001Good evening and welcome to the January 13, 2026 meeting of the Stocken Hill Community Preschool District Board of Education. The board will take a vote to go directly into executive sessions for discussions involving proposed pending or current litigation. It is anticipated that the board will return to the regular meeting at approximately 6:45 p.m. Do I have a motion to go into executive session? >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? I passes 5. Welcome back to the January 13th, 2026 meeting of the Stockville Union School District Board of Education. I'd ask that you rise and join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice
002for all. Thank you. Okay. Item 4.01 is public hearing on the districtwide school safety plan. like to ask for a motion to open the public hearing on the revised districtwide school saf. >> Do we have community input? We can we can or ask question part of the community. Um I just have one point of clarification. Um, on page five of the safety plan, the last paragraph reads, um, all community based organizations operating programs on district property must certify that supervising personnel have received the district's cardiac emergency response annex the location of all AEDs in the building they're using and have access and have at least sorry, one all certified in CPR and AED as a condition of use in the facility. Uh so I'm wondering if that's well it's language that's highlighted. So I'm not
003sure if if that's an addition the policy or if that's just highlighted as part of the current policy the pre-existing policy or plan rather. But I asked, pardon? >> Yeah, because it's it because I'm wondering because this came up actually at our safety committee meeting uh when we're discussing this prospectively. This isn't going to come before the public on the agenda, I guess, until the next meeting on the 27th. I guess that's what we talked about at the meeting, right? But we had some discussion at that meeting as to whether there would be a requirement that outside organizations have a person certified in ads at you know at their events and my understanding was right that we wouldn't necessarily be uh asking for that information. >> Uh I think we are um it's it's otherwise
004we would have to any event outside groups have then have to pay for someone or find someone to come forward. So we believe that the outside event should have someone with that certification. You think it's attainable? you know, um obviously if there's some sort of situation where you can help out, I think the first step would be for them to fill out a form that says, you know, do you have someone who will play to whether you accept it or not? Okay. and we could ask questions. If you say you don't have someone, we really don't think we can prove this have that dialogue. Um, but I would think we would want them to see they're the only ones there. >> Okay, good. So, it just clarifies things for me. I guess the distinction we
005were talking about at the meeting was that we wouldn't necessarily provide something. Correct. >> We would expect the organization to provide someone. But we will ask that. >> So we're specifically asking so >> that they confirm that someone's going to be available from their >> owners on them to provide someone and then they give us the information so that we can at least reference it if necessary. They have to provide something >> and we talked about the form possibly modifying that. I think the form has already been modified. >> I know we're getting other things that >> and the thing that's highlighted that's that's really a change. It's really that's the only change. previous uh policies previous so we just had to revise it really. >> Yeah. So my question is simply to clarify how
006it aligns with the policy that we're discussing use facility use >> which is going to come before I guess for first meeting on the 27th. But that's why we change all the policies because that that's other community input or board input. Okay. With that, I'll ask for a motion to close the public hearing on revised districtwide school safety plan. >> I have a second. Okay, that brings us to 5.01 comments from the public on consent agenda items. board discussions or to be discussed on the consent agenda. With that, I'll entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda as written. Do >> I have a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Passes by the passing of the consent agenda. Uh we just to point out we did hire an internal food service director. His
007name is Larry Anthony area districts last year. Um I know him uh when I was at Arlington excellent as assistant director uh but for the past decade or so he's been redistriction there's recently retired uh we met with him John and I are very impressed that he had some ideas to help us but really the ultimate goal is to find food service beyond. So, welcome. Okay, that brings us to 701 first reading policy 011. This is our title n policy. board discussion on it. With that, I'll ask for a motion to accept the first reading of policy 0919. A second favor 702 is first reading of policy 1111.1 which is a public comment on board meetings board discussion on this item. >> I'd like to make a motion that we table for discussion. >> Okay.
008Second that motion second. >> Okay. All in favor that to uh you have to specific specific or come back on the agenda here at some point. Uh 9.01 is our secondary administration update. >> Who's leading off? Good evening everybody. Um as always uh thank you for uh having us here for your support of uh our schools. Uh I thought tonight that I would um highlight our of our newspaper. Uh we have a newspaper club that um started it had been on the books for a number of years but it was dormant and we hadn't had a student newspaper in a number of years uh since before I was here. And uh last year uh we started um we started again. It's called uh sorry for my voice. I'm a little under the weather. Um it's
009called uh Todd Times and it's a um uh uh it's an electronic um newspaper which I'm going to show you uh the latest issue in a minute but um it is a club that um is run by Mr. Scandler who is our family consumer science teacher and this is from honor our art teacher and um it uh this year it has 16 active members which uh has gone up to about triple five people now it's about 16 um they have two editors and chief um Peter B and Paul the Leatherman and um the students get together every Monday um they think about content that they want to um go over. Um most of the student work they do outside of time and then they meet on Mondays to kind of do feedback to give peer
010review to edit the issues together. Um some of the content that they created includes um articles highlighting school events and classroom activities. There's creative writing. There's poems. There's comic scripts. There'sformational pieces on topics of personal interest. There's puzzles and scavenger hunts. There's opinion pieces on a variety of topics. And um they'll do polls every once in a while to get, you know, kind of the Todd Street response to different things. Um they they you know, they use the Canva system program that a lot of a lot of people use. Um, and I've always, you know, um, they do an issue a month and I'm always impressed with, uh, you know, length of the issue. There's all kinds of things that that they put in there. So, I thought I'd just kind of click through. I
011didn't realize it was going to be so small, but you want to just go if you go, yeah, if you just want to click through, you just have lots of pages here and there. You can see the different different things you've got. Uh, stories. Um, Keep going. You've got um that's a short story that somebody wrote. You've got art. You've got uh you know, pop culture references. You've got, you know, things anything that the kids might be interested in, but they can make it bigger. Okay. Yeah. >> 3% bigger. Yeah. And just, you know, I like the look of it, you know. It's really, it's a nice look. It's just I mean, you know, I I read through it uh once a month and I'm always just so impressed with it. >> Very center. Some
012of the things Yeah. It's the kids. >> Yeah. The kids do everything. Yeah. They make it's it's it's it is a kids run for kids. um you know uh mag uh they got books you want they've got puzzles your kids can do uh this is one of their polls about you know >> yeah artificial versus real yeah uh almost 90% think that snow is a big Shout out to the music department. Uh this is some pictures. This was a great thing. So we had our yearbook theme week the prior week before grade which was great. We had a 1hour internal delay. We had compet grade you know which we don't usually done that before. Was great. Did a great job. Mrs. They also got games in the month. I like games and they've got games.
013You have things that you know obviously important things. Lots of game stuff. They they student government did candy rams uh prior to the grill as well. And we got the scavenger hunt. So yeah, they they do it's it's a it's nice and you know they they did I think they do uh 80 a year which is you know it's that's a lot it's a lot of work and um and they and the students do a really nice job with it and um I thought it'd be nice for you guys to highlight and see um the work. So they share that with the staff and and the students every Todd. You're welcome. Thank you. >> Got some Ken. >> How are we all doing? >> Good. Good. >> Uh we're starting the year off on a
014positive note. Overall, the the hallways are vibrant. Kids are positive, happy. Hopefully setting some New Year's resolution goals. Talked about that a little bit last week. Kind of reset the students safety expectations. uh reminding them about our you know our device policy um which has drastically ch I think everybody would agree drastically changed um how students interact uh we've seen so many different positive outcomes from it and and really are enjoying the interaction. So just a side note but I just wanted to highlight a couple things um from right before winter break and then where we're headed to now and some celebrations that are coming up. So, I'm just going to focus on the uh our music department. Some of the things that I see in the classrooms uh and clubs going around the building
015that we may not see that are not on parent square in their newsletter. Um some of the day-to-day things that happen in the classes instruction focus on science and science research. And then just want to mention finishing up with nice heat. Uh we held two winter concerts before our break and also uh in the school day our concert choir carols through the halls. So they go into classrooms and they carol. Um they also did that in the lobby before the concert which was a nice touch that they added this year. Uh 18 chorus students were selected for the NISMA area all state festival in November. and Caroline Soile and Saucer Turk represented Spack and Kill at the NISMA all state conference in December. Um for classrooms and clubs, you can actually if you want to
016switch to the next page, there's a few pictures. Um, so classrooms and clubs, our P2 club at the high school collaborated with National Honor Society sock drive and distributed the socks to Hope on a Mission Pipsy, uh, which supports the homeless population. On December 11th, P2 collaborated with Haven Elementary's food drive to create food boxes which were distributed uh to SP with Leo with SP Leo Club adopt the family program which is huge success. Uh I didn't focus too much on this about that but I do want to shout out adopt the family the Leo club for the work that they do. I started a newsletter the students and the staff really put a lot of thank you to the community for helping out with that. We had a lot of family benefit from that.
017Um, our health class featured a spatill student with Down syndrome who's also hearing impaired who assisted in uh teaching sign language to a fellow students. Just wanted to highlight that. MST students or math science technology are building balsa wood bridges and then they are testing them this week uh to see who has the strongest design and engineering piece of that. Uh super interesting world lit classes recently took part in a pen pal project after reading the best we could do. Each of the seniors partnered with an immigrant student from international high school in Brooklyn. Uh they got information from their penal and then wrote a letter to that student which was returned to them about life living in Pikipsy and some advice uh living or how to be successful in America school system. something brand.
018Avid had a guest speaker, Jamie Palatini, the vice president of communications for USA Sports, which is a new network that's splitting off of NBC Sports 2026. Uh he spoke to all the AVID students about his journey, how he got to that point, and answer a lot of the questions about some insider information. Uh Science Olympiad, there's two pictures up there. a group in the middle of Science Olympiad. They competed at South Windsor High School Invitational and won 10 medals. Um they also this past Sunday came in second place uh at the Mount Academy Invitational. Uh we came in second. John J came in third. Just want to say that make that statement to my fellow John J. >> Uh came in first. Uh I don't know. I was just focused on coming out second and
019beating Jeff. >> Uh say Hussein in the bottom right hand corner is a current senior at Spackenville and he has been recognized as a top 300 scholar for uh the 85th Regeneron Science Talent Search. Um, as a result, our science research program has been awarded a $2,000 scholarship, which is going to be used towards materials and supplies and continuing to grow the already robust program that we have. So, uh, top 300 in the country recognized by Regeneron. It was a a huge accolade for him and the district and the school benefit from that, too. So, definitely want to shout him out. Um, and lastly, NICT, I talk about this every year, uh, since I've been here. New York State Theater Education Association puts on a conference every year. Uh, we sent 10, uh, 12 students
020this year, 14 total with myself and Miss Oakley, who came, who's our director of the play this year. Um, it's a really extensive conference. Uh students essentially work from 7:30 in the morning till 11:00 at night in workshops from industry professionals. Uh it's growing every year. We can only take they cap the amount of students that can go. There is 870 students that went this year all across New York State. They take over the entire uh villa um excuse me not for uh Villa Roma. Uh, and it's just a an entire weekend of learning, growth, and just kids being who they are and who they want to be and seeing professionals that work on Broadway uh, and learning from them hands-on. So, we've seen direct results from this. We have students that, uh, do light
021and sound that have learned how to operate our boards, our new technology, and apply that right away to our new plays. And then some of the classes that our students attended this year, uh, airbrush makeup, hand-to-hand combat, gortastic makeup and mask making, how to write a play when you're stuck, Improv 101, excuse me, Hamilton, Broadway Song and Dance, Magic of Theater, So You Want to Play in a Pit, Directing Brand New Plays, Mean Girls Dance Workshop, Monologues Unleashed, Spongebob, Spongebob Broadway Master Class, which I had to look up because I was like, I'm not sure what that what that class is, but it's actually the students learn the uh certain scenes from the Spongebob play on Broadway. That's the same with Mean Girls. Um I do want to shout out that we are auditioning for
022our spring musical right now, which is Mean Girls. So, we'll give out more information on that uh to be continued. But it's it's a weekend not just where kids get to meet kids from all over the state and talk about interests and and network, but they also network with colleges. There's a college fair uh about 15 schools go there and then again industry professionals from Broadway uh from places all over Syracuse. um they give up their time and teach our youth. So hopefully that they continue their education and go into those fields which happens often. So uh it's it's extensive and it's exhausting but it's it's an amazing experience and I'm glad to be part of it every single year. And you'll see uh on the top right is the opening ceremony with our students
023and which the keynote speaker was the uh the woman who played uh Linda on Broadway. So she performed for uh one of the one of the cast members from she played the last not the current >> not in the movie. No, not Chris, >> but the uh the woman who played it before the the last one before the she started from the picture say this is one of his favorite events. Is that fair to say? >> Yeah, it is. I I never did theater. Um I did like sound as a teacher. I'm always fascinated by it because I was a musician because this isn't just theater. It's uh so you want to play in a pit. That's a workshop for learning how to really perform in a pit. Um it really touches on every aspect
024of of music and that genre. Um but I was drawn to it. I was introduced to it in Walker as an AP John Japon. And uh for me the thing that touches me the most is just the overwhelmingly positive environment that is there with a thousand people all supporting each other all having fun all learning but just sponges and embracing all different types of art singing dancing artistic ability music you can think of and then also other activities there's sporting there's basketball, bowling that they do, team building workshops, rock climbing, uh swimming, there's dance, I don't know how >> just two days. Oh, that's two days. Friday through Sunday. So, it starts, we leave here Friday afternoon right after school and we literally get off the bus and we go right to the first workshop
025and there's five workshops throughout up until Sunday morning and we have the ceremony. The workshops are scattered. There is also a like a symposium Saturday night. Last year, one of our students uh was do light and sound. So they they kind of get tested throughout the weekend and they audition for parts and they put on plays that students write and it's a competition for that too. So Caroline Soiel actually um performed the uh in the Hamilton class they learn tap routine perform the songs on the play and they performed on a showcase Saturday night. So we tend to have students that get involved in the showcase as well. So not only are they doing the workshops but then they audition the showcase the next night and they spend all day outside of those workshops practicing
026that showcase showcase where the advisers would go. Uh I didn't want to win a raffle last year. So [laughter] no showcase. But there's a lot of there's a lot of teachers that also uh give up their time uh to teach workshops. So it's split between industry professionals teachers. Mr. Mayor, our course teacher teaches workshops there and he he chaper first year and then got latched into teaching it right right away just because he was so drawn into it. Um but it's really just a team effort. There's a board of educators that put it on. Um there's a lot of teachers that are involved in it in the association like myself were all part of it. >> We didn't have to have the weather seemed to be the weather. >> Weather was nice. There's a bonfire
027too. They do everything. >> Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Can I say one more? Absolutely. Please. Um, I put out some correspondence today about graduation. Uh, the dates and we'll put out more just, but today was the Thursday. So, Thursday, June 18th, 6:00 p.m. is our graduation ceremony with a rain date of Saturday at 9:30 a.m. Um, and regent exams are next week, as a reminder. So, Tuesday is a testing day only, and then we have regular school the rest of the week in tandem with our regents. with that. That brings us to item 10.01, which is our board correspondence. A number of emails in the last month. We've got two that were related to a student incident which uh were handed by administration. two that were related to a launch quality and cost issue
028which our administration has been in contact with the person that composed those emails. And our fifth email is with regard to our roofing systems and uh report that was from and our business manager has been contracted with a consulting engineer with regard to coming up with questions or a response to that question and we'll be providing to shortly with that move on to 10.02 comments from the public on nonaggenda items. Can I come up from here or >> if you if you would kindly just come up to the the podium so you can you can hear you and capture you on the video and audio. >> I don't want to go on video. >> Oh um well the video can stay on on this side. >> Yeah. Audio fine only because I've experienced um depth
029of my identity. So, I disapprove with any type of video. Even saying the word yes should not be recorded because it's captured by people that broke on the dark web. I've experienced this in real time and the police are involved. It's a very serious situation, one that should be um on high alert for elderly people in this community who participate in um Texas. Uh it should be on an agenda to speak upon dark web fishing if it's infiltrated through our mail. in accordance with California. HHS, Social Security, Medicare recipients are being fished from Cal into our homes and our identities are being taken for college to care for somebody in college. Okay, I don't know who the person is. How do but also how about implementing uh AI? It's a new language and um trades
030are emphasis on trades on children for all three app. I would I would love to participate in any food opportunities children when they do part on their journey to learn about taxes for heaven envelope. I've experiencing a decline in that basic and children they can't be the declaration of independence just appreciate the comments. Um I like actually mentioned that we we do have a pretty good robust uh fishing um program for our educators and our all the employees here at the district. Um maybe maybe at some point we can talk about um some of the things that we might teach some of our students about fishing and and things like that. Uh we have talked about some of that in the past our um we're focusing on AI this year. It's one of our goals.
031So we will be uh addressing AI as a more robust American manner and we'll be having some conversations and presentations on that as the deal moves forward. And with the trades, um I've been a very big proponent of that. Uh obviously everybody knows that that's in this room right here with me. Um but we've also had plenty of trade fairs and uh vocational um opportunities that we we typically always have uh annually at minimum. But um we've actually had other programs here at the school where we've uh trying to embolden folks to uh consider the trades as opposed to the traditional you have to go to college. So >> work with their hands. >> Yeah. >> Um I still have work when I came here. Then I worked in your job. Yeah, I still have
032my but I did myself. >> Boy, what a treat to show myself. >> Back what you said. Okay, next uh board meeting a little bit >> here. my next sorry next board meeting we have a presentation on our goals for this year and AI as part of that. So we'll talk a little bit about what we're doing with that to try to educate everyone. Um Mr. Lewis is working on portrait of a graduate a lot of what you talked about envelope writing or maybe specific to that but but kind of some of those items are included in that. Um, so there's definitely a lot going on and we do have a pretty robust uh tech talking about fishing and what to look for and I think our staff and probably even our board has to
033take um, you know, little uh, small little modules to to keep up their their learning because it changes so fast. >> Only with my experience and my observations of the uh, communication skills eye contact um for straight in their center. Um I'm witnessing a lot of bullying while they're out in public. Children are getting hurt. There's just recent citizens fence type strengthen their center so they can even feel the person behind you or approach um and quiet. It's a real piece of um we don't start here but it's a conversation table and uh also about missing children. It's a it's a concern of mine um I've been dealing with this um in my own life and uh it's a real thing and if that's your family, you will let me know. >> I appreciate your
034comments. Um, we do have a 3minut limit, which I think we've exceeded, but thank you very much. Appreciate you. Um, are there any other comments from the public? So, with that, we'll move on to comments from the board. Board comments. Quick comment um regarding that [clears throat] monthly Duchess County School Board Association meeting this past Thursday uh the 8th of January attended that meeting. Um very informative and illuminating presentation at that meeting from Melissa Napel and partners from the Thomas Waxton Pedro and Male law firm. uh and they talked about um the status of regional collective bargaining across the district. Very interesting, illuminating, shared a lot of data uh which I'm happy with and pass along if people are interested. Um thought it was an informative illuminating conversation that was the highlight. Talked a little
035bit about New York State budget priorities in the upcoming um legislative season and also respecting the postseason. So it was a informative meeting. That's it. Anyone else? It's been a long meeting. Okay. So, with that, I'll turn it over to our superintendent 10.04. We >> just welcome everyone back. You know, we've been back now a little bit, but we had a little bit of a break. I hope everyone enjoyed it. Um, still be aware of weather calls. Also, next week with the regions, uh, definitely be working with Canon if there's some issues with, uh, 2-hour delays or or snow days. Um, can have some secondary plans, I guess, if if something was to happen. U, so be aware of that. Uh, we are off on Monday, um, Martin. So, everyone enjoy that holiday. And then
036just just having everyone back and being back at school just feels like like we've never left, you know, we didn't have a break and it just feels good. Everyone's coming alive and I was at the high school on Friday. I walked into Ken's office and it had all kinds of luggage and everything and it was really to go to the the Nest conference as you see him light up with that. Uh it's just cool to have these events. Just it's just a small event, you know, but it means a lot to our our students and you really get to see that when Ken comes here or Dan, whoever brings it brings it to life and I think it's uh very important to continue to do that cuz just to see that one event and how
037it touched, you know, it might not have been a lot of students, but but but how it touches our students and we have so many of that. uh we want to take it for granted that we have so many of those events that touch our kids and that we offer our students. So, we just want to thank the board and the community for, you know, supporting all that. It's really pretty cool. Yeah. Thanks so much. With that, we'll ask for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Second. All in favor? I pass. See you next time.