001Okay. Very good. All right. We are recalling to order uh the regular meeting of the Suffren Central School District Board of Education for Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. May the record reflect that all board members are present except for Mr. Daryl Frasier. And we will begin with the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay. Our next item is student board member report with Joy and Colonel Robbie in the boardroom with the microphone. This Monday, tryyous for winter sports begin. Um, personally, I'm part of the indoor track and field team, and we had our first practice this week. Um, tomorrow is a countywide speech and debate tournament held at
002Suffren High School, and the speech and debate club is running it. >> So, at Suffren High School, we have this thing called Mounty Pride, which is it stands for, I think, prepared, respectful, involved, determined, and enthusiastic. Did uh did Cap get fired? >> Uh so with Mounty Pride, we have these Mounty shoutouts where students can nominate other students or teachers if they did something nice or they're helping out and they'll come at lunch, be called down to the office and they'll get their award. Also to do with Mounty Pride on Thursday is our quarter 1 Mounty Pride Awards which will be awarded by teachers to the students if they believe that they've shown uh proper aspects of Mounty Pride. And next week on Wednesday is the last day before Thanksgiving. So there's a lot of
003angst for that. But also the musical reveal will be at lunch in the auditorium. Uh, the directors put, I think, a lot of effort into making a nice movie. It's entertaining. About 10 minutes, 15 minutes to reveal. And now we're moving into some stuff that happened in the other schools, middle school and the elementary schools. So, last Monday, uh, Slotzburg Elementary was honoring Veterans Day. They hosted a schoolwide assembly which featured some of their local veterans and community members which and it was led by the second grade student council. The whole school listened to what was it? De Harry's speak to uh speak about the military and the whole school saying God bless the USA. at Connor Elementary. They will run their first grade global citizenship project which is called Tis the Season to be
004cozy. It's drive from November 24th through December 5th. And you may remember that last year their first grade global citizens held a pajama drive to support families in need across the county. And this year they've shifted their focus so more families can participate now. Uh they'll be collecting new mittens and socks and it'll be distributed distributed through their family resource center to RPC families in need and depending on the volume of donations possibly to families across the whole district. They're also excited to announce the start of the library squad for second graders, which is a leadership opportunity which will help students develop responsibility, teamwork, and pride while helping to maintain a welcoming library. Under the direction of Miss Marsh, students rotate jobs, assisting with book care, shelving by doing decimal and alphabetical order, locating books,
005and decorating the library. At Montabella Elementary School to honors Veterans Day, they welcomed four veterans who were families from within the school community. They shared their personal experiences and reflections on military service. And these stories offered students a meaningful look into the values of courage, sacrifice, and service, and was a special and memorable day for all. Um, Montel Elementary School is extremely grateful for the lessons the veterans taught as well as the time they served their our country. Montello is once again planning their future Trailblazers career day event to provide students with the opportunity to learn about the world of work and the many jobs and passions available to them as they get older. The school is looking for parent and community volunteers to come to the event and share their passions with the students.
006The event will be on December 5th, 2025 and interested individuals should contact uh principal Dr. Ivy at Cherry Lane Cherry. Uh third graders are currently working on their uh PBL project involving learning about hydroponics and using that system to grow lettuce. Once grown, these lettuce will be donated to the community food pantry. And early in the month, students went to the food pantry to learn about the organization and better understand the importance of their projects at Suffer Middle School. This Friday, um the second leadership academy will be hosted where students will learn more about what it means to begin with the end in mind. In addition to teacher led lessons, seven eighth graders will lead lessons for sixth graders as part of the work they do with the Lighthouse Ambassadors Club. The National Junior Honor
007Society just finished up their socktober fundraiser. They collected 152 pairs of socks to donate to those in need this winter. Um, every pair will help bring warmth and comfort to someone who may not have socks during the cold months. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Joy and Robbie. Um, since you are our first exeicio student board members who are obligated to deliver a comprehensive account of everything happening in the district, we really appreciate that detailed report because there's lots going on. It's a big responsibility. So, thank you so much for that presentation tonight. Okay, we're going to move on to the the minutes of the regular meeting of October 28th, 2025. Has everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes? Okay, very good. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? Mr. Donnelly
008second. Mr. Andert. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Okay, then we're going to move on to superintendent's comments. Thank you very much. Welcome everyone. Uh and I well I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving coming up. There's been a lot of great things going on in the Suffren Central School District and I think about once or twice a year we get the pleasure of hearing about great things going on in the Rockland Boseies District as well. And so our friendly face who who keeps coming back to us to share the good work that's taking place at Boseies, Miss Sandy Janette is going to get up and say a few introductory words and then introduce the Rockland Bosey's assistant superintendent for student services, Dr. Drono. Now >> and then it Thank
009you. >> I I was following Dr. Gunderson's instructions. >> Well, thank you, Dr. Gunderson and the board and everyone else here. I'm very pleased to have served as the representative for the suffering board since 2007. Hard to believe, but almost 20 years. But tonight, it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Christine Drono, uh, Rocklin Bosey's assistant superintendent for special services, and she's going to give us an update and an overview of a program called Flex Connect, a Bosey's program that's new, which began in September of this year. So, welcome Christine. Good evening. Is this good? Yes. Okay. So, um happy to be here. Rocklin Boseies. We love our partnership with Suffren. Um and we thank Suffren for everything. Um we have a lot of great partnerships. So last year um I'm going to start with coming
010out of COVID actually there was a group of students that across the county have not been back to school and last year all the components came together and said we still have a group of students that have not been able to re-engage back into school due to mental health concerns and extreme school phobia. It's a very small number of students, but as we do at Rockland Boseies, when there's a need and is there anything we can do to service these students, we put our heads together and we opened up a very, very small program because our goal is to have all our kids in school across Rockland. However, even with our specialized programs, we had students that districts have sent to us, but they haven't been able to come in our doors. So, we knew
011we needed something in between. And that kind of grew out of the need of what we heard and flex connect came to be. So the name of the program is Flex Connect because it's very flexible and it works on connecting students back into school. It's a bridge to re-engage our students back into school. It's only for high school students. It's very and it's for students with IEPs that have significant mental health concerns. Um and we opened in September. It's really tailored. They It's flexible. It's not a complete remote academy. It can be remote all to start, but then there's a hybrid that they can also come in to our NYAK site at Riverview High School and do some work there or we can re-engage them back into their high schools. The other piece of it
012is there's home visits. We have a social worker and a certified teacher that goes out and meets the student and the family in the house to welcome them back to assess their needs and to make a unified plan. So with this, we have academic services, we have mental health services, and we have wraparound services. And I'm proud to say, you know, I'm a psychologist first, you know, then a school administrator. And I was like, how do I deal with remote? I really feel like we need to get kids like this is our time and we were able to develop something very unique that we have a mix. Some kids have already re-engaged and showed up. These are kids that have been home for over two or three years. But having that connection with one adult
013that actually went to their house, greeted them, talked to their parents have proved to be just something we're really proud of. And we have students, we have students from all our districts. It's very small and the goal is to get them back engaged. But some kids may just need a few credits and they can leave high school graduating instead of not. And we know when kids graduate high school, it's better for everyone, for our community, for the families. And the families have been able to celebrate more some success instead of fighting every morning to get their student out of the bed to get to school. So it's there's an online curriculum, there's a teacher, a Boseis teacher that has office hours. they can come into the building. There's a lot of different components because it's
014flexible depending. It's not all remote. It's not all in person. And we're finding some success in that. So, I don't know if I It's really the bridge to get kids back and to re-engage them. So, we're really excited and we appreciate the support and it goes through a student's IEP. It is referred by the district through their CSE. I don't know if anybody has questions. >> Any questions from the board for Dr. D? Sorry, Dr. Dronto. >> No. Okay. Thank you so much. That was excellent. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Good to see you. >> Thank you. >> I just want to reiterate the the appreciation we have for Rockland Boseies. As Dr. Toronto said um whenever component districts and Suffren central is one of the components of Rockland Central whenever
015districts have a need that more than one district may have we partner together with Rockland Boseies and Rock Boseies does their magic and and makes things happen. So we really appreciate it and thanks for coming out and sharing the information on the new program that um at least I think one of our students is taking advantage of right now. So thank you. Uh, a couple of other items that I'd like to uh address in our um in the superintendent report is I've handed out to all board members a quick two-pager, one sheet, two pages. Um, it gives an overall um big picture of the strategic plan, our blueprint for excellence. Uh, for those of you in the audience here, there's a copy at the back wall if you want to pick one up as you
016as you walk out. We're using this one pager in my uh faculty meeting talks with with staff about what the blueprint is all about. I'd highlighted the concept of the blueprint at our opening day and then most recently now in faculty meetings I'm going in with smaller groups of folks to talk a little bit more specifically about what this blueprint means for teachers daily existence and how all the work that we do here in Suffren central really should be tied back to the blueprint to make sure that we are on the right path moving forward and of course as the board knows and members of the community may know our full blueprint is online on the main page of the website. Go down just a little bit and you'll see um the information for the
017blueprint there that can give you the detailed action plans and all the uh all the details. But this gives you just a quick picture of what our mission, vision, core values and our priority areas. And these are things that we are going to continue to talk about this year, next year, particularly with how we can promote rigorous teaching and learning. how can we expand learning beyond the classroom walls and also how we can operate more efficiently and with a greater level of excellence. So that's there for the taking for anyone interested. Um some really exciting news. We've been uh selected by New York school boards to for them to highlight our forensics program at Suffering Central. So, tomorrow there's going to be a film crew coming in from New York school boards going into the
018forensics classrooms um and videotaping and interviewing students and teachers and staff about how cool this program is and what it means for students. So, something to look out for. Uh and then this past weekend, boy, we had the Nourish Project a few weeks ago which was just incredible. and RP Connor, a staff, a committee of teachers at RP Connor taken it upon themselves for now months to collect clothing and along with the staff at RP Connor, uh they joined up with students from the Nourish Project and students in the high school AVID program to just do an incredible clothing giveaway at RP Connor this past Saturday where they had 138 families come to RP Connor to see what clothing was available for the for the taking. Uh, and I just want to commend not only
019our students in particular, our staff members who really stepped up and dedicated a lot of time and thank the community members who donated clothing and the community members who came to take advantage of the opportunity. Just another beautiful example of how we're expanding learning outside the classroom and supporting our community. Uh, and as you know in our mission statement, it's to create student centered culture that encourages students to become the best versions of themselves while also contributing to their community. And this again is a great example of our teachers and administrators working with our students to make them the best versions of themselves as they give back to the community. Just a beautiful example. This concludes my superintendent report. >> All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Janette, and thank you, Dr. Dorano,
020for being here as well. Um, I think if I'm not mistaken, yesterday in the Journal News, they did a profile on the Nourish Project in the newspaper. I think I saw that. I >> think it was yesterday. >> Was it yesterday? >> Yeah. And I think over the summer they profiled the forensics program. So, nice to see Suffurn getting um some coverage of the great programs that are going on. >> Uh we're now going to move on to our first session for public participation. This is on action items only. Action items are on our agenda tonight at 2.01 through 2.13. Is there anyone who is here to speak on an action item only? Okay, looks like not. So, we're going to close that part of the meeting and move on to our action items. Uh
021before I ask for a consent agenda, is there any item that any board member would like to pull? No. Okay. Very good. All right. All right. Do I have a motion for a consent agenda to approve action items 2.01 through 2.13? >> Mrs. Hodgej second. >> Mr. Shapiro. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. Very well. Then we're going to move 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. Uh please give us your name. Uh please do not mention anyone in the district by name uh whether staff, student or teacher. And please keep your remarks to three minutes. Is there anyone here to speak from the public? Yes
022sir. >> Hi, good evening. Thank you so much for allowing me to speak. My name is Hashi Jay. I live in the beautiful village of Montabelloo. uh moved there for quality of life and all the other beautiful things that we have here. It's really really pretty. Very grateful. Have one little thing every morning at about 10 to 7 till about 7:30ish almost every morning. There's insane amounts of traffic on Viola Road coming up from Route 202 um by Mile Road. It's bottlenecking. I need to drive at that time and a bunch of other community members that that's like the morning hours for us um heading out to work and it's every morning really really bad traffic. Um I've been going to um another town some mornings in Mandale where it's similar situation and they have
023police officers there controlling the traffic making sure that it doesn't affect the neighbors that live here and just want to enjoy this beautiful across the board and not have start the day off with this morning traffic anxiety. I moved out of Brooklyn to leave it there and then it hit me here in Mountello. So, I'm here to ask you and plead with you whatever you can do to help us alleviate that. I know people I've reached out to my town, my village, and and local senators and other people not knowing, you know, they guided me all here. So, I'm here tonight and um I was told that it's a fine room of people that care about this community very much and please, if you can help us resolve that. I think a couple of traffic
024people just controlling the there's so much space in there. I drove in there once. There's so much is just it needs someone pushing the traffic and then people coming maybe traffic should stop that you can't make the turn coming down from spook rock cuz that also like the cars that come from that side and they want to turn into the school. So basically it's a two-lane road and it's it yeah it's very very inconvenient for everybody. So thank you so much. Thanks for giving me the opportunity and looking forward to uh getting it resolved. If I can just thank you very much for coming in and and sharing that with us. If I can just emphasize that if you could put your name and telephone number on the uh I don't know, Miss Campbell, is
025there a signin sheet there? Just so we can get back in touch with you. I appreciate that. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. >> Yes. Thank you so much. >> Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who's here to speak tonight uh from the public? No. Okay, then we're going to close that portion of the meeting and move on to board member comments. Are there any board members with any comments tonight? No. Okay. Very good. All right. Um then we're going to move on to superintendent's closing comments. >> I have no further comments. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. >> Okay. Very good. Uh then our next meeting is going to be our last meeting of 2025, which will be Tuesday, December 9th, right back here in Suffern. Uh
026hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving if you're celebrating and a wonderful 4 days of not eating turkey if you are not celebrating. Um and have a happy and healthy uh time away from school. We will see everyone back here in December. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? Uh Mr. Shapiro second. And Mr. Donnelly. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Very well. See everyone back here. December 9th.