001good evening and welcome to the March 11th 2025 meeting of the spacking kill Union Free School District Board of Education I ask that you rise plge Allegiance allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the stands na indivisible [Music] item 2.01 is a internal audit risk assessment report for our 2024 2025 school year good evening so uh this year our firm performed the internal audit for the school district and just so everyone is aware New York State requires all school districts to have have a annual risk assessment done and also a focus area test and we performed both of these for the district and um the focus area this year was on purchasing and as a result of our audit and the focus area we suggested some updates to the district's policies
002also um just a posting the financial statements on the website and in the purchasing area the issues the items that we selected we did not find any issues and just some recommendations for updating the purchasing policy to align with the requirements of New York State and other than that we just want to thank the management for all of their assistance B and her team were very helpful in getting through the process and overall the district looks good and thank you for your time thank you item 3.01 is comments from the public on consent agenda items only do you have any public comments on consent agenda items good evening thank you um um Rob shimento I'm presid the Bose's board and it's election time and my term is up so I was um stopped by to
003just let you know there are three vacancies um and there are several people running including myself for re-election and uh I just appreciate the SP um thank you I'm obviously a spacking co-resident as well and I've been president of this board in the past as well so thank you very much for your consideration thanks thanks thank you uh good evening Mr President or do I need to fiddle with this no you can fine superintendent trustees G Stanford I have the honor of serving on the uh Bose Board of Education as vice president to the eminent Ralph chimento from whom you've just heard by strange coincidence we are both up for election uh on the same year uh it's been a great honor I'm in my fifth year um uh uh serving uh on the board
004it's been a great honor I do uh apologize for the infrequency of the visit but you could not be better represented uh than you are by President chimento um and of course we've been able to keep up through the Duchess County School boards Association it's always good to see uh uh back and kill so very well represented and I have the uh honor to be the uh great Uncle of two of your uh uh fine recent graduates so very aware of the wonderful education uh the young people in the Spen Skill School District do get from you as Ralph said there are are couple of vacancies uh it would be a great honor If U you would include me uh in the nominations but perhaps uh more significantly the 22nd of April uh I would
005be greatly honored to have your vote uh to be able to return uh to another term at the Dutchess bosis uh doing our best to serve uh the the needs and the interests um of all our countywide districts thank you so much for your time thank you any other public comments consent agenda items only no the board discussion on consent agenda that needs to be pulled and discussed or okay with that I'll entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda as written Mo second second all in favor pass is 4 Z that brings us to 7.01 a little more discussion on bosis we have a Bose budget presentation [Music] usual [Music] you know hi everybody thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you this evening to talk about our proposed budget
006at Duchess bosies I'm jod Delicia I'm the district superintendent at duchess oses and I'm joined by our assistant business official um the amazing Mike I almost called you Mike back here Mike scar um we uh Matt does extend his apologies this evening I know that you thought he might be here had a family my matter to attend to um but we are very pleased to be here to talk to you about the proposed budget for the 2526 school year um predominantly the conversation is going to be about the voted on portion of the budget and I'm going to let our business uh our business mind talk about that piece uh with you we of course it's kind of a PDF so it's going to be a little weird for you to see um you know
007we do have our Board of Trustees and um Mr chimento does represent the Spen Hill School District he is our board President we have Mr Bly Sanford representing hi Park we have miss Karen burka from Pauling Mr Mike McFarland from it's okay I have it here you just can't see the rest of the faces and it's fine from wengers we have Michael reel who represents uh Beacon and we have miss Karen Smite from Red Hook so um we're going to talk a little bit about the budget and about our priorities moving forward into the next school year and kind of talk a little bit about our uh vision for Innovation growth and partnership for the agency as we move forward and I am incredibly happy to turn the presentation over to Mr scarrett who will
008share the the timeline with you fix it thank you Jody and again thank you to Dr Finn welli uh board president uh Mr kler and the rest of the Board of Trustees for allowing us to be here we know your time is valuable we know you got a lot on your on your plate for tonight uh we thank all the students for being here this is our first one but I guess the word's getting out already so that's pretty good pretty good so I always feel like it's kind of important and again I won't I won't get into too much detail because again I know you have a lot in your plate but always feel like it's kind of important to to explain our process some of our assumptions as we go through our budget
009um and our rate setting process and that's this is really a rate setting process at the bosis at this point in the process uh we really start in November and December setting rates that we can give to our school districts so that you can make decisions on whether or not you want to purchase our services uh we're just one small piece of your over overall school school budget um but you need to know what we ultimately need to charge for our services so that you can consider rolling those into yours so we really spend those two months in preparation of rolling out a Services guide and services forms with our rates so you can make those decisions we try to give you about three months to look at that um we ask that you send
010your service request form it's it's an initial service request U we're always going to work with school districts as they need to come into services or get out of services or edit the levels of support that they need but we do ask that you send that back in April um to give us a good sense of of what we need to do resource wise in terms of hiring what we might need to do with some of the vendor contracts that we need to support you um and we certainly will work with you if you need another couple of weeks on that um I'll jump a little out of order here by our June board meeting we asked our board to approve an initial budget which is the first kind of swath of your service requests
011you and all the other districts that we support and approve that budget as our initial budget 5 minutes after the board approves it it's outdated because districts are constantly coming in and out of Bose Services the one piece that and and Dr Delia mentioned this in her opening comments the one piece that you don't decide you know I can come into a service I can get out of service the one piece that you actually vote on and it's fixed uh that gets shared with our 13 component school districts is our administrative budget and I'll talk a little bit more about the two pieces of an administrative budget here in just a second but we ask that all districts vote on that on April 22nd this year and we also have a a capital allocation which
012I'll talk about here in just a second so that's kind of Our rough timeline big animal picture timeline some of our budget assumptions much like a school district we need to make some assumptions when we're setting our rates we always try to assume consistent enrollment in our CTI our Career and Technical Institute and our special in alternative education programs we obviously hope to grow throughout the year and we have seen tremendous growth in recent years but if we establish kind of a fat flat Baseline year-over-year as we do grow um most of our infrastructure and fixed costs are covered and we can return that to you in the form of surplus and I have a slide later in the presentation about the level of surplus that that you've received the last year uh we've assumed
0137% health insurance increase our Dutchess educational health insurance Consortium actually just uh within the last week Pass rates that are just a tick lower than that but we have additional retirees each year um that we need to roll into our budget and and uh I'll talk more about why this number is so important we get non-component school districts that participate in our services so districts outside of Duchess County to the extent that we can deliver quality service to them we can bring in some administrative fees to help offset the cost that our component districts pay and then we're always focused on upgrading and and increasing our focus on our facilities our maintenance plans and our safety and our security posture so those are key assumptions that we're going to roll with our budget so as
014I mentioned that the one budget that we will ask you to vote on on April 22nd is our administrative budget two big pieces here um the one is our and I'll just I'll keep talking here we'll get this back up in a second but the one piece is our administrative budget as you would kind of expect it to be right our active employee administrative budget we call it our non- retire admin expenses this is our superintendent office our Board of of of Education our HR department our business office actually that's going to be a reduction this year of just under 2% had we had a couple of new hires that took a health buy out so uh we actually were able to save some money there so our budget will actually be down just about
0152% year-over-year on on our I'll call it controllable admin expense the other piece of our budget which is about 3ars of our budget and why health insurance is so important is the cost of all of our retirees um you I'm sure you've heard Matt mention this in years past but no matter where the person worked when they were at bosis which program which service upon retirement all that cost shifts to our administrative budget um so you see it's a shade over $5 million here and that's why again it's so important that we really keep our finger on the pulse of our health insurance costs you put the two pieces together and the total budget is up about five 4.5% we now look at how we're going to allocate that out and in terms of our
016revenue streams we don't have a tax base as you know U we don't have state aid as you know our two components of Revenue are the the charges that we build to our component school districts and our other sources of revenue our other sources of revenue are are pretty pretty uh small much like yours we have some interest income in here uh we get some money to be the lead agent on the dhit consor and we have some insurance recoveries and things like that so you'll see that that we're actually projecting a decrease year-over-year we're kind of expecting interest rates to come down we also if you look to the left if you've seen the presentation prior to now there's a big number there under other Revenue that was the return of some retiree health
017insurance money that we were mandated to return to our districts our Auditors mandated we return that so we had that cash in our coffers we were able to Garner some interest on that so that's another reason why we think it's Prett to lower that other Revenue number so you put those two numbers together again it's the 4.54% of Revenue with the district's component share being 7.95% this next slide um just shows the breakdown between our school districts on the lower part of the slide here we see back and Hill highlighted in blue and this is much snappier when these things are flying in here in a PowerPoint presentation but we uh we figured we'd give you the PDF so we we could kind of take the technology out piece of it out but um your
018increase year-over-year is going to be 65% so when we have to allocate our administrative budget out after we've calculated it we do it uh based on a thing called arada or residential weighted average daily attendance it's an it's an since your enrollment there's some waiting factors for high school age children but for all intensive purposes it's your enrollment and your enrollment over the total defines your overall percentage of the pie um your enrollment is going down a little bit year-over-year whereas the the County's number is going up so your your share of that's down a little bit so you're actually 6 and a half% uh whereas the average is 7.95 so one of the few instances in which you want to see your enrollment going down that's the administrative budget you guys can slow me
019down if you have any questions we'll leave some time at the end certainly but feel free to slow me down too the other piece that I talked about that um we will be considered on April 22nd is our capital and Rental budget um we appreciate your support with our large Capital project a few years ago this is just our annual contribution to do things like just maintain our roofs we want to replace any doors windows things of that nature we ask for a million dollar contribution each of the last handful of years that gets allocated out to the districts uh We've have actually uh six Local School classrooms and five of them are in spacking Kill so we certainly appreciate your partnership there we we like those in District classes um so again your share
020this is a reduction year-over-year your your piece of this pie is actually going to be down about 1.7% on the last thing I wanted to show financially uh we talk about Surplus obviously you've heard of Bose's Aid before we think it's kind of nice to see your overall spend with bosis and compare that against what you got back in terms of surplus and state aid you see on the left hand side here just a shade under $5.7 million spending with our bosis last year for which you received back Surplus of$ 455,000 and Bose's Aid of 1.5 million put the two together it's just under $2 million for 35% of your your money returned in the form of those so we think about it another way you know you're you're spending 65 cents in a dollar
021when you spend send someone to bosi so we never want to sell our services based on Aid we want to be competitive with private entities but the reality is you know there is a nice benefit to using the bosies and actually my little cave out there is special ed services of which you know there's a good chunk in that 5.7 million are aided directly to you through a different mechanism so actually your your um funds back on your BOS service is even north of 35% with that I will turn it back over with Dr Dela for our goals and focus areas I get to talk about the fun stuff that is not money but I can't do it without the money so um thank you so first again I really want to thank I have
022many many partners longtime Partners um in this room with me tonight I see uh Dr Mulford nodding her head um and it's really nice to see all of you and to be here with you tonight and to watch some of the successes is that um that I've seen grow throughout the county that you've all been the wonderful beneficiaries of here in sping um we certainly have seen and I'm sure that you've heard this here at the board table in spaen Hill um we've seen a a very large increase um in students at the bosis um since my arrival back in 2021 as the deputy um we had approximately 450 students in our career Technical Institute and um right now including our adult nursing program we're pushing about a th000 students this year which is a
023fairly substantial increase in our in our hallways um our resilience Academy has gone from around 85 students at the beginning of last year to 174 this year um what's also interesting is the growing needs our assault Point Center as well has seen these types of growing numbers um coming back to numbers preo right so um I I draw that to your attention to also draw to your attention some of our goals as we're moving forward one having to do with space um and one having to do with strategic planning so as an agency we really are looking at the best ways to be Innovative to be supportive to meet the needs of your students in the best ways possible and to create the most therapeutic programming that we are able uh to provide the needs
024of the students that are being sent to our Loving Care um have grown fairly dramatically over the years and we need to make sure that we have the programs in place that are going to best support the students not the students that we had but the students that we have and the students that currently don't have placements here in Duchess County and we want to keep them all at home and take good care of them so a big Focus area for us is to be creating additional programming with lens to increase therapeutic services for our students and we're taking a lot of steps to do that in the coming school year and some of this will take multiple years to implement because you have to sta it and you have to grow it um but
025it's a big goal um you can see that one of our goals of course is um our safe welcoming and respectful culture but then you see two um focus areas for us on Space utilization and state-of-the-art facilities and so those are going to be priorities I mention these to you because we are going to ask for stakeholders for input in both our strategic planning process from the county and on a stakeholder facilities committee as we think about what the next step for space is um by my estimation we'll be going into the 25 26 school year short five classrooms so um I know that's an interesting thing for someone who just said we just finished a capital project but you also heard the enrollment numbers that I just shared so um I wanted to make
026sure that I pointed that out as we grow we're going to make sure that we have that continued focus on partnership with our component districts with our County Partners and with our industry Partners so that will also continue can't see my own notes I'm at the age now where I can't decide if I want the glasses on or off are any of you there um so those that's kind of the gist you're going to see new programming you're going to see smaller ratio sizes in some of our um in our services guide for some of our students and our programs and we are going to invite you as stakeholders to participate and I really hope that you do take advantage of that our students truly are your students and I think it's really important for
027your voice to be heard on all of those committees um I do appreciate the never-ending support that I get from your fabulous superintendent and your administrative team and I think I have one more slide I do y so I was gonna just keep talking forever um oh it's not actually up there no oh I'm just kidding hold on you don't have the slide I have but I did want to just share with you some of your direct student numbers in our programs so do you do this part okay so in our special and alternative programs you have six students at our Salt Point Center which is our ka8 building you have one student currently enrolled in our Alternative High School and you have seven students in our in District programs um um of course two
028here in Nassau uh Hagen four here at Nassau and one in our Red Hook high school program um but you do really participate very well in our CTI programs and the students graduating from our CTI programs of course graduate with so many wonderful opportunities available to them including access to um lots of credits through articulation agreements in our local and not so local universities you have 44 students attending the Career Tech Institute you have four in cosmetology four nursing assistance four in trade electric three in Welding and Fabrication three in Auto te and then 26 kind of randomly spread all over the building um and we're thankful for their participation we do have in the past three years we just figured it out today we've opened um nine new classrooms and we have a new
029EMT program um to offer for next year so we're very thankful and we do appreciate you taking advantage of the service we're here for you and you know I think that we would really appreciate your vote on our budget in April I do want to remind you that the vote is on April 2 thank you 22nd um and our meeting will be April 9th and I'd also just like to extend the invite once again for you all to join us on April 23rd If you have not received the invitation please just read reach out and let us know um for the meet and greet that we'll be hosting at Duchess Bose's in our conference center it's a reception beginning at 6:30 p.m. thank you I'm cing things thank you very much any questions more questions
030or comments thank you you thank you thank you again appreciate all you do uh before you walk away just want to uh congratulate uh Dr she was newly mitted as the district superintendent of 's about a week old now is it a week it was Wednesday last Wednesday when it was announced uh and it was a nice uh nice to do that congratulations well deserved and I know welc a board you've been here for a while count welc aard we were at a meeting about a year and a half ago and Paul said Jody is Duchess boosting so thank you very much I appr congratulations okay item 7.02 2025 2026 budget update by our school business administrator thank you very much um this is going to be a repeat of some information and there will
031be some new information in this tonight we're going to review the proposed 2526 budget again discuss the considerations that went into preparing the budget the key cost budget drivers for that proposed budget um I will present the proposed budget in its three parts of admin capital and program we will also review the tax levy that we're proposing to support the 2526 budget um take another look at the proposed vehicle purchases that we will be using the capital vehicle reserve and we will take a look at the 2526 budget and what that would look like for back and again reviewing the proposed 2526 budget we're proposing the budget of 57 million 788 which is an increase of a little more than 3.2 million from the current year and 5.99% increase we are also proposing a tax
032levy to support that budget of 33 milon 665 757 which represents um an increase of 1.7% over the current year's tax Lev some of the things that went to developing this budget the considerations um were based on the salaries based on current collective bargaining agreements that are in place and also estimates for the contracts that we have in District that are ending uh June of 2025 we're also looking at boy Services as you just heard in presentation from the BOS superintendent um the number of participation services for the district is increasing over time as well as the cost for B cities to um produce and put on those Services we're looking at increases in special education tuition based on historical Trends it increases anywhere from 5 to 7% year to year um B's also indicated
033that their health insurance were all on the same health insurance plan so that we're looking at about a 7% increase in premium year to year the district is not anticipating any additional Debt Service borrowing and we are planning to purchase three Transportation Vehicles additional things that we have under consideration of additional instructional and support staff um we're looking at adding a full-time instructor to um supplement and to enhance the AVID program in the high school and in the Middle School school and in the past couple of years we've increased the monitor hours in both elementary schools um in the past couple of years those were those increased amount of their hours were paid for using the federal stimulus money so that money has exhausted and ended in September of 2024 so that additional salary has
034to roll into this budget the district is also making adjustments to salary and for DM rates to reflect the increases in the New York state minimum wage and in order to maintain competitive with other school districts and other Industries uh Governor hoko has put in place planned increases in minimum wage for the next several years and the districts made the decision to try to stay ahead of those minimum wages we're also looking to replace some outdated and poorly performing facilities equipment this is mostly things like snowblowers and uh salt spreaders floor scrapers and hand tools that are used by our maintenance and custodial staff there are also some classroom maintenance and repairs that need to be done um we're going to replace some damaged shelving and cabinets replace window shades and uh malfunctioning smartboards we're
035also looking to support our instructional needs um there's new instructional standards that have to be met so there's going to be additional supplies and textbooks and software needed to um those new standards and textbooks are now not just textbooks most of them have a software component with them which adds to the cost of those um software instructional needs we're also looking to do some technology upgrades um to improve our data security and increase our bandwidth um we're doing those in order to strengthen our ability to resume operations in case we do have a data breach and the additional security would help alleviate the potential of a data breach actually happening in our budget there are five components that represent 85% of the budget those are salaries health insurance bosies both Retirement Systems and Debt Service
036um the district doesn't have a lot of leeway in those costs um salaries are contractual health insurance is dictated by our provider as is the cost for the BOS Services New York State dictates what the district's contribution will be for both Retirement Systems um the total of those five components is about 46 48.6 million 85% of the budget which leaves the district only 15% to fund equipment supplies and other contractual costs um we are required to present um our proposed budget in three parts the administrative program and capital the percentages of the budget for each one of these components has been fairly stable year to year the administrative component is about 10% of the proposed budget the program which is the Lion Share is a little over 75% of the total budget and the capital
037fece is about 14% of our total budget and again those percentages are pre standard from year to year for those stund an overview of the tax levy um we are suggesting that tax levy will be under the tax cap again this year the current tax levy for the 2425 year is 33 million 739 the maximum tax levy that the district could impose otherwise known as the tax cap for 2526 is 33,98927 which would be a 2.59% increase over the current Levy we are proposing to support our budget 33,6 65757 which would represent a 1.75% increase over the current Levy and that's been in line with the past several years of being under 2% um as I mentioned earlier we're looking to purchase three vehicles for transportation um a seven passenger Caravan we've got an estimate
038on state contract of 45,500 and two 30 passenger buses um just under $100,000 each we're looking to do this so that we can ensure that we will have fuel-based vehicles to get us through the next 10 years when we have to fully convert to EV vehicles and we're going to fund these purchases a capital reserve so it will not be included as part of the budget this also eliminates the need for the district to borrow funds to make these purchases there will be a separate proposition at May 2025 vote asking the voters to approve um the purchase of these buses using the capital reserve also by law we are obligated to present a contingency budget um a contingent contingency budget will come into play should the voters not approve the vote the budget in May
039of 20125 if the voters do not approve the budget the board has two options we can go straight to a contingency budget or the board can request that we have a second vote if the board opts to do the second vote and it is again defeated the board is obligated to adopt the contingency budget for the 25 26 School year and what would a contingency budget look like for Staffing um the basic premise of a contingency budget is that there can be no increase in the tax liy so we would have to impose the 2425 tax levy which is 739 which would mean that from the proposed budget we would have to reduce that budget by 9,18 in order to keep the Le consistent with the current year we would have to eliminate any equipment
040purchases um eliminate transfers to other funds and make up the difference in reduction across the board for supplies to the budget therefore a contingency budget for 2526 would be a 56 mil 58977571 increase over the P budget the budget calendar is finally getting shorter the next board meeting Dr fanelli will present um his recommended Budget on April 8th we will be asking the board to adopt the budget and approve the um res resolution for the bus purchases using the capital reserve fund on May 6th we will will hold the required public hearing and May 20th is the actual budget vote and the trustee election um information is currently on the district's website for any Resident who is interested in running for the one Board of Education truste position thank you now board comments or questions
041thank thank you again goes into that okay item 7.03 is our Elementary Administration academic review upate thank you thank you that works all right uh good evening everyone so um I'm going to kick off the academic review uh Mr dusza and I did a joint uh slideshow and um he told me to be quick I'll try my best all right um so just a reminder before I get into the the numbers so K2 is a bit unique compared to the rest of the school district in that there is not a New York state um assessment U not a region or or 38 uh data point so uh we used a norm a norm reference test called um I ready it's the one that we've used for several years in a row so we have some
042um interesting Trend data now um similar to last year we we looked at uh some comparative data not only to New York state but also the national norm and you know I don't I hope there's a I hope there's a point in time where we don't have to go back to uh preco numbers but we we do still feel and and you'll see how it plays out with the averages uh nationally we are still going to reference preo and postco just to give everybody kind of a sense of of the impact there so we'll start with reading um and if you look to the left that is spack and kill um that is last year's data from the fall to the spring if you look to the left um and then to the right in
043order from left to right we have the national Norm data um preo which was 201819 and if you I don't know if you can see it from the back of the room but it is it it's higher than the than the current national data which is that middle bar um and it's also higher than the New York data um which is uh last year's data as well so um those numbers uh so so these are K5 numbers actually and I'll and I'll I'll kind of get down deeper into the K2 data but it is um so if you look at the green the green if the the uh light green and dark green together is 73% on or above grade level for spacking kill and the national Norm preo was 57% postco National was 52%
044and postco New York state is 49% uh this next trend is is what I know Mr dusza and I are it's something that we strive for so it's our spack and kill Trend to the left is the direct opposite of the trend to the right so if you look at so our goal is is obviously to receive students at a certain level and then over time we want them to grow so when they leave in second grade in other words we want them to be higher than they were in kindergarten and it's the opposite um with New York State and the national so if you look at um kindergarten first grade and second grade you see how that green green kind of goes up and to the right and the SP and kill data the
045green kind of goes down and to the right that means that more students are proficient when they leave second grade in spacking Kill but less in New York state and less Across the Nation um you know one year ago was a seems like a long time ago but we did uh kind of shine a light on last year's kindergarten class because it it was looking back all the way back to the maps data it was the lowest group of kindergarteners that we had since 2012 and it's nice to see so there that means last year uh that means this so last year we looked at the previous year so now we're looking at them as first graders and it's nice to see that that progression they've really made a nice jump there um if you
046compare second grade so if you look at the back and kill numbers um it really jumps out when you when you see the dark green number so that is on or or above grade level at 68% and when you compare that to New York State at 20% that's almost three and a half uh times as high so we're really uh proud of the progress in reading this is something that you know we put a lot of time and energy and thought into so we so I has a a personalized pathway so every kid takes the diagnostic and it's pretty neat what it does it um it pinpoints going back to pre kindergarten skills very specific holes we kind of think of kids as blocks of Swiss GS as a as a visual and the bottom
047and the and the holes leading to the top are gaps that they have in their learning and the program the software takes that diagnos that diagnostic data and it and it gives them an individualized learning pathway and this shows that the students that have met their recommend mended weekly time on the program which is between 30 and 49 minutes um they have the highest growth rate in terms of median average at 152% so um you know that's something that we we talk about we're always cautious about too much computer time um you know at the younger levels but you know this is a this is a good data point uh for us to see all right so this is domain uh specific performance and growth and it's it might be tough to see for people
048in the back but there are light colored lines below the dark colored lines the light colored lines signify uh the fall performance data in each domain so you have phonological awareness phonics high frequency words vocabulary uh comprehension and that just shows the growth in each one of those um you know obviously at the at the primary level um you know one of our most important goals us to teach kids how to read and so we spent a lot of time on those top two areas phonological awareness and phonics which um you can see uh towards the bottom it shows how each group in terms of their Baseline performance how much they grew and that shows that our our students that started off lowest improved the most um all right so I'll move over to math
049uh I'll start off with the K5 slid similar to what we had in reading so to the left is spack and kill uh fall and spring and to the right is are the National norms preco postco and New York State postco as well um and as you can see our K5 numbers uh are higher uh so this is the grade byg grade uh breakdown and you know this this is this is a little bit different it's a different story than reading uh so the numbers are are still very very comparable and in some cases um in all cases higher than the right two columns in terms of postco but you if if you look closely um there are some that are pretty pretty close to the preco National Norms um so we've been discussing that
050as well all right uh so the similar to reading these are the domain specific areas you know sometimes you you see one of these areas that um are significantly higher or lower than others um this is interesting because nothing seemed to really jump out um you know geometry measurement and data Al numbers and operations are all very similar um but if you look at the bottom exactly very similar numbers to reading again our our lowest students at the beginning of the year that are two or more grade levels below um are growing at the fastest rate out of our entire population all right some some takeway ways so uh Nassau students continue to perform uh higher and grow faster than other students in our state and Country um multiple years in a row are reading
051growth and proficiency um continue to be greater than math you know it's actually Mr Dua will speak more about it it it's an interesting trend for us because if you if you look at the New York State data it it's the opposite of that um in terms of math is generally higher than than reading so it's you know it'll be interesting at as these students continue to trickle up uh through the system we have spend an incredible amount of time and effort um on kind of remaking our reading instruction and we believe that's the biggest reason for the reading um increase but it's an interesting um correlation when you compare it to the New York State data um I mentioned our lowest students are growing at a faster rate than any other group and that
052is not always the case in every year um I mentioned the focus on foundational reading skills uh paying dividends uh also the trend of students who meet their personalized pathway um goal their amount of minutes are growing faster according to the data and one thing that I think we're we're battling which is not unique to spack and kill but it's something that we we have to think I think long and hard about our our kindergarten students un undoubtedly have the least reliable data sets and part of that is just their computer skills uh some districts um actually don't assess kindergarten students until the middle of the year we've toyed with that um but you know we're we're we're on Pace with the with the national averages but we we you know we have put some
053some thought and need to continue to talk about the best way to get reliable data from our kindergarteners uh some action steps I know Mr duza will talk about this as well um so New York State released literacy briefs um basically they're they're associated with the science of reading and they have um created a list for each area of of reading and they'll do the same for math of research-based best practices and we are kind of getting our hands dirty with that actually just this morning we had a committee meeting where we are kind of doing an internal audit um at the end of it Dr fenelli will sign off on a on an etess station saying that we are doing these things um and we feel like we're in a really good place with
054that and that's helped us um it'll be we'll continue to have you know you've heard Dr Fu say it frequently but you know it's it's a it's a goal of ours to meet every student exactly where they at and I think we although the lowest students show the most growth um we take pride in pushing our highest students just as much as our lowest students and sometimes that can be equally or more challenging for a teacher that have that has gaps like this and it's their responsibility to meet every learner I know that we'll have a presentation uh coming up uh in the coming months um about um our plan for trimesters but we believe that that will will um add instructional time that was our biggest reasoning for wanting to move to that um
055number four we're really excited again this will be another board presentation I I I think Dr fenelli had mentioned may but um we have over 60 parents who are interested in being on a committee to really talk about um the impact and the mental health um struggles that students have had in spacing kill and are very interested on in partnering with us in the PTA um and making a plan uh we also have I think 12 from Hagen 12 12 staff members and 12 staff members from uh Nassau we have so we're going to make in school shifts um and then the parents are going to help us with making recommendations for home and then the thing that I you know I know it's in our it's in our mission statement but it's probably what
056I what I'm most proud of and want to continue continue to um keep moving forward with uh we we have a dee rooted uh culture of collaboration reflection um and continuous Improvement so that that's not going to change and we'll keep moving along with that so uh thank you for your time and I'll turn it over uh to Mr dsan thank you sir um so I'm going to start with the state data being we have the state test in the 35 uh uh he realm in Reading uh Math and Science just to contextualize the state test and kind of what they mean and when I get into the scores here because these are all important factors um the state is constantly tweaking the standards and best practices um so often times you know when they
057do make that shift it's not until they roll out the test that we know how they're going to essentially assess that shifted uh shift in the standard um so that's something to keep in mind computer-based testing is now kind of enforced on a timeline last year fifth had to take all their tests on a computer including the brand new science test this year fourth and fifth have to um and then next year third will have to as well so that that's certainly a factor um and it kind of changes our test prep and how we focus on typing and um you know those extended responses are now being transferred from brain not to paper but to keyboard um and that that's a that's a level of uh practice that students will need cut scores and
058scales change from year to year so what could be a two mid two one year could be a three the next year depending on where uh kind of the state averages out our test out opt out rates vary year to year and school to school um so when I show you the comparison data it is going against schools that may have had larger opt out rates than us uh we had a very large pool of students take the test which we're super proud of um every single grade level was over 90% of the students partaking in the state exams um and I think that kind of gives us a a clearer picture and I'll show you those numbers as we go forward um test results are delayed uh so you know the computer-based testing argument
059is you can get those scores back a little quicker um which then gives you more time to kind of prep and uh change curriculum or make shifts um but it's still taking quite a bit to get the scores so you know the incentive for students to perform if they're not really going to see those scores or here those scores until fall of the next year um and how does that opt out rate influence the student motivation in the moment um certainly the impact of the pandemic I know we uh you know uh Mr Lynch had referred to that the post and pre and I'll show you some of those numbers as well from I ready at haen um but currently our fifth graders were kindergarteners when it shut down and our fourth graders were hybrid
060in kindergarten so you know those those impacts of some of those early foundational skills and then this was the first year last year was the first year we took the science test in fifth grade remember I didn't present any science science data last year it skipped the grade so they used to take it in fourth grade now it's a brand new exam um in fifth grade on the computer and it's much more reading base a much more Source base and uh you know a lot of people including New York state are going to make some tweaks because it was it was essentially an eighth grade reading level so that certainly uh took our students by surprise but as you'll see we still fared very well um comparatively so this is math to start we've always
061kind of set the pace in math when you see the bars so I'll explain the blue is is spack and kill so it's Hagen the red is Duchess County schools and the yellow is New York state schools when you see the number next to the grade level below the each bar that's our percentage of participation so 94% of third graders took the test and you can see our proficiency was over 60% in all three grade levels in math um continues to be a strength of ours continues to be something that we're really super proud of um and you know with those new numeracy briefs that come out we'll certainly make those shifts but teachers really uh feel very comfortable um with what the the state test is is giv Ela still strong um you'll notice
062that third grade is kind of a dip comparatively to the other grades our other grades actually grew from the year prior in ela and it was a focal point of mine um with the teaching staff to grow our Ela scores if you remember last year I talked a lot about some action steps uh around Ela forming a committee making an audit of our curriculum that audit led to us going full board into a new curriculum uh so now for the first year ever K5 all all schools are or both Hagen and Nassar are doing inter reading so so what came out of that committee work and and collaboration with the teachers is we really needed a comprehensive program we were kind of doing a hodge podge version of ela um and the experience was different
063from room to room grade level to grade level so finally we feel very vertically and horizontally aligned um obviously it's our first year so there's some trial and error um but we feel very good uh one piece of feedback that I continue to get as I uh you know check in with the grade levels is this is much more geared to prepare students for state test type questions um where in the past we were kind of you know doing that during test prep time this spiral review of skills like central idea um and characters that was it's over and over in the inter reading program so that's something that I'll be curious to see what Ela scores are like next year um and the third grade bubble you know there's some certainly some factors there
064we were one of the few schools in the area to do CBT for third grade uh we didn't have to but the benefit of that now um is we know what we need to prepare for um one area that the third graders struggled in was the extended response if if you asked the third grade team which I did their writing was pretty good it was probably the transfer to the keyboard that made the extended response a little weaker um so you know those numbers in comparison I don't know how many of the New York State schools actually made their third graders take it on the computer versus The Duchess County Schools but in the next two years it will all be even playing field so that's something to keep in mind um and again we're
065we're excited about where we're going Ela we grew in fourth and fifth and I think that growth will continue to go in the right direction U moving forward as well this is science um so despite what I told you about the the eighth grade reading level and the new test and kind of being you know when you when you take this assessment there really is no test prep around it um we are super proud of our science program at Hagen um there's a lot of dedication by Mrs scori in our stem lab to conduct those mandatory investigations leading up to the test um to make sure students are prepared for the type of questions that they're going to face and you can see Hagen uh outpa Tess County and New York State on the science
066test um and hopefully we'll continue to grow as we now know what the science test looks like um and we can make those adjustments curriculum wise too I did add um some I ready pieces that uh Mr Lynch had referred to just so you can see similar Trends as well um it's just going to be flip-flopped so spagen kills on the right national and New York Norms are on the left those National Norms like you mentioned preco uh this last year National norm and then New York State national Norm for the spring I will say Obviously and you can see our our green bars are dark green and our light green bars outpace even the pre-co numbers which is we're really proud of in the spring but I'm super proud of our growth um so
067you can see just on the spagen kill side our fall bar numbers the left bar on each grade level and you can see the growth that happened so you want the greens to grow you want the Reds to Str shrink and certainly you see that at every grade level and this is reading and this is math um highlight third grade math here because start of the year last year they had about 10% of their grade come in with the third grade math skills and they leave with 62% so that's a huge growth number um and a and a credit to those teachers and those students for working really hard throughout the year um and exiting with those prerecorded skills and again same idea those National norms and pacing them some takeaways uh math continues to
068be a strength there's no doubt about that um we have a large pool of students participating haen um and that's continuing to grow and hopefully that will stay where those numbers are cuz it gives us a really complete picture Ela is stronger than the averages in the region and better than last year but still room for improvement like I talked about with the CBT factor and the extended response Factor um thank she's here in the room so I'm going to give her a shout out Miss Mrs Hoy does an amazing job of our data um and really helps me kind of break down the data so each grade level meeting that I get this data I go in and it's so broken down that it basically tells the teacher how their room their 25 so
069kids did comparatively to their grade mates to the the county and to the state um and that is a as a former teacher really gives you a kind of insight to why did my room or my class maybe do not so hot on certain questions and better on certain questions and it's just a good internal reflection that's going to lead to better teaching um so those things I I couldn't do without her so thank you um teachers are working really hard in that vein to meet students where they're at and Hagen students continue to perform and grow higher than students uh nationally and in New York state and reading growth and proficiency proficiency is greater than math which is opposite of the New York state test data um and I think like Mr Lynch said
070I think there's a a super focus on our reading instruction right now and a real U kind of attention to detail with our new Ela curriculum so I think that will uh that's kind of betting out in the numbers so I mentioned the data chats I I meet with grade levels but then I also meet with each individual teachers and go over release questions and and and how they're planning for uh you know growth literacy briefs just released so we're conducting review um as Mr Lynch mentioned the adastation uh we feel very Comfort comfortable where we're at um first year full implementation into inter reading it couldn't have gone better um the committee really is proud of the work that was put in um and now it's K5 so that's really kind of aligned to
071our mission there around Ela certainly fact fluency will always be a thing that we're focusing on and we we are piloting a program First in Math right now through New York State and then the anxious generation plan and more to come on that so um thank you very much and if you have any questions me and Mr Lynch you're here comments or questions from the board appreciate the information thank you very much problem Mr D the Mr bring us to 7.04 secondary Administration academic review yeah it's about to get really boring you guys can go bye see you see don't worry Dan we'll stay thanks [Music] Jody actually oh it is on okay here we go well good evening everybody and um I'm going to take us through uh the Todd Middle School academic review
072uh which I did a similar uh presentation last year um I'll go over uh some of the results as and then I'll go over the different things we do at Todd middle school so I always I start off with the ELA results um I'd like to start off by just talking a little bit about refusals um because we know that refusals kind of skew data and I you know I always start that off just to know that you know some of the data that we're looking at um is obviously the data that of the students who took the test and um you know we don't have kind of the data of the students who who don't take the test so I just like to put that up there and you can see that the refusal
073rate uh continues to be in sixth grade was 17% you see how it goes up a bit each year 21% for sth grade 24% for 8th grade uh and you can see last year's refusal rates which are similar some went up someone down kind of in the same place about you know roughly one out of five don't take the test and then you can see our student levels of students who took this test who scored at levels three or four you see those percentages 62% % 63% and 68% so that is for the ELA for four last spring uh looking at the math uh first thing you'll notice is uh those refusal rates rise can particularly see 8th grade uh has quite a rise uh so you can probably guess which test uh is given
074first which is the ELA test uh and then the math is given a second uh so refusals just to remind everybody is um uh is something that parents can do right parents refuse test um and so you know I think at a middle school level I don't think we're alone but you know I think uh the students um you know talk to the parents about that you know um so but so you can see those refusal rates and um and then you can see again uh our our school our our our students um you know achieving at levels 3 and four 62% 77% 67% um science uh refusal rate 177% uh students scoring at levels three and four was 27% uh that is uh the the kind of the difference between that number and the
075other two numbers is the earth science regions so all the students who take earth science uh do not take um the state test so um basically if you you put in the these the earth science results you'll get similar numbers in terms of in terms of kids achieving U master I'm sorry does that go towards refusal you're saying no no those refusal numbers but it go towards in other words that 27% be more like 7 70% uh algebra so we had our first administration of the new uh algebra regions and we had uh I don't put in the p rates cuz all the students passed the test but um I put in the Mastery rates so the Mastery rates for the new algebra regions was 43% uh the Mastery region for the earth science region
076was 60% uh last uh this will be last administration of the old earth science regions beginning next year we will be doing the new Earth and space science regions so kind of similar to the new algebra regions we may see a dip in Mastery level um that's not only us uh new test there's it's not only a new test but it's also I think a bit of a new calibration of you know the grading as well so you'll see that um but those are our numbers for for both algebra and N science uh in terms of what we do with Todd um firstly I want to talk about the social emotional program supports and interventions um we you know we at at Todd and also not only us but all middle schools know that social
077emotional support is really important a lot of the things that um keep students back academically are not necessarily you know you know the math and the writing as much as what's going on within them that that that stops that or slows down that process so uh the positivity project which we've been doing here for a number of years um we continue to do our our virtual uh P2 which we now do um twice a week we we boed a mindfulness piece so we do some mindfulness on Mondays we do a virtual on Fridays um part of uh the positivity project is also we bring it in for discipline and behavioral Reflections so it's not just um you know something that we're doing uh to teach all students but students who struggle with things we like
078to use that as a way to remind them it gives us a Common Language um and just uh it's not on the slide but recently um through the site based team we started doing what's called positively P2 which we we kind of recognize students they basically any staff member can recognize a student and then they their names are put into a um you know into a raffle uh we pull out once a one a week uh the student gets a gets a a gift card to the to the uh book bag and the teacher gets a nice parking spot on near school as a as an incentive to do it and we've had you know know um I think we've done it for about 6 weeks there's been um probably at this point between 800
079and 1,000 students recognized uh which is amazing you know um there's uh students do a wonderful job and it's nice to recognize them so and we know that trying to do this kind of work keeps keeps the culture in a place that um that students can learn and as students feel comfortable um do a nice job he recognizes the the teacher who Rec the kid yeah whose parking spot did they get Mr dty uh they get my parking spot um and uh it's worth it's worth the walk I can always use the exercise um so anyway it's been it's been it's been really nice uh and um and it's a it's a nice added piece to it uh clubs and activities as anybody who is in this building from 2:30 to 3 to 4:00 knows
080that clubs and activities are very busy uh in at Todd Middle School we know that clubs and we you the data all says that there's a correlation between U involvement and after school activities and student achievement and we have just uh you know we just have you know 25 clubs uh I I I usually do a clubs and activities report uh I did that a couple of months ago the amount of people students involved is huge same thing with the music program and sports it's not listed there but they are also so um there's just a lot of involvement and we know that that really helps student achievement and we think that you know I think that's reflected in our scores uh our counseling department you know they do an excellent job we we're in
081our second year uh with Amanda unal social worker she's done a great job you know um so they they they really they work very hard you know between uh the four counselors and Mr Cormier and myself you know um we do a lot of work of trying to uh make kids feel feel good about themselves feel good about their situation and you know those are the things that you know you wouldn't see that necessarily you wouldn't think about that as being remediation uh but it is you know we're remediating that's what's that because that's those are the things that sometimes hold them back especially at the middle school level um we do a lot of work uh with with daa with title n uh with cell phones so a lot of the things that we
082know uh are are are important things that middle school students are learning about you know we especially through the posit the P2 virtual you know we're able to do mini assemblies whenever we want so anytime we want to talk about something uh this week I'm going to talk about teasing you know we haven't done that in a while so I'm going to talk about Good Nature teasing versus hurtful teasing and again you know you might not think that that is something that could be reflected in the scores but on the Middle School level it is those are the things cuz being teased or feeling like you know nobody under you know that that that that's going unheard are things that will affect what a student does in the classroom and then that will AFF how
083it shows up on a same test uh cell phones uh we uh have attempted to stay ahead of it uh they they they travel pretty fast on cell phones not too easy to stay ahead of them but you know as we know you know the work that's been going on uh with the anxious generation we have been you know I've been uh we as a school have been trying to be very proactive with that and students have been mostly responsive uh I think the cell phones uh we see uh we know that they're there but we don't see them we see and they they're allowed to use them from uh at from dismissal till like 235 because that's when everybody has to check in from 227 to 235 that's when all the check-ins are I'm
084staying after I'm not staying after I'm going to this out whatever they're doing and boom you you'll see literally 350 cell phones from from 227 to 235 uh so um but those things are really important and you know the the learning that goes with that about social media uh about being appropriate about being a good digital citizen you know all those things are things that can impact that they can and do uh end up impacting how students do on tests uh in terms of uh academics um and supports and interventions you know uh uh you know the the teacher and student resilience uh you know even though that's a kind of you know uh they had mentioned a little bit of looking at some kind of post-pandemic things and I think I consider ourselves still
085in a kind of a bit of a post-pandemic world um in terms of that and being resilient is really important uh so both teachers and students are resilient I think the positivity project has helped a lot with that as well um and I think that's a really important vital part of it is that we try to lift each other up um and and try to uh support each other uh and and we get a lot of support from the students too you know um especially me you know today was today was one of those days that um you know I didn't feel well uh this morning and uh you know it was funny and I don't know if it just worked out that way but there must have been literally like 15 20 students that
086went out of their way to say hello to me today and uh you know they do all the time but I was noticing it more today because I needed it so it's kind of it goes both ways uh attendance you know if you look at us compared to other you know I don't have the data in front but the is very good you know students are here students show up we uh Mr cornier uh is kind of our our attendant um you know General he's the one who kind of tracks it we meet uh with counselors we follow up a lot of attendant stuff at this level you know uh is more about uh parents and Guardians than the students you know what I mean it shifts a little in high school but in a
087middle school it's usually a kind of a family thing so we work with families to say hey you know they're they're better they're better here they need to be here uh there's always cross work being done in ela Math and Science we don't look those tests even though those tests are in those subject areas uh Ela Math and Science are done um in basically every classroom you know every classroom has a piece of something you know music is a very mathematical um uh subject uh so it's it's it's kind of so I just thought you know it's not just the math teacher and the the math teacher the English teacher and the science teacher are not the sole people responsible for state test results and uh and and when we do and the work we
088do in all of those classes Encore classes Health classes if you look at at the at the rigor of what they do uh it's rigor that will help them on on state tests uh extra help is huge you know um there's usually you know out of 400 students you know anywhere from 150 to 275 are going to be here from 2:30 to 3:00 and um Homework Helper we've been doing for a couple of years that's right here that is where you have Avid students sometimes you have high school Avid students sometimes you have regular high school students coming down and you have students helping each other so there might be students who on one day are receiving help and the next day they're giving help so homework help is a really great thing actually that
089runs till 3:30 on Mondays and Tuesdays which is a nice thing uh the vertical work and the summer work that's done you know the teachers do um the summer grants are really important you know Dr Mulford leads that and you know we do a great job of having kind of homegrown curriculum work done and that is a really important piece of what we do because we want to you know uh you know it's one thing to kind of to to have a knowledge of what the standards are but having a knowledge of what who the students are and what we do what we need to do you know Dr F says you got to meet students where they are and that work that they do over the summer is really important because during the school
090year um it's it's a little hard you know we're we're we're kind of flying a plane it's hard to you know try to fix things a lot of planes going but the summer is a really important piece uh the special education department is uh tremendous uh if you know we um if you look at our special education students versus you know they do very well uh on state test but more importantly they do very well in the school day to day uh I think our special education department is outstanding I think the support is outstanding I think the leadership's outstanding and they do a great job uh enl Department we we don't have a lot of uh uh L students but the but the one students we have are they get they get special attention
091and um you know for us it's it's James Lano and other schools is different but they really they get to know the families they work you know it's a very personal thing you know um they they go above and beyond and again those are things that are going to that are going to end up showing up on on state test the AVID program is now in its third year uh the a program that that students have done outstanding in the program uh it is now it's its first year in the high school um we are you know we've been very excited uh the professional development that we that we um get through have it is excellent we've been able to TurnKey some of that uh professional de development here that's something that we're going to
092continue to grow um it's uh it's great not only for the students involved in the program but it ends up being you know the entire staff begins to get more and more of the professional development involved and and aage just you know it's just excellent teaching it's nothing it's not it's nothing new everything is out there but their resources the way they package things the ability for us to to use it is really is outstanding uh AIS again is a is an is another huge part of of remediation uh we have uh we have Ela classes we have math classes we have study skills classes not AIS but important too is multisensory reading so all those are looking those are targeted right those are students that uh we know are deficient and we work really
093hard to try to to meet their needs and to um and and they have time most of those classes are every other day so um but it's a great way for for us to and and most of those classes have you know two to five kids so it's you know it's small classes uh and they get they get a lot of help from the teachers um and finally you know what used to be called RTI is now called rtss and we you know we meet every Friday we look at a lot of those students are your AIS students but we look at all students and you know we we started the mentorship program last year where where basically the six of us the four uh counselors and Mr Cormier and I kind of we kind
094of become mentors for different students we try to meet with them regularly we try to work with them oneon-one because you know those relationships you know going back to Dr ryer work of you know having a having a connection with an adult is really important and we try to we try to Foster that so you know overall both this and theal is is is the work of uh what everybody says about spagen kill which is that it's small you know it's close it and you get kind of um personalized help which I think is really important um and all that you know feeds into um you know the the state results you know it's kind of like a whole the entire school um and I think that is all I've got so if anybody has
095any questions answer thank you very much thank you thank you hey everybody good evening I know it's getting late um won't be too long I'm doing something a little different than I have in the past um in the past you know uh that we focused a tremendous amount on data and there were times when we would have like 30 or 40 slides going through all of that data but data really doesn't tell the whole story I kind of equated to going on a road trip with your family so the data is there to make sure you know you're good so you look down at the speedometer Direction you're going and your engine temperature but it doesn't speak at all to the places that you sto to eat the license plate games that you played with
096your kids uh the smell when you opened up the window smell when the window was closed um you know so um I I I wanted to focus more on the story of spaen Hill High School if you will and like everybody said I mean none of this is possible without Mrs Hoy um she you know she is behind the scenes she doesn't get a lot of recognition but she so deserves it none of us would be able to come to you uh with the information that we have without without her um she's a Cornerstone for all of our programs so thank you so much Mrs Hy so I have a couple markers um again if you remember from all those slides in the past we were always in the top three in one way or
097the other and it continues to to be the same way it's our graduation rate graduation rate for for students that struggle or students with disabilities that's basically showing you that we are we are successfully helping kids graduate so that they can move on with productive and and uh good lives the regions if I could go through all of those show the same thing in terms of proficiency Mastery uh we do well in in all of those areas so to me what's more important is the story or the culture you know what makes back and High School special and I can tell you that it is a very special place the district is but my job tonight is to focus on the high school and the fact that we do want to meet kids where they
098are and I want to show you the culture and I want to explain the story of how we do that so um AP exams we're a small high school we have 15 courses that are available and students are taking advantage of it you know it's over the course of the years we have a lot of kids that are taking advantage of those AP classes and those are challenging classes they're at the the college level you know we have dual enrollment classes that we partner with uh with Duchess I listed them there we also have science research which is done through uh Sunni Albany um these are enrollment numbers uh the reason that I put tuition next to it is I'm I'm sure the board knows that in 23 24 that's when students would have to
099pay a portion uh of tuition and that may affect numbers we have to see you know it is a difference between the the 269 and the other numbers but we have to keep an eye on it but I thought that was important information for the board to see CTI is an awesome awesome program and you hear more now than ever about uh you know what a great life you can lead going into the trades and there's less college debt doesn't matter so at SP and kill high school we want kids to be able to explore what they might want to do down the road and you can see how the numbers have increased over the years what has not increased over the years are the number of kids that we put into uh the program
100where kids tend to have behavioral issues they said that they had the one I like to keep our kids home because I think we can do you know unless it's a really you know special circumstance we have the staff with the knoow uh and we love our kids more than anybody else is going to love our kids so we try to keep them home as much as we can so music why did I put music up there you know obviously we've invested more in the music program but at the high school level kids stay in there not only to get you know the higher level regions credential but because they love their teacher teachers they love their you know the other kids that are in the program they love what they do and and look
101at the numbers of kids that are are staying in music the same goes for foreign language it's not like this in other high schools they're there because they love their teachers they love their peers and they love what they do uh and they so many look forward to that uh overseas trip as well and most schools don't do that anymore probably because of liability probably because you know their kids they can't trust them and I'll get to to some of that too we can trust our kids and uh we can do things that other districts can't do science research numbers are growing we talked about it at our faculty meeting uh today a little bit about science research and what an awesome program you know the years that the kids invest uh you know we
102have kids that have they're published articles it's just absolutely amazing absolutely amazing Sports another you know so this is 23 24 24 25 the reason we did that it it kind of covers a full year of sports although it's split over two years so no we have over 500 kids in in the school uh 465 student spots obviously kids are counted again if they're in additional Sports um but we have a lot of kids participating in sports and the kids that are participating in sports do well academically both as individuals and as teams and that you know 90% are higher GPA that's uh you know that's a pretty high marker so clubs we have 35 clubs at the high school and again students obviously would be counted more than once we have this year 900
103spots of students that uh are going to those clubs and I just threw out their drama for instance 114 kids all together 75 are from the high school that includes both casting crew and we have haen students that are coming up so that they're excited when they come up to the high school or to the Middle School uh about being in in such programs uh another special thing about the high school and the district is that we're very Community oriented and Leo obviously is a is a a community service Club um and we're told uh although we're one of the smaller schools high schools we have the largest number of students that participate in New York state I mean that says a lot and in terms of uh just some final thoughts after school like
104it Todd you know we have a 10th period so students that want to stay after for extra help have exams that they have to catch up on on or a lot of times they just will spend time with a teacher that they had previously that they miss and just want to catch up it's all about relationships uh the after school 3 to 5 program so if a student has to be suspended we don't send them home with a Corona book and email them you know stuff to do we connect them with a real live teacher from the high school that is with them to create those uh you know because the bond is so important some of those kids may need counseling that's done during that time uh and also if students are medically fragile
105so that they don't fall behind the same thing but we we don't just get rid of our kids sometimes there're consequences but they know and their parents know that we care and that we love them and that's why we bring them back to our school to continue to educate them uh RTI I didn't know the initials changed I'm not big on that but as long as I'm here it's going to be RTI different Renditions of enl of their uh so every Friday at the high school we meet for about an hour and a half to two hours to go over every kid that we may have concerns about and there are a lot of people in the room from the nurse to the administrators guidance counselor social worker school psychologist athletic director school resource officer
106so you know that's a lot of people and a lot of time but we really get to stay on top of all of our all of our kid and make sure that everybody is okay um Algebra 2 with lab why I put up why I think that's important algebra 2 is a diff is a difficult class years ago um we wanted kids to push themselves like Mr Lynch said we don't only focus on kids that are struggling but our our most capable kids we want to push further and we found that there were many kids that just needed a little bit more time to achieve that goal and that program has been incredibly successful we've had uh 42 field trips last year and this is where the trust thing come comes in if you have
107kids and teachers that can't work together they can't trust one another the last thing you're going to do is going to go out in public I mean that's embarrassing but I can't tell you how many times we do go out and people come to us and say your kids are wonderful you know please come back and they do all kinds of things from you know community service to visiting museums to uh things like visiting different colleges uh taking our kids in 10th Grade to see if they want to go to CTI competitions and Math Science music so on and so forth mentoring program we have high school kids that work with uh like a Big Brothers Big Sisters program both at you know Nassau and Hagen phones man I'm so tired of the phones thing
108we don't need big government to tell us how to regulate our kids put them in a freaking bag or hand them into a truck we have conversations wow right isn't that amazing conversations with our kids we get their input we say you know what our expectations are where we have to go and do we have no problems no you'll never have no problems but the vast majority you don't have issues with the phones they do what we ask them to do and we respect them and they respect us for respecting them you know so it's a it's a win-win um and so the point of my whole presentation is that successful students are engaged students you know our high school is the foundation is on relationship it's on respect um and when you have that
109you can weather any kind of storm you hear people talking about changes in you know expectations from the state education department different people are in office you know you get some Troublesome kids or families that come in if you have a solid culture you can weather any of that and you have to go to the Grave to defend that culture that's something that you can't cave into but as long as you have that you're good and then school safety you can have all the hard stuff that you want metal detectors armed guards you know big guys walking around that doesn't make a safe school what makes a safe School our relationships and and respect so and that's that I think that's it so thank you thank you comments or questions over specific just want to
110thank Mrs to and our principles who really did an amazing job showing some of our successes showing how we reflect on things how we continuously uh Drive ourselves to improve and and be know the top that we can be so we appreciate that because at the end of the day that's always what we want is the best for our students right our student outcomes are the most important things and that's what we strive for so appreciate uh all the presentations tonight thank you okay so that brings us to item 8.01 board correspondence I have none um 8.02 is comments from the public on non-agenda items any public comments on non-agenda items okay 8.03 is comments from the board comments from the board I do have a comment um I wanted to um congratulate Timothy he
111um he's a believe a seventh grader in the Middle School um who did a solo at the CIA today um it was awesome that the fifth grade band course and Orchestra were able to attend as well as the Middle School orchestra um so and Miss Valentine was in the um Orchestra as well playing the bass so just a big shout out to them they did a fabulous job my kids came home and we're just raising about it so awesome cool thank you for sharing anyone else I'll brief comment on the um Jus County School Board Association meeting last week last Thursday the 6th and I attended that and just a quick follow up of the two main topics uh for the agenda were a little bit of a report from around um the districts in
112the county about the budget situation and uh all the districts reported I don't think there was an exception um but they're on track to coming under the cap so people are pretty optimistic in that respect in terms of their budgets there was some talk in that conversation about uh School Bus issue and and so some districts are are starting to experiment a little bit with electric buses um no one sanguin yet about the prospects of that initiative kind of working out in the long run but I it was you know healthy discussion about that as typically as has been the case in the past we also talked as a second issue about phone policies around the district and uh was interesting to hear that some districts have tried to implement have begun to implement districtwide
113policies or or policies that vary from school to school as well um most people are on top of the problem I think recognize the issue and I think to Echo what what Steve was saying are really trying to think about ways that they can address a problem that everyone acknowledges but in ways that are appropriate for and and suited to their school districts their own districts and their own students so uh mentioned our approach uh and I think people are sort of on top of that issue so those are the two main issues that we discussed thank you okay with that I'll turn it over to item 8.04 comments from our superintendent Dr did you have the cell phone go up right good time just want to thank all of our presenters today um really
114took a lot of effort to uh put that together um I'm going to talk about that in a second uh but we want to remind uh everyone if there's no school on Friday um we're having a conference day and remind the board that we're going to have a little mini celebration uh for the 160th anniversary uh have a little uh you know assembly with our faculty and some performances and a brief history spacky kill so something cool to look at but 160 years uh will we celebrate 1865 uh is when we we began um but and for students no school so just be aware of that um and then get back to today so uh a lot of these presentations that we saw from our principles really get started in uh something that we have
115uh monthly as much as possible is we have data meetings um and we really get to talk about data and I do want highlight Kathy Hoy again shity she had she had a slide um but uh you know she does an amazing job uh you know she does reach out we kind of talk about what to talk about but she comes up with ideas and looks for Trends and finds Trends um and I think we have one tomorrow um so uh we're looking forward to uh to that uh especially on the heels of today's uh presentations but that is something uh we take seriously uh but we also know that we're more than a data point we are you know we're more than that I think you saw that flavor a little bit in in
116some of these presentations and especially the last one to really look at uh what we are and who we are um and and we're proud of that we do well with with those numbers but we're we're we're proud of of the other part and what we do um I don't know about the smell in the car uh Mr Basher we just smell outside right yeah um STI with that but want to thank everyone and uh and uh you know congratulate our district on 160 years so thank you thank you so that brings us to 10.01 do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting second second all favor pass 4 we'll see you on March 25th