001Good evening. I call this meeting to order and note that all board members are present, in addition to Dr. Hagerman and his cabinet. I want to welcome all of those attending this evening's board meeting or watching later on demand, and on behalf of the board, we hope that you are well. Thomas has asked to give his opening statement first this evening and so we will move to item 2.03 on the agenda first. Great, thank you, Karen. I have a little bit longer words tonight, apologies in advance, but it's all important stuff of course. So first of all, good evening and welcome, we appreciate you joining us of course both in person and virtually at tonight's business and education report meeting to become more informed about some of our most significant work here in the district.
002As I said, I have a lot to say tonight, but I wanna start with a student focus. There's a great deal of student programming going on at this time of year and much of it is formally documented in our principal's and PTA newsletters. But tonight I would like to acknowledge Scarsdale's cheerleading team who'll be competing in the upcoming UCA national competition in Orlando, Florida on February 11th through the 13th. On behalf of the district, I want to acknowledge their hard work and success and wish them luck representing Scarsdale at this very prestigious competition. Shifting to the agenda for tonight's meeting, there will also be a brief update on COVID-19 metrics and risk mitigation efforts, followed by a very comprehensive special education report presented by Mr. Rauschenbach and his team who many of them are in
003the audience and we really appreciate you taking time out of your very busy weeks to come and be a part of this meeting tonight. We'll also be hearing quick updates on strategic planning and DEI from Edgar. On the ladder of those topics one week ago, we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He once famously said, life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others. Martin Luther King Jr. Day has become the most recognized day on the calendar for community service. King spoke of service, community empowerment and non-violence. In recognition of the national holiday and in honor of King's humanitarian contributions, as you all know Scarsdale schools were closed last Monday with the hope that everyone was active in some way spreading the word of recognition and service. Although we'll not be
004addressing the ongoing budgeting process at tonight's meeting, it is important to mention the governor. The governor has released her 2022/23 executive budget proposal. On January 18th, Governor Kathy Holcomb delivered a presentation in support of this budget proposal. Shortly after that presentation, a budget briefing book was released that provides additional details on a number of her proposals. While actual budget bills have not been released yet, there are some highlights you probably wanna know about. The first is a $2.1 billion increase in state aid for schools, a foundation aid phasing plan that will help to generate nearly $1.6 billion in new foundation aid, full funding of expense-based aids generating about 460 million increase over the current aid levels, State Education Department authorizations to provide forgiveness on building aid and transportation aid penalties, $100 million state matching fund
005for high need districts to address student well being and learning loss, and more than a billion dollars for the state's initiative to provide affordable broadband access in rural and urban areas across the state. Of course, more information on how this budget proposal directly impacts our process will be addressed at subsequent budget meetings. Returning to tonight's agenda, you'll see that there are nine resignations and retirements in the consent agenda, representing over 232 years of collective service. These are all esteemed colleagues and professionals whose contributions to our district have been immeasurable. Each of these individuals will be recognized by their school and by the district in the weeks and months ahead, but I will note tonight that Scarsdale schools have been indelibly improved because of their dedication, talent and skills. I also need to let you know
006that this list is incomplete as there's one more name to add. In executive session earlier this evening, I informed the Board of Education that I've accepted an offer for another position and I'll be resigning my position as superintendent of schools formally effective at the end of this school year. In a letter to them, I noted that, "When I came to Scarsdale eight years ago, the district was yearning for academic improvement, curricula consistency, clear communication, operational transparency, facility and ground improvements, financial stewardship, strategic planning, and much more. As I reflect over these years and prepare to say goodbye to our students, faculty, staff and parents, it is with the hope that these and many other areas have been significantly improved, and that Scarsdale's positioned to continue on a positive trajectory of growth". It goes on to
007say that the heartbeat of this district has and always will be the people, starting with our incredibly capable and talented students. They are and must always continue to be our first priority. The extraordinary teaching and learning that happens in our schools is of course credit to some truly remarkable staff members, educators and leaders. I hope that their skill, dedication and expertise continue to be recognized and lauded by both the community and the board, as they are uniquely qualified to make the best educational decisions for our students, both individually and collectively. Finally, I would like to thank both our parent leadership groups and the Board of Education, both those currently in place and those that I've had the good fortune to work with throughout my tenure here in Scarsdale. With few exceptions, these individuals have understood
008their roles as community leaders, stewards of resources, defenders of excellence, and avid supporters of students, staff and the broader community. Historically, our educators and many leadership teams have worked together collaboratively to balance the voices and needs of our school's many stakeholders, while also ensuring that our students remain the focus of our most meaningful work and decision making. As Scarsdale schools continue to progress through a time of significant change and transition, it is imperative that these individuals and groups work closely together to preserve the best of what Scarsdale schools have always been, places of great teaching and learning, places that support students, teachers and leaders, and places that create a sense of community and camaraderie. And as I turn back over to you, Karen, I'll ask that you amend tonight's agenda to add an action item
00911.04, resignation of the superintendent, and I will ask Honore to add my letter of resignation as the backup for that item. And with that and a heavy heart, I turn this back over to you Karen. Thank you, now we've on the back to item 2.02. Having just learned your news this evening, the board wants to briefly thank you, Thomas, for your eight years of leadership and service to our students, faculty and staff and community. We will more fully recognize your achievements and efforts as is our practice at the end of the year. I do want to let the community know that the board is committed to taking a thoughtful approach to next. (speaking indistinctly) I would like to let the community know that the board is committed to taking a thoughtful approach to next steps
010to ensure strong leadership and continuity of excellence. Please note that we do not discuss personal matters at the board table during public meetings, but we will keep the community advised of our process, understanding the importance of transparency, clear communication and community participation as appropriate. Dr. Hagerman has asked that action item 11.04, resignation of the superintendent, be added to this evening's agenda. I asked that our district clerk, Honore Adams, please add this action item. To turn to some board updates and items to note, at our last meeting, the board past policy 1230 allowing for remote participation at board meetings. The governor also signed A8591 on January 14th extending the current authority for school boards and other public bodies to meet virtually as long as the governor's current state of disaster emergency declaration is in place. This
011past weekend, the board scheduled board retreat was postponed. We will work to reschedule this retreat soon so we can continue our DEI development work in accordance with policy O1O5 and our other board development work. As budget season is underway, we encourage the entire community's participation in the budget process and hope that you will attend our upcoming budget study sessions, public forum, and board business meetings where you may speak during public comment periods. You may also send your comments to us via email. The budget calendar is posted online on the district's homepage. This year's board subcommittee on community engagement and onboarding are both scheduled to meet on January 26th to work on their respective charges for this year as they relate to our board goals. And at our last meeting, we tabled our first reading of
012the 1000 policy series and we will continue with that work at our next business meeting. In closing, I would like to mention the Westchester Putnam School Board Association's regional symposium that I attended virtually last Thursday. The title of the presentation was, Innovate, Inspire and Influence the Future of Public Education. It emphasize the importance of cultivating curiosity, engagement and true joy in learning. That we should trust the expertise of our teachers who work hard to make their lessons resonate with students, who encourage students to explore and think critically and creatively, who are in the constant process of their own critical thinking and creative problem solving as they observe student's daily learning needs and adjust or pivot in their methods, evaluating and reimagine aspects of education every day. As skilled professionals who are passionate about their work,
013teachers can light fires and change children's lives. I thought about the work of our faculty and the goals of our strategic plan, realizing how much this symposium was less a call to action for us here at Scarsdale, but more an acknowledgement and confirmation of the work already being done. As we continue our important work on behalf of our students and continue to navigate an ever changing landscape, I want to thank you all again for your continued resilience, patience, flexibility and hard work. Thank you very much. Now we will turn to item 2.04, board member reports. Do any board members have reports? Thanks, Karen. I have a couple of reports and then Amber and I have a joint one together. The first one is just that the SAFE Coalition met last week for one of its
014monthly planning meetings and a couple of upcoming events. They are working on another community book read likely for this spring, as well as working with the school on possible learning opportunities for Teen Dating Violence Month in February. And last week on last Thursday, the Scarsdale Drug and Alcohol Task Force or DATF held a webinar to present the Pride Survey results. Just a little background for those that may not be familiar with the Pride Survey. This is a national survey that is done every few years in the Scarsdale schools, and collects data regarding student views and usage on substances including alcohol, marijuana, e-cigarettes, cigarettes and prescription drugs. Chris Griffin from our high school presented the survey data and Lisa Tomeny from the DATF discussed the science behind how this data impacts students. They both also presented
015the work being done in the schools and community to address this issue. Following the presentation, there was a Q&A panel that also included Scarsdale Police Chief Matturro, Detective Bronstein, and Patty Moore, a youth outreach worker at the high school. If you weren't able to watch this presentation or a previous one done by the PTA, a recording of the presentation will be available on the DATF website which is scarsdaledatf.org. I personally found this information, resources and strategies to be extremely informative and I would urge members of the community to watch the presentation. Maybe I'll let Amber start on the joint one. Board Member Ron Schulhof and I had the pleasure of visiting Edgewood School last week as part of the board statutory responsibility to visit all of our schools. Our tour was led by the fifth
016grade torchbearers for this year, Kate and Pablo. Edgewood has a warm history of tradition seen in different ways throughout the school. Principal Brown and assistant principal Yang also accompanied us on the tour where we were able to visit classrooms and observe our students led by their teachers. Many thanks to the entire Edgewood community for providing us with the opportunity to visit their school. Thank you both. Now we will move to item 3.0, information discussion items led by the superintendent and we'll have our back to school update. My mic was turned off, can people hear me okay? So we're gonna jump into our back to school update and ask Eric to lead us off on that, thank you. Thank you Dr. Hagerman. A relatively short update today. I'm happy to report that the metrics in the
017county and the state are dropping fairly precipitously. We're at 93.4 cases per 100,000 which incidentally is down from 383 14 days ago. We're at a 0.62 infection rate which is the lowest it's been during the pandemic thus far. And we're at 15.8% positivity, again 27.7 14 days ago. All of those are good news. I think it's important to understand while those are dropping, we are still in the school district seeing fairly record number of cases in the last week since last Monday, we've had 76 cases, 69 students and 10 faculty members, so we still do have while we are starting to feel that downslope, the numbers are still fairly significant. I did wanna take a minute to talk about procedures as you no doubt heard during Dr. Hagerman's last communication. We've reinstated day trips, we
018are allowing overnight trips as long as parents and guardians can travel with the student in case there's an infection on the overnight trip. We've added two spectators per athlete or per student performing to the performances. And just as a note, all of the overnight trips that have been currently planned will be under that one to one parent guidance. Next Monday, good, this coming Monday, we will re-review our policies around snack, we'll look at spectators again, visitors, and take a look at those overnight trips in light of where hopefully seven days from now with similar dropping of numbers, we're in a little bit different of a situation so those will be evaluated. And last but not least, the state last week disbanded their active contact tracing by the Department of Health. They also released guidance in
019January that schools no longer needed to contact trace so we as a school will be ending our active contact tracing. We will still be following up on all positive cases, making sure those isolation dates are correct. We will still offer test to stay for anyone who reports they have been a contact to those, but we are foregoing the interview processes that we go through whenever we get a positive case as per the new guidance. So at this point, test to stay and antigen test will be available to whoever is a self reported close contact, whether that be of a school nature or in the larger world. And we will be providing antigen, we continue providing antigen test as long as our supplies remain to any students who are experiencing symptoms so that they can test
020to come back if they're vaccinated. Okay, that's really all we have for tonight. Any questions, happy to take them. I have three very brief questions. First of all, I've heard very positive feedback on visitors, most recently spectators at the senior plays on Friday night, we heard a lot of very positive feedback from community members who were able to participate in those great curricular events so that was terrific, or extracurricular events. As you review the policies next week, are you planning to take into account not just the number of people per pupil but the number of people in a space because that seems. Yes, as we look at it next week, we'll be thinking about capacity of venue probably more so than per participant. Great. Second question was at this point, what is the status of
021allowing parents into classrooms or third parties into class? Yeah, so at this point, we are allowing a parent volunteer or a vendor for an educational program, something like Learning to Look or Learning from our Differences, we can't have those programs. We are not allowing visitors in classrooms for non-educational programs. So if that were birthday parties, things like that. Sure. And you alluded to continuing to offer the test as long as our supplies last. Obviously nationally, there have been certain shortages of tests. Are we encountering difficulties with the amount of tests that we are receiving at this time? Right now we have supplies of tests 'cause BOCES has supplied us with approximately 5700 tests. There is a second shipment that is supposed to come, it has been delayed once. We still have ample tests for the
022next I would say at least month. We are hoping to get another shipment. If we were to try and source those tests on our own, that would be next to impossible. Are we not still getting tests in the partnership with Mount Sinai as well? Well, they're different. So yes, we are, we're doing PCR spit-based tests on a weekly basis but those are on a scheduled basis. So there's no problem getting those tests from Mount Sinai, it's the antigen, the at home antigen tests that were-- For the test to stay. Correct, that's exactly right. All right, great, thank you. I don't expect us to run out anytime soon and I do expect another shipment so knock on wood, assuming everything goes to plan, we should be fine. And my final question is, at this point, do
023we have any data on whether the students who contracted the virus in the last week, whether there was any in-school spread? I mean, even though we're not contact tracing, were there any whole classes that were quarantined or anything like that? No, there were no full classes that were quarantined and we don't have large groups of kids in any particular class. It's very hard to figure out especially during Omicron where that spread is occurring just because of the level of spread that's happening now even with the numbers coming down. I think it would be naive to say there is zero in-school spread, but we are not seeing a large scale spread across classes. We do see some spread on sports teams given the interaction that those students have, especially in the more contact related sports. And
024is there any data at all at this point on the percentage of our students who are vaccinated and whether there's overlap in vaccinated students on the cases being contracted? A lot of our cases are vaccinated students, in fact most 'cause most of our students are vaccinated. Right, thank you. And we do have a percentage of students vaccinated roughly at this point? Our last survey kept us at about 90% across the community, that's still a reasonable number. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. Sorry, Drew, the first one is for you. So, when we talk about the number of cases that are happening, are there any concerns with staffing anymore? Are we feeling comfortable now? Staffing remains I'd say more challenging than normal, but certainly not at the challenging level it was the week we
025returned from the December break, and it's been improving I'd say each week over the last three weeks. Great, thank you. And Eric, I think we're hearing something about the mask mandate of the governor is potentially expiring, do we have a sense as to what's going on there? We don't have an official sense of what is going on there. I do know that there are a number of things being talked about including metrics around vaccination and spread as triggers for allowing mask to come off or whether they should go with a ending of the mask mandate more globally. I don't know that that's been settled on a state level yet. But for right now, we still have the mask mandate in place? Yeah, no changes. And so when? When was the last end date? End of
026the month. It's set to expire on February 1st. And as of Friday she announced, Governor Hochul won't make an announcement until the 31st. So we'll know when we know, I guess. Thank you. Just a quick question, I think it's for Drew, just how is tutoring going? It sounds like they're probably hand in hand with how staffing is going. But are we okay with tutoring for kids? Yeah, I mean, I do. Thank you for asking that question. Our staff has continued to really go way above and beyond and because they care, they want the students who are required to be out to maintain as much of a connection to what's going on in the classroom as possible. It was similar to just the general staffing, I think we were really bending and almost breaking, but I
027think the change to the five day isolation. And we've also made an adjustment to when we're supplying tutoring, it won't be unless you're out three days or more because of the time it takes to get set up. So that has brought the demand down a little bit. I'll share at our one of our budget meetings the number of tutoring hours and then the associated costs is significant. This has been a huge added component of our program for reasons we understand. But it does look like we're, I know I'm going on at length, but it does look like we've been able to maintain what we've needed to maintain it. And maintain it with Scarsdale teachers? With Scarsdale teachers. We just we've had to go to the services that we use on occasion, but far less than
028last year. And just so somebody's watching is aware, so if the way the timing works, are students only gonna be out a couple days? Is the plan they should just contact their teacher and get work for those couple days? Yep, yep, just for day one and day two, if they're out three days, four days, the maximum right now is five days unless they have continued symptomology, then it's going to the tutoring program, yeah. Just to be clear, if they're set to be out for three days, they get the entire three days of tutoring, it's not only starting on the third day. And I don't know whether we have this data but or just anecdotally, I know coming back from break, the board had received from some communications about families concerned for whatever personal reasons that
029they were concerned, are we seeing more of those kids coming back? So some of those families were holding their kids out. Are we seeing more of those kids back in school? There was only a small handful of families that actually held their kids out, of that small handful, we are seeing the majority come back. That's great. I apologize, I had one more follow up too Ron's question or Ron's comment that the guidance will be given from the governor's, Ron and Amber's questions, that the guidance from the governor's office will come on the 31st. Obviously, we don't have a board meeting between now and then. What is the process gonna look like for informing the community of any changes that the cabinet opts to make to the masking policy in schools? It's probably worth talking through,
030whenever we receive a new guidance from the state, or at least in the last 20 months when we've received guidance from the state, there is the moment it comes out when we all get to read it for the first time, and none of the guidance that has come out thus far is without its contradiction and interesting language to what does this actually mean. So it does take a little bit of time for superintendents groups to get together, us to talk with our attorneys about what these requirements might be. Assuming that's the case, we would meet as a cabinet, discuss what the requirements are, ultimately talk to the Administrative Council and figure out the right path forward. We would then probably inform the community through a community update about what the guidance was giving them access
031to whatever those documents that came out were or whatever announcement was made, and ultimately, how it'll affect school. And since this is a case where a specific date has been given for an announcement, are we prepared to react pretty quickly? I mean, yeah, I mean, the mask mandate is one of the, not that anything can't be made complex, but it's-- It is complex and it can be divisive. Right, but what I'm saying is the determination of whether we need to wear them or not is a fairly on or off situation. So we would have to see whether they base it on metrics or whether they just say it's now optional. We would need to talk with our district physician, talk with other superintendents in the area and talk with the local Department of Health. If
032it's optional, that makes it something of a local decision. Sometimes the state will leave those to the local Departments of Health to make, that's what they've kind of come to do in the last six months on many of these things. If that's the case, then we'll need to wait on their determination. If it's to the local school district, obviously, we'll have to have internal discussions about where our numbers are and what we're seeing and what makes sense with our district physician. Thank you. I think it's also a topic that we would broach with our employee groups. This has been a fixture of the mitigation strategies that we've used throughout the pandemic from the time we returned to school last school year. And I know it's of high interest to our employee groups for a variety
033of reasons. Sure. And Drew, just one question for you specific to issues that are of interest to our employee groups, as the weather has gotten colder, have you heard any feedback from the employee groups in terms of the temperature of classrooms since keeping windows open is a key part of our ventilation strategy? Yeah, I haven't gotten any concerns or complaints since the weather has turned personally. I can check on that, but I haven't heard anything. Okay I think it's important to understand, the directive to teachers is to open the windows as much as humanly possible while keeping the classroom at a workable temperature for work. So, there is dispensation if it's minus five degrees out that windows are not wide open during that day. Thank you. Any additional questions? Thank you very much for that
034update. Thank you. Now we will move to item four, hearing from those present, and I will begin by reading the public comment preamble. Members of the public are cordially invited to speak on district related matters or other non personnel matters. Please do refrain from discussing personnel issues. When it is your turn to speak, please state your name, address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization. For those commenting remotely, please mute the livestream voice, turn on your camera, and then unmute yourself. Comments should be kept as brief as possible. Speakers are asked to conclude their remarks within four minutes and will be given a cue at the three minute mark. If at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the board via email. The public comment
035period is reserved for comments only, the board will not engage in dialogue. The board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion, either during response to public comment or at a later time and place. Response to public comment will take place after this first public comment period and again after the second public comment toward the end of the meeting. So at this time, I would like to invite any members of the audience who would like to speak to please come to the microphone. Good evening, school board. My name is Robert Harrison, I live at 65 Fox Meadow Road. My wife, Terry, is here with me tonight. We haven't been to a school board meeting for a while this year but we have four grandchildren in the school system and we lived
036in the community for 40 years and we've been very involved in the community. My wife is a teacher for 40 year plus years and my own involvement in the Scarsdale community for 40 years. So a couple of comments, first of all, on this public comment preamble, I strongly urge that you make that a five minute period just like the village board. And I guess back several officers ago under Scott Silberfein, there was a unlimited time for residents to speak to the board publicly. And I think four minutes is too short and I'm concerned that in this little note, you have, comments should be kept as brief as possible. It almost sounds like you don't wanna hear from the community which is totally wrong, you should be willing to hear from members of the community on
037school issues, and really, there shouldn't be any limit. But to tell our community to keep your remarks as brief as possible, it sounds like you don't wanna hear from the community. So I totally oppose that type of commentary and hopefully you will open up the period to five minutes. And if it takes up too much of your time, having personally served as a volunteer in the community and on the village board, if you can't afford to give your time to the community, then really you shouldn't be on the board, I'm sorry to speak so strongly, but that's the way I feel. You're all volunteers and we're volunteers in the community and we pay a very high tax rate and we want our community to have a great school system and we want the school board
038to be aware of the feelings of the community. So moving on with a few other items quickly before you cut me off. I'd like to know about the sports program. I have grandchildren playing sports and modified sports program in the middle school. Can grandfathers, grandmothers, parents attend the modified sports events at the middle school? If I can get an answer on what the criteria are for that. And from a budget standpoint, I guess I understand you're gonna start your budget meetings. I'm wondering, I know the village talks about its first cut on the budget, is there a projected tax increase at this point in time or that has not been determined. And I'm sure as you go along with your budget deliberations, we'll hear, but the village in the first cut would indicate where they
039were to start. So if you have that first cut projected tax increase, I'd like to hear it. And these screens aren't working for some reason, just that one up there which is hard to see. I don't know why you don't have these screens working for people in the audience since we don't have hard copy of your agenda, which I'm a strong believer that you should have a copy of the agenda for everybody that attends this meeting. You wanna be informative to the community and the taxpayers. So if there's any comment on that or in the future, you'll have these screens working. And I guess I'm about, I still have a little time or where are we? Is that the bell? So okay, so if I could get some response to the sports attending, parents attending
040sports, grandparents, I'd like to hear about that. Thank you for your time and I know it's a challenging job and you're volunteers so I appreciate that, thank you. Thank you so much Mr. Harrison. Anyone else from the audience wish to speak at this time? So then we will turn to those who are participating remotely and who would like to comment at this time. Thank you. Good evening, everyone, Alison Singer, 3 Continental Road, and former Board of Education vice president. I just wanted to be among the first to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to our now outgoing superintendent. Thomas, you have been an inspiring leader to our students, our faculty and our whole community, showing respect and compassion to each individual with whom you come into contact. You have been incredibly hard working and you
041have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to our students. You faced the challenges of the last few years with grace and with thoughtful effective leadership. And you have accomplished the highest measure of a leader in that you will leave our district in far better shape than that in which you found it. I wish you good health and great joy and I thank you for your service to our community. Thank you very much Alison. Thank you, hi, good evening, Mayra Kirkendall-Rodríguez, Fox Meadow Road. I'm speaking only as a parent and as a taxpayer. When you talk about the memorandum of understanding this evening, I hope that you will be able to clarify a couple of things on this very important MOU between the Scarsdale School District and the village. I was hoping you would be able to explain
042exactly who in the village would have access to the school district CCTV, the surveillance camera, the computer system et cetera. Also, I was curious as to what kinds of safeguards you'll be looking for against cybersecurity hacks. There's obviously a tremendous amount of private data and private information at the school so I was hoping you would clarify the scope of what exactly the village will have access to and what will be done to protect family and student privacy. In point number one in the MOU, you state that the school district is going to be providing the village information under certain circumstances such as active shooter situations and school lockdown, but you also mention, the MOU also mentions that it would be provided in sub point five, other health and safety. Respectfully, that sounds like an incredibly
043broad category and so it'd be great to get more detail on that. Lastly, on point number six, you mentioned that the village would have to comply with all respects with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. So I'm hoping that you will provide more details on that. I can understand why this MOU is being contemplated, but it's very, very important to discuss what kinds of safeguards will exist and to give more detail, especially as to who exactly in the village will have access to the information, will it only be the police? Will it be the mayor? Will it be personnel or will it be other trustees? Many thanks. Thank you very much, Mayra. Hi, Diane, you've been promoted to a panelist, please unmute your microphone and make sure your livestream is good in the background.
044You can begin speaking now. Hi, how are you, can everyone, I can't tell if people can hear me. Great, thank you. My name is Dianna Cohen, I live on Duck Pond Road. First of all, Thomas, congratulations on your next move and best luck to you. I'm here to speak regarding reinstating snack time. Snack time was supposed to be reinstated in January and was put on pause to the recent increase in COVID cases. I want to review the facts as they stand. One, COVID case volume has dropped precipitously as Eric has mentioned and we're back almost to where we were when we announced when snack would be reinstated in December. Two, no other school that I know of to my knowledge has stopped snack time due to the increase in cases. Three, other schools with our
045medical advisor have snack time so I think we can assume that (interference). Four, we're able to find the space in our classrooms, other schools have done it, we can make this space to safely allow the children to have short snack break. A break for snacks, right now they just have a short lunch period. Oh, I'm frozen Do you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, so the students is the board's true north young for snack is right thing to do and I urge you not to delay on reinstating snack breaks. Thank you very much, Dianna. That's it? Okay. At this time, we will close hearing from those present and turn to item five, follow up to public comment. I'm happy to take the MOU and I'm happy to take the snack conversation. I think
046it's important from a health, so sub points under Article One are active shooter, school lockdown, not a drill, intruder hostage situation, shelter in place situation, not a drill, and other health and safety. The number three however in further explains the health and welfare, it's when a situation that poses a significant threat to the health, welfare or safety of students and other persons as described in paragraph one or two. That is really when the lives of staff or students could be in danger, situation like a fire, a situation like an emergency where there's a major building issue where the Scarsdale Police Department could patch into our CCTV and help direct police to the right area to address situations or see students who may be trapped or things like that. So this would not be for situations
047that would be not of serious risk to life and limb of those who are in the buildings. The Scarsdale Police Department is the only village department that would have access. And we are meeting actually prior to the implementation of the protocol to put protocols in place with Scarsdale Police Department on who on each shift and how the credentials would be used and given in the police department. That is gonna be a joint effort between the Scarsdale Police Department and the district and those obviously will be public knowledge for people. As far as safety, there isn't a concern as far as the other school district data that's stored. This is really a closed system access to just our CCTV program. It is its own separate entity and will be on a separate server that login but
048they will need to apply or follow all of the educational privacy rights agreement. I think that was, we're done, one more question for her. So I think I got my risk questions there. As far as snack goes, this Monday coming up, we will be re-looking at snack and deciding when and whether we'll implement it. I'm sorry. Yeah, could you address Mr. Harrison's comment, question about the modified sports program. Sure. At this time, two spectators per athlete are being allowed at all athletic events, except for multi-school events, where we're either modifying the format so it's a warm up compete in which we would allow two spectators per athlete, but if there's multiple schools in at the same time, there are no spectators allowed. Okay. Outdoor events allow unlimited. That's only for indoor events, outdoor events right
049now just limited to the facility's capacity. So like outdoor hockey at Mary's would? Correct, our home rink, Mary's, and there's some other rinks in the area, but our home rink is outdoors so there's no requirements there. And if we were to hold an outdoor track meet, we'd be okay there as well. Mr. Harrison also asked a question about projected tax increases and when that will occur. Yep, we don't have a draft projected as of yet, we're still working on that. We are behind in the business office, we will be changing our first budget session actually, moving that from February 7th to the 14th of February. I think Amber will be talking about those changes later in the meeting, but that is most notable just to give us enough time to finish the budget book and
050get that first draft done. So you can anticipate February 14th with our first projection. And thank you, we appreciate your feedback on both the preamble and the time limits. Thank you very much. Anything else, I think that's it, right? Okay, so now we will move to item six, written communications, Amber. Please note that the Board of Education email is also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk. Open meetings law requires all board deliberations which may lead to action or policy changes to occur in public. Therefore, your written communications and emails will be reported in an upcoming public board meeting. A board member will respond at their earliest convenience. From the period of January 6 2022 through January 19 2022, the board received 80 emails. This report contains nine emails that were sent during the previous
051reporting period, but due to a technical error would not receive until this reporting period. Please note that because open meetings law requires all board deliberations which may lead to action or policy changes to occur in public, our email replies are by necessity limited in scope. On district matters, the board received 70 emails, and on board meetings, invitations and highlights, the board received 10 emails. Under district matters, the board received four emails with regards to in favor of having snow days as opposed to remote days. The board also received four emails expressing appreciation for the instruction received on remote learning days. The board received one email as an appreciation for early notification of the delayed start. The board received 18 emails with questions or comments regarding the proposed holiday break for the 2022/2023 school year. The
052board received one email in support for the proposed calendar with a shorter holiday break and later start to the school year. There were 24 requests for reevaluation of the previous spectator policy. There were two emails with request to permit overnight trips with parent chaperones. There were two requests for remote school option for students. There was one email asking the board to reconsider masking in schools. There were six budget-related emails with questions about the proposed budget. There were two emails requesting the reinstatement of snack. There was one email expressing concern about indoor lunch at elementary schools. There were two requests to align with newly released guidance on isolation and quarantine. There was one email with appreciation for the efforts of the board, district administration and teachers. There was one email about the Scarsdale High School Music
053Program. Under board invitations, publications and board meeting highlights, there were 10 emails which topics included the Scarsdale Middle School PTA DEI library donation, appreciation for the superintendent updates, interest in attending board meetings, feedback on public comments, appreciation for the January 10 budget presentation, and an article to read and information regarding the NYSSBA Area 10 directorship. Thank you very much, Amber. And now we'll turn to item seven, our personnel report, Drew. Thank you very much. So I'm going to spend a minute or two and just provide a little color to the resignations and retirements that Dr. Hagerman referred to a little bit earlier in his introduction tonight, and I'll start with a resignation. We do want to acknowledge our 15 year bandleader at the high school, Jason Noble, has decided to resign to move on to
054a higher education appointment at the end of this year. And we appreciate Jason's taking giving us this notification when he didn't have to to allow us to have a wide and broad search that's obviously an important position for the band program. And we have a number of other retirements tonight. And I just like to highlight them as Dr. Hagerman noted, we will have other opportunities as the year works toward June to honor and celebrate these individuals. But on the teaching and administrative side where we're nearing 200 years of service among this relatively small collection of retirees. The first is Jeanne Cooper retiring from Scarsdale High School and the A-School. 40 years of service to the district. Our own Jerry Crisci has announced his retirement effective August. Jerry has been with us for 32 years in
055this district and we often think of him as our resident historian for the story of Scarsdale. 26 years of service at Scarsdale High School, John Harrison will be retiring from the Social Studies Department. We have two library media specialists retiring also carrying with them many many years of experience and familiarity of books and putting books in the hands of kids turning on a light of desire to read in so many kids. Carole Phillips from Green Acres Elementary School will be retiring after 30 years, and Jan Schorr will be retiring from Fox Meadow after 17 years in the district. Nancy Van Camp for Heathcote Elementary will be retiring from her special education position there after 16 years. And last but certainly not least, David Wixted, who's in the audience tonight, he will be retiring, joining his
056lovely wife, Emma, in retirement after 31 years in the Scarsdale public schools. So we are so appreciative of that incredible commitment to the district and we look forward to further celebrating those individuals. On the non-certified side, we also have a retirement tonight, at least in the agenda tonight to take place in September. Our treasurer, Jeff Martin, has announced his intent to retire and we appreciate everything that Jeff has done. He's certainly one of the most knowledgeable and intelligent individuals that I've worked with and his command of this budget is extraordinary. So we will definitely miss Jeff. And of course I think I speak for cabinet when we look forward to the chance to thank and honor and celebrate Dr. Hagerman when the time comes. Thank you so much for that report, Drew, and the board
057also looks forward to celebrating our retirees. Now we'll move to item eight, our consent agenda. The board may conduct some of its business using a consent agenda in an effort to achieve greater efficiency at meetings. A consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the board into a single motion. It is prepared by the superintendent in consultation with the president and vice president of the board. Items are selected when officers of the board and the superintendent believe there's no controversy regarding them. The items on the consent agenda have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. If any board member feels that any item on the consent agenda requires discussion prior to action, that board member may remove it from the consent agenda by merely requesting the same at this meeting.
058Would anyone like to remove an item? Okay, so now we'll turn to the consent agenda, Bob. In this meeting, there are six items on the consent agenda for approval. Item 9.01, it is recommended that the board accept January 10th, 2022 business meeting minutes as presented. Item 9.02, be it resolved that the Board of Ed education of the Scarsdale Union Free School District hereby accept the recommendation of the following personnel including another appointment as listed. Item 9.03, be it resolved that Board of Education of the Scarsdale Union Free School District hereby accepts the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign the following non-instructional personnel as listed. Title 9.04, we recommend that the board accept a memorandum of understanding with the village of Scarsdale regarding camera access in the case of emergency. Item 9.05, I recommend
059that board accept the central treasurer's report for the high school and middle school extra classroom activity fund for the period of October 1st, 2021 to December 30th, 2021. And item 9.06, I recommend that the board authorize the Assistant Superintendent for Special Education and Student Services to execute the contract as presented. Item 9.7, I recommend that the board accept the consent agenda. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. At this time, I'd like to request that we take a two minute recess and return to our meeting in a few minutes at 7:30. Can I have a motion to do that? So moved, yes. Okay, thank you so much. We're coming back to order, if we could have everybody. We have a group of presenters so that they can
060get ready to come up here in a moment. I do wanna let you know that a number of you have probably heard that the mask mandate in New York has been repealed and so there's a lot of buzz going on in the community and across the state about what implications this has for us. I'm gonna be going to a meeting, I apologize, I wanna step out of this meeting to be able to attend a Zoom meeting to try to get more information and clarification on that, I think it's important in light of the urgency of this to do that. In advance of that though, I just wanna say thank you to all of our special educator teachers and leaders here who are coming to do this very comprehensive review. I think this is one of
061the really important reports to the Board of Education in terms of having a full holistic view of all the aspects of special education. We've been talking a lot about mental health aspects as of late, but special education is so much more complex and nuanced than just the mental health aspects of it and so I really hope that this is an instructive and useful presentation for not only the Board of Education, but for the entirety of the school community. And again, in about 15 minutes, I'll step away, but please don't let me distract you off from your beautiful presentation that you've worked so hard on that. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Eric and he can introduce your team tonight. Thank you, Thomas. First and foremost, I'd like to thank my team who
062is here to present this. We have Dr. Amy Cermele, Dana Khani, Bevin Pagel, Michael Hirsch, and Eileen Cagner, all our leaders in our department of their various programs. Throughout this night, they'll come up and explain some different programs that we have. This is really important to start off this way because in special education, we talk a lot about students disabilities and what they cannot do. And I think it's important to understand that special education is really about helping kids grow their abilities and learn how to be great at what they can do. So a disability is only one part of a person and it's just like any other person, it's a combination of their character, effort and abilities that determine their success and happiness. I think this is kind of what we live by in
063special education in Scarsdale so it's really important to start there, we're really talking about different abilities that people have and how we maximize those abilities. Tonight's presentation, we're gonna talk a little bit about the purpose of special education. I'm going to go through the current numbers and trends of what we're seeing in special education as a context for what you've heard both in our budget presentations, and ultimately, what our programming decisions were, how those current numbers and trends have and will continue to impact our programming decisions and what our philosophy and parameters about building programs are. Dr. Amy Cermele will come up and talk a little bit about the CSE process. And then representatives that I just announced from each, the elementary, middle and high school will come up and give a comprehensive summary of
064the programs that currently exist in all of those places. So hopefully by the end of this, you'll have a pretty good understanding of where Scarsdale's State of the Union is, if you will, in special education. So first and foremost, let's talk a little bit about the purpose of special education. I'm not gonna read every slide, but this one I will 'cause I think it's important. So our purpose is to allow students with disabilities to access the general education curriculum with their non-disabled peers as much as humanly possible. We wanna develop student's understanding of their strengths and challenges while protecting and growing their self worth. We wanna teach students self advocacy skills and foster increasing independence throughout student's educational careers. And we wanna help students with disabilities develop post secondary plans that consider their challenges but
065focus on maximizing their strengths and interest. So, not unlike Scarsdale in general, our goal is to educate the whole child and to make sure that as they go through Scarsdale, they can leave feeling confident that they can engage in the world they find themselves in. So who are we? Scarsdale currently has 564 students who are classified under IDEA, that's approximately 12% of our population. We have 65 preschool students who are classified with preschool services. And of the special education students that we have, 93.5 of them are served within our district schools. So that's kind of the 30,000 foot view. The next couple of slides are going to talk about who these students are, what kind of disabilities they have, and what the absolute numbers are within the district. So I think it's important as we
066look at this slide to first take a look at the very bottom line. In 2010 and 11, the district had 371 classified students under IDEA. It had relatively the same overall general population. In 2021/22, we have 564 classified students, that's approximately a rise from 7% classification rate up to 12 where we are now. The average classification rate in the area is between 12 and 14. So as you can see, we're in that average range as of now. As we talk through these numbers and you see some of the trends, I think the overarching context for that is, I believe our growth should slow at this point because I think we are where we need to be as far as classifying students, and our processes and procedures have started to catch the students that we need
067to and make sure they're getting the programs that they need. So to give you, basically I've highlighted three lines here, the two yellow lines are the classification of autism and other health impaired. You can see that we've had a rise in both of those classifications. And then emotional disturbance is a rise from an absolute number standpoint, but we'll see on the next slide, has not really been a percentage increase. Our next slide here shows what disability by percentage we have here. There's a couple of things to note here. Other health impairment and learning disabilities have kind of switched spots. Learning disabilities was historically our largest classification, that has been surpassed by other health impairment, and autism has risen from 7.3% to 11.3% in the last 10 years. Emotional disturbance however has stayed relatively the same
068at 5.9% back in 2010 and 11 and 6.0% this year. I think it's important to understand that classifications don't tell the whole story here. The federal government has identified 13 classifications under IDEA, obviously there are not only 13 types of disabilities, and every student within those 13 classifications can be very different. So when we think about these numbers, it's important that other health impairment is a bit of a catch all for the federal government under IDEA. We've talked about rising levels of anxiety, we've talked about rising levels of depression, most of that falls into the other health impairment when we talk about students who have needs from a mental health standpoint that rise to the level of being classified under IDEA. So as we continue this conversation, please know in the context of tonight, when
069we talk about mental health needs, we really are talking only about classified students, okay? And that is not the sum total of students who are engaging our psychologist or social workers, these are students whose mental health needs have risen to a level that require them to have special services in order to access the general education requirement or general education curriculum. So with that being said, you get a little bit of an idea with these trends on where our overall population is, we have more, other health impaired which includes ADHD, it includes, like I said, anxiety, depression, and a number of other disabilities that may not fall into our other categories. So, let's take a look at our referrals to CSE. Obviously with our rise in numbers over the past 10 years, we are seeing rises
070in initial referrals. CPSE has stayed relatively consistent over the last six years in the 45 to 50 range of referrals. When you look at the current budget or the current staffing recommendations, this is why we've looked to try and bring in a halftime CPSE person to allow for this kind of consistent set of work to be handled on its own. Because as we look at the next slide, our initial referrals to the CSE have really climbed since 2014 and 15. I do think this graph will start to plateau at a new normal given that if we're at 12% classification rate, which we think is about where we need to be, that would make somewhere between 150 and 160 kids per year in a graduating class. And those initial referrals tend to equal the amount of
071kids that are leaving senior year per year. You will take a look at 19/20 and 21. I believe the spike you're seeing between 19/20 and 20/21 is a little bit of pandemic related logistics. So we left school in March of 19/20, referrals at that point basically dropped off a cliff, people who were at home weren't referring students as much as usual, that left that year artificially low. Obviously those kind of built up and came back at us in 2021. So I think your rise there is a much softer rise from a general standpoint, and the pandemic really messed with those two last numbers of the year. But you can see we've been on a rise pretty much from 14/15 steady to the 12% where we are now. Our ICT program, which accounts for much of
072our growth in special education over the last 10 years or in the last five to seven years, you can see has grown immensely with 40 students in 2016/17 to 151 this year. That being said, I think again 20/21 to 21/22, that major rise from 105 to 151 is definitely at least partially pandemic-related as students had less schooling over the 20/21 years, some of those students who were being adequately served in LRC found a tipping point with that change in education and I think we had more students recommended to the ICT than we would have otherwise had. I don't believe that 151 kids in ICT is going to be a lot more than we will see moving forward, but I think we will return to 125 mark as we move over the next couple of years.
073This is one of the best slides for me in the presentation, this is our out of district placement usage. So these are the kids who are directed to an out of district placement through the CSE because we don't have a program within our district to serve them. So from 14/15 to 21/22, we've had about a rise of 120 students in who are classified but we have dropped from a high of 50 students in outside placements to 35 this year. As a percentage of our students, that has gone from a high of just below 12% to where we are at now which is a about six and a half percent out. So I think those are excellent numbers for our growth of program, we're keeping the vast majority of our students in district which is always
074a goal when we talk about wanting to educate our students within their own home community. The other type of student who may be out of district are parentally placed students. So these are students who qualify for IEPs but have decided for one reason or another to have their students attend an out of district school. So, as you can see, the percentage of special education students who are parentally placed has stayed relatively steady moving from 14.19% in 14/15 to 15.07% in 21/22. The red line you see however are of those students, the ones that are attending special education schools. So within this list, there are a number of students who may have an IEP, but they're also attending Hackley or Masters or Solomon Schechter or another school which is not a special ed school but it's
075just a private school. There's also a number of kids in here who have an IEP who are being red shirted as kindergarteners, so they will show in Mohawk or in the little school. So when we excise those students from this list, the red line where the red bars there represent how many of the students with IEPs are out at parentally placed and that has gone from 12.13 to 11.17 as you can see, all right? It gives you an idea of kind of the trends that are happening within special education. And I think it's important in this next slide to spend a few minutes talking about. We've had a major rise in special education students over the past 10 years. That being said, we've had a slow but small decline in the general education population, and
076we've talked a lot about, or the general education population, we've talked a lot about how the hiring looks to be an opposite of our general education population where we are bringing on more staff. And I think it's important to understand where a lot of that staff has gone. So on this slide, you see 20 staff members that have been hired since the 14/15 school year, and the major hiring has come in the increase in ICT sections. So there were six sections in 14/15, there are 18 sections this year. That's a net change of 12 FTE just in that one program. An increase in special class sections, in 14/15, we had zero special class actions in the elementary, we have to this year, and that's a net change of two FTE obviously. Social emotional program at
077the high school represented a net change of two FTE. So I think it's important those last two bullet points have also been part and parcel to the dropping out of district placement use, and they do represent an overall savings in money because we're not using the number of outside district placements that we were previously. We've had increased LRC sections at SHS and SMS given the rise in special education students, that's a net change of two FTEs. We brought on a district-wide psychologist for testing and ACT and SAT at one FTE, and a district-wide behaviorist which was a conversion from consulting services that we were using that did net savings for the district but that was a change with one FTE. So it gives you an idea of how special education has grown over the last
078number of years, but that has resulted in increased hiring in those programs. So, how are these numbers related to the programming? At this time, here are our current programs in the elementary, every elementary school has a Learning Resource Center, staff with two special education teachers. It's important to understand that those special education teachers in those programs also teach our multi-tiered systems of support in RTI. So they are not solely teaching special education students. Our integrated co-teaching classes are in our schools as you see there, and our self contained classes are in Quaker Ridge and Edgewood. This year, we do have a request to expand with one special ed teacher, the Edgewood program, from a K-2 to a three/five as well and continue that program across the elementary spectrum. In the middle and high school, all
079have Learning Resource Centers. We have a parallel program in the middle school and we're proposing a Scarsdale Support Program there. In the high school, we currently have a Supported Skills Program Learning Resource Center, and Scarsdale Support Program. You'll hear the details of what these programs do a little later in the presentation, but you can see we're developing a full continuum of services on all levels. So, what's our philosophy when we think about programming and how does it work? There's really three legs to the stool of how we build a new program, one is pedagogy, one is understanding and one is balance. So effective pedagogy includes our ability to provide professional development, targeted materials, and teacher input and feedback. We also consider universal design, how do these new programs relate to our general education curriculum? How
080can we work with the general education curriculum to make sure students are included? Before we start a program, we need key understandings. What are the academic needs of a student, social emotional needs, health related needs? For parents, what are their hopes, dreams and fears for their students? What's the knowledge of their own children? What are they telling us they need? What are the challenges associated with helping their children fulfill their out of school expectations? And then ultimately, we need to consider the community, what are our norms about behaviors in schools? What are the outcomes that we expect of our students? And what kind of levels of service are we looking at? How do we develop social norms? How do we make sure that the students we're bringing into programs have the social skills needed to
081gain inclusion among their peers and not just be part in the building but a separate programs? And then lastly, we always need to balance things like inclusion and direct instruction, students need some level of direct instruction, but they also need to be included. How do we balance the social emotional and academic? Do we want more or less support in a program in any given time? And what are our general interventions versus our specific interventions? So, that really breaks up what are the things we're considering when we decide do we make a program? And even with all of that, effective programming doesn't happen in overcrowded classrooms and it doesn't happen in a classroom of one. So when we think about programs, are they sustainable? Can we have a regular flow of students into these programs so
082that we can develop good pedagogy, keep it continually going, and make sure we don't have one student sitting in a room, or we have 30 students sitting in a room, either one is not effective. And then finally, in special education, we really have a number of mandates we need to look at, all students must take the same exams to earn a regents or a local high school diploma. So at the end of the day, they all need those skills. Attendance requirements and course load is standard regardless of disability. And many student teacher ratios and minimum service times are regulated by the IEDA. So, there are a number of things to consider whenever we start to develop programs like this, and it really is incumbent upon us to make sure we're working both from a fiscal
083standpoint and from a real pedagogic standpoint of can these programs be effective and sustainable? At this point, I think our ICT has proven that our effectiveness is there, our sustainability is there, we're working on our SSP in the middle school 'cause the SSP in the high school has shown us success, really lowered our reliance on outside placements, and our special class are being built now with that in mind. So, that's really context for what you're going to see next, I'm gonna ask Dr. Amy Cermele to come up, talk a little bit with us about the CSE process, and then we'll hear about each of the programs in the buildings. Good evening. So I'm gonna take you through a quick kind of cliffnotes tour on how a student might get classified to access any of the
084programs that Eric and my colleagues tonight will speak about. Okay, so what happens when a student is identified? So first things first, a parent or the school can refer a student at any point in time. Typically, what we try to do before we get to referral to come to committee on special education is have students kind of work through any of our pre-referral strategies or supports that we'll have in the building. Typically at the elementary level, those are known as our RTI or MTSS supports, and at the middle school or the high school, it may be known as our TAS, our teacher assisted support, or academic support program. The idea is that provides us some data as to how the interventions are working. If the interventions are not working, a family or a team or
085in conjunction the family and the team can refer the child to committee on special education. After the pre referral and the consent in the referral is sent in, a parent or the team will then submit the referral and then we will be sending home what's known as a consent to evaluate. If the family agrees and only if the family agrees and signs consent and returns it back, we then begin the multidisciplinary evaluations which look at a student in a variety of different ways. Most evaluations include at minimum a psychological, educational, social history, classroom observation, teacher reports, at the secondary level, both the student and parent vocational assessment which helps us plan for future planning for the student. Parents are a key member of the committee and a required member of the committee. So when we
086come back to committee to talk about if a child meets eligibility, the parents are not only invited to attend, but invited to really have a conversation and a frank discussion with the team about what their concerns are about their child and what they feel their child may benefit from. At that point, the committee would then decide if that child meets eligibility as a student with an educational disability based on one of New York State's 13 classifications of educational disabilities. If that student is found eligible, an IEP along with goals, accommodations, modifications, and specially designed instruction would be developed to meet their needs. In terms of goals, the goals really drive the IEP. Goals are developed to help the student access the curriculum. We do not develop goals just to be placed fillers or holders, we
087really look at where are the needs of the student and help that student develop those goals that they will work on with their special education teacher. In terms of helping a family and a child find the right program or placement, those goals and those needs would then help us understand as a committee where the child would best be supported in order to access the curriculum and have information either taught or broken down to them. In terms of the supports that we have, we've arranged as Eric said, from LRC all the way to a residential program. We don't look at residentials very often, the goal of all of us at the committee on special education is to keep students in their home school in as much of a "typical general education environment" as possible. So, we
088make sure that we are really looking at how can we educate the student with their peers in the most typical environment as anybody in the least restrictive environment. Okay, in terms of related service, related services are offered at all levels K-12 in a variety of different ways. What related services do is they support the student's access to the curriculum. Related services can be offered for anything from speech to occupational therapy, behavioral supports, or even assistive technology depending on the needs of the student. Again, these are conversations that are had with the families prior to consent being filled out just to make sure that the committee chairperson has a better understanding of the family's concern and how we as a district can potentially look into any potential needs. Okay, now I'll call up Miss Bevin Pagel
089to talk about elementary special education supports. Okay, let me see if I can get this. Do I have the right button? Oh, good luck with that. Hi, my name is Bevin Pagel, I work at Edgewood School in the Learning Center, and tonight I'm gonna be sharing with you the Learning Center programs in the elementary schools focusing on special education students. The Learning Center services special education students with very individualized intense instruction in academic areas. We call the students that are special ed students in the Learning Center tier three students following the RTI/the new term for it is MTSS model. We also focus working on academic support with tier two students, but tonight we will be sharing with you overall what we provide the special education students. As it was mentioned before, every single special education
090student in the elementary schools have an Individualized Educational Plan which is an IEP. On this plan, they have been given specific goals and objectives to focus on what they need in order to progress in school. The Learning Center teacher provides direct instruction in these academic areas. For instance, we work on reading, math, writing or studying skills, whichever has shown up due to their testing. In reading, we follow research and scientifically-based programs if necessary, in writing and math, we provide a variety of different interventions and activities to help support them, and in study skills, we help break down content areas such as social studies and science. In the last five plus years, we've been noticing that the special education students at the elementary level have weak executive functioning so we are looking into this further as
091every year goes on. We are now starting to even implement them and put them down as goals on their IEPs. Some of us elementary school school Learning Center teachers have now dedicated Day E to executive functioning day. That's primarily for the upper grade students and we're trying to give them lessons in things like task management, flexibility, task initiation, working memory, and hopefully that these can be carried on, it's more of an introductory course, and they can be carried on for middle school and high school hopefully to help them. These students, and we provide them with a lot of samples here to help them in their, especially with the fifth graders, with their daily life such as checklists, management of space and materials, visual support et cetera. The Learning Center works with students individually or in
092small group, they come to the Learning Center every day, anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes, where we can work on their individual needs. What happens in the elementary level is the principal and the vice principal have set up a schedule for the grade levels to have a special window. And during that window is the time that a special education student can leave the regular ed classroom and come into the Learning Center for academic support or attend any other related services that happened to be in their IEP. We do this to make sure that the child doesn't miss any instruction in the classroom. So during that time, the general education teacher would usually work with a small group, maybe small guided reading groups, or for instance, just catch up work. But we wanna make sure that
093the child doesn't miss out on any opportunities or new instruction that takes place. Because the special education students that come to the Learning Center are primarily spending the whole entire day in the general ed classroom, they're only pulled for their support that's needed. Communication is a big part of this because they're in the classroom with the general ed teacher all day so having communication with the teacher to make sure that's a positive learning experience for the child is necessary. We also wanna have a strong parent relationship. We can meet with a parent during the report card period which is three times a year during the school year at the elementary level, and we can always meet the parent whenever they want, especially if they're concerned. We send home an IEP progress report so they can
094see that their goals are being met. We can attend the parent conferences with the teacher or separately on our own. And at the end of the year, we communicate with the parents at an annual review where we will do any updated qualitative or quantitative assessments and testing and look over their IEP goals to see if they've achieved them and to create a new plan for the following school year. Again, very important to consult with a classroom teacher as much as possible because although I might be the case manager for the special ed child that I'm working with, they are spending most of the day in with the classroom teacher. So I'm gonna provide that teacher with as many strategies to help them in the classroom, Learning Center will provide materials and resources to help differentiate
095for any other specific skills in the classroom. And then we love to provide the teachers with hands on games and activity. I'll talk more about this later, it helps engage and motivates struggling learners in the classroom. Special education students are eligible for testing accommodations. These are found on their IEP when we have their meeting. These are some very familiar ones that they use at the elementary level, for instance, special location, flexible scheduling, extended time, directions repeated, refocusing, and even a scribe. Many special education students at the elementary level do use the testing accommodations for the New York State English Language Arts and Math Assessments. Assessments is a huge role for the Learning Center teacher and in all the Learning Center. Again, I know it was just brought to our attention how you take someone to
096committee of special education, we perform the educational evaluation with our team who does a full battery of assessments, but with our diagnostic standardized testing that we do, we come up with the strengths and weaknesses that we find and then we put them, it helps us create an IEP for our students. We set up goals academically that they need that's gonna be carried out to the year. And then we of course do progress monitoring. So when we work with our students, we collect data and use a different type of tools to measure their progress as the year continues. Related services also appear on the student's IEP if they are eligible for it. Every elementary school has a speech and language therapists and occupational therapists, and a psychologist. These are the main three, however, they are allowed
097to have if needed more related service opportunities in the district such as if they need a behaviorist, a physical therapists, et cetera, but these are the main three that are definitely in the school systems that they take advantage of. They also follow in that window. So if a student does need to see speech and language two times a week, they will leave during that window so they're not missing any instruction in the classroom. Additional responsibilities for the Learning Center teacher is we're a member of the multi-tier system of support which is the MTSS which used to be called the RTI. We meet once a week anywhere from an hour to two hours and we discussed students in the building, sometimes we bring up a student or many times the teachers will ask for a meeting
098and we'll come up to the meeting where we can discuss a student of concern, whether it be academically or socially or emotionally, and then we try to discuss how we can help that teacher intervene. If we think they need more academic intervention than in the classroom, we bring them into the Learning Center and we also service tier two students. These students have not been identified by the committee of special education, but they do require and benefit from additional academic support during the six day cycle, they do not come every day, they come usually anywhere from three to four times a week, and they also come out during that window. And then if we take a child that we think that needs more than tier two service and that they would require from more intensive support,
099then we are a member of the district of committee of special education where we will come up with a plan for them. The best part about being in the Learning Center is that special ed teachers love to use multi-sensory activities, we are very aware that these students, special ed students, have a variety of learning styles and we like to tap on that and take advantage of that through as many modalities as we can to help them learn, especially in the elementary level. So as you can see, we just took some pictures of some examples to engage and motivate kids. There's popcorn activities where we can just take a place value activity straight out of a math book and just stick it on some popcorn bags with some fake popcorn and they can answer the problems
100that way. You could read a book and then answer the five WH comprehension questions while playing a game of Jeopardy. You can put spelling patterns on the bottom of a cup and they have to match it on the page. But it just kind of shows you all the different ways that you can actually reach these children at the elementary level to help make them feel successful in their academic progress. And this is one of my favorite quotes, I'm sure all the special ed teachers in the Learning Center would also agree that if a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn. This is one of my students, she loves to be active, they love to be active when they're learning. We want them to come in and have
101fun, we want them to feel safe, and that it's a learning environment for them, that can be a fun experience. And I love working in the Learning Center and I enjoy every minute of it. And now I'm gonna pass it on for the integrated co-teaching to Dana Khani, thank you. Good evening. I am Dana Khani, I am the teacher in charge of special programs at the elementary level so I'm gonna talk a little bit about that. We have as Eric talked about, we have our integrated co-teaching classes and then we have our eight to one to two classes. So integrated co-teaching is really something I'm a huge fan of and kind of the cheerleader for. It is a classroom, it's a general education classroom, we have a special education teacher, a full time special education
102teacher, and a general education teacher. And they are both providing instructions to the class that has students with and without disabilities, so all children are learning together. The teachers co-plan, they prepare lessons together, they prepare activities. I'm gonna go into their different roles in a little bit, but together, they both deliver instruction to all the students in the entire class. Why ICT? As Eric mentioned, it's part of our continuum, it allows for more children with disabilities to be educated in district alongside their typically developing peers, provides individualized attention to all students, creates opportunities for positive social interactions and really promotes understanding of disabilities and furthers diversity and inclusion. The maximum number of students with disabilities in an integrated class is no more than 40%. So in a typical class, that's no more than 12 students.
103We very rarely get to that number, which is really nice, but that is the maximum capacity. So, in the ICT classroom, it's a general ed like I said, they follow the same standards, same pacing, and calendar as all the other classes on the grade level. The general education population of the ICT is created the same way that any other class is created, so all the students are kind of put into a pool, mixed up, shuffled. So you create this heterogeneous group of students that learn alongside one another. So this goes in some of the benefits. For students with disabilities, there really is improved outcomes on assessments, there's increased interaction with peers, students are shown to achieve more of their IEP goals when they're learning alongside their general education peers. For students without disabilities, there's greater
104acceptance and valuing of individual differences, it enhances self esteem, genuine capacity for friendships, benefit from review, practice and feedback. So all of the students in these classes really benefit from a smaller student to teacher ratio. And we talk about that a lot because we often are cutting the class in half to deliver this instruction. The benefit from more individualized attention and more opportunities to participate and engage in meaningful work with one another. There we go, strategies and structures. So Bevin talked a little bit about some of the strategies that we implement, the hands on learning, the multi-sensory approach, all of those things happen, however, in an ICT class, it happens throughout the entire day. So by having a full time special education teacher, they can really support each student across all subject areas and it's
105kind of woven into the curriculum. So these supports are embedded into lessons using universal design and tailored modifications according to the need of the students. So this is kind of a graphic of the shared responsibilities. The general education teacher is generally responsible for planning the upcoming lessons, making sure that pacing is kept up and that it's comparable to the other classes. While the special education teacher is then looking at those lessons and thinking about how to differentiate, what materials do you need, what visuals do we need in order to support our students with disabilities. Another important factor is the specially designed instruction. So every student with an IEP gets specially designed instruction to meet their needs. So the special education teacher is really responsible for planning for that. And then together, they have shared responsibilities
106where they co-plan, they come up with different ways that they're gonna teach, they think about different co-teaching models in order to implement all of their lessons. And teaching teams and service providers we meet regularly to discuss all of the students progress in the classes. This little infographic talks about that specially designed instructional piece. So it's really taking what the child can do, looking at the areas of vulnerability, and the student's learning style, and then figuring out how you're going to modify, how are you going to deliver the instruction, is it gonna be more visual, is it gonna be more hands on, and thinking about really breaking down those concepts so that students can access them. These are the six co-teaching models. Today, really quickly, I'm just gonna go over the three that are in bold,
107we have parallel, station, and team teaching. These are the three methods that are really used the most and research shows that they are most effective. Things like one teach/one observe is really good if a teacher needs to kind of sit back and take data or support one student, but they're not meant to be used all the time. Sorry, so these are just kind of the pictures of what those models look like. The blue dots are the teachers and obviously the orange dots are all the students. So again, we're gonna talk about parallel, station and team. So parallel, as you can see, the entire class is broken up into two groups, two even groups, one teacher takes half the class, the other teacher takes the other half of the class, completely heterogeneously grouped, and this is
108done for the purposes of changing your ratio. So again, instead of teaching the whole class, students get more individualized attention by being taught in small groups. They're teaching the same exact thing at the same exact time so all the students are exposed to the same lesson. This is a picture of station teaching which happens to be a fan favorite of most of the kids. Kids are broken up into groups and they move, a timer can be set, and so that each child gets time at each station. And it pretty much because we have the support of classroom aides as well, there's usually an adult with every group and it allows again for that ratio to be cut even further into a smaller group. It looks a little different for kindergarten than it does for fifth
109grade, but it's the same idea with the model. And then we have flip flop. This is something that was kind of created in Scarsdale not too long ago. This is also a fan favorite. So for this, one teacher takes a group and may teach reading, the other teacher takes a group and may teach writing, they do a full lesson, full time together, and then they flop, sorry, they flop so that every kid again gets the same instruction, but you're hitting all the areas and you're doing a smaller group of students. And then there's team teaching which is usually done for modeling. So if you wanna model how to do a turn and talk, both teachers may sit in front of the class, deliver the instruction, you're modeling a way to talk to your partner, you're
110modeling something through a read aloud, maybe you're acting things out, this is always exciting for the kids to watch too. So that was our ICT, we're now gonna talk about our special classes. These classes have more direct instruction. So we know that all of our students need some amount of direct instruction, the special classes have a little bit more and there's a specific ratio of students to teachers with aids. We have two programs, we have the Bridge Program which is currently at Quaker Ridge, and we have our 8:1:2 Intensive Support Program which is currently at Edgewood. These really focus on academic achievement, adaptive behaviors, students can be alternately or regularly assessed, and there's a maximum ratio of eight students to one teacher and two aides. The 8:1:2 Intensive Support Program focuses a little bit more
111on adaptive living skills, these are students that may not have a strong verbal skills that they need and so they're taught using alternate methods like assisted technology and sign language. This is our Bridge Program. Again, this is currently at Quaker Ridge. And this shows that they do projects alone, but they also have the opportunity to push into a general education class and work collaboratively with peers at the same grade level. So this is really fun for different science projects and social studies and different content areas for them to all get together with their gen ed peers, but then when it comes to the more academic areas like reading and writing, they are taken into a small group to get more intensive support. And this is our 8:1:2 Intensive Support Program. Students again, work with their
112teachers, they do a lot of hands on, a lot of sensory learning. You can see from the pictures, there's shaving cream, there's books that they do read alouds and interactive things, lots of sensory experiences. They also have a program where general education students from other classes get to come in and be their peer buddies, and they create different learning experiences for them so they get to socially interact with typically developing peers as well. And now, I'm gonna hand it over to Mike Hirsch, thank you. Thank you so much, I'll try my best at this. So thank you very much for having me this evening. At the middle school, we really do have, I have to figure out what button to push, there we go, a true continuum of services that we provide. Our programs are
113the Learning Resource Center, we have a push in program, a parallel program, and of course related services. We're gonna go into these programs in a little more detail and then touch on some of our thought process for how we kind of service our students within those programs. So the Learning Resource Center offers direct support to students within the LRC, that direct support really focuses on working on the goals that students have on their IEPs. These goals often focus on academic or executive function skills, and our individual eyes for each student. We generally attack those goals through work done within their general education content area classes. However, the LRC does also provide indirect support for students and sometimes this is equally as valuable or often as equally as valuable. We collaborate with the general education teachers
114to assess student performance and adjust supports as needed. We act as advocates for students within the building, and we're a liaison with parents in order to streamline the sharing of information. When we work with students in the LRC, we're looking at three larger components, what I call the hill, the skill and the will. The hill is the challenge itself, the skill is the tools to meet those challenges, and the will is the ability to utilize those tools in order to foster positive learning habits 'cause that's really what we're doing in most cases. Whenever we're trying to determine what strategy to pick, these are the questions we really ask ourselves as we're going through that toolbox that we all have in the LRC, does it change the students perception of the task to make it more
115manageable? Does it allows the student to focus their cognitive energy in order to increase an individual's ability to emotionally regulate oneself and build academic stamina? That could either be anxiety-related, it could be executive function, there's a myriad different lenses that we have to look through when we're choosing strategy. Does it help students organize material in a way that is conducive to retaining information and forming positive student habits? 'Cause one of the things we're really trying to do is say, what does someone who's really successful at an academic task to automatically and how can we modify that behavior through routines and strategies and skills? Supporting organization time management is a big part of what we do in the LRC executive function as has been noted as has been a growing concern for some time. One of
116the things we utilized are our planners, we can have the old school hard copy planner, right, that works for some students, but in the digital age, some students are really comfortable with a digital planner so LRC teachers often create digital planners for students. And we also use either that digital notebook that we can create, and this is an example of it up here, to help organize students work and notes and provide supplemental resources, or we can use the learning management system that we utilize at the middle school schoology where we can also on our LRC schoology pages have different folders for different supports within the varying content areas. This is more of at the moment in class kind of executive function support, it's an LRC map or the daily map, it can be utilized throughout
117the week or for different activities within the day. And that allows students to manage their time, prioritize tasks, monitor performance, and reflect on their own goals that they're setting for themselves. That's a very helpful thing. And one of the things that you're gonna see a lot throughout the presentation is that these are visual reminders for students. And that's one thing that the students really do benefit from, it's not just giving them the information, but it's putting it right in front of them so they remember to use those skills that we're teaching them within the LRC. I think I'm stuck here. There we go, thank you. This is another example of a visual reminder, and this is something that we really think of as important at the middle school. Because as we prepare students for the
118high school and just for later life, we want students to build independence, and criteria for success are excellent tools to help students build that independence. And this is just an example of a criteria for success that a student can fall back on that they can look back on before they ask for assistance from one of their support staff. Obviously, we're always there to provide assistance, but we want students as they go through the years of the middle school to develop some of that independence on their own. And this is something that I personally have posted in my bio LRC. We're also looking at the three main academic areas that we have to support like reading, writing and math. And LRC students learn and practice reading strategies to support their learning and content areas, but we
119wanna make everything an active reading process, that's the key right there. We wanna make it easy for students to find important information within text, we wanna allow students to gain a deeper understanding of the text and make meaning with it, and allow the students to monitor their learning as they go. This is an example of a multi-sensory approach to nonfiction reading, it's a reading comprehension strategy called SQ3R, and you're using the different senses to internalize information as you go. You're surveying the tasks, you're breaking it up into manageable parts, you're creating questions, you're responding to those questions, you're reading things in small passages, and then you're reviewing your answers. So this is just one example of one of the strategies that we would frequently work on. We also talk about annotating in different methods and
120things along those lines. Math problem solving takes a similar breaking down information approach, right? This is a four step process to breaking down an algebraic style equation, you're identifying the problem, you're mapping it out, you're solving it, and then you're checking your work. Here's a strategy that takes a similar approach to breaking down word problems. Everybody panics immediately when they see a word problem I think no matter how old you are, and this is called C.U.B.E.S. And what you do is you circle all the numbers present in the problem, underline the question, box the key words, evaluate the steps necessary to solve the problem, then solve it and check your answer, and then the reminder to make sure that your answer is reasonable, which is an important thing that we often overlook when dealing with
121mathematics. When it comes to writing support, we like to break the process of writing down into as many steps as possible. When students are given long term writing assignments, it can often be overwhelming and these strategies are designed to break these overwhelming tasks down into smaller parts. We focus on things from as basic as composing a thesis statement, citing relevant evidence, elaborating on written analysis, all those things we work on, but we work on them in individual parts so it doesn't overwhelm the student. And of course, self editing checklists are another great way for students to build independence while having a visual reminder of the steps that they need to take. There we go. So that's a basic overview of what we do within the LRC, but again, we do have a wide variety of
122programs at the middle school, we have our parallel and push in program. Within the parallel program, special education students attend general education classes for science and social studies with the support of a special education teacher who pushes into those classes. They also have an academic support period which functions in a similar way to what an LRC does for an LRC student. And then we have the special class for English and math. In the push in classes, the special education teacher can modify work, they can modify assessments, they can modify labs and things of that nature, however, the content area teacher is providing the instruction for the class. There we go. So this is just a little breakdown of the parallel math and English program. There are 12 to one classes and they allow for slower
123pace and modified content to meet the needs of the students within the program. This is really meeting students where they are, right? The parallel math classes incorporate grade level math skills and concepts in a way that is accessible for all students. They touch upon the mainstream math lessons and units, but content materials are modified. At the sixth grade level, they can focus on real world applications of sixth grade content and just frame it in a way that is more digestible to them. In addition, these courses can move at a slower pace in the sense that if a teacher sees that they need to work on one topic for a little longer period of time, they're comfortable doing that because they want the students to master those skills. Here's just an example of how teachers break
124down math work in the parallel program. Vocabulary is taught prior to each unit, do now activities are designed to help reinforce what was taught in previous lessons, and concepts are really broken down for easier understanding. The English portion of the parallel program works in a similar, fashion parallel classes, again, are 12 to one, and similar concepts such as comprehension, reading skills, vocabulary and writing are taught in parallel classes where the content can be broken down into smaller chunks. And again, that's a key, you can work on very similar material, but if you break it down and make it more manageable for students, they have a much better time digesting it. Here's an example of some activities that are worked on within the parallel English curriculum in sixth grade, right? A lot of making connections, comparing
125and contrasting, things of that nature. And we always try to incorporate real life connections with what we're doing. We also have related services, the big three that we were talking about earlier, right, we have a myriad, list of options that students can participate in, however, the big three are speech and language where students work to develop their communication skills, occupational or physical therapy, and then the school psychologists and counselors who offer counseling services. And with these related services, we really work well as a team, right? All the related service providers attend the team meetings where we talk about students, where we can offer suggestions to teachers, and we can really look at the whole child and all their needs. Our Wilson Reading Program is a real point of pride for us at the middle school.
126It's a research-based structured literacy program. And it's really a multi-sensory approach to reading as a whole, it works on fluency, accuracy, word recognition, and comprehension. And of course, all those are components of fully understanding what you're reading. And this slide does have some more specifics about what the Wilson Reading Program does work on. Another large responsibility of the LRC teachers, but of all special education teachers and the middle school in general are the testing centers. So at the middle school, the testing centers are part of the LRC, it's the same location. So due to the diverse nature of testing accommodations, a separate location is provided that allows students who are classified to take their assessments in an area that's stress free, where they feel comfortable, where they can be free of distractions. And this is
127a photo of one of the Learning Resource Centers set up as a testing center for that particular moment in time, it has the dividers, it has noise canceling headphones in case there are distractions, and it does really allow students to feel comfortable. Most students, especially within the LRC at the middle school, really look at that location as their home base, right? It's really where they feel comfortable and at home within the building so allowing them to utilize that location to take their assessments really does take the anxiety level down for something that can be really, really stressful. Here are some testimonials from students within the middle school about what they think has been beneficial about the programs they're in. They often say that it helps them understand every topic because an LRC teacher could really
128work with you on any topic at any time. And I think that's essential for students, right? It can give you extra help in every subject. If you have to do work and catch up on some things, it gives you the opportunity to do that. If you have a testing accommodation that allows you to ask questions or for clarification, the special education teacher who's in the room at that moment can help you with that. And of course, it teaches strategies for all different subject areas and all skills. Here's another example. This is a student who talked about how when their OCD kicks in, they can go to the LRC even if they're in a different class, they can use it as a place to kind of take a breather, regain some of their (indistinct) or lessen
129their anxiety and then go back ready to learn. If they didn't have that outlet, that environment, things might snowball into a different fashion. There's a lot of flexibility, they talk about not being stressed. And I will enter off on a poem that one of my LRC sixth grade students wrote this year. And I'll just read it to you. "LRC helps me in so many ways, "LRC works in play to write on the board, "to catch a phrase, "from subject to subject, we work all day. "but when LRC comes "I learned today but just in a different way". So thank you very much and appreciate the time, everybody. And I invite my esteemed colleague, Miss Cagner, Eileen Cagner from the high school to. Okay, so Good evening, my name is Eileen Cagner and I'm the high
130school Special Education Department chair and learning resource teacher. So today's presentation, I'm gonna focus on how the LRC teachers support our students using specific skills and strategies while working through the curriculum at any level in the high school. In addition to that, I'm also gonna speak a little bit about some of the other services that we provide. So the main component of special education at the high school is the Learning Resource Center, which is our resource room program. Students are scheduled for the LRC four times a week, similar to their other classes, and the classes are mixed grades level so it really depends on the master schedule. And the nice thing about that is that quite often you'll have younger students with some of the older students and they become the unofficial mentors as we
131welcome the younger students into the high school, they give them a little inside information, they dispel the rumor that there's a pool at the high school and they give them some firsthand experiences about teachers, staff from their peers instead of hearing it all the time from us. All the classes are in five to one student to teacher ratio which allows for that direct specialized instruction. So the work that we do in the LRC is really guided by the IEP as mentioned earlier. We have students with varying disabilities in the program and the focus of our work is to meet the students where they are academically, socially, and emotionally, and then help them to move forward. We provide skills and strategies to build their toolbox over the four years that they're with us, and really, I
132say this when we have our incoming freshmen, and I have a welcome night for the parents of incoming freshmen to kind of massage their fears about the big bad high school, and what I say to them is that we wanna move from guided learning to independent learning. And what I also say is that for each student, that's gonna look a little different, and help them to understand the work that we do. So these are just some pictures of the Learning Center at the high school, it's one large space divided into three areas and anytime you could have up to five groups of teacher and students working together, and the collaboration in the Learning Center is a major, major part of what we do, we all work together, we all wear different hats, and it really
133is if you walk in there, it really is a beautiful thing to see how the teachers and the students work together, the students come back on their free periods, and even if their specific LRC teacher is busy, they know that they could get support from other teachers. So the next slide really is sometimes how our students feel, right? The academic pressures coupled with social issues can lead them to feeling overwhelmed and can lead them to feeling anxious. We work closely with all the mental health providers in the building including the psychologists, the social workers and our youth outreach workers. We work really close with our deans and with our nursing staff to make sure that our student's needs are being, sorry, are being met, and to encourage our students to understand better their own strengths
134and their weaknesses so they can then build on that to move forward. Quite often working in the LRC, you'll hear students say, I can't, I can't figure out how to do this, I can't talk to my teacher, I can't write a paper. What we try to do is work with our students to shift that thinking, right? To say to them, it's not that I can't, you can do this, it's how can I do this, right? How can I change my study habits so that I use my time more efficiently? How can this calendar help me to plan my time? How can I break down this project that's so overwhelming that I'm just not gonna do it because I don't know how to get started? How can I write a 10 page research paper if I
135can't even come up with a thesis? How do we do that you might ask. So let's take a look at some of the resources that we use. Again, we use a curriculum as the basis for the work that we do in the LRC. So up on the screen now are a couple of organizers that are using in the LRC to break down long term assignments. So on the left, I believe that was one for chemistry class where they had to investigate a famous chemist. And you can see it's broken down into manageable pieces, there are due dates, and there's a checkmark when it's done. Now, sometimes this isn't easy, right? Sometimes we say to the kids, this is something that we want you to do and they look at us like we have three heads.
136Over time though with our support and encouragement, they come to realize most of the time that that little extra effort in the beginning is going to help them in the long run. On the right, they've taken it one step further to say, do you think that it's good enough for you, and then what do you think your LRC teacher is gonna say about it? So really to get them to start reflecting on their work and coming up with a plan. Organization always an issue. And just as Mr. Hirsh alluded to earlier, we have some students who still like to use the planner and write it down, and personally there's nothing more satisfying than crossing something off the list. But for students who also like to work on the computers that are more tech savvy or
137just more comfortable on the computers, either way, we encourage our students to do what works best for them. Moving forward and thinking ahead, 21st century learning, and then the computers and the Google Classroom has become an invaluable tool. But if the planner is something that works for our students, we're gonna encourage them to use that, and then at some point, maybe move them to the next step. Organization and writing. These two slides, the last one, I can't go back, here we go. Same thing, when I spoke before, how can I write a paper when I don't even know what my thesis is. And this is a tool that we use just to break it down just so that they could start seeing it in smaller pieces and then go from there. And again, with Google
138Classroom and with a lot of the technology, Google Docs that's around today, it's really helpful, the students can start share their papers with us and we could provide feedback as they're working on it. Organization in writing, this was for "To Kill a Mockingbird", for stories that have so many different characters, it can get really confusing for any kid, certainly for students with some learning differences so having a character map, something that is as simple as this so that when the students are reading and they're not quite sure who one of the characters are, they could go back to that and work with that. And then editing. I'm too quick here. I'm gonna get there, I'm gonna get there. Once their papers are in, sometimes the students just wanna hand it in and say we're done
139and then we kind of help them to see, okay, let's just take a look and make sure, right? A lot of times you might hear us in the LRC saying, we wanna make sure that you're connecting your thesis to the evidence and doing some of these self editing checklists and working with them through this is really helpful. And again, this happens over time, right? As they come in as freshmen, we're working on these skills throughout the time that they're with us and hopefully moving them along that continuum to more independent learning. So one of the other services that we provide in the high school is our co-teaching model, all of our skills classes grades nine through 11 are co-taught. They're smaller classes, they provide a more individualized approach, and they focus on the fundamental skills.
140The students benefit from the expertise of the gen ed teacher, coupled with the expertise of the special ed teacher, and that collaboration between the two teachers is paramount to the success of our students who struggle in those co-taught classes, but then, as you read some of the testimonials from our co-teachers, it also helps in the other classes as well. And LRC teachers, our related service providers, including our speech pathologists, including our reading consultant, really our resources for the gen ed teachers to help with any of the students in the school, but particularly in our co-teaching classes. So I think there's a couple of slides here and I'll let you take a look at those for a moment and then move on. And there I have a lot more feedback from teachers, from parents and I'd
141be happy to share that with you so that you can see it at your leisure. So the Scarsdale Support Program, we spoke about that earlier. the Scarsdale Support Program, we started thinking about that I think about seven years ago as we began to identify students in the district who were in need of a more therapeutic interventions. Rather than continue to send them out, we started to research a number of programs around the county, we began to prioritize our goal and objectives for a program that we could develop here. I'm happy to say that over the past five years that the program has been at the high school, it has been very successful and we have a fantastic team working in our support program that really has brought the students forward and brought that program to
142where it is today. Scarsdale Support Program provides support and structure for students who are struggling to access the gen ed curriculum due to emotional difficulties. Students in the program attend gen ed classes all levels and most are pursuing a regents diploma. And the primary goal of this program is to help our students manage emotionality while providing coping skills and in the moment feedback for certain behaviors. The focus is maintaining a stable positive environment while helping students develop their self advocacy skills. Similar to the LRC, students have access to the full high school curriculum including AT honors and skills, and the study methods class provides the setting to work on the IEP goals. The purpose of the therapeutic intervention is to address students social, emotional, behavioral issues that are interfering with their ability to function within
143an academic setting. Direct service is provided once a week individually, once a week in a group, and of course on an as needed basis. In order to provide therapeutic support, various theoretical frameworks including cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and traditional talk therapy is used. It's important to be mindful though that regardless of the orientation, the ultimate goal is to help students develop their own toolboxes of effective strategies and to help them change the way they perceive and then deal with the situations they find themselves in. So, I can't speak highly enough of the work that has been done in that program and here are two quotes, one from a parent, and the one on the bottom, I'd like to read because it really resonated with me. And this student said that, "Overall SSP has
144been a great staple in my school days. "It's comforting to know someone in the school "is always willing to listen to me, "even if most people never listen to what I wanna say". And then we have something from one of our parents. Nope, we wanna stay on that one. Okay, in addition to the programs that I just spoke about, we have some additional responsibilities within special education, two of those fall under our Academic Support Center which Eric spoke about earlier, and our Academic Intervention Services. So in keeping with the Response to Intervention model, the Academic Support Center provides support to students who do not quite meet the level of or their needs aren't quite to the level of special education. So this is a building level service that is provided through special education and the
145students meet with our teachers, usually twice a week. Students at the middle school who receive TAS services automatically are entered into our Academic Service Support Center one time a week and then assessed. And with all of the students, each quarter, we look at their progress and decide is this enough, can we release them, or in some cases, do we need to take it a step further and refer them to special education. So in addition to ASC, we have our AIS program, which is mainly for students who are in danger of failing in the New York State Regents. Although we haven't had to use that program in the last couple of years, it's still something that's provided through special education, and once once they start with the reagents again, we'll look back to incorporating that again.
146So you've heard a lot from myself, you've heard a lot from my colleagues, so at this time, are there some parent commentary? Hang on, where did my video go? Not the last one. You have to hear the student voice. There it is. So I'm gonna stop talking and I'm gonna let the talk. The LRC has not only helped me manage my time but articulate my thoughts. The LRC has not only helped me manage my time, but articulate my thoughts. With the LRC, in being open to suggestions and learning and bettering myself as a student, I was able to be succinct and just be a better writer overall while also learning that I needed to manage my time. But luckily, I had a great support system which helped me and we figured out a solution for
147me to excel in math this year instead of struggling all year. LRC has helped me a tremendous amount managing my time and finding time to get schoolwork done. I was having stress in school and at home and they were coming back to places where they weren't supposed to be. And that was what was really stressing me out. Finding that balance has been the most important thing that the LRC has done for me because now I can go to school and say I have LRC this period. LRC has helped me through my journey in high school by teaching me how to be more independent as a student, and it's helped me prepare for the next step in my life by teaching me how to self advocate for myself when I need the help. Giving me like
148test taking tips and stuff and it's helped me prepare for the next step. I was making sure that I know what's coming up in terms of tests, quizzes, essays, whatever it is. During my freshman year, my LRC teacher worked with me to create an organization system to help me keep track of my class notes and assignments. We also worked together to come up with study plans for testing quizzes to make sure I was studying all of the material and studying well in advance so I wouldn't end up cramming the night before an exam. The LRC has taught me to be organized, has taught me to be confident, but I would also say that the LRC has taught me that I'm capable of doing much more than I think. The LRC has always helped me because
149they always keep me on task, they always make sure I'm doing my work, and there's always a place where I can always just get my work done which is what I need to do. I'm Elijah Eikamp, I'm a junior at Scarsdale High School and I owe it all the SSP. I seriously doubt I'd even be at Scarsdale if it weren't for this program. With the help from Dr. O, we learned communication techniques and coping skills to support us when we need them. School has always been a big obstacle in my life. Most mornings, I'd wake up crying and spend the day sick to my stomach or just skip school altogether. I'm so grateful to all my teachers and supporters for helping me get to where I am. I love my family here at SSP, thank
150you. I have this work so I have to get it done and I can't complain about it, I just have to get it done because that's what's expected of me. Knowing that it's okay to talk about those things and that it actually helps me once I get that stress off my chest, I know that I can now take that into whatever job I have in the future, especially college. And I learned so many skills these past four years and I can't wait to use them for another four years. And I can't really put into words how grateful I am to be a part of this program, we're not afraid to ask for help and anything's possible, we just need an extra little boost. So I'm very happy to be a part of this LRC program,
151it has helped me so much, thanks. (applauding) We did a really nice job with that. Just the last relationship I just wanna highlight really is our parents. We keep our kids for four years and over those four years, we not only develop relationships with our students, but also with the parents, sometimes longer if there are siblings. And that really is another area where communication is so important and we wanna work with our parents as a team to always put the student first and meet the needs of our students. And again, these are some parent commentaries that they were so happy to share with us. And then before I leave you, I just wanna think about our goal as I said for our students is to help move them along that continuum from guided learning to
152independent learning, and always keeping post secondary goals at the forefront because we're preparing them for the next step. So, sometimes in order to allow for that, for students who have reached a certain level of independence, sometimes in their junior year, we'll start scaling back on some of the support and rather than four times a week LRC, we'll provide them with two times a week LRC and it's really to help them to prepare for the next step. Once high school ends, the IEP is finished so students really have to learn how to advocate for themselves for when they go on to the next step. And as far as the actual college process, we work very closely with the deans and with the families and what's gonna be scrolling up there in a moment is a list
153of colleges and universities that LRC students have attended over the past number of years. And before I finally stop talking, I just would like to thank members of my department for their help in preparing this presentation and Bryan Bagala and Vinny Modafferi for organizing and recording the students video. So I will leave you with this, thank you. So I'd like to just give a big thank you to the special education staff. (applauding) We're happy to be take any questions that you might have about the presentation. I know it was a lot of information and we don't get to do it very often so we tried to get as much in as we could. I just have a general comment, but I do have some questions but I just have to say how much I was
154struck by the incredible collaboration, not like among teachers, and parents and teachers, and students and teachers, and students and students, I thought that was really neat. And I can see when you talk about looking at this as growing abilities, how many supports are in place and the great care that our special education educators are giving to our students. It also struck me that our gen education students are benefiting greatly as well. I was thinking about the co-teaching examples that the regular classroom teachers learning from the special education teacher and the general ed students are also benefiting there. So that was really neat to see. I do have some questions, but I'll let some other people, do you wanna. Do you wanna go first? You can go first, that's okay. Thank you, that was a wonderful
155and thorough presentation. I just have a couple of questions. Eric, maybe this is for you, I'm not sure but as we're seeing the number of ICT classes growing in the elementary schools, I'm wondering how that might have impacted the parallel and push in programs at the middle school, and then subsequently, has it translated into more LRC staff needed at the high schools? So the answer is yes to both of those questions, it has impacted it. We are seeing almost every year two parallel houses rather than one which kind of was the norm prior. So that's certainly something that we've seen, we have seen an increase in LRCs over the middle and high school. Again, on that hiring staff that you showed, it showed the FTEs that we've moved in to take up that extended need,
156but yes, it does affect. At this point, the students who have started in our ICT program as it really grew are reaching the middle and high school. So one of the young ladies there that you saw in the video is actually a product of the ICT program all the way through. So it's wonderful to see those through stories. Thank you. And just one other question too, so related to the the number of ICT sections, and we see them at the all of the elementary schools and then I'm struck sort of by the comments about how great it is that we bring our students back into the district. Is there any thought about keeping ICT classes at all of the schools or for each grade? Yeah, that's a great question. So about five years ago, we
157had determined that we were gonna move ICT into two different schools and use every other year system. And that was done really because on average, we had two sections per grade, now we're more like three, possibly four. And the importance of having ICT concentrated so that there are teaching pairs that work for more than one year at a time and are regularly engaged in ICT, ICT is not simple. So you saw the six models of ICT, you saw the co-planning that goes on. The first year a teacher from a general ed class or a special ed teacher goes into that assignment is like a first year of teaching again, it's a whole different paradigm. Sure there are obviously transferable skills, but it's a year of re-planning and re-imagining how you work with students and resources
158in a room. So to the extent that we can make sure our culture builds in a building around ICT to make the second and third time you do ICT, you're that much better, the professional development moves from a introductory standpoint to tweaking these models to really attack very specific interventions with students. At this point, we've risen to a three or four section per grade situation, and I don't see that reducing, we are talking this year about expanding how many schools we would use. The issue about having, in a perfect world, would we love to have an ICT section on every grade in every building? We would, that would be an enormous investment in teachers and you would wind up having a disequilibrium between classes. If Edgewood grade three only has one ICT student, then you
159have that one section being populated by one ICT student rather than being able to concentrate them in numbers that make sense for the resources. So we are talking this year about expanding it, and how do we expand it into buildings, but keep a set schedule so that we can maintain the professional development gains we've gotten in a school like Quaker Ridge where it has really worked up through all the grades. That being said, Quaker Ridge now has 10 sections, that actually has a resource draw on that building, we've had to use a number of other consultants in that building to make sure every student gets what they need. But there's space constraints and there's other things there so that does need to be adjusted and we're working on that this year and later on this
160year, we'll certainly come to the board with exactly what that's gonna look like. Thank you. I have another question, I think you had a hand, but I was just wondering, how do we support students when they first, I mean, sorry, parents, how can we support our parents entering the world of special education? Great question. So we have both a secondary and a elementary student services handbook that are on the website and that really has an in depth look at what all of our pre-referral and referral services are. So it has things like MTSS and our child study teams. All of the things that are available before student is classified who may need extra help, what programs are available like you just heard for students when they are referred and ultimately classified under IDEA. We haven't
161touched on the 504 process but that is another opportunity for students to get accommodations and modifications rather than special instruction programs. That's also in those support handbooks. And those are on the special education and student services site for the district. Actually I had a question related to that, I was going to ask about our 504 students because it seems like there are several home bases and places to go and supports in place. So I was wondering, how do we support our 504 students in the same capacity. So 504 students, so the functional difference between a 504 in a school district setting to an IEP is those students who require specialized instruction really fall into the category of an IEP, those students who may need a related service or some accommodations and modifications in the classroom,
162they would really fall into the 504 bucket. 504s are the primary responsibility of the deans in the high school, of the guidance counselors in the middle school, the house counselors in the middle school, and the psychologist and general ed teachers in the elementary schools. So they're really worked through those avenues rather than the special education department, the related service providers obviously will provide service to mandated students, whether it's mandated under a 504 or an IEP. I had a couple of questions, although Karen just asked one of mine, but if Karen, do you have more, I don't want to cut you off. No, go ahead. Okay, Eric, so I understood that fluctuation in numbers that you were talking about with the pandemic years. And when you talked about a new normal, so you're talking about us
163settling back to sort of like 2018/19 level or what does that new normal look like and do we have the resources to support it? Sure, the jury is still a little bit out because the pandemic has thrown a little bit of a monkey wrench in the last couple years of numbers. I kind of think of it this way, if 12% of your population is about give or take 150 to 165 students leaving in any grade that were classified just for replacement value 'cause not many kids come in classified in kindergarten. So what happens is you get maybe 20 students classified in kindergarten and each year as students develop, they may need more support and by the time they get to senior. So if you look at the referrals, the referrals should generally match your leaving
164senior class per year, not an exact science, but somewhere in the same category. So, you're looking at about 12% of the population in referrals. Okay, then the other thing you talked about was, or one of the other many things you talked about was maintaining critical mass at each program level. And I'm wondering, has that Edgewood 8:1:2 class has both a K to two and a three to five component, will there be a critical mass to sustain it, and then is there a plan for the middle school for that? Yeah, that's a great question. So right now we have three students in the intensive support program in the three five, we expect to maintain them. We are using our channels to see if there are students from other districts who may need that and take them
165in as tuition students. We're looking at three to four kindergarteners coming in to the K2 this year that we would otherwise be using outside of district placements. As the program establishes itself, you become more attractive to other districts using it for outside placements. To be honest with you, as a special ed director, I rarely will send students on a tuition basis to an out of district program that's in its first couple of years of building 'cause I just wanna see where it goes before I jump in. So, as we build that successful program, we may have years where there are two or three students in that class, but honestly, I think that's a very worthwhile trade off to develop that piece of our continuum. It's about a two student pay off as far as a
166net zero from a cost standpoint 'cause of the teacher and the aides, but it's super important to those families that were keeping back and I think it's a really important goal to continue to strive for. Are there also students who perhaps are still going out of district who might be brought back into a program like that long run? Yeah, so we certainly did that on the startup of our eight to one to two last year, yeah, two years ago, excuse me, where most of the students that were in that program were brought back from outside placements. Once you do it the first time, the new kids aren't kind of, unless they're moving in and they're assigned to an outside placement from somewhere else, once you to bring the kids who are eligible back for that
167type of program, that's kind of where you're at. I could keep going but I'll stop and give someone else. First, thanks very much, everyone for the presentation. We've talked a lot about special ed, especially around the budget period for a number of years so it's really helpful to see this sort of holistic presentation. And you can see from K to 12, follow a student is really nice. We talked about a lot about services that are offered and we've added a lot. Are there still gaps that you would see in the future that you'd wanna fill in this district? Yeah, I think when we think about moving forward and we think about the LRC programs at the middle and the high school, I think there is opportunity to move to more co-teaching examples on the secondary
168level and see how that can be used strategically for students across grades. I think there are, obviously I'm looking to start an SSP in the middle school, that's a gap that I think we can fill on the elementary level. That's where it's difficult because our size of school district means we have at any given time one of any type of student that might be out there, I think you saw in some of those graphs on the types of classification, some of the classification will have one or two students every few years, that's very difficult to build a program for. That being said, when you start to get three or four or even two but they're there year after year, we can build a program. So I think from a specific class point on the elementary
169level, we've reached that, I think we can continue to look at ICT and how do we with these additional sections start to almost specialize there. Is there a way to tweak some of our ICT programs for students on the autism spectrum that might be a little bit more effective in this way or that way? So there are some things we can do there. And as we move forward, I think needs, what I've learned is needs kind of change as the years go by depending on what we're doing in the general ed setting, depending on what the community, the society is doing in general. The rise in mental health needs has been something we've been seeing pre-pandemic, obviously intensified by the pandemic, but something that wasn't there 10 years ago, or wasn't there in the numbers
170that we were seeing. So, there's always work to be done. I think right now the SSP in the middle school is our first priority along with really drilling down into ICT and to LRC, how do we become more effective on individual interventions? Thank you, in one area, thank you. And sorry if you did speak about this, but what about extra curricular activities, can you just talk a little bit about how our special education students interact with that at the different levels? Yeah, sure. So, on the elementary level, we work with the PTAs pretty extensively when extracurriculars comes around. There's opportunities, the PTC will often supply aids to different programs for different students. We maintain trying to have as many students with any ability or disability in those programs. When sometimes in a school like Quaker
171Ridge or a school that has a number of ICT sections, the PTA may need aids in multiple sections, sometimes we will help with that funding if it gets beyond what the PTCs or the PTA can handle. On the middle and high school level, the LRC teachers make concerted efforts with the deans to identify extracurricular activities that students would really benefit from and help them make those first initial steps. Many of our students in the LRC find in addition to the LRC being a home base, those extracurricular clubs that they can find and become really a part of are something that makes high school and middle school that much more appealing and that much more real in their lives. Thank you. I had a couple for Miss Pagel. Thank you so much for your very creative
172and thoughtful presentation, it actually made me wanna go in to the LRC to do the popcorn math, I feel like that could be really fun. I had a couple of questions. So you talked about the need for executive functioning skills as a growing issue. Yes. And I can imagine a million reasons why that might be happening, right? Like we live in a world that's increasingly busy and demands more and more executive functioning of all of us. But you talked mostly about introducing it around fourth and fifth grade, is there something that needs to be done either in the general education classroom or in the LRC with students a little earlier to help create those frameworks? Yeah, we've been starting to introduce it in like, third, fourth and fifth grade with actually using the terms, executive
173functioning. Executive functioning is actually always happening from kindergarten and in learning centers, I would guess it's more of a hidden curriculum. So when they get their binder or when they get their planner or when the teacher puts up a schedule on the board and when they take the schedule down and when they go up and check things, that's always been introduced. So I think just good teaching is already starting to do that, we're just trying to focus on more with the child doing it themselves independently. So as far as going, I'm not opposed to it, I'm sure it will happen, but like I said in the last five plus years, in the elementary level, we noticed that it's happening, it needs to be addressed a little bit more and we're currently taking a course that's
174doing it and we just find that the fourth and fifth graders are understanding it a little bit better just based on the terminology of it. I hope that answers your question. Okay, but there's no extra support that you need from the board in terms of professional development or anything to help. Not at this time, no. Okay, and then also, you were describing the pullout situation and how it works so that kids don't miss important instructional designs. Are students who are classified also able to participate in things like music and band or does-- Absolutely. 'Cause there are also pull outs for those during my time. That's all set up in the schedule, we are never allowed, which we would never do that anyway, but we do not pull children from their specials. Our LRC teachers and
175our assistant principals are master Tetris players. I'm sure, I'm sure. It's true. One of the things about ICT versus LRC, when we have students, there is a critical mass of services that a student needs that no longer fits into the game of Tetris, especially with all of the other things that are going on. So that is one of the tipping points, when a student has a more globalized need from an academic standpoint, and that five or six times a cycle move to LRC is really impinging upon the student's curriculum with the other related services and maybe their trumpet lesson and everything else, that's the time when you start to consider what program best intervenes for that student and it might be a moved ICT. Thank you, Eric, for that. But Miss Pagel, I have one
176or two more questions, sorry. You talked about some of the modalities of reading and math instruction, I mean, the ones that sounded fun to me, right, the popcorn math and everything, is their collaboration with the classroom teachers to implement a wider variety. I know we're hearing later about some of the reading curriculum, curricula that are used in the district, but is there an effort to work on introducing different modalities of reading across the board a little bit? As far as like the Learning Center sharing or-- Yeah, the Learning Center sharing or the Learning Center collaborating because there are certainly general ed students who might benefit from some of those. Definitely I agree. There's a lot of professional development. A lot of the teachers we meet with them frequently. So at the beginning there when we
177meet with them, we share them with all these ideas. I mean, when I say we meet frequently, we meet frequently so we can definitely give them all of these hands on materials. And most of the time when we give them for the special ed child, they are using them for the regular child because they might have them in the same reading group and they could benefit from the same experiences. We also do besides the professional development, there's STI courses. I myself teach a course on creating games and activities to help differentiate instruction in the classroom. I've done it for I think 15 years now. So it's a week course in the summer and there's almost 90% of the participants are the gen ed teacher. So I think it's just getting out there and the kids
178go back and do that as well. Sometimes the parents, if I give them a bag, they'll go home and practice the game as well. So we try to make it out there as possible and the gen ed teachers in the elementary level are, it's fun, they want learning to be a little bit more fun so they are very receptive to any type of hands on multi-sensory activities. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Again, I want to thank, you have a question, I'm sorry. No, just two quick comments. Eric's chart went back to 2014/15. And my recollection going back quite a bit further is that in fact the increase from whenever before then until then was also fairly significant. So I mean, I hope, Eric, you're right in sort of trending and how we're identifying and that we
179get to, I don't know what the right, equilibrium of some sort. But I think that that issue, and the ICT classes I remember that they had started somewhere or maybe not started, but I do recall there were much fewer even then what you're showing from 2014/15. So I think it's a positive though because I think it really shows that we're serving our students and our community and our children in the village and the town in a way that maybe we weren't before. So I think that's really beneficial to everybody. And then the other thing, I just wanted to basically echo what Karen said, just thank everybody not just for the presentation tonight, which was really fantastic and should be mandatory for everybody really, I think, but for the obvious effort and dedication that each of
180you and I'm sure all the other members of your various teams have to the students and professionalism. And I'm sure that that's where the real benefit is for the students that you're all so dedicated and committed and care so much, and it's really great to see, and especially, I know things have been more difficult and challenging in the last, well, we know how long, so appreciate that you're here tonight with masks and all but more importantly, everything you do every day, is it's not lost on any of us that even taking the time to make that presentation I'm sure was a substantial effort and it's not lost on any of us that that just indicates your level of dedication so thank you. And taking the time to build our understanding. And I see it is
1819:15 so we certainly do not expect you to, if you would like to go home, we really, really appreciate it, you're spending so much time with us. That was excellent so thanks. Thanks, everybody, good job. Thank you, thank you, thank you. (applauding) All right, so now we are up to item 10.02, the strategic plan update. to just do a brief overview of some of the high level goals. Sure, okay. So tonight, I'll focus on four of our strategic plan goals related to instruction and curriculum. Next generation standards alignment, student-centered learning, libraries and learning spaces, and student support. We'll be discussing of course remaining nine goals at upcoming educational reports. So for the next gen standards, a math pilot update. Bridges Mathematics is the final of the three math programs that 43 elementary classrooms are piloting.
182Through an ongoing STI course, teachers are meeting to discuss the benefits and challenges of the programs and materials both digital and physical. We are anticipating that in April, the committee will join the building administrators in our internal consultant to determine which program to adopt in September. Concurrently, our leadership team is investigating the potential pathways and timelines for rollout of training and resources. For students-centered learning at three different levels. Through an STI course, over 50 elementary educators are working with our SPARK leaders and CPET Teachers College Consultants to design modules for project-based learning experiences. Our continued partnership with CPET was inspired by the successful collaboration work building last summer's SPARK program. And Ann Marie included a description of that STI course in the catalog that she passed on to you. Author and instructor instructional coach, Kate
183Roberts, continues her consultation with our middle school English Department exploring the power and engagement of choice through guided and independent reading cycles. And next year, a college level linear algebra course is being designed to provide students choice in a meaningful and real world application of linear algebra. Beyond the student-centered design of this course, we aim to allow a wide access for student participation. Our new linear algebra course will be open to seniors who have completed a full year of pre-calculus and can be taken as a core fourth year math course or an elective. This highly personalized course will explore the many applications of linear algebra, the applications it has in the natural and social science world. A special thanks to Maureen Ellison-Connolly and Sam Greenberg for their work and innovation on this exciting course. The
184next area for an update is libraries and learning spaces. And it has to do with nonfiction reorganization. After careful audit of the middle school shelves, it was determined that our percentage of nonfiction texts was low. We are replenishing the shelves with current, engaging and quality texts. This influx has given us a wonderful opportunity to reorganize and reconfigure the library in ways that support student inquiry and agency. Inspired by the professional text, five types of nonfiction, middle school librarian Shana Frazin is breaking text up into categories to provide better access and wider circulation of the materials. And in students supports, an update on MTSS. And I believe Bevin did say it's formerly known as RTI. James Wright, an expert in MTSS and RTI will work with our entire elementary administrative team to review and update the
185MTSS district plan. To inform these updates, the building administration from each of the schools will introduce the processes, the forms, and the educator feedback. Once our district NPSS plan has been updated, there will be a common blueprint to share with building MTSS teams. Then we will schedule a full day CST admin training with James Wright at which point he can address questions about the MTSS process, including the opportunities for students-centered flexibility within the blueprint and appropriate adaptations to reflect the needs and the cultures of the schools. We imagine this to be a highly engaging and collaborative day. And a next step would be looking for Mr. Wright to come in and provide direct teacher training and elements of classroom intervention. The timing and process for this teacher focus PD would be determined through coordination and
186discussion with teacher representation. So we're looking at that as an exciting next step. And just to circle back to what Jessica you were talking to Bevin about, it's about these CST teams are opportunities for teachers to come in and talk about the kinds of strategies that they can use with their students. And they have a wide range of influences because what happens is they become the kind of best practices collected from the speech language person, from the LRC teacher, from the OT, from ENL teacher, that they can use with a student who need support, but also with all the students in the entire class. So it has a wonderful wider effect that way. So those are the updates for strategic plan for today or tonight. Any questions? Moving on to pre-TDI update. Okay. I will.
187So I'm gonna talk a little bit about work with Derrick Gay, it continues. On December 16th, we had our first virtual administrative workshop where we discussed the challenges to engage in conversations about race, had a chance to deepen our understandings regarding the ways in which we personally process racial issues, learn about experiences of racism from various racial ethnic groups and reflect on how we can personally foster racial inclusion in Scarsdale schools. We are looking forward to in person February meetings with Derrick Gay, including the second administrative workshop where we will go deeper and reflect on a follow up survey he gave us all including focusing on cultivating group norms to facilitate constructive conversations on topics of diversity, equity and inclusion. This board of education will have a workshop that will mirror a lot of the
188understandings and concepts covered during the December administrative meeting. And Dr. Gay has two building leadership meetings, one with the high school, or he had to build a leadership meetings with the high school and one with the middle school team dedicated to brainstorming building level implications of the work and an upcoming session in March with the elementary team. Building leadership has appreciated his knowledgeable and flexible approach to the ongoing work, and the fact that he has researched our educational community specifically beforehand and is tailoring his guidance to our unique needs. Dr. Gay will also be meeting with the teacher leadership at the secondary level for an after school session in February. Thomas and I will be meeting with Dr. Gay in February as well to receive and provide ongoing feedback. These meetings have been scheduled throughout
189the year. At the Compact Committee on Wednesday, principle leaders shared the various work they are engaged in with their DEI committees and we'll be sharing the progress they have made in metrics in an upcoming meeting. Families have and will be contacted to participate in DE related activities directly from the school. We are excited by the creative and collaborative projects being done throughout the schools. Since last year, we have had an outside partnership with the Westchester Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center specifically to work on a county wide committee exploring ways to enrich and adapt the curriculum to developmentally appropriately and inclusively teach at the elementary school level the histories and justices and historical patterns of marginalized people. I'm joined on that committee by elementary Scarsdale educators, Michelle O'Donnell and Joanna Marty. We met with this
190group virtually last week to conference with frequent Scarsdale Middle School collaborator and storyteller DEI consultants, Sheila Arnold. She described various programs she has done at the elementary level and we look forward to exploring the expansion of that partnership. There is a lot of STI coursework, we have Lisa Marie, Lisa Marie Presley in the audience, we have Ann Marie in the audience who can help get us color to this. In the fall, we have exploring cultural diversity through literature, various books, we have a stack course DEI and film with Paul Tomizawa, upcoming spring courses, class, race and economics, creating art about immigration, exploring the professional shelf series, facing history in ourselves, Japanese art history, multiculturalism through film series, faith on film, and who's still going on music and American culture. As well we have a new
191exploration, Montgomery, Alabama field study, and a group of our 12 teachers are researching the possibilities of visiting civil rights landmarks in the state of Alabama over spring break or in June. Teachers will be hosted by the Equal Justice Initiative, and Ray Hinton. They will visit historical sites in Selma, Birmingham and Montgomery, such as the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the National Voting Rights Museum. Teachers will collaborate on using these resources in their classrooms. And that is what I have for this evening's DEI update. Thank you, very comprehensive, thank you. The only thing I would add to that is that I do know that our PTC has also reached out to try to plan some parent programming around that. I think they're still negotiating the opportunity there, but hopefully, that will work
192out as well. I had a quick question too. I was just wondering, aside from our high school students on the Compact Committee, how are we involving our students? So will they have an opportunity, our main student groups, to meet with Dr. Gay too? So at this stage, Dr. Gay is really leading with the meeting with the leadership, and then he has some opportunities to get some feedback from the teachers. But at this point, he won't be engaging with students directly. But we do have our students I think on the high school compact team, right? Yes, and we have students who are participating actively in book groups at the middle school level with Shana Frazin and some social studies teachers. And most of the metrics actually center around the lived experience of students so the data
193that we're collecting through our metrics at the building level goals is all about students. Yes, and collecting their feedback. Okay, thank you, thank you. I think my question was very much in line with Karen's, I'm definitely heartened by the level of professional development that we're doing in this sphere, it sounds amazing. But I guess I'm curious about steps that are being taken particularly at each building level to create a more welcoming culture of inclusion of all types and whether you have examples, you gave the example of the book clubs at the middle school. Are there efforts like that either, are there efforts like that at the elementary level, is there? There are. And in fact, I mean, for a later DEI update, one of the, yeah, I don't wanna give it all away now, but--
194You don't wanna keep us up all night long. How we had left it when we had the Compact Committee is that there was some sharing about some of the things that were going on at the school level. And then one of the charges was to come back and talk in more depth about the metrics and the movement that we've made on these metrics that are very student-inclusive. Thank you. So I think, should we hear from Ann Marie and then take a break or you wanna, it's been two hours, but maybe-- We have two more items here. Yeah, so push through and then take the wellness break, okay. So the next item is 10.04, STI courses. We're gonna ask Ann Marie Nee to come up and talk to us about this. Hello, everyone. Ann Marie, welcome.
195Thank you very much for having me. The spring catalog list new and repeat courses for your consideration. These courses were proposed by teachers, approved by the STI Accreditation Committee, and are slated to begin in February. The listing of 40 courses support many many district goals, many that you've heard tonight, in special education, we have an elementary offering on accommodations and modifications for the general ed classroom, and a secondary special education study group focusing on progress monitoring. Edgar listed all of our DEI offerings. Sustainability courses include indoor gardening and microgreens, food agriculture and climate change, and sustainability and outdoor gardens for when the weather gets a little warmer. Technology courses will have teachers organizing their Google Drives, becoming Google workplace Jedis, curating videos for class, creating digital games and more. Interdisciplinary courses will be offered in
196science fiction, financial literacy, improv for the classroom, media literacy, art and augmented reality and challenge ropes courses. The STI is also supporting athletic coaching education. There's courses on strength and conditioning, long term athletic development, and practice and drill design. And I should just really give some recognition because the STI is really built on the work of the teacher coordinators who have proposed these courses, and they really step up to share their passion and expertise. They go well above and beyond what they are expected to do as part of their normal work. And then of course there are the teachers who take these classes who are modeling lifelong learning for their students and creating a learning community of scholarship, innovation and collegiality. These courses are offered in the afternoons, in the evenings, on weekends. And then
197when we get to the summer catalog, we offer classes every week of the summer. So thank you for the Board of Education support, the administrative support, and I would welcome any questions you have about any of the offerings here. Thanks, Ann Marie, any questions? Just that they look fantastic so thank you. Thank you so much. All right, and then finally 10.05, under discussion items is the NYSSBA elections for the Area 10 director and I will ask Karen to take that up. So the Area 10, there are 13 area directors, we're in Area 10 which encompasses Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester Counties. The directors are nominated by school boards, members of school boards in their designated geographic area and elected by ballot. So the director promotes the needs of the school districts in their area, brings their
198perspectives and their priorities, they're an advocate for our region, they help keep us informed of what's happening NYSSBA and education around the state, they influence statewide education initiatives and help decide general policies of NYSSBA and appoint the executive director and adopt the association's annual budget. So there are three candidates that we have all reviewed, we've watched both their videos statements and read their statements that they sent to us. And so I guess I will open the floor if anybody would like to nominate an individual and we will hopefully come to consensus on the person. Well, I guess I should first ask, is this something that this board wants to do? Okay, and then I will open up if anyone would like to nominate a particular individual and hopefully we will reach consensus and be able
199to cast our one vote. So I just wanted to speak to your first point really quickly and say that I do think that it's important that we participate in this process, that we want to be able to be active members of NYSSBA as our lobbying association, and I think it's important that we do make a nomination. So just to that point. I guess before I would nominate someone, one thing I think for me that's a relevant piece of information is, so there's three candidates, somebody who's on the White Plains School Board, somebody that's on the North Rockland School Board, somebody on the Ardsley School Board. The reason there's a vacancy in this position is that our director has become the president of the NYSSBA Board of Ed who is also a member of the North
200Rockland School Board and the North Rockland BOCES School Board, which the person from North Rockland is as well, which I think is fantastic that they have a lot of service from there, but this position does represent three counties, Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam. I do think there's value in having people from those different areas, and also Miss Zugibe who's gonna be the president has been in this position for a long time so I would personally lean towards one of the candidates from Westchester. I'll leave it there and I'm happy to speak more about it, I just wanted to put that out there for the rest of the board. We're happy to have you speak more. Would you like to speak more? Anybody else want to add anything or do you want to. Did you have something
201to say? I support that sentiment as well, yeah. So I mean, it comes out to the board member from White Plains or Ardsley having reviewed their statements, their videos, their backgrounds, I mean, personally I would put forth Cheryl Brady from White Plains. I think she has a lot of experience both on a board, her backgrounds in education, obviously White Plains I think is a very large district, it's a nearby district. Ardsley is also nearby, but just looking at all that, looking at the composition of the NYSSBA board, I think Miss Brady would make a good addition. I would agree with Ron. I have to say, I didn't think of the the Westchester versus Rockland so that's very helpful, thank you. That sort of went over my head. But I think I think both Cheryl and
202the gentlemen seem well equipped to do the job. I have to say I felt a little more attracted to the Sheryl Brady resume because of her background and her presentation. So I think I would agree with Ron, she seems to be very well qualified for that position. I wanted to agree because with both Bob and Ron on that, I mean, I think my gut instinct is to say at first blush that Ardsley is a district that maybe is more similar to ours than White Plains and perhaps might be more aligned with us. But I think looking through all three, I felt like Sheryl Brady was probably the strongest of the three candidates. Yeah, I concur. I also agree with the logic about finding someone within Westchester. I thought all three candidates had a lot to
203offer and appreciate all of them putting their names in, but I would support Sheryl Brady as well. I concur as well. Carl, are you okay? Do we need to vote on this? We're gonna take action later yeah so okay. All right, that concludes the information discussion items. Okay, James, did you wanna add anything, I didn't wanna? Okay, so, at this time since we've been sitting for over two hours, we'll take a five minute wellness break and then come back to finish the meeting, thank you. 11 action items led by the board and we'll start with 11.01, proposed textbooks for Scarsdale Middle School and James will lead us in that. James, is your mic on? Okay, thank you, Karen. This is pretty straightforward, it's just the board is being presented with selected textbooks. New York education
204law provides the boards of education to designate textbooks to be used in schools under their charge. And the board has received the listing of proposed new textbooks at the January 10th 2022 board meeting, and was given the opportunity to review the books before giving final approval. And so the point of this vote is to give approval for the purchase of these books and I recommend the board accept the proposed textbooks for the high school as presented. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. Next 11.2, Ron will lead us on this. I move that the Scarsdale Board of Education hereby cast one vote for Sheryl Brady to fill the unexpired term of Peggy Zugibe on the New York State School Board Association Board of Directors representing Area
20510 for 2021/2022 and authorizes the district clerk to execute the ballot in any documents consistent with this motion. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. Item 11.3, STI courses, Carl. Yes, I move that the board approve the fall/winter 2021/2022 STI courses as presented earlier this evening and with great appreciation for the work that goes into planning all those courses. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. Item 11.04, which we added onto the agenda, resignation of the superintendent, and Amber, you'll lead us in that? Yes. I recommend that the board accept the resignation of the superintendent of schools, Dr. Thomas Hagerman, formerly effective at the end of the 2021/2022 school year. Is there a second? Second? Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion
206passes. And now we will turn to item 12, hearing from those present. At this time, if anyone from the audience would like to speak, light them up. No, okay, then we'll turn to our remote participants. None? Just Alison. Okay, so we will close public comment. And since there was no public comment, we will skip 13 and move to 14, wrap up, review of information and any questions from the meeting. I didn't capture any, did anyone? Just the notion of doing the vote and finalizing the paperwork necessary for that. Okay. Any other things to note, no? Okay, so now we'll turn to 15, our meeting dates for the coming month and Amber will lead us on that. Thank you. This Wednesday, January 26th, the Board Subcommittee on Community Engagement will meet at 10:00am in this room
207170 at the high school, and the Board Subcommittee on Onboarding will meet at 1:00pm in this room 170 at the high school. On Friday, January 28th, the Board Policy Committee meeting for the 2000 series will meet at 1:00pm at this room in the high school. On Monday, February 7th, there will be a board DEI workshop at 4:00pm in this room 170 at the high school. And please notice as Stuart mentioned earlier, the budget study session one will no longer be on Monday February 7th, it will now be on Monday February 14th at 6:30pm in room 171-172 at the high school, followed by a board business meeting immediately after, and executive session if needed. And just to follow up, budget study session two will move to March 7th, budget study session three will move to March
20821st to be combined with the regularly scheduled business meeting, and the budget forum will move from March 21st to March 28th which was previously an unscheduled date. So I was just thinking we should probably resend our letter to our community partners to amend all those dates. So we'll make that a follow up item as well. Okay, so now, I would at this time like, can I have a motion to adjourn this business meeting? So moved. Second? Second. All in favor. Aye. Okay, great, thank you so much, meeting adjourned.