001(upbeat music) All right, so I'll call this Business Meeting to order. I believe we are live, great. Okay, so welcome everyone to our first board meeting in room 170/172 for this year and the first board meeting for some of our board members. Welcome to this space and thank you to everyone for getting the space ready. I will note that all members of our board and of cabinet are present. Before this Business Meeting, the board met with leaders of the community groups with which board members hold liaison positions. And we heard from them the many ways they support our students and also our parents' experiences, their health and wellness, and also how these organizations efforts and activities impact programming. I could really speak a long time about their work, but I'll just know that the board
002is extremely pleased to have liaison relationships with these groups. Confirming the reality that it does take a village, and we're very grateful for the efforts of each. After that the board held an executive session to discuss collective bargaining matters in the employment history and compensation of particular persons. And of course, today was the first day back to full capacity at the Middle School. All students will now be welcomed into the building each and every day. The community is already aware that elementary school students are back daily, and that high school students returned four days in a week. Therefore the board does ask drivers to be especially patient and cautious. Traffic will be heavier, and students and families will be biking and walking to school. So, please help ensure the safety of our students as these
003changes in activity and also as the improvement in weather occur. And as I did, when the elementary schools opened, I want to express our appreciation for the efforts of our custodians and cleaners at the middle school and on the middle school faculty teams, our facility teams who got the building and the campus ready for today's change and who take care of restoring the building each and every day. We'd like to thank the transportation staff for their flexibility, the teachers and aides who have once again adjusted their classrooms and teaching, the counseling and administrative staff who support the work and our Assistant Principals, Hauge and Coughlin and Principal Troy for their guidance and their leadership through this change. And that's all I have to say, Thomas. Thank you, Pam. I appreciate that. And as usual, I'd
004like to echo some sentiments and add some new ones of my own. So, first of all, good evening and welcome as Pam said, we're happy to be back in room 170/172 for the first time in over a year. It just serves as a reminder that each day brings us new steps towards normalcy. And this is just one more of those steps. That demonstrates that we're moving forward on a positive trajectory. Another one of course is the middle school as Pam said, it's an exciting day we got celebrate the return of all of our K-5 students, a few weeks ago. Today was a day when middle school students came back and we do recognize that there were some traffic issues this morning, as is typical of both rainy days and first days, but we suspect that
005those will iron themselves out in the days ahead. And then we'll of course, continue to work on that to make that a more seamless operation. However, all in all the reports of the day were really terrific, kids extremely happy, teachers so well-prepared, and as Pam said, none of this would've been possible without the extraordinary efforts of the full compliment of faculty and staff, who worked so hard every day on behalf of our students, and even more so this year to confront the challenges that were dealt with and to do it with just such a high level of professionalism. So, we're so appreciative of all of those folks. To our broader virtual community, we do have a small physical audience here as well, but people probably can't see that, but it's nice to see people back
006in an audience. A format for our board meetings, but we appreciate all of you both virtually and in person that this night's business meeting, to become more informed about some of our most significant work as a district. Tonight, I'd also like to take a moment to acknowledge that this is the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and it began at sundown this evening. To those of you who celebrate the holiday, we wish you a generous Ramadan or Ramadan Kareem. This holiday also serves as a reminder of our ongoing work related to diversity equity and inclusion. Later on tonight's agenda, we will be talking about a new proposed School Board Policy, Policy 0105. This policy sets out our commitment to the principles of acceptance and inclusion of all of our students and acknowledges the district's responsibility to
007eliminate institutional barriers, providing culturally responsive classrooms and school environments and implementing programs and services in which all of our students feel safe, welcomed and accepted. Several questions have been raised about more specific aspects of this policy, including goals, metrics to measure progress and leadership and accountability for this work. In order of operations, it is important to note that this initiative is both ongoing and an extension of work that has been going on in the district for the past few years. While COVID-19 has been our singular focus for the past year by necessity, as we re-orient our priorities and practices heading into next year, DEI will certainly be at the forefront of our thinking, and many more specifics of this work will be shared. School board policies are generally more global expressions of intention. These are
008purposely broad to encapsulate a wide range of experiences and outcomes just as this policy is. Goals or objectives on the other hand are specific activities to achieve these aspirations over some duration of time. They allow us to address multiple aspects of our broader aspirations, in an institution as complex as a school district. This provides needed flexibility for different levels in schools to engage in this work in different but still meaningful ways. Today all of our schools have been working on DEI issues that are purposeful and site specific. We intend for this work to continue into the future, while also creating an umbrella framework that allows us to make both institutional and individual school progress. We understand that the work will need to be guided by both experts and representative community voices. And we intend to
009make this work both collaborative and transparent in the months and days ahead. On another topic, many of you are luckily aware that the New York State Department of Health, Interim Guidance for In-person Instruction was updated late Friday afternoon. Highlights of these changes include a reduction of social distancing to three feet between students in school, but maintain the need for six feet distance for adult to adult and adult to student contact. Moreover some activities which require heavy breathing, may reduce social distancing from 12 feet to six feet. CDC also no longer recommends the use of barriers. However, in the absence of this guidance earlier, we moved more in-person learning, with promises made to our students, parents, teachers and faculty. One of those promises was the use of barriers in conjunction with reductions in social distancing. And
010this was and continues to be an important factor in gaining our faculty and staff support for these changes. And we will continue this as part of our multi-layer risk mitigation plan. This another information will be shared in the journey forward update later in tonight's agenda. Again, we thank you for your continued participation and support of our common and shared work, Pam. Thanks, Thomas, I know a few board members have an opening report, Amber, okay. Thanks, Pam, just as a reminder, I serve as the Board Liaison to the PTC and I wanna remind parents and members of the community that tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., is a joint program hosted by the PTC, Scarsdale High School PTA and Scarsdale Middle School PTA on "Implicit Bias and Cultural Competency" led by Reverend Dr. Bryant Marks. If you have
011time before the meeting, you're encouraged to take the implicit association test on race. The link is available in PTA E-Blasts. The test only takes about 10 to 15 minutes. I took it myself and I was actually very surprised to find my results. So, I encourage all of you to take the test, but if you don't have time, you're still encouraged to attend the event it promises to be a valuable and informative program, thank you. Thank you, Amber. Karen, do you have a report? Sure. As Pam and Bob have mentioned at previous meetings, board members have been involved in attending tenure and probationary conferences both have aptly commented on our talented professionals, but I also wanted to comment about the tenure process as I have been struck by the efforts of those on the journey and
012those supporting the journey. Expectations are certainly high and the process lengthy it involves frequent classroom observations by administrators, conferences with department chairs and mentors, careful lesson planning that provides effective delivery of content and student-centered learning, building an environment that nurtures all types of learners, the honing of skills and methods and deep self-reflection. I have been reminded of how much is involved in becoming and being an educator and how much energy is invested in cultivating and supporting our excellent teacher core. And Alison, you have one? Yes, on March 27th, I had the honor of participating in the Stop AAPI Hate Vigil. I wanted to thank the Scarsdale Chinese Association and the Scarsdale High School Asian Conscientization and Empowerment Club, for organizing such an important and moving community event. I was particularly proud of the many students
013who spoke so openly and so eloquently about their own personal experiences. As a community, we cannot tolerate hate, bigotry, harassment, bullying or marginalization of anyone of any background or any difference. In our schools, we celebrate our multiculturalism and recognize that our differences are our strengths. As Dr. Hagerman said, later tonight, we will have our third reading and vote on our new diversity, equity and inclusion policy. This policy has now undergone several rounds of revision and community input and feedback for which we are grateful. And I also wanna thank all of the community members who will continue to work with us as Dr. Hagerman said, "Outline the strategies and implementation plans." The policy codifies our commitment to maintaining a positive and inclusive learning environment for all students, particularly those currently and historically marginalized. And as a
014board, we are committed to ensuring that all students and faculty feels safe, included, welcomed, accepted and experience a sense of belonging and academic success. Thanks, Alison, any other board member reports? Carl. Thank you. I'm the liaison to the Scarsdale safe coalition. And on April 21st, there's going to be a virtual program with a reading of "Know My Name" by Chanel Miller, in which she writes about being sexually assaulted in January, 2015 in the aftermath. So, that's in keeping with their mission and programming. And if you can't participate, read the book and if you can't read the book, try to participate. Thanks, Carl. Any other opening reports from board members? Okay, then move to the next agenda item. The Journey Forward Update, Thomas, Eric. (Thomas faintly speaking) Thank you, Thomas. I'm just gonna cover some of
015the the major stats that we have in the County right now and in the village as most of you know from our community updates on COVID cases. We had five cases over break. An additional 13 cases were reported the Tuesday we came back, the 6th of April. And since then, there's been seven additional cases. So, quite a little jump, right, as we ended break, however that has settled back out to give or take about one a day. That's not how they're coming in, but that's about the average, which is certainly slightly higher than right before break, but returning quickly back to earth, which is a good sign. Scarsdale has 50 active cases currently that's up from 41 last time. However, well down from 90, which was the high back in January. 28% of Westchester is
016now fully vaccinated that has completed two shots or one if you have the Johnson and Johnson. And the positive rate in Westchester County is 4.48, which is slightly down from the last time we reported where I believe it was just over five. The Westchester County per 100,000, over seven days is 250, that is relatively unchanged but moving slowly in the right direction, we were at a high of about 800 per 100,000 in January. So, right now, over the last two weeks, we had seen a little bit of a a blip up in some of the numbers due to variants. Those have come back down to where they were middle and end of March, which is good news. Hopefully, the 30% vaccinated number is having a significant effect on transmission. So, with that said, right now
017we are in similar situation to where we were last I reported which is numbers that are staying steady or going down, which is a good thing. So, I'll turn over to Thomas to talk a little bit about the new guidance that was released on Friday. Yeah, thanks much, Eric. So, we did not, as in the past receive much of any warning that the guidance was going to change. So, it was a little bit of surprise for this to arrive in our email boxes on Friday afternoon. It's a 24 page document that again, represent some updates some of which we've already covered in our opening comments. I would encourage folks we're looking at the most meaty changes are really found on pages six through nine ish or so in the document itself. The rest of it
018tends to be a re-statement of pieces that have already been stated before. I think the six foot, three foot issue has been clarified much more in this particular document where it clarifies the expectation for six foot versus three foot. As I indicated earlier, we are able to have students particularly the younger students, I'd be at three feet social distancing rather than the previously stated six foot. There are some continued exceptions for the six foot. I wanna just be clear about that. Six foot is always required. This is the required distance between adults who adults, including teachers, staffs and visitors between teachers and students. Six feet of distance is required when eating meals or snacks or drinking, or other times when masks must be removed within the classroom environment. Individuals participating in activities that require projecting
019the voice or heavy breathing such as singing, playing with instrumental PE, may now be at six feet, which is a reduction down from the 12 foot, and six foot social distance to be maintained in common areas and outside of classrooms whenever that's possible to do so. And as I also mentioned earlier, the CDC no longer has a recommendation for the use of barriers in the classroom spaces but nothing precludes districts from doing that. I've been talking with my colleagues over the course of the day. Many of them are going to continue keeping those in place. People have invested a lot of time and money and for some people bring some sense of comfort. And so, you know, as I said on our opening comments, also we made a commitment because we did not have the
020guidance to go on. And we were trying to move towards more in-person learning. We made a commitment to our faculty, to our students, to our parents that that was part of our multi-layer risk mitigation plan. And we intend to continue using those at least as remainder of this year as long as nothing else really changes at this point. So, I would say those are really the highlights. At this point, we are gonna continue our mitigation plans for the remainder of the school year as I mentioned and look at probably more substantial changes for the fall. I suspect that mask will likely be in place for a long time. I'm not sure how many of the other risk mitigation efforts will be in place moving forward, with a wide vaccination campaign that's going on. The number
021of people, we have record numbers of vaccinations happening in every day, and also the availability soon to be for teenagers. And even younger than that. I'm coming up over the course of the summer. So, for all those reasons, I think we're committed to our ongoing risk mitigation plans this year. And we'll continue to re-evaluate and share out our planning for next year. We've made the assumption that we're gonna be operating as normal next year. And we'll continue to plan accordingly for that. I think that is it, Eric, was there anything else you wanted to add about that piece of it? No, just to put it on the boards radar screen this afternoon there was additional guidance announced for end of year activities. We're not prepared to report on that yet as we haven't gotten a
022chance to really take a look at it and analyze it, but they have set out further guidance for end of year activities and Westchester County Department of Health has also discussed how to engage in performing arts, performing arts in schools, with a set of guidance from them. So, those are coming. We as a district are looking at end of year activities culmination activities now and looking to see how to do that in the most effective way to give students the best experience while maintaining health and safety. So, those are conversations that are happening now. Just for the boards information, more so than the community, obviously with the change in ceremonies and end of the year activities last year, we were not able to recognize staff members and others in the way that we typically have.
023So, as we're planning for this year ceremonies, we are thinking of ways of bringing back faculty and staff for years of recognition, tenure recognition, you know, those kinds of things that were milestones that were missed over the past year. So, that's something that's been a part of our thinking in addition to what Eric described as trying to make very meaningful experiences for our students as they hit these milestones in their academic lives here. With that, Eric, you wanna talk to us a little bit about the opening of the middle school? Sure, I still start off by simply thanking the entire staff, facility staff, teaching staff, office staff, teacher aides, everyone who works in that building has done absolutely yeoman's work in the last few weeks, getting ready for this opening which went extremely smoothly. Today,
024I spent some time with Meghan Troy and we looked through the building kids were absolutely thrilled to be back, and absolutely thrilled to see each other. No matter that it was a little bit chilly out, people were outside using the outside grounds. They were happy to be in classes, it was such a different feel in the hallway, walking down not hearing the disembodied computer voices from Zoom in many many classes because kids were there live and in person it was a wonderful thing. To hold the sporting our red bracelets that say we're all in this together that the middle school gave out, and they really spent quite a bit of time celebrating this return to in-person learning which I think is fantastic. The only announcement we would make is to echo what was said during
025the opening comments, they have open drop-off 15 minutes earlier at 7:30, this morning, most people just due to muscle memory were following the regular drop-off which happens between 7:45 and 8:10 with very very few people there at 7:30 to 7:45. So, we'd ask people who are early birds to feel free and go ahead and drop off a little bit earlier to move that traffic along a bit quicker. So, the middle school largely successful this morning. Very very happy to see everybody back. And I'm happy to report also that the opening at the high school is moving a pace and they feel certain that there'll be ready to open come the 19th, the custodial and facility staff are doing their work. We'll finish obviously this weekend as the quarter ends on Friday, it will be a
026wonderful time to start kind of a fresh in the fourth quarter on Monday the 19th. So, with that, I'll open it up to the board for any questions on any of those topics, Amber. Thanks, Eric. Could we find out the update on tents for the middle school and the high school? Yep, we are working on that with the architect. The plans have been submitted to SED based on the board's approval, whenever we met last. Unfortunately it is slowing down a little bit. SED is firing back with a lot of different questions that we were told that probably wouldn't be a concern but now they're becoming a concern. So, hopefully we're just working our way through it. We were hoping for two weeks from now, that's still the hope but it could be delayed a little
027bit longer based on this new barrage of questions that we weren't quite expecting. Thank you, and I have one more question about social distancing. I'm not sure if this is for you Thomas or Eric. But the new guidance says six feet for singing and Lind instruments and PE. So, are we doing that now then? Well, obviously that represents a big change and it just came to us on Friday. So, we will be planning on making those changes and adjustments over the next few weeks. So, we wait till that come, okay. Yes we've moved already to set up meetings with the performing arts teachers to start to think about which spaces make sense, how to set those up. We've we spent quite a bit of time planning on how to do that. At 12 feet with
028some ingenious plans cooked up on using rotating spaces. So, happily, we won't necessarily have to use those for too long, but it will take a little bit of time to kind of re-jigger those so they're ready to go at six feet. Okay, great, thank you. Any other questions? What is the status of afterschool clubs and activities aside from sports? Yeah, I think there are continuing conversations they're being kind of investigated and by each individual case basis, every club is a little bit different. There has been limited oxygen in the room, if you will, to kind of look at those before we have everybody back and participating. So, now as we get settled, that is the next layer of work, what clubs can meet, what clubs make sense to be an in-person versus keeping in Zoom.
029That being said, there is logistical complication after school as custodians are doing much more cleaning than they usually would every evening. So, the school building does have to be open for them to do their work at a relatively reasonable hour in order to facilitate that. Yeah, Karen that's that's a great question. Thank you for asking. I think one of the complications of course, is that with each step that we move away from our own faculty and staff, we lose our ability to sort of control and maintain our risk mitigation efforts. And so, since many of these afterschool clubs and things are really done by third-party vendors and things like that, it's really challenging. So, I think we're trying to sort of get through this year without a wholesale returned to everything this year, I think
030if there's some high level things that we can do we're certainly committed to making the student experience as best it can be this year. But again, I think probably in its fuller form, we'll come back next year. And just in a technological world, Ms. O'Gorman is texting me right now saying, "Many clubs are already happening at the high school. "And they are each day asked and individually approved." So, many clubs are happening at the high school. Yeah, I'll go ahead. Could you give us a quick update on the status of vaccination of faculty staff, non-faculty, in general whether they're able to get the appointments that for those who want it and whatnot, Hey Drew, you wanna take that? Yeah, I would need a minute to pull up numbers. We have not re-surveyed since the last
031report we had at the board table. However, we do know that there have been just any number of community supports people reaching out to try to secure appointments from students themselves including a middle school student who helped get a number of appointments for people, Dr. Gilbert, who sits on our medical and nursing task force has assisted and has helped along with that Dr. Erica German. So, the network continues to be activated when are able to identify people who are seeking an appointment. Yeah, please, Alison. Eric, how did the lunch period go today at the middle school with all of the students back, and with the added, with the rain adding additional? It was not raining actively during lunch. So, it was not raining. They went out and had lunch for the most part. So, we
032are being very even on days that we would otherwise in other years maybe move to the inside. We did do outdoor today, but lunch went smoothly. We will see the system fully work on the day that it actually is actively raining during lunch but we have yet to experience that. So, to be continued. Now we're pretty ready forecast for this week. We might get a chance. What's the task this week? Drew, do you expect to, to survey folks again, just to try and get it, keep a handle on that? We can, I haven't kinda contemplate. We no longer required to, most of the surveying was really done to play an active role first in influencing through superintendents group, through the teachers association groups and so on, to influence more access and that was successful. So,
033judgment at this point is that the people who are likely to get vaccinated, can get vaccinated have or are in the process. I think the last time or reported, I'm just pulling up my data right now. We're over 75%, for example of our teachers have reported being vaccinated. True, just on that point, one thing to consider if you wanna consider another survey, is that it sounds like that the appointments aren't as much of the inhibiting factor anymore. It could be other things such as the ability to get to an appointment, transportation given that the community has really come out and tried to support our faculty and staff, I wonder if there's a a need to ask if that would be helpful and of the community, then being able to say the community, it's no longer
034securing an appointment, it's now somebody may not have transportation to that. And whether there's a logistic, let's go or operational way to do that. Yeah, thank you. Can we also talk a little bit about efforts to encourage students, to get vaccinated? The Pfizer shot is approved for individuals over 16, so that covers some of our high school students. And I mean, I think we can expect as the studies in children and adolescents continue that those will be approved. Is there a plan for education of our students, education of our parents surrounding the importance of vaccination? Yeah, I think that's something we can absolutely turn our attention to at the moment. The answer is no, there isn't a plan. We've not gotten to that particular piece of it. But there's no reason why we shouldn't replicate
035the kinds of outreach and the kinds of conversations that we had with the adults to eligible school-aged children. Yeah, for sure. We have already produced with the doctors on our health and nursing task force, explanation video around all of the vaccines, how they work, side effects, the science behind them, and why they are effective in ending the global pandemic. So, that was actually made quite accessible as a video. So, it is something we could also use and turn around, should we wish to once kids are able to access the vaccine. Great questions, you guys. Anything else for the journey forward? All right, thank you very much. So, to the next agenda item hearing from those present this is the opportunity, the first opportunity in our meeting for the public to speak on non-personnel district items.
036At this point in time, we have a three minute limit on this comment period and max at an hour and a half, we will invite people from the LA in-person audience to come to the podium first. And then we will go to see if there's anyone on Zoom. Would anyone from the audience like to speak at the podium? Seeing none, we'll go to Zoom and are there any hands raised? I see one hand raised. Okay, lemme go to participants. There's one hand raised Mayra, I'm promoting you. And I'll just ask you to unmute and you can state your name and address if you're speaking for any organization. And then go ahead. You just need to unmute Mayra. Myra, we cannot hear you. You look unmuted, Mayra says there's no audio on Zoom. It's something that's
037come through the chat of the Zoom. (board member talking faintly) Mayra, we're just looking at it. (board member speaking faintly) And at this point there's no other hands raised but Mayra will try to get you. (board members talking) Let's give it five seconds, 10 seconds. Does anybody know? They're working on it. Mayra, if you tried to speak, we wouldn't hear you. Is that part of the problem too? She may be trying to speak she's unmuted from our end. Okay, one minute. They're going to check. Here's the glitch, should we consider going into written communications just to be a little efficient? Sure. Okay, we're working on the technical issues. And as soon as I get a notice that we can take public comment through Zoom. We'll go back to public comment, but now we'll just, Mayra?
038Hi, can you hear me? Go ahead, thanks Jerry. Hi, are you able to hear me? Yes, go ahead, Mayra. Great, thank you so much I apologize there was no sound coming. Mayra Kirkendall-Rodriguez, Fox Meadow Road. I wanted to thank you very very much for creating the proposed policy 105 equity, inclusivity and diversity and education. My husband and I especially would like to thank Dr. Hagerman and the administration, as well as Ms. Alison Singer for writing this important policy. I've heard and read the first two versions. And this afternoon, I read the third iteration. I express my strong support for the policy. Writing policies has never easy because by their very nature, they're broad in scope. And certainly since March, 2020, you certainly have been very consumed with the challenges of the pandemic. And I thank
039all of you. I encourage you to please explain to the community as specifically as possible the following eight points, the precise objectives of the DEI policy, who will design and write the processes and procedures, which will be used to implement the policy. Whether the Compact Committee will be the body responsible for the policies implementation. And if it is, please describe the human technological and financial resources it will have at its disposal. Whether you will send out an open invitation to Scarsdale parents and students to volunteer to be part of the policies implementation process, whether you will use surveys or other mechanisms to solicit input from the Scarsdale community, to identify what people want in DEI initiatives, for our schools. What metrics and data will you be using to identify and measure progress of the policies
040implementation? What communication tools will you use so that the work of the Compact Committee or other implementing body is transparent, and the timeline for implementation of the policy. I also have specific questions about the content of the policies, the policy states the students should be reflected in the curriculum, given our demographics, how precisely will that be accomplished, in addition to having books in the library written by or representing people of color. Well, economics and history classes teach the numerous contributions of people of color in every field in this country. Well, we spend more time learning about immigrants who crossed the Bering Strait or who crossed our Southern border or landed on Angel Island, rather than disproportionately studying about immigrants who came on the Mayflower or those who came through Ellis Island. The policy space that
041it is, "Imperative that the board, its officers and employees, "faculty and students be fully conversant "in the historical injustice and inequalities "that have shaped our society." Does that mean that the BOE, staff and administration will be trained on these issues? If so, by who and how and when. Lastly, the policy states that the superintendent or designate, will ensure that curriculum and instructional materials reflect the board's commitment to educational equity. What is the board's commitment to educational equity? And could that change as the composition of the board changes or once this policy is adopted does that mean that that will demonstrate what exactly the board's commitment is to educational equity. For over six years, I volunteered at multiple community and PTA groups in Scarsdale, and I'm always impressed with the incredible demographic, ethnic racial and political
042diversity in our community. Please be inclusive of those who wanna make sure that the DEI policy is successful as you designed the DEA implementation processes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayra. I'm going to look and see if there's another hand raised at Zoom. I don't see one at this time, is that correct? No other hands for public comment? Okay, then we will close public comment. And we will move to the next item, which is "Follow-Up to Public Comment". And I know I will ask Mayra, the first April appoints were sent to us in an email over the weekend, but if you would send to the board the additional, perhaps your entire comment or the additional, because there were a lot of extra questions that I think many of us would like to make sure
043we get them all accurately and respond to them. If not during the discussion, perhaps via email at another time. But is there other follow-up to Mayra? There is obviously there were many questions that were raised, many questions that were posed and other kinds of information that weren't requested. I would ask that rather than respond to those individually now, that we talk about them in the action item and address some of the questions there in conjunction with board questions. Okay, all right, then we'll move on to number seven "Written Communications", Alison. So, just to remind the community that the board of education emails also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk, the open meetings law requires that all board deliberations, which may lead to action or policy changes occur in public, therefore written communications and emails
044are reported at our board meetings. Okay, so between March 6th and April 9th, the board received 39 emails, 14 were focused on the journey forward, including questions about quarantines, concerns about families traveling over April break, and requests for more information about the new schedules for grades three to five and for high school students. Two letters expressed concern about instances of violence against Asian-Americans in this country. 10 letters express support or concerns regarding the 2021/2022 school calendar or the budget. Five letters focused on athletics, including several that expressed concern about the lack of PE exemptions for our athletes. And eight letters were invitations for board members to various community events or announcements of webinars that individuals thought might be of interest to board members. We thank everyone who took the time to write, every email received
045a response from a board member or from a member of the cabinet or both. Thanks, Alison, I know a couple of principals also respond to just some of those more particular school-based concerns. We'll move to the personnel report, Drew. Thank you, I just wanted to quickly pick up on a point Dr. Hagerman made earlier in the meeting about some of our ceremonies and we have one important one coming up on May 10th at our board of education meeting and that's tenure, 21 individuals will be recommended for tenure from among the faculty and administration. And we're still working out the details on exactly what that will look like. But I just wanted to point that out that we're happy to be celebrating those individuals in about a month. Awesome, thanks, Drew. Before I move to the
046consent agenda, I know that there is lag between the live stream and Zoom, is that correct? There's? I think we should be just watching in live stream. Okay, so that way everyone can stay on pace to what we're doing. It's the best way to watch the live stream. (speaker faintly speaking) Right, I just feel like there's a hand raised in public comment and I didn't know whether I'd miss there's a hand raised in Zoom. And I didn't know whether I'd missed that because of the delay. (speaker faintly speaks) Okay, fine. So, we'll move on to the consent agenda. And just before we get to that, I wanna let everyone know that the superintendent, the board president and the board of vice-president and sometimes another board member meet typically on the Thursday before the Monday and
047discuss the agenda. We also get information from board members at that time related to what topics would like to see at the agenda. And then we set the agenda and the consent agenda is set with items for which we feel the discussion is not necessary, but if at any point today, a board member right now, a board member wants to take an item out of the consent agenda, you may do so at this time. Seeing none, go ahead, Ron. Thanks, Pam, there are eight items on tonight's consent agenda, item 10.01, the minutes from the March 2nd, 2021 Budget forum, education report and business meeting item 10.02 personnel certified, item 10.03 personal non-certified, item 10.04 election inspectors budget vote and board elections May 18th, 2021, item 10.05 claims audit report from March, 2021, item 10.06, special
048education contracts, item 10.07, Stipulation of settlement and item 10.08 accepting the consent agenda. I move that the consent agenda be accepted. Thanks, may we have a second. Second. Carl, I think that was you. We don't need discussion, so all of you will say aye, Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? Okay, the motion to accept the consent agenda passes and we'll move into information items, Thomas. Thank you very much, Pam I appreciate that. The first three, 11.01, 11.02 and 11.03 are all respectively within Stuart's purview. So, I'm gonna ask him to first review the facilities update followed by the custodial cleaning products agreement and round out his section with the food service update. Great, thank you very much, Thomas. So, facilities wise, I mean a number of different items I'd like to update the boarding community on first
049and foremost, and what's current is Dean Field. So, you can see if you've driven by the field or out in the parking lot. It looks really close to being complete and it looks probably more complete than it actually is, probably about 95% done. There's some things that there still need to be finished up and really wanna remind the community that the field is still closed and it will be unable to be used until next spring. It's very important that the sod roots in and forms that connection with the sub base of the soil. If we were to use it, it could ruin it and set us back. So, we do have some signs out there. We are gonna be putting in some snow fence across the field. So, it will look very obvious that it's
050closed but we're really like everyone's cooperation and helping to make sure that the field at the end of the day will be as good as we all thought it would be. But it really does look wonderful. And it is tempting admittedly. Back to the current and planning for outside dining and getting outside. In addition to the tents, we have ordered a a bunch of tables for all the buildings. So, picnic tables, not quite what you would see in the state park, but something like that for each and every building, there is a delay on that. So, we'll expect them in about a month's time or so. The great thing is it's not now related. We'll be able to use those going into the future as well. So, I know the principals were very excited when
051I told them that we'd be getting them, all when we worked with them for proper placement and the number of them. And there'll be great to get once we do get them, pretty neat. Pond projects, so the roofing work for Edgewood Quaker Ridge in middle school, we will be going out to bid on those shortly and we'll have those bids ready for you for the May 10th Board Meeting. And the electrical panel upgrades in HVHC work. Unfortunately, that does look like it's going to be delayed. They're very very long lead times on all sorts of steel products at this time. If we were to go out to bid now on these items, the product would not be in place until early fall. Unfortunately with HVHC stuff, you can't put that in if you are going
052to need heat for the winter time. So, unfortunately it's not going to overlap. We're double-checking a couple of things just to be assured that's not possible but it's not looking likely, which is unfortunate. And that would just be pushed off to a summer of 2022. And that is it. Just a reminder in the board report, there was a park eases, a brief report on Dean field. Just give you an update on that. Any questions on facilities? Quick question that Dean Field, it looks great. The parks department, when it rains, they send out their email that all the fields are closed or which fields are closed. Are they putting in there that Dean Field is closed until next spring? Just to get that word out into the community? Yeah, I would guess not. I can reach
053out to them and make sure they do that. And then Ray, I know through his context, we'll do the same. Yeah, coming through spring, a lot of teams are just looking for empty fields and if you see an empty field, they're just gonna wanna go on it. Yes, they will. I think I know I've seen a few individuals out there. I think Ray saw a little ad hoc quick pickup baseball game going on. It just looked great. It's just not ready. So, yeah we'll get the word out. So, the HVAC work that might be delayed is it definitely delayed or when will we know for sure? I'd say I'm 90% sure. It's gonna be delayed. I've been having meetings with the architects and engineers. We had our latest meeting on Friday , almost timelines just
054does not look like it's going to work unfortunately. Or the work was always planned for summer of 2022. And we were trained to ramp it up a little bit quicker just because of the pandemic. And it is just not gonna unfortunately time-wise workout. All right, custodial cleaning products. So, this is pretty exciting Viking Pure. Our facilities department has been doing research on alternate cleaning, sanitizing, disinfecting products. They happened upon Viking Pure which uses electrolyzed water to clean. So, if you think about a salt water pool, it breaks down chlorine to a very base level and it cleans and disinfects. So, it's not new technology but it's finally come down in price and Viking Pure has developed a process to take care of the salt, corrosiveness issue in the product, which would always be sort of
055a drawback for using anything like that. It's being used in Mount Vernon and a number of other districts across the area. We'd be at the forefront of this for certain, but we're very excited in that not only is it a very green product, no chemicals or anything like that, it's using water but it's also a sustainable. So, we'd be basically getting rid of two of our other disinfecting products that we've been using Conchrobium and a molding mess and substituting it with this product. We be getting rid of an awful lot of plastic that's throughout the buildings and our containers for those other products and replacing it with this which self-generates onsite and all at the same time we'd be saving approximately $14,000 a year by using this product. And to boot, and I put this
056in the backup. The president CEO is a Scarsdale alumni was neat to find out through our investigation of this. If you look the Scarsdale paper, you might note some of his athletic accomplishments. I did look as a accomplished squash player of all things but he's been with this company for a number of years. We had a Zoom conference with them, and it was very exciting to have the chance to bring this product on. Any questions about Viking Pure? Okay, if not, we'll come back the next business meeting with the actual contract for approval. Great, and I would just say, it's not an action item today which it does allow for community input or questions on this over the next. However, many weeks to our next board meeting. I think it might be four weeks, if
057I'm right. So, there's time. If anyone has further questions or has input we'll be happy to receive it. Thanks, Pam. Last but not least is just an update on food service. As we've alluded throughout this year it's been a difficult time from the business standpoint of food service, the inability to really generate revenues from sales, it really does operate like a small business or tries to this current year. Well, this past school year and this current school year, we will need to transfer those funds like we've talked about from the general fund to help support that program. I thought Tara Cook, who was a Food Service Director did a really nice sort of an update for the board of education community, as far as what they've been up to and still supporting, nutrition in the
058school district and making sure that they were there for the families that still wanted to take advantage of those services. The good news with what we were talking about earlier, as far as more students back in the building, sales are now picking up at the middle school as anticipated. They're actually double today from what they were previously, as soon as recently as last week, high school continues to pick up almost on a daily basis and elementary school, now that they're back that has doubled and continues to increase a little bit as well. So, we still certainly expect to lose money this year. I think previously it was all $400,000 was our estimate back in December, it won't be that, but it will still be a few hundred thousand dollars, unfortunately, but we look forward to
059a next school year. The contract for next year to recall, this current year was supposed to be a bid year that was delayed with an emergency contract with just to carry us through, that will again happen for next year at least through the first few months, at which time if things still continue to advance on a positive note, that we would negotiate a contract for the last six months or so of the next school year, of the 21/22 school year. And then we would go out to competitive bid for the 22/23 school year. Okay, any questions on food service? How has the kitchen Greenacres being used? Is it being used to help prepare food? It's not at present because we've been really watching our staffing and with the grab and go type food that we've
060been preparing. We've just been in a limited number of meals. We've been just preparing it like we have in the past out of the high school we're excited. If you've seen it, I think you have it, it's beautiful. So, we're ready, we have a plan to use it, once we're back up and going, as far as staffing, but again we've been really trying to watch our expenses. But that will it be used to support the other elementary schools or all the food gonna be made predominantly at the high school? Yeah, I don't think, not at this point, it would be just Greenacres and then we will see, once we get that up and going, the ability. The thing that we have here is Glenn Garew, Who's our Executive Chef, he has managed just right from
061the beginning, all the food service. So, he really hasn't done a fine science. He's only one person, but he knows how to do it and he does it well, as soon as you start to farm that out, we might lose control of that, until we get that up and running, get somebody there that could handle more than one area. We would probably just keep it centralized here, and then eventually move it out. Okay, great. Thank you. (Thomas speaking faintly) Did you guys miss all of them? Sorry. (members laughing) I heard it. I said that Mayra always keeps us on our toes. Lots of good questions and seeking information. So, I just wanted to remind everyone that this is a new policy for us Policy 0105, that the correct title of it is, Equity, Inclusivity and
062Diversity in Education in Scarsdale. This was not something that was a required policy but something we felt strongly about, which I think speaks to the board's commitment to this work. In the beginning of the meeting, in my opening comments I spoke to a couple of different issues. Namely, that board policies are very broad in scope. They're not intended to be discreet goals or objectives which are something that are quite different. Those changed from year to year and talk about how we're going to reach our aspirational board goals sorry, board policies in any given year. And those are subject to change over time depending on the values of any given year or sort of where we find ourselves. And we also talked about this work being kinda bifurcated and we wanna keep that approach so that
063there's been meaningful, site-specific work that's been going on, which has been very important to the faculty and staff who've been involved in that work. And we also have work that we wanna do at the district level, which this policy really speaks to creating more of framework for us in terms of moving forward with that. So, each year we will have policies which back up our board policy, but those will change over time and to address one of my risk concerns is that those changes over time will reflect board priorities. And those do change, as new board members come on as old board members leave us over time. I also spoke to the idea that expertise and representation will be an important part of this work. This is something that has been ongoing. I don't want
064people to forget it. I would also add to those two terms, partnerships. We know that the PTC has a big program tomorrow night. They have had ongoing program around DEI work. Those worked sort of hand in hand with the district's priorities on this issue. Just as a reminder, we've used a number of consultants over time. We've used Tanya Odom at the high school. Sheila Arnold has been working with our middle school faculty and staff for a couple of years now, Glenn Hoddle has worked with the district staff on different kinds of training and PD that was necessary and Jen Rosen who happens to be our TC representative has also worked with Edgar very closely particularly when we were doing the multicultural libraries at the elementary school. So, we understand that it's important to have people
065who are experts and who are guiding and facilitating this work, and as I was sharing with the PTC when I met with them earlier, best intentions and best outcomes are not always the same thing and there's lots of people who are working on DEI work and having people who are not necessarily skilled facilitators or experts in this area and it can get communities into sort of hot water around. These are very sensitive and can be very emotional issues. And you need people who are very skilled at both and having expert content knowledge and are skilled facilitators of this work within their communities. And so, we understand we're not gonna be able to do this work on our own. We've never, I think sort of suggested that we were capable of doing that on our own,
066but we are gonna have to lean on folks. There's a question about whether or not we need to have a point person in the district who kinda takes on that leadership role. And that will be something that we continue to work with the board on over time. Certainly that was not a part of this year's budget discussions but something that we probably need to talk about probably next year. Now, I really do view next year as being sort of a framing year for us to take this policy that we're talking about adopting tonight and putting some legs as you would and providing a structure so that the board can make informed decisions about the kinds of supports. My wish I said what kinda supports, what kind of communication tools, what kind of resources are gonna
067be dedicated to that? I think the adoption of this policy starts those conversations in a more formalized way and allows us to then sort of create the superstructure around that so that we can come back to the board in a really informed way and talking about our needs. I think it's important to note that there are six mandates. I feel like that are embedded in this policy. So, it's not as though this is very open-ended in my mind. And the first one is found in the second paragraph of the policy, which really speaks to the idea that students and faculty should see themselves reflected in the curriculum, their physical surroundings and broader environment. All that gets dis-aggregated and explained a little bit more in terms of curricular and programs. I think that statement also talks
068about staffing issues and that's something that Drew has been talking with us about the cultural diversity, hiring fair that we participated in this year, our real commitment to trying to hire a diverse staff and faculty that better reflect our student body. So, I think that's a big piece that's embedded in this policy, the way it's currently written. I think we signed the second one in the third paragraph where Mayra did also ask us, does the statement around it's imperative that the board its officers, employees, faculty and students are fully conversant in historical injustices and inequalities, that have led to institutional barriers within our schools, not only within Scarsdale but within the greater society and our greater community. And I think the answer to that question is yes we've embedded in the policy that we are
069committing ourselves to training and to developing a deeper understanding and what forms that will take. I'm not quite sure yet, because that's something that we don't wanna make an assumption about where people are in this work, but we actually have to do some assessments and figure out where people are. And some of us may be beginning at the very very beginning of this journey. Some of us may have been working on this for a couple of years. Some of us may be more seasoned in this work. of training and professional development, needs to make sure that we're bringing everyone along no matter where they're starting much like we do with our students. There's not a starting point. That's the same necessarily for every single person. And the third piece and the fourth piece, I think
070really will be work that Edgar will be priding some leadership for us on, that's the first aspect of that is ensuring that curriculum instructional materials reflect the board's commitment to educational equity. And it specifically talks about the curriculum materials reflecting diversity of perspectives and a range of perspectives and experiences. So, Mayra talked to us specifically about does that mean we're gonna be focusing on this type of meal Greenacre experience or a different kind of meal Greenacre experience? Are we going to really call out contributions that are made from a wide variety of people. I think we do a pretty decent job of that in the arts, in social studies and in English classes, but it might be more of a challenge and something like a math class or a science class to make sure that
071we're finding those same kinds of ways of being able to talk about the contributions that many people have made to those fields. And so again, it's not we don't wanna be making assumptions about this work, but actually doing curriculum audits and program audits to make sure that we are really being as representative as we can be. And then making sure beyond the curriculum materials that there's a focus on instruction as well which are two different things. So, it's not as though Mayra said about. It's not just about having books in libraries, but it's also about having a lived experience in the classroom for kids to be able to really do participate in different perspective taking and different perspective understanding and having access to people's experiences in a firsthand way. And that's sometimes supported through traditional
072curriculum and books. And sometimes that means bringing in speakers or looking at other kinds of film or other kind of mediums as part of that experience. And then five and six are really talking about sort of the early part of how to operationalize this. And I've had a couple of people questioning about why the Compact Committee as opposed to a different kind of group. And the only response that I would make is that as a structure that we currently have in place, that we have representatives from all of our schools while a regular original Compact Committees were developed and implemented by Thomas Sobel, a Superintendent from here who went on to the State. And that was originally around site-based decision-making. Obviously Scarsdale had been doing this for years and years. And so, part of our
073compacts have evolved and much of them have evolved around creating, welcoming and inclusive school communities. That's just been naturally an evolution over time here. And so, the last couple of years, this year not withstanding because of COVID of course, we really began to focus on DEI kinds of issues and people remember we came up with a calendar, we came up a glossary of bias terms. We started adding different kinds of holidays and ceremonies to our school calendar. We talked about ways of recognizing different traditions. So, that's been work that's been ongoing. I don't know that this work will live there forever, but the idea is that we wanna use a structure that's perhaps already in place and it's been working in order for us to meet with success with this new initiative. So, that's the
074thought behind compact taking this on initially in terms of a warehousing sort of area. There's again work that's going on at the elementary schools, middle school and high school. We're not gonna be pushing out and saying you must do this, but rather talking about the good practices that are happening at those. And then talking about as we have been doing over the last couple of years, well, what about this kind of support, or by the way, we're bringing in this speaker, you might have faculty were interested in coming to this and really serving as a resource across the district for that work. And then of course the leadership and accountability portion of this is making sure that we are annually reporting to the board. That was another question that was brought up to us in
075the public comment about how do we sustain this effort over time and make sure that it isn't subject to individuals who may be sitting around this table at any given time. And part of that is by, in the same way I would liken it to the way we think about education reports. For a long time we didn't really focus on education reports but we began to have the conversation that that's the heart of what we're doing here. That's what we're about. And we made that a focal part of our board meetings. And I think just as we have with journey forward this year and moments of crisis, if we continue to make this a focal part of our board meetings, I think it will keep us engaged and excited and informed about this topic in
076a way that will allow it to have long sustainability in our district over time. So, I think I hit on the major pieces of that. A couple of other things that I would just say, yes we really appreciated the community involvement in this policy. We've been getting feedback including, and up to literally minutes before the board meeting started with continuing suggestions. This is a kind of a policy that I think can continue to be and probably needs to continue to be refined over time. So, we appreciate all the folks who are taking the time to contribute their thoughts and ideas to us. I do recommend that the board will or I will ask that the board approve this policy tonight, just because school board policy is going to effect if people don't know this. The
077night they're voted upon. Unless otherwise indicated within the policy. And so, this really just gives us an opportunity while we're still focused on COVID that's been our primary concern. It does allow us to start thinking about structuring our time over the summer and setting up and engaging faculty and staff around these discussions as well as our broader community about how we can start creating this framework. Then so, I find that there's a certain amount of urgency about us getting involved in this work. So, that was a long runway, but I felt like (chuckles) it was worth a few minutes to talk about that. Are there questions or concerns that folks have? I've a problem with the word the before disparate in the third paragraph, if that should be removed, because it makes it sound like--
078Are you talking about the very last? Yeah, it says, "That have and may continue" I don't know I brought this up last time. I still have amendment to it if possible, "That had and may continue "to contribute to disparate education." When you say the disparate outcomes, it sounds like that is a thing that we have. (Pam talks faintly) I see the word the before pervasive not in front of disparate. It's the last sentence, the last line of the third paragraph. Okay. It's here. Mine struck out already. I don't know why, but I don't have it in mine. Was this the same thing we talked about last time? Yes. Yeah, maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing. I'm looking at the third reading and it's in mine says in green and may continue to contribute. (Pam
079talks faintly) And then it says to the disparate. I think that's easy to strike. Okay. We can just adopt it with the change. To disparate. Other thoughts or questions or rates. I know I raised this last time too. It's about having it in the Compact Committee and why not a district? Why committee, like we have for safety. I was just wondering how often does the district Compact Committee meet during the year, and how that committee will be inclusive if it's designated the PTA president or the principals like will Edgar be on that committee? Like, how is that going to function? At least the Compact Committee that when I at district wide I think of it was you and the PTA heads or one parent rep and the principals. Yeah so, again, I'm certainly opening to
080suggestions about how to move forward with this work. Again, this has been a natural extension of where the Compact Committees have gone. We've met every couple of months in the past. We have not met this year due to COVID. I think this would take a concerted effort, like at least a monthly meeting. Again, from my purposes this is really about sort of creating a framework, and operationalizing this policy and putting it in front of each of our seven schools, but then in the terms of the school board, in terms of coming up with a plan for how to kinda operationalize it as much in the same way, we spent a year sort of working on a strategic plan and then putting it in front of the board and talking about the resources that would be
081necessary for it. We could, I suppose, create a brand new committee. I just feel like coming out of COVID this year, and trying to create a brand new structure with a brand new charge might be challenging to do that as I was hoping that we could lean on some of the experience that's already been developed. Since some of the folks who've been involved in this work for some time, understand that they have some background in this work and they tend to be not always but they tend to be the people who are doing this work within their buildings because that has been sort of the nexus between the individual building compact representatives and the district compact. So again, I'm open to suggestions or ideas about that. Yeah, I just think that some of the DEI
082committees the PTA committees are not being headed by the PTA president, who would be the person on the Compact Committee. It's not always the president who comes, each building sort of decides who those people are. But they elect, but is it gonna be the same person who's on the DEI committee? I guess once I look at this policy, why do we even need the paragraph that this is in the district Compact Committee since it's still not? Is that a definite, I mean that's something that we'll need revision, then if it moves from that committee. Yeah, I was personally trying to avoid some of these accountability measures for the first year, selfishly to sort of have it grow some legs and to be able to have the flexibility there. I feel like when we began to
083talk about this, there was a sense from some maybe the majority of some of those early voices who talked about the the need for accountability, I'm for it with the concern that if somehow there's not some level of accountability that it might somehow slip through the cracks or maybe it wouldn't be taken as seriously, there's the saying that what you measure is what your priorities are. And I think that was a little bit of the sense behind doing that. And then we had some conversations about who might be the best folks to be involved in that and where I sort of arrived at the Compact Committee. I certainly have no strong feelings about leaving that paragraph in, but we'd certainly wanna hear from other people before we just decide to strike it. Would a solution
084be to indicate just a committee and then it's sort of at least vague enough that you can try the Compact Committee. If the Compact Committee has the proper representation that Karen's mentioning. If you find that it doesn't have the proper representation that gives you the flexibility to create another committee or put it to a different committee. We can easily neutralize it by taking out the word compact and just thinking of district committees. I'm just curious, would it make sense? It seems to me that the first deliverable, so to speak of whatever the committee is, let's say it's the compact, would be to review and think through who should make up the committee meaning somebody has to create, if it's not the compact some committee has to meet to do something, right? So, the question is
085you need a first step. And sometimes we get so bogged down with looking at the long-term that we get immobilized by the first step. So, it seems to me the compact could task themselves with thinking, are we the right group? Maybe yes, maybe no. And if not, how do we picking up on Mayra's point like, who will be on it? How do you get a sense of inclusivity? That's a tricky thing. As we've seen through the restart, there are lots of different ways to get people on these committees. So, that alone is a task, right? And I would think that you could argue the compact might be a good first step and they could say, you know what? Maybe we're not totally the way we need to be. We need to add such and such
086a group. So, it seems I don't have a problem with the compact starting, but being aware that it may very quickly pivot to something else and that would be fine. I think that makes good sense. I was one of the people who felt very strongly that a policy without clear accountability and without measurability would soon be forgotten. And I think this work is so important that we wanted to move forward with that accountability vested in existing body so that the work would begin. And I think your idea's a good one that the first order of business, maybe for the Compact Committee with regard to this work is to think about a broader committee. But until that time they would still have the responsibility for the implementation and oversight of important policy. But can I go
087back to Carl's point then? I think I like the flexibility of having it open. I don't mind starting with the Compact Committee to think about the committee, but to the points about inclusivity, I've served on compact I feel like for a policy like this, we wanna be inclusive. And so, maybe that group needs to think about how to create an inclusive committee. So, I would support it, but I would prefer to not have compact listed in there, just with the understanding that for the first year, perhaps compact would take it on. And maybe one corollary is that the Compact Committee itself becomes more inclusive and diverse. I agree that I'm not sure compact is the right place for this. If I read this correctly, someone correct me if I'm wrong, there are 32 people on
088compact committee. I struggled to understand what 32 person committee is then gonna then determine another committee. I think this work is just too important. I think that we've already started it. I think we have a place to start. I think we can amend this to say a diversity and inclusion committee. And I think our superintendent can establish who's on that and start working on this. It feel strongly about the importance of doing it quickly. In my experience, I just don't know how a 32 person committee is gonna get to that work quick enough. I think if we wanted to specify a new committee, it would be important to set a date by which that committee would be set and offer an operating so that this doesn't drag out. And that there is accountability. One thing
089I did like about the Compact Committee though I know it's 32 people, but it does have representation from all the schools, all the levels. I think that's the problem when you get to some of these larger committees like the safety committee, everybody needs to have a voice. So, I understand the desire to kind of move forward quickly. But I also think you wanna be thoughtful in figuring out who is on the committee and not just try to put together 10 people because you might leave somebody off. I mean, if you think about next step, piggybacking on Ron's point, let's say we agree it is not the compact, it doesn't feel right. We don't want the compact. You basically pointed to Thomas and said, let's just start and you decide who's on that committee. We know
090where that's gonna go, he's gonna decide. And then people are gonna say, well, exactly why did you use that methodology? So, you're gonna create a committee to create the committee. I think the reality is you need a first step, and I don't think it would be wrong for the compact to say, this is a little unwieldy, 32 people. We're gonna create a subcommittee within this. That's gonna focus on next steps, the first next step of figuring out and the find inclusivity, what is inclusivity, who is included in that definition? It seems there's a lot of homework to be done before it's created perhaps this committee. And I don't think it should necessarily be Thomas, who's the point person to create it. You may disagree, but I think No, I don't disagree. I think in general,
091it's important that for legitimacy and for alignment, there's a lot of work going on. And to go back to the idea that there is site-specific work that is already deeply embedded in the culture and in the priorities of our schools, we have to respect that. And I think we can't wholesale sort of throw that out and say, now a district committee is coming down on high and saying, here's what we're focusing on. And the reason I think that we landed on the Compact Committee is because that has already been a mechanism in which rather than pushing out to the seven schools, we've brought in what's going out. Part of the function of every single meeting is to talk about what's the important work that's going on at each of those schools. And then we try
092to find the nexus of where that work overlaps for us to be able to do some work. And although it's a large committee I have to say, in the last couple of years, we've put out some pretty strong work products even from a committee of 32, from the calendar work that we did, the glossary of bias terminology, we also do, we renew our compact application every two years which has been and we have used the sub-committee structure very effectively to be able to accomplish that work. And we meet some time, if we need to meet 10 times in a month, we have a group of people who are willing to do that. And so, there are already lots of pieces that are in place. I think we wanna just be really careful about creating sort
093of parallel play in this work and having district work that's going on. That is not connected and respectful of the work that has been going on in our buildings already. So, because the line was scratch that it would report to the board. Is there a board liaison to the compact committee? No. Can I just to go back to my point and that's a good question but I think I'm assuming an imagining to some extent it's on us, but in that situation to make sure we get a report but I think this is important enough that I imagine it'll happen if it doesn't, we'll have to put it on the agenda. But I think to me, the important thing and the reason why I was saying it should just say, to me a committee is adequate
094is because from a policy standpoint, to me the important thing is that there is a committee that the work happens that we find out about it, that it meets the goals that are set forth in here. But whether it's the Compact Committee specifically, or a sub-committee of that that Thomas points has the committee required under here or something different is less significant to me as long as it's the right people and the right committee. There's a lot of different ideas about whether we should have a new committee, whether it should be a sub-committee, whether it should be the Compact Committee. I personally don't feel the need to figure all of that outright here. As long as I know that there's gonna be a committee and the superintendent is gonna supervise it and make sure that
095it comes back to us with appropriate information. I wanna acknowledge, thank you, Carl for that comment, I do wanna acknowledge that the scope we've written within this policy is extremely narrow. Like if we look at that first paragraph, the first sentence and the last paragraph, it says that this on committee compact or otherwise, we'll establish the goals and corresponding metrics related to the policy. That's what it's saying this committee is doing right now. That's a very very limited charge. It does not say that this committee is taking on the DEI work of the district and coordinating and focusing and doing all of that. So, just wanna be really clear to some people's points around the table. You have to have some body that really is going to think about how to implement this in the
096district, understanding the district structures. And that's really all the policy is saying at this point is that this compact or another committee are gonna establish the goals and the metrics. I would be personally concerned if we leave the meeting signing off on this without real clear picture of how this is gonna happen. If we say the A committee, it feels very very loosey goosey to me. I think there should be, from my perspective a very tangible, clear, next step, and to say A committee will do it and to say, I don't care which it is. Personally, I'll be honest. I'm not sure I don't know the compact, I haven't attended it. So, I don't know but I think we need to understand what the next step is and to say, just the general A committee
097feels, it doesn't seem logical in terms of who's gonna do what, when we leave this room, who's going to do what. When the next step, the way it's written within the next if my suggestion was taken, and I think it's a fair point, but when the next step be for Thomas to sit down with the Compact Committee, or some portion thereof decide who the committee is gonna be and then let us know and then go from there. I agree that if we said it fourth year, he doesn't have to take that step. Then he's actually going to step two, I guess. But anyway, I think that's true but I think we can also visualize the different sequence, that's all. One thing I like about Carl's suggestion is it just allows us to be nimble and
098execution of the policy. And ultimately that's the most important thing is that this policy gets implemented. And I think this is how we typically do things. We're not necessarily designating the exact way that the superintendent does the work. I think we are designated the general policy and then Carl's suggestion allows that to happen. Our committee and if Thomas believes it's compact, a sub-group that gives him the flexibility to do that. Yeah, that would be my understanding too. If we took out district, Thomas would go and use the district Compact Committee, because that's what he wants to use because the structure's there and he would utilize the ground up organic. In that case that's fine, because there's a very-- It's almost the same thing, but it-- Okay, so in a way we're giving him the flexibility
099To choose committee For wherever reason to wake up tomorrow morning and say, I don't want the compact, I want something else. I want the board of education. (board members talking and laughing) Because of that can I ask will compact even meet during the remainder of the year? Or is that something that won't happen until next year or months into next year? Assume we adopt this policy, then I absolutely would reconvene. You'll call the compact I mean again, we've been on this absolute singular laser focus on COVID, but I think as tonight demonstrates we're beginning to start stepping into those concentric circles outside of that now, and beginning to sort of get back to normalcy and obviously with the enormity of this task. And that would be something that we would absolutely need to convene for
100this year. Okay. Also my thought on the waking up tomorrow idea is I was really more thinking that it would go to the Compact Committee based on your comfort level and what has been said. But I was sorta thinking in six months or a year, if it's now grown gotten to the point where it needs its own committee, I wouldn't wanna have the superintendent to come back to us to amend the policy. That's what I was thinking. I'm not seeing that correct. Because again, I think the charge that this is a very clear and narrow charge around the metrics and the goals, and then I think it becomes a distributed. Then we become very clear about it the work is distributed across the district and here's how that work is distributed. And I see every
101cabinet member at this table having role in that work, I see board members having a role in that work. DEI Committees at each school having a role in that work absolutely. So, do we take or to get rid of compact? Or is it generic or generic? All right, it's going generic. Yes? Yes. Okay, so we'll task A committee with the star without shown goals, And unnamed committee. (members laughing and talking) That's all right. Tomorrow, Thomas will convene (laughs) the Compact Committee (laughs) for April 13th. Not really, do you have questions or thoughts? I just wanna again appreciate all the input we received from our community members this week as Thomas said, it seemed a lot of it is more around the implementation and the work going forward versus the the higher level guidance that a
102policy of the board provides to the administration and the community. So, we encourage that continued involvement. We understand the hard work that's happening at the school-based levels and very much hope that that can contribute to the structure going forward. And I reiterate that I appreciate all the board comments on that, as well as the community comments, all of that helps for us to stretch our thinking around this topic, which is although we've done a lot of work, there's a lot of work to do, and all of this helps. And then all policies are living, breathing documents that can be adjusted, next fall, if you needed to or January accordingly. So, this is a growing piece of guidance. All right, I'm hearing no more on the policy update, which was 11.04. The next two items, 11.05
103the board committee on community engagement and also the board meeting calendar. So, Karen and Ron are leading the next item. So, Karen and I are gonna give the update on the community engagement committee meeting. I'll just kick it off with a brief overview of our meeting and then hand it off to Karen. The committee met on March 24th to discuss a few follow up items from our board meetings such as a Board Coffee Recommendation, as well as other potential community engagement ideas that were on our list to be discussed. Just a brief update on the coffees, the plan is to try to hold them later this spring ideally in-person outside up possibly in Chase Park, but Pam is working with the village right now on the logistics and the planning of that. So, likely to
104move forward but just still waiting on some additional details. The committee discussed a number of other ideas and recommendations that had come to us from our listening sessions and other feedback from the community. There may be some additional recommendations that are brought to the board. There are a couple that we're still gathering some additional input from appropriate stakeholders. So, more on that to come hopefully at next board meetings. And then the last piece we discussed was the idea of a Board Community Engagement Plan. And for that, I'm gonna pass it off to Karen. So, we wanted to bring to the board the idea of creating a community engagement plan that this committee, the BCCE committee, would create that plan. I'm going to talk to you about the rationale for the plan. And Ron will give
105you an overview of the proposed structure. So, in of the rationale, a plan would codify existing board methods for community engagement. It would capture things like how we communicate, with whom we communicate, when we communicate, the ways in which the community can communicate with us, it would create a structure that would allow us to receive tangible feedback and a place to collect and assess metrics such as how many people are coming to board coffees. And what is the attendance at engagement opportunities during different times of the year, perhaps most importantly, a plan would provide a framework for relaying information to the community and foster transparency by providing a clear timeline of opportunities. In terms of what the structure of this document will look like, we propose to model it off of the district communication plan,
106and make it a living it (microphone swishing) make it a living document. Something that we would continue to update through some structures, Karen mentioned around things like metrics or different ideas or feedback from the community. Some proposed sections were get modeled after the district communications plans, were a section for the context to provide the overview of the board committee on community engagement the work to date and the purpose of this document, existing board community engagement methods, stakeholders and audiences, partnerships on this work, as well as a communications schedule so that people could understand throughout the year where those different opportunities lie in one document. This would be a living document hopefully helpful both to current, as well as future boards, and a structure that is accessible to the community and easy to follow. So, really
107a document that someone can open up and say, boy, I have some way that some reason, some feedback I wanna give to the board. What are the different ways that I can do that aside from maybe just knowing that I can come to a board meeting or email us, there are many other ways, or there are many other ideas. So, just something that's very accessible to the community. In terms of timing, I think we were flexible on timing, but ideally if this proposed plan is fleshed out by the end of this academic year, it will help that we can ensure that opportunities that are incorporated into the community calendars. As I think many community member knows, between all the different schools and other events, there are a lot of things that go on the calendar
108early on, and it would just be helpful to be able to incorporate into that. So, I don't know if there was anything else, would that just open it up to comments. No, feedback? So, just what we're looking for is that's the recommendation. And if the board comes to consensus that this plan would be a valuable tool, then the committee would go back and I would expect Ron and Karen would continue their work. They wouldn't need my assistance as a committee member. But we will work at it as a meeting, I guess is what we had just discussed. Ultimately, to bring a draft back to the board. Our next meeting is scheduled on May 13th. Yeah. So, they would be work done before that meeting by Karen and Ron. (clears throat) excuse me, if the board
109approved or came to consensus on it. I think it's a great idea. Yeah, I think if not, something that captures both a lot of what we do plus new opportunities is something we can refer to as, if nothing else, to refer people to see but also for ourselves to see. So, I don't see any problem with that. I agree, I appreciate your efforts in coming up with this idea and it's fully supported. So, I'll just say that you guys can still go back to the working document. All of the ideas that had come to the board or to the committee and or ideas that the committee generated itself, are still all there with a status, they're really only four or five that are open. One of them is this plan. And a couple of the
110others that are open, we discussed are likely be incorporated into this plan and resolved. So, I know I'm on the committee, but I just think it was great work of the committee to recognize so many opportunities to bring them forward and for the sport to really have moved forward a bit from before we started this committee. So, thank you so much for your attention to that. And thanks, Ron and Karen. Good to go. Right, thank you very much. The next item is 11.06, which is the proposed board of education meeting calendar for next year. If you click on that, we did try to preserve some of the changes that we've made, particularly when we get into the budgeting season. I think we've worked out a schedule that seems to work out very well now, both
111in terms of logistical needs of Stuart in his office, as well as the requests over time from the community to provide input early and often into the process. We've also tried to work hard on restoring our education reports and again journey forward. Updates have taken priority over the education reports. And I think, Edgar's had a lot of news to share over the course of the year that hasn't necessarily gotten the airtime that it deserves or that he would like or that we would like understanding that again, our core purpose here is really the education of the children and making sure that we continue to focus on that and highlight that important work and showcase the skills and talents of our incredible faculty and staff here in the work that they do every day with our
112students. So, we believe that this proposed calendar meets those objectives. It's a little bit of a late start time, but we do have approximately two meetings each month for the majority about 20 meetings in total right now for the board of scheduled for next year. Of course, we do also add meetings as necessary when we have timely topics or need to do so. And we're always prepared to have that flexibility built into our schedule, to accommodate emerging crises or priorities or other kinds of things that come up. And I think we've demonstrated that each year. So, I don't know if there's questions or concerns around this. We looked at again, trends that we've looked at for past calendars, obviously looked at holidays and other kinda conflicts this year and are putting those forward as a
113proposed calendar for next school year. I'm happy to share some thoughts, thanks for putting together a draft calendar for this discussion. One of my takeaways just in general about that I've tried to do this year is just sort of think through so many things were forced upon us and think through what that meant and how we might rethink what we've normally done. So, I would love to have a discussion and put out some ideas about possible alternative ways to do certain aspects of the calendar, just to give some concrete examples of what I mean by that. I think that this year it was a light was shined on it, but it's something that we have in previous years where we have some times very long meetings where we have multiple important topics to discuss. I
114personally find those very challenging to do all in one sitting. So, one idea would be to have some more frequent sometimes whether it's a meeting or a working session for some of those topics, a discreet example would be education reports seem to have morphed into education/business meetings. And then I feel like the education reports don't get the time that necessarily deserve because we know we have 10 action items or information items afterwards. So, for me just thinking about, can we separate that out? Can we just have a working session about an education report really reserving it. So, there's no chance of even attaching a business meeting to it. I'm happy to go through more things. One other big item from me is just the cadence of meeting. Well, there are a number on the calendar.
115A number of them are not full business meetings. So, for example, if you look, we would meet in October, middle October, and then not again till middle of November really, from July 6th, we wouldn't meet till September 20th. I think some of the lessons learned from this year, the possible need to have some summer meetings on the calendar if they're needed, it just even tonight, just sitting here on April 12th knowing that this board will not meet for another month, with everything going on just feels like we have important work that we could do with that time. So, I'll pause there. I just wanna put that general thought out for others to discuss. I'd like to hear everyone's opinion. Do we have the flexibility? And by the way, when I say this, I'm cognizant that
116it's different than scheduling things ahead of time. We have the flexibility to add meetings as needed, but I guess on the other hand that doesn't mean anything will necessarily happen versus if you put aside a meeting specifically for an educational report. I mean, I guess I'd need to think a little bit about specifically what we would wanna do and when we would wanna do it because these two different things I think they're run highlighted. One is sort of gaps which is a little different than particular meetings. Although if you have a gap, you can take advantage of that gap to have a meeting on a particular subject. They're not necessarily unassociated but they are different things. I think it would take a discussion about what the need is for different meetings on specific topics, if
117we wanna do it and then for specific topic. And then when we wanna do it. It's very hard for me to almost look back and remember what it was like last year, to be honest, this year we had a lot of very one meetings for reasons which we hope will not be recurring. So, but I think it's worth thinking about now or when we have the board retreat in July and consider whether there are specific work sessions or something that we wanna do. But I'm not unhappy with the at least the items that are on here in terms of the calendar. I think it's a question of adding more than anything else. I guess my question would be for those, and I think, Ron, certainly you fall into this. My only experience has been this
118last year. And so, I can't really model that experience because I don't know if next year will be the same, but my intuition is it probably will be a little less intense at least I hope so. So, I guess the question is I think this was not a typical year. So therefore, I would wanna make some decisions based perhaps on previous, the cadence of previous years in terms of making sure that the sense was we were covering all of our topics. This year frankly, I could have seen us meeting every week, honestly. I mean, there certainly was enough to do. That maybe wasn't realistic. But we did meet a lot, 20 times feels like we're doing well. It's a fair number. So, to start adding four or five more fields or committing to every two
119weeks, feels slightly onerous to me. I just wanna clarify one thing that I wanna let others speak, when we say 20, I think we have to recognize that includes things like our budget priorities, 9:00 a.m. public forum which in the past is lasted 20 to 30 minutes. It's not necessarily what I think we talk about as a full on business meeting. Okay. Bob, just to go back a little bit. When I first started out on the board, there were two meetings a month, it was actually difficult when one wasn't an education report. So, there was a first Monday was business and then the second of the month was an education board. But it wasn't every month because a lot of times holidays prohibited that. But the preparation for board meetings by cabinet and the administration
120is like a five day process. Right. So, if we give them five days of work for every twice a month, it takes a lot of time away from their efficacy. And there was a discussion about that years ago, about whether we could be more efficient and work to not have two business meetings a month so that our staff was working on operational, activities as opposed to just prepping for our presentations. And so, over those years, we morphed into more efficient presentations, but also only having the second board meeting every other month. That was actually something, I guess in my second or third year. And I was fine with that. Once we morphed to that, it was held for a few years without any issue until this year, when of course there was so much for
121us to be hearing about and giving guidance on that we needed to meet more often. So, lemme ask this, I think the minute we say it's a board meeting, it triggers certain things to happen. Some of which I've personally experienced. The planning of the Thursday before and all of those things that have to happen, because it's a board meeting. So, the question is, and maybe it's semantics, but Ron, are we saying that these extra meetings have to be board meetings or they have to be meetings, meaning a meeting that doesn't have the same backdrop of requirements that a board has, where we discuss a topic. Like there have been moments when I thought, oh maybe an informational meeting, not a board meeting but an informational meeting, might've been helpful where we just took a deep
122dive for an hour into a topic. But I guess the question is if you have an informational meeting, somebody has to prepare. So, if we had every other meeting was informational, that's a lot of work to do it right. Because you're gonna say things, and you're gonna be held accountable. So, to Pam's point, I think we wanna be very thoughtful not to create a cadence of so much work. It becomes almost burdensome to perform, to Pam's point of the five day. I wonder too, if it will feel a little, can you hear me? (board members agreeing) If it'll feel a more rounded out ones some of our engagement opportunities we've been talking about, maybe we have a listening session in August before school starts just to hear the community's thoughts. Maybe that's the August event.
123It's not in a meeting that requires so much preparation or where we have a month between that we have coffees in there. We have other events where we're connecting with the community, even if we're not having an official. But that's, I guess what is the timing on saying this is the calendar. Like when we come back with the community engagement plan and we've identified, should there be a listening session scheduled each year at a certain time of year? So, there's a little bit of difference. I wanna go back to one of the things that Bob said. So, anytime you have a meeting of the board, whatever you wanna call it, it's an official board meeting. And that has all the trappings of a board meeting. So, the preparations, the agendas, the timing, the notices that
124go out, the minutes of those. So, board's work is only done in board meetings. That's the only way it can happen. I think we try to put this out because this is a highly engaged community. There are multiple other responsibilities that board members have lots of liaison positions. People use our board meeting calendar, to then start planning all of their other activities. We plan school activities around board meetings. We try to avoid those nights. Many community organizations also plan around us. It's important for us to get that in a timely manner. To Karen's point, thank you for bringing that up. It doesn't preclude us ever from adding things on particularly if they're, (microphone swishing) sorry, if there's sub-committee work or things like that that doesn't involve the entirety of the board, the community engagement are
125our perfect example of that. So, those can be added on incrementally over time as the board decides on those things. But I think we do need to concretize the board meeting schedule because so many people really depend on having that in place to do their own planning for their various organizations. I see your point, Ron. And I struggle sometimes when we have long gaps in thinking about going till next month, it seems like a lot's gonna happen. But I also see the concerns about having these long meetings and the work though that it brings. So, I sort of like Karen's idea about thinking about how we fill in those gaps, maybe with working sessions, if we need them, or listening sessions. I mean, I'm fine with the calendar like this but I do think there
126are gaps in there that might be nice to fill maybe not every two weeks, I've seen at times where I wished we had meetings. Again though, like Bob, this is our first year here. So, it's kind of a weird year to imagine. I hope next year will be better. Totally, I think this was a great discussion. I think there's a lot of things that we're talking about that makes sense it may not to be a business meeting, obviously any meeting is a meeting and we will notice it, but noticing and certain minutes, I think that's very doable. So, I think there's a discussion to be heard at the appropriate time for that. The one thing I would say is, I do feel like even though we're hopefully back to quote somewhat normal next year I
127don't know exactly what that's gonna be, Does seem like this board should have something on the calendar this summer in preparation for the start of school. And to me, it seems prudent not to have our first meeting on September 20th. So, I do think we should be having a scheduled meeting at sometime before that. Are you saying we should have a meeting earlier in September, we should have a meeting in August, or we should have a meeting in August and September? I don't think any of us can say right now, or we'll be able to say in may or June exactly what the sort of next year is gonna look like. I know what we're budgeting towards. So, I feel like we need a meeting at the appropriate time so that this administration and this
128board can sit down and discuss what school look like at the start of fall. So, you're talking about August, a meeting before school starts? Sorry, before school starts. Okay, that was what I was trying to get. I'm sorry, do you understand, Yeah, before school starts. Yeah, I think that makes sense. But we could still approve this calendar, but with the understanding that we would like to meet in August to get sense of what to anticipate and be able to have that be a public meeting that will also alert the public what to anticipate if they haven't been paying attention and they should see us at a board meeting they'll maybe pay a little bit more attention. I don't want to do a meeting in August, but I understand the need for it. So, because you're
129right, Ron, we don't know exactly what school's gonna look like and maybe it won't be necessary. Maybe things will be very straightforward, but it's not bad to start thinking about. I just don't know if we do that now or if we-- the only thing I would put about trying to schedule this that as I'm sure many around this table, August is a big vacation month. Do you have kids coming back potentially from camp. I think the administration probably takes some time off during that time when it might be a little slower, obviously it's just mostly a calendarization and scheduling challenge. Tonight it's not on for an action item tonight. So, I guess the question is, do we wanna get a change before next whatever meeting, or do we wanna say that we're okay with this,
130but we wanna be sensitive to the fact that we may need to have a meeting in the summer to get a better sense. So, we wouldn't need to ask for a change to the adopted calendar right now, but we're all aware that this is something we should keep an eye on. Does that make sense? Is it that formal to be approved? This goes to action item eventually. Yeah. Next meeting, right? And but then of course it can get changed (laughs) anytime afterwards. So, did I make a fair assessment? Okay. Not to get in your way, Pam (laughs). So, what did you just decide? I think the idea is that nobody feels the need to make it permanent definitive change to the calendar. I do. Oh, okay, that's why I was asking. Okay, so Ron's asking
131for a definitive change. I don't think anybody else if I'm saying it wrong, feel free to yell at me. I don't think anybody else felt the need at this juncture to make a definitive change to the calendar that we will adopt at the next meeting, but that we do wanna keep our eye on the ball for the summer and see where we are in May, June. And see if we feel like we have a need for meeting in August. I think to test this idea, I think each of the board members should look at their calendars on the 2016, 23rd and 30th, and see what your availability is. I think that's gonna say a lot. I think people should acknowledge that's a time those last few weeks are both very busy at the school for
132arts in terms of preparation, but also people try to eke out those last weeks of summer as a family. So, I think that might be a good way to answer the question that's on the table, which is kind of just looking at your personal availability and your willingness or ability to plan around those Mondays. When is convocation, like when are people back on the 30th, 31st that week? When the teachers back on the third. Drew, do you have convocation? (board members talking) We haven't communicated, but convocation will be on the 30th, which is Monday, the two days we have set aside for superintendents conference days, 30th, 31st usually initiate both of those days of convocation. If you're gonna do something, Clears off the table just to be clear. Right, but if in my mind, if
133we felt that we wanted to have a meeting, so I'm gonna say something and Ron, you should correct me. But if the idea is just kind of get a report on what's gonna happen in September, to alert us and anybody who's watching, we wouldn't wanna do it on the 30th anyway. We'd wanna do it much earlier in my mind, like August 2nd maybe to see if there's any worthwhile feedback. And I would say that it would be a very limited agenda to just see the educational report and public comment, in my estimation. I agree, I would say it would be a journey forward update, on what September is gonna look like. I recall what this summer was like. And I think that it would have been very helpful to have that meeting on the calendar.
134I think it's obviously we're in a much better place. But this crisis is not over. we don't know what the fall will be like. And I just try to be proactive in our thinking about preparing for the fall. Do we think, just from my own information that in July and August, the opportunity to meet over Zoom will still be in existence. Could we do? It's generally not allowed. And it has been only extended month to month, based on what we're seeing and the change in guidance and stuff. This is not gonna go on and definitely there's no way. So, the only assurance we have is through may at this point. So, I think we have to be careful about hedging our bets on the ability to do that several months from now. I'll be frank,
135I guess I would rather not do it. One of those Mondays in August, if I have to physically be in this room. July, 26th. There're plans, I'm not saying it couldn't be changed, but I'd rather not. You're not alone actually, to be fair. One of the issues is always that the rest of the folks living here travel August. So, what time, not only our calendars, but everybody else's. We could do something on I don't know the July 26, which is still July, some people might be around. I don't have a sense of how many people would be around. My experience is that people are starting to think school probably like August 16th, 23rd, college kids are returning, PTA mailings go out. That's when people are starting to turn their attention back to school. Yeah, but
136isn't it also pretty much the last when everybody's away, 'cause that's why everybody was upset that we were starting before Labor Day, 'cause they're away the last two weeks. Sports teams come back for practice. I was gonna say, yeah, fall sports start the 23rd. Enhance the dilemma. It's more the board, the public will still be able to see it live stream so they could watch it from. They wouldn't be able to participate in public comment if there a way, but they could always email, so they don't have to be present in the town for you to have an effective meeting necessarily. They can be live streamed and they can email input. So, I would really look more to your schedules and those of cabinet then. I would do my recommendation, If you're thinking of that
137extra meeting. How would the cabinet feel about either July 20th? Well, in deference to Bob and everybody who goes away in August which I think no, no, it's not only you, I think people are away during August. I would kinda think about, I understanding what Karen said to the extent that people are interested. I'd probably be thinking about July 26. What would that look like for cabinet in terms of knowing what's gonna happen for the year. I would anticipate that would be an extremely difficult time, Okay. for us. And we've never had a July board meeting. And I think as we talked about we're back in school kinda in late August, people are expecting that if there's people haven't had any vacation time and in some cases over a year, and I think people already
138had plans for July. I think this is pretty late in the game to add a board meeting then. I quite honestly have no idea what my plans are gonna be for August. So, I didn't want to tell you all about. And what did the advantages of getting full in-person learning this for the last semester, the end of the year was to be in really good shape for the fall. Everybody was going to be familiar with getting back in the building. and what the protocols and procedures would be. So, there was an intent to not have another full summer of work, which every faculty member and every administrator, and really every board member was involved with it. So, and we've never had a summer meeting before, but we added one on August 13th this year because
139it was necessary. So again, I'm not quite sure if you need to put it in the calendar until the issue comes up, that there are issues that need to be addressed. Otherwise, we get through the summer as normal, the administration's prepping for opening of schools, the building principals and communications come out regularly from those sources to the community on what's happening. So, unless you have an issue, I don't see it as an important meeting unless you have an issue that's different from what you would normally expect the school year opening to be. So, I would still suggest maybe just leave it open until needed if it is difficult. That gets back to my earlier (chuckles) observation that I think everybody was okay. But I agree with that and I think leave it as is. That
140having been said, I think Ron's pointing to an inherent issue that exists in the fact that there's potentially uncertainty in the community. On the other hand, if we're basically all whatever, all engines forward, by the end of June, we probably don't have to worry too much about it. We should know by then where we're gonna be in September. And I guess if we're not, then we decide, we need to have an extra meeting. Okay, that makes sense to me. I don't know how everybody else Can you put a placeholder on something? Do you ever do that that you just hold like August 23rd as a placeholder? So, people are. We have an individual calendars, we tend not to do that on a draft of something unless it's pretty sure because again time is valuable real
141estate for people. If it really wasn't something solid, we want everyone to work around that necessarily. If that would have been a viable option for other things going on. I think, Pam is right. Obviously, if there is an urgency to meet, I think all of us would rise to the occasion to meet that urgency. My personal feeling is because less joy in August was such a stressful period, particularly for the staff and administration, that if we can keep August open for people to perhaps do vacation things that they basically haven't done for maybe two years at this point, I feel I would like to try and do that. Obviously, if I need to be here, I'll be here. But I think the many, you put it as a draft, it kind of means don't pencil
142it in and don't book anything that day. And I'm not sure we necessarily wanna do that. That's just my own perspective. So, I guess we could maybe move right now to the next item but then this of course would come as an action item with an opportunity for more discussion at that time. That gives you some time. We're coming back on May. We have the May meeting, Amber (chuckles). Then just to finish all the information items. And I appreciate everybody's patience on that. We do have the proposed STI courses, and I'm gonna ask Edgar to spend a minute talking to us about them. (Edgar speaking faintly) Thank you. The STI has four new courses to propose. One of them is called post-pandemic growth to foster a thriving learning community. That's something that would be coordinated
143by Dr. Elliot Cohen. And it would be something that would relate to everything that's happened. He would be curating research and literature and videos to talk about post-traumatic growth. The goals of the course were to examine the elements and show the importance of this growth and create and apply all this work to the the members who would be attending in their school community the other curriculum and programs. The second course is the place the thing practicing playwriting, which would be taught by a high school English department English teacher Frank Ceruzzi. And it would be a way of engaging teachers in playwriting as a method of learning about themselves as writers, and then and applying that to the work that they do with students. The next one is about stop motion animation and that would be
144taught by Chris Casal, the computer teacher, Heathcote Elementary. And it would involve everything from pre-production, script writing, story boarding through filming and editing, and with actually a broadcast of a finished animated piece. And the next one is one that I've been deeply involved with, which is teacher as reflective practitioner, the Spark Edition, which would really consists of an STI course that's connected to the summer enrichment program. And it would be focused on learning and developing, learning about developing curriculum for project-based learning. And that is being coordinated by Kristina Beck, who is a CPSE CSE Chairperson, here at Central Office, Trish Iasillo, who's an Assistant Principal at Fox Meadow and William Yang an Assistant Principal at Edgewood Elementary School. Just to be clear, there's not just four classes, but as you scroll through that document, you'll
145see that adds compliment to another 40 classes that are being offered over the summer. And I just bring that up to illustrate the point that we still hear that old sort of saying about teachers only work part of the year and that that their summer's off. Just to remind folks of the deep commitment that our faculty and staff have, with the 40 classes that are going on, we expect all of those to be full classes just as they typically are in the center, which again just shows the dedication to the craft and to professional growth that our faculty continues to demonstrate on a regular basis. So, this is, again, as we've heard many many times a very unique component of our school district and and unique way that we can engage our teachers in their
146ongoing professional learning. It's a really, I think valuable part of who we are as an institution and something I think we can all be very proud of. Any questions on these courses. Edgar, thank you, I appreciate that. And that actually concludes our information items. And we will now move on to the six items within the action items and I'll turn it back over to Pam, thank you. Thanks, I'll just also know that the textbooks not textbooks, the STI courses are coming too as an action item later, was that clarified? No, it was not, thank you for clarifying on our behalf. Our normal course of action in order of operations is that we typically try to present something at one board meeting, and to be able to have feedback on it and then take action the
147following. Unfortunately, the sign-ups do need to happen before our next board meeting. And there's a timeliness to the organization the preparation, the final offerings of these courses. And so, we really need to have the sign-ups happen in advance of may. I'm sorry for the accelerated timeline but that's why we're doing both tonight. Thank you, Pam, for that clarification. Sure, and normally I wouldn't do this before action items, but since we have a lot in the budgets ahead of us maybe we take a five minute break. So, I guess, quarter of nine. Okay, we're back. So, moving into action items, item 12.01, the budget resolution. That's my item. There it is. All right, so what we decided to do is I'd would read this excellent elevator speech. Thank you, Stuart and others. Michelle, thank you, Michelle.
148So, I'm gonna read this and then I'll make the motion and it'll get segregated. And then we can all have a discussion and vote. It's an important change this year that the vote location is at the Scarsdale Congregational Church, Dyckman Hall, One Heathcote Road in Scarsdale, New York. I'm assuming the time is still the same 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. The budget maintains high quality teaching and learning by ensuring staffing levels are consistent with current and historical philosophies and community expectations. It expands the implementation of next generation standards and the scaling of successful instructional models. This budget provides continuing support for in-district special education programs including continuation of the eight, one to two programs and expansion of integrated co-teaching and additional special class programming for students in need of intensive support. It maintains class sizes
149and best practice through the addition of a 1.0 FTE special education integrated co-teacher at the elementary level. And at 1.0 FTE special education and point four FTE speech teachers at the high school. A budget growth of 2.56% and tax levy increase of 2.15%, will translate into a 1.93% tax rate increase for Scarsdale and 6.28 tax rate increase in Ameritech. It continues a comprehensive, layered approach to safety, security and emergency management including appropriate mental health, social-emotional supports for students supported by an addition of a point two FTE Psychologist secretary at the middle school. This budget elevates district cleaning protocols that all elementary schools through the addition of 5.0 FTE cleaners, it includes capital improvements and upgrades focused on sustainability, infrastructure, safety and security district-wide. It implements a COVID-19 budget strategy to anticipate negative impacts from a
150continuation of pandemic related expenses. This budget contains many efficiencies including our self-funded healthcare plan, state aid maximization through the use of both sea services, transportation and expenditure based-aides and cooperative agreements with the village and participation in multiple cooperative bidding consortiums. And then there's also some bullets about Mamaroneck Strip information. We know we've heard, I know Alison has from residents about the differential in the tax burden. In any given year, the tax burden shifts may fluctuate between Scarsdale and Mamaroneck properties. The allocation between the two areas is based on property value as defined by the State Equalization Formulas and County Assessment Practices. Over the last 10 years, the Mamaroneck Strip properties have shouldered between 3.7% and 4.3% of the total tax burden of the Scarsdale schools. Due to these formulas, tax growth in one town often
151appears to have no relationship to school budget growth or to growth in the other town. And it can fluctuate significantly from year to year. The district does not control how its tax bill is allocated between Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, that is set using a state imposed formula. The differences in tax rates between Scarsdale and Mamaroneck Strip do even out over time in the last decade, the average tax growth in both places has been within a percentage point. So, with that information, I recommend that the board adopt the budget resolution set forth for the budget for the 21/22 school year which has resolved that the sum of 166, oh boy, million $862,755 shall be appropriated to meet the estimated expenditures for school purposes for the school year 21/22. And that the board of education be authorized to
152levy the necessary taxes to meet the same. May I have a second? Second. Oh, bless you, Carl (chuckles). Okay, so now we are open for discussion and which could include questions for inclarity on the budget that we have here. And then I'll do a roll call vote. Are there any questions or discussions? All right, then we'll do roll call vote. (clears throat) Excuse me, Alison. I wanna say that I'm very proud to support this budget and I really appreciate the hard work done by Stuart and Jeff and everyone in the cabinet for the extensive and thoughtful work that this budget document reflects. This budget provides a framework and funds to support the high quality teaching and learning that is the hallmark of a Scarsdale education, maintaining our class size policies and best practices. It also
153recognizes the reality that although schools are opening full time, we still need to prepare for the unknown when it comes to COVID-19. And this budget makes provisions for anticipated negative impacts of pandemic-related expenses. And also expands our cleaning and disinfecting capacity in our elementary buildings, by adding five additional cleaning staff, I'm particularly pleased that this budget supports are now ongoing strategy to bring our special education students back into district and keep them here by expanding our co-taught and special classes, adding sections as these students age up, and adding staff necessary to keep up with the increase in classified students. So, there's many Scarsdale students as possible receive their education right here in Scarsdale. The budget also allows us to make necessary upgrades to facilities including continuing our work by renovating the high school auditorium, and
154implementing additional safety and security measures throughout the district. School is the core business of Scarsdale. And we are fortunate that our residents are committed to supporting our efforts to provide a superior education. I'm glad though, that this budget also recognizes the economic realities that our residents are facing and reflects our efforts to keep taxes down with a tax levy increase of 2.15%. And I enthusiastically vote yes. Amber. Thanks, Pam, this is my first year on the board of education and our district has faced many challenges this year. We are fortunate that one challenge we have not had to address is our budget. The thoughtful analysis of last year's team, both administration and last year's board, allowed us the freedom to make adjustments as they were required this year, whether it was purchasing PPE, upgrading ventilation,
155hiring more staff or purchasing furniture. The foresight of last year's team provided us with this flexibility to address the ever-changing guidance, as we battled the pandemic. I believe this year our process has been equally thoughtful. I appreciate the questions raised by our community partners including the League of Women Voters, the PTC and the Fox Meadow budget chair. Thank you to my colleagues, on the board for their probing questions and careful analysis of the variables this year. And I want to thank Stuart, Jeff and the rest of the administrative team, for the time they spent preparing this budget. I believe this budget reflects the challenges we face today maintaining a COVID budget strategy in case it's required, and implementing an optional summer enrichment program for elementary students. This budget strives to promote excellence in our schools,
156retaining our class size objectives, adding staff as appropriate to serve our students with educational and emotional needs and maintaining our facility standards, while taking careful consideration of the external forces beyond our control. I vote yes. Bob. So like Amber, this is my first go around with the budget process. And for me, I'd like to say that it checks all the boxes. I'm a process person, and I thought the process was thorough, transparent, paced very well for me to understand I'm not so much a financial person. So, I thought it was excellent. I was also looking to make sure that the Scarsdale values were maintained that our strategic mission was consistently reviewed. And again, as part of the process I think that was incredibly successfully done. If you look at the number of the budget, it
157is consistent with guidelines that we might try to be targeting. So, I felt very good comfortable about that. It seems reasonable. And as an empty nester myself, I felt it was respectful of the various constituents of Scarsdale, even though I don't have a kid in the system, obviously my commitment to maintaining the mission and values is very important. So, for that reason, I'd like to enthusiastically vote yes for the budget, thank you. Carl. Thank you, Pam. I wanted to just remind folks and look back to last year when we had a very stressful number of budget sessions and we really pushed the administration to and ourselves to reduce the budget as much as possible last year. And the fear and concern was that in doing so, not that it wasn't the right thing to do
158but that we would be paying the piper this year. And I think that was a very real concern, but outweighed by the difficulties that we were worried about for our community last year. The fact that the budget is now completed and we're voting on it with an increase that is within the so-called tax cap. And relatively, I think modest speaks to not only the effort in preparing the budget, but the careful watch on funds during the past year and really has avoided what I was. I think most of us were deeply worried about last spring. Not only did we avoid any significant increases, any surprises, any deficiencies that really had to be made up for in this year's budget, but the fact that we're able to continue bringing back special ed students and keeping them
159in district, the fact that we're able to do all the things that Pam and Alison outlined in their comments leads me to believe that this is a really good piece of work and I will certainly vote for it, and with great appreciation to everybody who worked on it. Karen. I support the budget resolution for the following reasons the proposed budget support, Scarsdale's mission, and commitment to the education of every child and the whole child by providing for and sustaining the district's educational program and strategic plan needed and mandated special education and student services, social, emotional and safety needs and supports, staffing and preservation of class size, teaching and learning and the maintenance and continued improvement of the physical plant. for future unknowns related to COVID, and funds the Spark Summer enrichment program and support of
160our youngest learners. It also addresses and restores where possible several of the cuts made last year while remaining sensitive to our current economic climate. I too want to acknowledge Stuart and thank him and Jeff and the administration, the community, and my fellow board members for their time and effort during this year's budget process. Ron. Thanks, Pam, I also share a few brief comments tonight about why I support the proposed budget. As part of the budgeting process, we've had numerous detailed discussions about each area of the budget, where I and other board members have shared our specific thoughts, and tonight I would like to just talk about some key themes I believe the proposed budget addresses in the upcoming school year. First, the educational excellence, we will be continuing to fund the delivery of educational excellence
161to our students. A focus on our people, we are adding faculty and staff in a thoughtful manner that directly supports our students in areas such as mental health, special education and healthy and clean facilities. We have a conservative approach and are prepared for uncertainty. We are being conserved in many of our financial assumptions and this approach helps ensure we remain in strong financial shape to continue to be able to provide the highest educational program, even if we are again faced with future impacts to our educational models. And we also have a plan in place to help build back our general fund balance which we had to draw down on partially this year. Thank you to the administration and all of our faculty and staff for their work on the proposed budget, especially Stuart Mattey and
162Jeff Martin who led the development of this budget, while continuing to manage the numerous other financial aspects of our operations throughout this year. Thank you to the community for all your thoughtful ideas and feedback, which helped me in my decision-making throughout the budgeting process. And thank you to my fellow board members. We all bring different ideas and perspectives to the discussions. And I think discussions result in a robust and thoughtful budgeting process. At the end of the day every dollar we spend, is in pursuit of the finest education for the students and I vote yes in support of the proposed budget. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, everyone. I will also add my appreciation to the administration and to the community members and to each and every one of you as a board member for your
163time and your effort during this development process. I do wanna take this moment to remind the community that this process, in a sense is already begun for next year. It really ramps up each year in the fall at the November community forum, where individuals or community partners are invited to provide input on priorities and values as part of the budget development discussion. And after that, we hope that the community remains engaged in the development and the board invites public comment via email and at each board meeting and at the budget sessions through April. I think it's very important that this budget is developed organically, with a focus on our students and on our strategic plan. And we also adhere or adjust to Federal State mandates, labor agreements, State aid and grants, State and local program
164changes, CPI and economic conditions and of course, COVID-19. I am grateful that to accommodate the many unknowns, there is a continuance of the pandemic deficit reduction. And if this is unused, it will help rebuild the depleted food balances mentioned. Furthermore, it's valuable to have an appropriate allocation of funds to cover unforeseen non-recurring COVID-19 costs above and beyond our base budget. So, these aspects, along with those mentioned by each of you including class size and best practices, the Spark Summer enrichment program, increasing in district special education, our facilities upgrades and cleaning, operational efficiencies and the support of student mental health, wellness and general safety and security, ensure that this is a strong and necessary budget, which I fully support, I vote yes, on the resolution. So, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you, everyone. And we'll move
165on to 12.02. I don't know who that is. Does someone know who that is? Carl or Karen. Oh, sorry, I can't get to it. Well, it's not the report card. Okay, thanks, something just happened. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, I recommend that the board adopt the 21/22 property tax report card as presented. Second. Is there any discussion? All right, all those in favor, say aye? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? The motion passes, thank you. So, 12.03 board policy, Alison, are you doing that? Yes, I recommend that the board adopt policy 0105, equity, inclusivity and diversity in education with the revisions as presented. Thank you, is there a second? Second. Okay, I think that was Amber, any discussion? The language and the resolution says presented as the ones that were presented here, just to make the two points
166that we're taking out the and also taking out compact per discussion. Great, presented active, okay. All right, so with that-- So, did you have more to add to that ground? No, that's what I was gonna remind everybody about. So that clarifies. Any other discussion? All right, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? All right, the motion passes and the next item is 12.04. The transfer to capitalists is that you, Carl? It's Alison. Okay (chuckles) But you can keep offering me and I'll keep deferring to the right person. I recommend to award the base bid and alternate number one contract to SIM brand technologies, Inc. The lowest responsible bidder. Second. Thank you, Carl, any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? The motion passes, thank you. Moving on to textbooks,
167Amber. Item 12.05 are new textbooks that were presented first to the board on March 22nd in world languages, "Sendero's little three primes", "Sendero's level four prime" and "Sendero's level five prime". Apologies, I did not take Spanish. So, I may have butchered that and the other textbooks are science textbooks, "Earth and Intro to Physical Geology" and "Essentials of Geology". And I recommend that the board approved the textbooks for the high school as presented. Second. I think that was Ron. Okay, any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions. Okay, the motion passes, thank you. And now to item 12.06, the proposed summer STI courses. I think I picked that one up it's recommended or I move that the board approve the proposed STI courses for the summer of 2021 as presented and discussed
168earlier. Second. Thank you, Alison. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? All right, the motion passes, thanks. We're moving on to item 13, which is opportunity, the second opportunity for public comment tonight, we still ask that you hold a three minute limit and a Andre has the bell but at the same time, the overall period is not limited. We still ask that you keep to agenda and district matters and do not speak to particular personnel. No one in the audience would like to speak to public comment. All right, then we'll go to Zoom. Right now no one's hand is raised. So, anyone who wants to raise your hand on the Zoom call please do so now for public comment. And we'll give you some time. So, I don't see any
169hands yet. There we go, there's one. So, Vivian, I'm going to promote you. And then we'll just ask you to unmute. And then if you'll just unmute yourself and then state your name and address and you can begin talking once you're on mute. Go ahead, Vivian. Hello, can you hear me? And we can see you on our Zoom, Hello? Can you hear me? I can, yes. We can hear you. Can you elevate Karen Lee as well? Sorry, I think there's a little bit of delay and lag. Well, I'm promoting her. Would you please mute your, is that what she should do? Mute her livestream? (board member speaks faintly) Yeah, so if you meet live TV, which we hear behind you, I think I'm promoting Karen. So, just turn the volume on the live TV. I'm
170promoting Karen now and then I'll let you know who she is. Okay, so if you can hear me, you're both on and you can both unmute yourselves and go ahead. Of course and turn on the volume. Can everyone hear me? I'm Karen we can hear you. Okay, I'm sorry for the confusion. Anyways, hello, thank you for allowing us to speak at this board meeting. My name's Vivian Guo and I'm here with my friend, Karen Lee and we're two seniors at the high school and we're also co-founders of the Scarsdale's ACE Club at the high school. So, we wanted to go back a little bit and actually talk about the draft of policy 0105 on diversity and equity. We recently talked about it with all of our club members as well and we just wanted to
171share a couple of our thoughts about the policy. So, we agreed that like the policy draft is really optimistic and idealistic, so thank you all for drafting it and writing it. However, we also agreed that it was a little bit abstract and vague, and we wanted to share our opinions on maybe how there could be a couple more actors or implementation mechanisms. So, we have four main actions that we would like to call on the board of education and the SUFSD to commit to. So, the first one is to begin the policy with a statement of accountability. So, we agreed that when you're advocating for a policy, even though we're kind of novices to it, it seems intuitive that it should offer a background to the problem that it's at hand which is the lack
172of diversity and inclusion right now, and maybe the constituents, the student body, staff faculty or the curriculum itself. The overall language of the policy draft was really optimistic, future oriented which is really good. But we thought that the board should first begin the policy by reflecting on its past actions, to pave the way for more potential growth for our education system. The second thing that we would like the board of education to take into account is to clarify how they will implement diversity and representation programs. So, in the second paragraph of the policy, it states that, "Students and faculty should see themselves "reflected in the curriculum, their physical surroundings, "staff, faculty representation." These are all really great ideals, but it's also seems to be unclear how these actions will be carried out. For example, Asian-Americans
173have a different history in America compared to black and brown counterparts. So, how will they be reflected in the curriculum? And if students will see themselves reflected and staff and faculty more, what steps will be taken to hire educators of color and will that mean that their recruitment will crowd out current white teachers who is tenure. And so, we think that the board of ed should clarify these logistics or if they're not, at least if they cannot be fitted into policy 0105, they should at least be clarified in the overall diversity and inclusion policy package in general. I'm gonna turn over the next two points to my friend, Karen here. Yeah, so the next two points also follow a common theme about clarification surrounding the language of the policy draft. So, the third point that
174we want to bring up is a clarification of the actors that we'll be holding and reviewing the curricula at Scarsdale and the education system. So, we found that a lot of the language here was phrased passively. For example, here is a quote that we pulled from the fourth paragraph, "Curriculum and instructional materials "for all grades shall reflect diversity. "Curriculum materials shall be reviewed "and examined for bias." Although we do agree that this statement does hold good meaning in that obviously people want to prioritize diversity and also make sure and ensure that we try to remove as much bias from the curriculum as possible, but it becomes a bit nebulous when we try to go into the actual standards of what this bias is, and also what it means to uphold a diverse set of curricula
175for students. Because importantly, we just do not know who the actor will be nor the timeframe for evaluating these curricula, which we think is very important because if we do not specify the actors nor the timeframe, this means that the certain staff and faculty who are reviewing these curriculums will rely responsibility. And so, we think it's really important that the board specifies a qualified actor who can rigorously go through these curricula. The next point and our last point is also about clarifying what they mean by extra-curricular activities. This is also from the fourth paragraph, "Class instructional activities "and extra-curricular programs "shall be designed and implemented to provide opportunities "for cross-cultural and cross-racial interactions "that foster respect for diversity." So, we believe that this is an incredibly imperative initiative adjust because it affects so many students.
176And so many students have firsthand accounts, that directly drive from the statement. And so, what we mean by this is that a lot of our friends and a lot of our club members of color, they all share these feelings of being alienated or authorized at school which have resulted in the student body segregating itself into different ethnic clusters. And this is how they create their own friend groups. Obviously, this is not our ideal version of what diverse means. And so, what we see is that a lot of these marginalized students across genders grades and races turn to each other, because you don't feel as comfortable sparking these discussions with their white counterparts. And so, we think that the board's statement about this is incredibly vague about first, what committee they're referring to? And how do
177you actually address this issue which leads us to worry about some efficacy issues. Furthermore, a lot of these extra-curricular activities other than like athletics are mostly led by students or are mostly competition-based. So, we want to know how the board's policies will reach these groups that aren't necessarily regulated to inclusion-based requests. And so, with these points being said, we call on the board to answer these and also specify and clarify some of the language on the main questions of who, what and how in their policy package. Okay, thank you, Vivian and Karen. We have another hand raised, Mayra? I will promote you to panelist. And just for Vivian and Karen, I don't know if you're familiar with public comment, but we'll go through the comment and then there'll be a follow-up at the end to
178all the comments. So Myra, I'm promoting you. And Jen Chang it there. Jen Chang is a panelist? She has removed herself. Okay, Mayra, lemme find you? Hi, Mayra over at Fox Meadow Road. Very quickly, thank you very very much for all the comments that the board members made while discussing the DEI policy. I found all of the remarks very very interesting and very very insightful. On the comment the Dr. Hagerman made, I believe it was Dr. Hagerman. I better be careful in terms of possible challenges going forward in terms of incorporating, representation of people of color in some of the STEM fields. I just wanna remind everybody that it wasn't just the Greeks who created the study of mathematics, obviously a tremendous amount of actual evidence exists of the written math, with the Sumerians and
179my own ancestors. The Mayans did come up with a very sophisticated counting system and I mean, obviously I could go on and on with India, Cambodia, China, Islamic countries. So, there are plenty of ways to incorporate all that representation. And then I'll be happy to send you a presentation that we did at Fox Meadow about hidden figures. So, I do encourage you as you go forward to think about the contributions of all of these people in the fields of STEM. Secondly, I'd like to thank Mr. Stuart and Martin for your incredibly hard work on the budget. Yeah, I really continue of course, to encourage you to create a long-term model and financial plan. It's precisely when we are in economic or market turmoil that a financial plan is even more important than ever. I doubt
180that this will be the last time that we have a public health crisis. Next time it might be a natural disaster or a crippling cybersecurity attacks. So, I think as a community, we do need to think about these issues and have a solid long-term financial plan. Lastly, I really wanted to thank Dr. McIntosh and all the elementary school principals and assistant principals and everybody else who gave us such a useful and detailed presentation on Spark today. I personally found it very useful and it was really good also to get a chance to see the questions posed by the other elementary school parents. I really hope that this program offers, I wish you much success. And if in any simple way, I can not help at all. I'd be happy to help out and be a
181volunteer. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you, Mayra. Jen Chang, I'm sorry. I guess you were promoted somehow. Maybe I did it. I'm promoting you now to panelist again, and then we'll unmute you and you can speak. I'm sorry about that. I was looking for that, raising your hand and then couldn't find it. And now I understand why (laughs). My name is Jen Chang. I just wanted to congratulate the board and district for even considering this policy. And I think it really sets the Scarsdale district as one of the leaders in the country, in wanting to promote the EID, right? Which the three big things, I think that a lot of folks in Scarsdale community really embrace and strive for together as a community. And I just wanted to echo what the other two high
182school kids have said and others it really is to say that let's focus on the big prices, right? If we can improve our curriculum, make them more responsive and more diverse, more inclusive, and we can improve staff representation in the Scarsdale district, we already made a big headway, right? Less as more right. Let's focus on getting the big ticket items right, in the next year or two, and show momentum, show cohesion, show broad-based support. And then we can look at other things go down the road. I wanted to urge everyone here to remember why we're doing this, right? So, just three years ago, during the first, well, not three maybe a few years ago during the first Trump election. There were some heated debates and arguments in pretty much elementary school, middle school and high
183school. And there was one kid I actually knew well, and his parents as well, he said in the heat of moment said to another kid and say, you will never become the president of this country. You know why? Because you are dependees. The irony is that kid is American, born American and it's not even Japanese, he's mixed (laughs) half Canadian and half Japanese, right? So, what we're doing right now is to at least from Asian, Chinese, American, Asian and American perspective is that this foreignness, this otherness is very hard to remove. I sometimes feel no matter how hard we try, my children try, they're seen as others, as foreign. So, with the tinted curriculum, with the staff representation, with continued staff training with the broader environment, it's all the things that said in the document.
184I'm hopeful that our community, our schools will become more inclusive and in the sense that everybody feels they belong. So, on that positive note, I wanted to congratulate the other board, and the district for a very strong verse document. But I also urge the board to incorporate what the others have said especially our two very boko high school kids, thank you. Thank you, Jen Chang, Laura, I'm promoting you. And I'll just ask you to unmute yourself. And then you may go ahead name and address and go ahead at your convenience. This is Laura. I too would like to thank the board for enacting the first policy equity, inclusivity and diversity. I would like to offer a couple of thoughts in terms of implementation sort of our next steps. The first area is in school-home partnership.
185I believe that is an area that if we have that intention to do some work, and some kind of bridge-building and reaching out and really improve that school-home partnership, especially with multi-cultural families, I believe a lot of fruits can be gained from that effort. And that can also include PTA representation, hopefully all the way through the Compact Committee representation of diversity in the community. And then the second area I wanna comment on is the social-emotional development of diverse students. In the policy, there's the language thing, historical marginalization led to disparities in some academic outcomes. I wanna add that in certain student populations, academic outcomes might be quite positive, but I think we all know in student development, social and emotional wellbeing is also an incredibly important metric and it might be a little less easy
186to measure than academic outcome, but I think we should also keep our eyes on that development goal, especially for diverse students. So with that, I just wanna offer my last point which is as several previous speakers commented, this policy is very broad strokes. So, we hope the board kind of we'll revisit. And as the implementation started with the input from that phase, we can kind of let the policy evolve and be more concrete. 'Cause I noticed some of our policies are extremely concrete for example, the sexual harassment policy. 'Cause I guess we just have a lot of practice and knowledge in certain areas. So, that is all, thank you. Thank you, Laura. Are there any other attendees who would like to speak via Zoom this evening? All right, seeing no hands raised, we'll close this
187public comment session and move into the next slide in which I'm assuming is responding to public comment and Thomas-- Yeah, so first of all, I'd like to express my gratitude and thanks for all of those public speakers, we'd love to hear from everybody but it's especially lovely to hear from some of our students. We know that this is a lived experience for all of you. And so, we appreciate you staying up and participating in this. We talked about some of these items earlier on, so I don't wanna repeat some of the things that I've said and our last speaker noted that some of our policies seem much more concretized in a way than others. And I started off talking about this particular policy 0105, as being more broad and really is intended to define our
188intentions. And the speaker was right. Things like sexual harassment, title nine, those are governmental policies that are guided by law. And there are very specific elements that we have to include in those. And those are what we kinda call required policies. And we don't have a lot of discretion over those. We don't have the ability to alter those much except to fill in aspects of our particular district that apply in those situations who the contact folks are, who are the directors or representatives that people speak to when they have issues around these kinds of legal categories. None of this work is gonna be perfect. And I think we have to acknowledge that right away. I love the fact that people said, sort of be focused our students, talk to us a little bit about how
189we could be more clear and we absolutely can be more clear on all of this work. And I appreciate those suggestions. I think it is important for us to recognize that this work is gonna be imperfect every step of the way. Again, I think this policy set out the broad intention of the board and the administration that we care deeply about this, that we see the value of it in our work. And I wanna make sure that we don't get caught up in making sure that each step is perfectly enacted or implemented because I think in a topic as complicated as this work that that can easily happen and people get mired down in some of these details and it's hard to move forward. I do wanna build off of something that Edgar has talked
190to us about a couple of times, we are not starting at ground zero with this work, which is lovely. New York state has actually been somewhat progressive on this front and has created a framework for us that has been a foundation for some of our thinking. It was developed by a group of experts. And I'm referring to what's called the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework or sometimes it's called CR5 or CR-S rather. And that lays out just to some of our speakers to scribe a very clear framework with four focal areas, which I think are embedded in that policy that we adopted tonight. The first is a welcoming and affirming environment. So, we talked about the importance of environment and setting that up to make sure all kids feel so safe, welcomed, accepted, and included in
191that. And then our students remind us that that both extends in the classroom environment. And then be very clear about what that means in our extra-curriculars. Do anybody to walk away with the sense that those aren't also protected and regulated and whether you're in athletics or a club or we have an open door policy. We don't exclude students from those activities and certainly codes of conduct and other expectations for student behaviors apply to those situations as well. So, we hold the same kinds of values and expectations around extra-curriculars as we do for our co-curriculars. The second aspect of this framework is high expectations and rigorous instruction. I didn't mean to suggest with Mayra's comment that there are not many many many examples within the steam realm of contributions. I was merely trying to make the
192point that we've done this work extensively in social studies and English. And that might be the next iteration of our work. That has maybe just not gotten as much attention within our district as we may be able to exert kind of moving forward in the future. The third aspect of the framework is inclusive curriculum and assessment, and we talked about that. And really the role of assessment as being integral to making sure that we are making real progress in this. We don't wanna make assumptions about where either adults are or kids are in this work, but it's important for us to assess where they are so that we know the kinda curriculum we need to design specific to the needs of a particular class or individual student. And then finally the ongoing professional learning. And
193we talked about this with early on public comment around is the board saying they're committed to learning about this. As the administration committed, as our teachers committed to this. And I think the answer to those questions are all yes, uniformly. And the expression of tonight's adoption of this policy was to indicate our interest in that and our willingness, to engage deeply in this work. So, again the things that I heard was focus, clarity, specificity and get going. And I think we're really committed to doing all of those things. And also this notion of partnership, the one thing that I think is unique about this framework, is that unlike other frameworks, that's really looking to put all the burden on teachers to do the work. If you actually walk through the 64 page document, it talks
194about here's what you do as teachers. Here's what you do as building administrators. Here's what you do as district administrators. Here's the role for families. Here's the role for politicians? So, we think about it's really kind of a wrap around approach to this work. And I think it's really the only way that you make systematic kind of change is by having everybody engaged in some authentic way and recognize what their part is and their contributions to that work. And so, I think that's something that really is going to be different about the way we approach this work than maybe some of the other things that we do. So again, just my gratitude and thanks for all the folks who are continuing to stretch our thinking and have their voices heard as part of this dialogue.
195It's critical, thank you. And I just would ask Vivian and Karen to send their remarks to the boards so that we could get those very thorough and detailed and extensive recommendations and positioning. Any other, oh yeah, true. I was just gonna add there, from a policy lens there are other tools available to us too or to the board which is as you know, some of our policies have regulations and in the case of at least the sample policy on diversity, equity, inclusion that NASBA has, they also have a regulation around that that starts to flesh out in more detail what that policy looks like once the things Dr. Hagerman just talked about begin to be even more in place or more systematized. And the NASBA policy also has a sample exhibit which provides definitions related
196to some of the terms that you would see both in the policy and in the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Framework that Dr. Hagerman talked about. So, I think those are other in so far as policy is one vehicle of communicating to the community what we believe those other components of policy and regulation and exhibit, or also something we could work toward in the longer term to clarify some of those things. Thank you, Drew. Other follow-up? I just had two comments or questions. One is it might be worth considering offering some students to participate on the committee. I don't think they're on the Compact Committee. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. So, that's number one. The other thing the two students mentioned that I was thinking about as they were looking out at extra-curricular activities and sports. And
197I just wanted to mention, I think those are important items, but the board, the administration, the district has already started taking some steps. And I think part of what we're generally all sensitive to and thinking about is inclusivity in general, even beyond this is talking a lot about curriculum and all that but at the last meeting we adopted the Gender-Neutral Single Occupancy Bathrooms. And I think that type of inclusivity that allows the entire environment to allow everybody to feel comfortable is important to recognize as well. And I think even though we're focusing, I think that focus, I don't think it is limited to that. And the policy is not limited even though we're talking a lot about race right now to other things. And so, I'm looking continue to look forward thinking that there are
198gonna be a lot of opportunities across a lot of different people and types of differences to consider. And I think we're really on the right track here. And I really, I'm glad to see the changes and I'm expecting a lot in the next year that we can really sink our teeth into. Yeah, I think those are great points, thank you. I think while race is certainly front and center on the political scene nationally and locally, I think you know, Karen, I think asked the question a while back about what do we mean by culture and Drew kind of elaborated on if it's not just race in the traditional sense, it's not just cultural heritage, it's religion, it's sort of a family affiliation, it's sexual orientation, it's gender identity, gender expression. It really refers to a
199much broader grouping of the way that folks identify. And conversely the way we also sort of label one people, right? That's part of the whole package of this. And I think we're committed to looking at all of that as part of our discussions and deliberations not just race per say. I think that's a great point. And your point also, I didn't walk by it. I heard you about having students included on that. They've not been included in the traditional district compact, but certainly finding really significant and meaningful ways for them to be engaged in this work is critical. Okay, great, thanks. And Laura, I didn't ask for your lettered comment just simply because I know that the your email that came earlier tonight went through your points. So, I felt that we had those covered.
200And Jen Chang is that the same thing. You're all welcome to share your thoughts with us in writing. I wanted to get the student's bullet points very clear in my head. I have a wrap up before, I guess we've moved on through wrap up. There's really nothing from today's meeting that I can think of. That has been something we're following up. So, we'll move to meeting dates for the coming month, Alison So, on Tuesday, April 20th, we'll have a special meeting at 9:00 a.m. for the Southern Westchester BOCES Vote. Then on Monday, may 10 at four o'clock, the board will meet with high school students via Zoom, at 5:15, the board will go into Executive Session here in room 170 at high school. And then at 6:15, we'll have our statutory budget hearing followed by
201business meeting. Microphone wasn't on. So, should I do that again? Or did anybody hear me? (board members agreeing) Okay, great. At 6:15 on May 10th, we'll have our statutory hearing followed by the business meeting. And on Tuesday, May 18th, we have the budget vote and the election of school board members, voting will take place from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Dyckman Hall, the Scarsdale Congregational Church, which is at One Heathcote Road. And then at 9:30 that night, there will be a special meeting to certify the vote results. On Monday, May 24th, the board will meet an executive session at 5:30, followed at 6:30 by an education report and business meeting. Thanks, Alison, can I just confirm is the BOCES Vote on the 20th, is that going to be in person here in 170 or
202have we not decided on that yet? That's how we've done it unless there's some objection to it. It's just being able to just like this one except for five minutes. Yeah, so the intent, it looks like it for 9:00 a.m. would be April 20th 9:00 a.m. to meet here in this room again for that vote. And then also where it says in the agenda for meeting in the high school auditorium, the plan would be to meet here in rooms 170/172, unless we needed for some reason to go back to the stage. So, just to clarify that, thank you. Can I ask one question? Sorry, it's sort of related to the calendar. But the budget vote in school board election, last year everybody got their ballots in the mail. I want to be clear either that's
203not happening this year. So, anybody who happens to be watching don't expect something to come in the mail, but then is there a process for getting absentee ballots and would it be possible for you to just generally say what that is? That is while she looks for it, that is on our website. So, people can look for that too. There's a mail online. Yeah, there's a mail online. Yeah, under the shortcuts on the bottom is voter information page and people can click on that and everything is there. The dates when to apply for an absentee ballot, how to the form. It's going out in our budget mailer as well. So, we're sending that proactively out to the full community. Good, thanks, good, all right. Then I'm moving on to adjournment. I will entertain a motion
204to adjourn, Amber, second? Second. Carl (laughs) I can tell who speaks. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Abstentions? All right, motion passes. We are adjourned. Thank you everyone.