001Good evening and welcome to the April 22nd, 2025 meeting of the Spack and Carol Union Free School District Board of Education. I'd ask that you rise and recite the pledge of allegiance with me. 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. Thank you. Item 2.01 is comments from the public on consent agenda items only. We have any public comment on consent agenda items. Board discussion on consent agenda call discussed. Okay. I'll entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda as written. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? I passes 5. That brings us to 4.01. This is the uh Boseis administrative budget for 2025 2026. So, the trustee or board
002of education of each component school district by resolution may cast one vote to approve or disapprove the board of cooperative educational services administrative budget in the amount of $6,858,000. Um, does the board wish to approve? If you do, say I. And if you wish to disapprove, say name. All right. So, passes 50. That brings us to 4.02. This is the OC's candidate election vote. So, there are two seats for three-year terms beginning July 1st, 2025 and ending June 30th, 2028, and one seat to fill a vacancy with a term beginning April 23rd, 2025 and ending June 30th, 2026. on the board of cooperative educational services to be filled at the annual election to be held on April 22nd, 2025. The trustees or board of education of each component school district by resolution may cast one
003vote for each vacancy to be filled and only one vote for each candidate. Maximum of three votes may be cast in this election. No more than one person residing in a particular component school district may be elected to serve on the board of cooperative educational services at one time except as providing education law section 19 subsection 2- A. I'm going to read the the five candidates that are listed on the ballot in order that they're listed on the ballot. We have Ralph Jimento from Spack and Kill. We have Mark Flehower from Brian Beck. We have Bryce Holland from Pipsy. We have Judy Moran from Vivatuckup. And we have Joey Stanford for Height Park. So, I guess what I would do is ask the board, we'll start out just in that same order with Ralph. If
004the board has um wants to uh nominate or elect Ralph as one of our reps, then I guess what we'll do is we can just say um I and if you don't, I guess we would say nay. Um so why don't we just go right down the line for Ralph Shimento? I vote I as well. Mark Fhour from Lond. Bryce Holland from Pikipsy. I say I as well. Judy Mar from Hey. Hey. Okay. And Stanford from High Park. Hi. Hi. Hi. All right. Okay. So, that's Ralph Shento, Bryce Holland, and Billy Stanford as I'm sorry. Correct. Thank you. Okay. So, that's that. That will bring us to item 6.01, 01 science research symposium presentation. Good evening everyone. Thanks for having us here. Uh before we start the presentation on science research, I just want to
005mention a couple things. Uh number one, today is Earth Day. So, just want to take a moment to reflect on our planet and um take action and do what we can to protect our environment for future generations. It's important. We honored that today at school. We wore green and uh we try to do our parts as well. So, I just wanted to mention that here today since it is Earth. Um next this weekend is The Little Mermaid. Hopefully, everyone's got their tickets. It is uh very uh a lot of people are looking forward to it. The work that has gone into it is massive. Uh the set looks amazing. I would definitely suggest that you go attend it. 7:00 Friday, 7:00 Saturday, and 2:00 Sunday. So, just keep that in mind. We have roughly 50
006elementary students in the cast as well as high school students. So, it's a big part of the community and a lot of involvement and a lot of work and it's going to be fantastic. A lot of talent. So, keep that in mind. Um, so I want to start off just mentioning the science symposium uh based out of science research, a program that we have at the high school run by Miss Jen Maloney, who is here with us, and Miss Christie, Miss Christine Upright behind me, our two science teachers. Uh what this program is, if you're not familiar with it, is a three-year researchbased program, projectbased, where students and families get involved in topics sophomore year, uh that are interesting to them, and they pursue research, partnered up with mentors throughout the world, usually typically PhD
007level mentors in different universities and colleges, um that our teachers work to uh facilitate ate relationships with them based on a student interest. Um and they partner up with them over the course of three years and conduct research uh locally and you know in tandem with the uh the mentors in their universities and they present their senior years at the research symposium which takes place on May 21st, that's a Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. Part of the reason why we do this is to try to uh get the word out and get participation from our community. It is open to the public. There's a lot of great information, a lot of really upand cominging research um that that is not only interesting to the students conducting it, but it affects all of us today. And it's
008just it's really fascinating to hear what our keynotes have to say and hear the research that is that students have been working on for uh three years and some often times more than that. um we've in the past had students publish their research and we continue to have that success now. So we hope to see everybody um and we hope that the community comes out and attends to. So we have two presenters here tonight. I do want to just mention the other senior projects that will be presented as well the topics. Hopefully I don't destroy some of the topics. I was an English major not a science major. So uh I'll do my best. But um Nam Kukretti uh with the mentorship of Dr. Deun Satus at Maris College uh his research is based on
009comparing students test scores to chat GBT test scores to determine if chat GBT could be used as cyber security personal assistant. So um right there obviously is such a a recent development in AI and obviously it's interesting to not only our students but staff and it's great that we'll get to see how that can play a role in cyber security. Um Brody Herody with mentorship from Jen Adams at Winnicki Land Trust in Reinbeck, New York. native a topic is native versus in uh evasive species and deer appetites at Vlay Marsh. Um if you can't tell, there's a very broad range of topics and it's all based on student interest and what they want to research. I will give you an opportunity to come up and say anything if you if you want to. Yousef Ahmed
010again with the mentorship of Jen Adams at Winnick Land Trust in Reinbeck. This study investigates changes in moth biodiversity and species abundance in the Hudson Valley to determine ecosystem health within the Hudson Valley. Um Trish Trisha Pini, Dr. Andrew Westbrook at Ruckers University, the effect of ADHD medication use in healthy young adults. And lastly, senior Misha Parsons with mentorship from Dr. Dr. Debian Mitra at Columbia University, the use of laser cooling for the excitation of calcium hydroxide production to explore particle physics. Um, very broad range. We also have our underassmen, our 10th grade and 10th grade and 11th. Yes. Yeah. They also present their research as it stands at that symposium. So we get to see the pro uh the the progress along the way with the non seniors in the school at the symposium
011as well. So there's a lot to see there. Uh please join us. Ready? Uh our presenters that are here are going to stand at the board because they have a slide so they're going to be able to point to that. And we'll start with Miss Jacqueline Gil and I'll give you an opportunity to speak about your research and your mentor. go around this way. So, my name is Jacqueline Gil. My mentor is Dr. Robin Yan, affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital through Harvard Medical School. So my study was the effect of sleep on emotional regulation in adolescence. So 70% of high schoolers in the United States report inadequate sleep. And this lack of sleep can cause poor concentration, increased anxiety, a decline in both academic and athletic performance as well as increasing the likelihood of
012developing anxiety, schizophrenia, and other mood disorders. Adolescents are children aged 13 to 19 and they are at a higher risk for developing both sleep problems and other emotional emotional regulation abbreviated as ER is an individual's ability to control their emotions. In 200C in 2003 Floyd at all found that a lack of sleep was correlated with enhanced negative reactions and fewer positive reactions to various stimuli. In 2007, Magani at all found that a lack of sleep caused a higher um frequency of negative emotions and a lower frequency of positive emotions throughout the week. And Ben Deerehov in 2017 tied these studies together when he conducted a study on med students and found that even after a goal achieving event, which in this case was graduating med school, lack of sleep caused diminished positive reactions after goal
013achieving. The positive and negative effect schedule for children or the PAC is a self-report questionnaire that helps quantify a participant's emotional state throughout the time frame which in my case was one week. So they rate five positive emotions joyful, cheerful, happy, lively, proud on a scale from 1 to five based on frequency. One being they felt that emotion not at all throughout the week and five being it was almost a constant emotion. And those numbers are added up to calculate their total positive effects. Similarly, they also rate five negative emotions, one through five, miserable, mad, afraid, scared, sad. And those numbers are added up to form the total negative. Um, the NI effective picture system or an apps is an image set meant to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. And it's often paired
014with a non-verbal pictorial questionnaire, which in this case, I used SAM and it um it's these little graphs that you see here, and they quantify two variables for each image. first pleasure or how positively or negatively they perceived an image. So they would choose the icon that corresponded most to how positively or negatively they viewed an image. There was also a variable for the intensity of the emotion where they were able to choose how strong of a reaction they were having to each. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and problem solving. However, it's not fully developed until a person's early to mid20s, causing reoot results from adults like the ones I mentioned from Plexol, Briion all and child to not necessarily translate to adolescence. Because of this, my
015objective was to investigate the effect of sleep on emotion regulation and adolescence using the adolescence from spatula. I hypothesized that if participants had a shorter duration of sleep on their PAS C forms, they would for a higher negative effect and a lower positive effect. And in regards to naps images with the SAM questionnaire, I hypothesized that they would have a higher intensity of negative emotions and a lower intensity of the images that they rated more positively. So the first step in my research was to recruit participants. So by word of mouth and through surveys, I was able to recruit my participants to take part in the study. I also had an IRB meeting in order to make sure that my study was safe for the underage participants to participate in. I collected demographics such as
016age and gender through Google forms and I had to rule out any participants that had conditions that could affect their sleep or their emotional regulations including diabetes, schizophrenia, um severe diagnosed anxiety and other things. I collected my sleep data in two phases. Phase one occurred in July of 2024 and phase two appeared in September of 2024. Both phases were executed the exact same way where participants recorded their sleep information through Google form for one week. And this included the time they went to bed, the time they woke up, how long it took for them to fall asleep, any wakeups throughout the night, and any other information they wanted to share. After the one week of recording their sleep data, they completed an emotional regulation task Google form where they completed both the PAS C and
017they had 32 NAS images that were provided by my mentor filled um with a SAM questionnaire for each image. Statistical analysis was then run on the information. I ran piercing correlations on the PANC data and linear regressions on the NAPS and SAM data and P values less than .05 were considered. Uh for my demographics, I had 141 total participants with their ages ranging from 13 to 19 with an average age of about 16.5. I had 102 female participants. And I decided to look at the sleep data compared to the emotional regulation data in two ways. Their total average sleep over the whole week and just the sleep their night before they completed their emotional regulation classes. uh because there was a big discrepancy in like age, gender, and the amount of people for phases. Before
018I completed my statistical analysis, I decided to look at trends in Excel to make sure there weren't any significant differences based on other factors. And I found that there weren't any significant differences based on other factors. But I did find something very interesting in tables four and five. The highest R squared values or correlation values ranging from 0 to one. zero being no correlation, one being a strong correlation. For both males and females, the highest correlation occurred between average sleep and emotional regulation data. Whereas the lowest correlation values occurred with night before sleep data. While this wasn't necessarily what I was looking to find in my hypothesis, it does indicate that long-term sleep has a higher correlation with emotional regulation than short-term sleep. When I was analyzing the PAS seed data compared to my sleep
019data, um the only statistically significant P values I had were with the average SE data which you can see highlighted in green on the right side. So they as you can see the each black dot represents a participant score and the blue line indicates the trend line. Um I'm not sure if you can tell from there but based on the dots there's no clear way if you didn't have that blue line there to show a correlation. And this is evident in my Pearson correlation values which again range from 0 to one. Zero being a lack of correlation and one being a strong correlation. My R values were less than.24 and my P values were statistically significant. And what this means is that the lack of correlation between the sleep and the Pass C data is
020likely not to chance and there's factors besides sleep that impact adolescence emotional regulation. Um in these figures down here, figures five and six, this correlates the nap sam data and the sleep data. So these navy circles are a correlation of one. The orange circles represent a correlation of about.3. The blue indicates a correlation of about 0.2 and the yellow indicates a correlation of about 0.1. As you can see my R square values are less than 0.005 for both average sleep and night before sleep. And when we combine this very lack of correlation with the P values, it means that the lack of correlation between the variables is likely not the case. So this led me to conclude that um factors other than sleep impact emotional regulation and adolescence. But I wasn't content with just stopping
021saying that there were other factors. So my mentor and I began to look into um why there was a lack of correlation and what we could do to figure out why in the future. So first off, I had already found that long-term sleep had a higher correlation with emotional regulation than short-term. So for future studies, we want to record their sleep for longer than a week prior to giving them the emotional regulation tasks. In addition, lots of literature points to emotional differentiation in adolescence. And this means that adolescence aren't always able to correctly identify the emotions that they are having. So one way to go about this is to instruct them how to identify their emotions prior to them participating in this play. In addition, there's been a lot of research on adolescence about their
022desensitization to stimuli due to things like social media, certain video games, and movies. And this has caused their reactions to the naps images to be less severe than they used to be when the scale was first created due to the desensitization of stimuli in kids in this age. Um, in addition, the biggest thing that my mentor and I were talking about are circadian rhythms, which are essentially your biological clock, and it determines at what point in your sleep you hit the REM cycle and how long it lasts. So each adolescent has the their own unique circadian rhythm because circadian rhythms develop during your adolescence. So this could mean that comparing um adolescence sleep versus emotional regulation data across multiple adolescence is not really an accurate way of doing that if their circadian movements are different.
023So you'd have to use the same adolescent and look at how they regulate their emotions when they have about 5 hours of sleep compared to like 10 hours of sleep in order to get a better idea. Um, in addition, we could use electrophilography in order to determine what parts of a teenager's brain are actually used in emotional regulation since their prefrontal cortex isn't fully. Thank you for listening. Does anyone have any [Applause] questions? Um, so it's not just sleep. Yeah. Any idea what else? Yeah. So the question was if not sleep what other factors impact an adolescent emotional regulation. So, it's I think it's more so their circadian rhythm as that aspect of sleep, but it's also then what other emotional factors are going on in their day, whether they had like a physical activity.
024Um, and just whether they've been exposed to different techniques to help regulate their emotions because some people have been exposed to more ways on how to calm themselves down or how to like react to more difficult situations. found it interesting when you found that you actually stimulate it now since came out years ago. That's very interesting looking at pictures and things all the time and maybe that specific type of test. That's interesting. Anyone else off easy? piece to the presentation is all the public speaking work that goes into this. So, um the students spend a lot of time and the teachers work with them and they they work through this the speeches numerous times obviously they memorize and they work on question and answer scenarios as Dr. Ellie asked the question. Um, Jacqueline repeated the
025question for the audience. So, all that goes into a presentation and and public speaking to expand beyond science. Next pres uh next presenter is Katie Park. Come on up and I'll give you the opportunity to talk about your research. [Music] Hello, my name is Katie Park. My mentor is Dr. Karada, the leading kidney graduate center and my research is on the impact of stress and amidosis on microgle phenotypes. Microglea is the brain's primary immune cell containing countless healthy and necessary functions. However, more recent studies have pointed at it being a causal salt in Alzheimer's disease or AD and neurodeenerative disease primarily causing mental decline. For example, variance of micro specific gene from 2 has increased Alzheimer risk severalfold. In addition, the binding of animal beta across common in Alzheimer's to protein complex C1Q leads to
026synapse loss, a symptom prevalent in Alzheimer's. In the context of a microgle possesses a dark phenotype identified by interoping dark chromatin as outlined in the blue. It also presents altered organels. So there is intracellular change as well. And this is a comparison to intermediate and typical cells found in healthier patients where a more distinct chromatin pattern within the nucleoplasm or the blue outline is present. One mechanism discovered in dark machining is called the integrated stress response pathway or ISAR where in response to various pathological or environmental condition stresses are detected by these four enzymes activation was specifically found to be induced spec specifically found to induce dark microa. So why is this important? Since Alzheimer's disease is one of the 10 top leading causes of death in the United States without a cure, using the
027stark phenotype may potentially be a good identification marker for the disease. So the objective of my study was to ultra structurally or by looking at the fine structures of cells determine whether microblow stress as activated by the integrated stress response pathway and amoidosis a process causing amaloid beta exacerbates the dark phenotype. I studied three different mice genotypes. IPAR was a stress model. 5X FAD was an amoidosis model and 5X FAD IPAR was a combination of both stress and amidosis. Next, brain tissue samples were prepared specifically the cortex since it had been found to be correlated with a lot of cognitive functions. My role began with image analysis where I annotated over 180 images of cell bodies and reviewed them five times annotating them using a software called photo and then to objectively create chromatin contrast
028scores. I use a software Fiji by highlighting a heterocchromatin or dark outer skirt of the cell and subtracting that from the ukroin or lighter inner areas of the cell body. I also annotated for the two Alzheimer homeworks called amaloid beta plaques as well as cysroic nerates and then to look intracellularly I look at the organels mitochondria and lizoomes. Next for data normalization I created several equations to account for the different number of cells and pathologies across the three genotypes. That way they could be compared for the results. So going into the results, looking at the chromatin contrast ranges, I correlated the 0 to 20 mean intensity with the dark phenotype, 20 to 40 for intermediate, and 40 to 70 for typical. This visually made sense as the dark phenotype appears more uniformly dark have the
029least contrast. Specifically the smaller 30 to 40 mean intensity where the histogram peaks in the middle indicates the bonafide intermediate phenotype and also suggests that imaging may have been biased for the intermediate cells. Shifting our focus to the graph on the right. Unexpectedly the 5x FAD or amoidosis model had the highest dark microgal numbers as well as the lowest typical microgal percentages suggesting amoidosis may be a crucial factor for dark microbial numbers. In addition, since no dark micro glue was induced within the IP stress model, stress alone could not induce this phenotype. However, limitation to account for is the amount of stress could because apoptosis or cell death could not be induced. Looking into Alzheimer homework analysis, the greatest percentage of microgle contacting plaques out of the total number of cells were intermediate within the
0305x FAD genotype. Similarly, the greatest percentage of microfil contact and crack out of the total number of cells contacting some sort of amoid beta pathology were also intermediate. Thus, amoid doses exacerbate the intermediate phenotype. However, more notably, within the 5x FAD IP car cells, only the dark phenotype had any contact with. Thus, the combination of amoidosis with stress potentially intensifies the dark phenotype even more. in neurates though fewer cells and neurates were intermediate. This may have been due to more neurates being dark instead. 53.8% of microglea contacting urates were intermediate. And then looking to the right 87.5% of 5x IP cells were also intermediate. So for plaque stress intensified the dark phenotype but for nurate stress intensified the intermediate phenotype. And this was significant because a this supports a 2022 study that no dark microgle
031would be found without the presence of amoid beta plots and urates nearby and my study further supported this since no typical microgle were near those hallmarks. For organal analysis, the highest levels of mitochondria is present within dark phenotypes with around 30 at least doubling if not quadrupling the number in typical cells within liz for lizoome content. The darkened intermediate microgle levels had comparable ranges of lizoomes with the range of 1 to 1.6 and this was comparably non-existent within typical cells overall suggesting that the darkened intermediate microgle possess more indigestible components creating a greater energy demand that the cell needs to compensate for with more mitochondria and also digest those components with more lizosomes in order for cellular survival. So in conclusion, stress and ammoidosis exacerbates both the dark intermediate and dark and intermediate phenotypes. And
032this is important because we could potentially modulate this ISR or integrated stress response pathway as an Alzheimer interventional method in the future. Thank you for listening. Are there any questions? Question. What made you pursue this topic? The question was what made me pursue this topic and my grandfather had Alzheimer's disease. So that's where the interest has helped you understand stuff to your family and things like that. How was that? How was those two of all the information you learned and your passion? How did that come? The question was, how did this passion help? How did I how was I able to like spread the information? How did it help you and your family understand? Um, I think it was more of I wanted to make some sort of contribution to that Alzheimer field because although
033a lot of research does go into it, there is still no cure. So, I wanted to make some sort of impact that way, but other than that, I do try to explain it. I don't know how much they understand, but I think that's amazing. That's a great gift. Thank you. All right. So, um again, this is Wednesday the 21st at 6:00, right? Yep. 6 o'clock. Um, every symposium starts off with a keynote speaker. Um, so I do want to mention who our keynote speaker is this year. And again, we hope to see some community members come out um, and experience the research that our students have spent years uh, developing. So, we're honored to announce that Dr. Paul Ryder will be the keynote speaker at the Spack and Hill Research Symposium. Uh, Dr. Ryder is
034currently a member of the faculty at Princeton University where his research focuses on developing new treatments for malaria, tuberculosis, and other neglected diseases. His career spans more than three decades of groundbreaking work in both academia and pharmaceutical industry. During his 28 years in the industry, uh Dr. provider made direct contributions to the discovery, development, or registration of 14 FDA approved drugs. From 2002 to 2007, he served as the worldwide head of chemistry research and discovery at an ang. Uh Dr. Ryder holds an AB in psychology from New York University and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Vermont. After post-dctoral work at Colorado State University, he began a 22-year tenure track at Merc eventually rising to vice president of process chemistry. Uh his prolific career includes over 170 scientific publications, numerous patents, and
035a host of prestigious honors including the 20 thou uh 2011 National Academy of Sciences Award for Chemistry in Service to Society. Uh beyond his research, he has served on advisory boards and editorial committees for the leading institutions and journals and currently sits on the scientific advisory boards of medicines for malaria venture and the TB alliance. We're thrilled to welcome him. We're hoping and most likely is going to be a pretty fascinating uh conversation uh that we'll experience there. So, we hope to see you there. And at this time I will have Miss Maloney, Miss Upright say a few words. Thank you. Thank you very much for supporting our students today and giving them the opportunity to share their research with you. um is yeah um we have 26 students in the science research class and
036I'm sure each and every one of them would love to see you at the symposium but if for some reason you're not able to come we post a Google site every year and on that Google site the students record their posters or they record their um slideshow presentations so that you can have an opportunity to see them you know even after the symposium um we also include interviews with with alumni stack and kill alumni. So we have um gathered I'd say about six maybe this year maybe yeah seven five five oh five five this year so we have five interviews with a past uh science research alumni but there are also links on the Google site to to the previous years and interviews with other alumni as well about the program how it has helped
037them and what they are doing in college now so we'd really love to see you but thank you very much again for having us today really appreciate appreciate your time and the students have invitations for you if you would like to. And it's been wonderful working with Mrs. Upright. Um she's been a great addition to the program and the program's only getting stronger with her by my side. Thank you. [Music] Thank you. And great job Katie and Jacqueline. How did you secure that speaker? That's an amazing uh I know you you know I know you know but that that that that's is that common every year to have someone with that with that bio. Not as not as probably not as um intense as that. Um but we have had some amazing speakers. We have
038we've had some great speakers from Carry Institute from Vermont from all over. We've had was Yale. Yale. Yeah, last year was Yale. So, we we try to get speakers that um would be a mentor of the student. So, we asked the students to invite their mentor, but we had an opportunity to get u Dr. Paul Ryder and we jumped on that. Good. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. Just a reminder, go see Little Mermaid. Yeah. Plug it. Okay, that brings us to item 7.01, board correspondents. Uh, we did get some emails from some of the Duchess Bose's candidates, and I will say we had to choose three. It was a difficult decision. Uh we have we really commend all the efforts of all five for volunteering their time and for the sacrifices they made,
039the time with their family, the time with their jobs, whatever else they may be sacrificing in order to serve for all the districts in Duchess County. We really appreciate all those efforts and we appreciate um their willingness to to make those sacrifices. So thank you to all of them. 7.02 02 comments from the public on non-aggenda items. Move on to 703 comments from the board. Comments from the board just uh kind of already said it, but Mr. Lewis, thank you for that presentation. I mean, it's amazing the level of research that's being done by some of our students and you know, we don't often get a chance to see it. Um, sometimes it's supposed tough night for Mr. Polar and I to be able engagement on that night. So, he might not be able to
040make it. Um, but that the thought and the effort, you know, that those students is just amazing. I mean, some of the stuff you couldn't even ask a question. Uh, and that was uh it's amazing that our youngsters are doing that. So, testimony to you and to uh teachers that also would say definitely Little Mermaid. It's probably even sold out because I know it was pretty uh just about Yeah. Yeah. So, uh definitely looking forward to that. the buzz around the building today was wearing your shirts and talking about it. So, that's that's pretty cool coming into that. I like what you did with Earth Day uh with all the Earth balloons kind of around. Uh that was a definitely a nice touch and just want to welcome everyone back. We had a a nice
041break a little later than usual. Uh I think uh some of the holidays were a little later in the in the year. It doesn't always happen that way. next year. I think our spring break is in March or maybe right very end of March. So, uh definitely the weather is definitely warmer this time around like usually it's sometimes it can be marching cold. So, definitely great to be back and and we're ready to stretch out. So, that brings us to item 8.01. The board will take a vote to adjourn to executive session for the purpose of seeking legal advice for contract negotiations. After the executive session, the board does not anticipate any further business being conducted. We have a motion to journey into executive session. Second pass. See you next time.