001Good. All right. Okay. Good evening everybody and welcome back. Uh we are recalling to order the regular meeting of the Suffren Central School District Board of Education for Wednesday, February 18th, 2026. Uh may the record reflect that all board members are present except for Mr. Paul Shapiro and for student member Robbie Schwarz. And at this time, we will begin with the pledge of allegiance. 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. >> Okay, our next item is the minutes of the regular meeting. Oh, we've got student board member report. Whoops, I skipped right past you, Joy. What you got for us? Okay, so tomorrow um there will be a blood drive at the Suffren
002High School um run by USO and the Maddie Nickbond Together Foundation and you can make donations from 2:30 to 8:00 p.m. at the high school cafeteria. Um currently the blood blood bank has a blood shortage, so any donations would be appreciated. Next week, USO and the student advisory committee will be holding a volleyball tournament and the winner um gets a very nice reward that gets a pie in the face. Um, and then next week we will also be having a mid-winter spirit uh week and the theme days will be announced. Pause for change will be also be running a woof you rather event during this spirit week. Next Wednesday it will there will be a college information night open to everybody from the grades of 9 to 11. There will be three college representatives from
003Bingington University of Rochester and Mount St. Vincent. Playoffs are also starting for many winter sports such as ice hockey and basketball. Outside the high school, last week all of our elementary schools participated in Rockland Readin, which is an opportunity to celebrate literacy and a love of reading. Many classrooms were visited by guests from across our community who read special books to our students. RB Connor also celebrated the Luna New Year today with a special assembly and dragon dance for all students. In addition, this Thursday evening and Friday morning, there will be a universal pre kindergarten openhouse for families who are interested in learning more about their program. More information is on the district website at Terry Lane. Third graders will be visited by the Rimo Police Department this week as part of the year-long adopted
004cop program where the local law enforcement visits the classroom and talks about various topics um including internet safety and bullying. It's also a great way for officers to connect with students in a positive educational setting. Montabell and Sloburg Elementary Schools will be celebrating their 100th day of school on Friday. Additionally, at Slosburg, first graders have been visiting the planetarium at Sepan High Schools to bring their science unit on the moon and stars to life. At Suffron Middle School, last week, eighth grade band and orchestra students took a field trip to Suffer High School to learn about the music program and classes available to them next year. The high school and middle school band and orchestra students also practice songs that they will perform together later this year. On Tuesday, March 24th, the um sixth grade
005AVID Excel students will be visiting the high school. They will observe two AVID classes and eat lunch with current AVID students. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Joy. And thank you to all the administrators and board members and parents who went and read for Rockland Readin Day. It's it's really one of the most fun days of the year. Okay, now we're going to go to the minutes of the regular meeting of February 3rd, 2026. Has everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes? Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? >> Mrs. Hodgej second. Mr. Andert. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. Superintendent's comments. >> Good evening everyone. Welcome to the board meeting. I have the distinct pleasure this evening of uh welcoming our suffering robotics
006team. First tech team uh first tech challenge team 7486. The robotics team um has had an illustrious um history here in Suffren Central. continues to impress everyone here in the district and we are very fortunate to have them here tonight to give us a brief overview of what the robotics team is all about and some of their recent and upcoming hopefully successes. So go ahead and take it away. Thank you. >> Hi everyone. We are Hi everyone. We are team 74.86 suffer robotics and um along with me are along a few of my other team members. I'm Sarah Joseph and I'm one of the co- captains representing our team. >> Hi, I'm Ethan Leone. I'm the main captain. I'm Braden Gutman. I'm another one of the co- captains. >> And I'm Aushi Morothra and I'm
007also one of the co- captains. And here for the rest of our team, we have Ramis who is our designer and fabricator, Nathan who is our outreach and training, Martin who is our fabricator in training, and Josh who is our outreach manager. >> Uh our team participates in a season called First Tech Challenge, FTC. Um, every year in September at the start of the school year, FTC releases a game challenge video. Um, which in which we try to build a robot to complete said task for the entire season. Uh, we go to three qualifiers every year and if we qualify at one of those, we go to the state championship in Udica which we will be attending this year on March 7th and 8th. Um first tech challenge is main goal is to promote gracious
008professionalism which is being kind, cooperative, cooperating with other teams nicely and we won the inspire award which is the highest level award a team can win at one of these qualifiers on our second qualifier qualifying us for Udica this month this year. Uh we win inspire every year and what inspire means is that a team embodies gracious professionalism not only on the field but also off the field. Um yeah. [laughter] >> All right. Um this year's tech challenge is um decode in where we're trying to um score as many points as possible as efficiently as possible where every um where every artifact is worth at least three points. And we're able to score extra points if we get motifs, which are randomly selected um which are randomly selected patterns that we get at the beginning
009of every challenge at the beginning of every round. And uh there's a video here that's going to be able to explain more in depth about what the rounds usually play out for. Hey, [music] bounce. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Look around. Is it not? Oh, >> do I have to say it again? >> Yes. So we're trying so we learned tools such as streaming 360 which is a CAD software. So we're able to design some of the stuff that you see on the robot and we're all and learning how to program. A lot of us are learning how to program and how to use the tools throughout the robotics room with uh with the guidance of our senior members. So being on the team all four years from freshman to sophomore year I have learned
010that one thing that we struggle with is communication. So this year we started by having Monday meetings where we were able to come together as a team straight after school on Monday and have these Monday meetings where our team leads like Ethan and our assistant captains are able to have their own little groups like fabricators or programmers or documenters and they're able to work with underassmen and discuss like any trouble that they are having and any personal troubles. So communicating in a small team allows them to easily communicate any ideas that they might be having which might be hard to share in a big group discussion. So we figured and we seemed that throughout this year these Monday meetings have given the underassman and olderassmen more visibility of ideas and allowed for more sharing which
011we were able to have different iterations go through and different designs for different parts of the robot which is great. So, now we're going to move on to our actual robot, which is right there. And I'm sure that you guys are all excited to see it. So, we're just going to talk about it right now. Let's go this way. [laughter] >> Don't hold the video. Okay. Oh, so uh I got it. >> So, as part of the um game challenge this year, as you can see in the video, uh well, as you could have seen in the video, um basically you have to organize the balls you shoot by color to or earn extra points. And our robot can do this pretty well using a thing we call the Spindexer. As the balls are intaken
012through the rubber bands out front, the indexer rotates the balls in a circle until a color sensor sees it has the right color, which is projected by the uh polycarb plate we cut up top. And uh there's actually a passive swing arm down at the bottom of the robot, which allows the balls to be continuously rotated one way until they the color it needs appears. And then by spinning in the opposite direction, it's automatically loaded up into the launcher without any extra inputs. So the entire sorting mechanism is completely condensed into one motor. >> Yeah, we just unplug the launcher because it's kind of loud for you guys, but we're going to plug it in now. So it's a little loud. Just beware. So yeah, uh on top of our indexing mechanism, we have our
013custom 3D printed launcher. Can you guys hear me? All right over that. So this launcher is comprised of a primary spinning wheel as our primary point of contact. This wheel allows us to propel these balls extremely fast. We also use 10 additional weights located along our axle to decrease uh the time required to wait between our launches. >> Where you go? Can you turn sideways? >> Yeah. >> As you can see, our launcher has a curved design. This allows for increased accuracy and precision while launching. Additionally, the location of specific things like our flywheel on our launcher help to give our balls backspin, increasing their lift and increasing their stability while during flight. This launcher is mounted on a turret design, allowing us to have about 120 degrees of different angles where we can turn
014the launcher without needing to turn the robot to compensate for it. >> Yeah. Do some shooting. Hang up. Hang up. Oh yeah. So, >> so on the bottom of our of our robot, we have a lift system which if you can see here has a servo servo which puts which moves moves a worm gear to spin this this uh brass brass gear to pretty much stomp and push the robot up. So, we're able to lift lift above ground. >> Well, it's a work in progress. [laughter] >> Well, I mean, the few teams actually have the purpose of this is mostly because at the end, as you saw in the video, we have that zone. So, you get mult you get multiple points if you have multiple robots in the parking zone. So, by having it
015lift at an angle like this, we're allowing another robot to park in the zone, which ultimately gets us more points. Yeah. Okay. So, now we're going to move on to the programming section, which is my favorite section because I'm the programmer. [laughter] So, so I want to talk a little bit about the sensors that we have on here. So, we use mostly the color sensor as described before. And I just want to talk a little bit more about why we decided to use the color sensor. So Braden, who is on the drive team, noticed an issue that when he was driving, he couldn't really see what color ball was going in. And for this challenge, that's a major uh problem because we have multiple points if you get a specific pattern. So let's say the
016pattern is like green uh green purple purple. You get extra points uh for getting that specific pattern. So we decided to illuminate the whole panel around it. So now the drive team, even if you're like way back here, you can still see what colors on the panel. Um, so that was something that we did. Uh, something that we also have added on is something called P. So it's kind of like a feedback loop where the main issue we have is as soon as a ball goes through inside the flywheel, it tends to lose some energy and that makes it go slower. So by adding P to it, it's almost like as it detects that it's going below a certain level, it kind of uh speeds up for that 1 second to ensure that you were
017shooting reliably. And we also have an autonomous. So the autonomous section is the first 30 seconds and that's where no one's touching the robot. It's just moving on its own and it's scoring the points. So what our autonomous can do and I'm not going to run it because it's kind of crazy. Um but what our autonomous does is it stands at a starting zone and then it leaves the parking space which is already three points and all points are doubled in autonomous. So that means that that's actually six points and then it shoots the balls into uh the ramps as you guys saw in the video. And the more balls we shoot, uh, the more points we get. So, yeah, that's our autonomous system. Next. >> Okay, so now we're going to move on to
018our outreach section because robotics is also about giving back to the community. So, the main part about being a first team is also giving back to the community. As I usually said, our main goal is to reach out to the community and share our ideas of first and um inspire future generations to get into the STEM field. We host annually free library workshop tech where we are able to help senior citizens with any technological problems they might be having. This is very beneficial for them if they have any new devices with their photos or iCloud or messages. We are able to use our technological skills to help and foster a connection between them. We also, as you may know, we started um a 10-week program with the PTA and Slotzburg where we are using these
019kits um we using these kits to each week help them generate new and um engineering initiatives like one day we are able to make a snowmobile and these kids are able to program it and then next week we can drive it through a maze and these kids are really learning a lot through these SEM kits and we are able to show them the different iterations of engineering and programming and I think both of the kids and the students are benefiting from it which is amazing. Um with that money that we were generously given from the alumni association last year we hosted a community day we as we call the Roma rendevu. We were able to make a creative part for kids and families to take part in our robotics team. They made um binary brace
020bracelets. Um they made paper robot hands and they were also able to draw their robot through different fields which is a great way to get these kids interested into the STEM field and engineering ideas where they may not get this opportunity anywhere else. >> All right. So, as seen in the top right image, we also have the Girl Scouts, local Girl Scout troops come to our workshops so we can teach them about the fundamentals of engineering and what it means to be an engineer in first. Also, we help them get engineering related badges in terms of robotics, help them do simple activities that mimic what we do on the robotics team. And in the bottom right image, you could see we also often help our middle school robotics team in suffer middle school help them
021with their robots and we give them our insight as older engineers and it's actually very helpful because then they know what they're looking forward to coming up into the high school. Another thing we pride ourselves in is our the NE conference we go to every year where we get to show our robots, show what our team is to a whole bunch of engineers in the uh professional scale. We get to talk to people who work at NASA, SpaceX, and they get to tell us their engineering experience of what it's like to be in that field, how to get into these positions, and they also get to tell us what they think of our robot, how they think we can improve on our robot. and it's a very uh helpful experience for all of us. And
022another thing that we have in terms of our outreach is our team mascot modeled after our Mounty from Suffren High School. His name is Maverick. Um we brought him back after years of not having a mascot. And we also like have a social media page which we post funny videos but mostly we try to keep it updates and make sure that people know what outreach events and what is new with our achievements for the team. Thank you very much for listening to our presentation. >> Thank you so much. I just want to uh express my my sincere gratitude to you um Coach Mugno and the other advisers of the team for how much time and energy you put into just an incredible um activity for for all of you at Suffren High School. Um, not
023only are you going to be tremendous engineers, coders, business folks, but you're going to be great public speakers, and if you're not already great public speakers, by the way, um, and what we're so thankful for is how you are wonderful ambassadors of Suffren Central School District. every time you're either at the street fair visiting a group of young students out just spreading the word about what is so fantastic about first um you're also sharing the good word about what's taking place in suffering central and you really um represent us well and we thank you so much for that. Thanks for being here this evening. If we can take a moment and if you wouldn't mind all coming up in the front here and then if board members we can get uh with the group and
024take a quick photo that would be great. Thanks so much everyone. No, not >> here. Yeah, nobody wants All right. Thanks everybody. controllers. >> It's easier if you do. >> You want me to take the controllers off? >> Thank you guys. >> I know that I know that Dr. Mah is going to um be talking a lot about our blueprint. Uh here's one other example, right, of how a student activity connects so well with our blueprint, especially in the area of learning outside of the classroom, right? Really expanding what they learn in classes and just making a huge impact for themselves as well as the school community. As Dr. McCill sets up here for his uh presentation on curriculum, I'll introduce him in one moment. I want to make sure I take care of a
025housekeeping uh topic with regards to the upcoming um Suffren Central School District uh board of education election. So to the residents of the Suffren Central School District, this year's Suffren Central School District budget and candidate vote will take place on Tuesday, May 19th. If any resident of the school district is interested in running for a position on the board of education, petitions will be available starting on Monday, March 2nd. Petition packets may be picked up at the Suffren Central School District administration building at 45 Mountain A, Hillburn, New York between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 400 p.m. Monday through Friday on days when school is in session. Two seats on the board of education are up for election. Completed petitions must be received by the elections clerk no later than 5:00 p.m. on Monday,
026April 20th. For more if more information is needed, please contact the Suffren Central School District elections clerk at 845-357783 extension 111266. If you didn't quite get that, it's also on our website or R. Romanowski at suffern central.org. Mr. Romanowski, who's sitting in the back, is our district elections clerk. This information will also be made available, as I mentioned, on the Suffren Central School District website, which is suffentral.org. Thank you. Um, and now we have a uh a presentation from Dr. Kevin McCill. Dr. McCay Hill is our I think we still call you new. You're in your first year. >> Um, >> as our assistant superintendent for instruction, he has been learning a lot about what's been taking place uh throughout the district with regards to curriculum and instruction. you're going to share some highlights that
027um you've been a part of, things to look forward to next year, all as it relates to our district blueprint. Um and there are so many good things that we have in store for next year and things that are already happening currently. Uh but there are also some very challenging topics that we need to deal with as well. And I know that Dr. McCill is going to be talking a little bit about what those challenges are and where we're moving to address those challenges. So Dr. Dr. McCale, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you and uh we appreciate you taking the time to give us an overview. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Gunderson, and thank you to the board for your time tonight. Um, you know, as Dr. Gunderson said, uh,
028in my first year, a little bit past the half halfyear point, um, I've absorbed a whole heck of a lot. Um, you know, been in conversations about previous initiatives that are still very much scaling and succeeding in many ways. So learning how I can support those and then also introducing some new things based on feedback from our teams, from our teachers, teacher leaders, principles, district directors, um on where we've had gaps and we want to put some of our attention into that. The new blueprint is is a really nice way to organize very complex work. um the things that we're doing now, anybody who's watching who who's a teacher in the school district, principles will say, "Yeah, we have been doing this, but having a strategic plan and a blueprint that names it." I I'll
029quote uh Dr. Balwena on our team. If you name it, it it helps you um take things out of the complex and and make it more accessible. So, that's what I'm going to do tonight. Uh I'm going to briefly I'm going to call it a glimpse into some of the work because we would be here uh well into the early morning hours if I were to share everything that I've learned about um the wonderful programs the instructional programs in Suffren School District. But I'll just highlight some of of the areas. Uh but it's certainly just a glimpse. Okay. So these are the four areas that we'll discuss tonight. They're also the four areas that the instructional program lives in our blueprint. um engage in curriculum, uh enrichment and advancement, essential skill development, and learning beyond
030the classroom. Again, concepts and um you know, colloquial uh phrases for stuff that goes on in schools, but it's really nice for us to be able to compartmentalize them for reasons that you will see in the presentation. so that we can analyze, measure, adapt, and adjust based on experiencing these four really, really important aspects of a school community. So engaging in our curriculum, uh it's, you know, to set the table for this part of the blueprint, we're really focusing on and leaning into curriculum and practices within our classroom on how we perform our curriculum, the feedback that we receive from the children um within our curriculum. We want to be able to measure, adapt, adjust, and then repeat, measure again um frequently in cycles throughout our schools. So in our K5, we you'll see again
031in education, we love our acronyms. Uh so you'll see UFIS up here, stop and lex, uh our elementary units. We have core curriculum. You've heard presentations of the past. CKLA is our core ELA curriculum, K5. The Eureka math, that's our core elementary math curriculum. What I'm highlighting here today are the areas of our program that we have the ability to adjust and adapt in a more nimble way. these programs like UFly for teaching students the foundations of coding uh decoding in their early literacy skills. Um daily check-ins with students in the complexity of how they learn how to read is very very difficult. And when you have a wide profile of students with all different exposure to reading and early literacy um in your schools like all of New York does, you want to make
032sure that you're using tools that can work with all different learners. And so our teachers have been exploring in and out of different programs for years. And in my time with them, we're starting to get to a place of calibration, especially with the new twin um you know, the double K5 uh redistricting that we have in our elementary model. We're really looking to start naming which of these programs we want to start using on a systems basis so that we're all utilizing the same approaches. We're speaking about the same feedback in the data. So, um, UFly, stop and Lex. Lex is our our short little cute name for, um, the Lexia, uh, core five program, which is a primary, uh, literacy program. and fluency through play. um having our students engage in not just our
033Eureka programs, our teachers homegrown approaches to their math curriculum, but also relying heavily on our use of also now that we're using programs or identifying programs that are effective, efficient, engaging to the children and also available to teachers to speak about and reflect and review on those data. It's where in our busy 40-week schedule can we sit and have time to talk about things. So, our elementary schools are approaching an eight-week data cycle implementation where they're able to reflect through their MTSS. You'll hear me say those letters. That's just it's an intervention structure where you look at students across your school and you identify different gaps with a plan to remediate or intervene and help the children move through their gaps. Um so they're doing that on an 8week cycle in our elementary uh program.
034uh adaptive scheduling. Uh again, our talking constantly with our princ principles and they're speaking with their team leaders and uh teacher leaders about utilizing time throughout the day in the most efficient way, especially when it comes to our core curriculum. Again, teaching our kids to read and write and speak and articulate. Um that's still, you know, the the top that's the top curriculum in the elementary world. A lot of other content areas are really important, but in order to access them, you have to do a good job with your ELA programming. Um, okay. Moving up into our secondary, our middle school in particular, but our high school is is working as well. We're looking at their schedule. you start to hit up against structural challenges in the secondary um because everyone's following these pre-created bells
035and these schedules that have pre-created time constraints attached to them. But what happens if students needs go beyond the bell? What happens if the next day it layered on top of the day before's gap? So that's where schools that are on top of this work and our Suffren Central School District certainly is is structuring and and living in reflecting on your MTSS program in your schools. How do you transform intervention from a way of saying these kids did not do well on X or Y to getting deeper into these students didn't do well on X, Y, and Z and we're noticing a trend of a gap in this specific skill? Is it a content gap? It's not a skill gap. The student has wonderful comprehension and writing skills, but there's gaps in their content from
036their previous school district from they don't remember five years ago um stuff about social studies and they're really struggling. Um is there an effort gap? Right? Are students in our secondary who are young adults tangling with other things in life and they are just not interested in the daily excitement of our teachers sometimes? Um and is this a self-regulation gap? Are there social, emotional and mental health supports that schools are equally um obligated to identify with as much um you know targeted focus as we are nuts and bolts of standards and curriculum. Um the middle school has started working with their colleagues up in the high school on creating common assessments. Common assessments are some of the most powerful instruments that secondary school teachers can use across their departments. These aren't New York State created.
037These are not made by companies like Lexia or, you know, any of the, you know, Edute Tech world that's out there. These are made homegrown by the practitioners reflecting STEM questions. Um, I'm sorry, question stems that they think their students can handle. There's a level of highlevel question, mid-level question, low-level question, and there's an adherence to who are the students that are in front of the actual teachers and designing the assessment based on that. Doing that on a consistent basis and giving these assessments year after year, reflecting on the results helps us understand more about our pacing uh on our areas that we need to maybe teach a little better um areas that maybe we can go through a little quicker and maybe our curriculum maps are spending too much time in areas. So, it
038provides a ton of really great feedback. Um engaging curriculum at the high school. This one um is a real, you know, black and white thing that that we're leaning into together and it's a relatively new one. As I said, I I am learning about a lot of older um movements that are still successful. This one is certainly a new one in that everyone knows the high schools in New York are starting to transition toward a one diploma um which they're sunsetting the New York State Regent exams. That is a massive change. I I I I believe personally and a lot of our teachers, our administrators feel the same way that it gives us a little bit more local control over the same value that we get from common assessment development. We're going to now get
039in high school for some of these core courses. Um they will be less rigid with, you know, with the final regions exam. So, we're looking at tracks in the high school right now. Tracks that are succeeding in some of the more traditional program of study pathways that were always, you know, motivated by the New York State regions diploma, advanced regions diploma. Now, with that sun setting, we're going to have some time to develop new courses to change the way we value what the word proficiency means. Proficiency could mean something like these kiddos did tonight and they were graded by a rubric of different character traits and that's part of their score or their grade for that course as opposed to being able to, you know, retain and regurgitate, you know, some of the the wrote
040areas of the New York State highstakes assessment process. Um, again, reframing proficiency is a really big part of this goal. And as Dr. Gunderson said in any work that we do, it's not all, you know, rainbows and sunshines. There's a lot of hard work in everything that's going on in our engaging curriculum areas. Just a few to name. Um m moving our K5s from our comm five community schools to our four sort of double Princeton plan. Um right now we are in a transition phase with all of those assisted tools that I spoke about earlier. um in order for them to be valuable as a system, we have to start linking arms and saying we're all going to use this together. So calibrating across four different elementary schools with practitioners that have done things differently
041for for most of their career um is not an easy task and we are we are talking about it and working through it. Um the middle school as we know is only in their first year with this new schedule. We were successful in being able to adopt a flex block into a middle school. Um the flex block um is very much a mirror of the IE block or wind block in the elementary school. It provides time for kids to get enrichment or intervention without um taking them out of any enrichment class uh any of their electives or anything like that. Um so right now there's a lot of um building the plane in the air going on in the middle school to be honest. um you know trying to figure out how to rotate the
042kids through the you know through their team through the four cores which kids can go here to do enrichment which kids can go here to do math intervention to do literacy intervention it's all good conversation and good growth but it's certainly a challenge. Uh and then the high school as you could imagine where we're living in a in a split student body. um students that will be freshmen in fall of 2027 will officially not have the regent's diploma. Um so, you know, they're kissing those standardized tests goodbye. Um but there's also a lot of information in the New York State uh regulations now that there may be cohorts that are there now and that will be in there next year that will have to take the tests, but the tests may not count for graduation.
043Um, so we're living with folks with all different information while we're trying to all move forward toward new pathways and new programming when um there's still echoes of the past still living here in the present. So um you can imagine that challenge enrichment and advancement. Um we provide the place and space. Now show us your curiosity for growth that that sort of encompasses this big area which we do really really well. You know everyone enjoys enjoys this aspect of the blueprint. Um, you know, I can say as as a first timer ASI here in in Southern Central School District D district and being in other districts, it it's highly impressive um how this work is is built and baked into the culture of our schools. Um, you as the board members probably have participated in
044a lot of these programs. I know this year when we invited folks to come in and teach for a day, we had our board members there as well. um real world role models, trailblazers day, um you know, softskll mentorship, um you know, having local experts come in and and engage with our students, the four C's being, you know, the primary area of enrichment and advancement for our students, building creativity, collaboration, global day of play. Um even looking at unstructured learning as a way for students to problem solve and social growth. If you go outside during recess and talk to any of the recess aids or the teaching assistants, there's a whole lot of problem solving and social emotional growth going on in real time. Um enrichment and advancement um for our this is still our
045elementary. Again, more examples for everyone. Um again, purposeful, different from a classroom structure, could be in different locations in the school, in the community. Um, but offering students the opportunity and space to explore their curiosity and hopefully like these kids tonight, they could look back on something from Montabelloo and say, I was involved in a an enrichment program where robotics folks and engineers came in and it stuck in my head and that's why I'm here today. So, those are the seeds that we're hoping to plant. in our uh secondary again um we're we're continuing to have our students work outside of the box and put them in places but secondary schedules again determine what we do in the bell-to-bell boxes of time. So what we do there is we decide how do we make sure
046more kids have access to the enrichment parts of those schedules. the middle school was feeling the resistance and the push of students who were in need of intervention, whether it be in math or ELA. And the structure in the old schedule would create a situation where there had to be a decision made by a family member to say, "Yes, Johnny, we'll need three days of literacy support. However, that's going to mean three less days of guitar, three less days of music, facts, art, tech." Um so being very intentional this year with the flex block and the new schedule has opened the door to increasing student access to enrichment. And at the high school uh this slide speaks for itself. Uh uh uh Dr. Adler and his team have done a wonderful job with their department
047coordinators expanding the program of studies. This is the number one most powerful way that we can signal relevance in the high school for our our customers, our students by always looking at our program of studies, our electives. Are they relevant to our students? We've had surveys sent out this year with direct feedback from our kiddos. Um, a lot of us in schools, we beg, borrow, and steal from our neighbors. So, we have scoured program of studies from all over the Hudson Valley to see what cool stuff's going on around us. and there's no shame in that. Um, and so we're we're adopting a whole bunch of new courses, 10 plus at least at the high school. Um, with that to be the theme going forward and courses that don't run because there's not a lot
048of demand, there's going to be surveys around that. Well, why why did we miss that? Where can we change the description to make it more relevant or exciting for our our new learners? Again, their world is very different from ours. We have to respect their voice. uh challenges in this space. Uh again, how to embed those really amazing elementary ad hoc experiences that happen with veterans and with outside experts. Those four C's. How can we take that important learning experience, that curiosity, that that pushing those students out of their comfort zone into their daily lessons in ELA, math, social studies, science. So, it's really tough work. Um but we're we're focused on it. Um the middle school again as I said uh the flex block is still very new so there's some pain points there.
049Um you know identifying team sharing the right way identifying which kids can go where. We're we're getting there. Um, and at the high school again, how do we create enriching courses, have them ready to go, developed, have teachers ready and and you know, excited to teach it and and also adjust and adapt it with feedback from the kids almost like if they're half your courses every 20 weeks, we may adjust the curriculum, but then also identify what is highly proficient and proficient so that our diploma is still very strong and highly respected. Um okay, skill building. Our third uh aspect of the blueprint is our essential skill building. And this pillar of the blueprint uh revolves around social emotional reflection, self-regulation, right? So our students, even our kiddo here tonight, um got like a case
050of the I'm in front of a lot of people and I'm speaking and I I I may I may have blacked out a little bit. Um I'm speaking right now. I do this a lot. I do this for a living, there's still aspects of me that has to take a breath, understand if I'm slowing down, am I, you know, am I speaking too fast? So those skills are just as important as everything else that we're teaching in our schools. And we know with, you know, with AI that facts are not, you know, moving people to the top. It's it's their personal um skills and working with others and knowing themselves, reflecting on their own abilities. Um so that is very rich in our elementary um our K5. These are just some examples. It is very
051intentional utilizing PBIS that's positive behavioral intervention um approaches. Those are researchbacked um using our CRS integration or culturally responsive sustaining practices. All of this is, as I said, just as important to us to be held with fidelity in our daily minutes as our math and ELA. Okay, same stuff here. Similar examples in our middle school and high school. Um, we still are are focused on teaching kiddos at the young adult age or the, you know, the ad the pre-teen, adolescent, uh, young adult age. um it's but it's less uh it's less ad hoc or its own individual lesson as it is baked into the daily experience in a classroom. So working with our secondary teachers so that they understand and adopt that schools have shifted from content deliverers to content deliverers and social emotional models
052and teaching students how to be out of their comfort zone and how to use some of these skills. Um the wicker program right now from our AVID um is a very uh researchbacked way that shows success for um adults and students uh all over the world in writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. Um there are specific skills that we're teaching our kids there so that they can advance with confidence and have tools in their toolbox when they're whenever they're in a learning environment. you know, whether it be in the classroom or in a college area or in a certification for a trade. Um, these skills transfer and uh another growing area of our high school, but again being nimble and looking at what are the challenges at hand and let's do something about it. We
053are seeing that we have students that are entering our ninth grade with Lexile levels, with reading skills that still need to be addressed. And these are students that may have come from other school districts. These are students that entered um maybe in our middle school. If if those primary foundational literacy skills were not baked in, were not addressed, they layer year after year. and you you we we in our schools we start putting content in front of kids with the expectation that they can decode it to start on the lesson and we're finding that that's not happening with all of our kiddos. So, we have a pilot going on right now for the first time at Suffren High School, Lexia Power Up, um, which is the uh, you know, the older students version of the
054Lexia um, core 5 that our elementary models use and looking at shifting things, shifting seminar, writing seminar, nth grade seminar, uh, study halls to harnessing the power of of these Lexia programs, these AI programs that are intuitive and work really well with students and give immediate feedback. back. Um, another big area I know my predecessor, um, Miss Weber was a pioneer in this space with with school AI with AI in our schools. Um, we have successfully moved forward with our pilot of school AI. There's a whole bunch of Coke and Pepsi versions of AI for schools out there and we chose school AI. Um, we have uh courses in the high school and we're expanding an a specific AI course for next year. I'm really curious and excited after the elective fair last week to
055see how many students signed up for it. Um, but I will say, you know, as a 50-year-old myself, like we have as much to learn as the kids. Probably we may be a day behind the kids once we get going. Uh, so this might be a true project-based learning where we reverse the classroom, the kids are teaching us. Uh, so we will see, but we're certainly in that in that space. Um, and then challenges here. Uh again, to build proactive emotional skills within the same time that we're teaching them to learn content and skill development and academics is somewhat of a shift for our most veteran teachers, you know, myself included. um where we are teaching skills to teach kiddos how to read and write but also taking those moments to identify if a student
056needs a minute to talk about a reflection moment to talk about what is making you feel uncomfortable right now in your group project not working well with another peer. So that kind of stuff scales across K12 and we're going to continue working on it because it's so important. And the last pillar and I will close up um is learning outside the classroom. This, you know, again, meeting Ken Mojowski and and his uh band of followers, thank god there's so many followers all over all of our schools. Um teachers that are super interested, teachers that talking about it social emotional are uh nervous and vulnerable when they do uh ask Ken if they could jump on to, you know, a grade level uh project-based learning project. Um, but it these are these are true gems in
057our K12 continuum. Um, as you can see some of the the wonderful work that they've done this year from from third grade up to high school. In our elementary schools, we have gardens. We have living history. Paying it forward. Again, I could say with confidence um and coming to the Mounty Mines uh and hearing all the ideas from the community of how the school can partner with them. Um this area here, I don't have any challenges to it because the challenge is is like, you know, we could do this all day. We have to say no to to to folks outside of the district that want us to work with them. Uh and we have to find time to get so many project-based learning, learning outside the classroom events for all of our staff. But
058uh but this is an area that that we could scale all day long. So I don't have any challenges for this, but it's certainly a wonderful part of the suffering school district. And that's everything. I apologize. Thank you everyone. Thank you. And questions or >> Yeah, we'll let the board members come back to their to their seats uh for just a couple seconds for any questions. Um, but I want to thank you for a very comprehensive view of of what you've seen happening already in the district, things that you're helping to move forward and things to look forward to next year. Um, as you stated, um, we have never had a more complex pool of of kiddos in our district who are high achieving and need to be challenged more to students who are perhaps
059brand new to our district and who have not had a formal education in quite some time, who are struggling learners, uh, and everybody in between. So, I'm happy to see that the examples that you cite, as well as things to look forward to, are going to support our students at all levels, whether it's at the elementary schools, focusing on making sure we have um um responsible class sizes for students to get the proper amount of attention and the supports that they need to at the middle school levels providing that flexibility for both enrichment as well as some pretty significant intervention services that some of our students need. And then at the high school, of course, uh new courses that are going to be relevant to a wide variety of of our students, especially as they
060look forward to that next step after high school, whether that's college or career or a two or fouryear program, uh the military. >> There's a lot of work to still be done, but thank you for that overview. Any board members have any questions or comments? >> Okay. Thank you. All right. >> Excuse me, Dr. McC. >> Yes, sir. Um, I know, excuse me. [clears throat] I'm sorry. I kind of remember this microphone. Um, I know prior to your tenure, um, we estab, uh, literacy teachers really came over the summer and worked on that program. >> Uh, my question is this. uh have we been able to identify students with dyslexia >> from this program and where are we going with that? What programs, if any, have we developed? >> Yeah. Um I'm aware of Molly
061Nest from my time last year at the middle school. Uh she was a consultant that was hired, you know, to work with the middle school ELA department. Um, from my understanding, a lot of that her work wasn't focused on on early intervention or early identification of dyslexia. She would teaching them how to do formative assessments in class. Um, but Miss Ness has been around a long time. She's an author. I'm sure she has a lot of expertise in that. But I'm I'm married to a reading specialist and I know over in South Orangetown I know the dyslexia um you know puzzle of whether or not it is a diagnosible thing by schools or it is not is is a is a big question right now because we're seeing you know we're seeing kids being diagnosed
062externally with that. Um, but I think a lot of the stuff that I mentioned here, a lot of the information from the elementary leaders with utilizing Lexia, making sure that the core literacy strands are being addressed like the decoding, the phmic awareness, the comprehension, the fluency. when we see tells of students that are lagging behind in the data that we're collecting and and huddling over those are hard conversations with our cse chair and with the families but I don't think it ever jumps to dyslexia. I think it's I think you know there's more to look at here >> and what about pro I'm sorry >> no I was I was just going to add to that um that over the last I think two or three years we worked with Dr. nest for a couple
063of years. Um, and we have been able >> right and we have been able to increase the number of one of the big focuses of of our parent group Splash was that they were looking for us to ensure that we had some Orton Gillingham certified teachers and particularly at the middle school we have one who works with students quite intensively. Um, so we have paid a great deal of attention to that but we're also hoping that we can get more teachers that are OG certified. Have >> our numbers gone up though? Have we I I guess have we brought more have we >> because this is correctable. My understanding is this dyslexia is is reversible if I'm saying it right. >> Right. I I mean I know the programs now >> we need program we
064need we need to do stuff. >> Yeah. Because we can we can >> Yeah. Yeah. The science of reading has been has been really the approach now like all of the curriculum the CKLA is backed by the science of reading. Our Lexia core 5 is backed by the science of reading. Um Orton Gillingham certainly is a program that was ahead of the curve in and not doing the whole language stuff like the TC. A lot of school districts went that direction where Orton Gillingham was very science of reading. I'm absorbing and suffering a all science of reading. So like everything they're doing is based on the science of reading and the metrics and then how to interpret that on the back end of which students might need an intervention to assist with dyslexia. Um I
065would have to ask more questions from maybe our our younger uh our younger schools and we get that information. >> Yeah, I can certainly >> as far as you know we we don't we don't have any new programs from >> the data that we've obtained already. not new programs this year. I think what Miss Weber did a really good job on um before she left was really having an early intervention program. You had mentioned, you know, what you've seen with UFly, which is the um University of Florida language um intervention >> intervention. Thank you very much. >> Um and when you walk into the elementary school classrooms and they're doing the UFly, like you can see it's a very interesting and unique approach that's grounded in the work that Dr. NES talked a lot about
066um and you know moving up through the middle school the the challenge that we continue to have is we can't find enough Orton Gillingham certified teachers to really provide that intensive intervention support that our mostly middle grade um and even high school entering high school students really need and that that's a struggle that's not unique to Suffren but across the entire state you've heard the governor talk about that um there's a shortage of folks out there, but we have invested and we have some staff members on hand to support those those students. We can always use more. And as we transition then into the budget development slashfinalization next month with Dr. Castellane, >> you're going to be hearing from us about our additional needs >> to help some of our struggling learners. And as I
067mentioned before, >> we have a vi very diverse pool of learners who >> are excelling and students who haven't been to school in several years that find themselves here at Suffren Central and we need to treat them all as our own and we need to move them in a direction that's going to lead them towards graduation. So, and that that takes resources as you just mentioned and uh and time and attention. Maybe we should, excuse me, maybe we can consider getting a coordinator in here for for uh dyslexia. I don't know specifically, but getting a another teacher in here. We have one in the middle school, right? We only have one on staff, but you said more with u with um the >> Gillingham >> Orton Gillingham uh uh certifications. >> Yeah, >> that would
068be key. that that would be great. Sorry, we're trading the microphone back and forth [laughter] here. >> No, but you're absolutely right. And I think one of the challenges for the board is going to be when we when we present what our needs are >> is what can the district afford, right? And we're going to have to we're going to have to make some difficult choices um recognizing that we can't do everything that we want to. Um but we'll have we'll have that discussion. >> Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Right. Any other questions? Quick question. Um, can you help us parents understand what the flex period is about? >> Yeah. Um, so when your kiddos were in elementary school, they had you experience the IE block is that or a win block, right? It's a
069it's intervention and enrichment. It's like pausing the daily schedule. And in the secondary world, as I said, the the the secondary schedules run the day. They pace the day and everyone moves around into little boxes based on bells. And it makes it very difficult to add double doses of certain subjects that kids need time in. Um or secondary intervention in multiple subject areas. So, if they need math support and they also need English support, ELA support, um, middle schools and high schools, but more middle schools because of their teameing structure, require a trade-off, and it's a pretty large trade-off when looking at our blueprint, is that those students that would qualify for a second touch of utilizing a Norton Gillingham specialist or one of our three reading specialists or our math specialists, time with them
070in a small group would come on the back of one of the periods that's not their mandated New York State units of study and those are the enrichment courses. So the IE block is where those students are scheduled to be with specialists so that they can still access their enrichment blocks, but they're also getting intervention and it's not, you know, it's not impacting them the way the way traditional schedules would. Um, the way that it works, as I said, it's it's still a challenge because it's the first year, it's it's in development. um is that the the teams made up of you know the four core teachers share a hundred students um at the middle school you know work leading up to the schedule teams coming up with ways of rotating the students on a
0714-day cycle so that each group of 25 students spends time in the four different core teachers space and in that space it kind of looks like a workshop like there's kids doing enri enrichment stuff. There's kids doing intervention. There's small groups. Some kids are like, "I'm good. I just need help with my homework." They're getting homework support. So, it's a little bit of a catchall right now when the students aren't prescribed through MTSS specific time with an Orton Gillingham specialist or or someone else. Um, but when they stay back in the classroom and they engage in that rotating cycle, they're getting a little bit of everything. And like I said, team meetings monthly are how can we do this? How can we do it better? We have a lot of teachers finding engineering and computer
072science and AI um you know enrichment websites that kids can go to and they ask me you know can we look at this? Can we pilot this? So I think everybody's trying to figure out how to make the flex block what it is by design. It's supposed to be a flexible setting. So, you know, Johnny the first quarter may go to math help, but then he pulled himself out of the hole. And now next quarter, one of the flex blocks on seventh grade is actually you can go down and um and work with the tech teacher because they're they're sanding something or they're making something and the kids are part of a project. Um that's a lot of the models that we looked at, you know, that we'd hope to get to at some point.
073Um, we even, you know, are piloting an app right now that works with Synergy, our student management system, so that we can schedule kids ahead of time. So, you know, this group of kids are going to be with Mr. Castellane and they're going to go outside and swing golf clubs. That's what they're doing on Friday. Like some schools that we've looked at as models for this came up with their norms. Like Friday is an enrichment day for the seventh grade kids. So they do a bunch of fun stuff during flex and the eighth graders are are doing still doing like a lot of nuts and bolts stuff. So we I think we still have to figure out our rhythm. But it has a lot of potential. Right now, the win is that so few kids
074miss out on the courses that as middle school kids, it's the only reason they go there each day is sometimes for guitar or for, you know, tech and they're struggling in their courses. And we don't want to keep taking all of those things that they engage in and they have fun in away so that they can do better in the courses that they're struggling in. Like the whole day becomes a struggle. So, this was this was a nice shift. We still have some work to do to kind of make it our own though, for sure. >> Thank you, Dr. >> Castellane. Dr. >> Well, we were talking so much about Dr. Castellane swinging golf clubs. Uh, you know, >> and [laughter] and thank you, Miss Campbell, and thank you, Mr. Matone. Uh, special thanks over
075there to Dr. Mcahill. This concludes my superintendence report. >> All right. Thank you so much and thank you Dr. Mcahill for that presentation. Um, okay. We're going to move on to our first of our public participation section. This is on action items only. Action items are on our agenda tonight at 2.01 through 2.11. Is there anyone who is here to speak on an action item? Okay, looks like done. So, we're going to close that portion of the meeting and move on to our action items. Uh, before I ask for a consent agenda, is there any item that any board member wants to pull? No. Okay. The chair is going to pull 2.02. Uh, so at this time, I would ask for a consent agenda to approve items 2.01 and 2.03. 03 to 2.11. Do I
076have a motion? >> Mrs. Hodgej second, >> Mr. Andert. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. With regard to item 2.02, do I have a motion? >> Mr. Donnelly, second. >> Uh, Mr. Frasier, any discussion? No. Okay. Uh, do I have a motion to approve 2.02? I mean, uh, all in favor of approving 2.02, please say I. >> I. >> Anyone opposed? And I will abstain. Okay. Uh, moving on to our second public participation section. This is on any district related business. If you are here to speak about any district related business, please approach the lectern. Please give us your name. Please keep your comments to three minutes and please do not mention anyone in the district, staff or student, teacher by name. Is there anyone who is here
077to speak from the public on any district related business? Okay, looks like not. Then we're going to move on to board member comments. Are there any board members with any comments tonight? No student board member? No. You're [laughter] like, wrap it up. Okay. >> [gasps] >> Okay. Well, um, uh, my comment as, uh, I join, uh, Mr. Shapiro, who's in abstentia tonight, uh, to say that, uh, the school board budget and, uh, board election is May 19th, which is only three months away. So, make sure that you are registered to vote. Uh, check the district website if you're not sure of what your polling place is. and uh and certainly to our newly registered um students at Suffren Central High School, get out there and exercise your voting muscles. Um our next meeting will Oh,
078whoops. Superintendent's closing comments. I forgot. Okay, I'm just skipping over everything tonight. >> That's perfectly fine. I have no further comments. >> Okay, very good. Uh, our next meeting will be Tuesday, March 3rd, right back here in Hilurn at 7:30 p.m. Uh, do I have a motion to adjurnn? Mr. Donnelly second. >> Second. >> Uh, Mr. Frasier. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All right. Very good. See everyone back on March 3rd. >> Thank you.