BOE Business Meeting 2021-12-6

001(soft music) Hello. Good evening. I call this meeting to order. Well, welcome and thank you to those attending in the audience via live streaming or watching later on Demand. All board members are present in addition to Dr. Hagerman and his cabinet. Late this afternoon, the board participated in a board retreat where we had a meet and greet with our DEI consultant, Dr. Derek Gay and discussed our development work in diversity, equity and inclusion in accordance with board policy 0105. After our retreat, the board convened a special meeting with Scarsdale high school student representatives in the Scarsdale high school learning comments. We asked what is going well this year to which our students noted, increased teacher and student connections, school spirit, and engagement, and being able to more informally check in with teachers. We also talked

002about where there are challenges, such as managing academic workloads and finding time to eat during the day. Students commented that aspects of school that have been most helpful to them include tutoring services for students who are out, support from teachers, different modalities for submitting work and flexibility in the learning environment, but that there are some practices and supports like additional tutoring services and more coordination among teachers in terms of scheduling tests and more explicit training and executive functioning that they felt were still needed. We also discussed how the DEI work at SHS has focused on creating and maintaining a sense of belonging for all students in our school community. And that while sometimes obstacles like the need for explicit DEI instruction and the inability to work with a more diverse group of students because of

003scheduling can get in the way of this intention, but there are many aspects of school life, especially classroom communities, electives, extracurriculars and gym that positively contribute to their sense of belonging and creates safe dynamic spaces where everyone has a voice. We're very grateful to both Dr. Gay and our student representatives for taking the time to meet with us and help inform our understanding of DEI work and the student experience at our high school, respectively. As a followup to our last board meeting, Amber and I drafted an advocacy letter on behalf of the board and in consultation with our attorney regarding local cannabis dispensaries, social consumption sites, and the burning of tobacco and marijuana in public spaces in our village, the letter was sent to our village trustees on November 23rd. And I attended the public

004hearing that evening and read our statement. Effectively, the board argued as we had discussed at our last meeting, that such practices are inconsistent with the pedagogy, policy and tenets of the Scarsdale public schools, they are counter to our efforts and likely to send the wrong messages to our youth. Please note that the full letter is posted on our advocacy page if you wish to... On our webpage, if you wish to read it. As a reminder, the changes to the open meetings law took effect on November 18th, 2021, records must now be made available to the extent practicable at least 24 hours prior to the meeting during which the records will be discussed. In accordance, the board agenda was posted on Friday afternoon and will continue to be posted on Friday afternoons in the new year,

005since the law includes the phrase to the extent practicable the board can add to its agenda items that are emergency in nature or items that are were added at the last minute, just before or during a board meeting. So long as the items are time sensitive and cannot await further action at a subsequent board meeting. And in closing, I would like to note that December is a month of many, many celebrations, and on behalf of the board, I would like to extend our best wishes to all of our students, our families, our faculty, our staff, and our community members for a very wonderful holiday season. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Karen. Good evening, and welcome to our business board meeting tonight. We appreciate your continued interest and support of our collective and important work.

006Although we're just in the beginning of the first full week of December, the district is buzzing with a number of student events happening all over the district, including concerts, athletic events, the high school play, and the student art show at Scarsdale library. It's a beautiful exhibit of our students' work. If you haven't had an opportunity to take a look at that, we certainly encourage you to do so. It's also worth mentioning that back on Wednesday, November 17th, the Scarsdale High School Social Justice Committee hosted Anthony Ray Hinton, our Community Educator for the Equal Justice Initiative and the author of the "Sun Does Shine". Scarsdale high school students, teachers, and district administrators have the opportunity to meet with Mr. Hinton during the special event and to laud his impact on our students, through his powerful, personal

007narrative. To echo Karen's words a bit, earlier in a meeting today, the board, my cabinet and the high school administration met with high school students who shared their viewpoints on a variety of topics, including wellness and wellbeing, the return to full in-person learning and the aspects of school that have been most helpful to them along with the students' role in the district's DEI initiatives. And what aspects of school life has contributed positively to students' overall sense of belonging. We've been doing this now for a couple of years. and we meet with the students twice a year and tonight's meeting, I thought was particularly impactful as they shared again, their viewpoints on all of these issues that we've identified. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Karen for co-presenting with me and the state of

008the district forum presentation, which was on November the 18th. And unlike last year, we were able to present in-person at the Scarsdale Library, and it was a good opportunity for people who don't always attend board meetings to learn more about the current priorities of the board and the work of the district. The slides from the presentation have been posted on the district's website, under the superintendents page, along with previous versions of that. So folks who were unable to watch that presentation, but are interested, had the opportunity to at least preview the slides. Of course, as Karen also said, we are now in the month of December, it's hard to imagine. And as such, we are celebrating a variety of holidays, including Hanukkah, Las Posadas, Christmas, and Kwanza. And I would like to take this time

009to remind the community of a district resource that we developed last year, entitled World Holidays and Observances Calendar and Instructional Implications. This document details the holidays and observances that have historically been on our calendar along with several new ones that were recommended to the district, and that are now part of the DEI webpage. This document also provides background details for instructional purposes and recommendations on how to acknowledge observers and continues to help us focus on our issues of diversity equity inclusion across the district. For everyone celebrating religious or secular holidays this month, as Karen said, we wish you and your family as much joy. Finally, to transition to a more somber note, and we all know that last Tuesday, November 30th, there was a mass shooting that occurred at Oxford High School in Oxford township

010in Michigan. Sadly four students were killed and seven people were injured, including a teacher. This tragedy is a harsh reminder as to why mental health and safety security and emergency management having continued to be areas of significant focus for our district. As I finish out my remarks tonight, I would ask you all, please join me in a moment of silence to recognize the victims of Oxford high school shooting and all those impacted by this horrific act. So please join me now in a moment of silence. Thank you. And now I'll turn the meeting back over to Karen. Do any board members have opening reports this evening? Amber. Thanks Karen. On November 19th, Jim, Bob and I, along with Thomas and Andre met as part of the board policy subcommittee for the 1000 series, we reviewed

011a number of policies that were updated by the previous subcommittee for the 1000 series, which consisted of former board members, Scott Silverstein, Tim Pampiera and Chris Morin. Our next meeting is Friday, December 10th, where we will continue reviewing the policies in this series. I have two reports tonight. The first is about the Fox Meadow Facility tour, November 19th, Bob, Jim and I toured Fox meadow elementary school. Thank you to the administrators and all the teachers that were there that gave us the tour. The building is in good condition and many aspects of the setup and operations are back to, quote, normal with some COVID mitigation still in place, of course. Previous improvements to the building that we talked about at this board table previously, such as things like LED lighting the walkway around the back

012parking lot for drop-off and pickup and drainage by the field stairs have all been completed and have been very well received. And in addition to seeing the facility, it was just wonderful to see all the students engage in their classrooms, in their extracurriculars and all around the building with their teachers. It was just such a lovely tour. I have one other report, at a previous meeting, we talked a little bit about solar and what we could be doing in the district. I know that we were looking at a ConEd program and I mentioned there was another solar program that I would follow up with. So I just wanted to give a brief update. There is an exciting program that is underway right now through NYPA, which Phil's watching this, the New York Power Authority. It's

013where places like schools and municipalities often get their electricity from. This program is open to schools and municipalities. And right now the program is in a very interesting phase, I think for us is that it's well underway, so we know what the program is, but it's not so far along that it's too late for us to get involved in it. So right now they're at the stage where they're taking potential sites from schools, they do the review for you. I think given that from my understanding of the work with ConEd, we identified a number of potential sites that might be an interesting program where we can give them some information and have them do some work on behalf of the districts. There are a number of districts that are taking advantage of the program, Chappaqua,

014White Plains, Dobbs Ferry, a number of others around Westchester. And so I'm happy to provide Drew and Stewart more details, but I did just wanna get back to everybody since we talked about this at the board table. Thank you. So, okay, Jessica, and can I just have a quick report on the board sub committee meeting on the 2000 series? Amber mentioned the 1000 series, a committee comprised of Karen, Carl and I met and Dr. Hagerman and Andre were also in attendance on November 30th to discuss the 2000 series of policies, which focus on school board operations. We focused in particular on the policy around the organizational meeting. That meeting the sub committee meeting is now available online recorded. The next meeting of that committee will be on January 7th. Thank you so much, Amber, Ron

015and Jessica. Thank you. Okay, so now we will move to item four in 4.01, back to school update. Thanks. You know, as we move into a little bit different time in our COVID journey here, I just wanna take the opportunity to remind folks about vaccinations and booster shots, that those are continued to be a huge impact on our ability to maintain our programs and services and to move towards more normalcy. So again, just encourage folks to continue to think about that. Many of the folks who are early adopters of the vaccines are reaching the end of those times. And again, we really encourage folks to get booster shots as a way to continue to protect themselves and their families. Tonight, our back to school update is going to speak to COVID 19 metrics, vaccines and

016testing, review some of our protocols talking about the policy of gathering inside. We've gotten a couple of emails about, you know, larger gatherings in the district, a date for snacks to be reintroduced at the elementary school and lunch plans. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Eric and ask us to share the update. Thank you, Dr. Hagerman, and thank you for the opportunity to report. I will start on a bright note. We've held the vaccine clinic and given 189 shots to five to 11 year olds, which is about 10% of our elementary population. Second shots will be given this Thursday, coming at the high school, again in the evening, additionally, SFAC has provided two opportunities with us, for child vaccines. I don't have the final numbers on what they had given out, but

017I believe they had between 150 and 200 slots for each of them. So those are two very good pieces of good news as far as the vaccine front goes. Unfortunately, when I start to go over numbers and cases in school, that is a little bit less of a heartening report. Over the past week, the numbers have really moved in a generally poor direction. Currently we're at about 26.6 cases per 100,000 daily. That moves us again, up into the highest CDC threat mate or category for a substantial transmission. We're at a 1.23 infection rate, which hasn't been seen since our last major spike in the winter of last year. And we have a 3.7% positivity rate. So those numbers are certainly moving up. There is no sign of a peak or a lessening of the curve

018right at this moment, we do hope that that happens soon. Cases in school, our numbers are going up significantly since Friday. We've had 11 cases, including four staff members and seven children. That's the highest we've seen over that shorter period of time, again, since last year when we were in the throws of the other spike. We've had a total of 62 cases to date from September in schools. So those are cases of students and or staff being positive in the schools. Half of those cases have come in the last four to five weeks. We are also receiving more outside contact quarantined. So parents who are positive and children may have to quarantine or the like, or, you know, outside sports events or things like that that are closing quarantines in schools, not necessarily cases. Many

019of you may have heard, County Executive, Latimer declared a state of emergency in Westchester today, reserving those powers to see how the numbers move and reserving the right to institute mandates as needed as we move forward. His hope according to the press conferences that we won't need to do that, but he is worried about the spiking numbers in the county currently. So any questions on the numbers that we're seeing currently, and I'll move into talking a little bit about. Those are Westchester county numbers. And within the Scarsdale cases, do we have any sense of the severity of the cases? Are these people who are testing positive or has there been-- There's a mix of asymptomatic and symptomatic people. None of the cases that we know of at this point have been hospitalized or significantly severe.

020We have had two cases over the life of the virus, including one this summer that were severe, and with hospitalization, happily all have recovered, but right now they, like I said, a mix of asymptomatic and symptomatic and about 50, 50 breakthrough and unvaccinated. The unvaccinated being mainly students who are of an age that have not either finished their vaccine series or have not started again. With the number of kids that are now eligible for vaccination and getting vaccinated, is there some place where parents can go to find the rules about quarantine? Sure. So right now there is an FAQ that is pretty extensive and clear on the student services page of our website. It's called FAQ's for contact tracing and quarantine. There's a graph there that is very easy to read and understand what I

021would caution everybody that is for school quarantining and context. So there are a few different rules within the school setting versus the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, below six feet for 15 minutes, masked or unmasked is the definition of close contact. So you are in close contact of someone if you are within six foot for more than 15 minutes. There are exemptions to the quarantine, so if you are vaccinated, you don't have to quarantine, even if you're in close contact or if you've had COVID-19 in the last 90 days, you're also exempted from that quarantine. In schools, student close contact is less than three feet for 15 minutes, only counting for students, not the adults in the building, but only for students. Same exceptions apply as far as exemption from

022quarantine. It's important to understand there's been some confusion, especially in youth programs, youth religious classes, sports, where teams are being quarantined for less than six foot or less contact rather than three, that is consistent with what the county rules are, because it's only a classroom setting that three-foot applied to. That being said, if you are in contact with someone outside, it is your responsibility to quarantine if you are in close contact. Sometimes the Department of Health falls behind in their contact tracing. Sometimes the person who is positive is reluctant to give names of the people they were close to. So we would ask as a matter of public health, all families, if you know that your child, or you have been in contact with someone that fits the definition of close contact that you quarantine

023for the 10 days required. Obviously if that happens and it's a student, we would provide the tutoring we would provide to any student who quarantine. So it doesn't matter why they're quarantined, they're still eligible for tutoring, even if it's through a sport? So on the city, we have many situations where a student or a parent is unsure, on the fence, if they had met the definition, especially since we're working at three feet in school, we would advise that child to come to school unless the DOH says otherwise. But in a situation where a parent knows that the close contact was made, yes, we would tell them to stay home, and we would provide tutoring. Not necessarily to wait until they got a call from DOH with-- Correct. Which could lag for a day or two

024or three. We've actually, we had a situation this past week where DOH contacted members of a sports team the day before their 10 day quarantine ended. So that wasn't particularly helpful. But I also wanna recognize that the DOH is under a huge strain right now with the new spike and they're doing the best they can. They've been super helpful. Okay. Just to review quarantine tutoring to date. So this is excluding traditional home-bound tutoring. So only for students who have gotten tutoring through quarantine, there are 139 tutoring engagements this year by 79 faculty members totaling 667 and a half hours over the first give or take three and a half months of school. So tutoring is happening. There are significant hours of tutoring being applied. That being said, we are still looking at somewhere between, one

025and three quarantines, typically per case. So it's not a huge number of quarantines per case, but with, you know, 60 plus cases, that a lot of cases. So when we look at our protocols, I'm just gonna review a couple of different things. I wanted to make sure everyone remembers that Snack Day is being reintroduced at the end of December break, assuming there aren't major, major changes between now and then on the virus front, but January 3rd is the expected return of Snack Day. We'll be sending out information prior to that snack, but prior to break about snack for parents to understand. I wanted to just, the gym at Heathcote has been the subject of a question over the past couple of months. So the gym at Heathcote was built without mechanical, fresh air exchange in

026the era of COVID. We have put that as a non-instructional space at this point, it is scheduled to be retrofitted with mechanical air this summer. So that last year and this year, PE when not being held outside has been held in non-traditional spaces, including the multi-purpose room, the area outside of the auditorium and the common areas or the pods around the school. So they have been successful at running the PE program in those areas and allowing kids to have their movement and their exercise and their teaching facilities. So I just wanted to put that out there that that is the plan for this winter coming up. Performances, so last meeting, we talked about limiting performances to 50% capacity in the auditoriums. That is what we have done throughout the year for student assemblies, and it

027is what we are doing for concerts performances and the like at this point. There was some questions on where did we get the 50% capacity level. The guidance from the CDC and the state are not clear on how to manage school performances. Across the county, there are any number of plans put out by school districts from not having performances still to only allowing students to, you know, anything in between. So as we consulted with our district physician in implementing this, it was clear, let me go back for a second, the current guidance around adults in school and outside of schools, you must have retained six feet between adults in order to avoid quarantine. At the same time, the state is allowing large venues to hold concerts with proof of vaccination. So those two were in

028kind of cross purposes. In consultation with our doctor, Dr. Coursera, we really talked about having the need to space out family groups or non-related groups. In order to do that, we need to have at least one chair or three feet in between those families. We've been using the 50% capacity marker 'cause that's how we do it with students within those those areas. So it was an easy and practical move to keep that in place for performances with parents coming in the evening. We have 11 concerts between Thanksgiving and the start of December break. So it's not a huge number of students, huge number of parents coming in. Logistically, it was not possible to space out every auditorium in a way that would maximize how many adults came in by either doing vaccine checks or seeing

029how many families were bringing how many people and assigning seats, we don't have the manpower or the time to do that for 11 different concerts. So the 50% capacity was put in. There was unfortunately a communication error at the middle school, which I think gave the expectation to parents of two parents or two people would be allowed to go with each student, so there was one letter that went out to one team through a teacher that should have said, we are expecting and hoping to have two parents or two people allowed to come, but we're sending the survey out in order to understand what the capacity issues would be. Unfortunately, it said, two people will be allowed to come, please fill out the survey. So that was the miscommunication that happened there. So at this

030point, the middle school auditorium, which holds about 420 some odd people was not able to maintain the two guests per student. The high school auditorium, which is closer to an 800 capacity, has an easier time doing that for two people, for band orchestra and drama performances. The other thing that's important to remember about this conversation is that the district is responsible for contact tracing as well for these large events, and that is no smaller insignificant task to think about, you know, to Eric's point, the change wasn't from two to one, the change was when we started at the beginning of the year there were no performances and the change was trying to create some performance opportunities for students this year. So I just wanna kind of remember where we started this process, and this was

031a big step for us in terms of trying to normalize that experience for students in terms of getting them the opportunity for performances and for the parents to be there as live audience members. And we'll continue to, that will be our hope as Eric described, every venue is gonna be considered uniquely and differently. So this doesn't mean that there's gonna be a one-parent role moving forward, what this means is, you know, if you have an ensemble of 20 doing a performance and we're still at 50% of the venue size, kids might be able to bring five or six guests. But as our acts that we had over 800 kids involved in these sets of concerts, and it was just not possible to provide doubles of those or to have the size of crowds that indicated

032an interest to attend. And we explored splitting the concerts that would make 14 concerts over the three weeks, which is about one shy of the amount of school stays we had, which was just not workable from a logistic standpoint. Just so everyone knows our next review of our protocols will be at the end of the second quarter, which is the end of January. So as we look to spring performances, assuming some of these numbers curve in the right direction, it could be a different conversation at that point. And Eric, I just wanted to go back and ask a quick question. One of the ways we had, I think moved forward was that students who were performing were going to be allowed to be unmasked, is that still the case for particularly for vaccinated students? So

033we were at a place from an administrative standpoint to allow all performers to be unmasked during the time they were on stage with feedback from this board. We instituted a test 72 hours prior to the performance or vaccination to do that without one of those, they would have to be masked, obviously anyone who was more comfortable being masked could be, the only performance where that's not the case is chorus because of the amount of people onstage, the singing, the activity in and of itself, which is much more aerosol based because of the singing. So they will be wearing masks. Many of the band and orchestra kids will also be, 'cause it doesn't impact the performance, but drama was the main driver for the no mask performances. And are we providing some sort of microphoning system

034for chorus singers who are going to be masked? Not under each one. But we're not gonna do-- There's a sound field mic system. Okay. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I didn't realize we were doing questions for each one. So I'm done now, so, oh, okay. Sorry. Just about the performances are in thought given. So, you know, as we typically do in this district, we try to give the people that are closest to the students in each school, the discretion to make the decisions that make sense for their buildings, because every building's a little different and sure, elementary is different than middle and high school. But in this case, we have a district threshold of 50% and has there been thought into giving some optionality there? So for example, my understanding of the numbers is

035that, some of the performances to get to two parents were very close to 50%. Maybe it would have been 55% or 60%. So I understand we can't split them all, but maybe one of them could have been split and the rest could have moved up to 55% capacity, but proof of vaccination. So my question is, you know, can we give the schools that flexibility with some different optionality while we're still keeping people safe through different risk mitigation strategies, but not having one stringent 50% cap? So the closest was about 60 people. I haven't done the percentage on the capacity of that, which was quite a few over the 50% mark. That was the one that was closest. The others were closer to a hundred to 105 over. So splitting all of those, even if we

036didn't split the one that was close and bent the rule there would have still created quite a number of concerts that just weren't feasible in that short span of time, so we have three weeks between, you know, Thanksgiving and the end of December break. You know, we did all we could to take a look at it that just wasn't a path forward to be able to break that down for each and every concert type that was happening. It's a wonderful thing to have 800 kids participating in our music program. It's a wonderful thing to have the various ensembles that we have. It also does make the performance get, it's not just one or two performances, if that were the case, that it would be easy to say, okay, we'll have four instead of two, but

037seven to 14 is a difference, even if it was seven to, you know, 13 or 12. And I imagine the high school auditorium was booked for other things, but I mean, if it's much bigger, could where there any-- Well, we talked about doing that and yes, it was overlapping 'cause there are four major concerts in the drama presentation, also at the high school. And just, you know, one piece of feedback. I know it might be something for the board to discuss, but I think a lot of feedback I heard was, you know, a lot of reference to the district physician at the last meeting and there's a 50% number and where'd it come from? And what was the thought? We have a lot of consultants for this board and often they come to our meetings

038and provide additional context or are available for questions. So I do think not at every meeting, not every back back-to-school update, but when there's one where we're referencing the district physician on a number of areas, I presume it would be beneficial to have them available. I think it would be both good for the board, the administration and the community. Dr. Casarez is always happy to come and answer questions that being said, I just wanna be clear about the 50% rule, Dr. Casarez consultation do it at 50%. It was, you need to maintain space between non-related groups within the auditorium, and we needed to find ways to do that logistically. So the move to 50% was the administration kind of implementing that consultation. So I don't wanna put words into Dr Casarez is not a performance

039event planner. He's simply laying out what he thinks is the best way to go about this and his medical opinion. It was a balance to have the three feet of distance versus the six foot of distance as he recognizes how important those performances are, for kids and the opportunity for kids to play in front of a live audience, big, smaller, and different, is a major part of the music and drama curriculum and teaching. So it was kind of the splicing of two divergent CDC and state guidances, which is you must keep six foot with adults in school versus go ahead and have a concert if you want to, in Madison Square Garden and trying to figure out what the best way to thread that needle was, if you will. And so, what is the not,

040sorry, just to be very clear, not from a medical standpoint, because I realized that isn't your personal expertise, but from a quarantine on safety standpoint, what is the benefit of the three feet separation of familial group? It's less about quarantine because those within six foot would still need to quarantine. It's more about this risk mitigation for spread and having that space in the farther you are from someone during a time where you're sitting, you know, in an enclosed room together, the less chance. And attendees will be required to be masked? But Eric, you said it's less about quarantine because you still have to notify people, but the fewer people-- Yeah, it's easier, obviously contact tracing is easy. Not six feet. You may have, I don't have the numbers in the top of my head, but

041you may have a difference of two to four people within six feet versus potentially eight to 10 people within the six feet. That's a good, so I think that it's still relevant. And I think, you know, we've had Dr. Casarez here at other meetings, and I think we should, I would just think carefully about when we really do need him here versus when maybe we don't necessarily need him here. So we have a process for that, just as a reminder, and you know, we do our planning process, usually the Wednesday before the board meeting and any time somebody wants to make a suggestion and the board member always has the ability to make a suggestion in advance of that two by one meeting. And then we have the opportunity to discuss it and come up

042with a decision about moving forward on that. So we can do that on any topic on any meeting. And just to clarify something though, the board doesn't know what the back to school update is, till Monday. So we wouldn't know to ask for that for the two by one, right? Like we wouldn't know that this was coming out to even ask for that at the two by one. Wait, what was coming out? They saying, if we wanted Dr. Caseraz to be there, we wouldn't know to ask for it because we wouldn't know that necessarily an update is coming that was relevant to him. Well, we often get board questions or requests in advance of that as early as Monday for our cabinet meetings. And so those kinds of things can asked and expressed there, but

043certainly we have a follow-up as well. I get your point there, but, you know, there's multiple redundancy cycles kind of built into this work so that we can try to be as clear about the board agenda as possible. And I think it's important to recognize, the issue was not the 50 and at the last meeting, 50% was stated without argument, because it made sense from a COVID standpoint. I think the piece that made people question was, and I understand this as a parent who is not going to a middle school concert in my own home district, because they're not having performances is the ability to only have one person go, which, you know, my wife and I would have had to draw straws. And the one who drew the short straw would have been disappointed,

044but, you know, so I think this is really the conversation here is a reaction to the need to have that one person rather than the 50% in and of itself, so. I have a couple of questions about a couple previous topics, if we're done talking about the performances. So you talked about the tutoring hours and since we're seeing the number of cases increase, are we worried or concerned about like a backlog developing at all? Oh yeah. I'll take that one. I mean, I am concerned about that. I think the potential exists for that problem. I don't know that we have a way of knowing whether it will happen or not, just to remind people that the model we have in places, we are relying on Scarsdale teachers to agree to tutor. We have a whole

045system in place at each of the three levels for identifying who might be available and then following through to place them or assign them. Obviously, that has a finite capacity, right? Because there's so many hours after school or before school or during a lunch period on a weekend. So we continue to, we have engaged a second tutoring company. So we've been working with learn well all through the previous to the pandemic, and then through the pandemic, we did reach out to an organization called the Learning Shop. So we do have a second agency that's potentially available. The issue there is that what's happening in Scarsdale is happening throughout the county. So the demand for that tutoring is going to increase. But you are keeping an eye on it and you're looking for, okay. But the

046principles are keeping us, you know, keeping that at the top of our minds. Is all the tutoring one-on-one, are you able to do, if there's multiple students-- We have done multiple students if they're in the same class grade level, you know, elementary classroom or same course, we are trying to do that when and where that's appropriate. We're trying not to go beyond maybe four students at the most in that setting, because part of the ideas it's less time, but it's one-on-one time or one on two time. So higher quality time. And sorry, I have one more question unless you wanna-- Before you go on, just to shout out to the teachers for the tutoring they are providing. I do think they've worked unbelievably hard to try and arrange their schedules, especially when kids are in

047their classes and need that tutoring. So just a shout out to them. Absolutely, thank you. So my question was like a direct follow up on that. And actually, Eric, that comment is perfectly timed with what I was about to ask Drew. So has there been outreach? I know there was an initial ask of teachers in district about their schedule and availability to tutor. Have we continued to pull teachers about whether perhaps some who were not available to tutor early in the year are now available through? Every teacher's invited to respond to every request that goes out. Okay, great. So that initial survey was really geared toward a viability question. And we got the answer. Yeah, this seems to be viable. And now we're, it's really opened up to anyone. So if their circumstances have changed,

048they can jump in. Thank you. My second question is about the Heathcote gym? And so I know that we're putting in the fresh air over the summers, the plan, are there any temporary mitigation strategies you've employed? Yeah, the issue with a room that big, the tall ceilings, the amount of portable HEPA filtration to move into that would take up so much room within the gym. Just because the volume of air in there is enormous. You know, you could think of it as four to five classrooms and then a stack of classrooms on top of them because it's a double or triple height ceiling. So Stuart correct me if I'm wrong, we had the engineer look at it. And I think it was six enormous HEPA filter tracing units. We're still looking into it. And we

049have one of the engineers working at it, looking at it and BDS, but again, just like the initial law against, like Eric said, it's in what we originally sort of came across last year, as you would need so many of these things to then you'd have to put them in there, then they'd cause a, you know, a concern for safety. And then it becomes a room the size of the NPR, which they're using for PE now, because you have all the floor space taken up and you don't have now in normal shaped room, you have obstacles and that's not always the best for a gym space. Okay, thank you. I just had one other follow-up on performances in the 50%. And I think that a lot of the feedback we heard is after it was

050found out that 50% with limit is because all of this is based on everything we're doing, is based on benefit versus risking cost. And in this case, obviously we know the risk mitigation benefits are 50%, but then we saw we lost the benefit of both parents getting to attend. So for me, what I would ask is, as you're considering these things that, you know, we think about what other strategies we can employ, you know, understanding there's a loss of benefit on that side. You know, just speaking as a parent, that would have been a very tough draw with my wife about which one of us could have gone. It doesn't affect me. My kids aren't in middle school, but that would have been really hard. So I very much empathize with those parents, especially in

051this time, when not only it's been so long, but I should say in many other parts around our community, people are going to performances, New York city. My understanding is, you know, a hundred percent, but you have to show proof of vaccine. So I personally got a lot of questions about that. Why don't we follow a model that's shown to work, you know, highly vaccinated community to get up to a percent that two parents could come? Well, I would just... It is happening in New York city. It has been happening for the last two months and we are seeing, you know, a rise in cases across. So I think there is a difference also between, and we talked about this a little bit as an administration. When we think about a concert on Broadway and

052you have your family going with, you know, however many hundreds of other families that aren't connected. We are also talking about only our families in a closed circuit here. And when we think about the ability to keep school open and have kids in school, whatever happens within that auditorium, you know, directly impacts the schooling experience of the kids that are in that building. Because especially in the middle school where if mom or dad, and they're, let's say there's five or six parents that are infected during that type of concert, that directly affects their kids who are now needing to quarantine from school. You know, and it's not a spread out cost if you will, across not that anybody having COVID is any better or worse than anything else, but it is fully in our. But

053I mean, the, you know, to Ron's question or point, I mean, I think it begs some clarification, which is that, from what I'm hearing, you did weigh the benefits and the costs. And you know, this comparison to what's going on in New York city and Broadway. I mean, number one, I don't know what, you know, though, whatever theaters responsibility is for contact tracing, as opposed to our contact tracing, number one, number two, they have an entire staff of people for which you're paying the privilege of, you know, $350 to $1,500 a ticket so that they can actually staff and do that work, whereas we have a certain staff limitation and financial responsibility that I think needs to be at least considered not even the financial, but also just the wherewithal to do that, to meet

054that obligation in a timely fashion. I mean, to me, the worst thing that could happen would even be, it turns out there's multiple positive tests and we need to do the contact tracing and we don't have enough people and we're making the call on day nine, just like the Westchester County Department of Health and then we have a worse outbreak because now there's more people and more students and everything else. So, I mean, it's obviously terribly disappointing and I'm not unsympathetic. It's less disappointing than it was last year when we had none of this. And hopefully it will be next year will be even less disappointing and we'll be past all this. But I mean, my impression is that there was a lot that was actually considered and that it wasn't considered, it was just

055that, at a point the administration had to make some what you consider to be the most responsible decisions for the students, the parents, the faculty, and this was the compromise that we also had. And it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. He wants to be thoughtful about the comparisons that we're making too, because, you know, I don't think that some people have it figured out and other people don't necessarily have it figured out. I mean, to use Ron's example, Wicked Aladdin, Chicago play after play, after play has been canceled because of COVID for many, many performances. So they are dealing with the very same kinds of issues that we are. It's not as though Broadway is out there functioning beautifully and the rest of the world is not somehow. We just have to remember that there

056are shows that are being canceled all the time because of COVID. And as Eric said that doesn't have a nexus to, you know, kids being in school and doesn't impact them directly. Whereas that is an extra layer of something that we really have to think about in every aspect of decision making that we make. Thank you for saying that, and you're right. You know, we, in all of these, the primary focus is on what is a student experience like and how can we maximize the student experience with maintaining health and safety? Maximizing the student experience doesn't include, you know, having performances in the music program, you know, would it be a better student experience if mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and, you know, siblings can come short? You know, I think this is the intermediate step

057towards hopefully being there in the near future. I just wanted to say just, you know, as a parent and a board member, I do very much appreciate the district's efforts in making live musical performances available. The skier to audiences. I have a middle school student who was in a live performance last week. I have a high school student who will be in a live performance tomorrow. I am grateful to the district that efforts were made to make these performances possible in a situation where in other districts they're not happening. And in a situation where without question, you know, we are still in a pandemic that is getting worse, not better. And I know people are tired and can't stand the notion of, you know, any more special accommodations because of this pandemic. But I for

058one, recognize that we have a responsibility to, you know, do what we can for the students to have a normal experience, but also to do it in a way that recognizes the significance and severity of this pandemic, which still is here and is getting worse. So thank you for that. Okay. Thanks Jim. Any other questions on the back to school update? All right. As always Eric, very comprehensive-- Sorry, I actually I do have one more question sort of to follow on what Jim was saying. What would the threshold be for reinstituting the time to have daily screenings that we had in place last year? You know, right before this meeting, as you mentioned, there was the declaration of a state of emergency in Westchester. Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna speak from my experience with the

059screening process of last year. I actually think following up on absences at this point is more efficient and effective than having the screeners. Screener fatigue is a real thing. And our nurses spent untold hours chasing down forgotten, screeners, forgotten... And then once they chased all of those down, which 99% of them were, oops, I forgot to do it this morning, then having teachers say, you know, Johnny or Susie is here and they're sneezing and coughing all over their desk, but the screener was clean. So it was unnecessary, I think practice that was required. It's no longer required. And I think it's no longer required, not necessarily because the numbers were better when they made the call on it from a state level, but because there was a recognition that it was limited in its benefit.

060You brought up another important point by asking that question with maybe without even realizing it, Jessica, which is, you know, the other thing we do is we have fairly good numbers about faculty vaccinations and we'll be reaching out after the break, because at that point, all kids should have their second administration plan to get it in this first sort of round of it. And we'll be asking, of course it's voluntary, but we hope that parents will report on the number of student vaccinations that we have as well. So having that information, I think will be another way of sort of getting at some of the, you know, there will be a breakthrough cases and things like that, but at least we'll have a better sense of who's vaccinated and who's not in the district. Yeah.

061The timeline is for mid January, that students who, five to 11 year old, who got their shot on the first day, it was available won't be fully vaccinated until a couple of days before holiday break, because they will have gotten their second shot. And then it's two weeks after that for it to be, them to be fully vaccinated. So then that week before is when the very first kids will start to be fully vaccinated, quote unquote. So we want to give the time to the first four or five weeks or many of the kids who, and parents who really wanna get that vaccine. This is a big spike right now, and we wanna let that happen, so that when we don't have to continually resurvey and resurvey. Okay. All right. Thank you, Eric. Thanks for

062all the good questions on that, much appreciated. And I'll turn it back over to Karen. Thank you very much, Eric. So now we'll move to item five hearing from those present. At this time, members of the community are invited to speak on agenda items. Please refrain from commenting on personnel related matters. Please state your name and address. And if you represent an organization, please also limit your remarks to three minutes. If at the three minute mark, you have not finished speaking, we ask that you email your comments to board of education at scarsdaleschools.org. For those commenting remotely, when it is your turn to speak, please mute your live stream voice. Please turn on your camera and then please unmute yourself. And we will let you know if we cannot hear you. Thank you in advance

063for your participation. Anyone from the audience? Hi, I'm Diana Cohen. I live at a Duck Pond Road. I came to quickly talk about the Heathcote gym. But before that, I wanted to double click very quickly about a comment that was just made. The pandemic is not getting worse, it's getting better. I realized that the new variant is very, very scary, but the death rate in Westchester county is zero and we're at less than half of the cases that we had in January of last year. So we should, and the vaccination rate in this county is incredible. So just to keep an overall view of the picture of where we are, it's much, much better than where we were last year. And I'm so thankful for that. So to quickly talk about the gym, I would

064love to get more detail and specifics about what's going on with PE class. My daughter is six years old. There's 23 kids in her class. So how are they doing gym? Where are they doing gym? Are they doing it in the hallway? It's just so hard for me to imagine a flourishing gym program for 23, six year olds in a hallway or in their classroom. Why can't they crack a window in the gym? You answered the question about the air filters, but why can't we crack the windows? What else can we be doing? And I think the most frustrating part about it is why are we planning for it now, the winters' here, they have to be inside. Why weren't we talking about it in the summer? I'm trying to find the solution for the

065gym in the summer. And if we can't have a functioning PE program for that many children of that age, maybe we should be having a different, special, you know, they don't have technology as frequently as they could. Maybe they should be having more technology. Maybe I don't know what the other opportunities are, but I think it's worth looking deeper into it. When we think about the age of the children, how important physical education is for them and how many, some of them are in the class and where we're actually fitting them. So I would love to hear more about the PE program and our options at the Heathcote Elementary in the response to public comment. Thank you, Diana. Anyone else from the audience? Okay, so now we'll turn to the Zoom. Do we have any

066hands raised? Okay. So I will close this opportunity for public comments and we will turn to item six on the agenda written communications and Amber will help us with that. Thanks, Karen. 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 at an upcoming public board meeting. A board member will respond at the earliest convenience. And during the period of November 12th through December 2nd, the board received 24 emails. 17 were on district matters including sports issues, universal pre-K, COVID protocols, including masks, vaccination, school performances, and outdoor lunch protocols. The board received six emails on board meetings and highlights, which

067included written statements of comments made at our meetings. Our requests for clarification of a discussion from a board meeting and thoughts on the format of current meetings. And we received one email sharing an article with the board. Thank you. So now we'll move to item seven, the personnel report, Drew. Thank you. I just wanna point out in the consent agenda, there are two contracts. These just reflect the incorporation of the MOAs that were with the Scarsdale Teachers Association and the Scarsdale Principals Association back in June. And this is a copy of the STA contract, just back from the printer. So I just wanted to point those out. Thank you. Thank you so much. So now we will move to item eight, the consent agenda, and I'll read a 8.01, the preamble. The board may conduct

068some of its business using a consent agenda in an effort to achieve greater efficiency at board meetings, a consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the board of education into a single motion. It is prepared by the superintendent of schools in consultation with the president and the vice-president of the board. Items are selected for the consent agenda when the officers of the board and the superintendent believe there is no controversy regarding them. The items on the consent agenda have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. If any member of the board feels that any item of the consent agenda requires discussion prior to action, that board member may remove that item from the consent agenda, merely by requesting same at the meeting, the exempted item then moves to the

069regular agenda. However, all non exempted items would be moved, seconded and voted upon without discussion order in order to provide greater efficiency to conducting the routine business, I'm sorry, items of business of the school district. Does anyone wish to remove an item? Yes, can you please move item 9.11 budget transfers end of year to a separate action item? Thank you. Okay. So as requested, we will remove item 9.11 budget transfers end of year to item 10.06, 11 actions? 105. 1105 Yep. Okay. Okay. And now Jim will lead us to the consent agenda. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Karen. There are 12 items now on the consent agenda. The first item 9.01 is a recommendation the board accept the minutes of November 15th, 2021 business meeting, 9.02 recommended the board accept the minutes of the board

070of education public forum on November 17th, 2021 for budget priorities. 9.03, it's recommended that the board accept the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign a number of instructional personnel, item 9.04, is recommended the board accept the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign a number of non-instructional personnel. Item 9.05, it is recommended that the board adopt the following resolution, resolved the board of education approved, the collective bargaining agreement between the Scarsdale Board of Education and the Scarsdale's Teachers Association for the period, July 1st, 2021 to June 30th, 2024. Item 9.06, it is recommended that the board adopt the following resolution, resolved that the board of education approve the collective bargaining agreement between the Scarsdale Board of Education and the Scarsdale Principals Association for the period, July 1st, 2021 to June 30th, 2024.

071Item 9.07, it is recommended that the board of education accept the claims audit report for November, 2021. Item 9.08 is a resolution upon recommendation of the audit committee that the board accept the external audit report for the 2020, 2021 fiscal year as prepared by the EFP, group, LLP our external auditors. Item 9.09 is a resolution that upon the recommendation of the audit committee, the board accept the corrective action plan related to the 2020, 2021 external audit. Item 9.10, is a resolution upon the recommendation of the audit committee that the board accept the corrective action plans, risk assessment update in AUP report related to the 2020, 2021 internal audit. Item 9.12, is a recommendation that the board adopt a resolution concerning an Education Law section 9.13 examination. Second. I'm about to propose that they accept the

072Consent Agenda as presented. Second. Wait. Minus. Sorry, without. I didn't present 9.12. Yeah. Thank You. No, you didn't present 9.11, you did present 9.12. I'm sorry-- I didn't intend to mess you up. So now I second that. Okay. Any, discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Okay. The Consent Agenda passes. Thank you, Jim. Welcome. Now we we'll move to item 10, Information Items. Discussion items led by the superintendent. And the first one is 10.01, the 2018 bond, general construction bid award for Scarsdale High School and Quaker Ridge. Okay. These are projects that are part of the 2018 bond project and I'm gonna ask Stuart to walk us through those, please. Yeah. This is the third of the three contracts that are part of the work happening this coming summer for the Scarsdale High School

073and Quaker Ridge. HVHC work at the last board meeting, you approved the electrical and mechanical bids. This is for the general construction work. As part of that project, the bid is actually the third lowest bidder. The lowest bidder did not meet one of the required specifications for experience, the second withdrew for a mathematical error. However, the third of lowest bidder, Mays Contracting Corporation at $637,000 still puts this project, the construction side of the project, almost a million dollars under budget, which is great news. And I would further add anticipating at the next board meeting the work for Heathcote, which will be the mechanical ventilation work that we'll talked about in this meeting will be awarded, hopefully. We're opening that bid up on December 22nd. That'll be for the Heathcote Middle School but primarily that Heathcote

074could work will be part of that project. Just quickly, could you remind us when that work actually started for Heath codes specifically? When it started? Well, the planning for that project, I mean, for this bond goes back to 2016. So this is always been part of the 2018 bond, has always been planned for this upcoming summer. You know, it's disappointing when we weren't able to move it up. However, no one anticipated to in pandemic, then due to a lot of the, you know, the delays that we hear about on the news and in the construction work and the trades, especially at HVHC where you have a lot of the metal and steel work, that work, unfortunately, wasn't able to get done sooner. It's really rooftop work so closes down the gymnasium so we're not able

075to do it while school's in session, not even over like a two week break. It really needs a full summer to do that work. Yep. I have a quick question. And not that I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth, I mean, clearly coming in under what we budget is better, but it seems like it's a fairly significant amount under budget and I guess we've already bonded this, so not that the money there won't be other projects, but I am kind of curious, is there a reason you think it's so significantly under budget from what we anticipated? Yeah. You know, it was great news. I was really holding my breath and I'm still holding my breath for the bids that will be opening in a couple of weeks. Certainly the results on this give us

076a little breathing room. We're out early so it's work for summer and we were opening bids up in late November. We had a lot of bidders so contractors, you know, for them, they're trying to line up future work and if they can lock that work in now, that's a good thing. So it really brought them out and really sharpen their pencil. So very, very fortunate. Typically you'll recall, you usually would go out to bid and February, March where, you know, some of the contractors, you might get less bids and because they have work already lined up. So we're really sort of ahead of the curve on this one, which is great. And of course we knew about the work and we were pressing, you know, to get these bids out to the public or out

077to the contractors. I would be interested as someone who's still trying to learn the budget process, like Carl, it's great that we have, let's say a million dollars under budget, but how does it work if you go out for a bond, for a scope of work and you bid that scope of work, and you're fortunate enough to come in under budget which, you know, bravo to the team, is that million dollars, let's say for the sake of argument really available for reallocation? I just don't know the mechanics of what it's tied to. Is it tied to the scope or could we add additional scope? Yeah. No, it's a great question. So sort of a couple parts, as far as being tied to that scope or not, it really is tied to the scope that was

078approved by voters back in 2018 so we have to focus on that. You know, there's always an addons, alternatives and things like that, but primarily we're pretty much done with the project overall unless something goes haywire for this last bid. You know, we will end up under budget. If you recall we actually borrowed a million dollars less than a total authorization when we went out to permanent financing last spring which is great news now with additional good news, the money eventually drops down. You've seen a debt service reserve transferred. That service transfer sometimes in our budget process. Those are essentially leftover dollars from past bond work. Most recently, it was from like that 2014 bond. We were bringing money back in that was leftover back to help the general fund, basically. So eventually that money

079drops back down to the general fund and the taxpayers we've used it for auditorium work in the past, especially for that 2014 bond work where that auditorium was pulled out. In the future I would anticipate some of the money being available in the 2023, 24 budget process because by that point all of these projects will have been closed out and we'll start to know exactly where we stand. So you'll hear more about that sort of this time next year. Thank you, Stuart. Okay. The next item on information items is a 10.02, which is the MADSA Memorandum of Agreement, and again, this is represents negotiations that have been going on between the bargaining team for the Board of Education and the bargaining team for the managers, the District Services Association. And I'm gonna ask our friend

080over in HR, Drew Patrick, to share the details of this. Thank you very much, Dr. Hagerman. So, you may recall this is the last of the open collective bargaining agreements from last year. Like some others, we had a one-year agreement for the 2020, 21 school year. That was during COVID when negotiations were taking place. And so negotiations for a new successor agreement carried over into the summer and subsequently into the fall but we have reached an agreement with this unit. This is a unit of 25 employees. They represent probably the most unique range of titles and positions. So these are most of our technology team, both in technical services and data services. They include several of our business office folks. They include our transportation team and our food service team. And the agreement that we

081reached is for four years. As the MOA lays out, there are agreed to salary increases of 1.75%, 1.65, 1.6 and 1.5% over the four year period. We have some adjustments to individual titles and what column on the salary schedule they're compensated. We are anticipating, we've added a title to the unit anticipating a long-term transition or a long succession plan, really to upgrade a couple of our positions toward that title. So that has not happened yet, but it is in hopefully in process and it includes a COVID payment for the work that this group did. And I, of course, I left out it's our facilities team, which is a huge omission. Those guys obviously were instrumental in our ability to open school and keep school open up through this year. We have through our negotiations added

082Juneteenth as a holiday, as it is a mandatory state school holiday now, and a couple of a variety of odds and ends. This group has, of course also agreed to the health care changes that we have that you've seen in the other contracts. And we've had a two tier health premium contribution approach with this group in the past based on salary range and in the negotiation this time, we bifurcated that a little bit further to a three tier approach where the top tier is paying the equivalent percentage of our teachers union and then there's two layers below that for folks at various income levels. So we're pleased with the agreement having four years for the arrangement is I think a plus a positive, and I open the floor to questions. Any questions from board members?

083Just to thank you for me and all of us for your work on that. Thank you so much. Okay. Stuart right at my side there. So thank you. Thank you. Alright, thanks Drew, thanks Stuart. Moving to item 10.03, Safety Security and Emergency Management Update. It's been a little while since we've done one, but we're gonna go over some high-level stuff here tonight. I'm gonna ask Eric to walk us through those items. Great. Thank you. I'm gonna start with just some coordinating with the village that we've done over the past few months. We're working with the village currently, as they upgrade their SPD upgrades, their radio systems. We've had teams from their technology base come through and look for dead spots in and around all of our building in order to ascertain the need for repeaters

084and different things. So we are assured once the radio changes happen, there's full coverage within the buildings. As you can tell by the amount of brick in these buildings, that is not always the easiest of jobs. Further, during February break, Scottsdale Police Department, along with a number of other police departments from across the county will be training at Scarsdale Middle School doing tactical response training for school shooting situations. It's actually a wonderful opportunity for both Scarsdale PD and our schools to have many of the units that, God forbid, anything happened would be our mutual aid in training during the February break. We will be sending out community updates because there will be days during February break, where it looks like all hell's breaking loose at the middle school because there'll be training actively and doing

085tactical training. So we'll make sure the community has full awareness that's that's happening. So we're actually thrilled that they'll be doing that, and it gives them good experience in our buildings and it's a way that we can work together. An update on training and drills, we have completed all of our threat assessment team trainings for all of our buildings. So starting before the pandemic, we had instituted threat assessment teams in our middle and high schools and gotten to two of our elementary schools. Last three of those elementary schools have now been trained to have a multidimensional multidisciplinary team to assess any mental health or threats that may come into the building in a way that is thorough and follows an established protocol. There are police representatives on all of those training teams and they were

086present for all of the trainings across all schools. So those are completed. All of our drills for the fall semester are completed across all schools, including lockdown, fire, and evacuation drills. Today's fire alarm was not a drill but we did it successfully anyway. So we will have more drills coming in the spring as per our state regulations, kind of, as the weather gets better. So an uptown on, or an update on our lockdown integration planning. Day Automation will be providing its final proposal today or tomorrow with the final numbers and scope of work for that project. I'll have a full update at the next BOE meeting. As far as the pricing on that, the scope of work and the timetable. Our camera installation, we did get a proposal from day to day on that. We

087also are working with Milestone and awaiting their final quote. The two are connected but not necessarily the exact same project. So the lockdown integration includes our door sensor system, a computer integration that will allow for multiple paths to trigger a lockdown that automatically set in place a lockout of the school building, a phone call to police for response, and ultimately all of the PA and lighting systems that we would put in for that. The cameras are actually a separate system. They don't get triggered in any way by a lockdown, but they need to be integrated into a web portal or into proprietary software so that people outside of the schools can have access. So what we're looking to do there is give Scarsdale PD the access point to those cameras should there be a health

088and safety emergency within the school and they need a tactical awareness of the property. So happily, both Milestone our current camera operator, and Day Automation have come back with web-based applications that they can provide for us through new servers. So that will make giving the Scottsdale Police Department a credentialing issue rather than any type of software technical issue. We have been working together on a draft of an MOU to outline the ability for Scarsdale PD to connect to our camera systems and what situations that would be allowed in. I will have that MOU draft at the meeting for us to discuss and then ultimately come for approval on the following meeting so that's coming shortly. And then last but not least, Thomas mentioned, obviously, Michigan in the past few days has really put the spotlight

089on safety, security and emergency management. We are reviewing all the information that comes out without terrorists, as it comes out about this situation. Each of our Burke teams to have already met since the Michigan incident, have discussed it and worked through the information they know and how it works into their emergency response that will happen for the rest of our board teams as they meet over the next month, month and a half. We will also discuss it a DAT when that comes around in the next month or so. I think it's important to understand that mental health continues to be the main risk and or protective factor in all of these incidents. So students who are feeling connected to a building to adults are not the kids who are perpetrating these incidents, it's students who

090are feeling alienated, it students who are feeling disconnected and angry at the institutions they're in. That being said, as we move into budget season, much of the SSCM work will focus around looking at mental health resources and you can expect both student services and SSCM to focus on what are those resources that we can provide for students and how do we make sure that our psychologists, our social workers and our guidance counselors have the room within their practice to recognize and intervene on students at this level, rather than that level. So that really will be our focus as we move forward. The threat assessment teams that we've been working on for the last couple of years are also a major protective factor for the district with regards to this. I think you've all heard that

091administration at the Michigan school had contact with the student the day before and there were a number of places where there may have been an opportunity to intervene previous or prior to the incident happening. This is not different from many of the other school shooting incidents that have happened but it was the genesis of why we want threat assessment teams in all of our buildings. It's so that no one person, no two people who are dealing with a particular student has to feel alone in deciding whether or not there's a credible threat, what the intervention should be. All of our schools are ready and able to bring together a group of multidisciplinary professionals, including Scottsdale Police to really work through a threat, decide whether it's credible and decide what types of intervention need to happen.

092So, obviously as more information comes out, there'll be learning opportunities from the Michigan incident that we'll fold into all of our practices, do tabletops that look like a situation like this and take to heart everything we can learn to make sure the prevention is really where we're at for this. Okay. That's all I have for today. Thank you, Eric. Questions? (indistinct) Grab your mic. You mentioned the training opportunity for the police, in the middle school, has an opportunity like that been provided for them at the high school? So yeah, they have done their own tactical practices in a number of our buildings over the years. This training opportunity's a little bit different. What it is, is bringing in the lead officers on these response teams from a number of different police departments to do a

093five day training class that they can then bring back to their own departments. So this is a little bit wider than that, where SPD, while they're there and certainly the other units will have opportunity to know our middle school because they're addressed in it. The main opportunity for this as creating a wider, you know, it's a turnkey opportunity for police departments. But yes, they have practiced in, I think, almost all of our schools at this point over the last few years. Mike, the last one was in the high school, I believe? Which was just before the pandemic. Just prior to COVID. And Green Acres-- Green Acres is going as well, especially they did that after the new wing was put on so that the police got a kind of a look at it and understand

094the layout. Jessica. I had two really quick questions. One, I understand from a cybersecurity standpoint that it sounds like what will be happening is it's just authenticating another user on an existing platform and it's not-- It'll be a new platform 'cause currently we're on proprietary software. Okay. So that is what I wanted to clarify. So has Rachel's team had the opportunity to analyze it or has it-- Not fully yet but they will before we... So we're waiting on the Milestone's proposal. We got these today so now the process will be having everyone. We Will internally have administration. Mike and Rachel's team have been in our meetings for those systems and our vetting at the entire way. There's data privacy rules that are in effect that need to be in place for any of our systems,

095whether it's safety, security and emergency management or student information. Right. And I just wanted to understand their role in that. Okay, great. 'Cause I was a little confused. I apologize. And then, to your points on the tragedy in Michigan, I guess I'm curious as we approach the budgeting season whether we'll not only be looking at sort of SSCM solutions to this, but whether the solutions or address identify... Something sort of fell apart. I apologize. Let me reframe this as a question. Are there measures being taken into consideration that would better raise awareness among students enabling them to flag other students if they saw danger signs? Yeah. That's a great question. And actually one of our students this afternoon, when we met with the board raised that concern in light of Michigan, yeah. I think that's

096something we need to look at over the next number of months. We have in the past done that, as COVID has cut and we have not, you know, directly addressed it recently so I think we do need to pick that up and take a look at it. I think it would be very interesting to see that not only from a... I think it would be interesting to see more outreach to students. I agree. You know, I think it's a wider outreach than not framing it as, you know, how do you recognize students that that could pose a danger, but how do you recognize students that are in pain, that are having difficulty that need the support of the community and who do you go to it with? Correct. And you know, and how do you

097do that and avoid retribution, et cetera. Who's on that threat assessment team? That's a great question. So it's the mental health, it's the building administration, the mental health clinicians in the building, it is a teacher representative and it is the people who do coordination of lunch and recess in the elementary schools, the Dean of whatever student may be involved with it in the high school, in the middle school and then the SPD. So there's a number of people. I mean, it sounds like-- And there are alternates kind of, depending on what the situation is and who they have the opportunity to call in kind of anyone that would make sense in whatever situation they're dealing with. And then Mike or I would always be present when a threat assessment comes together to coordinate that work

098with the rest of the district. Fabulous. Thank you. Is there some sort of after hours reporting mechanism for people who have concerns, like-- Not specific to threats, all of our reporting mechanisms are the same across the board. We have, you know, it's really an email or on phone call system. Okay. And is there a way for students to... Or they would just reach out to their-- They would reach out to a trusted adult. Usually that would be on the elementary level, their teacher on the middle and high school, their Dean or House Counselor. If there's something percolating on social media that the students wanna call attention to, like there's no direct-- There's no 24 hour hotline. That would be a threat assessment hotline. There are certain services that exist like that. We haven't explored them

099recently but they do exist. We found experiences that many school districts have had with kind of the 24 hour tip line or anonymous tip line that there are some incentive to call that very often and it becomes a logistical difficulty with response for non-credible, not necessarily kids doing it for nefarious reasons, but just non-credible situations that come up. Okay. Thank you very much. Jessica, do you have a question? No. Okay. All right. Thanks very much for that. Next item is 10.04, policy 2342, which is agenda preparation and dissemination. As we had indicated earlier this is a policy that needed some particular attention because there was a change in legislation which required the dissemination of the contents of major decisions and resolutions to be made available to the public. So if you look at sort of

100the original version of it, it did some of the things in terms of talking about who prepares the agenda, how items may be suggested and whether the items will be... Which categorical nature they'll fall into, whether it's an action item, consent discussion, or information item. So the law now requires us to provide this information at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting to the public. Logistically it presents some unique challenges to us because we have board meetings on Mondays and we have structures as alluded to earlier in place that have allowed us to be prepared for those meetings on Monday, which include two by one meetings, cabinet agendas and things like that that, again, allow us to prepare the agenda in real time. perhaps market improvement in terms of transparency and communication but also

101really changes fundamentally our practices today. We're not able to reschedule all of the meetings in a way that more closely aligns so as was indicated in the preamble or an earlier comments, instead of doing it 24 hours, which would be on a Sunday, we're really, for all intents and purposes, gonna be trying to get this out to the community on Fridays so that they have the, you know, so that this exists within the work week for our employees, but also provides even more time. So, the big change is that under the availability of agenda and supporting materials, and this talks about it being, you know, also, and being very transparent, we've been clear about public participation in our processes, as well as trying to be transparent about when things happen. And so this adds a

102very specific dates and times, or days and times I should say, in terms of when particular information needs to come out to the board, as well as to the district for consideration of agenda items. So according to the NASBA Policy Service Update, which we used, they said this policy is optional. And the reason that it's optional is because it's a local policy. You don't necessarily have to re stipulate things that are matters of law, but if you do have the policy, then the update is required. So that was put out by NASBA that if we have the policy, which we did, we have to update it to comport with the law. And all of our policies must comport with the law, obviously. So we have that piece. We also have policy 2410, which talks about

103the formulation, adoption and amendment of policies. It's not the policy that we're talking about, but it does specify that when we develop new policies, rules, or regulations, there to be presented to the board as part of an agenda packet prior to the regular special meeting which this one was, after study on the part of the board and after presentation of the proposal at the regular meeting, the board may adopt the proposed policy as a first reading or withhold action if it wants to. So obviously we're asking that the board approve this as a first reading so that it can effectively be in place so that we're very clear with our community about, again, what these expectations are. Nothing precludes us from going back and doing a second reading and readopting it to affirm, but this

104does comport with our policy. And we have other examples of when we've needed to do this in the past. One example of that is policy 5605, which a student voter registration and preregistration that also reflected a change in law a couple of years ago and we both read that policy and approved it in the same meeting, because again, it was law and we wanted to make sure that our policies comported with law. So with that in mind, I will open the floor to see if there's any questions from board members. I just wanted to clarify too, that this came through the policy 2000 subcommittee and Carl and Jessica and I, and Thomas and Andre, that the red lining that you see is a result from our initial review of it. And the attorneys review as

105well. So I just wanted to clarify, so the agenda and supporting materials will be delivered to board members four days in advance. So would that be Thursday? That's our goal. So we'll get it Thursday, It'll go to the public on Friday. Correct. Which again will require, you know, we've had a little more time in the past. The board has, we understand it's a challenge. We understand that getting information on a Thursday and being able to respond to it the next day, when many of you are working and have other lives outside of here, it's gonna be a challenge. We may have to rethink the structure of some of the proposed meetings, or even our board meeting date next year, moving forward, if this ends up being problematic. but I think in the short term we

106can manage it this year and see, you know, learn over the next few months about how it might impact our work moving forward. Can you just clarify, I'm not sure what you mean by getting something back on Friday. You meant agenda questions? Exactly. I mean, for this meeting, we gave them on Sunday still. Is there an expectation going forward we're gonna be given them by Friday? It's a complicated. So, you know, sometimes they've been questioned, sometimes there've been a specific board member requests, I would like to see more information about X, Y, or Z, and once the agenda goes out, this is pretty clear that we shouldn't be making substantive changes. So anything that's substantive, that's going out to the community, really we have to do it in a way that's... We're not gonna change

107it once it goes out to the broad community, If there are a little edits or things like that, then you know, of course we can continue to tweak it, but we really can't add a substantive piece once we release it out to the community. If there's a big pending issue, it doesn't say, you know, we're gonna do it on Friday, it says we're gonna do it in advance of the meetings as much as possible. So again, to the extent practicable it's something that our attorney talked to us about that, you know, this is about best intentions and trying to get all the information out to the community that we possibly can. If there's something of an emergency nature, then we have a little bit of flexibility, but it's not just routine matters at this point.

108Just to clarify that, on the Friday thing, you're basically talking about if we get the agenda and somebody sees it and has a comment from the board that there's something significant missing or something included that that clearly shouldn't be for some reason, that we wanna do by Friday morning before it got released to the public but in terms of the kind of questions or details that we often ask in between to prepare for tonight for the board meeting, whenever it is, that there's less pressure for the 24 hour or less 12 hour turnaround? Correct. Board members can continue to ask questions all the way to the end, but in terms of altering the proposed agenda, that's put out to the public. And again, this starts not on Thursday, but it starts in the process of

109preparing for the two by one meeting and having that opportunity. So it's, like I said, it's gonna be a different set of practices for us. It's gonna probably take some time to get used to, no doubt. I mean, this isn't in the policy, but are we thinking that we're gonna move the two by one meetings earlier? Because like to do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, like that's a very shortened time. Yeah. So all of these systems are interconnected. Again, it starts on Monday morning with cabinet meetings, it starts, you know, the week before that with administrators materials so it's a very complex process, it's not about shifting one meeting. We're gonna have to think about the totality of how we prepare these agendas and where they start and so we'll have to dedicate some time to that

110again, once we live through this change in practice for a little while. And just for clarification at home, I think, for anyone who's viewing, there are two terms that have been thrown around but maybe less familiar to people outside of this table. The first is the NYSSBA, which is the New York State School Board Association that we are part of, while the other was the two by one meetings that board officers generally hold, we hold ahead of each meeting. Agenda setting meetings. There are agenda setting meetings held ahead of our normal public board business meetings. Correct. Thank you for that clarification, Jessica. Again, you know, with fidelity to our policy process, we always try to do the two readings, but again, we are recommending this as an approval as our first reading and certainly happy

111to bring it back next week, our next board meeting as a follow-up and to readopt if we want but if we think it's important that we have this in place, and because it's such a major change to our practice being, you know, providing the community with the opportunity, because if we don't adopt it tonight, none of these pieces go into play Officially as board policy and our current board policy is actually outdated and reflects a practice that we no longer utilize either. I do have some comments on the timing and whether we consider adopting it tonight as a first read. But before that, I do have some questions about the actual proposal. First of all, I think it's great what the governor did personally and I really appreciate the administration finding a way to get

112this out to the community earlier. I think it's feedback we've heard the community engagement committee in many places. People wanna see the agenda so they can consider it before our board meeting. So overall, I think it's great and I think a number of these changes are great. My question is about the third paragraph in the first section. The paragraph that starts with persons suggesting items of business must submit them to the superintendent at least seven days prior to a regular board meeting, regular meeting or five days prior to a special meeting. I'm not exactly clear on why we even need this paragraph because it is the superintendent and the board officers that help solve this question. Why would we wanna limit ourselves in a policy if somebody came with something that really made sense to

113get on there that you can do that. And if you decide, no, we didn't have enough time that's your discretion? I don't know why we wanna limit ourselves in a policy with this. Yeah. The discussion around this is that it respects the process that's currently in place and has been in place. So if you count back from that would land us onto our, essentially our two by one meeting date and I don't think, I wouldn't wanna be in the position of unilaterally making a decision about adding something to the board agenda without going through a typical process that we followed, which include board officers in that discussion. And, you know, because the paragraphs above say that the agendas are developed jointly through the superintendent and the board officers. So was to clarify that and they

114made a pretty big point in the policy about specifying the... NYSSBA made the recommendation that we add in those days. That's fine. I mean, I've heard varying comments about, you know, how we've taken this, but we have not taken their recommendations on previous policy changes. But personally, on this one, I just think, I totally agree that you don't wanna be in that position, but you could meet with the board officers, or you could say, I can't do this. It just seems right now, if somebody or an organization brought something right now we couldn't add it unless it's an emergency nature. I don't foresee many things happening in this way. I just think that you have sole discretion anyway. I don't know that it benefits us to put this in as a written policy. I don't

115know if you want to respond to. Well, no, but I mean, in other words, you can still basically, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what Ron's saying, not to put words in your mouth, but like you could still basically have a rule of thumb among yourself and the officers seven days ahead of time, but at least it gives you the flexibility if you and the officers ever want and somebody sends something in six days, you know, it's up to you versus being seemingly, relatively, absolutely precluded by this. I mean, I'm okay with it either way. I think, to me, ultimately it's gonna be up to you, up to the superintendent officers anyway. You could make the language, is the item is of an emergency nature and, or authorized by the superintendent so

116that it doesn't have to be of an emergency nature. That also eliminates the vagary of what constitutes an emergency. That's good. Versus an urgent. I just, again, this was written with respect to the process that has been in place for many, many years here, which is we get things, you know, in advance of the two by one meeting and then we consider those and we make joint decisions about those and neither board members nor the superintendent has usually altered that pathway once we've decided on those things. Can I just be a devil's advocate? Let's be a devil's advocate with respect to having dates specified in the policy. I take Ron's point, you know, it's nice to have discretion on the other hand, you know, looking at it from the perspective of the public, how come

117Joe's item got accepted and my item's never been accepted? You know, Joe got it to the day before, I got it to you eight days before. You know, those kinds of, you know, feelings of, or perceptions of someone's being favored in some way. When everyone knows that deadline, deadline is a deadline. So you're anti splitting the end? I am just suggesting there's a reason for it. It's not that it exists solely to, you know, it's not like a total negative, it just exists solely to remove a discretion which has only positive. I'm saying deadlines like that also create an impression of fairness. A deadline that everyone knows can do it, or if they don't do it, the reason is clear. It's not that some suggestion that maybe someone's viewpoint was favored over someone else's. Okay.

118That's fair. Just as a counterpoint, the vast majority of the time, the reason something doesn't get added to the agenda isn't gonna be because somebody didn't get it to us in time, it's gonna be because the board officers and superintendent didn't wanna add it. So I take your point, but that could happen too. People could come and want something on the agenda and one may never get on it. That we could face that all the time. That is just part of the job I think. Just to reflect the conversation, I think it was just clarity and transparency. We've been talking about that as our mantras, you know, in terms of letting people know, not only about the access to the agenda itself, but just to be clear about the way things work. How do we

119prepare our agendas? When do we information come in? You know, how do we consider it? We've had a pretty good, robust conversation on here, which I'm sure it's probably very enlightening to folks who are listening about that, who maybe had not thought about it in the past. So to the extent the board wants to keep it or not, again, I would recommend that we adopt this and tonight is a first read, and then nothing precludes us from making a change next week again if we decide to do that. The reality is you're talking about, unless it's an emergency and it was not an emergency, there is gonna be another meeting in two or four weeks. Correct. I, you know, and by that time, you'll be more than seven days, even if you did it six

120days. So it's is probably not worth spending too much more time worrying about. I do have another question. I watched the subcommittee meetings. so I think I know the answer. But I really like to just make sure we do this correct in this wording. Same paragraph, it says persons suggesting items of business. Is that board members? Is that an administrator's? What does persons refer to? Yeah. So if you read the paragraph above, it says, maybe suggested by board members, district employees, parents, students, or other community members. So that's the. So does this include board members, this word person? So it could be read as-- As it is written, yes, I think though then, the seven days in advance makes that a little harder because that would be the Monday before a board meeting for board

121members to submit items whereas right now, again, with practice, I'm collecting them through Tuesday evening. So that's the seventh day before the next Monday's board meeting. That's the seventh day? Sometimes you have to-- Seven days before the Monday board meeting. So everybody would need to get their items in by Tuesday, 11:59 PM. Which is effectively what we do anyway because we talked about Wednesday morning. Right. 'Cause we dump them at 9:00 a.m. I mean, I'd have to go back, I think, there's been weeks we had a two on one on Thursday, and then we got it on Wednesday. I just seems like this isn't adding anything for us. You know, we do it based on the two by one, which you back into by when your schedules work good. They're all laid to for Wednesday.

122Actually there they've been backed not because of our schedules, but really to be able to effectively manage the processes between that and getting the agenda prepared. When they go on Thursday, they were very difficult. The timelines were too tight and so we had to back it up in order to be able to do a better job of preparing the agendas more fully. So then how does it work? Special meeting you want five days prior. Board member can call a meeting with 24 hours notice. This wouldn't comport. Yeah, but if it's immediate to me call called 24 hours, it's been an emergency nature and this probably wouldn't be a place where we would be adding agenda items from the community. But again, a board member could be at trying to add something. Yeah. But if you're

123calling an emergency meeting, you're calling it for a specific purpose. So, I wouldn't be inclined to think that you call a meeting for a specific purpose on an emergency basis for a special meeting on 24 hours. And then I say, well, why don't we consider these other 10 items anyway or two items? Maybe one other item. Why not? Why would that be so-- Those aren't allowable for emergency meetings. Yeah. It would sort of defeat the purpose of your calling a special meeting. If I wanted to call a special meeting for those items then I should do it otherwise I should wait until the next meeting. I don't think. I mean, look, I think this is a good discussion. This partly gets to my other comment, which is, you know, not feeling comfortable voting on this

124the same day we're first reading it. I don't feel like I have enough information on some of this stuff, partly on how the community feels about this. This is the first time they're seeing it. Well, it's not. So on all of our policies we put out there, what we're reviewing, we have instructed the community to actually provide the comments in advance of the meeting so that we can consider them as the sub committee deliberations. We did not receive any community feedback on this particular policy. And again, you know, our other policy absolutely allows us to make an adoption of a first reading policy, particularly there's something like the legal nature of the fact that this was went into effect November 18th by law. But it's not clear to me that our existing policy doesn't comport

125with the law. I mean our existing policy. The existing policy talks about mechanic got board packets 24 hours in advance which clearly is not gonna be the case with this. If you look back-- The 24 hours to board members, right? It talks about, it says a complete set of materials for the regular meeting shall be sent to each board member, the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, the district treasurer, and the news media and others as required, which now as required by laws is. That would suggest the board members are getting the board packet simultaneously with the community because of the change in law that now requires that dissemination to happen 24 hours. I don't think occludes this from sending it to board members earlier. I don't see, I think voting on a policy the same way

126as the first read is not a good practice. I don't believe based on the information I've been provided that this there's an emergency nature to vote on this tonight. And I don't feel like I have enough information because there's still some pieces that I feel like I need to go back and now look at the law about these questions about special meetings and things like that to make sure. I wouldn't feel comfortable voting on this tonight. Okay. Well, you know, again, Ron, you have to vote your conscience on this and you know, we'll have an opportunity to do that but again, school board policy 2410 absolutely allows, and it's been existing policy that allows us to do this. And I think it's intended for situations like this in which there are changes in laws in

127which we wanna make sure all of our board policies are always comporting with the law. Regardless of whether or not we change it, we are required to follow the law and I think it's just good practice for us to be proactive about that and be responsive to it in advance. I mean, if that is the feeling, I just wanna lay out the timeline so people are very clear on this. The governor signed this law on October 19th. We got an update from our legal counsel I think October 28th, we've known about this for some time. If we really felt like we needed to do this by November 18, we could have met, we could have met two times. We could have, you know, followed the best practices of our policy and had two reads. I

128don't, you know, we put ourselves into this box. I don't feel that this is the right way to move forward. Well, I can just tell you from a logistical standpoint we've struggled mightily to get people to be able to come together and have these policy meetings. We've tried for multiple days. We tried to do it earlier and that just wasn't possible through board members' schedules. So I'm not sure how else to respond to that. We have known about this for a little while and we started working on it as soon as we found out about it. So can I ask you if you approve a first reading though, it still allows for a second reading on the 10th? A hundred percent. Our board policy 2410 says the board may adopt the proposed policy as a

129first reading or withhold it if it needed to but revisions are brought back to the board for further deliberation and for subsequent meetings. So it's absolutely-- So there can be further deliberation at the next meeting? Absolutely. If we vote this as a first read. If we want. I think I'm okay with that. I think what makes me nervous right now is some of the timeframes. They do seem very abbreviated, but I also don't know how we would adjust those until we go through the process and see what's working, what's not working. I worry a little bit about the board getting the packets on Thursday and turning around before Friday morning, but I think it's worth trying. And that's not, I mean, I can't remember, I mean, it's not that I've been on the board forever,

130but I don't remember a major change to an agenda anyway. I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't happen but I mean, let's face it, if there was a major change from a board member from, you know, they'd get the agenda that night and be like, holy cow, this is missing. And then, so I don't think that that's, I mean, I understand what you're saying but I'm not sure-- I think it's just putting a time pressure on everyone here on the board that we all need to look at this Thursday. You know, there's no cushion when you get it on Friday, you can look at it on Saturday or Sunday. You have a little bit of flexibility and freedom. This is you're working and if you're in trial, good luck to you. I hope you have

131time to look at it. So, you know, I, like I said, I worry about that part of it, but given that it's a first read I'm comfortable with voting on it tonight. And this gets to my point of trying to get some more information. So Carl, for example, it's not clear to me what constitutes the threshold of that additional information. So for example, for this meeting, I asked for additional information for one of the items and it was added, you know, would that have triggered this? Would that have been an issue at this point if I didn't get it in by Friday? You know, again, these are open questions to me. I mean, I guess the question is if it didn't get in by Friday, what would be the ramification? And most of the time,

132it's not, you know, it seems like going on the agenda the next meeting, I mean. Well, it was something we're voting on tonight that I wanted more information on. Oh no, no, but the point of Friday is not getting what... From my understanding, the point of the Friday is not getting that you wouldn't get any more information after that. It was a document added to the action item. It was added. It wasn't just information for the board, it was added. But isn't that, to the extent practicable, meaning if there's something that needs to be added, it can be. Our attorney in talking with Dan about that, he said, you know, really, unless things are from an emergency nature that we should not be changed once this is released to the public, we should not be

133just adding information on. All right. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. The next is, I'm gonna thankfully hand over to Karen to talk about, which is policy 10.05 and it is the second reading for remote public comment. So we're almost at our two hour wellness break. Should we do 10.0, can we kind of move that up to 10.06 and then take a wellness break and then come back to 10.05? Okay. So I'm going to take 10.06 before 10.05. 10.06 is the update on the board committees. At our last meeting, we discussed the methods and structures needed to meet some of our board goals for the year, specifically on the ones pertaining to community engagement and creating onboarding materials for board members. We decided to create an ad hoc subcommittee on community engagement with the

134following charge, as it relates to our board goal to guide the board community's engagement plan and the process of community engagement through this year to monitor and suggest if there are any other needs or methods to help support the plan. For example, creating a standing committee and to monitor and track community engagement opportunities to assess their efficacy and report back to the board. So this committee will be called the... From looking policy work we should not be calling them board committees they're board subcommittees, right? So it'd be the board subcommittee on community engagement for 2122 or the BSCE not the BCC, okay? And the members who have indicated interest in that are Amber, Ron, and Jessica. They will will be that committee. We also decided to form an ad hoc subcommittee with the charge of

135collecting and creating onboard materials and establishing an onboarding process for new board members. That committee will be called the ad hoc 2021, 2022 board sub committee on onboarding and that board committee will consist of me, Carl and Bob. Okay. So I just wanted to have a up on that and now we will take our five minute wellness break and then come back and re pick up with 10.05, second reading of remote public comment, policies and preamble. Thank you. We're picking up with item 10.05 where are we gonna do our second reading on that remote public comment policies and the proposed preamble? So at our last meeting we had an initial discussion about the four policies and the suspension of policy but we had a beginning discussion on time requirements or not. And so to start

136this meeting, I just would start this, this conversation ask first if there are any comments on the policies, not regarding time, but general comments on these policies. I think we should just make sure the community is aware. We did ask our legal counsel about whether we could require a super majority for the system. When you say that, would you like to fill that? No, you brought it up so why don't you fill it in? Go ahead. And we do not have that authority as a board. It is laid out in state statute when a super majority is required. So I don't think you'll hear us talk about that today because we don't have that authority. Okay, thank you, Ron. Sorry. No, no, no. That's great. Thank you so much. Any other comments or edits, clarifications,

137no? Okay. So we have three things that hopefully we'll come to consensus on this evening. The first one is whether to place a limit on individual remarks and whether or not to place a limit on the first public comment and whether or not to place a limit on the second public comment. Again, our current practice which we made a resolution to keep in place from last year was a three minute limit on individual remarks, one and a half hours for the first period of public comment and no limit on second public comment. So it would be helpful, I think, if we went around the room and shared our thinking so we can see where we all are, and then we'll have additional discussion from there, okay? So somebody wanna volunteer to go first? I'll start.

138I mean, I'm fine with the limitations that have been proposed. I don't feel strongly that we need limitations as much on the second public comment just based on experience, but I don't think it's unreasonable to have them. So I'm okay with it. And the rest of it is fine. I think other issues that we hashed out, I'm fine with all of those. So that's where I am. Okay. So three minutes, one and a half hours and no limit, okay? I'm fine with that. Okay, great. Bob? I think it's a good balance of issues. In other words, it allows us to ensure that we do get to our agenda items at a point that is at least within a reasonable timeframe and it feels respectful to the community that they will have a chance to speak.

139So I'm in favor of it. So keeping the same? Yes. I'll share my thoughts. I think I've been vocal about my view that there should be no limit on any of them. You know, listening to my fellow board members at the last meeting, I think there's some good points made. I think I could come to a compromise position on having limits for individual comments. It's certainly for me not at three minutes and I'm happy to talk about that if everybody's already at three minutes and there's no need to talk about it. It's not my personal view. I think it's not a problem. We just don't have that issue unless there's some reason people need to speak. So I'm not in favor of any limits for individual comments, but I would be open to discussing, you

140know, some compromised position. In terms of the first and second public comment period, again, I don't feel there should be any limits and certainly not if we end up having a limit on the number of minutes an individual speaker can speak, because now the only reason that we would end up with a very long common period is that we have a lot of people speaking and if that is the case, we need to hear from them in my opinion. And I just wanna give one example of a really thoughtfully, prewritten public comment that was recently made that took longer than three minutes. And that was this board statement on marijuana. It was pre-written, it was thoughtful, the board officers did a very nice job, Karen did an excellent job reading it at the public hearing.

141It was something I believe needed to be read in public out loud, not just emailed. I do not view email as a substitute for public comment. It took longer than three minutes to read and our own three minutes being proposed, that statement would not have been finished. I think you couldn't have asked for something that was more prepared than that statement and I don't see what could have been cut from it, that it was a very good statement. So that's where I'm at now. I prepared a quick statement so I'm just gonna read it. "Hearing from our community is an important part of our community engagement efforts and part of our goals as a board this year. While there are many ways we can hear from the community to the best ways for the full

142board to hear information or via, and by a public comment. As board, we strive to ensure that every email is replied to either by the board of the district so that the writer knows their message has been heard. I believe we should treat public comment in the same way, giving everyone that makes an effort to attend our meetings, whether in person or via Zoom, an equal opportunity to be heard. We also have other responsibilities and these are important as well. We are obligated to conduct board business, which is critical to the functioning of our district. While thinking about the decision before us, I reviewed public comment from the last 16 months of board meetings. In one public comment session at the height of the pandemic, the floor time limits were imposed. We had 34 speakers

143share their thoughts with the board. With this in mind, I support a four minute time limit for speakers. I want everyone that attends a meeting to have the opportunity to be heard, and without time limits on individual speakers, we may run out of time to conduct board business, but I do not support imposing a time limit on each public comment session. By providing an opportunity for everyone to speak, but imposing an individual time limit, I hope we can achieve both the goal of completing board business and hearing from the public." So I'm sorry, just to review four minutes no limit? Correct. Okay, Jessica. I agree with Amber's comments just now and I also wanted to add the point that in addition to focusing on community engagement this year, we're also focusing on DEI and it

144can be difficult at times that I have heard it be difficult at times for community members for whom English is not their first language to make comments fit in that three minute period. And it is unfortunate that the people who might be gaveled bound or belled out are community members who we are actively trying to include and engage this year as we try to solicit more diverse viewpoints. So I think a four minute time limit would be more conducive to that and I think that not capping the time limit on each public comment session would allow us to hear from anyone with an opinion on the topic at hand. I could probably be convinced otherwise, but at this point that's where I stand. Jim? There are different interests that have to be balanced and I

145think, you know, obviously we want to hear from the community, we want to encourage people to express their opinions. We don't want to give people the impression that we're not open to hearing them. Express their opinions on the other hand, the guidance we have in terms of the purpose of the board meeting is that it is a meeting of the board in the public not with the public so there is also the important business that we're attending to as well, which is the public's business and we are elected to do this business. So I think we also have to weigh with the impetus that we have and the desire we have to encourage public comment, the obligation we have to conduct our business in public, but to conduct it. And so with a, you know,

146sort of sense of trying to weigh these sometimes competing interests, where I think I am is I do support a limit of some kind on how much time someone has to express their opinion. I think three minutes is not enough. I tend to agree with Amber and Jessica that four minutes is more appropriate. I actually think having no time limit in some ways may discourage people from talking because it just could become unwieldy and hard to actually manage. I think when people know they have a certain amount of time, which I often in my business know I have only a certain amount of time to make a point, it forces me to make my best points and not every point that comes into my head. And that's okay. It's okay for people to feel they

147have to make their best points. I don't think it's discouraging people from talking at meetings that they have to make their best points that they can make in the time they have to make them because I believe it's important for the board to do its business. I do support a limit for the initial public comment of an hour and a half but not a limit for the second public comment. So I believe it's good governance to set rules and expectations and to be fair and consistent with the application of time therefore I support placing a limit on individual remarks. However, since tension can occur when a person is asked to wrap up, I suggest that at three minutes individual's asked to conclude their comments with the expectation that they will speak for no longer than

148four minutes. For as a point of clarification, I knew I had four minutes at the village and I actually did have to amend or curtail a piece of our letter slightly. I left off all of the stuff about the exact laws, because that was clear because I knew I wanted to be respectful of their time limits. So I was slightly over but I did take out just a tiny piece of it. I also support our current practices of limiting the first public comment period of one and a half hours so the board can attend to items of business. However, I do not believe the second period should be capped so that all community members have the opportunity to speak. So, I think let's go to the time first. It seems that there is most, you

149know, there is certainly a consensus that the time be limited. Throwing things at me. Karen, I'm perfectly fine with the four minutes but I actually like your nuance of three minutes, just announcing three minutes with a closure by four. It sort of gives a cadence to the so, but the four, I'm fine with the four. Okay. I mean, we can discuss, that could be part of our preamble, whenever we ring a bell at three or do the bell twice at four, I don't know. I just think it's very awkward that the speaker is not necessarily aware that they're at the three minutes and suddenly they're told you need to stop. So I, you know, maybe we can build in something, a warning per se and they'll know that they still have... I mean, just food

150for thought on that. So I guess I'll entertain some more discussion on the four minutes. Ron, I know you talked about maybe talking about, you know, coming to consensus perhaps if it were longer than three minutes, would the four minutes... How do you feel about that? I mean, as I was thinking about this and I appreciate that Amber went back and reviewed, I did the same charter to try to get some context of, you know, what comments of different lengths sound like. For me, I think an appropriate amount of time is five minutes. Again, it's just not an issue that we face on a regular basis. I think there are times when people speak on behalf of community groups. I agree with this awkwardness of when you get shut off, I also sort of think

151it's awkward when people have to bring multiple people just to read a statement because it's a longer statement and a community group needs to bring multiple people. So where I was thinking was five minutes. I appreciate that others have, you know, moved off of three, but that's where I was at. Other thoughts? My concern with five minutes is that if we are trending towards putting a time limit on the first public comment, which it seems like we might be going in that direction, I think it limits the number of people that would be able to speak. So, I don't think that many people come in with the longer comments. So I really, I still lean towards four minutes personally. Okay. So can I see if there's a consensus for four minutes, if you approve a

152four minutes? Okay. So we will amend the policy to read the first public comment period not to exceed four minutes. And we can work on the preamble language of how to alert the speaker, perhaps when their time is coming to an end. If we want to do that, when we get to that, we'll do that. Period two. Again, there is consensus without even looking at it that there be no limit on the second comment period. And we are split right now for, we're not split, sorry. We are a four to three on period one having a limit of one and a half hours. Amber, Ron and Jessica said, no limit, Carol, Bob, Jim and I said one and a half hours. Any discussion? I'd like to make a point about that. There are times that

153we are going into that could be uncertain. We had a fairly robust back and forth around the back to school report today and I can imagine a situation in which a number of community members would have questions pertaining to an agenda item that could reasonably surpass that hour and a half limits. So if you're talking about something related, say to COVID or to school safety, you could certainly be put in to a position, I would think, where you would exceed the maximum number of speakers in that first comment period and I do think that I am someone who wants to hear from the community and wants to hear what their questions are before we go into deliberations on the issues. So, because that first comment period does allow people to address items on the agenda

154that night before the board takes a vote, I think it's critical not to limit the number of speakers in that or to not limit as much as possible the number of speakers in that first comment period. I do obviously still respect the fact that there is a lot of work to be done during rest of the meeting but it seems like cutting the community off before we take votes could be detrimental in certain situations. Any thought to moving it to two hours? With the calculations that I did, based on what we saw with the 34 speakers at four minutes, it's a little over two hours and you know, that seemed to be the worst case scenario. And so, you know, I understand, I don't know how everyone else feels about moving it to two hours.

155I would be okay with that but if people feel strongly about the 90 minutes, you know, I understand that too. Where I think about this is that when we don't deal with this, most times. It's just not something we do on day in and day out. So what happens if we do deal with it? We're at a meeting there there's some reason a lot of people, not only have come to our meetings, but choose to want to speak? And when that happened at a meeting last year and 20 people were cut off and then asked to wait until midnight to speak, that did not go well. And frankly, if I were one of those people, I would understand why. So my view is in the very rare instance that this will happen, if it does

156happen, there is some reason it's happening and we need to hear it. And that might mean tabling other items that night, that it might mean that it might mean a late night for us. Again, in all the board meetings that I've been a board member of and watched before this, it's just not that common of occurrence. It's only happened on the village and the school side when there is some issue and I think it will be really important to hear from anybody who wishes to speak at that time. I also do think it's an important signal given that it's not something that will likely happen all the time. We talk a lot about community engagement. I think this is a very important signal to the community that we want to hear from you. Hundred people

157show up, great. That is excellent. That means people are engaged and that is what we want. I have a comment. I have one last thought which is, Sorry, my last thought was there are other means that we can take such as having a listening session at a different time if we are concerned that there is an issue that is so hot button, that it is gonna cause the comment period to exceed 90 minutes, right? I mean, if we see something coming, we should be hearing from those people, as Ron said. We should be engaging the community and if we have failed to do it outside of that comment period to a point where people feel like they have such significant concerns that we need to hear them, I think we owe it to them to

158listen to them. I agree. I think it's incumbent upon the board to recognize something that would require listening session or forum in some capacity. On that I agree with you. And okay. I was gonna say that's actually a really good point, Jessica, in that if we did put in a time limit of 90 minutes and we found we were exceeding it, I think that would be a signal right there that, Hey, maybe we do need to have a listening session. So Jessica, you just actually moved me the other way to supporting, and that was not what I was trying to do. Yeah. But the problem with that is the idea that we're gonna have a listening session if we're actually going to take an action on something that night, you know, it's not really feasible.

159Do you think we would not take an action on something if you know, we had 90 minutes of comments from people? I think-- I don't know. I agree with that, I just don't know what the thing is. We're not differentiating, that's all. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what it would be. I mean, I, you know, the stuff we had last year, saw people were coming and talking about, and there was nothing that we were doing on the agenda, which cuts both ways, right? I mean, you're right. It says, and I don't know, you know, to be fair, after the first 20 people, I'm not saying it wasn't... There was this degree of repetition in what was being said. and so when you get to the four minutes or three minutes, or the

160two minutes, part of that is like, as Jim was saying, people aren't necessarily moderating their thought process. So anyway, I'm fine. I'm actually, to be honest, I think it's rarely gonna be an issue so I'm easily swayed on this point. So have you changed your mind to no limit? I'm not changing my mind. I mean, I still think I, you know, I still think a limit for the first public comment makes sense, because I do think that we... I would say that we did not get the best of us on some of those business items. I mean, it's hard to pay attention. I wanna pay attention, you know? Part of it is, in fairness to the people that come here, I wanna pay attention to what they're saying and I also wanna pay attention to

161the business and if I'm exhausted because I've heard... Been trying to pay attention to, you know, 30 people speak for four minutes each and then I have to decide, you know, out important issue, whatever it might be on here, I don't know that I'm serving anybody so well at 11 o'clock at night. And you know, I'm not saying we shouldn't be here late, I'm just saying, I don't know that you get the best of all of us that way. I do think that it's worth having some limit because I think, you know. I guess if it was an action item than we might say. Well, we still-- (indistinct) We haven't heard anybody. We're not going to take actions too controversial, whatever. At some point, all of it comes down to us being responsible to ourselves,

162you know, the people that are speaking in our community and the students and everything else. So I have to trust that we're gonna do the right thing, whether we really get a chance to speak or they do. Oh, I turned my microphone off. Sorry about that. I said, I trust that we're all gonna do the right thing. I mean, I think Carl, I think that I'm speaking for myself, I do recall that by the time we got to the action items, I felt very distracted. I was tired, it was a very intense interaction with the community. and I think if I recall, we were not taking an action item at that moment. so to your point, I think if it really was going to affect our judgment and our long-term decision, I think it would

163behoove us all to say, look, clearly, there's more listening to occur. We can hear it in that within the community and, you know, we need to pause. But I think we need to give ourselves enough time to do a proper job. And I'm not saying anyone was not trying to do a proper job, but it was really hard. You know, when you get after midnight and it's not like a friendly conversation, I think, you know, maybe, you know, the lesson learned is that we need to have some limit, but use it as a point of making an informed decision to hold off maybe. If it comes to that. And I think now we're all very much because of the need for transparency and community input, I don't think anyone would disagree with. You know, it

164behooves us all to be, you know, stand up and say, look, clearly this is very strong opinions, let's have a listening session and let's do that quickly and, you know, move on. So I think 90 minutes to me feels fair. I just wanna say one last thing. Again, this is not a likely occurrence. Could you imagine if there were people here, pack this room, speaking for 90 minutes? People got childcare, people made plans and then at 90 minutes we said, you know what? We need a listening session to listen to you, but not right now while you're here. I do not think that sends the right message. and I think that would be a real mistake in that moment. So I just wanted to reiterate that for you. And I wanted to clarify that when

165I was mentioning a listening session my theory was that this would be an issue that we would have anticipated ahead of time, right? That this was... That presumably last year, for example, or when other hot button issues have come up in the past, for example, around Green Acres, separate listening sessions could have been held, could have been formed ahead of time. There really should not be a need for a limit because in those situations we should have anticipated the need. And if we have failed to do that, it is reasonable for us to listen to anyone who is here. I mean, that was really my point. And I guess I may not have made it fully clearly, but my point is, comments should sort of naturally moderate itself. We should, with a four minute speaking

166time, not be hitting that 90 minutes, that people are worried about hitting very often if we are engaging with the community fully. And so for the rare time or two that we have to pull on our own reserves and really sally through and make business decisions clearly at midnight, I think it's worth the trade-off to not have a time limit. I think it sends a much better message. So there is also the option to suspend our policy to suspend the 90 minutes, if we have a large crowd because we just allowed ourselves. To be clear also, all the people that wanted to speak that evening spoke after we did that and in fact, some of them spoke more than once. It was only a matter of whether they got... And speaking about items that were

167not on the agenda. So the only difference was we conducted our business at a point when it was a little bit earlier and if you really wanted to speak a second time and I think it was mostly, or you really wanted to go beyond the three minutes, you came back for the second public comment. So just to Jessica's point, I mean, nobody got-- I would dispute that fact. There was 20 people who were cut off and we don't know that they all came back the hours later and made comments. If it was important enough to continue, it was important enough to continue to-- I don't even care, to put their kids to bed or the many reasons that they plan to be there at that time and then couldn't stay till midnight. But we do

168have Zoom available now for people to comment. So we have given that option whereas if you are not able to speak in the first public comment session, you could, if you had a childcare issue, go home, turn on your Zoom link and wait until the next public comment session came up. I also just wanna make one statement. I would need to ask our legal counsel for guidance, but if we thought about suspending a policy that night, depending on how those comments were playing out, it could be viewed as a content based decision that we were taking a position. I don't know if we can do that, you know, change a policy. That'd be a legal question. If everybody was speaking about one certain aspect. You were saying at the beginning of the meeting, not in

169the middle of the public comment extended, right? Yeah. Like if you had a huge crowd. But if we're gonna do that, then why would we make this policy? It's a proposal right now. The majority is still to limit at one and a half. So I will enter that in and when it comes back on we will vote on it on January 10th, okay? So I will amend the policy to read, not to exceed 90 minutes on the first, no limit on the second, four minutes for individual remarks. Four minutes for individual remarks for both the first and second public comment periods. Both periods. Yeah. Okay. The preamble, so again, like your input here on whether or not response to public comments should take place after the first and second public comments periods, or only after

170the second public comment period. So let's see if we have agreement on that. Carl. I prefer after the second, the way we have it now. Okay. I'd prefer having after both. Okay. I also agree having it after both. I think if somebody comes... These responses aren't detailed responses, these are fact-based responses or here's how we'll get back to you or here's where you can find that information. Let's be easy to work with. Why make that person wait all the way until the end? Bob, your thoughts? Can I pass and you come back? Yes of course, thank you. Jessica? My inclination is both because I think that there are situations where we could give very fast, easy resolutions to people's concerns. If one of our board goals this year is community engagement, getting quick response to

171whether it's Amber writing back to an email quickly, which she's been, you know, tasked with this year or whether it's the people at this table responding immediately to someone's concern in the audience seems reasonable to me. Jim? (indistinct) Okay. Bob, do you, or can I come back to you yet? My original thought was we should wait for after the second set of comments because the concern might be that we get into sort of a back and forth debate with the second set of comments. One might argue that's fine. I don't think that's the intent of the comments. They should be more factual. I think after the second is fine. Okay. And I think it should be at both. So there is consensus to then have it at both. Okay. So we will make that amendment

172to the agenda. It's not a policy, so it's a preamble, right? So it's just a consensus. It's public comment preamble. It's an agenda, the agenda format. So we're changing the agenda format to have response to public comment after both public comments, okay? And again, they, you know, it reads that the board, you know, reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion, either during response to public comment or at a later time in place if needed. So if more information is needed or you feel like you can't answer something at that time, you could, you know, answer it at the second response if needed, okay? Karen, did we come to consensus on whether the preamble there'd be something about after three minutes, you'll say something and then before four, does that have

173to go into here? Yeah. Should we talk about that quickly? You know, how do you guys feel about that? Yes. So it's, I think it's a great idea. Okay. So I will amend the language. I was only gonna say, I think it's a great idea. I would do it is in wording rather than a ding because I think people won't know what the ding means. and it just might sound a little jarring. So maybe, you know, and I'll put this back to you guys also for the 10th, okay? But to create the wording that we will let the public know when you are at three minutes with the expectation that you will conclude your remarks by four minutes. We appreciate, you know, people's attention to that. Is that something like that? So okay. Okay. Great.

174Okay. Thank you everybody. All right. So now we'll move to item 11, action items. This one is me. And this is Ron, Yeah. Action item. 11.01 proposed textbooks for the high school. Second. I move that the board accept the proposed textbooks for the high school that were presented at the November 15th, 2021 meeting as presented. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. Thank you. Item 11.02, the 2018 bond. Item, 11.02 2018 bond general construction bid award for Scarsdale High School and Quaker Ridge Elementary School. I recommend that the board hereby accept and approve for contract award the bid from the lowest responsible bid as follows, general construction contract in the amount of $637,000 to Mays Contracting Corporation. And in addition, I recommend that the board hereby authorizes the board president

175to execute a contract between the district and the winning bidder noted above upon approval of same by the district's attorney. Copy of such contract shall be incorporated by reference within the minutes of this meeting. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay. Motion passes, thank you. Item 11.03. I will not be seconding this motion. I moved that the board adopt policy 2342 agenda preparation and dissemination with the revisions as presented. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? I just wanna reiterate my view. I don't feel I have enough information to make a vote on this action item. So should we amend this to be a first reading that allows for. Do we have to amend it for that? No. Okay. I think we just add it to the agenda for next time. For

176the second reading. Okay. So all in favor of approving the policy 2342? Approving this policy now (indistinct). Yes. Well, as a first reading at this meeting and we can-- We'll come back. We'll bring it back as a second reading But just to be clear, first really means it is our policy immediately after it's voted. Correct. So I just reiterate, I appreciate it's coming back but my reason for that I'm gonna abstain is because I don't feel like I have enough information to vote one way or the other on this. Okay. So any other additional discussion before I call for the vote? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Nos, abstentions? Abstain. Okay. Motion passes. Item 11.04, Amber? Sorry. I didn't realize I had one. Oh, sorry. 11.04. This is the MADSA memorandum of agreement for the 2021,

1772025 years. It is recommended that the board approve the memorandum of agreement and authorize the execution of an agreement consistent with the terms of the memorandum of agreement. Second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay. Motion passes. Item 11.05 budget transfers. Can I have a motion to approve this? So, Jim is back on your... Because it came off the consent if you wanna make the motion. Sure. Okay. I'll make a motion. Is there a second? Second. Okay, discussion? So the reason I asked it to be moved off the consent agenda for discussion is related to the item, the personnel office consultants, both the 2020 21 transfer and the expected transfer for 2021, 22 and just really trying to understand more about the process here, not necessarily about the numbers, although I have some comments

178about the numbers as well. But first, process. Thomas, maybe you could help me understand, this was an item that was budgeted for $40,000 in 2020, 21, and then $135,000 was expended. A second contract was signed later in the year. I just don't understand from a process standpoint, where was the money? It wasn't budgeted for this amounts. How does this from a process standpoint happen on the line item? So drew, do you want to actually-- I'd be happy to take that. This is completely on me. So first of all, in our normal budgeting process I have two codes within the personnel budget that get expended toward this kind of work. One is a code that's earmarked for administrator professional development and one toward consultants. It was actually in the 2019, 20 school year after a three

179year hiatus from any kind of group professional executive coaching work that had been a 30 year tradition in this district with a consultant named Barry Gents, we started to rethink about engaging in that work. So if you want, I can describe a sort of a two track process. One track was a very thoughtful, reasoned process toward identifying a consultant to work with the 25 administrators in the district. The other track was poorly executed and that was planning the budget around that and looking ahead to what this work might cost, and that really fell off the rails as this work began during, during COVID. So the thoughtful part of the process was our cabinet met our administrative council, talked about what we value. I have a notes document of two discussions where we were trying to

180figure out, I was trying to learn some of the history of the leadership development work that had taken place and we thought, yeah, this is a time we've got a bunch of new administrators. We're embarking on a strategic plan. One of the goals we've identified is a culture of lifelong professional growth and we actually talked about a couple of consultants. A number of us went to a conference and spent a full day at workshop with this particular consultant that we've now been working with. Dr. Ellie Draigo Severson and we kind of identified, yes she's someone we'd like, like to talk to. We actually had our introductory phone call with her on February 28th, of 2020. Two weeks before before COVID hit. And what would have unfolded, I would like to think if I had been

181on top of this, is a thoughtful budget proposal. At that time, albeit late, in the budget process being the end of February, but we had an understanding of what that would be. That didn't happen. As we entered the end of August of 2020 into 2021 school year, and looking at the mountain of challenges that we were facing as an administrative team, we made a judgment to engage with her and didn't know what that was going to look like at that time, because first of all, it wasn't gonna be in person, all sorts of conditions changed. And a couple of us met with her and planned out, okay, let's have some shorter two, not a full day, but some two hour meetings. So we started meeting with her monthly. That, though not necessarily earmarked with her

182name on it, you know, in the pre the budget that was voted on, that was built within my budget. What we didn't anticipate was the really desire and I believe need of our administrators to have executive coaching support during all of this time. And this has turned out to be actually far more transformative than I definitely imagined. And as you have building tours, I encourage you to ask administrators what impact this work has had on them and on the work they're doing with their faculty and in turn with students. So I could go on about that. It's been transformative. She's super expensive. She is a luminary in the field of adult development leadership. She's the head of the doctoral program at Teacher's College and has a robust consulting practice. And I let that whole piece

183just get away from me. So we looked to the fact that we had some unspent areas of the budget and believed we could make the budget work and continue the work with her throughout the year and into this year. The process blown, and especially for such a large amount of expenditures it just didn't follow the process. And that process should be appropriately budgeting for and presenting, you know, through our process all the way up ending with the board if it's a budget change, this increase in the budget and or even if it is sometimes things are unanticipated, a transfer of this amount needs to come before the board and it should have been specific and much and much sooner. And I just let it get away. That that's the honest. You know, I appreciate that

184very detailed response too. I do wanna say that, unfortunately, some of this work, especially consulting is a great example, so I'm glad you raised it, Ron, is very difficult to timeline with the budget process. And so your options become when, again, when it's done the correct way, to put any placeholder which would have to be often larger than you're gonna know and or you kind of go through the due diligence of going through this process. So having done this with the DEI consultant, you know, we didn't realize until really mid year that we were gonna be going down this road. The importance of that when we started engaging in what became a five month process of working with a consultant. Had we asked the board to put in, you know, earmark money, we would've had

185to guessed some very high number because we had no idea, we had a whole list of people we were looking at, we were going through a vetting process, we were doing interviews with people, and then you start the contract negotiations portion of it and talking about scope of work and things like that. So it's definitely an imperfect process again, I appreciate Drew sort of describing his process, but this is something that is going to, as long as we use consultants, which we do extensively in this district, we're always gonna have to think about this being a little bit of a nebulous process, and we're putting place holders in the budget. This is something that board members have not been really willing to do or interested in doing in the past. So first, Drew, thank you

186for the detailed update and thank you for the candor about it. I very much appreciate it and that I can see how that could play out, especially in COVID. I'm not exactly sure, Thomas, when you say like placeholders in the budget. I mean, that's the budgeting process, isn't it? Like, that's what we have to do. We have to go to the community and say, it might be a really high number. If we don't do that, where's the money coming from? Yeah. I mean, well, we build in contingencies and things like that. It's just, you know, in the past, and certainly if this board is more comfortable with that, we welcome that as an approach. In the past, when we've tried to, and we did a number of times talking about putting placeholders in for things,

187and the board was just not comfortable with that concept at all. I guess what I'm struggling with is, you did it though. So the money came from somewhere. So it seems like, I can't speak for previous boards, but we're supposed to present a budget to the community that's reflective of what we think and I understand if there's items, it's a cold winter, we don't know exactly what heating costs, that's different. An emergency, boiler breaks, there's a process for that. But this is something we... You're talking about something we know about. So, there's two things in this memo, there is approving the transfer for last year. I appreciate that detail. I don't think it... I agree it wasn't a great process, I could see how it played out. I'm personally going to be okay with it

188and we'll be happy. Happy is not the right word, I'll approve it, for me. But there's also a note in here about this year. This is gonna happen again in February and I'm really struggling to wrap my head around how we're gonna go through the same thing. This is both a very expensive person. I mean, $8,000 a day to come here for seven hours. It's a lot of money, but it's also a large amount, not in the scheme of our total budget but we're talking about a lot of mental health. I mean, we should have been having a discussion should we have hired mental health folks? I don't doubt this is a great program, but budgets are about trade-offs and making those decisions and I wanna be very candid with everybody here, I don't know

189yet, if I'll be able to support the budget transfer for the current year, I appreciate the information you added, it's been very helpful, I may have some requests for more information, but I just want to be candid with everybody here. And the reason I'm saying it tonight is because it's in the memo. I don't want anybody to get the wrong impression. If I vote for this memo that I'm also giving a tacit approval for another transfer. So I just wanna be upfront with everybody. Any additional discussion? Well, it looks like, Drew, just to clarify, you've got a budget and when you say it got away from you, I take it to mean that it didn't get away from you where it went from... I mean, my impression, at least part of it was from what

190you're saying, it didn't just go from, you know, 40 to 130. It must've gone at some point it just was incremental and then it was suddenly almost, I don't know, if suddenly is right? Incremental part was the growth in the number of our administrators who asked to participate in coaching. Okay. And the coaching is on a monthly basis and it's been critical in my view, and-- But it sounds like you engaged her, you had an idea that some people might use it, and a lot of people used it and having offered it, obviously, resenting it would have been even far worse than coming here and giving them a makeover because then you would have had administrators that... It would have created other problems, let's just say. Wait, I'm sorry. People can differ about. I'm sorry,

191I think actually you're supposed to come back here and I think the response is, we don't have the budget for it. I need to go and get a transfer. That's what this process is. I'm just saying like beforehand. Carl's saying you couldn't say to administrator, you can't do it. I'm saying the budget's a budget. Like I'm not saying it's not a great thing but we budget something, taxpayers approve it, that's what we're allowed to spend. So the question is, it's whether you came back here now or before, basically? And just to be specific, the coaching component, you know, there's these two components, the full group, professional learning together, and then the individual coaching. That coaching component wasn't realized until this budget that we're currently in was final, was, you know, was baked last March. So,

192it was not even something I anticipated for as a known budget line until, you know, until after the budget was adopted which explains, you know, the second part of the memo for a budget potential budget transfer in February or March. I guess what I'm not sure about to is it, you know, we have a lot of things that go... Fortunately we have a lot of things that come and under budget. We also have any number of lines in a given year that go over budget. So I guess my question is, kind of a more general question, you know, when is it that, I'm not really clear actually, now that I'm sitting here, like when it should come back to us and when it doesn't. It usually, the lines, when we're something doesn't work out the

193way we anticipated, we see it in this in this memo and we have sort of, my understanding is we've entrusted you on it. You all, as administration on a day-to-day basis to make that determination as to whether we need to stop something. And this is a little different, 'cause it might've been, maybe it was easier to stop, I don't know. So I'm just kind of asking, I guess, really, you know, is it that things should be coming back to us more regularly? Is that a custom, a practice I'm not clear on what the rules of the game are right now. I mean, I take what Ron says. We obviously do have a budget. We spent a lot of time on the budget, so there's no issue about that but on the other hand, we have

194all kinds of things that come out differently and, you know, budgets and generally speaking, estimate but of course it's approved and everything else. So I don't know, I've said it, I think. Does anybody? Carl. We follow board policy which is why you see the memo. It typically comes back, you know, later on. And I think what you spoke to earlier is that management, administrators is responsible for managing the budget and making the expenditures that are, you know, included within that budget. Sometimes things get overspent for one reason or another. and we typically will come, you know, after the fact to do those budget transfers that need board approval. Those ones, not at the end of the year ones, due to the closing of the books and the timing of board meetings and preparing for audits

195and everything, typically they do come back much later in the process or those end of the year transfers. I think what has perhaps grabbed the board's attention here and Ron's attention in particular, Carla and yours, is the idea that generally these memos seem to be for, or the ones that I've seen, have been for truly unanticipated costs due to COVID, right? Things like PPE. There was an item related to the salary of aids which had to be escalated due to supply and hiring constraints. And so, Drew, while I appreciate your candor in the way you brought these to us, I think the thing that's catching some people by surprise here is that this item seems less emergent or maybe easier to anticipate than some of the really unexpected, truly unprecedented things that had happened in

196the past year, right? And I think that that is why this item stands out and-- I'm not sure about that actually. If you say it was critical then for me that means that this was something that we needed to support our administrators in tending to our students. So I see it as, if you're telling me that this is a critical expense, I understand that. Last year was a tough year and ultimately we are here to ensure that our students are taken care of and that starts with our administration and trickles down to our teachers, to our students. So, I take the word critical from you seriously as an over-budget item, it happened. And I also, I think what you just said is important. I don't think it's a coincidence that with everything that was going

197on last year, that people felt the need for additional support on how to manage different things so I don't feel it's unrelated but, Jessica, I'm also not sure about that. What you said in terms of, we have all kinds of overages all the time. It's not just COVID, it's not just related. But it's that there are transfers for things that the team legally required of us. Things like-- I don't think that that's Special education. I don't think that that's... You'd have to go back and look. I don't think that's accurate. I think we have all kinds of different things. Whenever you hear consultants in general, you know, it's always seems like they could just push the button and cause the bill to go up, but, or they do more and it's hourly so it goes

198up a certain way. But I don't think it's just emergent. I don't think it's that limited. I can't put my finger on it right now without, I mean. Just to remind, so I don't think that Jessica and Drew would know this, but things were brought to the board last year that this is likely going to be a big transfer, a lot of them were COVID related, but they were brought so that, you know, they were very big changes. So it would be not be unprecedent for that to happen. And the board can, and Stuart can certainly speak to this, like all the ones over 25,000. So these are the ones that do come to the board are going to be the high ticket items. No (indistinct) talking about. It doesn't speak to the huge myriad

199of smaller transfers that happen as a matter of sort of daily operations of the district. Okay, are we ready to call for a vote? Is there more discussion? Are we ready to call? Can I call for the vote? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. Item 12.01 gift proposal to Green Acres. Jessica? Sorry, I just need, because we moved to that item. this is working differently. Okay. Here we go. So the board's gift policy provides that the board approve all gifts and the Green Acres PTA has offered a gift proposal of $5,526.97 for funding grade level grants for the current school year as stated in some attachments and we resolve it is recommended that the board accept with thanks this gift of $5,526.97 for funding the grade level grants

200as presented. Second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Extensions? The motion passes, thank you. Now we will move to item 13, Public Comment. I guess before I go through this, is anyone raised their hand? There's one person, but she's not raising her hand. Let me give her a second or two. Okay? Yeah. All right. I will close public comment and turn to item 14, Follow Up to Public Comment. I'll follow up if you don't mind to the one comment we had earlier. I just wanted to reiterate that there are other non-traditional spaces being used for PE and in Heath Code, including the multi-purpose rooms, which are about three quarters of the size of the regular gym as well as the open space in front of the auditorium which is the size of about two classrooms.

201And when the schedule becomes difficult, they do sometimes use the common areas and the pods which are usually multiple classroom size. There's one class in gym per period. So the 23 students are playing during the PE activities together. They are getting the physical activity, they're not in a hallway. I don't want it to seem like they're, you know, running up and down the hallway doing laps. They have the opportunity for those spaces. We are using the outdoors more than we ever would normally so, you know, even if it's cold, the kids are typically outside doing that. I think they're getting appropriate physical education and I give the gym teachers at Heath Code a big shout out for that program. If there are more specific questions about exactly what activities are happening, I would encourage parents

202to reach out directly to their PE teacher and have those conversations. First off, PE is required by the state so there is no substituting it for another special but I do think they're really receiving quality physical education in non-traditional spaces and we obviously can't wait to get the gym back, but I don't think our kids are suffering a hardship through PE at Heath Code right now. Yeah, in fact I was at Heath Code last week and doing a tour of, watched PE classes being conducted, talked with Maria, specifically asked her about that, she didn't identify any concerns or deficiencies in her mind. and in fact, it's the same thing Eric did, which is that she really commended the PE teachers for doing a great job. If I could just add as follow up Jim and

203Karen and I all went to Heathcote and saw the gym and spoke with Maria and Kathy and Mr. Borgia directly about PE and the activities that were happening there. So we also got that same information. In terms of Diana receiving details and specifics, she should reach out directly to Maria and the-- No, actually you should reach out right to Mr. Borgia Who's the gym teacher or the PE teacher. Okay. I think that was it, right? Okay. Item 15, wrap-up items. I have a note. Policy work. We'll bringing back versions of the policies we have discussed to the board. Yep, and the amended preamble. Anything else I'm forgetting? Okay. All right. Meeting dates for the coming month, item 16. Yeah. So this Friday, December 10th, we have the policy subcommittee meeting for the 1000 Series at

2041:30 p.m in room 170, 172 at the high school and that meeting will be live streamed. On Monday, January 10th, we have a Budget and Staffing Recommendations meeting at 6:30 PM in this room, 170, 172 in the high school, immediately following will be the board business meeting, same room, and executive session if needed. All live streamed. And Monday, January 24th, we'll have a special meeting or executive session if needed at 5:30 here in this room, 170, 172, and a board business meeting and education report immediately following a room 170, 172. Okay. And so now I would like to thank everyone for this meeting and I will entertain a motion to adjourn this business meeting. So moved. Second? Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Meeting adjourned, thank you.