001over. Let me know. My college Is it I don't know. in my neighborhood. American But then Elementary school. And then we're not all It's a nice And I never status on it. Pretty Wonderful. First day of day. entire school. No, I'm good. Okay, good evening everyone. Uh, welcome to our um, April Board of Education meeting and apologize for the wait uh, for now. Can everyone please stand for the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Please take a seat. Okay. And we are going to begin our meeting with the approval of the uh minutes of the uh March 10th uh 2025 monthly meeting and the March 18th 2025
002special meeting. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Ro seconded by Deto Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. And um we are going to have Mr. Ostrich uh to uh report on the citizen finance committee. Thanks Mr. Chair. Uh at the citizens finance committee again we discussed insurance. It is a popular topic because it is of incredible interest to us. Uh we uh went over the fact that our RFP is out for insurance and expected back in May. I also believe um that we discussed uh the providers on NASA county, the fact that um NICER has um almost all of the districts on Nassau County are the clients um of Nicer. Uh I think we also went over the discussion that we were going to begin interviewing insurance companies
003to make recommendations to the board similar to how we made recommendations around the allocation to NY class for our uh reserves in terms of the interest expense the interest that we could be collecting. I don't know if you guys remember that uh the finance committee interviewed a number of potential providers and it uh yielded a very um beneficial interest uh revenue source for us uh last year was like one and three/4 million is that something so um the uh finance committee uh continues to show its worth. It's a very good collaborative uh opportunity for the board and the community to work together and there's a ton of really talented and exceptional people who are dedicated and continue to show up at those meetings and their recommendations for the board. Uh I expect to continue to
004be um similarly outstanding. Um I think that was really uh the summary of the meeting. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Astrich for um for the report. And the next item will be Dr. Rufol. when we have the treasures report and appropriation adjustments. Okay. Um as indicated in the treasures report, the cash on hand for the month end February 2025 was 89,618,3208. It shows that bank balances for all the cash accounts were reconciled to the book balances and were collateralized in accordance with the district's banking agreements and investment policy. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Rufol. And uh can we uh can we have approval of treasures report and appropriations adjustment? Can I have a motion, please? Miss Levitan, second by Miss Falco. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any
005abstension? And the next item on the agenda is going to be the AI pilot uh presentation. U Dr. Rogers. Thank you very much. So, as the team is getting ready to present to you, uh, as the board knows, we've been, uh, working on pilot projects around, uh, artificial intelligence and education. Uh, we're excited to report to you on the, uh, progress of those pilot projects. I think our team has done some amazing work uh, that we're very proud of and very proud to show you. And I'll just tee this up with a little story. Uh, I've been now at Sciosa for almost 11 years. And the very first year that I was here, uh, about two months into the school year, I went with the board to the New York State School Boards Association conference
006and all of the board members and I were just going to the sessions that interested us. I walked into a session on technology and education that was hosted by Apple Computer. And as I looked around the room, I saw eight of the nine Sioset board members in the room. Uh, not coordinated. Did it just sort of happen that way? And I said to myself, "Oh, there's a board goal around technology sitting right in this room." So it was clear to me that that board was interested in technology. And even though every member on the board has changed since then, the board's interest in technology has not changed since then. The other thing that has changed since then is what technology in education means. And technology and education, the work that we were doing then was
007around uh getting devices into more students hands. The work that uh technology and education is going to be about for uh the next foreseeable future is certainly going to be about incredibly powerful tools that can help teachers do more work, help students, uh work better, uh and can open up possibilities that we haven't even thought of yet. So, uh with all that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Steinberg, uh who with many people has been leading this work, uh but he's going to kick us off. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Rogers. Miss Chang, the entire board of education, uh, not only for the opportunity to present this exciting work to you tonight, but for supporting this work, uh, throughout the year. It's been, uh, it's been a lot of fun for us. Uh, we've been doing
008a lot of learning. So, we're really excited to share this with you. Um, you're going to hear tonight from a number of different u members of our uh, our staff and our faculty who are going to share with you uh, the why behind our work. They're going to share with you the process of how we uh went about doing this work and then they're going to share the great outcomes in a very short amount of time that they've been able to uh to uh uh uh you know get here. So um we're excited to begin. So um we always begin this sort of work we ground it in our mission statement uh where we look at that the district has prepared students to thrive in both the future we imagine and one which may evolve
009in ways yet to be envisioned. And we intentionally underline that last part may evolve in ways yet to be envisioned because we actually thank the board for their work on this mission statement because it really provides us a guiding light and it and and it's a challenge in some degree because how do you teach students to be uh ready for a a future that we can't even see? And and when we look at this and we look at that word evolve, we kind of think of well, we've got to then equip them with skills and the skills that are going to allow them to adapt to whatever the future's going to be. So it's not necessarily teaching them about any particular content area necessarily, but yet equipping them with the skills so they can adapt
010and apply the knowledge that they're gaining to whatever the environment is that they're going to encounter 10, 20, 30 years down the road. And we look at those skills. We specifically are focusing on skills like curiosity, mental flexibility. We want to talk about persistent uh risktaking, compassion, critical thinking, creativity, and of course collaboration. So with that said, I'm going to invite Dr. Bojuk to come up and talk more about the board goals and these individual skills. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. Good evening, everybody. Um, as I want to echo Mr. Steinberg and Dr. Rogers in saying that um our educators are really phenomenal. So, you're in for a real treat this evening to hear what they have to say. Um as Mr. Steinberg said, we really are very mindful, always thinking about our mission and then
011really incorporating the goals that you've worked so hard to um encompass together. So thinking about the board goals that you've just shared and how this pilot demonstrates those pieces of the goals specifically creating those individualized learning experiences for students. Um creating an open-minded opportunities for students where they can explore new ideas and new perspectives. um looking at utilizing and fostering um you know technology in a way that promotes critical thinking um and creativity through collaboration, fostering wellness, balance, an appreciation of multiple perspectives. So as we go through the pilots, you'll see that the board goals are deeply reflected in everything that we've done within that. We also take a look always at our why. looking at our instructional why as well as our technology why and our obligation that we have to prepare our students
012to be responsive to this everchanging world to be adaptable to have agency over their learning and you'll see these wise interwoven into the pilots um that are demonstrated this evening. So, at this point, I'd like to welcome up Miss Christine Payne, um, our director of instructional administrative technology. Thank you, Janette. Good evening. Um, it's been 10 years with Dr. Rogers with the technology workg group. We started in 2014, and I really want to thank the board for allowing us to do all this amazing work over the past 10 years. Um it's really been very gratifying and um very exciting. The teachers have always risen to the challenge and I'm so very proud to be here tonight with our new AI committee and pilot participants. Uh just a little trip down memory lane. In 2014, Dr.
013Rogers asked two questions of the technology committee. Where are we now and where do we want to go from here? With those two questions in mind, we um started off looking at instruction, technology, and professional learning. Our initial pilots empower empowered teachers to experiment, engage in meaningful conversations, and to think innovatively. By 2016, we launched pilots 2.0, 0 which we named adjacency pilots, expanding on our work and resulting in over 80 new projects in the district. In 2017, we began the implementation phase of the workg group, rebuilding our infrastructure and integrating our pilot projects into our instructional practices. In phase two, we provided devices for all our students, re-imagined libraries, and introduced flexible learning spaces with new technologies. Our robotics program and coding opportunities further broadened our learning experiences. In the spring of 2019, we
014rebooted the technology workg group, focusing on digital resources, privacy, and security, and professional learning. The pandemic in 2020 showed our strong technology foundation, allowing us to quickly transition to virtual learning. We were ready. Beginning in 2022, we continue to enhance classroom technology while actively increasing awareness in data privacy and how to create safe learning spaces. Now with the advancements of AI tools, we pivot and lean into this work with the formation of the AI steering committee composed of teachers and administrators from all levels. I'm pleased to turn over the podium to Kelly Folkanos, our staff developer, who will continue our journey with our AI pilots. Thank you, Christine. I'll share the sentiments with I share the same sentiments as Christine, Dave, and Janette as well that this has truly been rewarding work and I'm so
015proud here to stand here tonight in front of everyone to share what we've done so far. So, with the inception of the AI steering committee in the fall, we immediately took a deep dive into the understanding of how AI, this new, exciting, and promising technology, could be leveraged in education to support our district's mission, curriculum, and instruction. In September, we began exploring generative AI tools using Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini, both of which have data privacy and security safeguards in place for our district users. Our first task was to develop an understanding of responsible and ethical use around AI and to raise awareness of the potential biases that are inherent within these AI tools. In October, we began to provide direct training and prompt literacy, which put the educator at the center of our work.
016By crafting a detailed prompt and including attachments for AI to reference, a prompt became an effective way to brainstorm ideas quickly that were aligned to the teacher's instructional goals. The steering committee carefully reviewed proposals from across the district and projects were approved. We quickly moved into providing professional development on data privacy and security, responsible and ethical use and prompt literacy. In January, all pilot participants received a Google Gemini license and began exploring how AI could support their curriculum and instruction. During this period of exploration, there was trial and error, success and challenges. But across all groups, the exploration grew rapidly. As our prompting skills developed, the tools were the tools had evolved as well, allowing us to do more than where we started in January. The pilot teams had frequent opportunities to check in with
017each other to learn how they were leveraging AI. We shared our prompts, processes, and the different ways teachers incorporated their output into materials and resources to support their students. In less than 100 days, from January to March, we had evidence that Google Gemini could amplify instruction. Teachers came together in an AI pilot showcase in March to the to share their successes with Google Gemini. Now, I'd like to introduce Kylen Veriline, our elementary technology support specialist. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you, members of the board. Thank you, Dr. Rogers, for this opportunity. Uh, what was amazing about this was that through the approval of 32 AI pilot projects that involved 94 teachers across all schools and departments, our district is advancing instructional innovation aligned to both instructional and the board of education goals. These pilots emphasize learning
018design, differentiation, sorry, I knew I was going to mess that word up, instructional support, and datainformed practices, all grounded in the educator in the loop approach where teachers guide AI tools with intention and clarity by designing experiences that promote wellness, balance, and multiple perspectives. Educators are fostering a collaborative culture and creating indiv individ individualized learning opportunities that meet diverse student needs. This initiative reflects our commitment to evolving technologies and cult cultivating the skills and mindset students need to thrive in an everchanging world. I'm going to bring it back to Kelly. Okay. To better understand our AI implementation, let's look at a draft of our AI theoretical framework. When partnering with AI in our work, educators can leverage AI to engage with curriculum more deeply. This framework allows us to reflect on our various use cases
019with AI. First, AI can streamline tasks, creating more time for educators to focus on curriculum design and implementation. And these examples or these use cases fall on the left side of the spectrum where AI helps educators complete tasks tasks efficiently. This newfound time allows for more thoughtful and elevated engagement with their curriculum. Second, on the right side of the spectrum, you'll see that AI can act as a thought partner, helping educators to critically examine their existing work and explore new, more advanced approaches. You'll see that our pilots span the spectrum and in all instances, the teacher was at the center of the work, facilitating instruction and using AI as a partner to their work. So, now we're at the fun part. We'd like to share with you a few highlights from our AI pilot showcase
020that took place in March. You'll note a few key takeaways from our uh next speakers. So, the AI pilot program has unleashed a wave of teacher-driven innovation, which empowers educators to leverage AI in diverse and creative ways to enhance their teaching practices. From generating engaging content to personalized learning experiences and streamlining workflows, AI is transforming the role of the teacher, allowing for greater efficiency, personalization, and innovation in the classroom. I'm thrilled to introduce two incredible fifth grade teachers who have been at the heart of this work. Victoria Greco from Willlets and Justine Constantinites from Berry Hill. Good evening members of the board, Dr. Rogers and central administration. My name is Victoria Greco. I am presenting tonight with my colleague Justine Constantinites. Together we represent the dedicated fifth grade teams from both AP Willlets and Berry
021Hill Elementary which also includes Lorraineis, Laura Albanesey's, Nicole Cordella, Megan Molina, and Stephanie Luna. We are excited to share with you our innovative AI pilot program this evening. A program that highlights the power powerful synergy between artificial intelligence and the indispensable expertise of experienced educators. Our pilot program centers around an interdisciplinary Shark Tank project-based learning unit. This innovative unit began with a seed of an idea, a desire to engage our fifth grade students in entrepreneurial thinking. With the power of AI, we were able to take this initial concept and amplify it, generating a truly enriching learning unit. This approach directly aligns with the board's academic goals of cultivating collaboration through experience. As AI helped us establish a comprehensive backwards design framework based on our desired learning outcomes and goals. It's essential to emphasize that while
022AI served as a powerful starting point, its output required our expert human insight to ensure that the framework was relevant and applicable to our unique learning environment. We then leveraged our joint teaching experience and deep understanding of our students to adapt this framework. This critical human element allowed us to refine the unit into six objectives: interviewing, research, idea generation, product development, marketing, and pitch sales, ensuring they were not only ambitious, but also realistically achievable and meaningful for our fifth graders. AI provided a foundation, but our teaching expertise shaped it into a truly effective learning experience. As previously touched upon, throughout the Shark Tank project, a key insight emerged that quality of AI output is intrinsically linked to the quality of human input. Both teachers and students have been actively cultivating the crucial skill of effective
023prompting. Keeping in mind the board's goal of fostering a collaborative culture, this slide provides an example of a prompt that was utilized to generate a 10 question Google form with the end goal of grouping students mindfully for this project. As you can see, being specific is crucial when it comes to utilizing platforms such as Gemini. By providing clear, precise instructions, AI was able to better understand the task and generate more relevant results, such as the question shown at the bottom left. The data collected from the Google form was then uploaded back into Gemini, which analyzed the information with some additional teacher prompting. Gemini then suggested groups that were differentiated by various strengths and abilities to enhance learning sense of community and to ultimately improve our academic outcomes. A sample of the output for this is
024shown at the bottom right. So where do we go from here? We recognize that the project success required diverse skills and we are now extending our resources beyond AI. While our strengths as educators lie in pedagogy, entrepreneurship is not our primary domain. Having leveraged AI to a significant extent, we identified the need to seek guidance in this specific area. This led to an exciting collaboration with Dr. Prento and the virtual enterprise teachers at Sioid High School, creating a valuable bridge between our elementary and our high school students. We will continue to strategically utilize Gemini throughout this project and to further develop and enhance this dynamic unit. We are excited for the steps ahead and believe this pilot offers valuable insights into the future of innovative learning. Thank you. It is my pleasure to now introduce
025Tyler Dental Core, second grade teacher from Robins Lane. Good evening. My name is Tyler Jenncore and I'm a second grade teacher at Robins Lane. I want to start by thanking the board and Dr. Rogers for the opportunity to share tonight about an exciting project that myself and my colleagues have been working on. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of my team, including Jessica Robbano, Christina Sacko, and Melanie Spiegel. We were thrilled when we initially heard about the district's interest in exploring how AI can be used to benefit our instruction and our students experiences. I started by thinking about my current students and their needs. I thought about a few students in my second grade class who were reading far below grade level expectations. I was struggling to find books that matched their reading level, which would
026also foster their love and enjoyment of reading. Our idea was born from there. What if we were able to utilize AI programs like Google Gemini to create decodable texts that were leveled appropriately for students like these, but also had a storyline that matched their personal interests. We got to work collaborating with each other to develop prompts that we thought were detailed enough to get a good response and product from Gemini. But even with our detailed prompts, the results generated by Gemini still didn't meet our standards and expectations. We wondered what if we provided Gemini with evidence-based research on characteristics of good decodable texts. I moved over to Google Scholar searching for scholarly articles and academic papers which which explained detailed criteria for strong decodable texts. I then uploaded them directly to Gemini and asked Gemini
027to explain what it learned from them and the criteria for evaluating the quality of decodable texts. From there, I simply asked Gemini to create a decodable text with a storyline about cats, keeping that criteria in mind. The result was far superior to what Gemini initially produced for us. But we still had to take the story that Gemini developed and make it a book that would be presentable to our students. I copied the story that Gemini gave me and moved it over to a template that we created in Canva. Canva utilizes its own AI model which can be used to generate images that we could use for each page of the story. With these two programs in unison, we were able to create a printable book that we could actually give to our students. There are
028still obstacles and challenges that our team is working through. While Canva was able to generate pictures that we could use for our stories, each picture is different and we haven't been able to create images with the same main character consistently across each page. But I think the biggest thing that we realized was the benefits of uploading documents directly to Gemini in order to get the end result that we were looking for. Once we understood that, our project began to expand into other areas. I used the phonics program foundations in my classroom and wanted to explore how Gemini could create books with specific phonics skills that match what my students were learning in our current foundations unit. I simply found documents that included the words that Foundations uses to teach each specific phonics skill, uploaded it
029to Gemini, told it what unit my students were working on, and had to generate a story from there. I copied it into the template we made in Canva, how to generate images, and now we were learning how to streamline the process and create books for different uses more quickly and efficiently. My colleagues who work on other grade levels quickly adapted this process to meet their own needs. Within a few hours, we had a kindergarten level text focusing on CBC words and a fourth grade level text to match a current social studies unit with an attached comprehension quiz generated by Gemini as well. While our project expanded into way more than we initially anticipated, our final goal was achieved. These texts were printed and put into the hands of our students. My student, who loves cats,
030now had a book personally leveled for her that matched her interests. All of my students now had a book to read that aligned with our current foundations unit. We used AI to generate books that students would enjoy, and we got those books directly into their hands. My team and I are extremely grateful that the district gave teachers the opportunity to explore how artificial intelligence can be used to benefit our instruction and our students learning experiences. This pilot generated a ton of interest and excitement between educators in our building and most importantly the children of Robins Lane. We simply can't wait to see where our project takes us next. I'm excited to introduce Alexandra Garin, seventh grade science teacher at HBT Middle School. Good evening everyone. My name is Alex Garin and I'm a seventh grade
031science teacher at HBT. Thank you all for the opportunity to allow us to explore and utilize AI to benefit our students. I am excited to present on behalf of the seventh grade science team at HBT, including Christa Hatchadorian and Nicole Moscow Delgado. The revamp of our curriculum has been ongoing since the introduction of Next Generation Science Standards. We've done about three summers of curriculum writing in order to get our curriculum up to those standards. As our alignment has continued, we had the need for a new project to allow students to be creative and explore unique and diverse ecosystems while incorporating the content from our new science standards. This concept of understanding includes abiotic and biotic factors, organism role in ecosystems or niche, feeding relationships, geographic factors that impact ecosystem climates, etc. Initially, we told Gemini
032to produce a project for us about ecosystems, but its first suggestion was not the direction we wanted. We can see the first prompt here on the screen. So, we pivoted using our professional lens and gave II concept of creating a travel brochure inspired by our daily interactions with students. Students often comment on the images around my classroom of ecosystems and national parks around the world. So, we wanted to incorporate their passion and excitement for exploration with their standards. Our project description is here incorporating multiple steps and broken down so that students could understand each part of the project. We also put this into Gemini and asked it to create graphic organizers and rubrics for students and they were able to utilize all those artifacts to create their project. The project not only incorporated the use
033of those standards but gave students the opportunity to reinforce vocabulary. Students continue to reference the project even though we completed it a few weeks ago during our discussions of ecosystems in the classroom. For example, students weren't formally introduced to the term apex predator at the time of the project, but many of them discovered that their focus organisms were apex predators, and now they have a self-derived example to help them understand that concept as we continue to learn. Here is an example of three panels of the final project of one of our students. We ended with a gallery walk of all student brochures, and students were really impressed with each other's work. Looking ahead, we hope to use Gemini to incorporate cross-curricular content with other subjects on this project. In English, they could do the research
034and the writing portion. In social studies, we can incorporate the five themes of geography or civil action. Should an organism be added or removed from an endangered species list? And what qualifies an organism to be an endangered species? In math, we can calculate the ratio of the number of organisms of a species to the amount of habitat space available in that national park. The science team has also been working um in a completely different area apart from projects. We've been utilizing AI to create assessments focusing on the use of evidence. This has been vital because students will be required to provide evidence on regent exams and it will be required for students to analyze graphs and images. So here are two examples. The first initial image is what Microsoft co-pilot was able to create when
035we asked it to come up with a predator prey graph. Unfortunately, Gemini is not great at creating images, which has been um a little bit of a hindrance for us, especially on the science team where we need graphs. We thought that the first graph was inappropriate for seventh grade students that is as it is confusing to read. So, we came back and told Gemini that we needed a graph that was appropriate for seventh grade students. And the second image is what you see that co-pilot was able to create. The seventh grade science team is very excited to continue to use I AI in our adjustment to next generation science standards and we're very excited to see where it goes. I would now like to introduce Dave Seyberg speaking on behalf of the Sioset High School
036English Department. Thank you very much. Um, I'm actually here to speak specifically uh for Caroline Politus who unfortunately had a conflict and couldn't be here but uh she did want to share her work with the board uh because uh it's pretty impressive what she's able to accomplish. So I'm going to read what she shared with me um as as if I was Caroline. So uh please bear with me. Thank you. Uh good evening. My name is Caroline Pedus. It's it's actually Dave Steinberg. I'm an English teacher at the high school. Unfortunately, I'm unable to be uh here in person, but I'm happy to present my team's work. I worked with Alex Herbert from the business department and Tracy Bryce in the English department in the high school on using Gemini to provide writing feedback to
037our students. We know that mo the most effective writing instruction requires frequent and timely feedback to our students. However, depending on the type of assignment and the number of kids on our rosters, timely feedback is a significant challenge. So, we thought, let's see what AI Gemini can do for us. In our first trials, which you see on the on the screen there, we uploaded our department writing rubric to Gemini in an effort to train the AI engine on our SIASA created rubric. We then plugged in a student writing sample and asked Gemini to provide writing feedback using the SIASID rubric. The feedback that it returned was, well, pretty good. It was specific. It was relevant. However, the teacher still has had to read all of the essays. the teacher still had to read through whatever
038feedback AI provided uh to make sure it's exactly right. So, in the end, it didn't save the teacher really any time. There was really no efficiency uh there. We concluded that while it would make a nice tool for students to refine their writing during the writing process, it wasn't saving us any time in their grading. So what's interesting here, I'll just editorialize that is in this particular project, although uh Caroline and her team set out to really try to grade student work with this, they realized that wasn't worth the time to do that. But what they were able to discover was potentially they've created a tool for students to use to self assess their own work. So in the process of them now creating their work, they could plug it in against the rubric and
039get a sense of am I really getting this right before they actually finally submit that. So um it's interesting to see and we're going to we've been seeing that throughout uh the projects. So that was their first example. The second example and I'll go on in Caroline's voice. At this point we shifted our focus to writing instruction. We wanted to see if Gemini could help us provide targeted individualized instruction based on skill levels. So, we plugged in the following prompt. You are a high school English teacher and you have a student who has trouble writing topic sentences that respond to all aspects of the writing prompt. Come up with a mini lesson and writing exercise to help her. In response, Gemini returned a mini lesson that hit upon all aspects of the prompt and offered
040a strategy along with a model. Upon analysis, the strategy provided was reasonable and the model was simple and accessible to students. I had to prompt it to make it to make changes to the text it referenced in the model and the lessons needed a little more depth, but it was a good starting point to build on. In the final trial, I focused on students who were struggling the most with writing and whom I've tried various supports with little success. I was much more detailed for this prompt, asking Gemini, "You are a special education coordinator." And a high school student's English teacher noticed that he is having trouble with writing expression, particularly with composing paragraphs that effectively respond to prompts, with organizing his thoughts in a coherent response, and with clearly explaining how his evidence supports
041his claims. The teacher has tried creating checklist of things the student should include in his paragraphs and providing graph graphic organizers to aid in creating a fluid response. The student has not had success with either of these supports. suggest an alternative support for teachers for the teacher to try with this student. Gemini recommended modeling a think aloud and collaborative collaboratively composing a paragraph. And these are excellent approaches, but in a class of 30, the one-on-one attention this approach requires isn't really feasible. So, I had Gemini modify uh by generating the questions that would simulate the think aloud. This way, the student has the prompts on a worksheet to use for support during a writing task. So, uh, some of Caroline's key learnings and her team key learnings and takeaways included collaborating with colleagues is the
042best practice as they are the experts. But when scheduling makes collaboration challenging, AI is a good substitute. It makes a great thought partner that fosters creativity. AI is never perfect, always needing refinement, but a great tool for generating ideas on how to personalize instruction, targeting particular skills, and for creating or curating resources for instruction. So what's what's great about this project and and the many iterations um that Caroline and her team went through is that some of it worked, some of it didn't. There were failures, there were some successes and uh you know just to bring back an earlier point, all of this work that we've been hearing about all this happened in 100 days. Um and it's pretty impressive and and the group here, we talk often about um what does all of this
043work look like in a year from now? What does it look like two years from now? So with that, I'll uh ask uh Dr. Rojik to come back up. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. So, as you can see, um the work from our educators is really remarkable. Um as Mr. Steinberg said, you know, three months we they received their Gemini licenses in January and through those three months, you can see that these pilots, 32 pilots, 94 educators, the impact that this has made in just three short months is really quite remarkable. you know, the opportunity to build and develop and increase um our professional capacity around the responsible and ethical use of AI has been remarkable. We've had opportunities to enhance and tailor learning experiences specifically to engage students in the work to make learning relatable,
044fun, engaging, personalized, individualized. We want to deepen connections. So we're looking at ways in which not only have connections amongst our educators been deepened but looking at it from a K to2 vertical alignment and thinking about how you know with example to the Shark Tank how our virtual enterprise students are now mentoring our fifth grade students looking at how we elevate the learning amongst our learning community and in three short months that impact really has been quite remarkable. So with regard to next steps, okay, so as we've been saying, this is really just the beginning of the work. So um we're using all of this and with the 32 projects, you heard a sampling of those projects and I wish we had enough time to share all 32 uh because they're just unbelievable the work
045that's coming out of this and it's really motivating. And one of the the the takeaways that we all had from this is that it wasn't so much about AI. When you have 94 teachers working on 32 projects and then we brought them together to share out, it was the connections people were making with each other, the building of community across the entire district, it was amazing. People were were were deepening their relationships with one another. Um and and that's really where the excitement was coming from. It wasn't coming necessarily from the AI. It was coming from, wow, I what you do in fifth grade, I might be able to do that in 10th grade kind of thing. Um which was great. So we're taking that and launching that. Um when we get into our superintendent
046conference days in August, uh we're going to be facing this to the entire faculty. So we'll be sharing out all 32 projects with the faculty giving now the entire faculty opportunity to engage with the pilot participants give them now an arena to talk about the work that they've done to share it with their colleagues and we'll also be providing training in Gemini to the entire faculty on the basic use of Gemini uh and also the responsible and ethical use as well with that focus on discrimination and bias because um as we know these technologies have that inherently in them and so we want to make sure that uh you know we are using it appropriately ly. And again, this is all for teachers use. We're not facing this to the kids. This is all for
047for our teachers to be using. We're going to look to support a 2.0 version of this pilot next year, invite more people into uh into piloting this this uh this technology and see where that goes from there. And as we do that, we continue to explore where our studentf facing Ed Law 2D digital resources are right now. So the students really don't have really any kind of facing tool within the district. We know they're using it outside the district, but within the district, um, they really don't have any facing tools. They use Canva, which has some AI image production, uh, that they have access to, but there is no large language model models that they're they're able to use. They can't use Gemini or Co-Pilot or any of those things. Um, and even with the
048teacher resources, there's a there's a handful of other AI other digital resources, I should say, that have AI components. So you might have heard of things like Cahoot and uh and and Near Pod and Perdeck and these sort of tools. They're all beginning to embed that uh and and it's helping of course with the teachers to do that. So um that's that's our goal for our next steps as we continue uh with this work and again only 100 days. So um we're excited to see you know what the coming months and years bring with the work. And before we conclude the presentation, we absolutely have to just, you know, thank all the people. You heard uh all these wonderful people talk about their projects, their work. Um and we often say, you know, around here
049it takes a teacher. Um this this work doesn't happen without without our wonderful teachers, their commitment to our students and commitment to this work. Um and to and take a night off and come here and do something like this. And also to the other 90 plus teachers who were in this pilot who weren't going to come here tonight. uh but we we do have to thank them as well. So, thank you for listening. We appreciate it. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you so much for the work. Definitely very impressive and I love seeing the building collaborations of all the teachers and then all the communications really wonderful. And at this point, are there any questions from the board for the team? Uh Mr. Ostrich and then Mr. Rotolo. Um, so at the risk of uh making
050a statement, the the words that you're using, I wrote some of them down and I'm just looking out into the audience. Motivating, collaboration, excitement, energy, enthusiasm. The smiles on teachers, administrator face in the audience are so incredibly obvious. It is so obviously refreshing and innovative and it's such a wonderful thing to see that energy coming back. Dr. Rogers, this is an excellent uh presentation and a program. I'm super excited that this came through. I have two questions for you though. Um can you help us understand two things? The first one is if I think about the structure of where we want to go or where you want to go with this and how to manage it, can you help us understand some of the goals you're trying to get at the end of it? Is
051it individualized instruction? Is it curriculum and content based? And equally importantly, how are you going to um it's going to be a challenge for you to uh keep this from being more than just sort of a fun experiment and uh you know toys to play with and you know have to manage that structure to get to the end. I'm curious about the two things that you have in mind, you know, the things you have in mind. And the last thing is student learning the prompts. How far away from the students actually getting engagement with this? Because it seems like most of it was uh teachers uh leading the prompts and uh what's the timeline for that in your point of view? So I'll answer the second question first because it's more of a logistics question
052than a a goals and visions question. So right now every every technology tool that we use whether it's AI or something else just email program has to be ed 2D compliant. So Edlaw 2D compliant among other things means that any identifiable student data has to be encrypted in transmission and encrypted at rest. What does that mean? At rest means when it's on a server at some server farm that's owned by whatever company it is. It have anything that it can be identifiable as student data. And that could be something as minimal as a student query or a student prompt in AI that is associated with that student that is private to that student that is actually termed student data. It has to be encrypted on the server and it has to be encrypted as the
053student is making that prompt from their desktop, laptop, whatever over the internet to the server. And then the company has to also sign a data privacy agreement that swears they will not use that data in a number of uses. Um they won't resell that data, they won't use it for targeting the student, they won't use it for marketing, they won't use it for a whole litany of uh uses. So a lot of the AI tools and chat GPT open AI uh sort of at the top of the list refuse to sign these data privacy agreements with school districts. So the reason why we have teacherfacing and administring tools is because we have Edlaw 2D compliant licenses for adults for Gemini uh for Canva um uh for um Copilot the Microsoft private. So we're limited right
054now because there isn't anything that's Edlaw 2D compliant. There are a handful of name brandand AI tools that are working right now on trying to get Edlaw 2D compliance agreements through Boseies and then through Boseies all districts in the state would have access to those through a crosscontracting process. So I think once that happens and one or two or four of these you know name brand tools come up with data privacy agreements through both these I think you'll see a lot more studentf facing work knowing that the studentf facing work is not far off one of the visionary goals now to return to your first question for this work with the AI pilots was to get our team as familiar with AI as quickly as possible because once we get it into the students hands
055it's going to take off. So some of this is just giving our folks a head start. So that's a very practical sort of Maslo level one kind of goal for this but an important one because I don't want our teachers to feel off balance once these tools are in students hands. The second goal of this project was to see if we could identify uh places where it works and places where it breaks. So again before we go widescale with something before we really start student facing it if there are pitfalls I would rather kick the tires with the adults and find out what works and what breaks so that we know how to build guard rails around how we start using it when we're using it with kids. None of those are visionary kinds of
056things. Those are behind the-scenes logistics. How do we build a ramp? How do we do this work correctly? The visionary part of this is twofold. One is here are some of the ideas I think it could help us with. And if we could go back to the slide that has the continuum. uh I was had the advantage of going to a presentation and seeing someone present this continuum and then we decided to yoscitize this and kind of uh build on it for our own purposes. But this theoretical framework I think is really useful. Um I don't know that there's one side of the continuum that's the good side and one side that's the bad side. They have different uses in different places and figuring out what those uses might look like in SIASET, but in
057first grade versus 12th grade versus English versus uh art, we were going to need to have a lot of things going at the same time and illustrate where they fell along this framework. So part of this was trying to engage as many brains as possible in exploring to see what came out of that exploration. And then the la the the most visionary part of the goal for this was to have people discover things that they weren't expecting to see. And I often find when I'm looking at data that the counterintuitive data point is the one that leads to all the insights. And I think that's also kind of been true here. Uh as Mr. Steinberg alluded to when um Miss Pitus was trying to create a grading tool, she found that she wasn't confident enough
058in the grading tool to seed control to it. So she repeated all the work that the grading tool did, thus doubling the work. But in effect, what she created was a tool where a student could have a really credible draft uh feedback and they would know what grade they were going to get. They could turn this in to an AI that was trained on how Ms. Paul Cides would grade their work and the AI would say, "Hey, you know what? If you turn this in for the final assignment, you're going to get a B+. And here are the 10 things that you could do to improve it." So you could get an A+ instead. Now the student can take their original work which they generated use AI to reflect on that work against the framework
059that Miss Paul Cedus has and come back with a sense of where they're going where their work is and how it's going to land. So I think that was a counterintuitive product that wasn't what was going what she was aiming for but ended up being uh kind of remarkable instead. Similarly I was blown away by Mr. Gentle Core and that team uh coming up with decodable texts. If we buy these suites of decodable texts from uh textbook manufacturers, they're 30 $40,000 a pop. Uh we're for the low low price of Mr. General Kore's evening. Uh we're able to we're able to generate as almost as many of these as we can imagine, but they're better in two ways. One, they're tailored exactly to the vocabulary that our student needs to master. and they are tailored
060to the interest that will keep our student reading a book that is otherwise probably not all that engaging. If I give them the same Sea Spot Run book that everyone gets, maybe the kid who likes dogs will be engaged with that, but the rest won't. So I think it's a powerful illustration of tailoring an instructional project product not just to a student's instructional needs skill level but also to their interests simultaneously. I thought that was a really remarkable and powerful tool and I thought the illustrations were extraordinarily good although I know the first draft the leprechaun had three legs and that was a problem. And then uh lastly, again the the counterintuitive things. I think the the Shark Tank, it's a fun exercise and there's lots of ways that we replicate that, but to have
061elementary students progress so far with their Shark Tank project projects that their teachers, adults, felt the need to recruit students from the high school with specific subject matter expertise to extend the learning of the students shows how much further the project went with the assistance of AI. And I think of that as AI leveraging task efficiency for the teachers so they maximize their time with the kids. So when all is said and done, and I've been saying this for a long time, but I think it's especially relevant now, the resource that is in shortest supply is actually not money. It is time. It's the students time. It's the teacher's time. And when we come up with a tool that gets more out of the time that they have together, we have maximized the one finite
062resource that we have because the day the the year is 180 days. It's never going to be 190. It's never going to be 200. Like the time is finite. And this leverages time in extraordinary ways. And then to that point, forklifting the whole new NGSS standards which are at all levels, it's just a tremendous amount of work to redo 180 lessons worth of a year's program. And that's time that a teacher is investing in that curriculum and not necessarily investing in individual students. So if this makes that task more efficient, it's again leveraging time with kids. So, it's a long- winded answer, but I think what I'm harvesting from this is I'm blown away by the creativity of of all of the people who worked on this, but I'm seeing the potential even beyond this
063first round of pilots. And again, as um Mr. Steinberg, Dr. Bojic said, this is where we are after 100 days. Um I can only imagine what's going to happen after these tools are in people's hands longer. Uh we go to the 2.0 pilots. you haven't seen some of the other pilots which were also were extraordinary. Um there's there's more good work to be done here. Thank you Dr. Rogers. Uh Mr. Rotolo, thank you for that presentation everyone. That was really good. Um so the board did um revisited all of the buildings and I sat down or all of us did with watching the students in their day-to-day and in the coding and this was probably fourth or fifth graders. I was watching and asking them to explain to me like what are you doing? How
064are you doing that? And what I noticed was their thought process and what I was looking at was was different and I was like wow that's amazing that you're doing that. Uh and how comfortable the kids were with the technology and not also comfortable on failing and keep trying and keep trying. What I also noticed was that the other kids would help each other out which was another huge thing because they were saying well I don't understand this. How did you do it? And they were explaining it. So, I guess my my questions were um I saw like in seventh grade that like you were doing the graphs with some of the students. Are we planning at some point after we get all of our I guess um clearances, are we then going to do
065some pilots with elementary school kids, high school kids, middle school kids to see how they use the technology because it's going to be different than how an adult or teacher would view it. Because I just sitting there that whole day when we went around and asking the kids questions and watching their thought process, I was so impressed. That's why I was so impressed because they were so comfortable. They were so mature on how they were dealing with these problems which I thought was amazing. Yeah, I'll I'll start answering that question and then I'll let um Mr. Steinberg, Dr. Wick uh chip uh chime in just a little bit. So, some of that will depend on which tools are approved first and what order that goes in. But clearly, we want to hear students voices in
066this and as you know, I meet with students as part of my student cabinet. Uh we met with some high school students and had pretty engaging conversation around AI and they surprised me because I thought there they were going to be um anxious to incorporate it more into their work and they were concerned that AI was going to rob them of their education by taking away the tasks that they knew were building their intellectual muscle. And so they they were worried about going to the gym and having the robot lift the weights instead of lifting the weights themselves and what that was going to do to their learning. So I think they're shrewd in how they are thinking about these tools. I think they're absolutely using them for task efficiency purposes for sure, but I
067think they're also cognizant of the fact that there may be a loss from that. So how we navigate that tension and where we want to space kids along this theoretical framework is really going to be the thing that we're going to have to keep front of mind and be really thoughtful about and maybe iterate a couple of times as we go through this with kids. So uh David Yeah. Yeah. If I could just add to that because um it's it's a really good question and we have to remember that that our students are using AI outside of school, right? So they're on chat. So they're already somewhere in this spectrum, they may not be able to identify clearly how they're using it. There are students who are using it maybe the wrong way, maybe the
068right way. So before we even face the the technology towards them, we've got to educate them on how to use it responsibly, right? And so some of the work that's happening currently right now, um it started o over a year ago. We've always had digital media uh fluency curricula K through 12. Um but what we've recognized now with this particular emerging technology is that we've got to amplify that that curriculum across the board. And so um we've been doing a ton of professional development um particularly our LMS's are leading a lot of that work. uh we're actually calling that information fluency at this point and we're and we're beginning to build that more robustly K through 12 and looking for those integration points in the curriculum so it doesn't just live in a singular place
069so that we build the the literacy around that with with throughout all discipline so that the students are seeing this in everything they're doing. So if someone's assigning a a a project in social studies, English, math, science, right? this is being this is underneath it and the kids are beginning to see it. So when we face a technology to them that they ought to begin to have those skills developed and at the elementary level the focus really is on digital citizenship. So understanding how to use digital access responsibly, what that foundation developmentally looks like and then leveraging that and moving towards using AI and really becoming prompt engineers, understanding how to input to get what you need out of it in a responsible and ethical way. So it's the the foundation building at the elementary
070level. Okay, one more thing. Okay, go ahead. Just just an aside. All of those queries that we're doing, are we building our own internal database where then we're pulling from like ours at school one? So that's a great question. We are cataloging our prompts. All of our pilots are cataloging the prompts and sharing the outputs so that we build an internal, you know, capacity for us to be able to say, okay, this prompt, you know, resulted in this. And so therefore, teachers can share that. It's like a little catalog that we're creating. Um, Dr. Park and Miss Epson, thank you for the presentation. My mind is completely blown. It's just amazing. um and love the fact that it promotes uh collaboration not just between students but between teachers and it also individualizes the teaching and
071learning. Um Anna and I were talking the other day how important it is for our kids in college and they're always working together collaborating and when they're going to work force that is another thing. So, uh, learning how to work together is a skill that they need to learn for the future. So, love that that's happening because of this. I have a couple of questions. Um, the individualized learning, I think that's fantastic. Having book that's tailored to a student, that's amazing. Um, that will just promote kid to learn, love to learn and read. Um, that's just incredible. But how much time can a teacher spend for that child? Is it possible for literally to be individually teaching every child in class? Uh second question is I learn differently than another student um at a different
072pace. Will that create even bigger discrepancy uh disparity between kids who can and kids who cannot? And is that okay? Kids who can just keep on going to the point where we don't expect them to nobody else uh can expect to catch up. Is that okay? Is there a threshold that you hold all child to reach and say, you know, keep on going, keep on going using this AI and raise them up to a certain level. Is there something that you have that in mind? And um how quickly can all the teachers adapt and learn this skill? Because if you have a teacher, if a student has a teacher who's fantastic with this skill versus a teacher who's not, then how do we uh even them out? Yeah. So, I think there were three questions
073there, right? Okay. So, um the first one dealt with time that teachers would need to to create these tools. Um what we're seeing is is like anything else depending on how they're using it. So if we go back to this theoretical framework and and why it's a draft form is because we're developing as we're seeing how we're using it. So it's kind of developing alongside of us. So teachers are using this to help them take care of a task that normally um you know that they that would take them time to do, they're gaining time back. So where it may be that they're using more time over here on on a project that maybe is AI related, but they're also using AI to save them time on some sort of mundane task that normally would
074take them a while uh to kind of figure out. Uh one of the projects we heard about tonight was using AI to create instructional groups, right? Instructional grouping can take quite some time in the planning process. You have to go through each student's uh you know information and make sure you're really putting them together. But if you can leverage the AI and gain that planning time back. So you it now you've gained time from that task that you can put that time now to maybe a task where you're developing something more deeply that you may ask AI to reflect upon that that piece of work that you're doing. So time's a time is an interesting concept, right? Um it it it seems to be a little bit malleable. Um and uh and so it's hard
075to say in terms of that time and that's part of why we're piloting the program. So, you know, to one of the other questions you talked about, which was differentiating learning, um, we didn't see it here this evening, but some of several of our other pilots are really focusing on the diverse needs of students and how we can leverage AI to differentiate learning um, in a way that builds all of our students up and um, provides curriculum and instruction in different modalities. So, as AI is evolving, there are things that our educators are in interfacing with that allow students potentially to take notes for for instance and make them into a podcast um and provide opportunities for students to interact and engage with the curriculum in a modality that's better for them. So, that will
076help leverage the playing field. I think you were talking a little bit about that disparity. So some of our pilots are exploring ways that we could differentiate learning to kind of level that playing field a little bit more. And and the last question uh was related around the teachers learning how much time it's going to take them to learn. I think that was the question. So, anytime we deal with with professional development and teachers learning new skills, um the beauty of that is that when you have a collaborative environment, a collaborative culture like we do, we have people who might be, let's call them speedboats. They'll run out there, they'll learn this technology. We have them here tonight, right? Um they'll go back and speak with their colleagues and they and they will turnkey a
077lot of this and a lot of the collegiate conversations that are happening are going to lift everybody up. We have more formal structures in place, our professional learning communities that are in place where where teachers can have carved out time during the school day to really work on a task together. Um, we talked about a next step at superintendent conference day where we're going to now faces to to the entire faculty and then throughout the year using time like faculty meetings, department meetings also where teachers will have time to work on this. And so everyone's not going to learn this at the same pace. there will be some people going to learn it quicker, but they in this culture, in our learning culture, they will turn around and help their colleagues and work together on
078it. I think we're also cognitive of the fact that everybody's levels um and engagement with AI is different and so we will meet teachers where they're at and support them with their level of comfort to bring them up and build their capacity as well. Okay, Miss Edmonson, I have no questions left because everyone took my questions. But I do want to thank you guys because I I think this was absolutely amazing. I I am probably not the only one who does this, but I equate AI to like the internet and we're taking the time to embrace it and collaborate and use it appropriately and teach our students even if we don't have the forward facing yet to use it appropriately because they absolutely are and they should learn how and disseminate in incorrect from correct
079information and so on forth. Um, I'm just very excited to see where we take it and I'm glad we're not shying away from a new technology in our schools. So thank you again. Thank you. Okay. Thank you again for that presentation. Thank you. [Applause] So just in case I haven't sufficiently gushed all over you, great job. Thank you very much. Um Well, I was going to make one last comment on AI as the the team is filtering out. uh at the presentation that I attended where we discovered this theoretical framework, the um presenter took us through an exercise with one of the the large language model tools and asked it to uh come up with a a bedside clock that was showing the time of 5:00. And the clock that appeared had the hands at
08010 and 2. And then he said uh show us a clock that is uh at the time 4:30 in the afternoon. And it again created a clock at 10 and two. And so he used this to illustrate that AI is only as good as the data that it's trained on. And it turns out most images of clocks on the internet are images that are generated by companies selling clocks. And the reason why the hands are at 10 and two is because most of the numbers are visible and usually the brand is just below the center of the clock and you want the brand to be visible. So if the hands are covering up the brand, you won't know what brand clock it is. So AI is not very good at coming up with a clock
081that can tell any time other than 10 and two. So I think it was a obviously very powerful kind of example of the limitations. The tool is not smart enough to say, "Oh, you want a five o'clock clock? Oh, the hands one, the big hand goes to the 12 and the little hand goes to the five." It just says, "I know what a clock is because I've been trained on what a clock is. Clocks look like devices that have hands at 10 and two." So, as it wasn't a surprise to me that our veteran English teacher felt like what she got from her prompts was kind of average because everything that it's trained on ultimately reverts to the average. So I think uh part of what we learned from this is it is a great
082way to get an average starting point but if we want it to be at our level of expectation we're going to have to iterate and scioitize just a little bit but and that point about the clock is also the same point about bias. So if the internet is only trained on clocks with 10 and two it thinks all clocks look alike. that is the at the heart of when we say there's bias in AI, the bias is based on the limitations in how it was trained and uh what data it's trained on. So I I think there's more work to do with that. Uh but it's again it was good learning from this process to see where that bias not necessarily uh ill bias but where bias is in the models and where average is
083in the models and where we are relative to that average. Okay. Thank you. And Dr. Rogers, you're next for the Popel New York. So, uh, we last spoke, uh, as a board about Propel New York at the December board of education meeting I had reported to you on a meeting I had had with, uh, folks from Propel whose, uh, responsibility it was to talk to affected entities. Uh, at that time, we identified, [Music] um, all right, I think I've done all the things right. I've done so many things right, we're done. All right, so this is an overview of the project. Just as a a reminder to everyone, the um state has identified the need to uh transmit more power between downstate and upstate, which will help uh with congestion on the power grid. It'll
084allow more power to be available uh on Long Island. Uh in order to do that, they're proposing to bury a a number of uh high voltage uh power transmission lines. Two of those power transmission lines will cross uh part of the SAS school district. Uh so we're certainly an affected entity and uh at the time in December, we identified as uh potential concerns three things. And those three concerns now with several months of uh developments haven't really changed. Um at some point they're going to dig up the roads in order to bury these wires. Uh if when they do that, that will complicate access uh to our school buildings. It will complicate busing. Um one of the wires will cross Southwoods Road. We've experienced these last several weeks uh the impact of some construction on
085Southwoods Road. uh I expect this to be equally impactful. So uh it will certainly disrupt operations and we would want uh any operations to be as little to have as little disruption as possible. The second is we are worried about you know potential utility interruptions what might happen while this is going on. Our biggest concern is about the safety of buried high power transmission lines. We have no expertise in this. uh one of the lines will go uh in front of uh Robins Lane Elementary School. Uh obviously we want to make sure that the students in that school will be safe uh both during the construction process and then after uh the wires are energized. So that's an important consideration and we spoke at the December meeting about uh this will be a an improvement
086a utility improvement and we want to make sure that it is assessed appropriately and that it is uh generating its fair share of taxes. uh if it's going to be in our community and obviously that's important to uh the taxpayers of the community. So those concerns are unchanged. Uh the one thing I promised you I would do at the December meeting is what we did with uh the Amazon warehouse project uh because we were concerned about the site it was being located on. We hired an environmental consultant to advise us on the safety of the project and to make recommendations for how the project, if it was going to move forward, could be carried out in the safest manner possible. I think that's also again the most appropriate uh step to take with this project
087to get someone with expertise in this area to advise us on uh how uh what the risks may or may not be and how to uh do this in the safest way possible for the students that uh we have in our care. So um I have talked with uh superintendents of neighboring school districts that the power lines are going through as well. they have similar concerns to ours and um we're willing to collaborate with each other in order to share some of the costs of this expertise. So I think that will be an advantage to us to have uh others who have the who share our interests and also want to make sure that their students are safe uh so that the costs don't fall entirely on us as they did with uh the Amazon
088project. So um we're being advised in this of course by our attorneys. I'm not familiar with this particular permitting process. I do understand that it's going through a couple of phases. The first phase was um entities at the state identified the need for uh this additional power uh transmission capacity and went through a process of identifying who the builders would be and what the overall scope of the project would be. Now that that has taken place, the the people that have been selected as the builders have to get permits for the plans that they have constructed. So that process is uh going through the public service commission uh right now and um they are they were moving slowly and they've started moving more rapidly uh in the last couple of weeks. So um the ultimately
089the project can't start until they get approval from the PSC and the PSC is moving through its approval process. So the project is intended to start uh they're at least advertising it start in 2026 and moving through uh into the early 2030s. Um so this is not immediate to start construction. uh no sense of when necessarily the construction in Scios specifically would occur but certainly if um we're going to engage with the permitting process the time to become engaged with that process is now. So there are three ways that we could be engaged in this process. The the first is we could monitor things that are happening and that's certainly what we've been doing. The second is that uh we could submit comments uh written comments, oral comments, testimony uh at every opportunity along the
090way. We took advantage of that uh with the Amazon project or we could seek party status uh in the proceedings. So if we were party to the proceedings, my understanding is that the best analogy is that these proceedings are like a legal proceeding. They're almost like litigation and seeking party status is like becoming a party to this litigation. The end result of which will be uh some sort of a permit and uh likely a series of cautisils to that permit that govern what is allowed for this construction project. So uh obviously having party status is a higher level of involvement for the school district. Uh there will certainly be some cost involved. Not just the costs that we were already planning on uh spending for uh uh our expertise to advise us on the safety
091of the project, but there would be some costs involved uh for legal representation. Uh but we would also have the ability uh to participate uh in a more muscular way in the hearings that are taking place. Certainly as a party, if we were granted party status, uh we would have a more robust standing in our conversations uh with the PSC and uh with the um the applicant and uh there's the possibility of being engaged when the applicant is going through the settlement discussions in this process that uh analogizes to litigation. We might be able to have a voice in uh some of those settlement discussions. uh it doesn't mean necessarily that um our preferences will be followed but it does mean that we might be able to have a voice. So uh that's not a
092decision that I can uh certainly make on my own. So I know later in your agenda you have um opportunity for a discussion around that. I just wanted to set the table for that discussion by uh bringing you up to speed on uh what has been happening since our last conversation about this in December and uh what the choices are uh in front of you. Thank you, Dr. Rogers. And um are there any questions from the board for Dr. Rogers regarding Propel New York? If you have if you have questions, you can ask. And if you want to save for later, that's fine, too. Okay. Okay. Then we're moving on to the uh next presentation. Great. This will be the second update uh to the board on the progress that we've been uh making with
093the antibbias task force's report from last year. Uh we reported to you earlier in the year on some of the progress that we've made. This will be an update uh in the time since then. I think one thing that is apparent to all of us is how important this work is and the need for the work to continue to be ongoing. So, um I'm proud of the work that we've done. I recognize that there's more to be done. I think that the steps we're taking have been effectual. Uh but the work is clearly far from done. So I've asked Mr. Steinberg, Mr. Carishi, who have been co-leading this work for us uh to update the board on where we're at and what some of the next steps we anticipate soon uh will be coming in
094moving the the recommendations of the task force along. Okay. Okay. So, thank you once again, Dr. Rogers, Mrs. Chang, the board of education, uh, for the opportunity to provide you an update. Um, our last update was back in October. So, um, we're happy to be here to share with you some of the work that's been going on since that time. Um, just a quick, uh, reminder in terms of where we've been in the work. We did establish this, uh, task force back in November of 2023. And throughout that school year, the 232 24 school year, the task force was meeting and then provided the board its recommendations at the April 2024 meeting and then the goals were um uh accepted uh at the May 24th and again in October we provided the first update and
095here we are in April now with our second update on the implement how the implementation is working to this point. Uh we did at the beginning of this divide this across the five subgroups. We did lead with the student experience because ultimately that's why we're doing this work. Um we're doing work around code of conduct and DASA, the curriculum itself, our recruiting, hiring and professional development and our community outreach. Uh as well our goals uh for uh the implementation have not changed. These are the same goals. So you might recognize the presentation as as very similar to the October presentation because it is pretty much the same presentation. It's just you'll see some highlighted areas where the uh enhancements have been made since October. So in our student experience, you can see that we're looking
096at goals around creating data so we get a better understanding of our students lived experience within our within our school days. Um we're looking to improve their connections by increasing their opportunities for discussions uh that bolster their sense of belonging. and then the the idea of fostering uh empathetic empathetic and affirming environments and making sure they have trusted adults within the um within the environment. So in terms of our student experience you can see in the yellow the yellow points out the work that we've done uh so far um pretty much since October. If we start with the data collection area we see that this that Dr. Rogers uh along with the uh cabinet have met with uh each level the elementary middle and high school Dr. Rogers referred uh to this in the AI
097presentation. Um where we've had conversations not only around AI, we've had conversations around cell phone usage. Um we had conversations recently with the elementary students about the fifth graders and about how they feel about moving into sixth grade. Um and it was, you know, it's always eye opening to have those conversations. And we asked the students one of the question was what do you want to accomplish when you get to middle school, right? And um and we thought we're like, oh, I want to take this course and I want I want to I want to get a this grade and that grade. No, they wanted to accomplish to finding their passion was what they were telling us. And it was so wonderful to hear that and so refreshing. They were looking forward to the different
098choices, the independence that they were going to uh get when they get to to middle school. So that that was real nice. Um so we meet with those students twice a year and we just completed those meetings which which was great. Um a belonging survey. One of the uh goals was to find a survey. uh we are currently using thought exchange and we will be moving away from that uh platform and looking to move towards the panorama survey. The reason why we like the panorama survey is that the data is nationally normed on this survey. Uh also the questions they provide are researchbased and they're field tested. Uh so that helps to reduce the bias in the questions for us what whatever we decide to do. Um and we'll there'll be more information following uh
099you know in the future around Panorama uh more in depth about uh how that platform is going to function. And then of course we've had the we've had the mascot selection work going on where we when we did send out the survey uh just a little bit more than a third of the respondents have been our students which is which is wonderful uh that they're engaged in this process. We're hearing their voice on this. Um, and currently right now, uh, the schools are working with the students and they're talking about once a mascot selected, how would they like to reveal the mascot and what what what that might look like. And so we have that work continuing and the student connection work, which is consistently going on. Some of the highlighted areas there is our
100tech-free Tuesdays, which is a new initiative of this year where in our middle schools there's a Tuesday where there is a disconnect from technology, specifically during the launch periods. Um, so students aren't sitting on a Chromebook or their phone during the lunch period. But yet in the middle schools, they're providing activities, chess, board games, crafts, and on nice days, you see all the kids are going outside. You see a big difference. You see kids really connecting with one another. Um, and and in those student conversations, um, the students like those Techfree Tuesdays. Not every student, but but most of the students do enjoy that and they see the benefit of it. And that's sort of the purpose of that that program is for them to see that you don't have to be on a device.
101You you can you can just go out and play outside with your friends and and that's a great way to to connect with one another. Um we all know that we have the multicultural expos throughout our schools which are just phenomenal and those are in conjunction with our PTAs and um you know that's just a day of enjoying culture, enjoying food, enjoying our community. So those are wonderful. Um we brought back the multi-school breaking borders uh this year. Uh we had seven schools from across Long Island come here to Sioset. They spent a day uh talking about really the division in this country and and it was a very interesting conversation to hear the high schoolers talk about this with their colleague colleagues, their peers from other schools. Um these are difficult conversations. These are
102what we refer to as these courageous conversations. They're digging into these things and they're learning how to to have those conversations um and not shy away from those conversations and stay present in those very difficult conversations. And we're also very proud of the mentorship work that goes on throughout the district. You heard that a little bit in the AI pilot uh where we have the VE students at the high school working with our elementary students, but we have our fifth graders who mentor our kindergartens kindergarters and they read to them and and they're so very proud of that. The fifth graders when you talk to them about that, they love that work. and our high schoolers through our peer program, they'll go to the elementary schools and and make that connection. So, we we're really
103beginning to sort of bolster that K12 um community and connection to the kids, which will help the younger students as they transition through the grades and and through the schools as well. Um and this the fostering of the belonging uh for the for the students. It's constant work that we're doing. Um, you know, it's constant work through the curriculum where we're constantly looking at and evaluating curriculum for the materials you saw in again the AI pilot in the in the decodable books. That idea of of personalize that that makes a student feel like, oh, my teacher sees me. This is where I belong. It's a wonderful piece of it. Um, the enhancements that we made to the 89 transition by having the eighth graders visit the high school, visit them and come around for the
104day and get to know the electives a little bit more intimately. So they feel like when they get to the high school, it's a it's a it's a place where they feel like they can belong. And then we had students this year, we had five students who participate, five might have been six actually, who participated in the witness project, which is is a project where students are paired up with Holocaust survivors over the course of the school year. And there's a culminating event where basically the students are on a stage in front of a a crowd of about 2,000 people and they're telling the story of that Holocaust survivor, why that Holocaust survivor is there in the audience with them. Um so it's very powerful work that's happening uh around uh the district to you
105know to help students really have that that connection and that sense of belonging um in the district. Um so now invite uh Mr. Karnishi to come up and talk a little about the work that's happening around our code of conduct. Good evening. As we know, our code of conduct ensures that our students feel safe and belong. And DASA is designed to foster an environment for students that is free from discrimination and harassment. So, one of our major goals is to ensure that our code of conduct and our DASA reporting tools are accessible. The district has translated forms into multiple languages. We provided a plain language version of the code of conduct. We provided staff training and facilitated assemblies and presentations uh for our students. This year, uh, the board of education reviewed, revised, and adopted
106its policy 5130, the code of of character, conduct, and support at its November meeting. Uh, the district also continues to engage in conversations to build student capacity around the code of conduct at the elementary level. Um, and I'm actually going to hand it over to Mr. Steinberg, who's going to continue uh a little bit of of of leveraging AI with respect to the the code. Thank you. I'm just going to go back one slide to to the implementation goals because if you look at the enhancement of the code of conduct, one of the first goals is to create a user-friendly code of conduct and and that sort of was the um impetus for the plain language summaries that were created. Um but now if you look with leveraging AI, we have a new tool in
107the district called Notebook LM. And we have a prototype right now where we were able to upload the code of conduct into notebook LM and uh as a single source and leveraging AI you could ask uh the engine any question about the code. So for instance, you could type in into the code about anything about um consequence about what happens if my student uh cuts a class three times and and what would happen to my student in that case and you could ask it very plainly that way. And what the notebook LM will do is it will use our policy 5130 as a single source. It will not bring outside source into it and it will then generate an answer okay for you. So the goal of this prototype would be to eventually have that
108outward facing so that the community would have access to a tool like that. So we have a few more steps to go before we're ready to actually um outward face something like that and hopefully we get to the end of that. But that's sort of where we're working and trying to leverage the AI to help to to meet some of these goals as well. So that's just some of the work that I you know I think it would be good for you to to understand that we're working on there. Right. All right. So that brings us to our curriculum goals and those focused around cultural competency and really social media. All right. And in that work um in the yellow highlighted areas, there's so much work going on in here. So we try to capture
109this in the update really in some broad categories. Um we've been talking curriculum analysis. So um a lot of the work that that happens on a regular basis as you are aware is that we have summertime curriculum writing. Um teachers are constantly reviewing and revising um as they go. Um we are also in the midst right now of um creating templates uh to do some scope and sequencing work around uh specifically our secondary curriculum which will provide us the ability for analysis for gaps and redundancies which will help us to see where the opportunities lie then uh where we have to enhance the curriculum and adjust it accordingly. Um it it was a a great month. We had ifar celebrations across the district. Um they were beautiful. um the community came out for them. Uh
110we had wonderful Holocaust remembrance events uh where we had Rosalie, a Holocaust survivor who came to the high school to speak to our 10th grade students. Um that was followed up by um an art gallery at the student lobby at the high school that the art was inspired by the Holocaust. We had string instruments that that played music. So it was it was wonderful event that happened there and our Lunar New Year celebrations across all our buildings as well. Um again just you know creating situations that that all of our kids feel welcome, they feel like they belong and this is a place for them and also for a place for us to learn because there's so much learning that happens there and and I will tell you my first ifar was last year and
111um and I it was just incredible what I just learned and I didn't know what I thought I knew. Um and so uh it's wonderful to attend these events and do that and then identifying um and incorporating culture responsive text. So at the elementary level um the continuation of the literacy matters project where uh culture responsive texts last year were infused in K through five. This year that work is happening in the sixth grade and in the high school continues to happen. Most recently, the high school uh had its uh annual book day, and the book that the ninth graders read was the book Frankly in Love, which chronicles an a Korean uh teenager and uh a Korean-American teenager. And it's really about uh their experience uh you know, growing up and and and dealing
112with parents parental expectations and things along that line. And it's a hit. It's actually the second time we've used the book with the with the ninth grade and we bring the author in. the author comes in and talks with the students. So they really they really have an opportunity to engage in in these kind of curricular activities. Then our social media goal. So there's been a lot of work around this. Uh most recently the Nassau County Association of Secondary uh Superintendent, they have uh their curriculum committee. The curriculum committee is focused on social media curriculum. Uh we have a team of our LMSs who are participating in that. So I mentioned earlier that we're working on information fluency curriculum that's been going on now for about a year and a half and it's going to
113continue to go on. This is only going to amplify that. So what what our faculty is going to learn in this experience bring this back is only going to be better for our students as well. We'll make sure that not only is it best practice but we'll do what we typically do in Sios and we'll elevate um that curriculum uh so that our students are getting what they need and then we'll be integrating that across across the curriculum as well. We discussed the tech-free Tuesdays already and uh earlier Dr. Wick mentioned the digital citizenship that's happening across uh our elementary buildings and I'll invite Mr. Kernishi back up. So our implementation goals centered around the recruitment hiring process professional development orienting our new faculty to the SAS way and our evaluation and accountability. So, with
114respect to professional development, as it was mentioned in Dr. Wjek and and Mr. Steinberg's presentation, um at our superintendence conference day this summer, um for the upcoming school year, we're going to provide training um on res on responsible and ethical use um and particularly addressing bias that's often embedded and inherent uh in AI with respect to recruitment and hiring. And we're in the thick of the process right now. Uh to reiterate, the district subscribes to the belief that talent is equally distributed across the population and we have two goals in our hiring process. One is to hire excellent staff and highly qualified staff and also hire a diverse staff. Uh we try to achieve both goals uh by casting a wide net to reach that diverse teaching pool. Um, our strategies include broadcasting, our postings
115on social media and networking platforms. This, uh, winter and spring, we attended in-person recruitment events, uh, where we interacted with hundreds of candidates. Um, currently, the district has 36 teacher vacancies largely due to retirements. And in the last two months, uh, we received over, uh, 3,500 applications uh, for these positions. So orienting our our new faculty to the SAS way, our our mentorship program involves monthly sessions with our new staff um that include training on inclusive teaching, addressing bias and DASA. Uh with respect to hiring, our administrative team facilitates a rigorous multi-round interview process. This process is not only an opportunity for us to evaluate those applicants, but it also for the candidate to gain an understanding of our district, our mission, and our high standards and expectations. So, our interview questions and engagement during
116that interview, communicate our values uh uh that are aligned with the board of education's goals of connected community and fostering inclusive and engaging culture, climate, and character. So in our line of questioning uh we inquire about a candidate's experience uh and approach to teaching in a diverse multicultural multilingual multi-thnic school community such as ours. We ask how do you generate belonging and inclusivity in your classroom? How do you develop meaningful relationship with relationships with families? And we always ask how will you make us better? Uh because while we believe and know we are a high caliber and we're proud that we're a highc caliber district, we want our candidates to know that we have high expectations for them and that we're always focused on improving uh as an institution for our students. So any of
117those applicants who are in the process who do their research and are watching this this this presentation right now are on have an edge because they just heard four of our questions. So um so with respect to our evaluation and accountability um we evaluate our staff based on the district's annual professional performance review APR plan. Um we provided a screenshot in orange there um that is what one of the 11 indicators that uh addresses some of of of what we hope to achieve as part of our um our task force. And so, uh, listed there is is what constitutes a highly effective teacher. And it's a teacher who acknowledges student diversity. Um, uses it as an opportunity to enrich the learning environment. Um, and and so that gives you kind of a glimpse of of
118of one thing that we we touch upon as we evaluate teachers. And that brings us to our community partnerships where you know our goals here is just to you know help to bring the families together um and to communicate and that you know includes our branding and our marketing as well. And so when we look at our families some of the updating that's gone on and this has been a wonderful initiative led by Dr. Wjik um is that we now have elementary curriculum parent workshops um that uh help parents understand what the curriculum looks like at the elementary level. So, um, already this year there's been a workshop on math and upcoming, uh, this at the end of this month, April 29th, there's going to be a workshop for K through two on reading and
119then 3 through 5 that workshop will happen on April 30th. So, um, we're excited about that. Um, I I believe the attendance on that was quite high um, in the hundreds I think the the number was. And that's wonderful. Um, it really says that there's a need for that and we're meeting that need and uh, parents are learning more and more about that curriculum. So that's wonderful. Um and again you see the multicultural celebrations up there and our marketing branding. So we we've been having uh conversations around the portrait of the graduate. Um and you can see some of the skills uh and components that we'd be looking for our students to potentially uh be embodying um in terms of uh who they are as as as learners and as people anywhere from curiosity to
120their cultural competence. And and you see that theme running through the work that we do. Um, it's not something that just sits up here. You heard it through the AI. You you see it in many of the presentations that we talk about because this is the shift that we're seeing. We're seeing a shift towards that this skills development and assessment and away from the knowledge in content assessment, right? We still need that knowledge. we see them to acquire the content, but it becomes more about the content and knowledge to to gain the skill because it's the skill that's going to help our students adapt to a world that we don't know what it's going to look like necessarily. Um, we recently launched a new district website. Uh, so that's great. So, that becomes another way
121for uh people to connect with the school. And the fall we'll be uh uh implementing a new communication tool called Parent Square. and our community-based mascot selection committee. So, that selection committee that has about 70 plus people on that uh selection committee uh is still hard at work uh you know trying to figure out what this mascot's going to be. So, we have uh all that work going on as well as we continue to go. So, thank you again for uh listening to these uh updates and for your support. Thank you again. This is a really really comprehensive list of updates since our um since the last presentation um last year. Um so really thank you in all these different areas. Uh we just see a lot of uh uh new initiatives and then also
122continuing the work that we've been doing. Thank you. And then at this point are there any questions from the board? Okay. Uh Miss Arenson, uh thank you for the update. Um this is like a marathon, not a sprint. So we appreciate all the updates and continuing to make progress in these areas. I just wanted you said the launch of parent square in coming fall 2025. Can you elaborate on what parent square is and the purpose of it? So the the purpose of it is to become a communication tool with the community. Right. So it's a way for us to communicate in a single place uh where people can get this app um and then they have you know notifications and things along that line. So which is a little more streamlined communication tool. That's about
123as all I can comm I can expand on it. Uh, you know, Miss Hefernon who's working on this probably can give a much better description of that, but I don't see her here. Oh, here you are. Sorry. So, just it's district to parent, not parent to parent. It's not for the parents to connect with each other. It's for the district to connect to the community. Okay. Um, Dr. Park. Okay. Um thank you and uh thank you for making a strong um effort to encourage encourage teachers of diverse background to apply and reaching out to them and um encourage them to apply. I think it's very important that our students experience viscerally seeing a teacher or somebody of an authoritative figure um that they can respect, they can receive love, encouragement, guidance and I think it's
124very important that all of our students experience that um so thank you for that effort and I was wondering what changes you see in terms of pull of applicants uh and how diverse they are uh and how it changed from your ex your efforts that you put in. One thing that I found is that it's it's um and one element that I didn't include here are connections with with universities and institutions and then so uh some of the the job fairs that we attended um the recruitment fairs that we attended were um Mallaloy New Sunni new uh and other regions that um tend to have populations with with people of color but also um have uh and and um but have affinity groups and racial affinity groups that we can tap into. Um in terms
125of of I'm interested in term if you could elaborate more in terms of your question of of in terms of changes that that I'm seeing of like of Yeah. Do you see more u diverse applicants applying? No, I think it's a good question. Um I I'm that's still something that I'm reflecting on and and I think some and data that we're tracking in terms of who's applying. Um I think the reason why I like going to recruitment fairs is because you often you know obviously we're evaluating when you look at a resume. We can't make an assumption necessarily based on race background and because it's a piece of paper. Um and and it's limited in that in that respect. So, um, one thing that we're that we're attending to is determining who's applying, um, and
126then to what extent can we then gauge, uh, what the racial, cultural, ethnic background is of that candidate. Um, you can make assumptions based on what's on the resume. Um, the reason why I think attending inerson fairs is then you can meet and and and engage a little bit more and then get a better understanding of who those candidates are. Um, so that's information that we're tracking and then we're going to evaluate kind of our hiring as well as we've done in the past. Um, and so I hope to have even more of a thorough response for you uh, as we as we continue this work. Mr. Rotovo, thank you both for great presentation. U, Mr. Steinberg, I love that you have the tech free Tuesday. Um, and obviously this is both ends of the
127spectrum because obviously we want to take advantage of the technology, but at the same time we want to keep those human interactions and connections. Um, and I think the the children want that the students want to have because you had you said before what have what are students looking to do when they go to middle school? They want to fit in. They want to have friends. They want to socially be accepted. Um, they want connections. And same thing as you were saying for teachers, Shnie, is that maybe you don't remember what your high school chemistry teacher taught you, but you definitely remember how he or she made you feel. Um, and that's going to go with you through the rest of your life. And same thing of how you fit in with the other students
128and and how they treat you. So, it's great that we have all this technology, but at the same time, at the end of the day, as we were saying before, um, when you leave school, when you leave high school and you go to college and then you go to work, everything is collaborative. You don't take tests at work, right? You ask six other people, how do we what do you do? What do you think? How should we do this? So, everything is again interpersonal skills, uh, collaboration, learning how to work, um, and social cues. So I think all those things are important and I think you're doing a great job of keeping this balance because can't be one way or the other and you need that. So thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Are there more
129questions? Miss Bastri. Thank you. Um Dr. Rogers, when are we going to get the survey data? The survey data. So, we're going to sunset um we have annual contracts uh for the survey instruments. So, we're going to sunset uh thought exchange at the end of this school year. We're going to uh replace use the resources that we're using to pay for that to replace it with Panorama. Uh we'll probably give that survey in the fall. Uh I want to understand a little bit better if they have um again they have researchbased questions that have been field tested. So with a lot of the instruments that we use, there are testing windows that are supposed to be used in order to be able to have valid comparisons to national pools of data. So I need to
130understand a little bit better when those assessment windows are, but I'm imagining that if we did a fall administration, we would have those uh data sometime later in the fall. And um will you report on sort of your summary from the cabinet K you know your kid cabinet meetings at the same time as the data in case uh there are any things that seem aligned or I mean just yeah and uh I'd be happy to provide you with some summaries of my notes from the uh student meetings. you know, they're ranging conversations and obviously the fifth graders are interested in different things than our seniors, but um we were just commenting uh we were just meeting with uh the fifth graders and we asked them what advice they would give to incoming kindergarteners in order
131to be successful in elementary school. And they they were so on point. It was don't worry about everything. Try to make some friends, but don't change who you are to make friends. Be sure to be yourself because you're great just as you are. And they went through all of this. And we said to them, "So, how do you feel about entering middle school?" And they shared some of their thoughts and fears. And we said, "What do you think about your advice to kindergarteners? Do you think it applies to you going into middle school? Be yourself. Make some friends." So, and they were all like, "Yeah, that's exactly it." So, just great conversations and um always eye opening, always encouraging. So, I'd be happy to work, we were all there, we all took lots of notes.
132Uh we can compile some of those notes and share some of the the um the uh flavor of that with the board. I'd be happy to do that. Just a couple more. If there's someone else who wants to talk, I won't talk open. Okay. Um, how soon can we get parents and kids access to the AI code simplified code of conduct if we fasttrack it? So, the issue is not fasttracking. We have a working prototype up and up and running and it is, I will say, impressive. So, I've spent a little bit of time with it and what we're trying to do right now is break it. So, what I don't want to have happen is a parent asks a question of the AI tool that summarizes the code of conduct and they get an
133answer that's going to be at odds with what they experience when they walk into the principal's office. So, imagine that a student makes a mistake. They're going to have a disciplinary consequence. Parent wants to know what to expect as they head into the principal. They type something into this AI and the AI says, "Don't worry, it'll all be fine." and then they go into the principal's office and not fine. So, we have been um Mr. Steinberg and I and maybe others in the cabinet I'm not aware of have been um putting in tougher and tougher questions trying to throw the AI um and see if we can break it and see if there are places where it does break. What do we need to do to shore it up a little bit? That's effort number
134one. So, kind of like Ms. Polyetus, I'm nervous about taking the training wheels off and trusting it to to ride the bike on its own. Uh, just because of the nature of what it is, but it is an impressive tool. Uh, and I think it would be a real help to families if we could turn it loose because I think it would be really helpful. Um, the second thing that we have to do is we have to consult with our attorneys about whether this whether we can use it. I can think of two worries immediately and there are probably others I haven't thought of. Worry number one is a parent puts in enough data about the misdeed of their child to identify the student. Now that data lives in LM which is a Google product.
135Is that data um encrypted at risk at rest and encrypted in transmission? I don't know. Where does that data live? is it getting mined, etc. I I don't know the answer to any of those questions. I don't know if what we've built, it's really impressive. I don't know if we built something that isn't Edlaw 2D compliant. And then the second thing is the code of conduct is a legal doc, as you already know, um is a legal document and uh parents can hold us accountable for the words in the code of conduct as we apply the code of conduct. Does creating another tool that spits out words that describes our code of conduct but hasn't been reviewed by our attorney problematic from a legal perspective. Again, we're asking that question of our attorney. She's engaged
136with us in that conversation. We're not there yet. So, I I have a couple of pretty uh chunky problems to solve before we can turn this loose and put it out in the wild. Just two more quick ones. Dr. Rogers, the portrait of a graduate. I think who is writing this? Are we going to write it up here? Is the staff going to write it or is the cabinet going to write it? And how soon can we get that moving? because the sooner we can communicate shared values on a consistent basis, I think the sooner we're going to have a much more successful um uh reduction in misunderstandings in the schools. I certainly think that we've made our values around diversity and behavior abundantly clear. Um, I like the more generative approach that the portrait
137of a graduate represents and it's definitely my preferred way of approaching this work. So, two things are happening in parallel. We're certainly thinking about this and the state has uh repeatedly said that they're going to release a portrait of a graduate. So part of what I've been trying to do is um not go down so far down a path that we have to rethink what we're doing if the state goes in a direction that's completely different. So again, there's no reason why we can't be independent. There's no reason why we can't sayize, but I also don't want us to do rework either if the state is going to do something that's going to cause us to have to backtrack a little bit and then go forward. On the other hand, I would have thought the
138state would be done by now. So, at some point, we have to abandon waiting to see what they're going to do and just strike out on our own, knowing that the state's eventual decision may cause some rework on our part. I do think that a lot of the broad concepts and I reference some of the things that you shared at last August's board meeting, uh, ideas are common themes that I've heard in, you know, your conversations as a board, uh, other school districts that are working and have done portraits of a graduate. So I I think all of that I is wellformed in a nent shape. I don't think that we've really brought some sort of final form to it but I think we could uh in terms of process what I would suggest is
139that uh we work on uh first drafts as we do with policies and other things and then have the board uh reflect and react on the first drafts that we create and give us feedback and direction. Okay, okay, if the tool for the plain language policy is going has pro has legitimate issues. I hear all those things and I totally understand. In the meantime, are we working on something that can go up faster? Um because that sounds like it could take a while to get through. So, the last time we did major revisions to the code of conduct, I'm going to call that 2018. I think that's the right year. Um, we engaged large groups of um teachers, parents, and students to write plain language codes of conduct for their own constituents or their own
140peers rather. So, students wrote plain language code of conduct for their peers etc. So the board has made a number of changes to the code of conduct over the years since then. Uh obviously we've had some experience implementing this code of conduct and uh have seen places where u you have as a board have reacted to shore it up and uh we you know certainly have the recommendation from the antibbias task force uh to make it more user friendly. So the process for doing that I think would look a lot like the process we used in 2018. Um that process took over a year uh because of how many people were involved. So the advantage is that it's incredibly inclusive. The uh challenge is that with all of those people involved in all of those
141thoughts, it takes time to grind through. Uh, I do think that what we achieved in 2018 was um something that uh I hadn't seen any other school district accomplish and in the two years after we did it, we got requests from dozens of school districts for copies of the code and would we care if they copied it, etc. So, it really was I think we were leading at that time, especially around restorative justice ideas. Um, I think a lot of districts have codes that now look similar to ours. So, if we're going to engage that process, it'll be a big one. I don't think we could start that at the end of a school year, but I think we could lay the groundwork for it over the summer and start to engage in it in
142the fall. And I think these both of these things can happen at the same time because the AI tool is kind of cool. You just ask it the question you care about right now as opposed to flipping through 50 pages to try and find the relevant uh piece of the document. And then asking, can we organize the document in a different way? Can we make some of the language in the document clearer? That's a different question, but also an equally valid question. Okay. Are we all good? All right. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you both for the presentation. Okay. Now, we have no legislative items and we're moving on to our discussion items. And the first item on the uh uh discussion agenda is the Nesso Boseis board of trustees election. Uh since we
143met last month uh there are two more two additional candidates for the uh Boseis board and um uh both both candidates uh send us the uh resume and um I would like to uh uh recommend the board for uh Michael Jamie for consideration. Um he's been the um uh board president for Elmont school district for 14 years and he has been working holding a position in the uh Nassau SA school board assoc association and also as well as the New York State school board associations and he's part of the board of directors and also the national school board association uh on the board of directors of uh NSBA and uh these are the organizations that we sas um has been working closely closely with um and I do know that uh Mr. Rotolo is also
144a member of the Nelson Sofk School Board uh association on the executive committee board um and so is um Michael Jamie. So Mr. Rotolo, would you like to uh say a few words? Thank you. Yes. So, um, Michael and also Robert Ba Shonne are executive um, committee members on the National SuffK School Board Association. Michael I've gotten to know um he's in Elmont and he is um very active and actually he had helped orchestrate a revenue sharing um agreement for 49 years with the new Belmont Park which uh really helps his school district um be able to to afford much more educational services. So um I've known him for a while. I highly recommend him. Um I think he's a great guy and he's uh dedicated himself. He's on the national he's on so many
145things I don't know how he does everything. Um so yes he must be very passionate. No he is very passionate. He really is. Yeah. And then um anyone else would I you know have anything to add to it Mr. Greco please? So obviously I want to confirm we're obviously supporting Miss Langner and Bjan. So, um, look, I I had a different take, uh, when I looked into the two of them, but barely. They're two very good candidates. So, obviously, we're going to go with consensus here. Um, but I think Mr. Pascarella is u a very strong candidate, but listening to you guys today, if anyone else has anything different, I could go either way on this. Anyone else? Okay. So, uh, um, for, uh, Michael Jamie, do we have a consensus to nominate him? One,
146two. Okay. All right. Yep. Okay. Thank you. And then, uh, we're going to, uh, go to the second discussion item, which is the seeking party status for Propel, New York. And Dr. Rogers gave us the gave us a presentation. I am not going to, uh, repeat the presentation only because I can't do it as well as you did. So uh um at this point I'd like to take some questions from the board if there's any missing please. Um so our discussion just to be clear we're just discussing if we're joining the party that's the discussion we're having right now. Great. So I just feel so I just to clarify when you join the party we're the school district represents the school district but in the party that ex the people that can be part a
147party in this can be homeowners uh districts towns there's different aspects of it. So everyone kind of represents individually. Is that correct? Yes. Um there is a judge that a couple of judges that are overseeing this process and what we um what anyone can do is apply for party status and then you're a party to this litigation, this negotiation. So a school district can apply for party status, a municipality can apply for party status, but even an individual homeowner can apply for party status. So any party is representing their interests. So that individual homeowner might represent their own interests. Maybe proximity to uh where the lines are going to be buried. Uh a school district. Obviously the question before you would represent the interests that are germanine to the school district itself. So uh I
148guess there's two things. The first is can we provide information to homeowners how they can apply to be a party part of part of the party. And the second thing I guess I'm just going to give my opinion is I think this has being in part of the party joining the party gives us potential to be in the room where it happens. It gives us we a different kind of leverage and I think that there's we're going to end up doing a lot of work on our own anyway. So I think there's a big benefit to us joining. So that is where I currently am. Um and so just uh to answer your first question, I I would be reluctant to have the school district give a homeowner legal advice. Uh and so how to
149become a party to this uh process might be legal advice, but what we could do is direct people to the resources that Propel New York has put online and also where to find information about the status of this article 7 process so that someone doesn't go have to go hunting over the internet to find it. Um the school district can we can institute a web page where all these resources live and then folks can go through there and and look for what they need. Mr. Greco. So, Dr. Rogers, I think I think what you had on your slide earlier, preliminary concerns, your three concerns, I think are all valid. Uh, I think there's a couple of other concerns such as whether we can be compensated. Um, I mean, it's not a concern that would sort
150of be our demand, but u I I think being a party here will benefit us in addressing all of those concerns. So obviously I'll support being a party. Mr. Rotolo. So Dr. Rogers, my question if we become a party to this is that is this the best avenue for the school district to represent its interest for our students, our teachers, and our community. Is this the best avenue for us to basically represent them and make sure that our interests are met and we have uh some say in this? Well, no matter what we have say, um we can go to the public hearings. We can make ourselves known at those public hearings. We can put testimony in. Uh we can do written testimony. So, we we always have the opportunity to be heard. Uh what
151this will do is um give us access to uh settlement conversations potentially uh information about what is occurring uh possibly access to uh settlements that other um parties are engaged in. So your question is um is this the best way to do it? The answer to that would be this is the way that has the most tools associated with it. So nothing will stop us from advocating for our students and for our safety and all of those things. Whether we are or not a party, we will do that. Um this is a way of doing that that has more tools at our disposal than others. My main concern is the safety of our students, our teachers. Also, with this construction project, this is going to be a lot of traffic. Um, so there's a lot
152of other we have to reroute our buses. So, there's a lot of other factors that we we're concerned about. I want to make sure that we're heard and that we're representing. Are there miss? Yeah. I mean ultimately this sort of brings two core values into conflict for me which is one I I always want to vigorously defend our interests as aggressively as we can but I also don't like the idea of uh uh racking up huge costs to do it. Dr. Rogers, is there a way that we can um do this so that we protect ourselves in terms of the cost but still vigorously defend our interests if we become a party? Yes, I think there's two ways to do that. Um as I shared with Mr. Routollo, we never give up our opportunity to
153use our voice in the opportunities that are available to the public at large. So uh no matter where we are in this process and as it moves along, we will always have the ability to take advantage of that. I think you as a board um can be kept apprised by uh our attorneys uh through me of where uh how things are progressing and what the costs have been. And I think at any point in that process uh you can make a decision that uh the costbenefit analysis of these extra tools is not worth the cost of these extra tools um to accomplish the goals or you uh we may be successful in uh having the con the three concerns that we've listed may get dispensed with early in the process and that it might not
154be necessary to uh engage further. But I think uh what what I'm imagining and again I'm not so familiar with this process. But I'm imagining it unfolding and us having some status reports to the board in terms of where we are costwise, what we've accomplished and what we hope next to accomplish and where we see this landing. And you as the board are always in the driver's seat in terms of directing us uh whether the strategy that we're implementing on your behalf is achieving the goals that you have for us as a board. So to conclude then yes I would support it. Actually going to respond to Mr. Austri but what I what I think is important because I think that balance is important is what m Miss Aerson said before when she mentioned this
155puts us in the room. So once we're in the room we get to decide how much money we want to spend in the room to to make the kind of demands we may have. that there's nothing forcing us to spend money this well besides applying uh to be a party and I think we can balance this down the road once we find out if we're a party but being in the room is important enough that I think we should all consider doing this. Okay, Miss Abson. So no matter even if we were even if we didn't join the party, even if we were advocating without joining the party, there's still certain costs associated with protecting the three things that we need to protect. And because of that, just another reason why I believe we should
156do it. It there's already the cost. I don't think there there the added cost that gives us the leverage that we get to represent ourselves the best way we can. Um, and when there's no downside that we can pull out, if we decide that it's not um, performing the way we want to perform, then I think that we should keep going because there's always going to be a cost advocating for this. Certainly I I think you would absolutely want to make of of the three worries that we have logistical disruptions, making sure that u there's adequate taxation on this new development and safety. I know that your priority is going to be safety. So if we have disruption to busing, that'll be awful, but that won't that's in a whole different category from safety. So,
157we're already planning to do uh the work with a consultant to advise us on the safety of how to do something like this safely if that is possible to do. So, and I think I mentioned in my presentation that I had conversations with some neighboring districts uh that the transmission lines are going to run through as well and they have the identical concern we do and I think we can share those costs. So, uh, you're certainly as a board going to invest those because I don't see you walking away from the safety question. And the good news is we have a way of sharing that cost. The same good news, uh, also applies if you, uh, seek party status, uh, because there are, uh, some other school districts that are considering, uh, party status as
158well, and uh, one or two that have already. And so, uh, to the extent that there are some legal costs, the costs that we have in common could be shared. So, uh, certainly I would endeavor, I'd work with our attorney, uh, to make sure that where possible we minimize those costs by spreading them, uh, over any other school district that wanted party status as well. Okay. Thank you. Are there any more questions? Okay. Uh at this point we would like um like to move on to the uh walkout resolution which is Propel New York and the resol the resolution reads um AB1 is the authorization for district legal council to take all necessary actions and filings with the New York State Public Service Commission to request party status. Can I have a motion please? Mr.
159Greo seconded by Miss Falco. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. Thank you. And Dr. Rogers. Uh so we can get started um doing the filings and everything. Uh this way we can um you know um get the approval as soon as pos as possible. Yep. We'll start on that tomorrow morning. Okay. Uh we have no unfinished business and we are going to move to new business and 10A is the approval of staff changes. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Roa seconded by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? And 10B is the approval of sipons and hourly rates for 2024 2025. Can I have a motion, please? Miss Falco, second by Miss Levitan. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 10
160C is the appointment of interim director of pupil's personnel services revised. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, second by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 11 11 A and 11B can be taken together. They're the approval of the committee on preschool special education and committee on special education recommendations. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Greco, second by Mr. Astrich. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 10 C is the approval of the 2025 2026 proposed NASA board of cor cooperative educational services administrative operations budget and three candidates for the NAS NASA board for boses board and these three candidates are friend Langner Robert Sha Michael Jamie can have a motion please Mr. Rotolo seconded by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in
161favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 11 C is the approval of settlement. Settlement and release. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Greo, seconded by Miss Levitan. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12A is the authorization of service contract. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Ro, seconded by Miss Koshia. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12 is the authorization for special education and or nursing contracts. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Greco, seconded by Miss Levitan. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12C is the authorization for health services. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Miss Einson. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12D is the approval of request for proposals award for transportation for 2025
1622026 school year. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Greco, second by Miss Felco. Are there any questions? She didn't second it. Oh, can Oh, Miss Miss Levitan. Okay. Um, are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12E is the award of bid for partial roof replacement at Southwoods Middle School. Can I have a motion, please, Mr. Rotolo? Seconded by Miss Koshia. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? Okay. 12F is the award of Bid for partial roof replacement at Sioset High School. Can I have a motion, please, Miss Levitan? Seconded by Miss Valov. Are there any questions? All in favor? opposed. Any abstensions? 12G is the award of bid for switch gear replacement at HBT middle school. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, second by Miss Einson.
163Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12H is the authorization for type 2 action for projects included in the 2025 2026 budget. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Greo, seconded by Miss Levitton. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12 I is the is the rejection of bids for SAS high school switch gear replacement. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12J is is the authorization for contracts for federal part B fund. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Greo, seconded by Miss Belco, are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12K is the approval of student club charters 2024 2025. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Roa, second by
164Miss Abramson. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12 L is the approval of student group charters 2024 2025. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Greco, second by Miss Levitan. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12M is the adoption of grants. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Rotolo, seconded by Miss Arenson. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12N and 12 O can be taken together. There are the acceptance of donations. Can I have a motion, please? Mr. Greco, seconded by Miss Falov. Are there any questions? Um, Dr. Rogers, when we accept donations of books, can you just remind us what the rules are for uh book donations and what the process is that they go through? Sure. I'll give you the overview
165and then I'll look to Dr. Curry to help me out with the detail. So any instructional material that is acquired by the district whether it is acquired for money or acquired for free as a result of a gift has to go through a process where it is reviewed by the librarians, instructional specialists etc. So um sometimes we get donations of books from students who have written their own books. Uh we had a donation this year of a book from a student uh written in a language that I can't read. So, uh, we'll need to recruit sometimes assistants in order to read the the book to make sure we know what's in the book before, uh, we accept it. That whole process is led by our librarians. And I'll just ask Dr. Curry to walk through
166what does that look like in in actual use. Sure. Thank you. So working alongside our library media specialists, both of our assistant superintendents for curriculum are an integral part of that evaluation. Working with content area specialists, principles, teachers, and what they're using are criteria that have been established from various state and national library and literacy associations. And what they're looking for, they're looking for um examples of the um intended um reader, the age and ability level. They're looking for interest, genre, accessibility, the diversity and complexity of the text, as well as text type, and the way the topics are in alignment with our curriculum. The results of this analysis will then determine how and where the text would be adopted. Would it be an adopted text that would be appropriate for our building level libraries?
167Would it be appropriate for our classroom libraries? or would it be appropriate for inclusion in our leveled literacy programs at various different grade levels? So, all of that work comes together in order to determine where a particular donated text um would best suit and fit the needs of our students as well as offer an additional insight into the the uh the text that we have available. So what happens and this isn't the case here but what happens if uh someone wishes to make donations of books that are of a religious nature. There are texts of religion and about religion in school libraries. So, uh it would go through the identical process and it would be uh identified or classified as a resource that would be on a shelf and accessible to a student. Um so
168it but again it's the same process and so uh for the acquisition of other uh kinds of texts that are of or about religion same process go through the LMS's work through the criteria that are established by these national groups etc. Right. But our policy pretty explicitly says that we can't accept uh books of a religious nature that would promote one religion or another if I remember reading the policy correctly. I I guess the not having read the policy as fre as recently as you have I I don't want to try and quote from it but I don't think that having a text is necessarily promoting a religion. So libraries are repositories of resources. Those resources include all kinds of texts including sometimes sacred texts. Sure. And I don't mean sacred texts, but I mean
169u instructional texts that might books that might teach about different groups, different religions, etc. I guess my question to you [Music] is we don't have a policy that I understand covering donations of books per in other words instructional support and libraries purchasing appropriate texts and books on this subject totally makes sense to me right there's experts it's related to our curriculum why are we allowing groups or people or whoever to donate books that may be promoting one either any specific group, religion, ethnicity, etc. Why why isn't that for the instructional libraries to make that determination? And I guess ultimately, don't we need a policy that governs it? Because aren't we putting a ton on the librarians and not on ourselves? So I'm not I don't want to exceed to the premise of the question because
170I don't know if the premise of the question is true. Why are we accepting? I don't know that we are. But uh I would say the the policy likely speaks to the promotion of some sort of religion. But the promotion of the religion I do not believe. If you have a text that says this is how uh folks who have these beliefs and faiths see that belief. This is how they explore their faith. This is how they express their faith. These are the tenants of their faith. Uh these are important days in their faith etc. Um I having that as a resource in a school library is not tantamount to promotion. So I don't think that it would violate the policy that you currently have. Um if you had a policy that said you want
171no materials of any kind uh that reference religion, we'd fall short of the state standards which require us to teach uh students about a wide variety of world religions. Um and then as students are doing authentic research, you have to have uh authentic texts to do research from. So uh it it makes sense and is necessary as part of the curriculum to have texts that would be a catechism if you will uh because those are the authentic texts you would use to do research about that religion in an authentic way. So, um, if we were using a text to promote religion, that would be problematic. And we're promoting the absence of religion, that would also be problematic. So, the school can't uh as public entity, we can't take a position for or against anyone or
172all religions. So again, I I'm not trying to avoid your question. I'm trying to answer it without necessarily exceeding to the premise because I don't know if the premise is true. Sure. Sorry to persevere here, but I guess what I'm what I'm still struggling with is then those decisions would be made by curriculum instructors and not by other folks who are deciding what to donate to libraries. In some ways, it's akin to do some libraries accept diaramas or trifold boards about certain religious celebrations or anything from outside the school and how do we determine which ones get posted or how they get accepted? I guess my question to you is it seems like it's unclear to me where the decision gets made and how it gets made and where the limits are in terms of
173where the school is responsible for the curriculum or other folks are responsible for donating or decide what they want to put in our libraries. All right. So, I think the best way to answer your question would be to do some research and come back and explain in more detail exactly how that happens because uh you're asking for a level of detail that I don't have right at my fingertips. And what I don't want to do is give you a sense of what my impressions are and then have misspoken. So, I'm happy to do that research and get back to you on it. Uh I think that all of this happens as um and as you've been uh enthusiastic about in the past having strong partnerships with our community. So uh a lot of this is
174free exchange of ideas and uh you know we're moving away from book donations to trifolds and things like that. Uh we've often uh taken advantage of the knowledge of our families and parents as they describe cultural celebrations to us. So, uh, that seems all of a piece to me. So, I think we can probably get back to you and elaborate on the procedures that are used and be, uh, educational for me to get even deeper into this topic and obviously educational for the board because it's a topic of interest. Okay. All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? 12p is 12p is the disposal of broken surplus and or absolutely equipment. Can I have a motion please? Mr. Rotolo seconded by Dr. Park. Are there any questions? All in favor? Opposed? Any abstensions? We have no audience
175uh to the public. Um so the meeting is adjourned. Thank you so much.