Board of Education Meeting - October 14, 2025

001Oh, okay. Okay. Good evening, everyone. Uh, welcome to our October meeting. I can't believe it's October already. Uh, before we start the meeting, uh, can we please stand for the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please take a seat. Thank you so much. Okay, for now, as we know, we are recognizing our uh national Mary scholarship semi-finalists tonight. And then we have our um the assistant superintendent attendant for secondary um curriculum instruction and assessment to uh give that recognition. So Mr. Steinberg. [Applause] >> Well, good evening board of education Dr. Rogers uh in the community. Uh it's my great honor actually to be here tonight uh to honor uh these

002fantastic students. So I'll read a brief background of what this uh recognition is. So each year, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation recognizes the nation's highest achieving students based on their outstanding performance on the PSAT. More than 1.3 million high school juniors nationwide enter the National Merit Competition by simply taking the PSAT. And then from that pool, approximately 50,000 students are recognized for academic excellence. And then of those about 16,000 of them are named semi- finalists and thus invited to continue the scholarship competition and compete to be a national merit and they represent the top 1% of students across the country. The distinction reflects years of dedication, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine commitment to academic excellence. These students not only demonstrate exceptional aptitude and achievement, but also embody the qualities and integrity that define Sioset. So

003tonight, we celebrate their remarkable accomplishment along with their teachers, families, and mentors who have supported them along the way. So at this time, I'd like to recognize our recipients. So I will begin by calling your names and I'll ask when you hear your name to please come up and stand right here in in the front uh by the stage. So, Christopher Enona, Kingsy Chang, [Applause] Selena Chu, Evan Ding, Nora Han, Daniel Hang, Derek Hang, Gina Hang, Elelliana Leader, [Applause] Evan Lee, [Applause] Shaun Lim, Yuron Louu, Grace Louu, Sanvi Perry, [Applause] Nitton Rajik Poland, Poland, excuse me, Nikquille Sha, Sumeare Singh, Shri Sugum Shringanesh, Adrien Tong, Carolyn Wang, Tracy Z, and Katherine Yu. [Applause] So, congratulations to all of you for this great honor and for achieving national semi finalist uh status and we wish you

004the best of the luck as you continue in the competition. Congratulations. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Okay. Congrat congratulations amazing 24 very very talented students. Okay. All right. So um we are going to move to the stage and then to continue our uh meeting. So uh parents and students if you want to stay you more than welcome to stand. If not this is your perfect chance to make your graceful exit. Okay. Thank you. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Right now we will have um the uh Miss Christa Harris, our Science Council PTA's president to uh say a few words. Good evening. My name is Christa Harris and I am the president of the Siosetic Council of PTAs. Each year, the New York State School Board Association sponsors schoolboard recognition week, a time dedicated to honoring the extraordinary

005efforts of our school board members. As the association so fitly puts it, schoolboard members take on one of the most important citizen responsibilities, overseeing the education of the community's youth. What is often overlooked, however, is that this work is done entirely on a volunteer basis. Your gift of time, talent, and unwavering dedication is essential to the continued success of our district. You serve not only as board members but also as professionals, parents, and active community volunteers, selflessly balancing countless responsibilities with grace and resolve. As PTA members, we deeply understand both the challenges and the profound rewards that come with volunteering. We know that you share our commitment to serving every child and we admire your steadfast belief that supporting our schools is always worth the effort, no matter how long the day or how late

006the night. While we are proud to recognize you during this special week, please know that our appreciation extends far beyond these few days. Your leadership, guidance, and tireless advocacy for our students make a lasting impact every single day. On behalf of the PTAs across the Sioset Central School District, we are pleased to present you with a small token of our gratitude along with a certificate of appreciation from the New York State School Board Association signed by Dr. Rogers. This year's theme, empowering student futures, speaks directly to your mission and your impact. You are making a difference in our children's futures. Thank you for your vision, your service, and your unwavering support of our students and our community. [Applause] Thank you, Miss Harris, for recognizing the board. We truly appreciate your kind words and the thoughtfulness.

007Your support and partnership play a vital role in helping us helping us maintain a strong collaborative school community. And we are very grateful to work together with families, staff, and students to ensure the best experiences for our students. Thank you again. Okay. And next, I just want to uh recognize uh acknowledge the uh certificate of special congressional recognition presented to the SAS school board um on the occasion of school board appreciation week and it's from um uh Tom Swisy. So, we each get one of these. So, remember to bring it home. Thank you again. Okay. Uh we are going to move on to our meeting. 6A is the approval of minutes of the September 15, 2025 monthly meeting. Can I have a mo motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, second by Miss Abramson. Are there any questions?

008All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. Dr. Rufol, can we have the treasures report and appropriations adjustments, please? Okay. As indicated in the treasures report, the cash on hand for the month end August 2025 was 93,597,22.15. It also shows that bank balances for all cash accounts were reconciled to the book balances and were collateralized in accordance with the district's banking agreements and investment policy. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Rufo. Can I have a motion, please? Uh, Miss Kosia, second by Miss Falov. Are there any questions for Dr. Rufo? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? Next item on the agenda is the audit report and we are going to have Miss Jill Sanders of Colin and Denowski to present to the public the district's audit report. >> Good evening. Um each year the district is

009required to have uh under state education department law and the office of the state controller um a external audit of their financial statements. We completed our audit of June 30th, 2025 financial statement information and our report is dated October 3rd. We rendered an unmodified opinion and it's the highest level of assurance that you and the community get that the financial statements fairly present in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America. The document for the financial statements is quite lengthy. There's a little bit of a difference in the presentation of the information, but all of the information that was in the prior year's financial statement, you will find within this year's financial statement. Also, non- major funds now are captured on the balance sheet and statement of revenues, expenditures, and changes

010in fund balance. And then the details of those particular non- major funds are found within the supplementary information. So, it's the same level of information that you had in the previous year just in a different portion of the financial statement. Um I wanted to comment on the internal control structure with relation to the financial statement reporting process and all of the transactions that give rise to what we do from a risk assessment basis. The internal control structure is very good structure. It is it's economical. It's beneficial. It covers all of the cycles that need to be covered. We use that in order to determine our audit procedures. We also look at the internal auditor's reports and the internal claims auditor's reports and you know that those are very favorable for the district. Also um as

011a result we have nothing to communicate in the form of a management letter which would talk to the board of education if there were any internal control issues or recommendations with respect to changing anything within the internal control structure. There is a third document that we gave to the uh board of education in addition to the extra classroom activity report which is on the cash basis and which is a required presentation in accordance with state education department and that's a communication to you. If there are any any difficulties in performing the audit they would be noted within the document. There were none. We had no disagreements with the way the transactions were handled. And I wanted to express my uh my sincere thanks to Dr. Rufo and her staff for being accessible, for providing books

012and records on a timely basis and responding to the questions that we had as we went throughout the audit process. Um, I I hope you appreciate it's a very good report that you're getting from your external auditor this evening. Any questions? >> Thank you, Mrs. Sanders. Are there any questions for Miss Sanders? Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. And thank you uh to uh Dr. approval of course and her team uh for working uh all the way up till the last minute to uh produce the numbers for our auditors. Thank you. And the next item on the agenda is going to be a uh superintendent report. Um so Dr. Rogers, all yours. >> Thank you. So I'm going to start by recognizing a district employee, Miss Claudia Hardis. those. So,

013uh those in the auditorium know that Miss Hardis runs our transportation uh operation here and uh we have all come to rely on her, me most of all, uh for the great work that she does. Uh but it's sometimes hard when you're here in a school district and you see a familiar face to kind of see where that person is in the realm of the work that she does. So 30ome years ago I um shared an office with the executive director of the New York State Association for Pupil Transportation. But 30 years ago I had almost no idea what that was. But 30 years later, I know that that is the association of all the people who are responsible for making sure transportation runs smoothly in every school district in New York State. And this

014summer, they decided to give their highest award, the Artshock Award to our own Miss Claudia Hardis in recognition of her deep expertise. So, we know Claudia for her work uh organizing our transportation function and we also know that transportation is one of those services that you'd like to forget exists. It's fine when everything is going well and the only time you pay any attention is that when one or two things may seem to go wrong. So, it's worth talking about all the things that go right to give folks a sense of scale. Uh we have overund somewhere in the neighborhood of 125 buses running in daily operation. They serve not only the students, the 77,000 students that attend the district's 10 buildings, but they also serve all of the students who are transported to non-public

015schools wherever those non-public schools may be. And we provide that transportation on a daily basis. uh to do this well in SIASET you have to work with an external transportation provider which means that all the people who work with us don't work for us. So it is an even more tricky proposition to make a success out of working with an uh external partner who's responsible for staffing and managing the transportation function. As the community knows the board has uh embarked on a process of uh purchasing our own buses. will have three new buses of our own this spring. And that will make uh Claudia's job even more challenging because in addition to having to manage our external partners, she will now have to start managing our own fleet, making sure that those buses are in

016great running order and well-maintained uh hiring and training and supervising and evaluating our own uh group of bus drivers. and uh she already does a tremendous amount of work. That's only going to increase in the future. But I'm not here to talk about how hard you're going to have to work when uh we have our buses. Uh we're just here to celebrate the fact that your state association, who know better than anyone what it takes to be a great transportation director, took time out of their summer to recognize you with the Artshock Award. And so we want to recognize you as well, Claudia. Congratulations. to say a few words. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Dr. Rogers put in a perfect way to describe your role and um how you deserve this award very much and I

017just you know uh want to uh recognize this and then thank you for all the work you've been doing in SAS. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Now, as Miss Chang so elegantly puts it, uh you're welcome to stay and enjoy the rest of the meeting, but if you'd like to make a graceful exit, we will provide you with this opportunity at this time. Uh the next part of our meeting is going to be uh talking a little bit about some of the work that's in progress. I'll uh preface this by saying uh in the last uh two weeks we got a very nice piece of congratulatory information. We're all very proud of that. But uh we're not ones to rest on our laurels and we're not ones to stop working uh in on behalf

018of our students. So we had uh some energetic conversations at last month's meeting. Uh although I indicated that uh a lot of the projects that we started to take on are going to take quite a bit of time uh to bring to completion, I thought the board would appreciate some updates on the work that is going on instructionally. So uh we're going to have Mr. Steinberg, Dr. Wjic, and Miss Goldweight talk about the work that's going on with our secondary schools, our elementary schools, and with our special learners. And uh we'll just keep the board up to date. And what I anticipate doing is returning to these update presentations periodically throughout the year uh to keep you a breast of the work that's going on. Um it's and a thank you to the board. You

019adopted new goals uh back in the spring. Those goals have been framing the way that we approach this work and how we uh look for alignment with the work that's being done. and it helps us identify where to place our priorities when we have limited resources and time so that we're making sure that we're achieving the goals that you've set out for us. So without any further ado, Dr. Wjic. >> Thank you, Dr. Rogers. Good evening, Dr. Rogers, Dr. Curry, and the board of education. This evening, Mr. Steinberg, Miss Goldweight, and I will present as Dr. Rogers shared on some updates involving our instructional momentum. So the work we'll present this evening will reflect our ongoing commitment to innovation and collaboration. So at the elementary level um I'll begin the updates on our SCI inspire.

020So, as we shared at last year's board of education presentation, um the work that we're doing at the elementary level talks about elevating and lifting our learning for students and our elementary curriculum council, a group of elementary educators and administrators who come together to begin this work really took a deep dive on um advancing transdisciplinary learning. So looking at what is transdisciplinary learning, what crosscutting opportunities do we all that already exist that we can elevate and think about ways that we can weave disciplines together to make learning real world and relevant for our students. Um the another thing our elementary curriculum council has worked on is looking at our SIO inspire learner profile. So to facilitate alignment with the portrait of a graduate work that's taking place at the secondary level, our elementary curriculum council

021has begun to look at those six attributes and identify skills and dispositions such as curiosity or collaboration that exist at each level, each grade level um and figure out how we're going to incorporate that into the learning that takes place. Finally, as a full faculty, we're beginning to embark on this work. I've had the opportunity to meet with the entire elementary faculty via Zoom to kick off the SIO Inspire work and starting in the next month in November, I'll be meeting with all grade levels and departments to begin the process of looking at SCIO Inspire, looking at existing projects that we'll continue to elevate and begin to explore the learner profile. Other updates that exist at the elementary school are um our supporting our social emotional learning. So over the summer we had um our

022PBIS positive positive behavior interventions and supports committee come together to create a website and that committee consisted of um led by Kelly Morgan will um principal as well as social workers, behavior analysts, special education and general education teachers. they came together to create a new website that um featured lessons and promoted positive behavior and social emotional growth amongst our students. And what they did was come together to align New York State social emotional benchmarks, our social studies standards, and incorporated our Scioinspire essential questions to develop lessons that were developmentally appropriate for each grade level while explicitly linking the Scioic code of conduct so that we were sure that students understood behavioral expectations. and the result was this website for our educators to engage in that contained lessons for students at each grade level. Finally, the

023last elementary update really speaks to innovation in action. Um, these three projects that are ongoing really speak to the work that was done last year. So, as you saw, we had our AI instructional pilots. Um, and based on that, we're launching an AI pilot 2.0 SCI inspire Scio Inspire Edition. And teachers are invited to expand on the AI work that took place last year and leverage AI to really elevate the crosscutting projects um with the design to promote curiosity, creativity, and really elevate to transdisciplinary learning by looking at realworld problem solving. So that was the first innovative um process that we're going to be engaging in this year. Um one of our teachers, a fourth grade teacher, Mr. Schmidt at Willletitz um was so um inspired by the uh pilot that we showcased last year

024where the decodable books were created for students that he was able to leverage AI to create these differentiated level texts that allowed students to engage with grade level material reading level on their reading level um engage with vocabulary and text complexity. but allowed his students to do so at a level that's all on their own, an entry point for their each individualized learner. So again, those were added to our um SEAL website so that teachers could engage with those personalized learning um level texts. And finally, um we're really proud to present that we are going to be launching a newsletter for elementary students called the Scio Spark. And um starting in October, our monthly student newsletter will highlight all different kinds of things for elementary students. Um kindness, there'll be staff spy spotlights called the

025people in your neighborhood. So, um, our students will learn all about the teachers and, um, staff that have special, um, abilities or interests outside of the school day, as well as, um, there'll be a section where we highlight, um, some of our elementary students and how they're engaging in things that impact the world. So, we're fortunate enough to be able to um have a newspaper club at each elementary school and they will participate in creating this newsletter alongside us. Um at this point, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Steinberg to share more about instructional updates at the secondary level. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. WIK. And again, good evening, uh Miss Chang, Dr. Rogers, and the board of education. Um, you know, I'm I'm excited about the work that's going on the elementary

026school because I selfishly feel like that work is going to make my job easier in a few years. So, thank you for that great work. Um, as we um continue um in the secondary level, there's been conversations we've had around comparable learning experiences. And so, I want to take a moment and talk to you a little bit about how we take a systematic approach to ensuring that there's comparable learning experiences. So we are currently developing typical uh scope and sequences for all of our courses. And you can see up here we have over 360 courses between our three secondary buildings. That's a lot of curriculum. And the idea of the typical scope and sequence is that we're not looking to take individual teachers scope and sequence. But if we have five or six teachers that

027are teaching um a biology class, let's say, they work together. They collaborate together in groups to say this is what typical scope would be for the biology class. This is what typical sequence would be for that. And the reason we use our own internal tool for this is because in the 20 the end of the 23 24 school year, we recognized the need that we needed to start collecting this curriculum in in the context of the changing graduation measures. We knew there would be shifts that would have to happen. We need to be able to have a tool to analyze the curriculum to identify where those opportunities are going to be for us to enhance the curriculum for the for the students. Uh so we spent the 24-25 school year working with different companies, interviewing

028different companies, sampling products to see what's out there that maybe we can purchase to leverage to help us do that. And we kept running into the same issue. We'd ask the question to these companies, how is your product futureproofed? and uh and we could never get a a solid answer because in in the wake of AI, it just seemed to us that these companies may not survive this wave and we could not upload our curriculum to products like this and then sacrifice our own curriculum. So we do what we've done a lot is we made our own and we built our own um so that now we have our own internal uh scope and sequence document that currently our teachers the secondary levels are working on. We we kicked that off at superintendent's conference day

029and they're working on to create these documents so that what we're creating is not just an inventory of a typical scope and sequence. We're creating a tool. We're creating a tool to analyze the curriculum. Once we have those typical scope and sequences, what it will allow us to do is to then leverage AI in our favor to do some initial analysis of the curriculum so that we can look at what type assessments are happening across sections of the same course, what's happening across our grade levels. We look at the content. We look at for real world application and skills, common language and integrated curriculum like our information and digital media fluencies that we try to find redundancies in curriculum and opportunities so that we can just enhance the experience for each and every one of

030our students. Um and following our conversation last board meeting, we had an opportunity to meet with a focus group at the high school to talk about curriculum. Um and they were very candid in their responses to us and it was a fantastic conversation. We really enjoyed it. And what came out of that is that the high schools now is creating their own student curriculum committee which we're really looking forward to that. So now we're going to have curriculum that's going to live in the paper form or the digital form and then we have now a system where we can elevate student voice so we can understand what their lived experiences with the curriculum and make shifts where we need to make those shifts in that curriculum. So as we continue with the scope and sequence

031work, what we're adding to that work this year are classroom visits. We're calling them learning walks and we're specifically doing them through the lens of the portrait attributes. So the six attributes. So the goal of these walks is that we're going to be visiting the curriculum in clusters as opposed to visiting it in departments. So what do I mean by a cluster? So we're going to do visitations around CTE which is business FCS and technology. We're going to do STEM visits and we're going to do humanities visits. And the idea of the visits is to complete not to be evaluative but more so to be sort of a notice protocol. We come in and we're trying to see where these attributes already exist within our curriculum. How are our students experiencing this and how are

032they developing these attributes currently? And the importance of that is going to allow us then to launch off that and have the conversations to discuss where the strengths are and where are the areas that we might have to bolster or shift and do that work. So where you have your scope and sequence is your sort of paper digital piece of excuse me piece of that when we're in the classroom that's the relationship piece that's how are students relating to the curriculum how's the curriculum relating to them and that's really important. So now between those two pieces or really three pieces we have the scope and sequence we have the curriculum committee at the high school level and then we'll have the the data we're going to be able to collect through our walks here. um

033now we're going to be able to surface sort of what is the next big question that we have to answer and what's the next big problem that we need to solve. So we ensure that we are jogging along the state as we said in terms of the graduation measures um and without getting too far ahead of them but ensuring that we're well prepared for the changes when they come. So that kind of leads us to another bulk of the work that we're building upon and these are our secondary professional learning communities. These professional learning communities are interdicciplinary groups of teachers teams who who have identified research questions or instructional challenges or problems that they've identified and through an action research model they meet on a regular basis to work the solution. So what we're doing

034is we're now leveraging the capacity of our professional staff and we often say it takes a teacher to to to run programs and come up with these solutions. So now we have a system in place that we've been running these PLC's for quite some time now. Um you can see there's a number of them on the right hand side. The AI PLC which actually started last year is continuing this year but with a focus of a continuation sort of like our AI pilot 2.0 at the secondary level where you have interdisciplinary teams working on the best practice of using AI in the classroom and they will share those best practices there. Um, what's what's been really powerful about these PLC's, they allow us to take what we learned from doing gap analysis, develop the actual

035problem statement, and then work through that. And I'll give you a quick example. The ELA skills continuum, it was a PLC that we had started three years ago. We recognized that coming out of COVID, what we noticed was that there was an inconsistency in how English teachers were talking about and teaching the writing process. So students were learning to write and they were excellent writers. But what we started to notice the language around writing and the process it wasn't consistent and the English teachers understood that. So we got the English teachers together created a PLC to address that issue and what was created from that work and that was that that continuum was about excuse me that PLC lasted for about eight nine months. They created a writing rubric that is currently now in use

036within the English department. And so students get this writing rubric. No matter what class they're in, it gets differentiated for levels. But when we met with the with the students a couple weeks ago and that came up, they confirmed that that rubric is out there and it's being used, which was wonderful to hear that that PLC had that kind of impact. But just like any important work, usually important work will beg the next question. And so the next question that was begged from this work is, well, if that's in the English department, what does writing look like across the entire curriculum then? So how are we talking about writing? what what are what is everybody doing in and around writing. So that then became the beginning of the writing across the curriculum PLC where now

037an interdisciplinary team was talking about writing in all different curriculum areas and early on in their work they were able to create another rubric that tied the writing process though specifically to the style of writing for the discipline. So in the STEM field there's a lot of technical writing. So what is what are those skills? What does that look like for students? and in humanities you're doing a lot of creative writing, but in both you're doing a lot of evidence-based writing as well. So to see that and to help students really be able to talk about and see what their writing looks like. And that group kept meeting and because it was such an energetic group, they started to recognize another need. The need was that students need writing support. And so what they developed

038and we're in the inaugural year of it is we have a writing fellows program. We have a group of about 30 students who are or providing peer-to-peer writing tutoring to students who request it in all areas of writing. So, it's not just in English. So, we just I just had the pleasure of going through a training session with these students and they had an ENL teacher training them how to work with multilingual students, not to write for them, but how to understand how a multilingual student is thinking about writing in English and how different that is for them from writing in their home languages. Um, we also had the guidance counselors meeting with these students to to teach them how do you help your peers work through the college admission process? How do you write

039a personal statement and how do you help someone write a personal statement? And and then underlying the entire program was a partnership with Syracuse University and the students are getting a 300 levelvel course out of the writing fellows which is a junior year course from Syracuse University. So, we're very excited about what that's created and the opportunities that's created. And without going through all of them, but the last one that's been ongoing for about two years now is our is our science standards. And as you're aware, New York State is moving to new science standards. So, those science standards um are shifting and and have shifted in earth science to earth space science, living environment to biology, and then physics and chemistry are shifting as well. So currently um our teachers have been working for

040the last year and a half or so in a PLC not just with themselves but we have outside consultants working with them as well to help them create the necessary materials in the curriculum and we've partnered with neighboring districts. So now that our PSL PLC's have expanded beyond their walls to include some of our neighboring districts so that we can really get all the best thinking on this. We had the opportunity in June to administer the earth and space science regions and the biology regions. We we collectively made the decision that we were not going to administer that exam at that point. Uh the reason being is we had another year to get the curriculum where it needed to be to provide our students the best opportunity possible on this on this change. And like

041with any change at at this scale, it sometimes could be bumpy. And what we noticed that this past year there was a little bit of bumpiness. And when we looked at the aggregate scores on the earth and space science this year, what we noticed was, and we weren't part of this this scoring because we didn't take the exam, but that the mastery scores on the aggregate level for the students that took the legacy exam was 55% scored at the mastery level, which is 85% or higher. The students that took the new version of the earth and space science, the mastery level was at 15%. So you had a 40% 40 percentage point drop at mastery level which is is not great that that happens but it also was an affirmation for us to say okay

042we did the right thing by waiting and it just give us some more time to learn more about what these assessments will look like because typically for us our earth science students are performing at the at 83% mastery and 99% proficiency. So with those kind of numbers our work is to make sure we maintain that minimally. So that's the kind of work that's going on in the in these PLC's to kind of give you just a broad broad scope of of where this work is happening. So um so with that I'll going to hand it over to Miss Goldweight um and she's going to talk more about the piece and of course we know how important that is given the rigors of of the academics to have that piece underlying it. Thank you. >> Uh

043thank you. So in order for students to be able to access the curriculum that we just heard a lot about, we need to ensure that they're ready to do so. So one of the things that we want to do is continue to look and explore the New York State social emotional learning benchmarks which provide an opportunity for us to ensure that we're creating those skills that students need to develop in the areas and key areas like social awareness, self-awareness, and responsible decision-making. So some of the ways that we're going to highlight how we continue to do this work um is by breaking it down by elementary and secondary. Uh the first thing I'll talk about a little bit is in the elementary level we continue to engage in clubs and very often these clubs t

044uh are take place during a lunch period. We always want to ensure that we create opportunities for all students to be able to participate in. So this year, one great example of a of a club that was developed that is combining both of our special class students and our general education students together is taking place at BIS where they're working on a lot of the soft skills we just heard uh Mr. Seyberg talk about that students need to be successful in life. How do they work together collaboratively and kindly? How do they work with others? They may not know who they are. How do they introduce themselves to others? So, a lot of the soft skills we just heard about both through some of the projects with uh the writing uh programs that are being

045developed there are skills that we want to start developing early on in in our students careers. So, some of those soft skills are being targeted specifically with some of uh more inclusive club opportunities. Another example are that we're continuing to extend our peer buddy connections. But um very specifically, we do have our peer leader collaboration where we do have our peer leaders program at the high school which is a group of students that are actually coming down into each of our seven elementary schools where there's going to be a three-part series of lessons that our peer leaders are going to be able to teach to our elementary students. Those lessons are going to build on um and blend literacy, hand hands-on learning activities, and creative expression to spark empathy, connection, and school spirit through storytelling,

046collaborative play, and meaningful reflection. Our peer leaders are going to be there to model what leadership looks like, what kindness looks like, and be able to create and continue to build our culture of belonging here in Sioset. This will help to foster respectful relationships, behavior, emotional growth, and a sense of identity while focusing on our SCIO pride, our benchmarks, and our the um overall district code of conduct. In addition to that, we talked a little bit, and you saw Dr. Wjic um bring up the connections website. Um we actually had the team that helped create the connections website come to one of our social worker department meetings um just last week which then created an opportunity of well we don't just stop here where do we go next so what we're also going to now

047do is we and I have spoken to you about previously in other meetings about our pro calendar that we have where for each month we have a core competency um kind of area that we focus on whether it be social awareness self-management relationship building or decision-m skills where we focus a month on a topic and then we actually have an opportunity to kind of create our resources and collate our resources together so we know they all focus on that one topic area. What we're going to do now is kind of bring it all together. So, we have a website. We're going to be able to have an opportunity where on a monthly basis, we take all of those resources from things like Harmony, Ove, uh, No Place for Hate, the website lessons that were just

048created, uh, Erin's law, anything that you can think about and make sure that we kind of create an opportunity where teachers can have easy access to these lessons and these materials. So, this learning can happen naturally all day, every day. It also is going to be a nice opportunity for teachers to recognize this is work they do all day every day. You don't need to carve out an extra special time for this. One such example can be well learning about characters through story readalouds or your independent reading and characterization. Taking on that literary element and then using that to enhance some of those skills that we were just talking about. Can you identify the feelings and the character you're reading about? How does that connect with you as an individual? How does that connect? And

049how what relationships are you recognizing? Are they positive or negative? So, it'll help students not only learn to be self-reflective, but to be able to learn and have teachers feel confident to share those SEAL benchmarks through their everyday lessons that they're engaging in. On the secondary level, we talked a lot last month about different ways that we want to ensure that we're continually having opportunities to enhance social engagement and interactions. And in particular, we were talking about lunchtime. We still see students continuing to access the locations that we spoke about earlier, like the lunchtime nooks, wellness spaces, the workshops, libraries, maker spaces. And now that the weather has been for the most part really positive, they've been spending a lot of time outside. We at some days had upwards of 60 students in one general

050period accessing these other locations. So students know where to go. They know how to get there and they have been using these spaces to have smaller environments to do just what it was that we want to foster, building connections. One task we were asked to look into was about if clubs, the elementary model of clubs can be replicated at the middle school model. And that is a little challenging right now uh for a few logistical reasons. One, a club advisor might not have off during a certain lunch period that maybe students might be interested in participating in that club. In addition to that, it also takes away the opportunity for those clubs to be accessible to multiple grade levels at one at the same time. So what we want to do is continue to not

051let that stop us from looking to see is there a need to continue to build opportunities where connections can be made. So as student needs present themselves, we have to then address those needs. So, some of the things that um the um building level teams are working on together is thinking like should we be looking at playground equipment? Should we be looking at outside activities? Should we be coming up with organized activities that students can engage with and be able to find those opportunities to maybe connect with someone that they have not typically connected with before. So, those are things that the shared decision-making teams are working with together at our middle school level and continue to enhance. And I know thing, you know, we heard last uh month also that even student leadership and

052student government is looking to figure out continued ways to be able to engage in creating opportunities where these spaces can continue to be positive spaces for students to continue to engage. And another exciting um focus area that I wanted to bring up is just thanks to you as the board of education and the community who supported our bond. Um we are getting ready to um kind of create a new space in the high school which would be our our wellness suite. Uh right now we currently have an area where our guidance counselors are housed and then spread throughout the high school building are our social workers and our school psychologists. We are anticipating that this new space will be created soon uh where all of our mental health providers will be housed in one location

053and together it provides an opportunity for easy collaboration as well as continued enhancement to how we can support the students needs as they present in the high school building. In anticipation of that we have work to do. So what our teams have been doing at the high school currently is we do have a small group that is working together to be able to initially not only identify the type of furniture and colors that we want to ensure are creating in that we are creating in that space but more importantly what is currently in our MTSS tiered plan what's currently in our guidance plan and what do we want to do next so literally we're building a new foundation that we can enhance what we currently have here with to do. So that is our next

054goal. So we have our teams working together to be able to do some real deep diving into what are our current tiered approaches look like and where might there be opportunities that we can enhance what that is. One of the spaces that we're looking at is in here creating a wellness space. We do have a wellness space in both of our middle schools right now. We're going to be able to have an opportunity to create that in the high school. This could be a space that students go off of during a free period. They want a quieter space during lunchtime where they it would be a larger area where our social workers offices will be directly off of where we can help create those connections for students and places for them to feel comfortable in

055the building. In addition to that, we are going to we do a lot of work in teaching students how to cope and build strategies when working through any areas of of um challenge that they may be facing. So having also rooms in there that are going to be calming spaces for students to be able to employ those strategies in moments when they might need to do so. We're working together with our Northwell Health partnership to create a specific professional development opportunity and work with our mental health team in the high school in anticipation of us creating additional opportunities using this space. And that is actually starting this year. We've already reached out to Northwell. They're working collaboratively with us to literally create this professional development opportunity for our teams. And then together we'll be working

056together to not only ensure that our guidance counselors, our social workers, and our psychologists are ready to support our students, but every individual that's in that space is ready to welcome any student that walks into it. So these are just some examples of some of the initiatives that we continue to build upon. We're really grateful and that we had the opportunity to reflect the innovation and collaboration that we've continued uh to be able to work with with our buildings this year. So, thank you. >> Okay. Thank you so much for the uh presentation. Um it's definitely uh very informative and a lot of information and at this point uh are there any questions and questions only please uh from the board? Mr. over. >> Thank you both for that detailed presentation and forgive me if

057you guys went over this or I'd said it last time, but obviously we're doing so much work with our teachers and it's all great work. Are we getting either formal or informal feedback from the students on how they like stuff or from their teachers or from the principles? Um because, you know, we can think of every single thing, but then you ask a child and they'll come up with the one thing that we didn't think of. It's a great point actually. It was one of the things I forgot to mention earlier is that one of the things that we do want to utilize especially during advisory is getting some feedback from our students in the middle schools particularly about like how is lunch going uh what is it looking like for you? Um so that

058definitely at least for the areas that I spoke to are things that we are looking to do um and continue to get student feedback. That's why we do this not only to see what we recognize as adults that students might be demonstrating but how are adults feeling? How are the children feeling and what are they telling us they've continued to want us to explore? >> Jump in real quick. And just to add to what Miss Alway is uh sharing. So we have the the curriculum committee we spoke about which is new to make sure we're staying on touch with that. The principles meet regularly with their student leadership so that that gets surfaced and the central office meets regularly quarterly or so with with students as well so that we can surface uh that information

059as well. So there is a lot of information that we're getting from the students. Uh but we're constantly looking for more and more opportunities to engage with them so we to that point so we can continue to learn. >> And so my own observation and I think both of you were there was when we went to see at village the 931 class. So we had actually the fifth grader that was with the younger students and I remember when both my older daughter was at at village they anything where they actually had a real job where they helped a teacher that was tremendous. Um them being field felt valued that they were there they were actually doing something important like we saw it together. I thought that was amazing. Um, so I know those those individual

060ones where they're actually involved and they're actually doing they're coming in earlier. They're dealing with the younger children. That's tremendous for the younger children and also for the older and they're actually adding value. Um, and then I have a question for you Dave while you're up here was um, so I see we're gathering all this information. Um, and um, like you said, it's not additional work but I kind of feel like it's a great idea. we're not recreating the wheel all the time with curriculum and and try to keep equity amongst it. Is there any way that we're able to um kind of capture this in a way where okay, I went to college. I went I missed my first session of accounting 101. Guess what? I can go to the the 11:00 session. Is

061there any way we can capture all of this um the teaching the knowledge um where it's not like we're kind of repetiting reinventing everything every time? So if I'm stop me if I'm not understanding the question, but I think you're asking is there a way for us through this process to is it to to find redundancy in curriculum or are you talking about the student experience and how they engage with So like you said you're capturing like right now you're you're doing the observation to see like how are they teaching how are the students reacting to what the teachers are doing right but then you're saying hey let's look at the curriculum to see if there is redundance right from what my understanding was and what are we missing or what are we we don't

062need right how are you capturing like all that information like >> so um on the walks and >> because it's a lot there's >> it's a lot right so that's why it's it's a multi-prong approach so the scope and sequin itself is putting the curriculum down on on digital format those are those are living documents. So those documents are living within the departments. So they get updated. The the goal is they get updated on an annual basis, get reviewed and updated. The typical scope and sequence. Now our teachers hold their own scope and sequence. They do their own lesson plans. We don't collect that sort of thing and they're constantly revising those things. Okay. When we analyze it and we and and we use an AI tool to analyze it and we ask a question

063about where in the curriculum do we see project-based assessments, let's say, right? And so I can get some rudimentary data from that and then take that to a curriculum group and dig a little bit deeper into what does that mean and what is it telling us. When we do a walk uh when we do the learning walks the way we collect that data is that we're going to have debrief conversations with the team after uh we do the visitations to the to the classrooms, excuse me. And what we're using for that is we actually developed forms and the forms have on it what are called look fors like what are we what are we going to look for in the classroom? So in our debrief we'll be talking about the attributes that we did see

064and on the form on a scaled approach we'll say okay for effective communication if I was in exclassroom did I was that really noticeable or it was not noticeable at all and that's the sort of data we'll collect as a step one to start to get a sense of this and then we'll we'll iterate it and discuss it more and then see in the next set of rounds do we need to do things differently do we need to go more in depth or which direction do we have to go so these first rounds of the walks are really going to be just surface high level. Let's start the conversation. Let's start collecting some data and let's see what the data is telling us and we'll take the next steps from there. >> And the same

065thing and we are at some point getting student feedback. >> Oh, absolutely. Yeah. They there'll be student feedback to this and that's our hopes with these curriculum committees with the students that once we educate them on the attributes and what they're actually learning and how they need to be learning those things. But it's, as I've said before in other presentations and tonight, we're jogging alongside the state because the state at this point has only released a real basic definition of each one of the attributes. We don't know yet how um students will be accountable to those. We don't know yet how they're going to be able to show their proficiency and mastery uh to those attributes. So, we're waiting on a lot of information, but we're building a very strong foundation so that when we

066get more information, we can quickly move to the next step. >> Thank you so much. >> Sure. Okay. Are there any more questions for the team? Okay. Thank you again, Dr. Wjek, Mr. Steinberg, and also Miss Gworth for your presentation. [Applause] >> So, I'll just um do some brief conclusy comments on this. Um first of all, one of the overarching themes here is the theme of time. And there are a lot of resources that are finite in the school district, but we don't often think of time as being one of our most finite resources, but in fact it is. And so when we think about transdisciplinary learning, the strategy here is something that is taught but not remembered is a waste of time. And if there is a way that you can find time that

067teaches more than one thing, it's a way of leveraging time. So transdisciplinary learning we've found is more memorable for kids and so that's a better use of time and it allows kids to learn from more domains simultaneously. So it's a way of multiplying time in the same way the scope and sequence work that we're doing at the secondary level by looking for gaps and overlaps. Uh the overlaps create found time and that found time can be repurposed for other uses. So if there are other things that we want to teach or if to keep up with how the graduation requirements are shifting, we take advantage of that time. That's the purpose of the gaps and overlaps. But this process of going through the curriculum mapping also yields opportunities for us to get deeper into uh

068consistency between the classes and uh some of the goals that the board has talked about. And then obviously um if I had to come up with two alliterations in a row, we would say happy, healthy, safe, and smart. And all of the work that we're doing around mental health is around all of those four things. And uh I really appreciate that um we're not just taking a new space uh that we have the advantage of creating around wellness at the high school but now we're partnering with an external organization to say okay how do we maximize the function of this space so that we get the most out of this investment uh for our students. So I'm I'm excited about the the work in progress. We'll be back to you with more updates on where

069uh we stand with the work as time goes on. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Rogers. Okay. Uh we have no legislative items and one discussion item and that's the NISPA proposed resolutions. Um so tonight the board will be reviewing the NISPA business meeting resolutions and these resolutions guide NISPA's advocacy priorities for the coming year and our baseline for tonight's discussion will be the positions taken by the Nassau sulfur school board association at their recent resolution dinner and Mr. Uberlo attended that dinner. We as a board also received a packet of the the proposed uh recommendations. Um so if anyone feels differently about their recommendation uh we can discuss it tonight so that our voting delegate Mr. Rotolo can represent our district's views at the uh business meeting. Okay. Uh Mr. Greco. >> So I'll try

070to limit to just the three where I disagree with um NASA SuffK School Boards Association so we sort of know what the framework is. So the first one would be number 32. Number 32 is the request that NISBA, I I'll shorten this a little bit, advocate for the removal of GMOs, bio-engineered food, heavy metals, and dangerous chemicals from all student meals to protect our children's health. So for some reason, and I think I know the reason, both NISSBA and the National SuffK School Boards Association is not supporting the resolution by NISBA to lobby the state to confirm that those items are not in food. The rationale given by NISBA is that it would be outside the scope of NISBA's advocacy. However, I think we've learned uh over the years that food service is very much

071governed by the state uh and the fed in a lot of ways and that lobbying for better food and more nutritious food to the state is part of our role uh as a board and part of NISB's role in my opinion. And so I'm actually pretty shocked that they did not support this resolution and I think NISBA should absolutely be lobbying the state for more nutritious food. Um, and I would recommend we flip this one and we have Mr. Routollo vote to support number 32 when it comes up at the business meeting. I I don't know if there's a lot of debate on this, but I'd be curious anyone else's thoughts. >> Okay. Uh, does anyone want to uh talk about this one? Mr. >> Ro. So that I agree with you and that was

072um one of the ones that actually even at the dinner was very close when they voted on it. Um I kind of side with Brian. I you know the the the reason I guess that they were kind of saying at the dinner was that we might have then trouble accessing there wouldn't be food that met these criterias. I was like that doesn't make any sense. So, I I 100% agree with you, Brian, that that one was that we should um which I actually I did vote for that one first there. >> Okay. Does everyone have a anyone have a different view, Mr. Ginsburg? >> I don't have a different view. Um I think that it's great to get healthier food out there. I did Did they Were they worried um Tom when you were at

073the dinner that it was just going too broad? They were like, you can't really grasp what they're actually saying and they might have tried to get too many things there. So, they weren't really being so spec specific. I I just trying to get their understanding of it. Okay. >> I just want to make one other point. Uh Tom, this will be Mr. This will be important for you at the meeting. Uh I do think there was some confusion in the language used in the original resolution and then an amended resolution was submitted. So when you're at the business meeting, they're going to put up number 32 and then someone's going to say, "Well, let's put up the amended one." Then they'll vote to put up the amended one, and then you'll vote on the amended

074one. So I think we should support both the original and the amended because they literally just changed up some words to make it more clear, like change the tense of one of the words. >> So just for our purposes, assuming, you know, we're in agreement here, you're going to be supporting this resolution in its original or amended form. >> So we're going to be recommending. >> Yeah. So >> what the amended? Yeah. Original and amended. >> Okay. Are we all good with that? >> Okay. Mr. Roa, please change that. Thank you. >> Yeah. So I want to turn to number 28. This one is that New York State School Boards Association should oppose any policies or regulatory changes to curriculum or standards that does not promote academic excellence expectations and merit-based opportunities for all students.

075I was pretty shocked that this one got another non-support and the rationale for doing it given seem to be and this is what NISBA said. They seem to say that they already promote academic es excellence expectations and merit-based opportunities and that's great and I'm sure the state is focused on that. But to to not have NISBA sort of stay on top of that to make sure that continues seemed to be you know I don't want to use the word disingenuous u it seemed to be that they were saying that the reason NISBA shouldn't be lobbying is because the state is already doing it. I have absolutely no problem for lobbying something the state is already doing to the extent we think it's important just in case the state stops doing it. Uh and I think

076that was the justification for why this resolution was included. So I actually believe we should be supporting this and we should be supporting it and NISSBA can make the determination if they need to lobby if they feel like something is going astray. That's just my take. >> All right. for uh for this particular resolution. Oh, Susan. >> Okay. Oh, sorry. After. Okay. >> Okay. So, for this particular resolution, I do agree that uh um you know, as a school district and and especially the high achieving school district like SAS, we should be uh promoting academic excellence, you know, high expectations and all that merit-based opportunities for all students because we do have very very good education here. And we often say that we're the lighthouse of the uh um in education and academic excellence. Um

077however in my opinion um I do think that there are other factors not just three these three factors. Um and also that the board just passed the goals you know this past spring and it was talking about individualized learning experiences. So I do feel that you know when it comes to ex academic excellence expectations of course we want we want our kids to all achieve that. However we are also talking about that all students to should discover their greatest potentials. Um I don't know pushing just these three things is really helping the kids to achieve their fullest potentials. Um, so in in this one I would go with the resolution dinner to really just let the kids thrive at their speed in their own potential rather than just giving them hey you got to get

07898 on your exams or you know pushing that and that every kid every kid can perform in their own speed and um that's how I see it as supporting you know a holistic education. >> I just want to just counter that. So again, this is a resolution to have a lobbying organization oppose any regulations that do not promote academic excellence. So I agree with everything you said, but I still think NISBA should be lobbying to make sure that the state is focused on academic excellence for all students because this isn't really saying what we are going to do here. This is just a check on our state and our legislature to make sure NISBA is making sure they're not doing things that will hurt a school like Sioset, a high performing district. So that's why

079I think this for us is something we should be supporting. And it's not saying that the state should be changing the way they do things. It's just a check on the state to make sure they continue to do the things that we here in Scio would want them to do. >> Uh Mr. Now go. >> Um, so I mean obviously I don't think any any of us up here um don't want to promote academic excellence, high expectations or merit-based opportunities. Those are obviously three of the most important things in a school district. But I think as Carol said when I I did other reading with the other information that was there. I don't think it was only about supporting those three things. I think that there's other things that we as a school district would

080want to advance. And if if it doesn't, you know, something for a policy for mental health or a policy for, as Carol said, individual learning or there's all kinds of different things that we want to do that might not be specifically academic excellence, high expectations or a merit-based opportunity that we want to use to protect our kids, mental health, what a million different things that we can come up with. And those three things are completely important and we should always do. Right. But the fact that it says that they should oppo oppose any policies or regulatory changes curriculum that don't meet one of those three things, I think severely limits um what you know we can do. And so those three things, no one is going to say that those three three things aren't important,

081but I don't think they're the only things that are important. I think we have other other standards that are important to us as well in addition to those. And that's what and that's why I think that they both the NISSMA committee and the executive committee voted not to recommend it. Not because they don't believe that we need to make sure there's academic excellence and high expectations and merit-based opportunities, but because there's other things there's other factors that we look at in addition to that when we make decisions. >> Dr. Park and Miss Kosha and then Mr. Greco. Um I think it's important for us to give opportunities for students who have different opport different style of learning different emphasis doesn't have to be just academics students going to boseis to learn about different things we

082need to promote that as well and we can't just eliminate those because it's not uh pursuing academ academic excellence and this resolution states it anything that does not promote academic excellence, high expectation, merit based opportunity for students should the NISBA should oppose. I think this is a terrible wording. I think that the way that this resolution is worded is awful because it has two negatives in it and I think it makes it confusing for people when they read it. But it we're really just if you get rid of those double negatives, all it's saying is that um the school boards association should continue to push any programming that would be to help academic excellence, high expectations, and merit-based opportunities for all students being inclusive for all. This just being one part as I'm reading of

083acade of of schooling for children. So obviously like what Susan said, I'm with you on it. There's the social emotional and all that, but I think this is just focusing on the academic part. I don't think it's negating anything on any other part. It's just simply focusing on the academic part. And because it says oppose and does not promote, it kind of, you know, it it it's just worded incorrectly. But I do agree with Mr. Greco. I do think that we should um push for this because why wouldn't the New York State School Boards Association try to continue to push New York State to implement curriculum or standards that does promote academic excellence, high expectations, and merit based opportunities. If you read it in the other way, I think it makes more sense. I'm just

084I'm just saying. >> Mr. Greco, >> let me just put a little bow in it since we might as well just vote. Thank you, Miss Kosia. That's that's what I was trying to get at. I I keep hearing the word us when we talk about these resolutions. These are not applicable to us. These are resolutions that we are voting on that NISBO will have as their position statements when they decide when to and when not to lobby the state government. So this is not we absolutely can continue doing everything we're doing for everybody and we can make decisions when we should focus on academic success and when we should focus on all the other great things we do. This is just putting in a position statement for a lobby group to make sure the state

085doesn't do something that could burn us down the road. And this is a good way of doing it in my opinion and that's why it's put in here. But I think at this point, Miss Chang, maybe we should just vote on it and move on because we could go in circles for a while. Okay, Miss Algo. >> Um, so, so the language is very tricky and so I totally agree. I don't think though that the second um negative negates the opposed. So, because it says should oppose any policies or regulatory changes to curriculum or standards that does not promote academic excellence. the oppose and the um not promote aren't cancelceing each others out. They're how they're written. They're saying the same thing. So, so they're so even though it's not us directly, what they advocate

086for will could potentially eventually come down to us and we'll be held to it. So whether we recommend or don't recommend is important. So it it's it's not enough to say that oh that won't affect us till down the line. I mean, that's why we give our opinions because it affects us. Um, but so I totally agree the language is is confusing, but how I read it at least is that we that they're recommending that they oppose anything that doesn't promote those three things. So if if there's something that doesn't fall into those three categories like Shannie said or I had used mental health or you know any of those things they would have to oppose it is what it's that's how I read it. I don't know if Carol if that's how you read

087it. >> Mr. I just want to be clear with our views and obviously we're in Nassau so you know Nassau and SuffK are equally represented and they have a committee so um and at the resolution dinner that was Nassau and SUFFK who voted. So the executive committee is Nassau suffic committee actually of the of the um the of of their group and then this is basically representative of the other school districts because other board members came and voted. So I just this is like been vetted three times pretty deeply. So and and by the way that's kind of where they stood on this. This is why they didn't recommend for the reason that you said. So I I just want everybody to know that this is like we would be like fourth. >> All right.

088So for this particular one resolution 28 um if you are comfortable to go with the resol resolution dinner recommendation which is not recommended please just show by hand so I can you know one two three four and then I go to go you if you want Mr. Rotolo to recommend this at the business meeting. Just show your hand. One, two, three, four. Wait. >> Oh, >> okay. >> There's no You can't. At one point last year, we amended something last minute in order to and then recommended it. is the if the wording is the problem and we all want to get on the same page. Are there changes we can make to the wording so we can all be on the same changes same page to recommend it? >> We could we could we could

089certainly add the amendment and then have Mr. Rotolo present it at the business meeting and as that way uh but it's up to the uh the business you know the attendees to vote on it. But if anyone has any recommendations for um you know adding the amendment you know please share your thoughts. If not we're not >> I think we should we're at 44. >> We are at 44. So Miss Abraham I so sorry I don't but there we go. So it says curriculum and we do have we do have these standards do exist but maybe we have some wording that says in addition to whole child or whatever language that we think might be something that makes it viable to look at high standards for uh entire person as opposed to only high standards

090in curriculum in um >> students. So if they flip the wording to positive and say we support then it's not any different than what they're doing now. And one example that I can come up with that will totally get crushed by this amendment at this resolution would be uh both having a haircut which they have now. Then the state school board association has to oppose any policies because it does not promote academic excellence, high expectation merit-based opportunity. >> So that is not what we want to support. >> Only the legislature, >> right? Why would we lobby support the lobbyists who will suppress that kind of program? >> They lobbying the legislature. So, if the legislature is passing a law or the ed department is changing the way they're going to I don't know, they're going

091to cap the number of APs that schools can do in the state of New York. This resolution would have NISBA lobby against that legislative action. That's the whole purpose of these resolutions. It's just to lobby. I mean, they can lobby the governor or they can lobby the legislature. So to me maybe high expectations encompasses some of the the outside things that are outside of academic excellence that we put as a whole child. But I I agree with Shnie. What if we made it positive and said we should promote policies that raise standards of academic excellence, high expectations and merit based opportunities. And then that doesn't >> so but it's this if we want to support this maybe we make it the positive so that you can support this but you can also support other things.

092It's just the stance to be that we do support this, but it doesn't take away the fact that we support other programming. I hear what you're saying. >> Does that work? So, let's let's just amend it with new language that I think everyone will be comfortable. The New York State School Boards Association should support any policies or >> just support >> should support want to read it. >> Just say yeah just sorry just say support policies or regulatory ch or regul I would say support policies to curriculum or standards that promote academic excellence, high expectations and merit-based opportunities. I take out all the negative. >> Are we good? So I would say resolve that the New York State School Boards Association should support policies to curriculum or standards that promote academic excellence, high expectations, and

093merit-based opportunities. That's just very open-ended. >> Well, take regulation changes. I mean I would take out any the word any because that mean it's too it's 100% and I don't know that we want to say 100% of anything but it says that we would support policies and regulatory changes to curriculum that promote academic excellence and it doesn't say that we will oppose anything that doesn't Dr. park. >> I think that changes the intention of that resolution. There's no need for us to change the whole language of a resolution that doesn't fit us. All we got to do is vote yes or no on this one. And on this one, by changing that double negative to positive, it's basically changing the whole the intention behind the resolution. And I don't think we need to go that

094far. And by doing that that's not any different than like I said before what they are pursuing now. >> We we did we voted on the existing and we have 44. >> Okay. You know what for this one we we don't >> it's 44. We don't we don't have any consensus. Just >> Yeah. >> Go none. Hold on. >> So wait, so you recommend or not recommend as is? >> Okay. So it's 54. So we are not recommending this. So Mr. Roa, for this one, we are not recommending this. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. >> I'll be real fast on this one. It's number 11. resolve that the New York states association supports the state to safely key word incorporate AI into curriculum and district operations. So this is something NISBA actually supported

095and then its executive committee and then the resolution dinner did not. I don't see any reason why we should not have or we should not be pushing NISBA to lobby to make sure the state handles the implementation of AI correctly and safely and doesn't just blow it off and do nothing for the next 5 years. So this is exactly the kind of thing that NISBA should be lobbying. This is vague enough where we don't have to worry it's going to do something in a way we're going to disagree with. I think it's a little strange and I'd love to know if if Mr. RTO has the reasons why Nassau Suffk said no when NISBA said yes. So I would recommend this one which isn't really flipping because NISBA originally had this as a recommend. >>

096Okay. I agree with this one that we should recommend change the NRTR and um at the April 25 uh board meeting we just had this whole long presentation on AI and today again we saw the uh the AI pilot 2.0. Um, so I mean, you know, we are a leading district in terms of when it comes to AI and there's no reason for us to stop doing it. So that's just my opinion and I don't know how the rest of the board feels about this. So I agree also that we should be supporting uh for number 11. I think the fact that they write safely incorporate AI is a positive. When you read the rationale behind it, it sounds like um they are concerned about safely incorporating, but it says the word safely. So, I'm

097not sure why they would vote against it. But um I think they were they also had mentioned a few things about being concerned about uh data privacy statutes, regulations, and things like that. But again, the fact that the word uh safely is in there, I think we should support it as well. >> Yeah. And that was the issue with the Nassau suffk was about the the um the data security and stuff. That was their that was their why they voted um not to recommend. That was exactly why. >> So we all good for >> are we all good on this one to recommend? >> Okay. So those two recommend >> one one. Okay. Five. Okay. We have five. So change that to recommend. Okay. Okay. Mr. Geko, >> before you summarize what Mr. Rotolo said

098to do, um there was one thing that was interesting to me. So, in the past, I feel like I read a lot of the NISB emails and we get a ton of them. Get one almost every single day. They never really set forth where they are with their lobby efforts, right? So, there's stuff they're lobbying for that's very important to us and we don't even see it happening. And one of the bylaw changes that were amended. I don't really see a lot of the bylaw changes in the past, but this year couple of school districts asked to change the NISBA bylaw. So this is the bylaws at which NISBA operates. So how decisions are made and how they communicate those decisions to their members, including us. And they ask in bylaw change one to have

099the board of NISBA provide a summary report by email to all members at least once every two weeks. And God knows they write us every day. The report shall detail any lobbying and advocacy efforts undertaken by NISBA in support of official positions previously adopted by them. So in other words, if they have a position statement based on a resolution and they're lobbying to do that, right, make the food safer, they would then put in their reports to us that they are actually meeting with the food committee of the legislature. Dr. Rogers, correct me if I'm wrong. There probably is none. But if there was one and they were meeting with them, they would let us know they're doing it. So, I actually think that's a pretty creative way to hold NISBA accountable for these uh

100positions that they're going to take that they're actually doing the lobbying. And since they do so many emails and give us so much of an advocacy update on a regular basis, this would be a way they would just do it. And I think it's a easy flip from a NR to R, I heavily doubt it will pass. Uh, but I think it's worth at least making that point that we actually agree that they should be reporting their lobbying efforts to us. >> Okay. Anyone else? Mr. Ginsburg. >> I I want to second that. I think it'll be nice in order to get some progress reports on it. Um, also the third proposed amendment is very similar to the first one. It just doesn't ask for as many. It asks for once every quarter and maybe

101a couple other minor details. So, I don't know if we're able to even try to flip one and three just in case one of them goes more than the other one just to show that we actually won something. Um, but that's what I noticed also. >> Okay. So, going back to number one, how do you feel about changing NRTR? >> Just one, >> two. Okay. One, two. >> Yeah. The bylaw one. One, two, three, four. Okay, we got five. So, Mr. Rotolo, that was going to be uh recommend. That's the uh proposed bylaw number one. Okay. And for number three, let me see. Number three, u Mr. Ginsburg brought up the number three to change from NR to R. And how do we feel about that? One, >> two, >> three. >> Okay. All right.

102So for by law number three also. Okay. >> Okay. Dr. Park number 14. Um resolved that the New York State Bo Association shall advocate for ad uh amendment to New York State Education Department regulations to allow a set amount of daily recess time up to 30 minutes per day to count toward required instructional hours for elementary students. If they add that the um the program the outdoor re or recess daily recess is uh super structured uh planned and organized by the administration and appropriately monitored by staff. Then counting that toward education time I think will be effective way of spend uh spending time. children will have less issues during recess and it could be a fun time for the kids to have wonderful time recess and learning um whatever their administration has uh planned for

103that session. >> Mr. Greco. >> So whenever I see NISBA support something and then Nassau SuffK School Boards Association not support something, it usually puts up the radar that there's probably a local reason why they didn't support it. But unfortunately the paperwork we have only tells us the rationale for NISBA supporting it. We don't get the rationale for Nassau suff unless unless Mr. Bola you remember it. I think the issue on this resolved around that for it to really count as instructional hours now you need a teacher there and this would be like now you'd have to change the teacher's contract for them to have instructional hours to teach. >> See if it's not if it doesn't jump out at me as being obvious why Nassau SuffK said no when NISBA which represents the entire

104state says yes I usually defer to Nassau Suffk because there probably was a local reason. So, I think I'd have to, you know, respectfully, Shaunie, say no to this one. Keep it the way it is because NASO sufficing this that we just don't know about. Are we going with recommend or not recommend? >> Can we get a just can I just get a you know not recommend to go with Nestle SuffK school association? >> I want to keep it the way it is. >> Keep it the way it is. Right. >> Keep it the way it is. >> Not recommend >> to not recommend. >> Not recommend. >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. Okay. So that one. So Mr. Rotolo that one's going to be not recommend. Okay. >> Yep. Okay. All right. Any other

105resolutions that uh we want to discuss? Okay. Okay. So, we have a lot of changes. Mr. Rotolo, please represent us our um stance at the uh business meeting. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And uh we have no unfinished business and we are going to do our new business and 138 is the approval of staff changes. Can I have a motion please? Uh Miss Valov, seconded by Miss Levitan. Are there any questions? All in favor? opposed. Any abstensions? 13B is the approval of statements and hourly rates 2025 2026. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Roberto seconded by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 13 C is the approval of coaching recommendations. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Koshia, second by Mr. Ginsburg. Are there any questions? All in favor?

106Opposed? Any abstensions? 13D is the appointment of title 9 coordinators. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Mr. Einson. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 13E is the abolishment and appointment of position administration. Canable motion, please. Miss Koshia, second by Miss Falov. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 13F is the verification of memorandum of agreement summer school. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 13G is the ratification of a memorandum of agreement. Tutors. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Koshia, second by Mr. Ginsburg. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 13H is the approval of supervision of student teachers. Can I have a motion, please?

107Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Mr. Greco. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 13 I and 13J can be taken together. They are the examination of school district employee. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Koshia, second by Mr. Fal, Miss Falov. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 14A and 14B can be taken together. They're the approval of the committee on preschool special education and the committee on special education recommendations. Can I have a motion, please? Dr. Park, second by Mr. Rotolo. Can I have a motion, please? Oh, I miss um any questions? Sorry about that. All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 13 C is the approval of destruction of October 1st, 2024 cast ballots. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Koshia. Second by Miss Levitan. Are there

108any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 14D is the authorization of undue burton independent evaluation hardship waiver for district certification. Can have a motion, please, Mr. Rotolo. Second by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15A is the authorization of service contract. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Koshia, second by Mr. Ginsburg. Can I Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15B is the authorization for special education and or nursing contracts. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, second by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15 C is the acceptance of audit report. Can I have a motion, please, Miss Koshia, second by Mr. Ginsburg. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15D is award

109of Nassau County Director of School Facilities Purchasing Consortion Cooperative Bids 2025 2026. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Miss Abramson. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15E is the bid for Janasian HVAC replacement at AP Willis Elementary School contract M4, general construction work for Traditional Air Conditioning, Inc. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Falco, seconded by Miss Koshia. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15F is the award for gyasium HVAC replacement at HBT contract M1 general construction work to intricate solutions. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Mr. Greco. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15G is the award of bids for gymnasium HVAC replacement at Southwest Middle School contract M2 general construction work to

110traditional air conditioning inc. Can I have a motion please? Miss Koshia seconded by Miss Levitan. Are there any questions? All in favor opposed any abstensions. 15H is the award of bids for gymnasium HVAC replacement at Village Elementary School contract M3 general construction work to traditional air conditioning inc. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Greckle, seconded by Miss Abramson. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15 I is the approval of student club charters 2025 2026. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Levitton, second by Mr. Ginsburg. Can I have a Can I uh any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 15J is the approval of student group charters 2025 2026. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed?

111Any abstensions? 15K is the approval of dispos disposal of broken surplus and or obsolete equipment, supplies, and books. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Koshia, seconded by Miss Valov. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? We have no audience to the public today. And this will conclude our uh October Board of Education meeting. Can I just have a motion to uh adjourn the meeting, Mr. Rotolo? Second by Miss Einson. Okay. Thank you so much. And the next next meeting is going to be November 17th. And uh we'll see you then. Thank you.