a process that will help us do that effectively. That's great, thanks Ken. And I think one of the things, and it was

124brought up around this idea of APS access too. And there was a lot of in the initial, when it was being brought out, that was something that was a big concern of the community. So there was research done in reaching out to our colleges, through our networks to do surveys around what this would do to admission rates, for example. And a lot of the information that came back once we described what AT was versus AP, it did not impact, in fact, the year after there was a slight uptick in admittance to, and part of that was probably the PR and the conversation that went around that declared to these competitive colleges and universities that this was something that we were embarking on, that was really focused on the pedagogical and the learning aspects of it.

125And so, I think that's something that's worth re-exploring. I do appreciate that the questions that we asked and the group that was really curated based on their experience with higher level, there were superintendents and there were high school teachers and that they were gonna have a lens on looking at what those essential questions were. The final one having to do with what you were describing, which is, how is it preparing our students, both intellectually, creatively, but also what you brought up is practically. The practical aspects of that. The practical of that. And I had a chance to look at the alumni survey and there were elements in there where there people described some practical hurdles that they had from it and others describing how they felt like they were better prepared. So we would look

126at that holistically again. Okay, thank you. Ken, you kind of quickly alluded to the sort of political aspect of this decision. And I don't know if we're just skirting around it, but I think, Karen kind of alluded to the financial aspect of it. And I know that the cost of college is high, yes, we're an affluent community, but it is extraordinarily high. And in a time where we're trying to, I don't wanna say rebrand or brand ourselves as DEI sensitive, it seems to me that going in a direction of AT versus AP is basically starting to cut off the fact that some kids use AP as a way to save money. I mean, being bond about it, they can save a semester and now that doesn't mean they will, but they can, if they choose

127to, or they choose to do it elsewhere to save money and still get the degree. I mean, this is real life, this is what people do. And I think, it concerns me that we're starting to brand ourselves as part of an elite group of private schools that have the AT, that were in that category. There's a part of me that might feel very proud that we are like, wow, we're in that cohort of very selective schools, but on the other hand, being very blunt about it in a way, when I mentioned it to my own children, they saw it as a very political move, as a town. And that may be okay ultimately, but let's not be naive about how it might be interpreted from a more- When you say it, what do you mean?

128If we say, we're not going to... There's sort of now a sort of a subtle relationship between AT and AP and like the calculus class, if we choose to really make a split and say we're calling it calculus, but just to be clear, you may or may not be prepared for the AP exam. That may be a bad example because that happens to be one of the real success stories, but let's say the other 23 classes that are out there for those that really wanna get, five or six AP, four or five, so they can save a semester, what do they do? And do they start curating their curriculum based on success in an exam, which I would be curious to know, for those 25, how many people opt for the AP. So there's just

129overtones here that I think we need to just be transparent about, whatever we decide. Exactly right. You've kind of done a great job of listing many of what I was alluding to many of the issues that I was alluding to, with the use of the word political ramifications. And I think it's worthy of exploring them, and again investigating the role of scores in college admissions decisions. I think another political piece of it is, and I get inquiries every year about the rank lists, whether it's U.S. News and World Report or "Newsweek" or "Westchester Magazine" and those are often using, AP participation and if that's what's driving our decision-making and for some people that that is a really important factor in their concept of how we're doing, I think that's a conversation worth having as well,

130there's a lot wrapped up in here, yeah. So. Sorry, go ahead, I'm sorry. So I guess, the short sort of answers it seems like, and there's a gap that needs to be filled between what happens after, you know after they graduate, what happens in college? Now we're talking about potentially not only what happens in that first year, but what happens in that fourth year. And you said you had a 15% response rate, but I wasn't clear, what was that 15% of? Every few years, the district survey sends I think, paper and electronic surveys to three graduating classes of alumni. So 15% of three classes? Correct. So 15% of roughly 1200, Okay, so that actually is not a terrible number. I mean, I actually think given what's most, I would imagine is going on in a

131college student's life, I don't have to imagine I have a daughter who's in college. But I think that in drawing conclusions, even accepting that as a relatively good response rate, it will be challenging and maybe one of the things to think about is how we do better in terms of getting that feedback if zero kids or one student is graduating early, maybe that's not a factor. Or is it not a factor because we're not providing that opportunity? And then is that really an opportunity we should, I'm not by the way, minimizing any of the comments, but should we be concerned about that? Like is our goal to kind of think about, well, in four years, if they wanna graduate a semester early, if we don't provide AP classes that may limit it, when there are

132other options for graduating early, you can take a class at SUNY Purchase for $799. And I'm not saying it's same, but it might be a better option. So I think this is an area that requires a lot more information to the extent we can get it, and then to the extent we can't get it, it's gonna require a fair amount of intuiting and leaps of faith and maybe some tough decisions that just we think are the right thing for the school district overall. So it's not really a question, start over as a question, but it ended up as a soliloquy, so sorry about that. I'm fine with that. It's okay, I actually have a quick question, Carl, if I can just jump in? Ken, I'm curious, I think it'd be great, maybe I'm soliloquing too,

133sorry. Let me make it into a question. One question I have is how many hours of additional prep students who are taking the AP tests after taking AT courses are doing? Whether it's paid as Jim mentioned or on their own, because this year, obviously one of the top concerns that we've identified with your health are mental health concerns, we are very concerned about our high school students' mental health. And if students are being put in a position where they have to do extra studying, that is not going toward their coursework, but is going towards some tests that they anticipate that they need either to pay for a year of college or to get a master's degree in four years, or to do whatever else to place into a higher level language class, and not have

134to take beginner Spanish when they've studied Spanish for five years or more. I guess I wonder very much what additional workload our students are facing as a result of this decision. And I know anecdotally that there are some courses where students are working with either their teachers or tutors provided by the school up to three or four times a week on top of their regular course load. And that feels like it could be potentially very onerous, and I would hope that any summer evaluation of this program would include the impact that trying to take an AP test with an AT framework is putting on student mental health. That's a good question and yeah, that of course, is overarching concern, thank you for mentioning it, is the students mental health and wellness work we've been doing.

135And if we were to move to a world, and I'm not saying that you're advocating this, but where we put more of an emphasis on those exams and those outcomes, I would venture to guess hypothetical that if next year we offered AP courses, the amount of tutoring would not necessarily decrease by a significant factor. I just think that's a question worth asking. Of course, of course. So I think I'd like to see if we can get at somehow quantifying what you're alluding to, the amount of work student's doing on their own or with study groups or whatever, to prepare for the test that might not have to happen if there was greater alignment with the exam. Thank you. I have a quick question on that? Has there been a greater merge of AP, AT content,

136a move away from specific content where you're memorizing to more conceptual understanding and ability to analyze and synthesize, like, does that allow, 'cause it seems like this there's such a binary like AT versus AP and a lot of times it is crossing over, like AP bio is less that or do you remember this, I don't know, all the classifications of animals. I have no idea, I'm just putting that out there. But versus conceptually are teachers teaching our children how to understand things more broadly and deeply? And that the exams are moving that direction too? I don't know if that's true or not, I was curious to know if- The exams have changed over the years, for sure. Biology and U.S. history are usually shown as the primary examples of how they've moved away from memorization

137to asking for more evidence of critical thinking and having stimulus-based questions rather than recall questions. And I think that we're not unaware of those changes, I think what you're speaking to though reminds me of that, some of the criticisms or some of the reasons that we moved away from AP 15 years ago have been addressed by the changes that college board has made. I don't think that all of them have, but I think that's certainly another area worthy of study. Okay, thank you, this is a big thing to be looking at. Say again, I'm sorry. I said there's a lot to be thinking about here, yes. There is. Edgar, Ken, can you just help us understand that the next steps in the process, so I understand there's a planned Summer Day, but just a little

138bit broader that, this report is out now, we'll have a chance to review it, the community, I assume the broader faculty and staff that maybe weren't involved. So can you just help us understand what those next steps and timeline looks like on this project? So, as we said in the presentation, we got the report in late March, we're thinking about that in this moment. I think that I want to hear from the teachers first and foremost and have their reactions to what they see in the report. I presented this to the faculty earlier this month, at our faculty meeting, and then to see if we need to do additional data collection to get at some of the questions that are raised, for example, here tonight regarding student use of AP credit in the college setting

139and outside classwork related to the AP exam and so on and so forth. And then think about structures we can create to engage students, alumni, parents, et cetera. I think it's just going to be a kind of a cyclical process where you're interviewing people, doing surveys and focus groups, drawing conclusions, checking them, seeing if they make sense with focus groups and going back to do that. I don't know if Edgar has more to add on that? Absolutely, I mean, we're at this point, in which we got the report, we looked very carefully at it, we synthesized it, we're providing, that the entire report to all of you into the community for further reflection and questions. But as we go into this Summer Day, we're gonna be looking at the questions are coming up. And I

140think it's really important to look at the themes across the report because in it, there's a great deal of praise for those pedagogical, intellectual, creative aspects of it. And even in the room, an applauding of the sense of bravery 15 years ago, that got us to this point where we can explore, aligning a curriculum that is much more student-centered and much more parallels, much more of the expectations that we have for our students as they go out into the world. And just to add one other point, in addition to the Summer Day, we've begun discussions with Ann Marie Nee about creating an advanced topic study group through the STI where teachers can advance some of this work. Thank you, that's really helpful. Just a really tactical question, just so we're setting the right expectations with

141our students and families. Is there an expectation you people may see some changes in the next school year because of this report, or is this a longer term? This is much longer term. And I would say in terms of longer term goals, which I made just a quick illusion to is something like the mastery transcript, where you have, if you were to move away, from a traditional letter based-grading system and provide students the different opportunities to show what they know and to communicate that to colleges and other external bodies. I think that emphasizing, we have to think about the role of AP exams in a world where you're moving away from a five point grade system. So these are much longer term questions that will take, I would say, definitely a year or two to

142really fully metabolize before we could have an action plan of that measurability. That's helpful, I think is you're thinking about your communications, 'cause we, the Board receives and board members receive some, feedback questions as you've heard. And I just think setting that expectation when the community sees a report, what that timeline looks like will be really helpful. And I want to just add my support to the comments from Karen and Jessica, and others about getting the data about the mental health, the wellness around this. So thank you very much for the report. Thank you so much, Ken and Chris for presenting to us and Edgar for all of your work. I know this is a lot of work and it will continue to be a lot of work as you dig it out, but we

143appreciate your looking at it and coming here to speak with us about it. So thanks so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. (audience clapping) So we've been sitting for two hours and 20 minutes, so why don't we take a wellness break and then we will return to hear the technology report. Thank you. Hello, everybody, we've returned from our wellness break and pardon me, we are on item 8.02, the Education Report Technology and Innovation With a Focus on the New Technology Plan. And we will be led through this by Jerry Crisci. Thank, you. Good evening, everyone. I'm so excited to be here tonight as part of our celebration of our new technology plan. But before we started, I'd like to invite many of the people who worked in the technology plan up to the podium

144to just introduce themselves and tell you about their role. So you can come up one by one and just tell us who you are and what you do in the district. Don't be shy, you never are, come on (laughs). When I talk tonight, I'll be talking really on behalf of all these people who did the work for the plan. So thank you. Hi, I'm Catherine Sorensen, I'm the Heathcote Librarian. Hi, Chris Casal, Heathcote Computer Teacher. Hello everybody, I'm Jennifer Cronk, I'm the Middle School Computer Teacher. Hello everyone, I'm Liz Waltzman, one of the High School librarians. Hi, I'm Peter McKenna Fox Meadow Computer Teacher. Hi Katja Rossi, High School Librarian. Hi Paul Tomizawa, Edgewood Computer Teacher. Hello, Michael Pincus, Middle School Computer Teacher. Hello, Michelle Verna, Public Information Officer and Editor extraordinaire. (audience laughing) And

145Rachel Moseley, Director of Information Technology. Thank you everyone, it's great to see you and they'll be around for some questions later on if we have them after the presentation. So welcome again to this presentation, it's been a while from our presentation for the Board because of the pandemic, but it'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge all the work that the computer teachers and the other staff did to support us during that time. I don't wanna dwell on it, but going back to those early days, they were the ones who, when I asked 'em, if they would volunteer after school to help hand out devices, they didn't hesitate, they were dedicated, they were courageous, and I wanna thank them for all that work that they did during that period of time. So to begin, let's talk

146about the technology iceberg. You're gonna see a lot of us tonight here at this board meeting, but we do wanna acknowledge that there are many people that work behind the scenes to make the technology program happen. And we can see that part of the iceberg, but below the surface is our tech support staff, the computer aides, and also the custodians that really are helping us along with other people, secretaries and of course our classroom teachers. And not just underneath the water, I think behind the pole over there is Rachel Moseley who does an amazing job, really supporting and coordinating all the work that really makes the instructional technology program happen, so I wanna thank her as well as her team who works in data services that handle all of our parent requests regarding the parent

147portal and working on data and student data. And Ashley Smith who works part-time with me to help with data privacy and also doing a lot of our orders. And of course our technical support team who handles everything behind the scenes, our network people technicians, who do this work, that's really instrumental to making our program go. And I know they're looking here, I'm sorry. And two of them are here, yes. And also, I know they're looking forward to the next round of technology, that'll be delivered this summer when hundreds of devices will arrive and I'll have to get those set up. So for tonight's presentation, I'm gonna do some context setting right in the beginning and then talk about the three year technology plan that's on the website and hopefully had a chance to at least

148skim over some of it. I know it's 49 pages, it's our biggest plan to date, but it does cover a lot of that work. And then we have some computer teachers who are gonna give us three different examples of projects to help bring that plan to life. We could literally spend about six hours going over different parts of the program and the plan, but we decided just to have three kind of deep dives into the work that we do. So I'm gonna take you back to 2013, I was with some colleagues from Scarsdale, we were attending the Consortium for Schools Networking Conference in San Diego. And we were excited because it was about a year after we launched the Center for Innovation. We were presenting this to the nation for the first time. And at

149that conference, I had an opportunity to meet with the woman, I actually had lunch with her, her name is Christina Engelbart, and she was the president of the Doug Engelbart Institute. Now Doug Engelbart, if you're not familiar with him, is he's the person that invented many of the technology that you're actually using today, or that you've used. I'm gonna show you just an example of two very, very short clips from a 90 minute presentation, he did, that's called The Mother of All Demos. And sometime you have a chance to sit down and pull up YouTube, you could actually watch the whole thing, but he was able to predict things like hypertext in the way we use the intranet and even some basic things that we take advantage for today. Here's a very short clip of

150one. Okay, there's Don Andrew's hand in middle part, and then the second we'll see the screen that he's working and the way the tracking spot moves in conjunction with movements of that mouse, I don't know why we call it a mouse. (audience laughing) Now, I know why we call it a mouse (laugh). And the other thing I know is that we've been using it upside down for decades, but that was actually the first demonstration of what a mouse looked like back in 1968. Other things he did, before there was Zoom, this is the first example of this that was presented to a group of engineers in San Diego, during that lecture. Now computer do the automatic switching that will bring in a camera picture from the camera mounted on his console, such as the camera

151mounted on mine is. Hi Bill. That's great, now we're connected, audio, you can see my work, you can point at it and I can see your face and we can talk. So let's do some collaborate. What's really neat is that he didn't just say, he talked about the technology, let's do some collaborating. I mean talk about someone who could see the future and that's what he had, he had a vision for the future. And I wanted to show you that tonight because what we're doing this evening is showing you our vision for the future. The Technology Committee's work and putting together this three year technology plan that will guide us in the years ahead. So just some real basics about the technology plan. There actually are two plans, there's a plan that I submitted to

152our BOCES on April 15th, it was due on tax day. And basically they're going to review that plan, it's really not a plan in the traditional sense, it's a series of questions provided by the state, that's a technology survey and every district in New York State is required to submit that plan. We're also required by New York State to have in that three year plan three to five technology goals. I'm gonna talk about the four goals that we have in our current plan. And then finally, the current plan that we have expires at the end of June. So that's why we use this entire year really to plan the plan that is going to be hopefully submitted finally and approved by the state on July 1st. So one last thing before we discuss this, what

153really is technology? I've gone to many technology conferences where someone stands at the podium and says technology is just a tool. And this is absolutely not a good definition of technology. In our mind, technology is about one thing, and it's about power because when you have technology, you have the power in your hands to access things, to do things that other people can't. And I want you to keep that idea in your minds as we go through this presentation. Actually, we talked about this to the Board of Education many years ago, and shared Alvin Toffler's book, "Power Shift", which he wrote along with his wife and talked about that someday, there would be a transformation and reallocation of power. And we've seen that, we think years ago, when our students would go to the computer

154lab, there was a lock on the door that could access the technology when they were let in. Now they have the technology with them all the time, they have access to these powerful resources. So in terms of planning the plan, we had a whole committee with our head computer teachers, our K-12 Technology Committee, we did surveys and focus groups for teachers and parents, and we're still gonna be doing some focus groups and surveys, you'll look about that in a minute. And then we had subcommittees that were formed, and then we put together a technology planning website. In terms of informing our plan, we start out with our own plan, the Scarsdale Strategic Plan. And I know everyone's familiar with the different pillars, but the technology plan specifically refers to these items, libraries, learning spaces, and

155curated resources, STEAM and design thinking and of course, using technology to transform teaching, learning, and assessment. So after looking at our local pillars, we took a look at the two documents that guided us. One is the International Standards, the ISTE Standards as they're known, and the other one is New York State's Computer Science and Digital Fluency Learning Standards. These standards were just released in 2020, so during our current technology plan, and they're gonna be the standards that will lead us forward in the future, as we make a transition and really in combination with the ISTE Standards. Now I've spoken to the Board in the community many times about the ISTE Standards. These are identified as experiences that all students should do in the course of their K-12 education. And you've seen some of these, just

156to take a look at them, more closely, empowered learner, digital citizen, knowledge constructor, innovative designer, computational thinker, creative communicator, and global collaborator. And to look at one in more detail, let's take a look at knowledge constructor and get a little bit closer to that. This one refers to having students with the ability to understand credibility of sources, using a variety of tools, building knowledge by exploring real world issues. And that's one of the goals that we try to meet in our technology plan. And of course, New York State with its new standards, New York State has put forth five different ideas that we need to focus in on from the impact of computing, computational thinking, networks and system design, cyber security, and digital literacy. And you may notice that the first and the last ones

157are kind of unrelated, the middle three, really focus on things that many people would consider computer science, so a real focus on the technical aspect of computers. So in combining them, and crosswalking them, they really support many of the same ideas. So if you look at impact of computing as a New York State standard, that's really covered in the ISTE Standard by being a global collaborator and digital citizen. Computational thinking is not too hard to draw a line to computational thinker, which is the ISTE Standard, and the other ones also have corollaries as well. So we really cover both of them in our technology plan. In terms of framing our work, I've shown you some of the big ideas, specifically power and the vision. And we looked at the standards and now let's take a

158look at how we gathered some feedback. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about some teacher survey results. We surveyed our teachers, and here are just two questions that they answered that I think are indicative of some of the work that we had to guide us. We asked our staff how confident are you and the ability to use and integrate technology into your instruction. And as you can see, this is a self-assessment, they feel very confident. So most of the teachers rated themselves as an eight, nine or 10, with 10 being the most confident and one being not confident at all. And then we also asked, do you feel the district provides adequate technology resources to support your instructional program? And this was overwhelming. The staff said, the vast majority of staff said, yes, they

159feel like they have the supports they need in terms of resources and other things to support the program and support the instructional program specifically. And then we had parent and teacher focus groups. the teacher focus groups told us, the teachers told us that they really appreciated all the support that was given to them by the computer teachers. They expressed the desire for ongoing training and other things like that. I'm just gonna talk about some of the feedback from our parent focus groups. And to be clear, I think we met four or five times for an hour with very small groups of parents. I think we had between like six to seven or eight in a group. And we have more to do, we have I think another one or two that we're gonna be scheduling

160for the spring now that the technology plan is out. But I wanna thank these parents for really having candid conversations with us about our technology program. The focus group protocol we used was, are there things we should keep doing, things that parents liked? Are there things that we should stop doing or change, things that parents didn't like about the program? And start, is there anything that they felt our program was lacking that we needed to increase? And I'm not gonna share with you the pages of my notes in those focus groups, but I'll give you a couple of examples of feedback that we received. we showed the parents the ISTE Standards, and parents said they liked the idea of an empowered learner. They mentioned certain programs like SeeSaw and our STEM program. They liked Schoology

161having everything in one centralized place. They liked the fact that students had ownership over their devices. I'm not gonna read all of these, they liked that we provided funding to invest in technology, and they liked the work that we were doing, they felt in a digital citizenship. In terms of feedback of things they wanted to see change, they felt like they really wanted to have the ability to set up parent controls on our devices. They mentioned that there is no real sense by the district of what a good amount of time to use technology as they were concerned about screen time, and they wanted to have a baseline of that. And they've all felt that students are really on social media much earlier than they really should be. They mentioned that we need to really

162communicate or improve our communication with parents. They said that, students are signing up for courses that have a name like computers 912, or 913. They don't really understand what they may be getting into, and in some cases of course descriptions may not fully match what the experience is. So we need to really provide more communication. They mention the computer science gap at the Middle School, and I've spoken to the Board about this regarding our coding. And of course the ever popular extend the WiFi beyond the building comments were there as well. More coding classes at the High School and Middle School. They asked for parent education classes in the morning and things like that. So I'm just trying to give you a sense of the different feedback that we received and the range of what

163it was like. And then we engaged in a public planning process, and we told the community about our technology planning website. And this was set up really not just to help Scarsdale, but to help other tech directors who were new to the field in recent years and helped show them kind of our sequence in doing this work. And we did this as a public service, but also as a way to share our plans with our parents. And so our technology plan feedback, we're gonna be asking for feedback from the entire community or entire parent community in the next week. So the technology plan will be featured on the website and we're gonna be sending out a survey to everyone, so we want people to really give us feedback. I do this every time we've done

164a technology plan and you know how much feedback I always receive? Nothing, so this year, hoping to get some responses because parents are an important part of the partnership of what we wanna do with technology. And then in terms of writing the plan, you've seen many of the people who are here this evening, they're the K-12 Technology Committee who engage in this work meeting monthly over the course of the school year, having to put the plan together. We started with our vision statement, which is really based very heavily on the current vision statement we have. It talks about technology being seamlessly integrated, and we want to empower learners in their use of technology. And we wanna provide students with a wide variety of opportunities for them to use technology in the school. In terms of

165the plan itself, it has five different sections and these sections are modeled on the current technology plan, including a budget projection, where we have our actual budget projection for next year, and then a budget projection that's very difficult to do for two and three years beyond, but that's in the plan as well as the appendix. Now, the technology plan goals are really a highlight of the plan. We heard from parents, we heard from our teachers that we need to really start to focus on digital health and wellness. This was something that was expressed as an important goal for us in the next three years, and we're going to do that. We wanna make sure that we really ensure access to all of our learners. I think we do a good job of that with the

166one-to-one program, but we still have a striking number or striking disparity, I would say, in the number of boys versus girls in technology programs at the High School. And we're hoping to really address that with starting at the Middle School where I think this is a very important place to do that. I mentioned communication, this is once again, based on the parent feedback that we receive, we really wanna to improve our communication regarding technology. And one they're gonna hear about tonight in just a few minutes, media literacy, this is a hot burning issue right now in terms of technology, and you can hear about how some national organizations have made this a priority in what we're doing in Scarsdale for this. Now, in terms of what teachers have access to, of course, we know they

167use their SMART Boards and it might be in a world language class or elementary teachers using that SMART Board to show concepts, perhaps show a map, annotate things, annotate documents, and high school math classes, where teachers are using it to literally teach math and even inviting students up to the board to help solve math problems. So that's an important tool that our teachers use. And of course, this is all supported by professional development. We've had to make most of our professional development virtual over the course of the last two years, but we're gradually getting back together in-person and even having those collegial conversations between computer teachers and others to make that work move forward. And of course, I wanna give a shout-out to the Scarsdale Teachers Institute for supporting many of our online professional development

168experiences, including the work of the ST@C, which was developed by some of the people in this room as part of a center for an aggravation grant. And it's amazing to see what several years later this has evolved into for the work that we do. Now, I'm gonna walk you through some of the ISTE Standards that we discussed and show you what they look like and bring you into our classroom. So in terms of preparing digital citizens, this begins in the elementary level with teachers talking about digital citizenship at every level, even in some cases, having students actually write down their digital footprint, so they begin to understand the way they use technology. And at the Middle School, it includes the orientation we do with students at the beginning of school, for the iPads and how

169to use it and how to make sure that they're using them appropriately. And of course our library is an important part of our technology expectations, we call them and the work they do the hub of the school, and they're very active in using technology. In terms of taking traditional analog technology like books and projecting them, so the whole class can see them with a document camera or in some cases, digitizing part of the book so that classes can see them as well. And we've even added some new innovative things like the new Greenacres Library features iPads at the end of the different bookshelves, where students can actually go in and do searches right from those devices when they're in the library, which is very exciting. And our librarians do a lot of other work with

170digital literacy and understanding libraries. They're part of the ISTE Standard called knowledge constructors. So at the Middle School and at the High School, and also at the elementary school, we offer many, many different databases for students to use. And at the High School, I tell the story many times, but we have students who go off to college who request that we reinstate their accounts so they can use the databases they have here in the High School, 'cause they don't have access to the same databases in college. So it really is a Testament to the work of our librarians and putting these different resources together. And just to give you some information about the increased usage. ProQuest, the library company, called us and said that we just wanna point out that you have an amazing number

171of users in terms of the increase in students using the services as teachers begin and continue to use them and use these services and databases in their classrooms. And of course, if you look at the library catalog, you'll see that they not only loan books, but their many of their popular titles are actually loaning out the chargers because they can be loaned for the libraries as well. Using video conferencing to communicate with others is an important part of the work that we still do. And in terms of being global collaborators, the ISTE Standard, we have high school students and social studies classes who are working on solving problems with students from around the world as part of its special project that's happening here at the High School. Being innovative designers is very important, having students

172begin to understand how to design and do computer art at a young age, moving forward to when they get to the High School and working on actual design projects and in more of the industrial arts and STEAM and printing their designs in 3D with a 3D printer, or in some cases in our computer art classes, using tools like Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to do digital artwork and take that artwork and apply it to a real world problem. So in here, you're gonna see how the students actually used Illustrator to make branding graphics for fake companies. So to see what it's really like to be an illustrator and a designer and use their technology to do that. In terms of being an empowered learner, well, what makes learners more empowered than having the technology right in

173their hands? And if you walk through our schools, this is not an uncommon site to see students sometimes sitting in an area that's not the classroom or in the hallway, doing some work or working on physics simulations in chemistry classes in the High School, using a program like PhET to do some of the experiments that are difficult to simulate in a lab. And of course the goal that we're very proud of is computational thinker. This is using technology for coding and Peter McKenna, who I see in the audience, helping students understand how to program their bibhost as they start to learn how to do coding at an early age, using tools like microbits, understanding some really basic coding commands, Lynn Tory here at Greenacres using the FS commands and also documenting their work, that's an

174important part of the process. Students also using other early coding languages like ScratchJr and then graduating and moving on to things that are more sophisticated, even though it's block coding and ultimately moving to traditional programming languages at the High School. And here's a picture from our app design class where students apply the learning that they do, and also learn how to design the interface for doing apps. So now I'd like to bring up some of our computer teachers to show you three different elements of our program. We're gonna talk about video production at the elementary level, and then K12 media literacy, which is being led by the High School, and then finally some fun emerging technology at the Middle School. So our first profile is looking at the ISTE Standard creative communicator, which is a

175technology standard. And to show that, we have examples of students who use technology to create things like in our digital music labs or perhaps doing an ignite presentation or some other video presentation. And I see Chris Casal in our slides, or Chris is gonna come up right now. Chris has a very interesting background, he worked in media and television, that's his college undergraduate degree. And while he left the world of hanging out with celebrities, he's now with us as a computer teacher at Heathcote, he's gonna talk about our elementary program in digital video. Thank you, Chris. Hi, how was everyone? And that photo just as a slide aside is from 1997 When I live streamed an award ceremony with Cisco and Ebert over a phone line from Chicago. So the early days up streaming media,

176but yes, I'm computer teacher at Heathcote. And as Jerry mentioned, we do use the ISTE Standards. And the one we're gonna focus on is a creative communicator for this portion of the presentation. The biggest part of that is students communicating clearly, and then also the bottom part about using different platforms and being able to do this in different places, not being able to communicate just in one way or in one form or fashion, but being able to switch between them. Then New York State, as Jerry mentioned, has the comparable aligned standard. So similarly digital tools to communicate and collaborate. And the other part on the next slide is understanding the editing process. And that's key is that it's not just, we're going to communicate, we're gonna say these things, but how did we get to

177this point? So a big part of that is the concept that everything the students do is a story. It's a story of their learning in some form or fashion and how are they taking what they learned and then giving that out to an audience to sort of internalize that information. So what is that process? So study research learning, whether it be in the library or in the classroom during a mini lesson, or actually learning about a content area before they actually go into the technology component or with librarians actually learning how to research and look up the facts that they're then going to report on. So one thing we use are storyboards, and this is an analog component of these digital outcomes. As a student may be planning out a video, a stop motion animation,

178something along those lines, they could actually print out this piece of paper, stick figure, sketch it out, but it gives 'em a sense of planning and a sense of order and structure, the lines being where they might add, text on the slide, text for narration, things like that. And it gives them that sort of process structure building towards the end result. Another type of organizer is just laying out expectations for the students, giving 'em a place to put in a narrative and then giving them one version of a way to organize the structure, similar to a storyboard, but more in a paper-based format where they can literally write down. This is what I want my audience to see in this moment, this is what I want them to hear, start working on timing, and it

179gives 'em the ability to, again, plan it out through that process before they actually get to that final step. So then what is that revise and iterate sort of final step where we're actually putting this together. Three main platforms WeVideo, iMovie and Adobe's Creative Cloud are what we use. So this is WeVideo, just to walk you through a couple, the components of this, this is a cloud-based multi-track video editing software, so it's used on the Chromebooks. And what that means is in these three different panes, you have that pane on the left, which is your media pane. So not only can students bring in their own content, their own photos or own videos, WeVideo as part of our district subscription has tens of thousands of free to use stock photos, videos, backgrounds, all sorts of

180images, titles, transitions, things like that. So they don't necessarily have to create the visual content themselves, they can use free to use images and videos to stitch together that story. And as they're doing it, this preview pane, allows 'em to see it, which is important because they're not just then dragging it together and sort of haphazardly stitching these things together, they get to actually take a look at that content and find the things that align to what they planned out in their storyboard or the visuals that align to what their original vision was, or ultimately find something different that they didn't necessarily see or think about originally. And then once they've kind of previewed all this, down at the bottom is where these multiple tracks live. So video one is your primary video track, that's

181where they're gonna put their main key content. The titles are video two is above it because literally you will stick titles on top of a video. So they actually start thinking in terms of not just laying out their story, but then how these things relate to one another. When you watch television, you see the titles on the screen, so they're literally above the video, which is why it's laid out that way. They can also bring in music, which is part of the stock free to use video, there's soundtracks in there. They can record voiceover, they can edit it. iMovie is another software that we use, that's iPad-based. So K1, two, Middle School also multi-track you'll notice it also has very similar things in there, like titles, you can adjust the speed, it has the transition,

182so you can crossfade things of that nature. So very similar software affects the same results. Adobe's Creative Cloud looks a little bit different. Their timeline is more on the bottom, it's a little bit, it looks initially like a Google slide show, let's say, however, you could see in that middle pane, each section of your timeline, you could record narration, you could add a video to that slide, you can add text on it, a photo on it. You could add multiple features to each individual one. It also comes with free to use stock footage, stickers, soundtracks, things of that nature. So it allows 'em to focus on their story, what they're trying to tell without spending a lot of time trying to source original content, it focuses them on what they're trying to tell us. So

183then as students are working out at the next big thing is to publish these things and then to share them out, because that is sort of the point, then we get to hear their story and they get to have an audience for their story. So the next three examples are just excerpts, there are 30 to 40 second excerpts of three different projects across grade levels and across platforms, software platforms. So this first one is a first grade Reader's Theater example, Reader's Theater is a genre, which lets students practice speaking and performing, and it helps 'em with fluency, tone, expression. So what that first grade class did was they took a character study portion of Reader's Theater and read "Billy-Goats Gruff" out loud. However, we set up the SMART Board as a green screen, they made

184their own puppets. So that way they could work together as a group, speak the words, recite the story and record it and create an animated movie using iMovie based on this story in this Reader's Theater unit. So the next clip is just a short clip of the overall project. And Chris points out that when the students recorded this, they had their masks on, so they're a little bit muffled, but they're first graders, so they're also loud (laughs). (bright upbeat music) Now three billy goats brothers are in the valley. They see long green grass on the other side. They must go over a bridge to get there, a big (indistinct) under the bridge. (indistinct) Who's going over my bridge? It's me, little billy goat, I'm going over the bridge to eat the long green grass. So

185that was first grade. The next example is based on the extreme weather unit, where students research different aspects of extreme weather, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and then they essentially make a science research-based documentary on that. This was done using WeVideo, so they sourced images, they work together not only on the research, but the narration and the pacing, so now this is about 30, 45 seconds of this fourth grade project. Many people think that tsunamis are just caused by earthquakes, but they can be caused by lots of other things. When a tsunami is caused by an earthquake, the earthquake is underwater. It shakes the waves, causing them to grow big. They scrape the bottom of the ocean floor, picking up more water as the move. Eventually it forms a tsunami. (slow paced music) Landslides are also

186a common way that tsunamis can form. The land falls into the water, causing the waves to rock faster than usual. The waves keep rocking faster and faster and get bigger and bigger, then a tsunami is formed. And this third example is using Adobe Creative Cloud. It has a slide aside, Adobe Creative Cloud Express, which used to be referred to as Adobe Spark, Adobe rebranded the platform. This is a fifth grade social studies unit about immigration, so that students have to find an immigrant that they can interview about their reasons for coming to this country, what they think about it, their experiences and then they put that together in a documentary style movie with either stock footage or images sourced from that individual. This is the story of my grandfather's life and immigration experience from India

187to America. In 1960, my grandfather Bhal, moved from India to America for his PhD. His mom had to sell the family jewels just to teach some of her kids English and send them to America. Bhal's parents had to decide which kids would learn English and go to Americ and they knew that they wouldn't see their kids many times after they move. Bhal is 24 and excited to go because his brother had already gone and was very successful. And then that goes on, they're all much longer for a minute to three minute pieces. So the idea is they have these stories of learning, every student has these sort of holistic, as we've talked about experiences with learning that are deep, and we want them to tell their stories, video production is one way to have these

188stories. Thank you, Chris, for sharing those examples from our schools, we really appreciate that. And you may be wondering where does this lead? You've seen the progression of what happens from first grade through fifth grade, beyond that at the Middle School, the Middle School established a broadcast news station that they used to broadcast the news everyday, working with the partnership with Michael Pincus and some other teachers, and that's been just a great success for them. So they have a chance to practice that kind of video and even, using creative publishing, taking history and reinterpreting it through comics, something that happens in classes at the Middle School as well, so we address that standard in many different ways. Our next profile is an example of a technology goal. And this goal specifically is media literacy is

189the goal that we shared with you. With media literacy, we're concerned about making sure that students understand who creates the media, who delivers it and how is it consumed? And it's really important because we're talking about not just traditional television media, but also social media as well. And for this, we have Paul Tomizawa at helping us answer, how do you know? I will say that Meredith Dutra was his presenting partner tonight, but unfortunately she's not feeling well. And I know she desperately wanted to be here, but Meredith was an award-winning social studies, high school social studies teacher, who's now our head computer teacher at the High School. And Paul spent 10 years in broadcast journalism working for NBC and CNBC. So together they have just a great partnership of social studies and media and helping

190to lead this initiative forward. So thank you, Paul, for being here with us tonight. Jerry, what's the stadium on that picture? That's Tempe Arizona, Superbowl 30, the triple X rated one, XXX. Before I start, hi Meredith. So Jerry just posed the money question, how do you know? And that's a question that we ask early and often in a media literacy education. How do you know whether a story is fake or real? How do you know the intent or bias of the media messenger? They're important questions to ask. The two points on the screen encapsulate a sense of urgency with media literacy education (clears throat). People of all ages, not just children are consuming digital media more than ever. Based on a Stanford University study last year, high school students nationwide lack essential, critical literacy skills

191to spot fake news. A media literacy education instructs students on how to create with digital media and identify the persuasive and deceptive practices often used in online content. Earlier this month another group of educators, the National Council of Teachers of English also weighed in on the media literacy with their most recent position statement. The NCTE recognized that teaching, reading and writing is more than just communicating with text and print. We read and write in different modalities, such as images, sounds and videos. In their persuasion statement they wrote, "Persuasion and propaganda play a central role in consumer culture, democracy and public life, and the field of English language arts has long recognized the need to call attention to the power of misleading language that distorts reality." Immediate literacy education empowers our students to mindfully and safely

192navigate an online landscape where propaganda and persuasion are commonplace. In fact, K12 computer teachers, librarians, and classroom teachers have already begun the process of integrating media literacy lessons. Which is important because helping students avoid the pitfalls of misinformation and disinformation requires the attention of every parent, teacher and administrator. So here's the story I shared with my fourth grade students (clears throat) and right off the bat, they'd say, oh, that's fake, it's not a real story. That's fine, but the money question, how do you know? So I'd ask for evidence, take a look at it and see what you can find to determine if this is a fake story, it's actually a fake story. Some notice right away the strangeness in the headline, it lacks the conventional traditional news headline because there's a period at the

193end. And some incorporated prior knowledge, knowing that great white sharks are salt water creatures, and it's highly unlikely that they would be found in a fresh water body. Change the slide, please. Of course, the story acknowledged that skepticism, and anticipated that skepticism because right off the bat, it says, well, it is not entirely impossible, it is incredibly uncommon for salt water, so forth. So it still begs the question, how do you know this is a fake story? And they worked in groups and they hashed it out, and then finally, I had to ask them who saw the sharks? Where in the story, did it say that someone saw the sharks? No one saw the sharks, there's no source attribution either, no witnesses to this event, no author of the story, no photographer, it's a story

194that could easily be shared in Facebook or Twitter, but didn't have the facts to back up its headline. You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts, Senator Moynihan once said. There was a time, when that made perfect sense. But in the last few years, terms such as confirmation bias and echo chambers have become more widely known as a way to describe an inability for one to accept new ideas or facts that contradict one's current beliefs. At the High School, Heather Waters and Meredith Dutra are helping students examine their own consumption habits and biases is part of a Center for Innovation grant. And Jerry has more on that work. So I'll try my best to do Meredith's part this evening. I was there for some of the classwork that Meredith

195did where 95 students were surveyed about their own media consumption. And we asked our high school seniors and some juniors questions, basically, how many hours would you say you spend on social media? And the answers they gave us were very interesting, over half of them said three to four hours a day on social media and then about a quarter of them said one to two hours a day, there were some that were very high, five to six hours a day, so much I can't keep track. So these are numbers I know that parents may be familiar with and we hear about this from them as well. Next we ask them, what are your reasons for using social media? Entertainment was a big reason, but news is there, they are getting their news from social media,

196communication, science, sports, et cetera. I'm gonna ask the Board, what are some platforms you think that they use? What are some of the most common platforms our high school students might use for social media? Anyone wanna volunteer? Snapchat. TikTok. Yep, Snapchat, TikTok, the one that surprised us was YouTube. Large number of students reported that YouTube was an important platform for them. Very small group with Facebook, that's really for us older folks, I guess, and Twitter, but Snapchat, certainly YouTube, Instagram, TikTok are the ways they consume this content. And then we asked our students, have you ever discovered that you were led to believe that something was untrue on social media and only about 17% said no and 33% said maybe, and about half of the students said absolutely yes, that happened to me. And once

197again, this is a survey from four classes, 95 students. Now as Paul said, Meredith received an innovation grant with her colleague, Heather Waters and through their grant, they were able to bring in some experts to talk to our students. They had Mosheh Oinounou, who was the Former Executive Producer of CBS Evening News, who was excited to do this work and came to our high school to speak to students in the iLab about bias in media, looking at how even pictures can be misleading at times. Then they brought in Vanessa Otero, who's an Attorney and Founder of Ad Fontes Media, one of the leading organizations that's active in this domain, specifically, she talked to them over Zoom about what she did with her company, creating a media bias chart, which looks at the accuracy of media,

198how media is interpreted by different groups and helps them really understand their own consumption habits and understanding the most important question, which is you need to get your sources from more than one place. Paul. Oh, so sorry, (laughs) caught napping. So last month, Meredith Dutra and I in pursuit of the media literacy goal in our tech plan, we pulled together a focus group of K12 teachers, librarians, administrators, to brainstorm essential questions in pursuit of immediate literacy education for all K12 students. Can you click? Sure. They touch upon important starting points, such as knowing what lessons are currently being taught and how we build upon them through the grade levels. And we also wondered aloud how we can help students self-regulate their digital media habits and find balance with other important activities in their lives. Fortunately,

199we have some excellent partners in our district study. Some of us have had the good fortune of working alongside Dr. Renee Hobbs, former Center for Innovation guest speaker and Dr. Julie Coiro, two of the most prominent voices and researchers in digital literacy. Dr. Sue Luft, William Yang and I, are actually faculty members with the University of Rhode Island Summer Institute in Digital Literacy, which is an annual professional development program that has attracted administrators, librarians, teachers, K12, and higher ed from all around the world, including and teachers from here in Scarsdale. So this has all been really exciting research work, and we look forward to reinvesting this knowledge into our district work in media literacy. What's also very exciting is that Paul, Meredith, Sue Luft William Yang and Edgar are gonna be presenting at the NCTE

200Conference this fall to report on the work that we're doing here in media literacy and sharing that, with an international audience. So taking their expertise on the road Paul, we really appreciate you sharing that work with us tonight. Thank you. Our last speaker is talking about emerging technology. One of the new areas of our technology plan that wasn't in the original plan. So I'm inviting Michael Pincus up to the podium. We talk about emerging technology, we talk about things like artificial intelligence, it's making its way into our classrooms. A new term you may not have heard of, classroom orchestration where teachers can actually talk to devices and have them react to things. So here's an example of device called a Merlyn Mind, we were the first school in America to really test this device. We

201had five of them in the district, and basically it allows teachers to speak commands to the device and have their computers react to it. So it helps them really decentralize themselves from the front of the classroom. But another important emerging technology that's getting started in our schools is augmented reality, and Michael's gonna be talking about that with us this evening. Thank you, appreciate it. So you've heard the term augmented reality, virtual reality, just wanna give a quick background on the difference. Virtual reality is when you're immersing yourself in the digital world, you've completely immersed yourself. So if you're in like a simulation game for driving, you're in a virtual world, you are a virtual being in the world, so virtual reality. Augmented reality takes the interactive experience that you see in virtual reality and puts

202it into the real world. So it blends digital elements with real world elements. So for example, it's been used a lot in industries, we've seen augmented reality, for example, designing furniture in your actual house, you take a picture of your room and you could place furniture. My wife and I this weekend, we were trying to place pictures in our house, we had a bunch of pictures, we took a picture of the wall and we virtually placed the pictures before we actually hung them up. So that's augmented reality. "Pokemon GO", which was very popular, years ago where you went to different places and you saw the Pokemon actually in the park, that's augmented reality, so the difference between it. And it's a really growing technology in the K12 field. So in the Middle School, we recently

203have been experimenting with augmenting reality in different areas and it's using the MergeCube. This is a cube that we've bought each student either has it, or if it's working in centers, along with their iPad, they use an app that we use, and recently we've been doing it in science. So they've really done a lot of activities in science, in the sixth grade, we started using the MergeCube and recently in the sixth grade classrooms, we're gonna just show you what it looks like. We've rolled it out to other grade levels, eighth grade has started using it by the end of the year, we'll have it rolled out to everybody. So if you remember back when I don't know, when we were in school, if you were looking at the structures of the earth, you would look

204a textbook or a picture that was hanging on the wall and it would be a flat picture. The teacher would point out across the mantle, you'd get an idea, but you really didn't see it fully, 'cause it was a flat image. So this next video is a video of the iPad and the actual earth that the students are seeing. And they're able to manipulate the cube and look around the earth, the core, they can click on different labels or they can shut the labels off and read about the different aspects of the earth. And here's an example right here, showing structural adaptations where the students are changing temperature and the environment to show what the effects are on the bugs. So if you see they're sliding it up, changing into a temperate or cooler and

205they're seeing what happens and they're looking around the jar, they could look at the top, the next video shows this breeding bugs, so that students have this activity, they read, they have different things that go along with it. And then on the simulation, they take their cube and they could breed two bugs to see what happens. If you notice they tap two bugs and those two bugs will breed and what the outcome is of the breeding. So very cool simulation. Other future uses. We have a seventh grade technology class where they do a lot of 3D printing. So you can import the 3D model into the MergeCube app. And then before the students print it, they can look at the model to make sure the heights and the levels, sometimes when we 3D print, we

206realize there's a mistake. So with the AR cube, we can actually see it before it's printed. In social studies, they have a lot of virtual artifacts that ancient Egyptians mummies, they can look at and in art classes they can study sculptures so they can take the David and put it on their the table and look at it. They could do that in the virtual reality world and go to the museum. But in the classroom using the AR they're able to manipulate and look around and talk about it. So we were talking about the CFI earlier, the augmented reality stations that were created. I don't know if you're aware that over the summer, four Middle School teachers cleared out the woods in front of the tennis courts. It was a overgrown woods, they got permission to

207clear out the woods. they made a beautiful nature path. In there, they put signs and they put different stations that students and around the building, they sign out to use the nature trail, so they're not all there at once. And they walk the trail with their iPads and here's Ben Turner, one of the people who was on the grant, they walk the trail and they have these stations where they use an app called Zappar. They first use their camera and they have a Flipgrid video where it introduces the station. So they QR code it, they watch the video and then they have this app called Zappar, augmented reality app where they have created, the sixth graders have created the content in Zappar, so when someone scans the Zapper code, it takes them to this augmented

208reality slide. So we have a- It's gonna go by very fast. Yes, so here they are, they're walking up to it. Then these slides come up and they could click on different aspects of the questions. They have quizzes, videos, but if you notice we're in the context of the nature trail and these were all created by sixth graders. And so the different grade levels go out there and learn about different aspects of things that live in the nature trail. And Jerry's gonna talk about our next part. Yeah, Michael, thank you again for showing those two different examples of how we're starting to use this technology. I did tell Michael that I looked back at our old board presentations, this is from a board presentation in 2003, we imagined what the augmented reality would look like.

209The teacher who's in the video is of course retired and the students you're gonna see, I'm sure all have families of their own by now, but we imagined in 2007, we'd have Scarsdale Virtual Anatomy. We're a little bit very ambitious in our prediction, it doesn't quite look like this, but I bet you someday it will. Who knows what will happen with the future in this world? Thank you, Michael, for presenting that. And finally, the Scarsdale Center for Innovation has made so many great things happen. We talk about the idea of collective genius, where we assemble people who are individually have their own slice of genius. And one of the goals of the Center for Innovation has been not really to create a vision and have people follow it, but to set the stage for people

210to make their own vision. We have a group called our Innovation Ambassadors and thanks to Thomas for setting this up for us, having the idea to have teachers who are innovators, really meet with us to talk about their own innovations. In our website, if you go there, you can explore years and years of the different innovative work that's come out of the Center for Innovation. Not just a projects, but also places like grants to help think about the new Edgewood Library. The first grant for MakerSpace, that Peter McKenna actually received, a plan to build something called a Wellness Center, that really became something called the Fitness Center here and the Middle School NEST. So all of this work that's happened over the years for the Center for Innovation. I just want to conclude the presentation

211by talking about what we began with, the vision for the future. This is a story that happened over 20 years ago, I was contacted by "Electronic Learning Magazine". This was a magazine that really was leading magazine for technology and education at the time. And they wanted to do a cover story on the High School of the future. And they asked if this famous photographer, Danuta Offinowski, who had shot many different celebrities and magazines could come to Scarsdale and shoot some of our students for this magazine cover. And she did, and she came to the Fox Meadow Computer Lab, and while she was taking pictures with her high-end equipment, she was moving her camera up and down, which I thought was very interesting. When we saw the magazine cover, it looked like this. So she had

212all this high-end equipment, and these are the results that we had. These are Scarsdale kids from back in the day in the Fox Meadow Computer Lab. And if you look at these pictures, they're just very interesting. So I have another question for the Board, our final question for tonight, what does this tell us about the future? What was the photographer trying to convey? Blurry? They're blurry, exactly. Why were they blurry intentionally? Karen, what you saying? Guessing you can say it it's okay. You're not certain? Not certain, right? They're blurry because it's really there's uncertainty right about the future we don't know. We certainly don't know about the future of technology and in our own plan too, as we look at it, we have some uncertainty built in, but we hope that most of the work

213that Cindy will really guide our work in the next couple of years. I wanna thank all our presenters for this evening, thank people from the K-12 Technology Committee who came. (audience clapping) And thank the Board and the community for supporting all of us over the years. And also thank the parents who I know are gonna fill out our technology survey and give us feedback on our technology plan. So at this time, if the Board has any questions, we would be happy to answer them. I wanna step in quickly and say on behalf of the Board, thank you, Jerry. And I know Rachel assisted you and all the people in the audience who assisted with this presentation and all the incredible work you're doing, I'm kind of blown away. I feel very old sitting here and

214I wanna go back to school. So our students are very lucky to have you all, so thank you for your hard work. (audience clapping) I don't have any questions actually, but I wanted to say that I did my undergrad in electrical engineering and it made me so happy to hear that you are trying to attract a diverse group of students to our classes in the High School and everything that was presented tonight was fantastic. But I especially enjoyed hearing about the augmented reality, I'd love to see that cube personally and also the digital literacy piece was great. So thank you everyone for your efforts. I wanted to say thank you everyone, and especially Jerry, for your efforts. One of the things the board members do behind the scenes is each of us meets with a

215different member of the administration regularly. And I've had the honor of having Jerry as my cabinet member buddy this year. And so I got a sneak preview of some of this ahead of time, and I feel smarter every time I meet with you. So I also appreciate, as we look at media literacy, an area that is near and dear to me, that at least two of our staff, computer teachers who presented tonight, Mr. Casal, and Mr. Tomizawa, actually have a hands-on background in media. I think that working in the space changes the lens that you're able to bring to our students and I really appreciate that. In terms of just nitty-gritty questions, I'm wondering what the timeline looks like in terms of meeting with the remaining focus groups, because I know that's something we get

216questions about periodically. Sure, my plan is to meet with them during the month of May and then compile that final information along with the responses we get from the survey. And then we have a meeting set up at the end of May with our K-12 Technology Committee to process all the results and see if there's any other information or anything else we need to add to our technology plan. We have space for one more goal, if we see something emerge as something we want to add, but for the most part, we'll use that, we'll process that information. We'll hear back from BOCES after they review our technology plan, and then we'll go to the state to officially be the new technology plan on July 1st. And we're looking forward to our new crew, taking it,

217and moving it forward in the years ahead. And to Amber's point about bringing in a diversity of students, I do not have a degree in electrical engineering, I fell off the girls in technology map after being a Mac ranger in high school. But I am wondering about concrete steps we're taking to closing that gender gap in technology. I know that some of the elementary schools offer early morning coding or other options that can bring kids in to maybe catch them up, if they're not pursuing those activities at home. Are there any other social coding opportunities that we're increasing either in the classroom or as part of our extracurricular offerings under the plan? There are a couple of things we hope to do with the new plan. One is that we see the greatest disparity of

218course, in high school. And we know that this change happens in Middle School and the Board knows that you've approved and hopefully will be part of next year's plan, having a coding teacher in the sixth grade, that's a full-time coding teacher, not a part-time person that will hopefully spur that along. The other thing that's kind of a chicken or the egg syndrome is that if you look at, for example, our coding classes that have the vast majority are boys, how do you get girls to want to take those classes, understand that initially that first group may be a smaller group and hopefully it will expand into a greater percentage of that class. We've seen it happen in STEAM classes, certainly, where the classes are much more balanced, but helping them understand that. And then the

219final piece is just communication, as I mentioned. Sometimes people don't understand really what's involved in a coding class and the excitement of creating your own app or something that may really appeal to people who may think it's just about, engineering or math, but it applies to people who have interest in many different areas. So those pieces are there, we're gonna do some surveys, I think we have in our state technology plan, we mentioned bringing in an outside expert to help talk to us. We also wanna look at how coding is taught, frankly, to see if there's anything that's being done that may be turning off students who don't see themselves as strong in math or engineering, but still understand that creative process. So there are a couple of things that you'll get to see that

220will better in the state plan, that'll also be reflected in the final version of this document. And in terms of that very tiny 3% of faculty and staff who felt that they lacked support in terms of technology, that seems like such a small gap, it feels very attainable to close it. It does, and I think if we look at the data, once again, these are anonymous surveys, so we don't know who they are, but if I recall it was teachers that are maybe in the specials and feel like, the device, they have doesn't fully support their specialty area. And so looking at that, looking at that information and maybe a next step is asking those teachers to perhaps identify themselves, we can help give them that support. Because that felt very obtainable, right? Yeah. And

221then finally, we were talking a lot about media literacy and digital responsibility. How are we helping parents if at all, to model behavior that they want their children to have, or to rather than only having limitations on the devices, how are we sort of teaching parents the skills that they may not have for helping their kids become responsible digital citizens? So I know some of our computer teachers have done parent presentations, I see Jen in the audience, and Chris, some others, I dunno if you want to come to the mic and just talk briefly about what you've told the parents or both of you (laughs). Hello everybody again, I'm Jennifer Cronk, I'm the Middle School coding teacher. And I also have presented on digital parenting for the Middle School PTA and any parents that were

222interested. And so one of the things that we talked about is, and I was able to relate with the parents is I have two Middle Schoolers myself and recently lost the Snapchat battle. And I think that's one of the things that when we talk to parents, at least when I was talking to parents is that it's in a constant state of becoming an awareness. There are certain things that we can do and strategies we can put in place, but it is also important to recognize how some students are actually to your point, making a success story for themselves, depending on how they harness these tools. So exploring with parents ways that we can keep them safe and still let them explore their identities and explore these different opportunities to grow themselves and make their brand,

223'cause some of them are branding themselves very successfully in positive ways and especially athletes, that's a big part of how they might look onto athletic scholarships, my son is all over it with me, but then also taking a step back with the students at the same time where we're sharing with the parents, share with the students, both the negative and positives, because I think it's very productive to share both sides with students and talk and have discussions about positive uses of technology and social media and some uses of social media and technology that are not very helpful or conducive to your life moving on. And they're very adept and it could speak mostly for the sixth graders, my students about a solid 45% of my students have social media. I've surveyed them all and we've

224had a lot of discussions and the ones that do have a tendency to also have TikTok and Snapchat. So we've had a lot of conversations about that and the students seem pretty aware, and I'm happy to continue to meet with parents. It's something that I find personally very interesting as a parent of Middle School students, myself. Yeah, and similarly so I'm at the elementary level. So my conversations with parents are slightly different, but I do have an elementary student and a Middle School student, so I'm sort of in this world as well, crossing those lines. One of the biggest things is expectations and knowing that the parents need to set expectations about use and whether they put the device away at dinner and things like that. But also that there's gonna be an expectation where

225the parents have to step outta that comfort zone a little bit and allow the students to kind of have a little bit of that freedom for lack of a better word. The big example has always been everyone, and when I do these parent coffees, everyone would always ask me, when should they get their child a cell phone? And totally I get it, it was rugged. My thing, which then I lived up to, which we did, Christmas of my daughter's fifth grade year, because I felt like that was an opportunity where she was getting to that point where she was going to Middle School where there's that sense of independence, where the kids start to kind of pull away and kinda wanna do their own thing. However, elementary school, there's still that sense of, well, I

226have to listen to mom and dad because I'm still in elementary. So for us it was about, and sort of one of those things I talk about with parents is finding that balance of like where is that safe space for you to kinda give up some of that control so you can let your students make those smart choices and just kind of managing those expectations. And it's also, and one of the things that I always sort of get like weird joy out of, is when parents come to me and tell me that their kids yelled at them for clicking on something that they shouldn't have, which means that I'm hammering at home enough with the students that like sort of circling back. But I think that's important too, is that the parents are listening to

227the students because just like you mentioned a minute ago, a parent like this is new to a lot of people, whereas the kids are, it's more innate for them. So sometimes if the child is saying, oh, this is how it works, maybe pause and actually listen, because maybe that is, and maybe how we would've approached that technology and that balance is different now than it was. So, but yeah, we're very similar alignment and that's sort of how we approach those conversations. I also wanna add a lot of parents, it's funny pre-COVID, there was a trend in the region. Some parents are very concerned about screen time and then the pandemic happened and that was pretty much taken off the table for a period of time. And so now that is a trend that I'm beginning

228to hear more, and I have parents asking me about screen time. And I actually heard about a fantastic book and I heard about it from Jerry, Mitch Resnick, "Lifelong Kindergarten". And in that book, very specifically Mitch from MIT, who created Scratch, actually talks about the different purposes of what screen time really is. And I think one of the biggest concerns, if we clarify it specifically, is we're worried about our students who are sitting home or sitting wherever, just consuming content. And thankfully our district provides media literacy where they can question the content they're actually consuming. But what we really want to encourage is content creation. We want them to create constructs of their knowledge, we want them to be able to exercise their ingenuity and their creativity. And that's a kind of screen time that

229we have in the educational space, so it's important to differentiate between the two. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I have a quick, very technology question. Okay. Can you talk about why kids in K-2 start with a iPad and then three to five go to a Chromebook, but then in middle school, go back to an iPad, and then I think in high school sort of gravitate back towards- Chromebook of their own device. That's a good question, the parents ask us that in the focus groups as well. I think if you look at an iPad as a device for the K-2 program, having students have a device that has a screen and a good camera and also apps that are specifically designed for that level, was the genesis of moving forward in that direction. And I think it's

230something you'd find actually many other schools, but then the switch to Chromebook, happen because as students get older, there's more of a need for them to be typing on the keyboard and having a device that had the keyboard and also supported the Google Suite, which we use as you know, as a baseline was important. When they got to the Middle School, the sense was that because of all the creative and design work that was happening there, that having an iPad again was important, but the switch there is that they have a detachable keyboard that goes on. So it meets both the need of having a keyboard that they can type on, as well as having that screen and having the apps that they use. Where it get a little bit trickier as the High School

231where students like to kind of choose their own device. And we have freshmen who get ninth graders who get the Chromebooks, but then as they get older, many parents buy students their own device, students come in with a variety of devices. If you look around a high school classroom, you'll see just a myriad of different devices or go to the library, you'll see that as well. So basically it emanated from the curriculum use that the teachers were using as well as what happens at each specific level. I don't know if anyone else wants to add onto that, Peter or anyone else? Michael, I know you've gotten that question sometimes at the Middle School. When parents hear that it comes from really the curriculum and from the usage of the students, they understand that, it's really

232interesting because we get the same question about, well, you have Google Classroom and then you do Schoology and then you do Google Classroom again. If you think about it from the lens of a student, for them it's their entire year when they're in that environment, so they don't see the changes. Of course, with a parent, they have multiple students, multiple children, they see children in different places. So I think it's more of an issue for the parents than it is for the students, but it's something, to look at in the future, should we really standardize an either one platform or one device at least for, as the students get older or something we could consider. Good question though, thank you. That's helpful, I appreciate. And just one thing not to, maybe not for now and

233not to give you more work, but it'd be very interesting to know what our recent and somewhat recent alumni have to say about technology. There's just so many options now on what to use, what Program, I mean, Chris, talked about three different movie programs, what are they finding most helpful when they get into college into the workforce? I'm sure you had those conversations, is just something I think about a lot for that generation. No, we do talk to students. I think one of the issues we talked to our older alumni who were here when the technology program wasn't fully developed, but certainly recent alumni and college alumni, surveying them would be important. One of the things we've done with the Center for Innovation, of course, we visited several colleges and even graduate schools went to

234Yale School of Management, we went to Iona College to see their design space and see what students use. And basically, the next step is really very interesting. I think college professors are also struggling with doing a lecture and having a room full of students on their own devices and helping them wrestle with attention of the students in the classroom versus the content they're trying to cover. So it's something that that's a good question to help research. It is interesting when you think about the actual tools that back in the day, when we put Excel, PowerPoint on the bottom of our resume, I mean, it's a joke because basically what we want is develop that kind of intellectual flexibility to be able to whatever the device is, be able to negotiate it and use it for

235in an appropriate way to tell your story. There are only four things to put back then. (audience laughing) Well, thanks so much sharing and everybody that came. Thank you very much again for that, really. (audience clapping) Thank you everyone. Yeah, for our faculty and staff have been here very late tonight, feel free to go home now while you can, we know you have to get up tomorrow morning and go back to work. Thank you all. Thank you again. So now we'll move to item 8.03, the District-wide Safety and Emergency Management Plan. And Eric will lead us in that. I truly hate following Jerry every time it happens. A little bit more mundane, but very important to the operations of the school every year. The Board is required to approve a District's Safety and Emergency Management

236Plan. Attached to the agenda you have is the draft, new 22-23 Safety and Emergency Management Plan, along with the red line from last year. There were very few changes in this year's plan with the exception of the addition of two annexes, the first being on cybersecurity and the second being formalizing a longstanding bus accident policy into the actual (clears throat) emergency management plan. Because of the sensitive nature of our emergency response plans. This 40-page document you have here really serves as a public-facing document for each of the board members who would like to see the actual building emergency response plans that are referenced the cybersecurity plan, that's referenced bus accident protocol, and all of the other in depth plans. There is a full copy available to the tune of about 380 pages at honoree's desk

237in the Central Office, all board members are welcome. There's a 30 day comment period that this safety plan has to have that starts tonight as we discuss it, so we invite both the Board to garner questions and any concerns they may have on the plan and invite the community to write to the Board or to myself on any questions they may have on the plan, as well. As I said, from a legal and requirement standpoint, very little changed over last year, but we have added a cybersecurity annex, which Rachel worked and her team worked very hard on this year to really, while it is at emergency response, it takes on a very different life than your more traditional emergency responses, which are not in the computing world. Okay, any questions? Now, I don't expect anybody

238to have fully looked at the plan, but this is our opening discussion for the next 30 days. Okay, thank you, Eric. And this will be by the way, June 6th is the meeting that this will be approved because our main ninth meeting is less than 30 days away. Any questions? Okay, we'll move on to items. Oops, sorry. Sorry, no, I was just gonna ask if there are parents who want, I understand having reviewed the document, why it is not a public-facing document. If there are parents or community members who have specific security concerns, is there a way for them to confirm with you that they are addressed in the plan? Sure, any questions they may have, they can certainly email me, we wouldn't talk about what our staging areas are for each, where they are

239or what exits we use or what our walking escape routes are- If there are people that have suggestions, they can just write them straight to you? Thank you. Okay, so now we will move on to 8.04, proposed summer STI courses. Hi Ann Marie. Good evening everyone, I'm Anne Marie Nee I'm the Director of the Scarsdale Teachers Institute. And hopefully you've noticed that some of the presenters tonight, and many of the people who are here earlier are on our list as coordinators for teaching STI courses this summer and regularly. 'Cause the STI provides a space for teachers to share innovative ideas with each other so that we can serve the most students with those ideas. And you'll notice there are several new courses this summer, a couple of them give a window into new courses that

240are being taught. For example, digital logic is a new course in the Math Department that's project based and Dr. Kumaresan is going to be giving a condensed version for STEAM teachers so that they can see what he does and perhaps bring those ideas to their classes. Jenna Mazzilo at Edgewood will be teaching introduction to applied behavior analysis as she is our 812 special education teacher at Edgewood to share the different techniques she uses with her students, roadside, geology, and cooking with science, will engage teacher in an inquiry-based approach, so they can see science in daily life as we want our students to. And we have a couple of courses that are new looking at literacy again at the K2 level, and then another course that bridges elementary and Middle School ELA. And then of course

241we have our usual courses that review curriculum and prepare teachers for teaching the following school year. So I invite you to ask any questions you have, I always am open to suggestions on the Scarsdale Teachers Institute and yeah. I'd like the cooking with science to be delivering to the board meeting as- (audience laughing) I think it all looks great. Thank you, Ann Marie for all the work you always do on behalf of the STI, the STI is a really wonderful resource. So thank you for leading that. It is, thank you and I appreciate all of your support as a board for many, many years with the STI. This is the STI's 53rd year in existence, and that's because of the partnership between teachers, administrators, and the Boards over all those years. So thank you. Thank

242you. Okay, so now we'll move on to item 8.05, the Draft McKinney-Vento Policy and Proposed Changes in existing policy, first reading, it's Eric. This is the first reading of a required policy in the reauthorization of the last ESSER bill. The federal government directed states to ensure all school districts, regardless of whether they receive Title I money to have the policy in place for McKinney-Vento Act. We have and continue to follow the McKinney-Vento Act. And in short, what that ensures is students who are experiencing homelessness can either one maintain education in their original school district, regardless of where their temporary housing or the place where they sleep is, or if they receive temporary housing somewhere, can join the school district without the typical requirements of residency proof and immunizations records current transcripts. So it's really a

243continuity of education law. Scarsdale has very few homeless students, but we don't have zero. So we actually have some very interesting situations of which none of our students are experiencing, I think what you would call classic homelessness. We do have some unaccompanied youth due to world events going on, and we also have some students that have been with us for a very long time due to interesting medical situations that do live in Scarsdale. So there are approximately four students who are currently designated under this. You can see the draft policy, which really just outlines what the McKinney-Vento requirements are. There are three other policies which essentially steal language from the McKinney-Vento policy and place them into the appropriate spots in those drafts. I'm happy to field any questions for it, again, this is not a

244change in practice, but simply a formalization of the policy. All districts in New York State are currently doing a targeted review of the McKinney-Vento compliance and that's due to a state need with the federal government. So we have recently gone through that. This is the last piece to clear any hurdles that they have on that review. So any questions we'll have another review of this on May 6th. Go ahead. (indistinct) Yeah, I can read it for you if you like, hold on. So a homeless child is one who lacks fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence who has a primary nighttime location in a public or private shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations or a place not designed for, or ordinarily used The definition also includes a child who shares the housing of others due

245to lack of housing, economic hardship, or similar reason, lives in motels, hotels, trailer parks, campgrounds, due to lack of alternative adequate accommodations. Lives in a car park, public space or abandoned building, substandard housing train or bus station, or similar setting has been abandoned at a hospital, whereas a migratory child who qualifies as homeless and unaccompanied youth as a homeless child, not in the physical custody of their parent or guardian. So sometimes it's difficult to figure out who falls in this definition. And we often use our attorneys to help us kind of navigate what this entails, but it is specifically made to be broad and cover any students who is experiencing what amounts to a traumatic event that is outside their control. So really to try and give kids the benefit of the doubt and the

246ability to maintain continuity in their education. Again, Way 6, will have a second reading and hopefully an approval. Great. Okay, thank you. Okay, item 8.6, propose new textbooks for the High School. Edgar. Thank you, okay, so one of the text resources for discussion tonight is for Spanish courses, 312, 322 and 332. After careful review of the current resources. Sandoras, the language teachers determine that another digital resource and Quinteros would be more appropriate for their students in track two. This updated program offers more support for the full range of learners. This recommendation does not create an additional cost. The publisher has agreed to transfer the license to the new program. And then I'm happy to recommend two new texts to be used in Cammy rights at government course. The first is "The Politics of Power: A

247Critical Introduction to American Government" by Katznelson, Kesselman and Draper. This is the seventh edition. This text provides a counterpoint to traditional textbooks going beyond the memorization of facts on how government works and delving into complex questions involving the role of power and engaging in analytical framework with the goal of provoking thoughtful discussion and respectful debate. The next book is "Debating Reform: Conflicting Perspectives on How to Fix the American Political System" by Ellis and Nelson. This engaging text provides students with opposing perspectives and a range of topics, including the fairness of voter ID laws, whether to eliminate the electoral college and the normalization of impeachment. Each book was chosen for its scholarship, Ms. Schwartz discovered these texts through the review of exemplary college level syllabus, also chosen because she anticipates these texts will be highly energizing

248and meaningful to students. Thank you. Any questions for Edgar? Okay, now item 8.07, an update on the succession planning and Ron will update us here. Just a quick update on the RFP for the search firm from Jessica, Bob, and myself, that RFP is now in final form, has been reviewed by legal counsel and has all the additional language added to that and should be going out on the next day or so. And just wanted to acknowledge that we had hoped to get this out a week or two ago, that was our expected timeline, but it is now ready and we'll be going out. And once it is published, it will also be on the website. Okay, and now to item nine, action items. Jim. Yeah, so the action item is basically to approve the Scarsdale

249Teachers Institute summer 2022 courses. And so I would simply move that the Board approve the courses as presented. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay, no opposed, motion passes. Thanks Jim. And now we'll move to item 10 hearing from those present. As a reminder, we invite people from the audience and anyone participating remotely to speak on district-related items or non-personnel-related matters. Please state your name, your address, and if you're speaking on behalf of an organization, I remind you that we ask you to conclude your remarks within four minutes, and we'll give you a verbal cue at the three minute mark. If you have additional comments, we encourage you to send them to us at [email protected]. This is a period reserve for comments only, and we will not engage in dialogue at this time. And

250we do reserve the right to respond to comments or questions at our discretion either in response to public comment or at a later time in place. So anyone from the audience who wishes to speak now? Sure. Mr. Harrison. Good evening, members of the Scarsdale Board of Education, My name is Bob Harrison, I live at 65 Fox Meadow Road, my wife, Terry and I have been here 41 years, and I've had a great interest in our school system. I've had two sons go through the system and now I have four grandchildren in the system. Scarsdale is a great community living here 41 years, and like to see things go as well as possible, I'm very involved with students for higher education. I have my Penn State shirt on, I've been recruiting students for Penn State for

251about 25 years, I've helped more than 50 plus Scarsdale students go to fulfill their dream to Penn State University. And we just finished up a $2.2 billion fundraising campaign at the university, this past weekend, we had 1500 people on the floor of the Bryce Jordan Center and had a piece in the newspaper a week or two ago. I'm on the PI Sigma Delta Educational Foundation Scholarship Committee. If there are any parents out there and students who are planning to go to Penn State this year, we have 30 scholarships. We don't have 30 open at the moment, but they're 5,000 a year, and like to have any parents and students contact me, several have, and we have three students currently at Penn State who are on our scholarships. So it's bobnarrison@proscars, that stands for pro Scarsdale,

252@aol.com. Be happy to hear from you. I wanna thank Stuart, I'm getting old stuart, I forget names, Mattey, Stuart Mattey, for getting back to me on you have about $64 million invested, short term funds, I believe, am I right? Was the number, if you wanna shake your head, I guess you can't talk to me and you nicely got back to me almost immediately. I've had problems and I'll say it publicly, 'cause it's in the newspaper this past Friday with the village treasure on getting the right information of where their funds are, getting very low returns of 0.05 to 0.1%. And Stuart, you told me that you are starting to use treasury bills and I strongly urge you as a over a 45 year financial person on Wall Street and Goldman Sachs for 28 years, I

253follow the markets daily, I'm not retired from the markets and today's treasury bills, one year bills are yielding over 2% and the village is getting next to nothing. And I hope at tomorrow night's budget meeting, the Village Board will change that problem, but I urge you to continue to invest in treasury bills and one year bills. I'm not sure what maturity you have right now, but was 60 some odd million dollars, if you can get 2% or more. And by the way, I hope you all know who Jay Powell is. Jay Powell is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He's the next most important man in Washington or woman, he controls the interest rates and they're gonna raise rates probably up to three and a half percent from the current level of about 0.25%.

254They're gonna have a meeting on May the 4th, where they'll be raising rates at least 50 basis points, and then we'll have about seven more increases. So I hope Stuart you're able to manage your 60 somewhat million dollars T bills are totally liquid. It's the best investment in the world and you and our Village Board should be managing, these are our funds, our residents. That's how you have that money and your unassigned fund balance and it should be managed properly. And I compliment either you got back to me, but I urge you to be more aggressive with investing those funds. They're totally liquid, you need some to pay a bill, you sell some treasury bills right at the market. So I hope. So, Mr. Harrison- The Village Board will act properly and invest the citizens

255funds. Mr. Harrison, I'm so sorry to interrupt you, I know you're over the four. You gave me a little extra, right? Oh, you already have some extra, do you have- No, I said you gave me some extra. I did give you some extra- I'm complimenting you and thanking you. Well, we appreciate your feedback, really. If you have more to tell us, if you could email us or- (indistinct) Assets as good as possible too for the residents of Scarsdale. Thank you for that feedback, thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else from the audience wish to speak. Okay, do we have any hands raised? We have one hand raised. Hi, please turn on your video and unmute yourself. Hi, thank you all and I know it's very late. so I'll do my best to keep my

256comments limited. First, thanks for the coffees, I was there a couple of days ago and I appreciated the opportunity to share my thoughts. Hi, thank you all, and I know it's very late, so I'll do my best to keep my comments limited. First, thanks for the coffees, I was there a couple of days to go. Turn off your lights. Thank you all, and I know it's very late, so I'll do my best to keep my comments. Turn off my what? Turn off your lights. It's echoing, we're sending you a chat. Very late, so I'll do my best. Is that helpful? Yes (laughs). That's great, thanks Eileen, that's great. Does that part of my time? No. Let's go, let's go. Okay, we'll start you now. Are we good? Is my line stream off and we're okay.

257Yes, you're good to go. Okay, so I will, since I was repeated three times, I don't need to repeat again. Thanks for the coffees and for the attention. I had the opportunity today to review that contract, and I was surprised that it was redacted, that there was a big black marks through that contract. So it's not clear what the scope of the investigation is for those of us in the community. I also would like to point out that there's no timeframe for completing that. And I think that it would be important to go back to that investigator, the attorney who's taking care of that and actually have in writing what the timeframe would be as to when the expectation of that report would be completed and presented to the Board and to the community. And

258I'd also like to know that it would be presented to the community. I'd like to know that from the Board, that you have an intention of sharing that with the community, asking us during this interim period to have patience, but I would respectfully request that there should be full disclosure once that investigation is completed. My concern about the timeframe is two things. One, we have a budget coming up in May and part of that budget, it seems, and not my area of expertise at all, but it seems that we're being asked to accept some calculations that deviate from standard accounting practices and some of this stuff affects our budget and certainly raises questions about budgeting. And that's in May and I'd like to know where we stand with this investigation before I would vote on

259that budget. And I also like to point out that two key administrators who are directly responsible for the mistakes because they were pointed out to being mistakes are exiting shortly and also the lack of transparency, the lack of honesty, and the covering up of the mistakes that were made those individuals are also heading out and on their own timetable. And I would like to know that that investigation is completed before these things happen. I'd also like to say that I appreciate that you all took the opportunity to just take a step back and think about having the auditor be the same organization. That is the one that was supposed to be auditing things to begin with. Maybe it might be a good idea to have an outside auditor come in so that it can be

260done with fresh eyes, as opposed to the same people who have relationships with the administration, and maybe we can find out what, if anything they missed. I'd also like to ask you to please reply to the questions from residents, simple questions, like what is the flow chart, the flow chart in our administration, who answers to whom? That should be readily available in any organization and any board that should be readily available to people. I would also, and I mentioned at the coffee, I'd also like to have you guys as a board, please consider the training that you get as board members. Like for me, I have voted in over the years individuals who I have a strong respect for. I find this particular group and groups in the past to be extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily competent,

261inquisitive, curious, and with a great deal of community engagement and pride in our community. And something happens collectively as a board year after year that I witness is that we go from having really very strong, independent people that I know personally to sometimes a board looking like they're afraid to speak or to respond or to reply. So Eileen your time is up. I would ask that you reply to the questions that are being asked of you by our community members. And I would appreciate that and I will push my luck to say I was very grateful- Eileen, did you hear me? Your time is up? I can say no, I didn't hear you, Amber. I know (laughs), I don't think you can say that. Eileen, we ask you to, can you ask her to send

262the rest of her comments to, okay. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, did she hear that? Okay, no other hands raised. Okay, response to public comments. Again, thank you everybody for their feedback. Again, I wanna reiterate that many of the matters raised this evening involve, where the Board would need to consult and gain advice from counsel and other matters raised are under investigation. So we thank you for your feedback and we will provide updates as we are able and answer questions as we are able. Anyone want to add to that? Can I just speak really briefly to the notion of putting a cap on what the investigator is doing? Sure. Can I just speak very briefly to the notion of putting a cap on what the investigator is doing? I mean, I think that's a very

263good suggestion, and we had a discussion, which I don't think I'm outta school to say there was discussion. And I think where we landed, my recollection was that it was important for the integrity of the process, that the investigator not be told that there are limits, to what he could do if the facts led there. So in other words, it's not a carte blanche, it's not a spend however you want freely, we don't care 'cause we are supervising his expenses. It is the fact that he needs to go where the facts lead and we can't tell him, you can only go where the facts lead up to $10,000 because that's not a full investigation. However, again, to reiterate the scope is limited to a timeline and communication. And as I said in my opening comment

264while the exact timeline is not certain, we expect his work will be done thoroughly and expeditiously. Thank you. Okay, so meeting dates, oh, any wrap-up items? We will look into the possibility of a special meeting next week, if not, we will reconvene the Audit Committee at our May 9th meeting. Dates for the coming month. The currently scheduled dates for the coming month are tomorrow, no, Wednesday, April 27th. There's an indoor Board Coffee from 5:30 to seven in this room at the High School. On Monday, May 9th, there is a meeting with the designated group at five o'clock in the Learning Commons here in the High School, followed by the Statutory Budget Hearing at 6:30 in this room, 171-172 followed by a Business Meeting in this room, an executive session if needed. And on Tuesday, May

26517th is the Public Budget Vote and board elections from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the Middle School Gym and a special meeting to certify the vote results at 9:30 p.m. It says room 170, but I believe that's at the High School. In Middle School. Yeah, I'm sorry at the Middle School, right? Okay, at the Middle School. That's it. Okay, great. So I will entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. So moved. Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, motion passes, have a nice night everybody. Thank you.