001Good evening and welcome to the October 21st, 2025 meeting of the Spackman Union Free 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, with liberty and justice for all. Item 2.01 is comments from the public on consent agenda items. Do you have any public comment on consent agenda items? Okay, with that I will entertain. Well, actually, did any board members have any questions or comments on any consent agenda items? Okay, with that I'll ask for a motion to accept the consent agenda as prepared. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. It's 5.
002That brings us to 6.01, which is actually going to be pulled. Our school lunch director was not able to make it tonight. So, we'll be discussing that at the November 18th meeting as I understand. So, that brings us to 6.02, our elementary administration update. Okay. >> Good evening everyone. Um, lots of fun things happening in the in the early parts of the year. Um, we just had our book fair thanks to the PTA um and all the volunteers that help make that possible. kids get really excited. Um, I remember being a young uh student in Nassau going through the book fair and it's still got that same energy and passion behind reading, which is really nice to see. Last week, we also had the the Arlington Fire Company come out and do the fire safe
003house for our third graders. I know it's coincided with a board walkthrough before, so you got to see that in action. Um, but the third graders are always um thrilled to be a part of that program. In fact, one of my former students is now uh leading the whole thing. Um, so it's really cool kind of full circle moment for for myself there. This week started our play club, our before school play club, which is in connection to our Let Grow project. So essentially each day, Monday through Thursday, the playground is opened up for families that signed up um to just come and play. Um we have three teachers that are are running the program at Heaggan. Mr. Merrell, Mr. Muran and Mrs. Kittinden. Uh, it's been a lot of buzz about it. Uh, we
004just kind of got off the ground on Monday, which was rainy, so it kind of petered our participation, but today was was full go. So, it was it was nice. U, we'll continue to see that grow. A little bit of a dance at Hagen because we have all our before school ensembles. So, uh, I had to kind of navigate different ways to get kids two days a week, but it it worked out. Um, and the fact that more than half our population likes to be there before school starts is a testament to the kids and the programs that are running. Um, so that's really cool. And and this is our second month of doing Let Grow. This month's theme is spread your wings. So the first month was get out of your comfort zone. Now
005it's all about spreading your wings and and kind of, you know, spreading that influence of doing things on your own. Um, so we're excited to see next week we'll start uh, you know, tabulating what the kids did and and having those kind of conversations. And then it's always a buzz and excitement about Halloween. So, uh, next week, that Friday, um, we'll have our recess rodeo in the morning. Kids will go through stations. Um, last year, we decided to make it much more Let go. Um, and we're going to do that again because it was highly successful. instead of the teachers droning on for 14 minutes and the kids playing for two, we're just going to let them play. Um, and the kids are really excited about that. And then the afternoon we do our parade
006and we do our parties. Um, so I know there'll be a lot of um, excitement in the building and you know and energy. So it's pretty much it lunch. >> All right. Uh, so we also had uh, fire safety at at NASA. I think most of you probably saw the picture of uh Dr. Fanuelli in this um very tiny trailer, which was my favorite picture in the newsletter, but uh that's always fun. U also our kindergarters went to Meadow Brook Farms. They came home with uh a bunch of apples and a a handful of beastings, which uh the bees were out that day, but everybody was safe. Our school nurse was there and uh fun was had by all. Uh we have three clubs running at Nassau right now. We have the Nutty Scientist. We
007have our Spanish club. If you remember, that was um the the Marrist group. Um and we also started the play club on Monday. Um you know, it was a it's the first time that Nassau students who are electing to take the bus had to kind of do that Todd exchange. And so it was pretty uh it was pretty neat to actually see some of the Todd students um and the staff at Todd, which was great, kind of help these young students get from one bus to the next and then come over to Nassau. So, uh, that was wonderful. We have about 80 students signed up for the play club and we alternate days, um, Monday through Thursday. So, that's, um, going very well. Mr. Curtis is running it with Mrs. Pino. Uh, we also did
008our Let Grow Challenge where students are, uh, challenged to go home and do something outside of their comfort zone. And um we had about 200 leaves out of out of 300 students, which is a really wonderful start. And I'll just read you a couple of uh the things that our our K2 students did. So uh cleaned my room, made breakfast by myself, bought something at the store, and paid for it with my own money by myself. Bike riding alone in our culde-sac. I packed my school snack. I walked to school. I fed a sheep. My personal favorite because I'm from Soverey's home of the garlic festival. But I tried garlic ice cream. [laughter] I read to my sister and I took out the garbage. So really, we had 200s of the 200 of those. Um,
009funny story with our tree. We have one that's supposed to look like it's kind of blowing in the wind and the leaves should be going in one direction. And of course the leaves that I printed off were going in the other direction. So uh we made the best of that. But um lastly, I'll just um go off of what Mr. Duza said. Halloween is a is a really exciting time at Nassau. Um the last couple years we've changed from we used to have it be like a full week type of thing and now we have um by design kind of jammed our pumpkin run, our parties, um our parade all into one day. So, we're we're looking forward to that. And also, if anyone made it out to the trunk or treat, super well attended.
010Our our PTA does a phenomenal job with that parking. I don't know if I had the farthest parking spot. It felt like a mile walk to get to Hagen for it, but um you know, great to see the community come out for that. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Soua has the uh the reveal of your Halloween outfits. Is is it >> I was at the trunk or treat. We are still in Little Mermaid mode because my daughter's helped out. So uh I'm Kim Trion. My daughter is Ariel. My other daughter Sebastian Disney quality costume cost a fortune. And my wife, they wanted her to be Ursula, but she chose Skull. So there you go. Thank you again. Uh 7.01 board correspondence. We have email regarding a student matter which is being addressed
011by our administration. That brings us to 702 comments from the public on non-aggenda items. Okay. 7.03 comments from the board. You have any board comments? Sorry, I have a brief com sorry uh brief comment. Uh I attended the uh uh NISPA business meeting last Thursday evening where um delegates from each of the um area schools, district schools across the state met to review and vote on the resolutions. We discussed this at our last meeting. Um I believe everyone on the board got a a report uh from NISPA about the results of that meeting. But the short of it is that 24 resolutions were approved approved uh by the delegates. Uh that included 23 of the 20 22 of the 23 recommended resolutions. The only one that did not pass of the recommended resolutions was the
012one that we discussed at our meeting last week about the fire drills uh the drills the increase or the decreasing of drills from 4 to two that did not pass. So that will remain at four. Although it was emphasized in discussion that that's um a minimum. I guess he had four that is is simply a minimum. School districts can certainly hold more drill than that if if desired. And then of the 11 uh resolutions that were not recommended, two did pass. um first and the last uh very briefly. The the first of those was um resolution that would expand the uh application of reorganization aid to include not just full mergers of school districts but to include regional schools regionalization issues as we talked about it before. There were a number of resolutions that touched
013on that but that resolution passed. And then the uh the other uh resolution that was on the not recommended list uh that was passed was um amended and uh allows for mandatory recess or provides for mandatory daily recess for schools in kindergarten through fifth grade and students in sixth grade uh who are in elementary school buildings. So that was a sort of a technicality. There was really a lot of support for that. It just had to be amended so that uh the language be a little bit more inclusive for those groups. So, it was a successful meeting. Uh, long um started at 4:00, ended about 9:45, I think, but successful meeting. >> Short one. >> Yeah, short. It's getting a little shorter, like 15 minutes shorter every year. >> But, uh, good spirits, you know,
014on all hands. >> Thanks again for taking that time to represent Spack. really appreciate your efforts in that. >> Sure. >> Any other board comments? >> Yes. Um I also want to thank Dr. Horvath for uh for attending that. I heard it went from 8 hours to 6 hours this year. So a very long uh long event, but thank you for sharing our concerns on what we brought up at the uh at the last meeting. We appreciate it. Um I saw that Hagen had their uh safety meeting, their safety committee meeting. was uh mentioned in some of our board information. Uh appreciate that they're trying to do some lockdowns during lunch periods. I think that's a that's a great idea. You never never know those can be pretty hectic, especially with kids outside and you
015guys inside. So, thank you guys for considering into doing that. Um I also saw you guys uh discussed push locks on the doors um for the next capital project and locking for the vestibule doors. Um I'm in full support of that. I'd love to see that even before a capital project. I consider that right up there with our our fire alarms, our fire extinguishers, and you know, that's something that we should really be uh pushing to get done as soon as possible. Um you know, if we had a bad fire extinguisher, we'd be replacing it right away. And you know, same thing with our lockdown drills and fire drills and all that. I mean, I don't recall the last time we heard of students um you know, having a severe incident with a fire at
016a school, but we hear these lockdown ones happening a lot. So, I think we should uh continue pushing forward on our our lockdown drills and being prepared and trying to get those uh push doors um upgraded as soon as possible. if we could look into uh some pricing on that or whatever that may be. I know um we should have funding for if we're looking at $4 million at the end of each year, I'm sure we can look at upgrading some doors and some safety aspects similar to what we do for uh again if we had a bad fire alarm or a bad fire extinguisher. That's what I chock that one up to. Um other than that, that's all I have right now. Thank you. Anyone else? Is that something that um could be considered
017a mini cap project or something like that? Is that something that could be on the radar for >> doing sooner than later? >> It could be. We will look at the price for each lock and then, >> you know, see if we can do building by building in one year. See how many per year. But yeah, we can definitely look at that. >> Okay. Appreciate that. >> Thank you. >> We're having a security and safety meeting tomorrow, Thursday. >> Thursday. >> Uh just internal just to kind of go over uh some of the stuff. We were considering doing a more of a safety audit on our on our uh buildings with everything and try to see what what that might turn up to then see what uh we want to prioritize based on, you know,
018what what that yields. Um the locks have been spoken about before. So, uh we could, you know, we'll continue to put that on the, you know, on the list to see uh how it goes. But no, it's definitely a good idea to do. Great. Thank you. >> I guess I'll just add uh you know, we're hitting the uh playoff season for our sports teams and there's a lot of really exciting sports going on in Spack and Kill and I would ask that all of our community come on out and support our teams. They're doing great and it's really exciting. Positive vibes out there. Awesome. So, can't wait to see how we all continue to go through M halls and sectionals. It's great. And with that, I'll pass it over to 7.04. Comments from our superintendent.
019>> Yeah, echo the it's definitely a championship or playoff season. Uh the Mahals, I think we won yesterday, so we're in the finals of the Mahals and a couple of sports tomorrow uh offsite Highland. Um so that's definitely coming up. We have a football game this uh Friday. Those have always uh been a great community event. We have one on Halloween uh next week to be aware of that. Uh and just just fun stuff around I think the elementary uh principles talked about it, but just some fun stuff that's been happening, you know, between the book fair and the fire safety was always kind of the kids definitely enjoy uh taking part of fire safety. uh at one of the fire safety uh events. Uh Eric, I spoke to uh one of the teachers about
020their Melebrook Farms trip and she said that Metobrook Farms staff complimented them on being uh one of the the best uh behaved schools that have visited there. So uh definitely something to highlight um that some of the members of the community have noticed uh the Nassau kids behavior. So, good job there. And great to hear about the play club [snorts] and also about some of the items that the kids decided to do. Um, probably some uh some happy families out there paid for it with their own money. I I heard that as one of the things. So, uh you know, definitely uh some some cool stuff. So, keep us posted on that because I think that uh that's definitely cool. Um and thank you. That's all. >> Great. Thank you. With that, I'll bring it
021to 9.01. I'll ask for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Do >> I have a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? I >> passes 5-0. We'll see you November 18th at our next meeting.