BOE Business Meeting 2021-10-4

001(upbeat music) Hi, good evening. I call this meeting to order and note that all board members and the cabinet are present. Welcome, and thank you to all those attending this evening's board meeting, whether in the audience, via live streaming, or watching later on demand. Earlier this evening, the board met with officers and representatives of the Scarsdale Teachers Association. The STA shared their experiences, observations, and stories about the start of school. We also discussed DEI work underway at each school level and the additional work being done to foster welcoming and affirming environments at school. Many, many thanks to our faculty and staff for their important efforts so far this year. And thank you also to the STA for meeting with us. The board appreciates all the work that's being done around the district and the community

002related to DEI. Last week, I personally attended author Ken Liu's discussion about his work, "The Paper Menagerie." The event was co-sponsored by the Scarsdale Teachers Institute, the Interdependence Institute, and the Scarsdale Adult School. This collaboration provided for community learning and dialogue by bringing together teachers, parents, and community members to hear about the author's journey, his intent, and to allow us to contemplate the experiences and assumptions that readers bring to texts and to understand the importance of DEI work. Since our last meeting, the board held a development retreat with consultant, Marty Brooks from the Tri-state Consortium. At this retreat, the board established protocols and norms for the 2021/2022 school year. These agreements cover a range of topics from meeting norms to community engagement practices. Our protocols will be posted on the board's webpage along with our

003board goals and board assessment tool once they are completed. Also the board policy subcommittee met to discuss remote public comment. The board regrets that the meeting was inadvertently not recorded and we apologize for any inconvenience. Please know that minutes of the meeting have been posted on the board's web page, under board policy review. We will also hear summary of the policy subcommittees work during our board member reports this evening. Again, we encourage members of the public to send any comments or questions related to remote public participation directly to the board at [email protected]. As a reminder, the governor signed legislation that allows school boards the flexibility to conduct hybrid meetings until January 15th, 2022, and the board passed a resolution establishing remote public comment protocols at our last meeting. As a reminder, those clued three minutes

004per individual, per comment, period. First comment period to last no more than 1 1/2 hours and remote participants to turn on their cameras while speaking, these protocols will remain in effect until the board amends its policies on remote public participation. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you. As a writer, we're always putting the final touches on our notes. So I'd like to echo much of what Karen said. Thank you very much for all the recognition that you provided as part of that update. And I'd also like to say hi to our students, we rarely get to see students in the audience. So we are very excited that you guys are here. I know that it may or may not be attached to a class assignment, but we don't care. We're just happy that you guys are here,

005so thank you very much. Good evening and welcome. We appreciate you joining us here, as Karen said, in person or as part of our streaming audience to become more informed about our most important district work. The first few weeks of school have been energetic, joyful, and productive, as most of you know, one of our district wide DEI goals this year is to create welcoming and affirming environments for all within our school community. And our faculty and staff have responded to this priority through many intentional and multi-faceted acts of inclusion and community building. As our students began to settle into their regular academic routines, they're also selecting and participating in a wide range of other activities, including athletics, arts and music clubs, student government, and much more. We understand and support the social and psychological needs

006of our students to engage and interact with each other in non-academic settings. And we continuously work to provide our children and youth with co and extracurricular opportunities that align with our personal values, interests, and skills. One celebration of our students' interests and skills occurred this past Friday night in the form of the Scarsdale High School Homecoming Game. It was a great event for all those in attendance. The weather was a perfect autumn evening with just a bit of chill in the air. But the field field was beautifully showcased under its new lights. Our varsity football team demonstrated their incredible skill, metal, and sportsmanship. Our varsity cheerleading team kept the players and audience in high spirits throughout the game. And our student musicians both energized and entertained to the crowds. It was clear that all fans,

007young and old appreciated the contributions of the many staff involved to make this not only a wonderful experience for our students, but in fact, for the entire school community. The Maroon and White Booster Club also deserves our thanks for their many and ongoing contributions to our athletic programming across the district. And of course, the field lights, which would have not been possible without their generosity. While on the subject of gratitude, I would also like to thank all the students and families that contributed to the multicultural Scarsdale Middle-School Art Show. This work can be viewed at the Scarsdale Middle School PTA DEI webpage, and serves as a great example of just one of the many ways that our middle school students are learning about people and cultures around the world. Finally, it's worth mentioning that along

008with Latinx heritage month, October is also National Principal's month. Through visionary leadership and tireless pursuit of success for each student, our principals and assistant principals guide and support their schools, staff members, students, and families every single day. National Principal's month provides an opportunity to recognize, honor, and thank each of them for their enduring influence and impact. I encourage every family to acknowledge their principals and vice principal in some small way over the course of the month as I know this would mean a great deal to each of them. Thank you all again for joining us tonight, we have a full agenda and so I will pass the floor back to Karen, thank you. So I invite any board members who have opening reports to please give them, Amber, thank you. Thanks Karen. Last spring members

009of the board and the district met with the mayor, village trustees, and police chiefs to discuss traffic and safety in our village. As a followup to that meeting, Karen and I, along with other key members of the district administration met with mayor Veron, deputy mayor Arest, and trustee Lewis, as well as leadership from the Scarsdale Police Department. The purpose of both meetings was to communicate, designate key players, and forge a collaborative proactive process. Reports were given regarding preparations for the school year, specifically as they pertain to traffic and safety. And topics covered included the addition of no left turn sign at Quaker Ridge, increase in bus ridership at our schools, and police officers helping with the traffic flow at Scarsdale Middle School. There was also a reporting on attending shared trainings, using shared terminology, and

010having shared situational awareness. Trustee Lewis is overseeing the villages public safety pillar. He reported on efforts to identify best practices and any gaps as well as develop structures and protocols, so that work between the village and district does not ebb and flow depending on who is in seats. We all acknowledged the need to integrate and collaborate while respecting each other's structures and processes. We also identified future topics, including communication, marijuana legislation, flooding, fields, cell service, DEI, the pool complex, sidewalks, and the paused freeway project. We look forward to maintaining an open channel of communication with the village. Thank you very much. Other board members wish to give a report, Bob. Yes, last Monday, the 27th, I had a chance to attend a multi-cultural coffee for the Scarsdale Middle School at one of the parents' houses.

011The agenda was essentially to allow an opportunity for parents to meet each other, to hear about the schedule of events and to just generally have a chance to chat among themselves. It was in particular helpful for me because I got to meet a lot of the parents, to engage them in some wonderful conversations. And I would just like to encourage any parent who might have any interest in that meeting other families from abroad to attend these gatherings. They're just very collegial and very friendly, and everyone's here to help each other navigate the Scarsdale system. And I just really personally found it very helpful. So I appreciate those sort of meetings being set up. Other board numbers, Carl. I met with some of the executives from CHILD, which is the PT council committee for children having

012individual learning differences. It's essentially a group of parents offering resources and support to exactly that children with individual learning differences. So very supportive group of people that got a lot of programs coming up and really making themselves available for parents to facilitate services for their children and students. There are some coffees coming up for the middle school is tomorrow at 9:30, the high school, October 19th at 9:30 a.m. And then there are a variety of speaker events. So I encourage everybody, whether you're a parent of a child with an individual learning difference or not, certainly can benefit from understanding what is going on with the students and what the resources are in the community and how to work to continue to make Scarsdale and the Scarsdale schools a welcoming place for these students as well.

013I have two VA's on reports tonight. The first is from the Scarsdale drug and alcohol task force. We had a meeting last week and a couple of updates. The first is that as in years past the DATF will be co-sponsoring a speaker series again this year. The next event, I believe is likely in October, but look for details about the specific event to come. The second is that the pride survey results should be available this fall. I believe it will be coming through a PTA meeting and potentially some other channels. So the community should look for those survey results this fall. And last, but certainly not least, the DATF and Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling was recently awarded a federal grant for $125,000. This grant is renewable annually over five years for a total of $625,000.

014The DATF was one of only 52 new recipients nationwide to be awarded in this grant cycle. The grant provides grants to community coalitions to strengthen the infrastructure among local partners to create and sustain a reduction in local youth substance abuse. And there should be more information coming out of the DATF on the uses of those grants to the school community and the broader community. I also have a liaison update from the Scarsdale Safe Coalition. As in previous years, they are planning for a fall and spring event, events in the past have included Denim Day and The Community Book Read, more details on those events should be coming soon. They're also looking at potential opportunities to partner with local businesses and see if that is an avenue that would make sense for our community. And in

015addition to continuing previous events that they've done, they are looking at some new events. Those are still on the discussion phase. So I'll hold off saying anything about them until those are farther along, but both of these committees are actively working on behalf of the community. Thank you, Ron. Any other reports? Do we want to Jessica and Ron and me give a brief report on our policy subcommittee work. So will you start with that, Jessica or Ron? I'll start. Okay. I'll start, and I'll even turn on my microphone to do it. I apologize. So Karen, Ron, and I met in a public policy subcommittee meeting looking at comment policies from the public, Thomas joined us. And also it was, I believe, intended to be televised. Unfortunately, I think there was a flaw in that, but

016Karen had mentioned in the opening comments, we discussed the length of comments and modes for making Zoom comment a longer range possibility and revising the wording of specific policies to accommodate that. And I think we got through sort of the first major policy that required revision and we still probably have another additional meeting or two left of that subcommittee. Anything to add, Ron? The only thing I would add is that, although the meeting wasn't recorded, there's detailed minutes available on the board website, including those minute, so it looks like one page when you first look at it. There's a number of links though that go to all the policies we discuss and probably most community members would be interested in are seeing the current status of the suggested revisions to the policy. So the community

017can see all the potential changes through a red line that the committee discussed and can provide any feedback to the committee and the whole board by going on there. So it is all captured. And if I'm sure if anybody has any questions they can reach out as well. Yes, and again, that is located on the board policy review tab on the board of education webpage. And again, we appreciate any comments from the public sent directly to us via our email address. So, okay, thank you all very much for your reports. So now, we will turn to number three, our information to discussion items back to school update. Great, so tonight we're gonna be hitting on four broad areas. The first will be COVID-19 metrics and testing update. Eric will provide those to us. We're gonna

018move on and talk for a moment about booster shots and finally end out the little presentation with athletics, extracurricular, and club activities that are underway. So with that, Eric. Thank you, Thomas. Starting out with kind of where we are as far as the Delta variant and spread in Westchester County. The news is actually pretty good, over the last few weeks, CDC has actually dropped our designation from high risk of spread to substantial risk of threat spread. So that is kind of one step down on our four step ladder as has been the case for the duration of the Delta variant. The two metrics they use to determine your risk tier is the number of cases, daily cases per 100,000 over seven days, and then the positive test rate. So we have always been in the

019lowest category for the positive test rate, but our cases per 100,000 have been high, that has since dropped to 10.7 daily today. And when you multiply that out over seven, we are starting to inch down towards substantial, which is 50 to 100. And then under 50 is, I'm sorry, under 10 is the lowest category. So we hope that we continue on that trajectory. We are currently at 1.8 positivity rate in Westchester County and only a 0.85 infection rate. So all of those things are trending down fairly substantially, and it's really actually quite good news for the county and the state. The state is a little bit higher than we are in this county, (coughs loudly) excuse me, especially in its positivity rate currently. Wanted to give you a number of the cases in quarantines that

020we've had kind of since the beginning of the year. Scarsdale has had 22 total cases of COVID from the start of the school year. Eight of those cases are adults, the rest are students. Most of the students are skewed to the middle and elementary schools, are unvaccinated populations. We have seen breakthrough cases, both in students and in adults in the year. So most of our adult cases are actually breakthroughs and the high school and upper age middle school students are mostly unvaccinated, but there are a number of breakthroughs in those cases. As far as quarantine goes, since the change in our proximate contact definition or the dropping of the proximate contact definition, we have seen a great reduction in the number of quarantines per case as is expected during bad weather days when there is

021indoor lunch and a case, that does result in more quarantines, but an average of about 3 to 5 on an indoor lunch day per case on the elementary and middle school levels. And then on an outdoor lunch date, one or two is typical per case. So given the number of total cases, we've had the rate at which they're coming in and the quarantines, we are at a sustainable level currently. The quarantine instruction plan has gone into effect and seems to be coming online and working well for many of our kids. And generally, the tutors, and teachers, and retired teachers are engaging those students in an excellent way. We are continuing to use our tutoring firm, but also looking for additional firms to help us in case we do have an uptick in the number of

022cases and or quarantines, which knock on wood, given the rate of the numbers, that will not be the case. Many of you have seen the testing program emails that have gone out to families. I just wanna give a context to the testing program, how it has been provided for the district and what our relationship to some of the vendors that are doing this program for the county are. So there are three different entities that we are working with that make up the county testing program, the lab and the overarching, well, the overarching authority is the county department of health. They have hired and contracted with Mount Sinai labs to do all of the testing that is collected from schools. In turn, Mount Sinai has subcontracted two different vendors. The first is a company called C-19

023Safety First, and this is a logistics company that helps us as a district get our testing materials in, make sure they are correctly labeled and get them back to Mount Sinai. And then the other subcontractor is a company called Verbosity, which is handling the data end of the situation, which includes the consent emails that you have recently received. That is the area that the testing program has become slightly problematic in that there has been some hiccups in their consent process online, including not giving adequate adequate heads up to us as the district, that there would be separate emails for each student going out rather than the ability to sign up multiple students under one email. So that was corrected over the weekend and an FAQ and instructions from Verbosity were sent out over the weekend,

024as well as Verbosity connecting with any parents that had emailed us with difficulties. It does seem that from all of the emails we had received, as far as parents with questions, Verbosity has responded to them and help them sign up. We have gotten some initial numbers as far as the number of people consenting. We sent out consent to our entire staff and our entire student community asking for them to participate. It looks like early numbers, we have about 28% of our total population consenting to that testing. So a little bit more than 1/4 of our students and staff have said, I don't have the exact breakdown yet. Verbosity is still compiling their data and getting us access to that. In a perfect world, we would like to start testing this week. That being said, given

025my experience thus far with the rollout of the program, I think early next week will be our first cycle of testing. We will be able to test the entirety of people who consented the first week and then given our numbers, it looks like we will go to a two week cycle. So in other words, if you've consented to be tested, you will be screened every other week following this week or next week's testing. So that's really where we stand as far as that goes, we will be sending out very detailed directions on how to pick up, collect, and drop off samples as we finalize that with C-19 Safety First. At this point, we're waiting on the numbers from Verbosity because the number of tests that we have to give out, how they're spread out across

026our buildings will kind of impact the way we do the logistics of getting those tests out and then recollect it. But in general terms, what will happen is, a student will receive their test kit on one day that will be marked with all of the identifiable information. They will take that kit home. Their parents will help them collect a sample of spit, which is a 10 milliliter sample in a small tube. They will seal that and put it back in the bag and there will be drop boxes at the entrances to each school the next day, where that can just be dropped off. And then we will take care of getting that to Mount Sinai. We should have results at the latest 48 hours, but usually within 24 hours from Mount Sinai. So that's where

027we are as far as the testing goes, I'll turn it over to Thomas for booster shots if there's no questions on that Great, yeah. Pause for a moment, and see if there's anybody with questions on either of those items, either the numbers or the quarantine. So Eric, are we going to continue to ask parents to sign up for testing? Yes, so the ability to sign up for the screening program will be open indefinitely, that being said, we have closed access to the first cycle of testing now, so that we can get it set and get our first testing underway. But as people will be able to sign up, we will send periodic reminders that if people would like to sign up for the consent for the screening program, they can. And one more question, sorry.

028So it's great that Westchester County dropped from high risk to substantial risk, but the governor's order as mask mandate stands regardless of our level, is that correct? The New York State Dpartment of Health mandated mask order is not based on the CDC tier of spreadability. It is a blanket mandate that would need to be rescinded or adjusted in the future before we could change that. Thank you. Eric, in terms of other schools, let's use Westchester as our benchmark for the sake of argument, how does our percentage compare? It feels low to me, but I don't... Percentage for screening? Yeah. I only received our numbers this morning, so I'm not sure. We are on the front end with the county's testing program of getting up and running. I only know of one school that has started

029testing, all the rest are actually behind where we are in the process. So I imagine by the next board meeting, I will have some idea of our relativity to other districts in Westchester, but right now I don't. I mean, is it your sense that the percentage is at a number that it will give us the comfort in terms of the value of the testing that we would like? In other words, it's obviously, it is what it is, but it feels that there's a large percentage that aren't gonna to be a part the... You are correct. There is a large percentage that have not granted consent for the screening testing. There have been about a dozen and a half people who have granted consent. And then the day later revoke that consent, I do believe there

030is some conversation in and amongst the community around whether they want their students to be tested and how often and whether or not, some families may believe that is a higher risk of quarantine for their students. There's also some people who are worried about false positives in the PCR. So I think those are conversations being had. I think those are keeping the numbers down a little bit. I do think having 25% of our population tested on a regular basis or thereabouts will give us certainly an idea of if there is spread, asymptomatic spread mainly that we don't know about in the district in any significant way. Obviously, the higher the number, the more beneficial the information is. Eric, do you think that there's anything that we can do or the district as board members or

031that the district is undertaking in the next couple of days to try to increase participation in the program? I know there were some snafus with email or there was some confusion because it could only go to one parent. I think there are cases where perhaps some people didn't see it. Is there gonna be any joint effort with the PTA to sort of (speakers cross talk) So the next couple of days, no, because I think we need to have for the first testing, the people that we have now, we're going to move through with our first testing. I do think after that, we will work with the PTC and we'll work to report back to the board and to the community on how the first testing cycle has gone, which will hopefully give people a little

032bit more comfort in getting involved. Thank you. Eric. I don't mean to put you on the spot on this, so if you're not aware, that's okay. Sure. But my understanding is Mamaroneck did a big gateway testing and has already done rounds of testing, are they not doing it through the county program? I don't know. Okay, I only know what I've seen sent to me. Yeah, I'd be happy to reach out. My understanding is that they reached upwards of 90% consent. It'd be interesting to know what they did on that. Can you talk a little bit about the 28%? How does that break down? Cause that's of the whole school population, correct? That is of both students and staff. Do you have the breakdown of the... Not yet. Those are likely not vaccinated. So elementary plus

033six plus seven. Not yet. Part of seven. Unfortunately not yet, they haven't finished uploading all the data into our groupings. They've only given us kind of the big number this morning. So I don't have exactly how it's broken down, but I will report out as soon as I have a number. 'Cause I think as we think about what a next step might be, I agree on the face of a 28% seems low. Having said that if it's skewed towards those that are unvaccinated, maybe we're okay with that. Sure. And maybe that changes our plan, But I am in agreement with some of my fellow board members about trying to think about ways to increase it 'cause all the things you spoke about false positives, now that burden is placed on a smaller population in the

034school. And that would be hard for that population to feel comfortable saying, "Well, I'm saying okay, but others aren't taking that risk." I'm sure this question will come up, if you receive a false positive, is there any way to test out of that? So I think it's really important to understand PCR testing and I'm not an epidemiologist nor a physician. So I'm gonna give you my understanding as reported to me by the physicians that we've worked with and the department of health. From a department of health standpoint, a PCR positive test is a positive test period, end of discussion. So there is no number of followup tests coming back negative that will get you out of a 10 day isolation if you have a positive PCR test. That being said, the PCR test is extremely

035accurate, and I think some of the false positive argument is really around the amount of cycles it takes to get the positive and how much of a viral load is actually present. When a PCR has come back finding the virus, there is virus present. What the research that is out is how much virus needs to be there in order to be considered positive and contagious. What kind of viral reload is there? Could there be contamination of the virus that you breathe in and not necessarily being infected, but is in the sample? So the PCR is, if they're finding COVID have found COVID, most cycles of PCR test take 40 cycles is my understanding, where in that process if you're getting it on the 40th cycle, how small of a viral load is that? And what

036does that mean from a public health standpoint, I think is where the research and the argument around false positives quote unquote is. Thanks. And just the last question, do you know the total number of quarantine since that proximate was changed? I don't have the exact number, but like I said, most of our upper high school and middle school and elementary school for outside lunch days, it's one or zero for each case. On inside lunch days, it tends to be around 3 to 5 depending on where the student is sitting and that perimeter around them. Thank you. Okay, moving on to booster shots, we did learn of educators eligibility to be able to receive a booster shot a week ago last Friday. And once we learned that information, we immediately circulated that out and certainly encouraged

037folks to participate in that. We gave folks specific details about where those shots could be received and also talked about sort of anticipated questions with regards to that process. So that's something, and again, to answer a question that's just been asked, it's not just a one and done, we continue to cycle through that information and continue to push it out to our employees. It's also, I think, important to note that we are also modeling it, the majority of the cabinet members sitting at this table, I know personally went last week, almost in tandem to get booster shots. I'm not gonna call out everybody's name, but I will sort of out myself and I did get mine and I have my booster update here. So we've been really, again, really encouraging people to keep health and

038safety at the top of mind and making sure that we're all doing as much as we can to do that. We went to the city center, many of us. It was a little slower than perhaps it had been, but we were all able to get in and out within 40, 45 minutes, including the 15, 20 minute wait time after the shot. I personally just my own personal testimony. This is now my third Pfizer shot and I've had no issues. I know that some people have felt lousy the next day or had a sore arm, but I don't know if I'm just lucky or not, but just want to tell the good news that I personally have had no issues with it at all. And again, we continue to ask people to really think about keeping

039both our employees, health and safety, as well as our students and their families health and safety at the forefront of thinking when deciding to make this decision for themselves. Any questions about boosters. Question on this, is boosters available for Moderna, I thought it's mostly from Pfizer? Only Pfizer hasn't approved booster. (participant asking question) Yeah. That's correct. I have a sort of tangential comment, I guess. Sure. Which is, I think that given the emphasis on shots and boosters and vaccines and boosters lately, there may have been less attention to the flu shot than we might normally give. Is that something that's being made available to staff or encouraged through normal channels? I know we've spent so much energy focusing on COVID. I'd hate to see people getting the ordinary. Yeah, I mean, Eric can speak to

040this. I think there was a historically low on flu season this past year, but so it has not been sort of top of mind the way COVID has, but Drew was raising his hands, so I assume he has more. We have provided access in one way or another to opportunities for the flu shot to our staff in the past. It's always been through the White Plains hospital, in years past, they would send people here, several years ago, they stopped doing that, but made the flu shot available at their site. We have not set that up yet this year. I'm not 100% confident they'll have the capacity to do that, but if they do, we will do that. And we typically set up three days, we provide busing during the day outside of our normal student

041transportation time to help people get there easily, not have to worry about parking, et cetera. Thank you, Drew. There is a hope from the medical community that like last year where flu was super, super low, that the continued mask wearing in schools will actually hold that flu transmission out as well. Yeah. I recognize that I just, it's another thing. Yeah. So we're gonna round this out with a short discussion on athletics and extracurriculars. So I'm gonna ask Ray to come to the podium and first speak to us about the athletic program. Sure, thank you, Thomas. At our last meeting, you heard that I mentioned that we had the highest participation that I'd experienced in my time here at Scarsdale. So we had almost 700 students who submitted gold cards. And at last count, we have

042about 600 who are rostered on teams. We don't know if some of those gold cards were duplicates and or people who didn't show up, but we know that the attrition rate from tryouts is much less than the difference between those two numbers. So daily, we're at about 40% participating this fall with the male, female split being at 45 and 55% respectively. I think a lot of this level of interest is really based upon all the collaboration that occurred between the community and the athletic department to keep programs running. I think the word was out that people were willing to do whatever it took so that their kids could be out playing, spending time with their friends outdoors. We're still experiencing some challenges. Most significant challenge we've faced has been with swimming and having a facility

043on a regular basis. We're hoping that gets cleared up, a lot of it has to do with paperwork and approval of our health and safety plans, along with the contracts and additional paperwork due to COVID for clearance. And that's just been a challenge for us this fall, specifically related to swim. Community has been outstanding, one example of that is homecoming. We had an incredible turnout Friday night and the energy around our football team and our cheerleaders and all of our athletes from the pep rally through the end of that evening was extraordinary. Another thing I'd like to share, which we were highlighted for at the beginning of this fall is every varsity team was recognized by the New York state Public High School Athletic Association scholar athlete teams for last year. And Scarsdale High School

044was recognized as a school of distinction because of that fact. And while our JV and freshmen teams don't have formal recognition for that, they also achieve that same level of criteria, which is that 75% of their members or more meet or exceed the average grade of 90%. And that's amazing to say, especially in a COVID here. So all I can say is that I guess I have to close out with, there's been an incredible level of cooperation between the community and the school district to pull our athletic programs off. And that's not happening everywhere. Scarsdale is truly a special place and our kids are better off because of it. Thank you, Ray. I just will add a little bit more on that, as we were planning for this meeting, the board officers did request we

045often emphasize athletics. There's a sense of we don't always talk about all the other opportunities that are available for students and that students participate in. Obviously, a lot of that's driven by passion, interest, and skills. And so our students, we have kids who cross over into lots of different areas and some kids who feel like they wanna specialize a little bit more in a couple of areas. And obviously, part of the recalibration of this year is also opening up all those clubs and activities again to students because the hybrid model and the virtual virtual only models didn't necessarily lend themselves to the same kind of active participation as past years, perhaps. So just to raise numbers, the school year is just starting, half of our clubs haven't even met yet. Some of them have open

046enrollment and open membership, and so we're still in the process of collecting that information. We'll certainly have better numbers by the next time we have our business meeting, but just to provide a little more context to go along with the numbers that Ray provided. We do have 70 clubs at our high school, in addition to the varsity JV and freshmen teams. In addition to those teams that Ray just talked about. So lots of opportunities for students to be involved across a range of different areas. Our past data, not this year, but when we looked at the pride survey, which does measure folks involvement and connectedness with the high school, we have about 95% participation overall, our student body in outside curricular, co-curricular activities or extracurricular activities, all of that number, about 80% of our students

047participate in clubs of various sorts, often more than one. And about 90% of our students participate in athletics or sports across the three team designations that we talked about. When we go to the middle school, we have about half that we have 23 clubs that are available and already in our first, what is it? 16 days of school, we have five or excuse me, 400 of our students signed up for various clubs already. So that's a pretty high number. And again, over half of those have an open enrollment process right now. So kids are in the process of still signing up. So we'll be happy to bring back more information about those opportunities and talk a little bit more about some of the specific activities that kids are involved in as part of that. Go

048ahead, questions. Great, could you just clarify, you mentioned the participation split 55/45. Could you just, what was 55? Girls to boys? Right, so if we look at the total number of athletes this fall, 55% of them are girls and 45% are boys. Gotcha, thank you. You're welcome. Thomas, I had a question. Have any specific new clubs been introduced under the wellness pillar this year? And I don't mean to catch you off guard with that one. That was just something that occurred to me, I assume talking about it in the... Yeah, I don't have those, typically the process and Eric can speak a little bit more about this at the high school as well, is generated based on student interest. And so we have a historical clubs that have been in place for a very long

049time of which there has been historical interest in those. And then we have processes, both actually for informal athletic teams as well as clubs in which the students want to introduce a new club, then they have a process that they work through typically with ani. Drew, you wanna say a little bit more about. Yeah, I think you really covered it. It is a contractual element with the STA contract. There are clubs that are set and assigned, but then there's two types of room for new clubs. There is a monetary allocation for advisors to support new clubs that we don't know exactly what they are before the year starts, but there are resources to that, but those are usually clubs that have started prior with no funding or support formally structured, but student interest leads to

050recruiting of a faculty member or staff member to support that club. And they exist for some period of time before they get on the radar of this funding, basically. Right, yes, I just was curious in light of the comments about more enthusiasm this year, post hybrid. It just takes a little time for that to trickle up into our record keeping. So there may be, and we'll let you know if there are. We did for the benefit of folks who are not at the first meeting, which was with the STA, our teachers, they did talk about kids really clamoring for opportunities for interactions and connectedness this year, and how there seems to be out of the gate a lot of interest and sort of returning back to some of those normal staples of high school life.

051Thank you very much. Okay. so that concludes our back to school updates. And again, this will be a regular feature of our meetings throughout the course of the year, at least until these things come off and then we'll see about that after. Thank you very much. So now, we'll turn to item four personnel report, Drew. Thank you, I was just gonna follow up briefly tonight on a question Jessica that you asked last time when we recovering the enrollment report, and that was about transfers. Students who have left, left the district, and thanks to Rachel, she's done great work. It's trickier data to interpret than it looks at first. And she was walking me through some of this. Our system is really set up to collect the information we're required to report to the student information

052repository system at state Ed. So it takes some decoding and some sleuthing to figure some of this out. So I've got to give sort of a high level overview of our transfers and then sort of what categories they fall into. So we looked back, Rachel looked back five year ending with last year, and if we consider the four previous years normal, last year was not, we average about 260 transfers a year. That includes students who transfer to another New York state public school. So they moved jurisdictions. Students who've transferred to a private school or religious parochial school, students who've transferred to out of state, a school out of state, transfer to homeschooling with their parent or guardian or an approved provider or left the country. Those are the top five, there's a number of other

053categories, but these are really the bulk of them. And just to give you a sense on each of those five areas, the average in a normal year compared to last year where we had over 500 transfers. So we had almost a doubling of that, but it's interesting, sort of where that all lands. So on an average year, we have about 50 students who transfer to another public school. That number last year was 135, on an average year, we have about 55 students who transfer to a private or parochial school. Last year, that number was 154. On a typical year, we have about 75 students who transfer outside of New York State. That number was 134 last year, our transfer to homeschooling, that actually went down last year. The average is about, well, I'd say the

054average is about 12 and it was right there at the average last year. We did see a spike in the spring of 2020 of transfer to homeschool doubling our normal average up to 17, but overall a small number. And then finally, on average, we see something like 70 students, 65 to 70 students leaving the country and that was right on par with 66 last year. But when we look at the next thing we looked at was just kind of comparing one year, a typical year to last year and there's some interesting things. So for example, while we had that 500 or so students transfer last year, 241 of them moved, they changed residents from Scarsdale. 114 of them enrolled in private schools. And at least as far as we know remain there. 155 of them

055left for one of those five reasons and are back in our schools. So that last number is the biggest change we've seen. So 31% of our transfers came back, in a typical year, that percentage is seven. So that is an interesting uptick. It seems like people were adjusting, making decisions about their child's education until things may have started to look more normal and then come back. Something important includes that a large number of those are kindergartners. Okay. That left and came back. And came back, Right. So we'll keep diving into those numbers, but it's an interesting, thank you, Rachel. Drew, can I just ask you about the left and came back for a second, and I'm not sure I captured all the numbers as you were speaking. 155 left and came back, as Rachel mentioned,

056for those that couldn't hear at home, many were kindergartners. As we know, a lot, went to some private places, started a kindergarten program and came back. If I have this correctly, 114 enrolled in private schools, 241 moved, I guess what I'm struggling is if many of those 114 went to these private kindergartens and came back, there's still another 40 that it's not clear where they went and came back from. Well, left and came back cause. 155 left and came back, but only 114 were... And stayed, separating that out, that a number of people who left and maybe enrolled in private school, what this is separating that out. You excluded the ones that we know are back now, that 114 went to private and have not come back. I understand, thank you. Yeah. And then this

057is probably a broader conversation. Let me to just to clear. So we had 154 that we knew transferred to New York state private school or religious school. These are kind of dis-aggregating the numbers in two ways. These five reasons people may have left. Some of them came back, whether it was from the private school, from moving outside of New York state or whatever. Gotcha. It's not those aren't all private school students coming back necessarily, right, Rachel? That's correct. Yeah. They could have moved to a residence upstate or enrolled in a different school and come back, could be included in that number, just to make it a random example. I don't want to do this now, 'cause I guess I wanna sit with this and just look at the math, but basically, the question I'd have

058is of the 500 that left, if we take out those that moved for those, some of those reasons, like they just moved out of the country or they moved out of state. How many people who didn't do one of those types of moves left this district and didn't come back? I think we can get that from this data, but you tell me if you don't think that's something we can get. 144. 114. That's 114. Yeah. No, it's more 114 went the private school. That's the private enrollments, right? Yeah. Yeah, we actually have to go address by address to answer that. I see, okay. But I mean, we can look at that if that's the board's wish. I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I don't wanna send you on just a data mining

059hunt just for data. I'm trying to work backwards of what I'm trying to think about and that is why, why do people leave this district? And obviously there's COVID, but the question is so some left and we know that came back. Those that didn't, I would be interested to know, try to unpack that a little bit, that has implications for what we talk about when budgeting comes around and all of that kind of stuff. But that's just my personal view. Thank you for providing that follow-up, Drew. Sure. very much. Thank you, Drew. So now, we will move to item five, hearing from those presents. At this time, members of the community are invited to speak on agenda items and non personnel matters, please state your name and address and if you represent an organization, please

060also limit your remarks to three minutes. And again, we will allow the people in the audience to speak first and then before we move to a remote participants. Good evening, Leah Dembitzer, 354 Mamaroneck Road speaking as president of the Scarsdale Middle School PTA. We have a special speaker event related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the middle school community and curriculum. And I say special because we're lucky to have Edgar McIntosh coming to speak with us. And you're always precious, we thank you for your time and principal, Meghan Troy, who I know has done a lot of, is currently doing a lot of meaningful multi-faceted work at the middle school in this diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's next Tuesday evening, October 12th at 6:30 p.m. And you have to register to attend the webinar. And

061the registration link is in our e-blast for the middle school community. In conjunction with our book fair that is beginning this week, the middle school PTA has also launched a DEI library donation initiative. Our librarian Shauna Friesan has created a list of books that would be enriching to our learning community. I encourage SMS parents to donate to this initiative. They may do so on membership toolkit, details are in our e-blast and if you donate an amount greater than $15, your donated book will include a personalized book plate to recognize your student's name. October is LGBTQ history month and our PTA e-blast included a link to an October calendar observances as well as information about LGBTQ history month and resources if any parents wanna learn more, thank you. Thank you very much, Leah. Hi, how are

062you? Hi. My name is Diana Cohen, I live at One Duck Pond Road. My daughter is in Heathcote Elementary. I'm here to follow up on your nutrition and development in elementary school, I continue to be concerned that young children are not able to meet their requirements and are missing some key social development opportunities at school due to the no snack policy and showing TV during indoor lunch. Lunch is supposed to be a time for kids to learn to socialize with their peers, to recharge and to eat. My daughter doesn't consistently eat her lunch because she's busy watching TV. The CDC and the American Association of pediatrics recommend kids get 20 minutes time to sit and eat their lunch because one is so critical to their growth and development at that age. they also recommend 2

063to 3 snack times a day for kids in elementary age. So if we put that together, there's two gaps in nutritional related elements regarding the AAP recommendations. In addition, socialization is just as important for kids in these age for their long-term success. Just like learning, kids need to play. There's so much talk about play these days, lunch is an opportunity for kids to talk and that is a way of playing for them. My son, he's five years old. He goes to KBLs here in Scarsdale, he has a normal snack time and a normal lunch. I haven't been notified of one COVID case in his school. If these were leading to super spreader events when we know, New York city schools, Connecticut schools, public and private schools have snack time and indoor lunches without TV. And

064still, we haven't heard a peep about rampant COVID spread in those schools. As I mentioned, elementary school is a key time for growth and development socially and physically, you asked why kids are leaving the district. And it's because, I mean, speaking for myself, I'm new here, but there's a lot of parents that feel really strongly about their kids getting the social opportunities that they need and things like snack and lunch are really important to us. And when we're talking about like a six-year-old, I'd love the school board to revisit these policies with a pediatrician and a childhood development specialist and talk to neighboring schools to understand how they're going about these times and how they got comfortable reinstating snacks and indoor lunch in a typical manner. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, Ms. Cohen, you

065said your daughter doesn't eat lunch and you said why? And I just, maybe 'cause of the mask, I just couldn't hear you for a second. 'Cause she is watching TV. TV, so she's not in school. No, she's in school, they show TV during indoor lunch. Okay, I understand. Thank you for your clarification. Thank you. Would anyone else from the audience like to speak? Okay, so now, we will look to see if we have any remote participants. No. No, zero. That's no, okay. So now, I will close this section of public comments and we will move to written communications item six, Amber. 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

066to occur in public. Therefore, your written communications and emails will be reported at an upcoming public board meeting. A board member will respond at their earliest convenience. And item 6.02 is written communications. There we go. Through the period of September 17, through September 30th, the board received 21 emails, 16 emails were on district matters. Topics included Mandarin and DEI, AET and wellness, COVID protocols, athletic issues, including thoughts on practices for the swim team and student behavior at games and appreciation for district communications and Facebook posts. There were two emails on board meetings. One discussed the challenges of Zoom during public comments. And one was a copy of the speakers remarks from public comment. And there were three invitations or publications. One was to the multi multicultural coffee at the Scarsdale middle school. Another was to

067an Eagle court of honor. And there was information on COVID vaccines for younger children, thank you. Thank you. Now, we will move to item seven, the consented agenda agenda. And I will read the preamble to that first, The consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the board into a single motion, items are selected for the consent agenda when the officers of the board and the superintendent believe there's no controversy regarding them. The items on the consent agenda will have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. If any member of the board feels that any item on 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. And now, we'll move to the consent

068agenda, item eight and Bob. Sure, there are six items on the consent agenda for consideration. The first is item 8.01. And I recommend that the board accept the minutes from the September 20th, 2021 board business meeting as presented. Item 8.02, it resolved that the board of education of the Scarsdale union preschool district hereby accepts the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign the following instructional personnel. And the categories that were listed were the CSC summer meetings, athletic coaching, salary, credit advancement, teacher interns, and permanent building substitutes, obviously with specific names. 8.03, it resolved that the board of education, the Scarsdale union free school district hereby accepts the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign the following non-instructional personnel with a list of personnel names listed. 8.04, it is recommended that the board adopt

069the following resolution. Resolve that the board of education approved the collective bargaining agreement between the Scarsdale Board of Education and the Scarsdale Association of Educational Secretaries for the period, July 1, 2021 to June 30th, 2025. Item 8.05, it resolved that the board hereby authorizes the law firm of Bon, Schoeneck, and King to appeal the September 8th, 2021 decision in the matter of Mooney versus Scarsdale public schools index number 64055/2020 to the appellate division, second department. Item 8.06, background, the draft 2022/2023 budget development calendar was presented to the board on September 17th, 2021 for review questions and discussion at the September 2020/2021 board meeting. I recommend that the board of education improve the calendar for the development of the 2022-23 budget. And lastly, item 8.07. I recommend that the board accept the consent agenda as presented.

070Is there a second? Second. Any discussion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions. Abstain. The consent agenda is approved. Now, we will move to item nine, information items, which will be and discussions, which will be led by Thomas. There are four items in total. Typically, the superintendent and cabinet works through all of these items. However, the first is the bond and facility products update, which Stuart will walk us through. We'll have a couple of proposed new textbooks, which Edgar will share. And then I'm gonna turn this back over to the board to review items 9.03, which are board of education goals and evaluation template. And then finally 9.04, which is the New York School Boards Association proposed by law amendments. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Stewart to walk us through

071the bond and facility projects update. Very good, thank you, Thomas. Also, I'd like to welcome the facilities director, Mike Paterra and assistant facilities director, John Antonicelli, who are with us here this evening as well. We do all of this good work on a day-to-day basis. And as I do every October, I do like to update the board of education community on the projects have happened over the course of the last summer, both any bond projects. So currently, we still are working on the 2018 bond project, and then any of the budget supported projects such as plant improvements and transfer to capital projects. So to get into where we stand with our timeline for the 2018 bond, as you recall, these were approved back in February of 2018, how time flies, 3 1/2 years ago already.

072You can see from this grid, and this is sort of a high level, obviously, of all the different projects we've taken on. Starting back in the summer of 2019 when we did all this security vestibules at the elementary buildings and the boiler replacement at the high school. Last summer was certainly a busy and all the buildings, you'll notice, one glaring thing we don't have here is Green Acres, obviously that work has being completed. And that also started in summer of 2019. And that had obviously, probably all of these types of updates and additions as well. Summer of 2021, this past summer was relatively quiet with all of our work with Green Acres being finished. The only work that was undertaken was roof work at Edgewood, Quaker Ridge, and the Middle School, which leaves the remaining

073scope which will be left for summer of 2022, primarily electrical panel upgrades in HAVHC work, including unit vendor later replacements and installations at Heathcote, Quaker Ridge, middle school and high school. That work is being finalized. Now, we'll be going up to SED shortly for their approval. Just some very exciting pictures of roofs. So actually probably a viewpoint we don't often see, right? So Edgewood EPDM roof up on that facility. There's also some work on the cupela there as well. Middle School, I thought this was a really interesting picture because it showed the vast size of this structure and the number of workers that were engaged in this project at any given time. So this is a fantastic project to not only have approved, but now, to have completed, we've had leaks in that facility. Even

074though we do great work, putting money into our roofs every year, we've had leaks, cost us money, inconveniences and all of that. Now, this is something that we don't have to worry about and if it were to happen, it will be covered by warranty going forward. I did not have a picture of Quaker Ridge, unfortunately. Middle School and High School security cameras, it's obviously an outside camera at the middle school, but both inside and outside at the Middle School and High School have now been installed throughout the building and outside as well. Moving on to plant improvement projects. So these were the projects that were approved as part of the 21/22 school year budget. So LED lighting at Fox Meadow and Edgewood, completed and fantastically came in way under budget. We actually did this work

075a little bit differently where we, and thanks to Mike and his team for undertaking this, where we purchased the lighting separately off of state contract and then bid out the actual labor. And that work came in much cheaper than originally anticipated, which was good news 'cause some of the other projects came in a little bit higher. So Heathcote door project, that's still waiting a lot of delays like everything else due to COVID, it's still has not happened, but it has been bid out, and we're just waiting for those projects for the items to come in and then to coordinate with the scheduling, a little bit over budget on that one. Those roofing repairs and brick report re-pointing came in a little bit higher than originally anticipated, that's $9,600 more, that does include consulting fees and

076architectural fees that we have to pay along with that work. Again, that is an item, if you recall, over the last few years, that's been going down as we replace our roofs. And we anticipate that to that trend to continue in the next next few years as well. Carbon monoxide detector, we were off on that one, obviously with our bid of $37,000. However, it was a great project to have completed for safety, obviously safety reasons where now if that detector were to go off, say at part of the high school, in the past it would have been plugging, you would hear a beeping if you happen to be in that space in the building. Now, it would be centralized and we would be alerted, so that's great work and necessary work to have to have

077done. And the bus compound renovations. This is combined actually with a little bit of work in the business office 'cause we're moving the transportation supervisor up to that space and you'll see at least the outside of his office momentarily. So that came in a little bit above, but that includes some work in the business office as well. We'll see some continued bus compound renovations. I anticipate in the next year's budget process, as well as a small plan improvement project to finish off that and then transferred to capital project. That was phase two, the auditorium that we're a progress on that one. We're finalizing the bid specs as we meet internally, and then we'll get the up to SED and then that work will happen in the next summer. So a few pictures, really appreciate LED

078lighting from a picture of, certainly as you walked down the hallways, the students and teachers and principals are impacted by that. And they really do look right, same at Fox Meadow, really brightening up those spaces. We've done some painting work as well as part of our rotational painting program. And our buildings have really brightened up those buildings to make them more user-friendly, very exciting pictures of some carbon monoxide detectors, but that's what they look like. And that's where our money went towards. Bus compound, unfortunately, we did not have a before picture, but what a big difference? New carpeting, new ceiling, new painting, that door, which we're actually, we're putting a window in that door soon, but that will be Gerson's office. So he will be, if you know, he's been historically in the business office,

079this will really get him up with his team up at the bus compound to be able to make those connections and make for easier communication with his team up there. The drivers love the space and it's made a big difference in their daily routines. High School Auditorium, so just a reminder, this has been a phase project. It was originally part of the 2014 bond. Unfortunately, it had to be taken out of that bond work 'cause we're over budget. And we've been trying to take care of that work as we go forward through the years, that $700,000 project that was approved as part of the 2021 budget, that is about to get started, actually it's underway. And some of that scheduling is trying to be coordinated with the new director in the theater. That project did

080come in about $100,000 under budget. We're not completed yet, but that's with the bid prices, but at the end of the day, we should be under budget on that project. And that should be done. I would think sometime in the next couple of months, it should be completed. And again, it's more about scheduling at this point. Yes, thinking right after the holidays. It's really trying to get that schedule to work along with what's happening in the theater space itself. Thanks, Jerry. Phase 2a, this was the work that was approved as part of the current year's budget. You can see that design is happening. We expect to have that submitted to SED shortly. We'll bid that out late winter, early spring. And planning on getting that work completed in the summer of 2022, mostly lighting, as

081you can see from the scope items. And again, that will make a big difference. We do have a new theatrical director there that we're working with who has a vast amount of experience. So we're having him take a look at this to see if he wanted to fine tune any of these type of items before we make that final submittal, but again, staying within these general scope items. And then a reminder of the items that still remain to be done. And this is an estimate on the budget, just a little bit over $900,000. So again, we're working with David and Lisa Forte with our consultants, architects, we have a meeting next week or the week after to go through this and identify any additional work that we may wanna get done or maybe we changed

082some of this. And that will bring back to another student focus group to see where that goes in trying to get that sort of final scope of items that could be brought forth as part of the budget discussions. And then last but not least Butler Field update. As I mentioned, I think in the last board meeting, we did have some damage due to some drainage issues, which occurred from Hurricane Ida. So those short term repairs have been made. So for your homecoming, the field has been made usable for football and all of the sports going on here in the fall season, which is great. However, we still need to do some more digging, if you will, to find out what caused the drainage issues, it is a drainage issue. So we're looking to do some

083sort of sculp works, some camera work, and the contractor has to come back most likely, peel back some of the turf and really get in there to see what caused the issue, so we can make the proper repair, so it doesn't happen again. And then the sound system, if you recall, this was a gift from Maroon and White from over a year ago. So I'm happy to say that we are finally getting this done. It was delayed due to a number of issues with a contractor, I think internally coordinating everything. And then with COVID where priorities sort of went in different places. Happy to say that I think we're in a good place, we're actually coordinating. And as you recall, this is not a normal project and a lot of, it was a gift, it

084wasn't bid, it was a contract award off of contract. So there's a lot of different sort of pieces of the puzzle on this one. So we we've gotten everyone together here in the last week and a half or so or the last couple of weeks. And I think we have an active plan to get to a final resolution and get the sound system ordered itself and have it in place. I would say hopefully within the next month and a half, two months, I don't know if Thomas, you wanna add anything to that? No, I think you, I think you covered it pretty well. I think we've had a series of meetings over the last couple of days to try to iron out what the issues have been historically, we may be facing some supply chain

085issues. That would be the only reason at this point that there might be any continued delay. We have asked for specific timelines to be able to report out to the board in terms of when, times certain we're gonna be able to have this completed, but we think we've again, worked through all the logistical pieces at this point. So now, it's just a matter of ordering and installation. So any questions? I had one question about the bus depot, specific to that being sort of a newer facility, were specific measures taken or where they needed to avert flooding in the future, just to protect any resources or hardware that are over there? At the bus compound. Yeah, we haven't had flooding issues. Okay. Really. Yeah, so the parking space is new is what you might see, but

086the building itself, the bus compound, it's a double wide trailer that's been there. It's outlived its original life span. So really required repairs. It wasn't worth started getting rid of it and starting a new, we really thought we could by putting some money into it, make it last another 10, 15 years. So one was to do the internal work. The next part will be do to some external work and underneath work, but flooding there has not been necessarily an issue. Okay. Yeah. We done, sorry. Yeah. The soft costs and the contingencies and stuff included within the 485 and the nine, whatever the number was. Yeah. I think it was about 1/3 for both. I turn my microphone off, sorry. I think it was about 1/3 for both of them. Is that a pretty typical number?

087'Cause I can't tell like what your contingencies, your, well, obviously based on prior experience well within, but I'm not clear on soft costs and fees. Is that a standard? Is that like a... Yeah, I mean it's architectural fees. It's consultant fees it's, we're halfway through the project and we need to do some additional things to make this all work type of expenses. So that's standard, if you're doing a bod project, it's almost like 40%. So that's what you do. And hopefully, you have money left over and it's much easier to say we have money left over than come back and say, "Yeah, we need 25 or $30,000." Right, I mean that I get, but by the same token, I don't wanna put so much aside, but if that's a pretty comfortable. It is. If that's

088how you get to that number then I understand it, thanks then. Yeah. With all the roof repairs and all the work done, can you give an update on solar, on the score roofs? Sure, and Drew, can maybe help chime in a little bit on this one. Yeah, Ron, I think as you know, the road we had gone down in an exploring solar as an option for Scarsdale was to, we got routed to Con Ed Solutions. And before the pandemic, we had work toward an idea of a combination of solar projects coupled with battery storage, which is what Con Ed is really looking for is to capture energy produced by the sun at peak times, and be able to release, well, capture energy from sun and release it at peak times when the taxing demand on

089the system is great. So we had gotten to the stage of at least some sketches of where solar could or would work under their program and the economic model with the following assumption that Scarsdale that would pay nothing, but would host as a site, the solar and the battery, and then get some income as a lease site for this program. The economics of that by last contact with John Cain, who was our contact there. And he's been keeping me up to date as this has evolved through the pandemic, but the economics aren't there right now to have a cost free installation. The economics are there, if we wanted to site battery storage, which would come through just through grid electricity that would then be stored. We didn't think that was really what we were looking

090to do. So I think at this point, if we're gonna entertain solar, I think we need to revisit the topic and think about where we would be, where the community would be, where the board would be on thinking about such a project funding at ourselves potentially and looking at that. Thanks, and I don't wanna speak to whether it would work on schools, but there's, there's also been some movement within NYPA for municipal and other nonprofit entities in doing, some new legislation has come in that allows it to be more economical. And I'm happy to provide that contact that I know the municipalities are working with. Nice, good question. How long is the typical warranty on roof work when we look at all the money we've spent on roof work? 20 Years. 20 to 25 years

091depending on the roof material, but it's at least 20 years. 20 years, okay. And can you just repeat for me again, I know the process for the auditorium, you brought together various parties to discuss, is that what you said, you will be doing again for the last phase of it? So I just wanted to... Yes, so our initial meeting is sort of a non-student meeting 'cause we do have new theater director. So I want him to meet all the parties, the architect, the consultant, I invite the high school leadership team in, and obviously facilities, we'll take a look at where we have come from historically, look at the current scope for the 485 and then look at the next phase and then plan a next meeting or two, bring in some student groups as well

092to see if there's anything else that we've missed to be added to the scope or change what or tweak what we have in there. And will FMA be part of that too? Pardon. FMA, was they a part of that conversation? They were, yeah. So they'd be part of that next meeting as well. Okay. Yep, that's right. Great, okay, thank you, Stewart. Yep. Okay. Any other questions? Okay, so item 9.02. I will turn to Ron and Thomas to lead us. 9.02 would be textbooks for the Middle School. Did I misspell that, sorry. That's okay. We'll have Edgar pop in here for a moment. Propping them. Sorry, okay. We resorted some of these. So that's why I did turn off a copy too early. I printed too early, sorry. No, all good. I will look at the

093screen. Okay, sorry, Edgar. That's all right. Okay. I'm gonna start off introducing three texts to be used in eighth grade English classrooms. The first one is a partner text for Shakespeare's, "Romeo and Juliet" called "These Violent Delights," by Chloe Gong. Instead of, "Fair Verona," this dystopian tale takes place in Shanghai, China, in the 1920s and involves gangsters, political upheaval, and a monster lurking in the Huangpu River. It's a creative way to engage our students in new perspectives on familiar themes. The eighth grade teacher I spoke to anticipates that this genre blurring book will pull in all of her readers. The next two novels were chosen to build off a mentor text by Jason Reynolds called, "A Long Way Down," which is a book that they read and explores and discusses systemic racism. One is a

094Renee Watson's, Piecing Me Together." A book about a young black girl who leaves her poor neighborhood to attend a private school and the internal journey that follows. It's a Newbery honor book and the winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. Another is, "Randi Pinks," Angel of Greenwood, it's historical fiction that takes place during the time of the Tulsa Massacre and has a young female black protagonist at its center. This compelling book was released just this year. Adopting these books works in many ways towards our goals. It increases the choice that students have or the texts that they read. These books would be read in book clubs and chosen from several and increases more perspectives through carefully curated texts and supports our DEI policy by engaging issues of structural bias. Finally, I have a 12th grade

095from the 12th grade English department, recommending Cathy Park Hong's memoir, "Minor Feelings." This book was named one of New York times best books of the year and reflects the high school English and history departments dedication to providing texts that reflect a full range of the Asian American experience in US history and literature. This also adds to a group of powerful texts in the family of "Catcher on the Rye," that thematically represents the hero's journey. Those are the books that I have this way. Any questions for Edgar? Okay, thank you. I'll do 9.03. Okay, so now, we will turn to our discussion of board of education goals. Again, each year, establishing goals is an important opportunity for the board to reflect upon current work, needs, and potential areas for growth and development. At our last meeting,

096I asked the board members think about our goals and responsibilities for this year. Using last year's goals and responsibilities as a guide, I did draft, put together a draft of our goals and responsibilities, looking for feedback from the board. I did note when I was looking at it, reviewing it today that there was an error or rather under evaluation. If you go to the document I did put in, it's not showing here. It's showing on mine. it's showing on yours. Yeah. Okay, the suggestion for tightening up the language under our evaluation responsibility that our evaluation response to the responsibility is for the board and the superintendent according to policies 0310 and 0320, is that correct? So what the comments says, so for some reason, that language, the language that's there was transferred in there erroneously.

097So I wanted to make sure the board was aware of the new language that should be there. So I open it up now for any comments, feedback, on our goals and responsibilities for this year. (attendee asking question) I just have a thought to start with the goal, it's in reference supporting district's mission and beliefs, And I looked that up to look at what we actually put out there in our policies. What we put out there is a mission statement, educational vision. Okay. I actually was thinking whether we could be more conscious of what we had out there, to say, supporting the district's mission and vision. Okay. Not the beliefs. (participant mumbling) I guess no one heard anything I said. I heard you, but I didn't know. But the TV land can't hear. The comment that

098I made was simply to instead of referencing in the goal section of the board of education goals and primary responsibilities, instead of referencing the support of the district's mission and beliefs, my suggestion was rather than beliefs to say vision, because that actually tracks back to the policy that we have, which reflects our mission statement and educational vision as opposed to beliefs. And I think vision maybe captures what we're really going for here probably better. Yeah, okay. So I've noted that changed. Does anybody have comment on that or you're all right with that? I think that's a good change. Okay. I mean, it certainly lines up with the strategic plan and like as Jim noted. Thank you for noticing that, Jim, thank you. I'm happy to add some comments. First of all, I think it's a

099great, I agree with basically everything that's here. I just have a few comments, some minor and some additional primary responsibilities that we may wanna consider. The first, which I would just put out to my fellow board members is, do we want to add something about community values and a process for the board to understand those and refine those and think about them each year? I think that was a topic we heard a lot about last year as I was reflecting on last year. And I think it's something we all know we want to do, but maybe it's something we wanna put out there explicitly. So I don't know. I can pause there if people want to share any feedback on that. Sure, anybody thoughts on that right now? Can you explain that more? Yeah. Like

100what would be the metric by which we're, I guess I'm trying to understand like how would we go about doing that? No, I think that would be one of the goals, somewhat similar to we have. To me, it's a little bit of the other side of the community engagement. So similar to how we created a plan and now we have a plan and that we're discussing possibly the board overseeing and managing it. It would be something similar finding a way discussing whether it's the board or subcommittee or what that is about how to try to understand what are the community values in the given time period. How should we go out to the community and understand that? I think, yeah, Ill pause there. Okay. Anyone have comment on that. In sort of relation to our

101existing policies and that sort of outlined, I think, a lot of what I think are our community values somehow or our values into the school, how would that sort of fit in with our, we're going through this policy review of certain sections that we've gone through policy review before, and that presumably reflects a certain amount of public input that would reflect the community's interest and community values in those areas that we're reviewing at a given time. So how would this idea sort of interact with the ongoing policy work or work that was previously done on policies that might reflect specifically community values and earlier portions of the policies? So you want me to respond? I would argue that I think community values are an important input into policy work, and that should be something that

102we would want to have as part of our work. And I would actually disagree that we received a significant amount of input throughout the policy work. I don't know that we received actually much comment about it. If I don't recall if I said significant as much as just that we did, but I can't control, I agree, we can't control how much whatever it was. Let me clarify that. I wasn't saying that community input wasn't valuable. What I was saying is what was sort of this goal, how would this fit in? So let's say we took down, I can't remember the numbers, the policies, but how would this fit in with, if we just finished a certain policy that reflected like DEI or whatever we did that. How would this now fit in with what we've

103already done or what we may do in the future, I guess, is what I'm wondering. In other words, it almost feels like community values is a huge thing, right? So I kind of looked at it as I'm speaking right now as each of these opportunities for the community, we're supposed to be getting the community values, put aside how many people actually participate. So I guess I'm trying to understand, like we put community values in there. We all agree it's a good thing, nobody's disagreeing with that at all. The question is how does it fit in with everything else? Or is it like kind of a parallel track or something different? 'Cause to me that's such a huge basket of information and input and I'm wondering where it fits more than I guess or what you're

104thinking about when you say it. Okay, I think I have a way of addressing this, perhaps. I think you're right, Carl, that it is a really big idea, but I think you're also right around that it needs to be included. So one way to meet both of those goals might be to put it in the preamble and to have a sentence that, I mean, like overall, I think this is a great list of goals. I think you've put together a very strong list. But perhaps in the preamble, we could add another sentence like to form a strategic vision for the district that is consistent with the community's values, or something. I mean, would that? I mean, from my perspective-- I'm open to wordsmithing. But to me that would sort of-- So keeping it as part

105of an overarching principle that's influencing all the goals, I think, makes more sense. As I see, these specific goals, although Ryan sort of touched on it, although I'm not 100%, there's specific tangible things that we want to accomplish. Exactly. So hearing community values to me, if it's part of community engagement, that's one thing. If it's part of continuing our policy work, that's another thing. If it's a whole separate category, then that's what I was wondering about. Or if it's what you're suggesting, then that makes a little more sense to me as well. Could I jump into? So I agree that community values is a bit broad, but when Ron was reading his statement, I sort jumped to the community engagement piece and thought isn't that part of what community engagement is? But maybe last year's

106community engagement committee focused more on ways for us to communicate out and not as much. I mean, I think the coffees we're hearing from the community and what's important. So maybe it's more tied in there as part of the metrics with community engagement. I do think we get here the community values. I would also maybe suggest that we refine that a little bit because it's more about values related to education and not just values. So I think we have to be careful with the words that we use. I think that the DEI policy that we put together was based on community values. So I see Carl's point about tying it to the policy work too. So I don't know how to quite weave that in. To me, this is opening up a vast area because

107I kind of don't think we really have much data points in terms of what the community values should be or what they are. I mean, we have lots of anecdotal data points. We have our own families and friends, but we haven't surveyed the community and actually attempted systematically with the aid of consultants who do this for a living to act to capture what the consensus values are. And without doing something like that, how would we really be armed with a sense that we're doing the right thing, that we even know what the values are? I wonder. Yes, so we actually have done that work, but in the more distant past, I would just kind of invite us to think about there's been a trajectory to this work. So when we first went into our strategic

108planning process, we spent hours upon hours upon hours doing surveying and focus work, and got relatively good responses back from those part of our commitment and doing that work is so once we did this, we're going to stick with these goals that took a long time and it was over a year in the making of the strategic plan. And we felt like it was probably because you're never gonna get all the points of data from everyone. But all the people who certainly wanted to participate in that we collected tons and tons and tons of data around that. But part of it is, and then we went back and as has been described, we're doing that around DEI work, we're doing that around community engagement work, we're doing that around policy work. I think we have

109to think about the end result. If we are engaging in this work, we have to be clear about what we're doing with this, especially, vis-a-vis all the other commitments that we have already made to the community around this work. So to reinforce it philosophically to write it into the preamble, completely understand all those things. But I think we have to think about the thread that's pulling this work through from years ago and the commitments that we've made to the community around the feedback that was provided to us as well. How long ago was that done, Thomas, just out of curiosity? The plan goes from 19 to 24 and so we probably started that in 2017. So it was at least two years in the making. I don't know that there's a consensus with what I

110believe, to be very clear, I am looking for a very discreet goal to do work around this. I think I agree with Jim was saying, how do you do all this work without having that sense? Something that I've as I've reflected on, well, the last two years, but really, especially in the last year, something I heard a lot about, I do feel that it's valuable. I do, we had the session, I think two years ago, so I won't rehash it, but I have a different perspective on the level of engagement with the strategic plan survey. I think if we want to do this, it's an option, we'd have to discuss it, to hiring an outside consultant, doing this systematically. Again, this is just my perspective. I understand this may not have a broad consensus. So

111are you saying that the goal should be that we do that type a type of project that you're outlining just now? Is that part of the goal or is the goals something that would happen after we did that, but that's sort of a predicate for the goal? I'm just trying to understand exactly what I'm committing to if I put it down as a goal, that's what I'm getting at. I think you're asking me two questions. One is, I think it can start as a goal, we can build that out. I have explored, but my personal view is that goal should go down that discreet path of actual data collection and work, I think, just to be clear, I don't want to minimize the amount of work that goal would be, I just feel that that

112is worth it. So could it be done via a listening session instead of a consultant, could it be in the forum of to better understand and affirm our community's values as they inform our work through listening, like with a concrete, through listening sessions? I don't know, I'm just trying to. So my concerned about that, Karen, would just simply be that if you do it that way, certain voices would be over amplified, that you might get a skewed concept of what the community values are. You might wind up with a conclusion about what the values are that are in fact reflective of a small portion of the community, not the actual community. I think I wasn't saying I wasn't defining the scope of our work just as a listening session, but maybe that it's a variety

113of ways to collect that information because not everyone will answer a survey. Some people might come to, so just sort of figuring out, like, what are our vehicles and mechanisms for collecting that information as we potentially look at this. Although, again, for me, it's an understanding and an affirmation because we have a lot of things already in the works that are based upon our community's values. And Jim, I agree with the sentiment you said, and to Ron's point, who may disagree with the survey questions or whatever that was asked, but we did focus groups and survey, we triangulated the data, we surveyed. Once we did the surveys, we put it back out to the community and said, is this what you meant? This was a very extensive process and happy to walk our new board

114members through what we went through, but we also included, and we have to remember what we're talking about when we say the community, because we included teachers and educators and faculty and staff, and we included high school students as well. And so I think as a result, we came up with a list of goals and priorities that reflected what I refer to as a school community that may be different than just the parent or a broader Scarsdale. I really appreciate bringing this up. I'm sorry, I should've said schools community. In my mind, I was thinking the, thank you, I was thinking the broader community, not just a parent community. That's an important point. Yes, absolutely. Is it fair to say that? I think I agree with Ron and I agree with frankly, what people are

115saying in terms of the role of community, understanding community values. And I'm trying to think realistically, how to acknowledge that community values should drive the work that we do. And it seems to me, one mechanism is through the school board. In other words, there are seven people here that have been selected to in some ways reflect the community values. I mean, I assume that's why we were selected because we represent a, let's say, reasonable cross section of community values. Obviously, I think, sounds like Thomas made a very good point that the community, it's not only parents, it's faculty, it's administration that represents the entire. Students. And students. But I'm just wondering what just realistically, setting out a goal to document community values seems like a very daunting task to put down as a goal to

116suggest we need to revisit that, as opposed to saying we don't have the mechanisms in place to reflect those community values. I understand. I guess I'm seeing it more as it's our responsibility to understand those values. Is that how you're looking to define it under the responsibilities? Right. And how we go about fulfilling that responsibility. I guess one thing I'd like to bring up too, is that I think we have the policy work for the 1000 and the 2000 series that previous boards started and hasn't been completed. And we've introduced the new DEI policy, which we've made a focus this year. So I think those are two important things that as a board, we are going to try to accomplish, unless we're removing those. So I would be careful about taking to Carl's point before

117we commit to something, we should be sure about what we're committing to. So did you have suggested language for that, Ron, or right now, it's an idea for us to think about and maybe bring back to the table at our next meeting? I don't have suggested language. I really want it to make up the general idea to get everybody's perspective. Okay. So is that maybe something for us all to think about and we'll bring it back to the table next time? Perhaps we can try to get some language together. In the meantime, if anyone wants to offer some language and thinking about it, I'll do the same. We can see what we come up with. Okay? I have one other suggestion. I don't think it will be as a big of a one. Okay. And

118again, it's just an idea, so I don't have wording. And actually, I was really thinking about it after our meeting we had earlier today about adding a primary responsibility, whatever the wording is, but around relationships, I think it's something that we've all recognized the importance of. We had a great meeting with the STA executive board earlier. We have similar meetings with student government leadership, with STA, with others. Maybe we just want to have that explicitly stated about how much the board values and takes action to support those relationships. So would that also be part of our community engagement since our engagement is to foster those relationships? I mean, in our communication plans, we even list out our liaison groups in our buddies and all that. So maybe you could just leave under there. Link in

119there somewhere. And now I have really two very minor comments, and then that's it. Under community engagement, we have wording that says, "Continue to foster communication and transparency through support of the opportunities identified in the board communication plan. I would suggest saying through support and review of the opportunities, just because I think sometimes we have tried opportunities and it may not be giving us the impact that we're looking for and we should review those. And then under advocacy, I would just add some wording that says, "Board identified advocacy initiatives." I don't have any specific ones in mind, I just think that could be an avenue if the board had an advocacy initiative. So I'm sorry, how would you put that revision? I just want to make sure that's-- Sure, so it says, "Participate in legislative

120advocacy, impacting public education via efforts suggested by our administration or coordinated by NYSSBA or WPSBA," we should probably type those out, "Or board identified." Okay. I'm just saying it is possible the board would want to advocate that didn't come from the administration or these two entities. Sure. Yeah thank you. And thanks for putting this draft together, I think it will really help guide our work. Thank you for your suggestions. So I've made all of the notes that Ron suggested. I will indicate them in our next draft that we look to discuss next time. I'm open to receiving language from any of you regarding what that community value statement looks like. I will also take a crack at it. Does anyone else have anything they want to add or delete, edit? Okay, so we'll put this

121back on the agenda for our next meeting to revisit and hopefully come to consensus and confirm our goals, which we will then post for the community. Along with that, once our goals are determined, we will work to revise the board self-evaluation tool accordingly. So that will probably also come to us at our next meeting. We'll begin the process of where will that potentially need to be revised so the board can also look at that and affirm or confirm any revision to that. Do you have any questions or additional comments on our board goals and responsibilities? Okay, thank you all for your input. So now we'll move to our next item, 9.04, the NYSSBA 2021 Proposed Bylaw, and then minutes and resolutions, and Ron and, are you also? I'll just moving to provide a little bit

122of context for cabinet if I could. Are you okay if I go ahead and start on this? So like any other processes and procedures, we sort of formalized this process a couple of years ago, particularly when Chris Morgan was on the board and he sort of took responsibility for this as a sort of major area of interest on behalf of the board. The cabinets involvement, just so folks are clear, as we typically kind of look over these, as the board looks at them and we provide any what we feel like our feedback, especially kind of technical aspects of things in which affect district operations and then we'll opine on some or all of the ones that NYSSBA has put forward. We in the past have not gone through the list of other proposed bylaws that

123are not recommended by NYSSBA, but those are available for the board to obviously think about as well and I think Ron has an interest in presenting those as well. But I was want to provide some context for new board members as well as for the community because this is something that, again, we sort of formalized the process, has gone fairly quickly in the past, but I wanted to take a moment to sort of explain that process to folks. Sorry for intruding, Ron, go ahead. I also didn't realize I would just look at the time. Do you think that this is something we should take our wellness break before we go through this? We've been sitting for almost two hours or do we wanna forge through this? I'm not sure. What do you think? Ron, what's

124the timing you think you need for proposing this? I mean, I only need a minute, but unless there's discussion. If he only needs a minute, then. I can't speak to whether there's a discussion. Let's go for it. I'm not gonna read all the resolution. I'm just thank Tom for the background. I think it's really important because the community should know that the board heavily relies on the advice of cabinet as the experts here. Just to give a very brief background for those that might be reading this and wondering what this is all about from, at home, the New York State School Board Association, otherwise known as NYSSBA, which is a New York State organization that represents school boards from New York State, proposes a set of resolution and bylaw amendments every year. These proposals are

125submitted either by the NYSSBA board of directors. It's not necessarily an endorsement by them, but it's submitted by them based on what they're hearing from their members, or any individual school board may present the proposal. These proposals are then gonna guide NYSSBA's work for the year, so they are very important. Once these proposals are submitted, there are reviews by NYSSBA's resolution committee, which either support or does not support the proposal. As Thomas mentioned, some they propose, some they didn't. This year, there are a total of 26 resolutions and bylaw amendments, 17 are supported by the resolutions committee, nine are not supported. And if anybody at home is opening up the chart, you'll see that there are three potential recommendations from cabinet. Yes, no, and non Sibi. So obviously yes, you see the proposed resolution and

126rationale which comes from NYSSBA. Yes, would be that the suggestion is that this board supports it, no would be, it doesn't. And there are some resolution proposals, which may not benefit Scarsdale, but we know would benefit, and please make sure I'm accurately reflecting this, that may benefit other districts in their education and we may decide to vote yes on that for a non sibi reason. This year, the cabinet has recommended supporting all, but two resolutions, eight and nine, of the ones that the NYSSBA resolution committee proposed. So whatever this board decides, I, as the delegate will go to the NYSSBA Annual meeting on October 18th and vote as the board wishes on each ones. Shall I? Yeah, go ahead? And may I? Yes. So most of this is not very exciting, but appropriate and necessary.

127However, I have one item that administration recommended, and I can't find it now. But I know I saw there was the thing about saying where you are. There's one proposal. Resolution 89. 89, okay. So one of them specifically the issue was, or maybe they were both, the issue was whether a board member participating at a remote location has to disclose the location and allow other people to participate. The rationale from administration was for the board to model sort of open meetings, which I agree with. I don't have any disagree with that. But in my mind, it was just, to be perfectly honest, it's not likely to be a problem for me in the sense that anybody to find me, they're free to find me. It's not generally not very exciting even if I'm not home.

128But I could see, I know that we had board members that are away recently and they had to disclose where they were and everything. And I kind of wonder whether if we have the meeting open and they can be seen on the screen the same as the public can be seen on the screen and participate so we're not being any less open. I don't think about our meeting. If whoever, I can't remember who wasn't here, but Bob isn't here and doesn't give his location, if people could see him and hear him and participate. So I didn't really see these two things as much of a conflict as the comments that we received. I actually kinda thought it might enhance board members' willingness to participate when they're away. Although it's a relatively modest thing because the

129reality is if I'm out of town and wherever I go, I imagine it's unlikely that my friend Lee is gonna show up at my hotel room and knock on my door to sit with me while I do the meeting, not to not to call anyone out. But it did seem to me that there might be people who are serving on the board who might not want to disclose that information and might want to participate. And so I actually thought that was kind of okay as a proposal. I'm sure the board members have things to say, and I want to defer to you all, but I just want to make a really clear point, that we're not married to this in any way. And if the board decides not to do it, it's not going to

130hurt anybody's feelings whatsoever. I think we were approaching this, not from a logistical, but from a philosophical, that we have been spending so much time talking about public engagement and all those kinds of things around upholding public meetings. That was where those comments came from. So if people, I don't want to belabor the point or think that you have to convince us somehow that the rationale, like we don't have strong feelings about this. It was just an attempt to build off of the work the board has done around engagement and public awareness of meeting. I mean, to be fair, I wasn't suggesting that the administration was deeply invested in finding out where we're all going on vacation as much as you clearly put thought into it and it's a perspective, but it's just not one

131that I think the other side to me weighs a little bit on the balance of as long as we're talking about it. As someone who was actually a way for the meeting where I was participating remotely, I had a tinge of concern over the possibility that someone would show up at our vacation home and demand as was their right and enter into my home and sit at my dining room table with me while I participated in the meeting, which would have been there, I would not have been able to refuse them. And frankly, I thought that concern misplaced, I knew it was gonna happen, but we're in a time now where boards of education are being harassed, thankfully not here in Scarsdale, but in many other places where people you frankly, participating in board meetings

132who shouldn't be particularly for the purpose of harassing board members. And gosh forbid that somebody were to get an address, show up, have to be admitted, and then do something even if it's not violent. I mean, I think I could see some very real concerns arising from this, from the way this is implemented. And actually, even if you're not concerned, it's just a privacy thing. I think you should not have to tell everybody where you're vacating. I think it's also a safety thing, but it's a privacy and safety thing from my perspective. I mean, I would support the proposed resolutions for that reason. I just think they make sense. Could I ask, Ron, I noticed that there's an amendment to the resolution number nine and how does that work in with the proposed resolution? I

133don't think it was on the spreadsheet that they gave us, but it was on the NYSSBA document, the proposed resolution nine, the amendment at the end. So with the addition of so long as the majority of the board members are present in-person at the fixed meeting location. So are you voting on the resolution or the resolution with the amendment? Do you know? I believe this board should let me know which of those two, because it's possible that amendment will be made and fail or amendment will be proposed and not passed. So we should decide on both of them, I think. Thank you for bringing that up. I would add my two views are, one, in addition to just privacy, I actually think it's also a safety concern of you don't necessarily wanna let anybody know

134that you're on vacation for your home back here. I think that for number eight, which is more limited in scope, I personally would support that number eight is the one that is really just about not declaring where you are. I very much appreciate the view about the philosophical and we do one model the right thing. So I totally agree with that. In this case, I think I'd be okay. I would like to support it because I think just operationally it works. Number nine is a little bit tougher for exactly the reason that cabinet highlighted about if one of the proposals is a committee of a public body. So I don't believe the whole public body, but a committee meeting without a fixed location. And then what would that mean with somebody without computer access? I

135wonder if either the amendment or another amendment that just addresses that can be made to say, even if it's not in a fixed location, the district has to provide somebody the ability in a district location to view that meeting, which would, for me, alleviate that concern. Should we discuss eight? Is there a consensus from the board on whether to support or not support resolution eight? I suggest we support eight. I agree. Okay. Agree. Okay. And at nine is different. I kind of lumped them together, which was not a good idea. So resolution nine, is there consensus to support that with amendment as Ron suggested? It seems like if-- Is there an amendment? Like we have to be careful about saying, support it with an amendment. There's no amendment anymore. Yeah, I know. Just clarifying this.

136It's on page of the NYSSBA document. It's on page, it's way at the bottom. Amendments, it starts on page 30 and there's a few amendments that were made to resolutions. The first one is resolution nine. So that's why I was trying to understand what we were voting on, whether we're voting on the nine or the nine with the amendments. Resolution nine goes to page 29. Yeah, I don't see that, so that's why I'm-- Voting delegates guide 09/27/2021, it came in our email. So it's not posted here. It's not in the meeting. It was the voting delegates guide they sent us. Okay. I think we got in our email, I can forward it to you guys. If you vote with the keywords, voting delegates guide, maybe you can find it. So what does it say? What

137does it say? Yeah. The amendment says, so at the end of nine, it has highlighted a new new text, "So long as the majority of the board members are present in-person at the fixed meeting location." So meaning that if some members, the way I took it is that if some members needed to be away, then it would apply, but as long as the majority was in-person. Yeah. So I think that's different than what was originally. Yeah. So I would S I would suggest that we support it with the amendment only. I agree. Anybody else? I'm for it with the amendment? I agree. Yep, okay. Okay, great, thank you. Any other discussion? Sorry, Ron, any other? Yeah, any other discussion on this? I had a question, is now the right to ask that? Yeah. To Ron,

138about proposed resolution 10. I noticed that the district feedback was that it could potentially, I guess, have a financial risk to our district, but I guess my thought was going back to district's earlier comments, to the cabinets earlier comments on sort of setting a model, right? It seems like as written, the busing statute is too onerous for some districts, and it seems like those districts are asking for a less onerous statute for making safer transportation plans for their students. And I guess I would not wanna get in the way of that. I mean, that is sort of my thought on proposed resolution 10, just understanding that Westchester is a very varied and diverse group of schools. I would be inclined to support resolution 10. I agree, and would you like to add, this is just

139for internally, but do you want to add a non sibi check mark? I would love to add a non sibi check mark. Maybe just as a little background on that and I have some experience in this. I mean, the rules for setting that for qualifying, it's ridiculous, it's it's way over the top. And if a parent ever says, "What's this unsafe," it's like. I mean, you might feel that way, but as far as qualifying it, it's never gonna qualify. It's like a dual carriage way and so much volume of traffic. It's really crazy where I think Cronin's point here, that clearly is sort of dangerous. So, I mean, the only, I would say, a possible danger thing is if it is really is changed and makes it a lot easier to reach that level, then

140we could possibly have more students requiring busing, which would be more buses, more drivers, more crowding of buses and all of that. If it went way to one. And I think it brings up an important point. What we're voting on is what we want we being all the school districts of New York State want NYSSBA to go advocate for. Correct. So we're not voting on any of these changes and what they go advocate for and what gets passed, we don't know at this point. So they could advocate and then there could be other advocacy and that type of change could happen. Correct. Yeah, so just a point of clarification, because we have new board members here too. So typically the way we've used non sibi, just as a point of clarification is if it doesn't

141apply to us whatsoever, but we know there's another high need district or something that would really benefit from this, then we've tended to support those. This could be some funding questions, low-income staff, free and reduced lunch, like other kinds of things. I think what I'm hearing Stuart say is this actually could impact us and I think we'd probably wanna do some work on this to find out what the real financial impact might be if we were gonna say, "Yeah, we're supporting this." I think in general, it is worth supporting, which is why I suggested the X, but depending on if it ever got to that point, it could cost dollars. But I think knocking it down a bit from what it is does make sense for student safety. I think to that point that we've

142heard sometimes about traffic safety around our buildings. And if it should get to a point where something within our district qualifies for the zone, then perhaps we should be busing those children, because we do have roads that are harder for kids to walk on. We don't have sidewalks. So I support it even if there might be, I know we don't know what the financial implication might be, but I think it's something worth considering and supporting. Okay. So are we basically in consensus supporting the rest of the resolutions as per the spreadsheet? Yes. Okay. And I just want to confirm, and this was my only point about the resolutions that NYSSBA committee did not recommend 'cause I need the board to tell me what to do. We are not supporting those. I agree with that. I

143agree. Which is what Thomas mentioned. Is there consensus on that? Yes. I agree with that, agreed. Okay. Thank you. Okay, great, thank you, Ron, very much. And thank you to the cabinet for giving us your recommendations, taking the time to do that. I appreciate it, thank you. Do you wanna take a break. Sure. Okay. So why don't we take a five minute wellness break and return at 8:50. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Okay. We're back. It's 8:50, sorry. We will resume with item 10. And I believe Jessica is. Yes. So at the previous board meeting, Edgar had presented textbooks for adoption, including for SMS, social studies, and science for a world language, for high school social studies, and for high school English, and the board had received the opportunity to take a look at them in

144the intervening week. And we are now presenting them for adoption formally. Second. Okay, can you make a move. I moved to adopt them formally. Sorry, first time. That's okay. Carl seconds it. Any discussion? All in favors? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Okay, there they are approved. Thank you. Thanks. Now, we'll move to item 11, gifts, and this is Jim. Okay, thank you. A gift of $10,000 to support the fundraising efforts of the Scarsdale Union Free School District, section one, East Varsity Girls Ice Hockey Team Booster Club, and to ensure the continued development of the program for the girls participating in the East Team. And to be clear, this is a team that's comprised of a number of different schools in Westchester. It would be to develop, I think what would be essentially a second ice hockey

145team for girls and which Scarsdale girls would be participating. There is certainly interest in this and we have been a big proponent of it, but it would be a team that would be comprised of students from other schools as well as from Scarsdale. It is recommended the board accept with thanks to the gift proposal of $10,000 to support the development of the section one girls ice hockey program and a Scarsdale High School as they are the host school of the section one East Varsity Girls Hockey Team. I move that we accept this with thanks this gift. Second. Any discussion? All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. The gifts step is accepted. Now we'll move to item 12, hearing from those present at this time. Again, the community is invited to speak on agenda

146items and non personnel matters. Anyone from the audience would like to speak? If not, we will turn to see if there are remote participants. Okay. So we will close public comment and move to item 13, follow up to public comment. Do we have any followup from the previous public comment. I would address the comment about snack and lunch. Yeah. We have worked with our pediatrician. He understands the current policies. We do plan to revisit that at the end of the first quarter generally to where COVID numbers are. I think it's important. There's been a couple of misconceptions about lunch. Students are in the classrooms. They do have more than 20 minutes to eat their lunch. There've been some parents, not this speaker, but I thought it worth saying, that lunch is silent. Now, we are

147encouraging students to eat their lunch and if they talk to friends to pull their mask up as they're talking to the people around them. Indoor lunch, at times, they will put on an educational or entertaining video to have kids not be bored, especially since it will be indoor recess, that's not happening often, but it is happening. I would encourage any parents who believe their student is not able to function because of a missed snack or not eating to speak with their first their classroom teacher, the building administration and nurse following. So at this point, kids are engaged in classes. We're not seeing widespread evidence of kids not being able to concentrate or work through the day. And we will revisit as the numbers change. But right now, as far as encouragement of seeing how others

148are doing it, we do know how others are doing it. There's really two choices. There is moving kids to six foot apart, which includes taking them outside or into hallways, or that would require a logistical schedule and turn what usually would be a 10 minute snack into a 20 to 25 minutes snack. We've erred on the side of reserving instructional time there. Or some districts are doing it in the classroom spaced at less than six foot, but trying to make it last less than the 15 minutes that would require quarantine. While the 15 minutes is the quarantine platform for the DOH, it's not a magic number. And the idea of maskless eating for the 10 minutes that it would take to do snack, I don't think is a particularly good mitigation strategy fo spread. It

149does mitigate quarantine, but I don't know that it mitigates spread. There have been schools that have had spread in school. It doesn't seem to be hitting news, but I do know from colleagues around the district. It's not widespread, schools are very safe generally, but they are having more than one person in a class get COVID. We've had examples of more than one person in a class getting COVID. That being said, never totally tied back to in-school spread. So we're still in a place where the Delta variant is present and a present danger in our community. Those numbers are on the right track and we'll revisit as we come just probably prior to Thanksgiving. Just a couple of things to add to that. And Maria happens to be in the audience so she can provide any

150additional information here. But in totality, students have an hour and those are always kind of back for lunch and recess. So we have to think of that a whole amount of time for students to be able to both eat and interact with each other. From what I understand, we talked about TV being on. That's one of several opportunities that are afforded to kids, and there's often some choice around what the kids decide to do and so kids do have an opportunity. And then just finally to address the issue that we brought up in the last meeting, which is if anyone's having a significant individualize issue, that they can contact the teacher or the building nurse or the building principal and we've been making accommodations for any family who really needs it. As Eric said, to

151operationalize this across the school, we had to think about the balance of time and opportunity. And we're gonna lose more instructional time by having a wide scale break and it would disrupt the entire building in order to do that in some ways. And so we feel like this is the most judicious course at this time, and we'll continue to revisit this year issue as we do other issues as we are able to lessen our risk mitigation efforts. I had a follow up question. Yeah, please. What does a parent show to, I guess, have their child-- They don't need to show anything. If they just come and say, you know what? My child is just that kid who really needs to have something in the morning, then we just make the individual exception. I would say

152that just asking that, the vast, vast majority of our kids are climatized to what the school day looks like now. The more kids that have to go down to the nurse's office or to the office will clog up the school day. So please do it for a need, not for just because, that's just my one warning. If it is a student who is complaining of being hungry, those are things we can make accommodations for, but don't do it with lack of need as would be my-- Just so we set the appropriate expectation for any parent that does ask, what does that look like? Does that mean the kid is able to eat in the classroom? Do they have to go somewhere else? No, they need to move to somewhere else. Each school is doing it

153a little bit differently, but mostly the nurse's office or outside of the nurse's. It's not dissimilar to the idea of taking a mask break. In general, we've tried to build this into the day, but if a child needs something more than the rest of the class is getting, then we just accommodate those individual needs. Can you just remind the community, when does first quarter end, a lot of people ask us, I'm sure, when will this review be going on? Just prior to Thanksgiving. Okay, thanks. I don't have the actual date off the top of my head. Thank you very much. Item 14, wrap up items. I think that looking into the Mamaroneck's testing program, that was one that you had. I'll email the letter. It seems their gateway in one cycle. I can share just

154so you have the letter I was referencing. I'm also happy to provide the solar information to Drew for him to look at. And then I had just asked about the total number of quarantines and then the breakdown of that 28% that is consented. Really just the breakdown of elementary and six and the unvaccinated population, if it's a higher percent for those. Okay. Anything else, I think that's it, right? Okay. There are a few little things related to the goals that you're going to follow up on. Sure, right, thank you. So I will follow up with, I will ask the board to, again, send me any suggestions for the language around responsibility related to values. Item 15, meeting dates for the coming month, Amber. Sorry. On Monday, October 18th, there's a special meeting or executive session

155if needed at 5:30 here in this room, 170, 172 at the high school and a board business meeting and educational report at 6:30 here in this room, 170, 172 at the high school. On Monday, November 15th, there will be a board meeting with the designated group, the Scarsdale Principals Association at 5:15 in the high school Learning Commons and a board business meeting at 6:30 here in room 170, 172 at the high school. And on Wednesday, November 17th, we'll have our public forum for the 2022/2023 budget priorities at 9:00 a.m. in this room 170, 172 at the high school. Excuse me, can I make a correction there? The 18th, the 5:00, there's meeting with the village group. Okay. That was changed. Sorry, I didn't see that. Yes, 5:00. It haven't been put it there. Okay, thanks,

156Orneree. Do I need to reread that or is that okay? Yeah, reread that. So on Monday, October 18th, at 5:00 p.m. in this room, Orneree? Yeah, in Learning Commons. In Learning Commons will meet with the village trustees at 5:00 and then we'll have our business meeting and education report at 6:30. Thank you. So at this time I will entertain a motion to adjourn this business meeting. So moved. Second. All in favor. All in discussion. All in favor. Aye. Okay, meeting adjourned. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Take care. Yeah. (board members chattering)