001Okay, very good. Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. This is the regular meeting of the Suffren Central School District Board of Education for Tuesday, October 14th, 2025. May the record reflect that all board members are present except for Mr. uh Daryl Frasier and also for uh Mr. Robbie Schwarz. And we will begin with the pledge of >> 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, Joy, looks like you're up today for our student report. Hello everyone. Tomorrow, October 15th, is the PSATs for grades 9 through 11, while seniors will have college workshops in the morning before lunch. These workshops will focus on college essays, how to use school links,
002and the common app and the college search process. And this will be a half day day for all students. On Friday is our night to nourish at the Suffron High School, which is sponsored by the Nourish Project um supporting the community food pantry. This will be at Southern High School and will include food trucks and different activities for families and children. Um you can still buy tickets online. This Saturday, October 18th, is the ACT exam um held at Suff High School and we would like to wish good luck to everyone who is taking the exam. Uh, next Tuesday the 21st is the RCC college fair where dozens where dozens of colleges from New York and other states will present um will present uh themselves to different students and um the next Monday the 27th is
003a PPS resources affair and PPS stands for per people personnel services. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Good luck to everybody who's taking exams this week. Uh we're now going to move on to item 1.05, which is the minutes of the regular meeting of September 30th, 2025. Has everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes? Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? >> Mrs. Hodgej second. >> Second, >> Mr. Donnelly. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. Very well. Superintendent's comments. Thank you very much. Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here. Um I'm going to have a presentation in a few minutes uh on our new blueprint for excellence, our strategic plan for the district. But much more exciting uh and engaging than perhaps listening
004to me get up there and speak uh is our middle school green team. And if you couldn't spot them in the audience, then perhaps you're color blind. Mr. Shapiro, could you could you spot those folks in the audience? >> If they're very green, I have no >> There you go. Well, that's why they're going to get up and speak to us. They're joined by their their adviser Karen Mena who's going to get up and say a few words and then she's going to introduce Madison and Jaci who are here accompanying her about all the great work that's taking place with the green team. So come on up to the podium. Just make sure you push the middle button so the red lights on and then you can begin. Thanks. >> All right. Good evening everyone.
005I'm Karen Mena and I'm proud to co-advise the green team at the middle school along with the Elio Ficarella. The green team started in 2010 with the simple goal to recycle bottles and cans. What began as a small effort has grown into a group of about 50 amazing students in grades 6 through 8. Since then, our students have collected and recycled more than 826,000 bottles and cans, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. In 2013, we decided to grow literally by building a 900 square foot garden on school grounds. Each year, students start plants from seed and help care for the garden. Even through the summer, with help from our teachers and parents. This year alone, we donated over 400 pounds of vegetables to the community food pantry in Suffren. Along with gardening
006and recycling, our team also gets outside for hikes and park cleanups, which really connects our students to nature and to their community. So far, students have collected 151 bags of trash during those cleanups, helping keep our parks clean and beautiful. Over the years, our green team has also collected 1,830 lbs of school supplies that students donated from their lockers at the end of the school year, things that might have otherwise been tossed out. With help from the Rotary Club, those supplies were sent to schools in Vietnam. Another way our students have learned the value of giving back and thinking globally. We're so thankful to the PTA and the Reach Foundation for their support. Thanks to them, we've been able to get team shirts for our students and the supplies needed to help our garden thrive.
007And now I'd like to introduce two of our green team members, JC Munos and Madison Rosado, who are wonderful young leaders and will share what being part of the green team has meant to them. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Madison Rosado, an eighth grader at Suffren Middle School. I've been part of the green team since sixth grade, but even before that, I knew of this group and wanted to be part of it. My sister Maya Rosado, who was also part of the green team when she was in middle school, was also part of the green team when she was in middle school. And I used to beg to tag along with her when she went on hikes and watered the garden during the summer. Once I got into middle school, I raced to sign up.
008I love the idea of being able to give back to our community, and this club is really allowing me to do that. This past summer, I spent a lot of time at the garden and community food banshee, watching the plants grow and afterwards seeing where they went. I saw families that took the produce home and the gratefulness on their faces. This team has meant more to me than I would have ever thought and helps more people than you can imagine. The green team has given me a voice and created a space to learn about service and nature allinone. And it wouldn't have been possible without our adviserss who have shown me true hard work and dedication. So yeah, the green team means a lot to me and I'm honored to stand here and share my
009experience. Thank you for listening. >> Thank you. >> Hi everyone. I hope your evening is going well. My name is Jaci Munos and I'm a member of the Suffford Middle School green team. I've been a part of the green team since sixth grade. I first heard about it during the morning announcements. They were listing different clubs and honestly none of them really caught my attention until I heard the words green team. Right away I told my friends I was going to sign up and that I was determined to get in and here I am 2 years later still a proud member. Being a part of the green team has made my middle school experience more fun and meaningful. Last year we tried something different with recycling. We put an air tag inside a plastic bottle
010to see where it would end up. To our surprise, it ended up at a recycling plant in Minnesota. We were happy to see it didn't go to a landfill. My favorite activity is harvesting in the garden. We love seeing how big the zucchini and eggplants grow from tiny seeds. We also go on hikes together, which are really fun. And the views and the views are amazing. These hikes remind us how beautiful our planet is. Everything the green team does has made my time in middle school special. It has also taught me something important. We don't have to wait for others to make a difference when we can be the ones who make that difference ourselves. I'm really thankful to be a part of this group. Thank you for listening and I hope you all enjoy
011the rest of your evening. [Music] So, Madison, JC, thank you so much for coming and presenting us uh with your personal testament about why the green team is important to you and clearly the statistics that are up on the board behind me really do speak for themselves. Um really impressive the work that's taken place over the years. And what's another nice feature about the green team is the location of that garden is perfect. I was just at the at the girls field hockey senior night and there were dozens upon dozens of folks that walk by that garden and I know that many of those individuals comment on the garden, admire it, especially in the summer months when the when the plants are really uh growing a lot and producing a lot of uh vegetables. So
012uh you're really making a nice impact. And the other wonderful connection that you stated a few minutes ago is other community partners of ours. We're going to be talking about that in the blueprint uh presentation in a few minutes. But community is going to be an increasing part of what we do here in Suffren. And your connection with community food pantry is phenomenal. I mean look at the amount of produce that you contribute to folks in need in your community. It's absolutely astounding. And then the other organization that you mentioned is the Rotary. And there are some board members here that are members of our local Rotaries, uh myself included, and we really appreciate the connection that you have with Rotary as well. So, the the two of you and uh the other students on
013your in your club are really a testament to to what it means to give back to your community as early as middle school. So, thank you so much for coming and presenting for us today. Thank you. >> Thank you. [Applause] Um, if you give me one moment, I'm just going to go up to the podium and then I will present to the board about our district blueprint. All right. Good evening everyone. It's not too often I present from up here. It's a little bit of a different vantage point. Um the strategic plan is something that our district has engaged in for for many years. And when I first came here to suffer a little bit over four years ago now, the district had just adopted um a 5-year strategic plan that had come to its
014close at the end of last year. One of the things that the board and I discussed along with our leadership team is should we be engaged in another five-year strategic plan or should we become a little bit more current what many districts are doing which is engaging in the concept of a blueprint a blueprint for excellence. And the difference between a blueprint and a strategic plan, although some in some regards they're synonymous, is that the blueprint is a working document that short that is short shorter than the five-year strategic plan. By the time our district reached year four and year five, some of the priorities that we had in our old strategic plan, we found to be somewhat outdated or we had absolutely accomplished them already and we were looking for what was coming up
015next. So, when it came time to engage in a new strategic plan, we decided to shift to the idea of a blueprint, which is a 2-year working blueprint on where we want to go as a district that continually evolves over those two years. And every two years, we stop completely, re-evaluate the entire blueprint, and develop a new one so that we are constantly staying um ahead of the curve and looking to what is next for the district. So, I'm going to take just a few minutes to go ahead and review the work that we've done here with regards to our blueprint and then I'm happy to take any questions from the board. So, the process um and the overview of our blueprint is that we certainly involved our school community. The thought exchange that was
016issued in May of 2025 to our community received over 700 comments from members of our community and that include uh parents, students, staff, perhaps some board members, I know certainly some administrators, but it really um solicited a large number of folks from our community to share what they really thought they were proud of with regards to Suffren Central and also what we should be doing better or more of or something maybe that we hadn't been paying attention to at all. Um, we certainly engaged a variety of different teams defining the priorities that I'm going to review in a few moments. Um, in July after we solicited all that feedback from our thought exchange survey to the community, we had uh opportunities with our board of education as well as our leadership team to draft mission,
017vision, and core values during that period of time based on the feedback that we received from the community. And then in August, we had in this very room 75 folks from our school community gather to talk about what our vision, mission, and core value should be as well as what should be our priority areas. What are in this case the three main buckets that we need to be focusing on in our blueprint to move us forward as a school district that took place in August. So then we started um facilitate facilitating some action planning. Our district administrative team got together with some staff members as well to develop action plans that specifically identified how we were going to address each of our three main priority areas. And then finally, right now here in September and
018October, we've been revising, tweaking, massaging the little details to the point now where we're ready to share the results of the blueprint, what it looks like with not only the board of education, but our constituents in the community as well. And as I had mentioned before, this is going to be an ongoing and evolving process throughout not just this first year and next year, but also we envision renewing a blueprint at the end of the two years. So here's the actual work and the results of um the portion of the blueprint who we are our consultant that worked with us on this uh Dr. Kevin McGawan um really had us spend a lot of time in July focusing on what is our mission of the central suff school district and what is our vision and
019for those of you that have been in this school community for quite some time you're going to see some real um some real aspects of this vision and mission statement that hearken into especially that tagline that Suffren has been very proud of for quite some time educating for personal excellence. You can see the tagline on the banner in the corner there, right? It's something that really resonates with our community and we tried to reflect that in our mission while also expanding the work that we're doing. So our mission quite frankly as the Suffren Central School District is going to be to create a student centered culture, a student- centered culture that encourages students to become the best versions of themselves while also contributing to their community. And here with the green team this this evening,
020that's one great example of how we are aspiring to this mission. We're student centered. We put students at the center of this presentation here this evening to talk about the work that they are doing that they're shaping themselves. We're creating student leaders and they are becoming the best versions of themselves. They still have many years to go when they eventually move up to suffer in high school, but we're tailoring their educational program so that we can make sure that they are getting what they need to be the best version of themselves. And then of course while also contributing to our community and the the young ladies here talked about two aspects of the community involvement that they've already been involved in. But that's our mission as a school district to be focused on our students
021to encourage them and give them the tools necessary to become the best versions of themselves and also recognize that it's not just about themselves. It's about giving back to their community. And so our vision helps us do this. And essentially what we're saying as a school district is that we are leaders in creating a safe, welcoming, supportive, and academically rigorous environment where our students achieve personal excellence and inspire one another. Additionally, this evening, I'm sure that the students that are on the green team are inspiring each other every day that they're working together. They're coming up with ideas, sharing ideas, motivating one another, and so on and so forth. And for many of us that have been here for just a couple of years or perhaps a couple of decades, we know that what is
022of what the Suffren Central School District is really focused on is first and foremost making sure our students are safe. We've had many years of emphasizing the need whether it's within our curriculum or whether students walk into our buildings and how they feel is that they feel welcomed and that they are being supported by a wide variety of opportunities that we have here for people to assist our students and that we're uh we're making sure that we are ma uh ensuring that our students have academically rigorous coursework as well. We have not necessarily accomplished our mission, our mission or our vision, but we are certainly aspiring to those. I believe that we are well on our way, but we still have work to do. So, one of the other aspects of our work in July
023really focused on the four C's. What are our core values that we really took from our community contributions back from that thought exchange? And ironically, when we received all this information, we had a long list of core values, 10 different core values. And we said nobody in the world, especially the superintendent, is not going to be able to remember 10 different core values. We need to get it down and simplify it a little bit and bring it to something that we can all u understand and recall. So we started looking at the core values that we were developing and it really came down to four words that all happen to start with the letter C. What's really important to us as a school district? What can we say that we believe in? And that's important
024for our students. Number one, commitment. Our staff was adamant that we needed to talk about the level of commitment that we need to have from students as well as our staff and our administration and our community. We need to make sure that our students are dedicating themselves to academic, personal, or community improvement with perseverance and passion. Number two, community. We've seen community mentioned a few times right now. Placing an importance on the needs and well-being not just of yourself but of your whole community. And how do you foster a sense of belonging and a shaping of our culture? Something that suffering central is very proud of. Compassion. We use the term welcoming. Making sure that students feel a sense of belonging. We've been talking about that for years now. So how can we develop compassion
025within our students? And we all know when we look at the news these days, the world is not necessarily a compassionate place anymore. And more and more folks are falling victim to not being compassionate. And we're committed as a school district to make sure that we are ensuring that students are kind and open to the perspectives of others and the feelings of others and that they are respectful and welcoming in those interactions. And then finally, character, right? What do you do when no one is watching? you do the right thing guided by strong moral and ethical integrity. So thanks to our educational community, those are the core values that we believe in as a suffering central school district. So this all sounds great, this is wonderful, the mission sounds great, the vision sounds great, we
026have some beautiful core values, but now what do we do? Right? So that's where our community came back together in August and the 75 folks that worked in this room really broke down what our priority areas needed to be. And those priority areas, as I mentioned before, fall into three main buckets, things that are resonating with folks in our community. Number one, our first priority needs to be promoting rigorous teaching and learning. And so the the group of 75 parents, staff members, and students, by the way, in this room in August really talked about shaping the goal of what that priority area needed to be. So, we're going to prepare our students over these two years for future success by fostering rigorous, engaging instruction that promotes student collaboration, ownership, and inquirybased learning. All things, by
027the way, that tie back into that vision and mission statement. The second big priority, it's great to go ahead and have rigorous instruction in the classroom, but we all know that you need to be able to do something with that rigorous instruction, that knowledge that you gain. And how are we going to help foster learning beyond the classroom? And so therefore, we're going to create access to robust community partnerships. We talked a little bit about partnerships earlier this evening that provide students with curriculum aligned experiential learning opportunities that connect their skills to realworld needs. How can we ensure that when a student leaves high school, particularly suffering high school, that they're going to be ready for their next move, if that's college, and if their next move is going to be the world of work,
028how are we going to give them the tools and skills and credentials that are necessary for them to get a well-paying job right out of high school? The third big bucket, the third priority is operational excellence. These are all the things that folks in the community, myself included, been bothering us over a period of time. How can we go ahead and provide clear, accessible systems that keep every family member, maybe not family member, every family informed and engaged while providing facilities and technology that ensure safe, modern, and connected school communities. all areas that are room for growth that I'll dive into in a little bit more detail in just a moment. But these are our three main prior priority areas that I think are digestible. Folks can understand those three priorities. There are clear goals
029that are associated with them. Now the real work comes down to what are we going to do to achieve those goals. So let's start off with the first one. And I'm not going to go ahead and read every item in there. uh and I'll talk at the end of the presentation about how you can access this full blueprint uh and how you can dive in deeper into what we've done here as a school community. So number one under the rigorous teaching and learning aspect and the goal that I had mentioned before there are three main action categories engaging curriculum. So essentially what we're going to be doing over these next two years is evaluating our entire curriculum. What's important to our students? Is our current curriculum or our current course offerings, particularly at the middle
030school and the high school, really going to be preparing students for what they need after they graduate from Suffren Central. Enrichment and advancement. We've heard um some very constructive criticism recently about how we need to improve our enrichment programs, particularly at the elementary school and the middle schools. High schools have AP programs. They have three-year scientific research courses and programs. All these things for high achieving students. But what can we do more of at the elementary and at the middle school levels? So, how can we evaluate our current practices and how can we evaluate all of our levels of coursework to provide students all students with really um solid enrichment opportunities and how can they advance. And then of course we have students with a wider variety of needs than ever here in the Suffren
031Central School District. In a couple of weeks, Dr. Mccahill is going to be talking to all of you about how we are doing academically in our district. And there are students that are truly struggling whether those students have been here um for a long time in the Suffin Central School District or whether they are coming from another country recently and they are struggling in shifting to the American education system. Those students are all our students and they all need our help and they need essential skill development. So how are we identifying those students? How are we giving them enough support but not too much support just enough for them to take it upon themselves to advance and become more and more proficient. So we're going to be talking about how we can utilize that and
032how we can utilize AI, artificial intelligence for all students to help support their learning goals. The second big bucket that we talked about learning beyond the classroom. So how are we going to expand that learning and not just focus on what takes place within the classroom. So some three um subtopics for these action steps here creating a variety of opportunities and activities for our students. We do great things but in pockets in our district with regards to inviting in community partners. We may have a great career day here and there, but not necessarily for all students. And how can we expand those types of opportunities? How can we bring in more guest speakers to inspire students for students to see what the world of work is really like? And perhaps they're going to get a
033better sense of the future direction for themselves. How can we develop a calendar and funding structure to increase access to a wide variety of resources that we have here in the area? Uh Dr. McKay Hill and I and Miss Kern joined um the Rocklin Holocaust Museum at an event just last week. The resources that they have 5 minutes away from Suffren High School, 10 minutes away from our middle school are just incredible. The programming they have there is something that we really haven't tapped into enough of. And there are not there's not only the Holocaust Museum, but so many other resources in our areas that we can tap into to expand that learning beyond the classroom. And then we're going to look at our clubs and activities and reflect on how we can expand those
034programs and and really provide opportunities for students to learn more about what takes place outside of a very insulated sometimes school environment. Another aspect of this um learning beyond the classroom is going to be focusing on student engagement. Project-based learning, Mr. Wojahowski, has been a very popular thing that students have experienced here. But project-based learning shouldn't just take place with Mr. Wojahowski. It should be something systemic. And we've already been developing gradewide initiatives with problem based learning, but we're going to be doing more and more of that according to this action plan. That's what parents, that's what staff members, and that's what students were saying in August when we were developing this. And then, of course, health, wellness, and support. We need to continue to focus on mental well-being for our students. We need to
035establish different spaces where students can acclimate if they're struggling with school. Whether that's calming and sensory rooms for students that have some significant disabilities or challenges or mindfulness areas so that students can decompress and be more mentally attuned to what they need to do in school. Reducing screen time when it's not needed. A big thing that we heard from parents. How can we go ahead and use technology when it's needed and beneficial but take it away when it's not needed and beneficial? And then of course continuing to promote fitness nutrition opportunities for our students. And then finally the third big bucket for operational excellence. This is where you'll see some other subdivisions of the operational excellence focusing on communication. So how can we strengthen communication consistency and clarity? How can we engage with families, particularly
036families that might not be as accustomed to the American school system and or don't speak the language? How can we gather and act on feedback to improve communications? Many of us have been used to now the thought exchange surveys that go out, but how can we get more two-way communication between our families in the community and the school district to help shape the direction of what we do here? And of course, equity. Equity is a very broad term. In this case here, we were talking about parent and community outreach. How we can connect more and formalize in a better way our relationships with our individual building PTAs. How can we work in closer partnership when we talk about equity? One of the things that the board's talked a fair bit about these last several months
037is our prek programming. PreK at Slozburg looks different than preK at RP Connor. And what should we be doing about that? That's in our blue, excuse me, blueprint. And then of course equitable spaces, programming, technology resources. So our spaces need work and how can we provide educational uh spaces for our students that are conducive to learning for what we want to accomplish in the blueprint? How can we continue to ensure that our students across the district are receiving similar programming? That's an area that I would argue has perhaps improved under the elementary school restructuring program, but it's certainly far from perfect. And then technology, particularly at our high school. High school students shouldn't be using Chromebooks. They should be using real devices that really allow them to move forward with their curricular work at the
038high school. How can we give our students the tools and technology that they need to really become ready for college or career? And then the last piece of the action plan under operations is safety and security. Ironically, this is the last piece here, but I would argue it's probably the most important. If we don't keep our students safe and secure, we can't educate them. So, how can we make improvements to transportation? We have ongoing challenges with transportation. One of the things that uh folks from our community really talked about was how can we really experiment perhaps with GPS systems? If I can see where my lift or Uber is before it gets to my house, why can't I see where my child's bus is before it gets to my house? So, that's one of the
039things in the blueprint to explore that um option. How do we make improvements to our infrastructure? Specifically, from a security standpoint, not all of our buildings have the security vestibules yet. As many of you know, we've been working with architects to look at possible uh building pro um building projects. That's one of the things there that we need to to work on. And the schools that do have security vestibules are probably the most unwelcoming, harshest entries to any school building we've ever seen. It may be secure, but it certainly doesn't give you a warm, fuzzy feeling when you walk into that building. So, how can we create a safe, nurturing environment for our students and parents and community members when they come in to utilize our schools? And then of course we need to do
040a lot of work with student and staff development when it comes to safety and security. We are currently training but we need to continually train more and more for different scenarios. It's just at RP Connor today and we were talking about reunification drills. How do we reunify students with their parents in the event of an emergency? Those are drills that we need to do on an ongoing basis that we need to get better and better at. So that's a wide variety of different things that we want to accomplish as a school district, but we've tried to make sure that our vision and mission is clear. We have very defined four core values and that we have three major priority areas that may be quite large, but they are truly focused as well. Rigorous teaching and
041learning, learning outside of the classroom, and improving operations. So what are our next steps? So, I'm sharing this with the board right here. Uh, we are going to be sharing this blueprint with our community, which includes our staff members. In November, we're going to be unpacking the blueprint with our staff members and our principles. Really getting into the nitty-gritty of what's the work that we need to do to accomplish these things that our community is demanding of us. And then in February and May, you can see that we are going to be um building budgets for next year based on what we need to do for the following year to address these needs. And then we're going to be also tweaking this blueprint when it comes time for June based on our experiences this year.
042And then next year will be an implementation year of a lot of the work that we do. And at the end of that year, that's when we go into a blueprint phase two or 2.0 know or whatever we want to call it. How can we continue to do do work in a quicker version than a 5-year strategic plan? So, I want to thank all the folks, the 75 to 80 individuals who really took a great deal of time out of their their days over the summer and in the spring and in the fall. Now, whether it's our board of education that not only met here at board meetings, but interacted quite a bit with me and also came in on some special board meeting days back in July to talk about this. Our blueprint team,
043you'll see the long list of parents and students and some staff members in that blueprint team that came in in um August. And then of course, our leadership team also off to the right. Those are the folks that are really going to be developing the detailed action plans and working with our teachers and staff to truly make a positive difference for our students. Um, I'm going to encourage you. I had a hyperlink on where I have underlined blueprint, but I don't have the mechanism right here to click on it. Um, but everybody here knows where our website is, right? Suffer central.org. If you go to suffern central.org, right there on the homepage. Scroll down a little bit. You're going to see a nice little graphic that says blueprint for excellence. Click on that. You'll be
044able to see the entire blueprint, the PDF version of the blueprint. And then you'll also be able to see some more concise graphics uh and concise information as it pertains to our blueprint as well. So, I encourage all of you to go ahead and check that out. We'll certainly be promoting this on social media and in all of our communications to families as well. And of course, my final slide. I love this slide here. One of the um this is last year's uh part of last year's graduating class of students from Suffren Central. Uh and it happened to be the students I think at Viola, wasn't it? Was that Viola? Those were the Viola uh graduates when they went back to their old playground. You can see the smile there. Right. Of course, a tremendous
045amount of pride having graduated from Viola Elementary School. When you look at those smiles and those students ready to go on to their next chapter after Suffron High School, that's what we're doing this work for. We're doing it for 13 years plus of students in our Suffren Central School District. And I say 13 years plus because of course we have kindergarten and then we also have our prek kiddos. So, uh, some really special kids that we need to get better and better at as a school district. Any questions from board members? >> Thank you so much, Dr. Gunderson. >> I don't have a question, Madam Chairwoman. I do have a comment. Go ahead. I just made a note to myself. Um during the unpacking in November, the learning beyond the classroom section, those action steps
046um may lean heavily towards the high school students. It would be great to understand how that can be better expanded for the middle school and elementary school because when you look at those bullet points, They they seem heavily upper classmenish. >> Thank you. I can expand on that. >> Other comments from board members? >> Yes, Mr. Shapiro. >> I'm excited. Um there there were some phrases in there that really kind of hit home with me. One of them was be be kind. so simple and yet it's something that's missing in today's society. Um maybe not so much here. Um certainly not on our board. We happen to be very kind to each other. At least I most people are kind. I'm trying to think if they've been kind to me. But for the most part,
047actually not for the most part, we are kind. Um to inspire others, that's great. For some reason, that just hits home. Um there's just a lot of meat in there and I and I just hope that when we start putting things together that we really get into the meat and that we really um start making sure that our um students and that our staff and that the community really sees that um suffering as as good as it is can even be better. So I am excited. Thank you. Thank you. >> Other board member comments, questions? No. Okay. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Dr. Gunderson. >> Thank you. >> Uh thank you to our green team for being here tonight. If there was ever a group that exemplified uh if there was ever
048a group that exemplified commitment, community, compassion, and character, it's definitely you. Um, I I've seen that garden many times driving through the middle school. That is not a big garden and we are not a big school district and the green team is not a huge group. And it is truly amazing what you have been able to accomplish as far as food donations, gathering supplies that would otherwise be thrown out and and sending them overseas where they can do a lot of benefit. So, thank you so much for all the time that you put in to making your garden grow and making our school district grow and and better that it can be and thank you for being here tonight. Um, thank you to everyone in the community um from board members, community members, administrators, teachers
049who participated in all the blueprint discussions. Um, as you can see, um, although we all are here because we support public education, that means a lot of things to a lot of different people and everyone has different priorities. Um, so I'm glad that as many people as wanted to were able to express themselves and, uh, and be considered for putting this blueprint together. And thank you, Dr. Gunderson, for that presentation. That was very detailed. >> Um, any other comments? >> Thus concludes my superintendence report. Well play. Excellent. Thank you. >> All right, we're going to move on to our first public participation section. This is on action items only. Action items are on our agenda tonight at 2.01 through 2.14. Is there anyone from the public here to speak on an action item only? Okay,
050looks like not. So, we're going to close that portion of the meeting and move on to our action items. Uh, prior to asking for a consent agenda, are there any items that any board member would like to pull? No. Okay, great. Uh, do I have a motion for a consent agenda to approve action items 2.01 through 2.14? >> Mr. Donnelly. Second. >> Mr. Shapiro. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. Very well. We're going to move to our second public participation section. This is on any district related business. If you're here to speak about any district related business, please approach the lectern and please keep your remarks to 3 minutes or less. And please do not mention anyone in the district by name, whether it's teacher, staff, or student.
051Is there anybody who is here to speak on any district related business tonight? Okay, looks like not. So, we're going to close that portion of the meeting and move on to board member comments. Do any board members have any comments tonight? Yes, Miss Brian. Uh and it's in relation to item 2.14. Um just want to commend the volleyball team, volleyball girls club to put in that application. I went over the audit to make sure that they were not already on there and it seemed that they were not. So kudos to them for putting in this request. It was only the boys. >> Okay. Very well. And we hope they have a great season. >> Yes. >> Uh any other board member comments, Mr. Shapiro? >> Yes. Just to kind of piggyback on on that, I
052hope that the community didn't forget that in uh 2014, 11 years years ago, Suffren's uh girls volleyball team were the New York State champs. So, I just want everyone to kind of remember that. And uh to see this come up now to uh get more girls involved and to get the community involved, I I think it's a great thing because um to be a state champ in volleyball is extremely tough. And if you want to see college women's college volleyball, it's great. So, whenever you see it on, if anyone is ever surfing through their t TVs and all of a sudden you see women's college volleyball, watch it for about five minutes and you're going to see some athletes who are just so well trained and are so super in their in in their sport.
053Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Any other comments tonight? No. Okay. All right. Well, uh, then we're going to move to superintendent's closing comments. >> Not to dominate the conversation this evening, but I do have a few other comments. Uh, first of all, uh, Mount Mines is meeting next week. Mounty Minds is our community forum where folks uh, come together to share uh, their thoughts on what's taking place in the district. And of course, you could probably guess it, our topic is going to be focused on the blueprint and diving into greater detail with regards to the blueprint and potentially some building projects that we have uh our eyes on as a school district. Um, of course, Dying to Nourish is this Friday at the high school. Another great example of a student-led effort.
054Um, students really giving back to their community. So, if you can make it to Suffren High School next Friday, go on our website. There's a link there to dine to nourish. What did I say? >> Next Friday. >> I meant this Friday. Thank you for catching that. This Friday at Suffren High School. Uh if you can be there, great. Buy a ticket. The link is on our website and all over social media. If you can't be there, there are opportunities to donate as well. It's really going to be a fun evening and it's a great way for our community to come together um and celebrate that strength of student centered um activities giving back to our community. Um at our next board meeting, we are going to be having an overview of our elementary school
055restructuring as requested previously. So, we're going to be giving a a broad overview of what's been taking place with regards to our elementary school restructuring. So, stay tuned for that. And then of course most important is that this week is schoolboard appreciation month uh uh week. So I just want to let all board members know that you are appreciated. Um I know that this is a volunteer position. You don't get paid for this. Um you do get some appreciation every once in a while. Hopefully it's not just this week when we acknowledge you on our social media accounts and celebrate the work that you do to give back to your school community. Um, but I know that a lot of folks do appreciate the work of our board of education members. So, I'd like to
056thank you for everything that you do in making us the great school district that we are. So, thank you for your support and you are appreciated. >> Thank you. Uh, yes, we sometimes get refreshments, not tonight, but uh we we sometimes do. >> Thank Thank you for the appreciation. Uh our next meeting will be October 28th uh right back here in Hillburn at 7:30. Um and we are going to move to our uh final item which is our motion to adjurnn. Do I have a motion? >> Mr. Shapiro second. >> Um Mr. Ander. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All right. Very well. We will see everyone back here October 28th. Everyone have a safe night. That was the >> That was funny.