Board of Education & Budget Information Meeting - March 10, 2025

001e e e okay good evening everyone okay Welcome to our March B Education meeting and uh can a everyone please stand for the pledge and I do ask everyone to remain stand uh standing after pledge please 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 so please REM remain standing uh we were Sten today when we learned the news of our employee Joseph SC scatori who was part of our team that keeps the grounds looking so good and he passed away in a car accident yesterday so our thoughts are with his family and with those he was close with so please join me in observing a brief moment silence thank you very much

002please take a seat okay first on the agenda we'll have uh Dr Chris H Christopher Hil our coordinator of fine and Performing Arts to introduce our all Eastern musicians good evening Dr Rogers Miss Chang and the Board of Education uh it's a busy time of year for the fin and Performing Arts this P this past weekend we honored our all count artists next week we open our spring musical School of Rock and we also o wish our high school chamber orchester luck as they compete at the AA Nationals in Atlanta Georgia but tonight I am incredibly proud to take a moment to recognize six outstanding musicians from saset who have been selected for the nafme all Eastern honors ensembles this prestigious honor places them among the finest High School musicians from the Eastern region and

003these ensembles each draw in students from Connecticut Delaware Maine Maryland Massachusetts New Hampshire New Jersey New York Pennsylvania Rhode Island Vermont and the District of Columbia so it's very very selective their selection is a testament to their extraordinary Talent dedication and countless hours of practice as well as the unwavering support of their teachers and to Stand Out Among musicians from 12 States and the District of Columbia is an exceptional achievement and we could not be prouder so congratulations to our six all Eastern musicians and I'd like to announce that them being here tonight we have uh Lisa yazov mixed chorus Zen Zang mixed chorus Alice Swang treble cor and Jesse namkung symphonic band and also who we had two musicians that could not join us tonight because of course they have rehearsal Darren L on

004syphonic band as well as Elena serber in the trouble choir congratulations to them as well so congratulations once again this is a really Testament to all the hard work that you've done it's a tremendous honor being selected for that one Ensemble from all of those States so we are incredibly proud of you and thank you [Applause] congratulations again to these students and their families and um we hopefully will hear you perform one day thank you all right and now will be your perfect chance to make Grace Ro exit if you don't want to stay for the remaining of the uh meeting okay all right so now we're moving on to our business and that's going to be uh sixa and 6B and which can be taken together and they're the approval minutes of the January

00530th 2025 work session and the February 10th 2025 board meeting can I have a motion Please Mr greckle seconded by Miss Falco are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions and the Citizens Finance committee met on February 12 2025 and we will have Mr ostrich to report on that thank you Miss Chang the Citizens Finance committee met uh with one topic on its mind which was insurance we discussed uh two major elements of the current state of the insurance Market one is the difficulty in the insurance Market related to CVA or uh child victim act claims uh that has been driving up um claims for insurance and therefore premiums across the market and number two uh the competitive landscape of uh Insurance in terms of bids and the options available for uh The

006District in discussion and consideration for uh thinking about um uh how we can um best position ourselves for insurance uh rfps in the future so Dr Rogers was there anything else that I left out I don't want to leave anything out for the board not that you left out I would just go into slightly more detail to just elaborate on the insurance landscape you talked about the number of entrance in the market there are very few that are providing uh services to school districts so that makes it uh challenging for us because there isn't a lot of competition okay thank you Mr arri and Dr Rogers and then then from what I understand the uh committee is going to meet again tomorrow so we will hear some more updates at the next meeting okay all

007right and Dr rufo can we have the treasures report and appropriation adjustments please okay as shown on the treasures report the cash on hand for the month in January 2025 was 101, 106,000 63999 it shows that all Bank balances for all cash accounts were reconciled to the book balances and were collateralized in accordance with the district's banking agreements and investment policy thank you 7B and 7 C can be taken together and there be approval of charger report and appropriation adjustment can I have a motion Please Mr L seconded by Dr Park are there any questions all in favor oppos any exensions 7D is the acceptance of be internal all get report can I have a motion please miss seconded by Miss lean are there any questions all in favor oppos any extensions okay and then

008we're moving on to uh Dr Rogers superintendent SC thank you we have two presentations for you um as the board knows uh over a year ago we learned that the math program that was adopted back in 2014 was uh no longer going to be supported by the vendor so we had uh to explore we had the opportunity to explore new math programs or the update to the existing math program and uh that gave us the opportunity to look at how we were doing math instruction in light of the fact that the state had changed the standards uh to and that we had uh also improved over the course of the last decade so uh we're here to report uh we put together a committee of teachers and leaders to evaluate the options that were out

009there uh they made a selection we've uh done some preparation for the staff and now we're about 3/4 of the way through the year and uh here to report on how that decision went and then we'll follow that with a follow-up conversation from our discussion last month about the state New graduation requirements and we'll do a deep dive uh into Pathways and before before we do that we are actually going to have seate rules to be to do the budget uh presentation and then don't thank you thank you for coming okay okay good evening um tonight is our second budget presentation for the 2526 school year February 10th we talked about the capital and the admin sections and we went over the tax cap and tonight we're going to go over um some aspects of

010Revenue take a look at some program codes um and also take a look at um benefits so last last um last time around we talked a little bit um about the primary goal for our budget which was to um preserve our programs and our services um for for students and like the I would say the last couple of years the 23 24 the 24 25 25 26 is is shaping up to be a challenging budget season and a lot of the reasons are are up there the factors and two of the factors we've been seeing repeatedly over the last couple of years and that's um the enrollment growth and the inflationary increases and so those two factors um combined really put a lot of pressure on the budget and while we've been managing to both

011stay in under the cap and and preserve all of the existing programs and services we have to be mindful that that's not something that is um manageable indefinitely and in the future and we are losing ground um and really tightening due to due to these factors and then we have in addition to those we have our health insurance premium increase we'll talk about that in the benefit section in terms of Transportation I mentioned last time that our contractor was not willing to renew the contracts at um CPI so we went out to bid and we just received those um bids back so it's not appropriate at this time to go into that um any further um but we anticipate increases um well above what would have been on CP CPI um right before this um

012there was discussion about the environment for um casualty and liability insurance and that's a pressure that we um continue to uh to feel so despite all these factors um we anticipate that um for the 25 26 year will be right up um pressing up against that cap over the last years we've been more than 11 million under the cap but um this time around we'll need to to close the cap and get under the um the tax cap we'll need to do that both by revisiting on the expenditure side uh many of the items that I talked about at our February meeting the capital items equipment projects and looking to phase those just kind of how we um work the budget this year phase those projects take another look at the equipment we're in the

013midst of that now and make some of those um reductions so that we can preserve the program piece of the budget and so the other side to that is so you have one on the saving side that's the expenditures and but but th those changes alone those reductions are not going to get us under the cap so we're going to have to lean in um to our reserves a little bit more and we'll talk a little bit um about that when we get to this section so um overall our benefits and these are preliminary because we're still working through all of the Staffing and benefits are tied to Staffing so these are um preliminary numbers right now and that you can see that overall we have an increase of about 1.8 million or 2.42% in

014benefits and that's driven primarily by um health insurance you can see that that line is up about a a million dollars which really just reflects um it's I have actually a 10% increase baked into over this year's actual expenditures it's showing up as 2.34 because our actual expenditures for this year are lower than anticipated so that's good news for this year that our number that the health insurance number came in uh the premium rates were were much lower than anticipated but I've retain 10% in for next year so while there there's a $1.8 million in benefits we do use our reserves to help offset some of the benefits so through the use of our restricted reserves when we've had increases in these areas we've been able to offset them by using our reserves so um

015for the 2425 budget we've used about 7.2 million of our reserves primarily in ERS which is the top number than TRS and then workers comp unemployment and ebal which is the employ employee benefits acur liability and those are expenses when people separate from the district accumulated benefits sick um time and things like that separation payments so for the 25 26 year at this point we're looking at increasing that to about 8.2 million at this at this time and some of that change is in ERS so we're looking to increase that by $500,000 and that 4.5 million that we're um planning on using reflects the actual expenditure so our reserves fully fund the ERS TRS um the TRS um full expenditure is about um 12 million back here second line at the top 12. um 12.4

016million and we're using about 2 million of that reserve and right now we don't show um any change in that there was actually a decrease in TRS this year um sorry for next year because their employee contribution rate declined so even though it declined because of um closing the need to close the budget Gap we may need to consider allocating more of the TRS reserve for next year just to get us there and then the workers comp is an increase again that reflects increased um we're looking you know we we monitor that number throughout the year some of that is in increased settlements and then increased health insurance Works its way into workers comp payments and down at the right I don't know you can fully see it behind the curtain but those um show

017you the from the audited Financial statements the balances in those restricted Reserves at June 20 um 2024 just to get a sense of proportion and then we went over the um the state aid last um particularly Foundation Aid at our last meeting and so those numbers are still holding although we are working on um revising potentially the Bose Aid some of the some of the um um items that we had in our budget um to pay uh to purchase next year we're considering doing those through projects with bosis this year and not only will that help reduce the budget for next year we will be able to accumulate um or count the Bose Aid which you know for our Bose's project is anywhere between 50 and 60% that would bump up our Aid next year

018so it would help in in two ways so the next section that we're going to look at is the program section and the program section accounts for over 3ars of the budget it contains all of the regular and special education on the right hand side shows all the functional codes that make up the program section and overall and again I just can't emphasize enough that Staffing in right now is very preliminary so these numbers will change as we advance through the Staffing meeting meetings but at this point in time our program uh budget shows a$ 7.5 million increase or 4.75 um perc contractual salary increases and Staffing additions that we had in the current year certainly contribute to some of that um increases at this time again the program um shows an increase while it's

019still preliminary of an increase of five FTE if you look to the right the right two columns is an increase of five and that's in the area of special ed and we'll get to that um in a moment so the 2110 code which is which is up there represents about a thir third of of the budget at 90 million and that's a $2.8 million increase or 3.2% it's the largest function code in the district and this contains the uh salaries of all of our classroom teachers support staff um supplies and materials and what goes into the 2.9% are contractual adjustments to Sal salaries Staffing shifts that occurred in the current year and those were principally in the secondary schools Al there was some shifting in the elementaries currently there's no additional staff in this code

020at this time although that could change expenses for Bose SE services that you can see halfway down the page um increased and those are due to additional Elementary field trips Consolidated into the this code as well as additional arts and Ed and again those are expenses that we receive um revenue for in in the form of state aid anywhere from 50 to 60% of those expenditures there's also an increase in the supply line and those are due to allocations for new science lab um Material supplies and materials in the secondary schools to meet new state standards special Leed is our second largest um instructional code and that includes the code includes costs for our entire special education program classroom teachers speech teachers um physical and occupational therapists and our special education support staff our tutors

021and our Tas in addition further down the page you see tuition the students that go to Bose's programs and and private and public public um schools overall you can see that special L is forecast increase about 2.2 million or 6.8% so additional support staff that was hired in the current year based on IEPs and student needs as well as an additional special kindergarten class um results in an increase of about five FTE uh contractual salaries including tuition and bosis is is based on the current year and that also um Can shift our continuing education program offers programs to our community members and our summer school um right beneath that offers both enrichment and Remediation and both of those codes are relatively flat and they reflect expenditure Trends over the last couple couple of years all

022instructional media for the uh district for district students are are captured in this code in the librarian media programs and the increase of about 17,000 or 3.4% is due to contractual salary adjustments as well as Staffing adjustments that we made in the current year to support um additional audio visuals to Pro provide additional audio visual support and also additional Chromebook repair and assistance instructional technology this includes costs for computer hardware and software related to instruction so most of the increase um 34 328 out of the 341 341k is for bosei services and this is essentially for the um AI artificial intelligence Pilots that the um those projects that the district has started this year and will continue into the next year our guidance and our health services codes increased um primarily due to um contractual

023um contractual adjustments and Sh little shifting among the C the codes second psychologists and social workers are similar um the Psychological Services shows a decrease in contractual Services of $45,000 which offsets some of the increase in the contractual um lines and that's not doesn't reflect a reduction in services for kids it's just a reallocation and then the social worker it shows um our five social workers and just to remind you that the other the five are paid for by the grant our co-curricular um code is up about 114k or 4.5% this contains codes uh expenses for um for chaperon for Club advisors and you can see that the increase is in in travel we have um our clubs are doing very well and our competition clubs are seeing a lot of success um so that's

024increased travel costs and then overall travel costs have gone up um so that's what's contributing to the increase in that code Athletics Athletics is up about 1.68% and driven mostly by an increased um equipment allocation right now that there's an all and this is replacement equipment for hurdles lacrosse and soccer uh goals a blocking sled and swimming platforms so we're also looking to see if some of that can be purchased in the current year and then it would come out um um for um for 2526 and so that those are the major highlights of the um of the program code and we will be working um on in addition to the program codes going back and looking at our other sections of the budget we'll be providing an update um at our next meeting and

025finalizing our Revenue we're looking at our local Revenue tightening those as I said state aid um in preparation for a budget adoption in April thank you Dr rufel for that comprehensive comprehensive uh presentation um are there any questions from the board for Dr rufel Mr asri please uh Dr R can you remind me what a 200 day salary is those are are AIDS that work 200 days so they provide um support in our special education classrooms and lastly can you help me understand from the medical insurance part is it the increase of a million dollars is it one policy is it multiple policies is it stuff that we're self-insuring how do I think about the division of that increase so um so health insurance rates come from from ship and there are a variety of

026different rates Prem it's it's mainly increases in premiums individual premiums family premiums medic medical premiums and um half of that half of that year is known because they operate on a calendar year so I know what half of the expenses will be and I have a projection of 10% in for the second half of the year okay um Mr greckle please you mentioned that ERS is going to be budget at 4.5 and that'll all come from reserves and TRS would be the same 2.1 that you budgeted last year which of course is nowhere near the full amount needed is it limited in any way because you also mentioned that you would use if there was any I think you call it a budget Gap uh you would use the TRS reserves but is it limited

027in some way because I I noticed that it's 2.1 for the last two years and I was wondering if that was based on a formula no it is not funding the reserve is limited by a certain amount each year 2% of your reportable earnings but to your question um there's not a it's not restricted in how much you can use you just have to be mindful that when you use it yeah a couple other quick quick items um since we've been spending a lot of time in Citizens Finance talking about insurance um and I remember from last last month um the insurance budget went from about 1.6 to about 1.9 and I'm wondering because I know sometimes you allocate items throughout the budget is there any insurance allocated in today's budget um obviously not workers

028comp or anything that's you know related to employment but is know is the Summer School portion of our risk policy a portion to summer school or is everything wrapped up in the admin budget that you budgeted at 1.9 last month I believe that all no all insurance is in the insurance code which rolls up into the administrative budget which I presented last um last month there isn't other lines in here okay uh Dr Ruel um since we're in the uh PR uh process of up uh changing our uh mascot just wanted to know if that CA is already embedded in the draft budget or are we int anticipating anything from the state for the cost of that we had um put an allocation um for um mascot related Capital work mainly the um the turfield

029in the prior years budget so that's in our transfer to Capital line which is the largest component okay are there any more questions for Dr rufo Mr Rolo thank you Mrs drank uh thank you for the presentation Dr rufo um in light of the uncertainty with the federal funding um for our 2020 25 budget um 26 do you anticipate um what effect that would have on our budget and if so what remedies would be would we employ that would um loss of of Federal Aid um would be um that we have about 2 million um off the top of my head that that we have in our um our 611 and 619 and I'm looking at Aaron who's nodding the affirmative so if that funding um were to if we were not to receive that

030funding then we would have to um uh bring those if there there salaries bring those on to um the general fund into the general fund budget Dr Park um last year we had very detailed Foundation Aid uh allocated for each school we didn't I didn't get that this year um do you know if there is any foundational Aid that is that you're estimating that doesn't have the net benefit to us such as pre uh univers of prek the foundation the foundation Aid by school is um or we the upk is that what we so last year we had detailed lists of what each school was going to receive and it was itemized so we could see how much upk amount was and for that item if we didn't have enough students to fulfill that amount

031that is allocated us we had to refund it so it didn't really benefit us in terms of the number okay so yes we received a higher so let's say it's 5,400 I think is the amount that we receive per student and and you're correct that if you're alloc if you can't use the allocation is on a per student basis and if you don't um exhaust your entire allocation you're correct and you can't take the additional fund funds and allocate them to the number of spots that you have um what we did were able to do um Mrs W was able to uh Dr WK was able to um secure additional um funding that enabled um for those for a certain number to increase that that doesn't okay so my question was uh whether that Foundation

032a that you are estimating is we are going to fully utilize that amount the upk so I'm going to draw a distinction and see if I've got your question right so Foundation Aid is an entitlement formula what that means is it is calculated through a formula X number of students certain amount of um wealth in the district fiscal capacity it grinds through a formula and then a number comes out that number is allocated to the district to the whole District not to individual buildings it's just a revenue to the whole district upk is not an entitlement formula it is a grant formula so it works differently so as a grant formula the way the grant is written is they will give us certain amount um 2500 dollars per pupil what's the right number 54 54

033I knew way off okay $5,400 per pupil and that's sort of use it or lose it so if we identify the kids who are going to use that grant for every student that we can name we will get the $5,400 so uh Dr boic got a grant that will up that from $5,400 to $10,000 a student but not for the entire number of students but for a lot so it's an increase of about $900,000 for us but those grants are not entitlement programs so they're structured a little bit differently so yeah exactly it's not part of foundation Aid because it is a state revenue uh but Foundation Aid is one of many state revenues upk is also one of many state revenues uh it's structured as a grant Foundation is an entitlement and then there

034are um programs State funds that are reimbursements so Dr rufo referred to Bose Aid Transportation Aid and building Aid and she was talking about the reimbursements that we would get next year for expenditures made this year so a easy way of trying to explain this is if we buy this microphone from uh a store it's $20 if we buy it from bosies it's $20 but next year we get a $10 refund so the the net benefit of buying through bosies is if we wait a year we'll get reimbursed back so to the extent that we can we try to run many of these purchases through bosis in order to draw down this reimbursement Aid so uh obviously we're working on a large Bond right now as we finalize projects and then we turn in what

035are called final cost reports we'll say what it costs to build the fitness center that's behind the high school right now then we'll start getting Aid on the fitness center and again it's a reimbursement so we have entitlement AIDS reimbursement AIDS and Grant AIDS and they all kind of operate with different rules so on the revenue slide that Dr rufo had towards the beginning of the presentation she showed them all as a stack of revenues and and to us they all are revenues but the rules behind them are different mov hi um you may not know this I'm not sure so if I put you on the spot I'm really sorry but is there um any state aid that we get that's actually comes from federal aid to the state to us us that you

036know that we're at risk of losing or could be affected I think that we talked about um upk um some of that is is federal um the obviously the grants um when we look at our cafeteria reimbursement for meals comes it's not general fund but that as well um uh e- rate funding is a federal program so those are those are the ones that I can think of off the top of my head yeah I would also throw Medicaid in there as well that's a huge Revenue program for us it's also a huge Revenue program for the state so to the extent that Medicaid reimbursements go down the state's fiscal plan runs a deficit and their ability to fund things like general fund school aid are weakened if they experience losses in uh what are

037for them be big reimbursement programs like Medicaid but we also get Medicaid reimbursement for typically services to students with disabilities Mr greckle Dr Rogers this may be for you I notice we're budgeting the exact same for summer school uh I know sometimes that can be based B on what we have as an expected enrollment or possibly a change to the program are there any changes expected or keeping the same summer school 2.0 that has been so successful so many years yeah our our plan right now is uh to continue with the summer school that we revised uh in the same way that we have so we have a combination of uh extended year programs year round schooling for students with um the most significant uh learning challenges that need a year- round program and then

038we have the enrichment program that we offer as well and driver's ed and those are uh and then some swimming instruction that takes place during the summer so right now we're planning on keeping all of that intact okay are there any more questions okay thank you Dr again thank you m CH oh yes can I just circle back I was going to elaborate on two of the responses that Dr rufo gave uh even though they were excellent um to Mr 's question on medical insurance just uh one point of elaboration we like nearly every school district in the downstate region uh use the New York State health insurance plan and the reason we do that is because the way the state's plan is structured is it's a blended rate between downstate and Upstate so we're

039sort of getting downstate cost health insurance for Middle ofth State cost prices so typically that looks like a good deal for school districts in the downstate region um but it does mean that we're uh subject to the decisions the state makes about how they use their reserves to offset um uh uh payment costs that they're anticipating and then uh Mr Rolo you asked a question about um you know uh uncertainty in federal funding so Dr rufo said 611 619 those are special education uh codes so the the two Revenue sources that come directly to us um the three are Medicaid reimbursements uh idea individuals with disabilities Education Act those are special education fundings the 611 619 and then we get some Title One funding as well so on one of Dr rufo's slides she noted

040that we have um a social worker in every building five of those social workers are paid for with uh School District funds and five of those social workers are paid for uh on Grant funds typically idea Grant funds so uh if those Grant funds were to disappear then we would either not be able to fund those positions or we would have to fund them out of the school budget which means that we would have to identify something else that we're spending money on and choose to spend that money instead on the social workers okay thank you Dr Rogers okay and then uh we are going to have uh Dr WJ to give us a presentation on Elementary method medics okay good evening Dr Rogers Dr Curry and the Board of Education this evening Miss Barbara

041fornier our administrator of Elementary stem and I will be presenting information about our elementary mathematics program so as always we tie our all of our work back to the district's mission and vision statement so when looking at elementary mathematics and looking at our academic vision statement we always want to make sure that we're inspiring our students um to live as lifelong Learners nurturing their intellectual potential and making sure that we create Learners that are agile creative adaptable Learners um really using programs that are Innovative engaging and build their capacity to think so in order to understand where we are in math learning today um we can take a look back at the recent history of mathematic learning um at the elementary level so in 2012 and 2013 this was the first um introduction to the

042Common Core learning standards and so at that time saset selected the go math program um as it moves to the the Common Core learning standards um 2015 and 2017 goath undergos a series of updates um to uh stay a breast of um content and learning standards um in 2008 18 and 19 we revamp our report card our Elementary report cards um in order to align with the newly adopted Next Generation learning standards um at the time of the um Next Generation learning standards go maath had decided that their 2015 version was going to sunset in 2023 um and a new successor program was going to be um developed and so at that point we began the process with a committee to determine what program um at the elementary level we would be using so we

043convened a committee of Educators um and as those Educators came together we really talked about starting with the why as we look at a resource selection so it's important to recognize that um a primary resource is not a curriculum so our curriculum is based in the Next Generation learning standards and our primary um resource allows us us to um ensure Equity across all seven elementary schools it's an opportunity as we um look at resource selection to gain greater alignment with the standards to look and account for our professional growth um and then to ensure that saset continues to promote academic achievement mathematical thinking critical thinking and reasoning so as the committee came together they looked at specific questions s that they determined specific themes from so what are the benefits and outcomes we want for

044students um and the committee indicated that these were the hopes that um a resource would provide increased confidence in applying math real world situations looking at problem solving and critical thinking Advanced mathematical reasoning to be better prepared for higher level math but also stem learning um and to really look at Learning in a targeted and personal ized way and then based on those benefits and outcomes we can see that our educators are looking for a primary resource that benefits um the identified uh previous slide but also looks at a balance of teacher created curriculums and resource materials they were looking for Hands-On engaging um learning math games Center activities um really Pro a resource that promoted space for mathematical thinking critical thinking and one that really struck a balance between computation and deep problem solving

045so as I said we convened a committee that committee was comprised of classroom teachers special Educators our developmental learning teachers interventionists enrichment teachers staff developers administrators all stakeholders involved in looking at um different um programs that we could bring in as a primary resource so a rubric was used used for comparative analysis among the programs that we looked at um looking at four key Dimensions or four key areas looking at alignment to the depth of the standard how closely it was aligned to the Next Generation standards looking at Key shifts and focus from common core to the Next Generation learning standards um looking at instructional supports for educators as well as the types of Assessments used within the program based on that rubric we evaluated and several products and participated in demonstrations um en Visions

046investigations reveal and go math good evening um so go the go maath redesign aimed to make math instruction engaging and um effective for all students um they are now fully aligned with the Next Generation learning standards and they provide focused instruction and facilitate conceptual understanding using shorter chapters um the updated online platform is um userfriendly for both teachers and students and it provides access to um student Edition workbooks um including digital manipul manipulatives enl support and uh Math on the Spot videos which are short targeted video tutorials offering students step-by-step explanations and examples for targeted help when and where where they um they need it um waggle is um the new and exciting digital learning platform that provides adaptive practice on an engaging platform um it's connected to nwaa data so once students start using

047it waggle will analyze the data and provide each student with a personalized learning experience it gives them real time feedback and help students learn from their mistakes it gives them hints to help students engage with the material and the fun part it has embedded gaming that rewards um positive learning behavior and we have our two little their guys aren't moving they were moving when we were watching this but they it's it's a lot of fun it's kind of looks like a little Minecraft um activity for kids and they really enjoy interacting with waggle and we also have um more online resources for families so this graph shows our digital usage data the blue bars indicate um the number of total unique users and it's um broken down by week the orange bars show the total

048number of times logged in um so if we look across the blue bar we can see consistent usage um across the board um one of the tall bars in October I think it ends October 26th that was the week that we did our staff training in the fall which created a jump in our overall usage going forward um also interesting to note is that Christmas that winter break week um end of December we had 41 individual users log on uh 6 65 different times while out of school so kids were interested in in the program even while they were home um and this is all to keep in mind that this is just digital usage this is in addition to the math that's the in-person math that's going on with in each classroom um yeah

049go on so as far as implementation and support um we wanted to give teachers a preview of some of the updates to the new go maath program so we ran a PD back in the spring of 24 um and teachers left that preview with their teachers addition so they could start they could start to plan over the summer if they chose to um and a curriculum writing project was was developed over the summer of 24 that was turnkey during the superintendent conference days in the fall of this year we also conducted an initial in-person training by grade level in the fall of the school year we're also providing ongoing professional development using something called coach Le um which is a professional development service that provides teachers with unlimited access to Dedicated instructional coaches through the

050goath platform um it offers personalized support uh realtime messaging with a coach and um self-scheduled virtual coaching sessions um in February we ran a parent workshop for uh families and that was very well attended um we've also been collecting feedback from staff students and families and we'll use that feedback to make improvements during our upcoming summer curriculum writing uh going with teacher feedback um we've been seeking teacher feedback monthly since the beginning of the school year as we work through this first year to ensure that we're being responsive to any challenges the Educators may be facing um the top feedback um was really around chapter and lesson order the pacing of lessons and the Order of report card indicators the feedback will be addressed during summer curriculum writing where we will take a look at

051the scope and sequence of the program and make adjustments to the sequencing based on what we learned this year another theme of the feedback centered around website navigation that is being addressed through the coach Le sessions that I mentioned earlier so what are people saying um teachers uh are saying that they really like the online platform anything that's new is a little tricky at first but they're saying that it's more accessible and it's easier to find things they also like that waggle is engaging and aligned to NW scores without them having to input any of the data um they like the editable tests which allow them to create more custom content for their students and to provide for more differentiation in instruction and they also really appreciate the coach Le sess coach Le sessions calling

052them an amazing resource they will definitely utilize again um parents are saying they they really enjoyed the parent presentation that we had in February they thought it was informative and they like being able to access the workbook online so they can help their children at home now the students when asked about this new program students thought waggle was very fun um because if you complete a mission you earn a token and can play with your friends they also like doing stations and the math games and they feel more challenged and independent and less reliant on their teachers for support um Dr Rogers held um an elementary student council meeting earlier in the school year and at that time students reported a high level of interest and engagement in the waggle program so seems to be

053going well so as you can see gath has had success in its implementation and feedback um from all those who engage in it but how do we know if the program is working so besides looking at our local assessments such as unit tests and math application in our project based learning we can take a look at our longitudinal New York State assessment data we can see here that our level of proficiency and that's the percentage of students who earn a three or a four on the New York state math assessment has remained steady or increased over the course of the years we have been using go maath since 2013 as a primary resource um so it should be noted just as a a point of note that there's no comparative data for 2021 so 2020

054due to covid there was no New York State assessments and then in 2021 you see our sasit that's the blue bar um there was no comparative data from the New York State Ed Department due to covid-19 due to the state opt out rate um which was very high 60% um and so therefore because of this they didn't offer the comparison for the region and for the state um and then as we look at the cohort data um you can see that this allows us to see groups over time um and see how um groups of students or cohort perform as they move through the grade levels um so we can see steady scores across grade levels um and we use this data to ensure that a comparative lens our math curriculum including our primary resource

055meets the needs of our students um and ensures that they are challenged academically so what does this all mean moving forward so we are going to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of our primary resource this includes um Gathering more feedback from all participants looking at student mastery skills looking at um performance moving forward on our New York State assessments um we're going to be identifying enhancements to be made through summer curriculum writing as Miss fornier spoke about based on feedback from um our teachers as far as scope and sequence and pacing um we're definitely going to continue to develop more project-based learning opportunities um which are designed to promote that deeper mathematical thinking and that's it thank you thank you okay are there any questions from the board U Mr Roo thank you Dr wch

056for that excellent presentation so soon as you did your third page and kind of went back to Common Core I started to have flashbacks I think a lot of us did so I'm a CPA my wife's a CPA my next door neighbor's a theoretical math professor in college and we could not teach second graders to do math so my only question or two cents is can we please have something for the parents because it's frustrating at 9 o' at night when can't can't explain the homework to the child so I think what's really beneficial about um the updated go maath program is that the platform the that teachers um use with the students in class is accessible to families so at our parent Workshop we spent some time working with families to log on to

057the platform and to access the Math on the Spot videos which reteach to Children what took place as well as provide an opportunity to see the workbook pages there's also um a parent family room they call it where um families can go in and there's articles on how to promote mathematical thinking and how to connect to what's being taught in the classroom um I think I agree there were lots of feedback about families being able to support their children um and this program was responsive to that Miss koshia thank you for the presentation I just have a question for you about the Hands-On Factor because I see a lot of it as digital and online which is great um and I know the kids love it and there's games involved involved so of course it

058gets the mind going but my question to you is on the one of the last things you said was continue to develop more Project based learning opportunities so my question is the Project based learning opportunities would you foresee it being more Hands-On and just throughout the course of the day on a daily basis for the kids will they have Hands-On opportunities or would you say the majority of it is digital I guess that's my question no that's a great question there's um the majority of the learning is not digital in the classroom so mathematical learning takes on a workshop learning model so the structure looks like a full mini lesson with all students working um towards the aim that the teacher is trying to teach and and during that time um part of the kits

059come with manipulative kits so um fraction strips unifix cubes coins dollars anything that the students may use manipulative wise to work towards the concept that the teacher is teaching then based on that students then break out into centers those centers are different opportunities for students to engage in the aim that the teacher is teaching one of those centers is waggle usually where students will go on the Chromebook and then they rotate during that Center time and then the teacher has an opportunity to work with students who need extra reteaching or extension so the majority of the learning within the classroom setting is actually not related to the digital platform the digital platform is new which is why we highlighted it um more so so thank you for your question because I think it brings to

060the Forefront that the majority of learning is not um digital and then our project based learning is incorporated um throughout a lot of our grade levels um we use things like our tiny homes project where students have to build um and use mathematical thinking and reasoning um one uh kindergarten group designs um super coups for the chicks as they come so what type of chicken Coupe um could they use and the angle of the ramp for the chicks to get up so there's definitely Project based learning that takes place um but the digital platform is an enhancement to that you're welcome um Miss abson I'm sorry and correct me and you can you can even yell at me if I you mention this but we when you brought up Common Core obviously so like it

061did Common Core changed the total St the methodology of how they were doing math which I think was the disconnect between parents and students is this a new Total methodology or is it more aligned with core is it more aligned with an older thing or is it a totally new method so it's not a totally new method the Next Generation learning standards um were what came after the standards of common core and those Next Generation learning standards focused on specific mathematical practices that we wanted students to learn um and while there are still opportunities for students to learn different ways to solve a problem which is really what common core focused on and I think was the disconnect and what we didn't learn that children are learning now that's still available meaning teachers teach multi-ways

062but more often than not students default almost to the ones that we used as a more um straightforward way we provide opportunities for different students to learn different ways so that there's you know different um connections to the curriculum so um it is not a new new standards or new ways of learning some of that is still Incorporated but it's um a focus more on the mathematical practices how we apply the learning does that answer your question okay thank you um so um growing up my parents didn't speak speak English so um they weren't able to help me with English and social studies but they were able to help me with math but then if you don't have Mastery of the language and you're struggling with word problems there is there other tools available to

063support our non non-english Learners yes so one of the benefits to the updated go maath program is a multilingual learner support program that's along with it so the classroom teachers and our enl teachers work together to support multilingual Learners and their learning within the classroom so um there are updated opportunities and then as our enl students engage with um their literacy learning some of that relates to the word problem learning that takes place in mathematics so our um classroom teachers and our enl teachers will teach keywords we'll teach students how to identify specific ways of adding or subtracting both in the literacy learning that promotes into the math Dr part thank you for clarifying I had a similar concerns that it's very much digitally uh LED and students who prefer paper method I thought maybe

064they'll be at disadvantage and what he brought up um had a similar similar concern but are we also at this time creating another level of um Gap with students whose parents are not digitally or who are digit digitally challenged so will there be more support from parents who can handle the computer well versus parents who can't really help them well so everything about the go math program that existed before this new digital platform is still in existence today so students still have a workbook they still bring their workbook home um the digital platform is a resource for students that they could engage with but it's not a require requirement for mathematical learning so the waggle is an additional student platform there they can go in practice their skills but it's not something that parents would

065have to engage with the the family room that I was speaking about before that we walked through some of the families in the family Workshop um we have our um staff developer and our library media Specialists as well as our um classroom teachers there to support any families that may want that but we can we also provide um any support if families are having trouble um on paper or in person should they need it so there's always opportunity for families to support their children the majority of the work is on paper or in a book Miss dri I know we've gone on for a while so I'll be super brief the presentation that we gave is there a recording of it that parents can access so we have um the slideshow online the slideshow yes

066but not not the actual like we can put that on okay that would be helpful and then one last quick question and um I just want to make sure I understand something so we're not changing our instructional method we're changing the program the mathematical program so it it we're not introducing a new way of having classroom teachers interact with the program or the goat this is really just inherent in the curriculum itself self is is designed to help students go more in depth the reason why I'm asking is this comment from the fifth grader that um we're being pushed to be more independent and not reliant on the support of our teachers I just want to have uh a gut check that we're not asking students to be doing more of this on their own

067without teachers like we might be asking them in high school I think that's I'm sorry that's it so to your first question which um was about the curriculum remember we're we we adopted or um selected a new primary resource our curriculum is the New York State learning standards and so what we're learning what what students are engaged with what teachers are teaching Remains the Same because the next Generation learning standards are the same so our primary resource is what we use to deliver the learning standards so there's just some updates to that that's what we shared today but the the way in which students engage in mathematical learning and thinking is the same as far as fifth graders I think that is a step between fourth and fifth grade um is that push to be

068a little bit more independent I don't the the teachers are not encouraging students to learn math on their own I know also as far as language and I know this is near and dear to your heart but what about any unique Learners or so the goath the updated program does have a um a a richer Intervention Program alongside it that um can be used as a tier one so support within the classroom for students who may need extra support and also a tier 2 which lives in our Learning Center so that um in that has been you know enriched um as far as the goath updates program um and then w Le which is the um student platform is um tailored it's adaptive so it's tailored to students um as they um do well the

069the material gets a little more challenging as they need reinforcement they're provided reinforcement for things that they still need support with okay okay thank you again for the presentation and Dr Rogers would you like to say a few words uh just again I want to elaborate on one point about um the broad Arc of the shift of where the standards have been and where they were going and what common Corp was trying to achieve and the refinements that have been put in place with NextGen the big uh transition that uh Common Core was attempting to achieve and the reason why it looked unfamiliar was it was a move away from computational mathematics to um uh more of a understanding of the reasoning of mathematics so looking for uh kids to have an understanding of why

070why things work the way they did so um not adding together 58 and 42 and arriving at 100 because you knew to carry the one after you did the stacks but recognizing that 58 plus 2 is 60 and 48 minus 2 was 40 and 60 and 40 were easier to add together than 58 and 42 so that conceptual Math versus computational math was what we were trying to get some of the strategies that we used to try and teach math conceptually landed better than others and so this refinement to nextg kind of scraped out some of the less successful conceptual strategies and kept some of the more successful conceptual strategies and as Dr boek said a lot of what survived are things that are familiar um because they are easier to grasp so um it's

071an ongoing Pro progress but uh process but I think the the achievement data speaks for itself and obviously we'll be looking to see what happens with the achievement data going forward okay thank you and next we'll have uh da uh Mr Steinberg to give us a presentation on the cop plus graduation Pathways okay good evening uh Dr Rogers Board of Education um thank you uh again for uh having me to talk uh here about the SOP plus program as you recall last month uh we did do have a nice conversation about the shift and graduation requirements so to start the presentation tonight I just want to go back to a little bit what we spoke about last month and what the major Transformations are going to be uh as the uh as the state moves

072to um new graduation measures so the idea that there's going we're going to move from three diplomas to one is a key movement here where right now we have three diplomas we have our local diploma our regions diploma and our Advanced designation diploma so those are our three major diplomas in the transformation we're going to go to one diploma so that's going to take away that differentiation on the diploma so we'll talk a little bit more uh in the next slide about what that's really looks like and how we expect our students to engage uh with this piece of it as they as they pursue their diplomas and the next big shift is going away from the credit requirements and the assessment requirements meaning the Region's exams as requirement for graduation and moving into multiple

073means for demonstrating student proficiency and then eliminating the requirement of the Regent exam for graduation so those are going to be some of the major shifts we're going to see so when we look at the proposed model and we first start at the one diploma the talk right now from the state is that that advanced designation will move as from a diploma to an endorsement Andor a seal So currently in the current model we have already a few endorsements we have endorsements in honors in Mastery of Science and Mastery of math and there's a technical endorsement that's currently available right now that students can receive so our anticipation is that when we make this transformation to the one diploma majority of our students are still going to pursue the endorsements that are already available so

074the advanced take the advanced designation for instance that's an endorsement in order to earn that endorsement you have to take and pass eight regions exams or you can pass seven regions exams and take a four plus1 Pathway to do that in order to get an endorsement a diploma with honors endorsement on it you have to have an average of 90 or greater on all of the region exams that you have taken that is not going away that is still going to be there so our anticipation is majority of our students are still going to pursue that pathway even on a single diploma they're going to do that now where the opportunity comes in is why it's highlighted in red is on the technical endorsement the technical endorsement exists but prior to us having the scop

075plus program we did not have an option here in the high school for a student to earn that technical endorsement so they weren't able to reach that technical endorsement with our programs and when we first heard of the shifting graduation measures a few years back we saw this as the opportunity and that be became the impetus to creating the scop plus program was now that program which the state calls their technical endorsement we call it our scop plus program because we look at it as something additional that our students can now uh uh achieve it's not a replacement though for the endorsements that already exist it actually broadens the scope of the work and and really widens the umbrella so that we can capture more students so for the students that aren't necessarily uh pursuing

076their endorsements with honors or Mastery or Advanced designation they have an option now to get the technical endorsement so what does that look like for us and we our program we know again is going to um really Empower our students choice and their voice and their sense of self and we'll get into that a little bit and of course our cross cutting academic Pathways and developing their human skills and again exploring their future interests so we have just a quick review on that so in the program if we remember that for each one of the pathways students will have to complete three and a half credits of approved coursework that's approved by New York State half of that credit must include a personal finance course and then they must pass a industry uh standard exam

077once they complete all of those pieces they will earn the State education department tactical diploma endorsement which we call the scop plus pathway okay so again that's that's that one piece of that endorsement that if they choose to go in that direction So currently again as discussed in the past we have four approved Pathways we have accounting Finance pre-engineering business management Fashion Design and Merchandising management and what's interesting is if we look on the left side of the slide what we see is that these Pathways that were originally uh uh approved live in a singular department but the goal of the program is for it to be crosscutting and so as you see the fourth uh pathway that was approved the most recent one is now Crossing into two departments it's in family consumer science

078it's also in business and as we're developing more of these Pathways going forward in our health services premedical and education Pathways we're now bringing more and more of these departments okay to allow uh for us to meet our students where they are not to push them into Pathways but to give them options so that we're meeting them where their interests lie so that's kind of where we're sitting with the pathways right now so the the how of of this and and and how do we how do students get to identify the pathway that they may want to pursue or that they choose to pursue we have the ability to disaggregate students transcripts we can analyze them and we can look at those transcripts and we can see where the natural choices have been so if

079it's if it's if a student decides they want to pursue one of the SD technical endorsements again what we call scop plus um that conversation happens it will be happening in 11th grade we'll already have two and a half years of coursework almost three years of coursework under their belt that they have naturally chosen at no point that they anybody ask them to declare your pathway there are programs in other school districts that are are putting students in these Pathways when they come into high school they're saying to the the student you have to either be in the law school the business school the school of education and then that's your school that you're in right and I liken that sometimes you know like the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter right but we're not

080doing that so our students are coming to school they're picking their programs they choose their program but we have the ability to analyze their transcripts once they've been here to see where those natural choices are leading them so we can have pointed conversations so they don't miss an opportunity to get recognized or to earn an endorsement upon graduation so what does that really look like on the ground level so here's an example of 11th grade student the student has not declared any pathway and we have built out a dashboard in our systems that allows us to analyze the student's transcript so for the business management pathway as an example the courses listed here are the are the man required cours workk for the student to be able to pursue this endorsement so in 11th grade

081if I was a guidance counselor I would see this dashboard in front of me and you can see on the right hand side green means I've completed the the requirement for that course red means that has not been completed yet and it's still still still to come so what I'm seeing here is that for this particular student for next year I might say to them hey you have chosen you've taken three credits in this pathway in business management already and the conversation could look something like is that something you're interested in pursuing because if you wanted to pursue the endorsement upon graduation you would need to complete one credit of your college accounting and a half credit of your personal finance and then take your industry standard exam it's an information it's we're just giving

082that information to the student and let the student make that choice empower the student to say oh you know what I really do like that and let me see if that's something I want to do or the student says no that wasn't my intent and thank you but uh I'm going to go and take some different cours work so there's no pressure to do that um you know so again it's just helping the student see where their choices might be they may not be aware that that's where their interest lies and when they see how their natural coursework plays out in that conversation it might you know a light bulb might go well for them and they say yeah I do want to go there so that's how that conversation happens now we have a

08312th grade class now the of 2025 that this is the first year where students can earn these these endorsements upon graduation um if again and it's by choice none of the seniors are aware of the of the program so what we had done through our guidance uh Department we analyzed the senior class and we look to say okay so of the seniors how many of them have completed the required coursework and all they need is to take an exam and if they pass the industry exam they can earn that technical endorsement on their on their diploma so when we do that we use the same dashboard and here you see I have all green so this means this student has completed all the coursework and that's there was a trigger this year for the guidance

084counsil Now to turn to that student and offer them the opportunity to take the exam make them aware that if you just take the exam then you can earn this endorsement we had 40 students in the class that fell into this category that just knowingly took enough courses for a pathway um of the 40 students 39 decided that they would like to go ahead and take the industry exam so we have the high school has now created a a a test day where the these students can now take that industry exam and upon passing the exam it's pass fail they will now earn another endorsement on their diploma so we have in the way it breaks down for us is we have 10 students taking the accounting and finance exam we have 20 in the

085business management and we have nine in the pre-engineering so we looked that as a look look at that as a measure of success to say that the students did not they were not aware of the pathway program yet now we're recognizing 39 students for their interest and now they're going to earn something tangible that when they go out to school they go into a Workforce wherever they go they can always speak to the fact that they earn this this uh this endorsement so in summary really what the program allows the students to do is that they choose they're choosing whether they want to earn that s technical endorsement upon graduation so again they're not being they're not being put into a school they're not being asked to join a pathway it is when they get

086to 11th grade the conversation happens based upon the analysis and there there's no mandatory part of that and our hope is where the opportunity comes in is that as we jog along the shifts in the graduation measures this program now for aop plus allows all our students an opportunity to earn an endorsement so for those students that aren't going for the advanced designation they're not going for the honors the Mastery right the or students that aren't going to be taking a Regents because that's not something that they're going to choose to do to get to their diploma this may be an opportunity for them you know using the sads language as a multiple means to demonstrating their Proficiency in something so we're not sure how that's going to go but what we but we're we're

087kind of predicting that this becomes a program that is going to help many of our students so that's where the program you know lies right now and how we're seeing it fit in in terms of the graduation measures work okay thank you Mr snper for your presentation and then now uh okay one at a time okay all right so now we just going to ask um Mr steinber uh questions only because we have a discussion later so I'll save everything else for the discussion okay U Miss abenson please okay um so I have a I have a few things do you want me to like spout it out or you want me to go one at a time however you want to do okay enjoy um I think there's a lot of exciting things to

088be said about Pathways and they have a lot of opportunity I have a lot of concern learns about the whole the the movement um first of like the timeline of adding new Pathways seems to be extraordinarily long we we don't have a lot that Encompass different things like someone who wanted to try photography and engineering and business and just a like a jack of all trade that I think somebody Susan might brought up last time we don't have a lot that that does a lot of cross cutting and I know the timeline is long so how do we start doing that to make sure that we are still fostering kids trying things they never tried before as opposed to saying you have these three classes you should take this class um so that was a

089concern and something that we need to think about I guess um if we have concerns with Pathways with the state what what recourse our es do we have because if if we're worried about how the curriculum is going to drive our students as opposed to we have literally created a environment where we have a million APS and electives and different things so that kids are fostered and trying so many things before they go to college and I feel like and I know you're saying they have choice and I totally hear the direction in your words but even today with honor societies there doesn't feel like there's a ton of of choice because if you would like to get to business Honor Society you need a certain number of credits so they make choices based on

090that if you want to do the business management pathway you don't take the College real estate class because you have to take the college marketing class to get there and it becomes it becomes the culture as opposed to you want to try real estate this is your time so I'm just concerned that we're not that that it's going to become so ingrained that we there's not enough choice in the pathways to make to get to the requirements so so we have created do we have choice in How We Do course requirements for Pathways like what is choice of and versus what is required I hope that was English um and is there any downside to the exam at the end so if you choose to take the exam at the end of the pathway can

091it hurt your anything if you don't pass can colleges see that you took all the classes and didn't make the pathway um is that a detriment so I go I think that covers all my questions okay so I'm going to go backwards if I can and then I'll no it's it's they're all they're all great questions so let's just start with the last question um you know is there any would there be any negative effect you know for taking the exam not passing the exam taking it multiple times the colleges see that stuff um the answer is no um and that's because the students can take those industry exams as many times as they want until they pass it okay and and so once they pass it they pass it the college won't see it

092uh right now these things aren't transcript so they don't show up on the transcript um it is something that if a student earns it would be a seal on their diploma that they earned it but you wouldn't know if a student didn't earn it so it's it's not like getting recorded that they're in the p pathway and then they didn't complete the pathway and then it has some negative effect on them okay so there so there isn't a downside from that standpoint all right um the the upside to that is that when a student is putting their resume together um they can you know they they will share the pathway or Pathways that they did earn and might become a focus of of supplemental essays and things along that line talking about how they pursued

093an interest so it it will have some benefits you know in in that regard um we did in our initial conversations and set up of the program and we did talk to some University emissions officers um they they they shared with us that the benefit from that standpoint is that they would they would see that in the essay writing that the student would have a stronger voice in terms of what their passion was and what their talking points were towards that but uh other than that it's it's not a transcript item as of right now um okay so that's the that was the last question in terms of the choice and the pathways and it's a great question and I'm going to go back to the slide where we showed the pathways because there's an

094evolution happening uh to your point so the starting on the leftand side with accounting pre-engineering and business management those were the three first ones we went out with we we weren't sure how the process really was going to work we we wanted to get something out there and we put them out um now the Fashion Design and Merchandising management took us a while everything on the left-and side is New York State approved from that standpoint we have been talking with the state about permitting the local schools to create their own Pathways and still allowing there to be a technical endorsement of some sort that goes along with a recognition so what the state has told us up to this point is that we can create our own Pathways and I and I believe this is

095going to answer your question so let's take Health Services as an example where every student is taking biology every student has to take biology if we make that part of the pathway there's one credit every student's earning in that pathway every student has to take a half credit of Health if we put the half credit of Health in there now one and a half credits of that pathway is in there and then the other credits we we build a menu of choices that the students can pick which courses they want to add into that particular pathway so it's not so defined so I I think your observation is correct that the original pathways are highly defined and there's college level work that's going on there so it's reachable by by a certain type of student

096not by every student and what we're trying to be very intentional about about in these development of the new Pathways is ensuring that they are reachable by all of our students so that's to that point and so whatever that may be so there's an evolution of the program that's occurring right now and we're we're cutely aware of that and again it falls sort of under line that jog alongside the graduation measures so that when we get to 2029 we've kind of have this figured out and so there is a huge menu of options for all the students should they decide to go down you know any one of these Pathways um and then the first question uh kind of I I think I answered it maybe in this question but the timeline and why it's

097so long so the timeline to get approval from the state is long um the approval applications are due in October and then the state has to approve it and then we are not permitted to implement that program to the following school year so if we put in a program like fashion marketing we we Design and Merchandising we had state approved in October of 2024 but according to State we cannot Implement that until September 2025 that means St the graduating class of 2026 would be the first class eligible for that endorsement by the state so that's driven by the state that's not driven locally by us and again to the point that we're trying to move the needle on allowing us as a district to create our local Pathways within certain guidelines but we approve them

098and as long as we can show we have a process to approve them their rigorous Pathways we should be able to endorse those on diplomas and move these things along a little bit quicker so that we are meeting the the students where they are because we we don't want to just say to me you can only have accounting Finance pre engineering business to your point if you like photography if you want to be an archaeologist if you want to be a whatever it is we should be able to create that cluster of coursework especially given the the amount of courses that we're offering at the high school so I I I think we may have Miss understood your question I understand your question to be uh because there's three and a half credits those May

099displace other elective opportunities that students may have is that a better understanding of your question number one sorry so there was two parts first because of the timeline why can we start sending out like a million path like what what's the limitation on sending out Pathways why are we waiting if it takes a long time why don't we start implementing different things in different areas and yes I I think that the pathways should not only be in clusters of areas they should be encompassing different collectives and I also wanted to see if there were how when we create a pathway there are you have requirements like if you want to look at the business and accounting one for example you have two required and a three that have a couple of choices is there a

100way is is that how they design the pathway or we designed it to that specification and can we have more choices in there yes so we designed that within the state guidelin so the state guideline will tells us that you have to have minimally three and a half credits and those credits have to be taught by CTE certified teacher which is a business FCS or technology teacher and that's according to the state guideline now internally we create a self- study team it's called that works to determine what coursework needs to be part of that path and once th those courses are determined then we have to meet with an external review board that external review board is made up of local industry profession profs who review our curriculum feedback on it and make suggestions back

101to us the kind of coursework they think should be part of that pathway so all of that does take time for it to happen and it's a pretty lengthy application that has to be completed and then submitted to the state so the work that happens internally to try to create that because it's a new program and it takes takes some time for new programs to get up and running it take three five years you know to really see a program get going right now what happens is teachers engage in the conversations we listen to students and the kind of things they're looking to to engage in so it's hard for us just to throw a whole bunch of ideas out there because we have to go through this process and that does take time and

102that was my point about the local control over the creation of the pathways if we can move the needle on that a little bit and gain a little bit more control over that piece of it we could speed up that timeline in terms of what we're offering and how we're offering so we're getting the program to the kids you know a little bit quicker and with a lot more variety Dr Park so for next four years I think it was until this graduation degree is just one degree we still have to do four years of English four years of math right um and after 4 years years when those English Math Science and History is no longer required to have four years each but reduced right that's going to happen in the future we don't

103have an answer to that so yeah right so if if if the state is saying it's going to redefine the credit requirement it has not yet defined what it means by redefining the credit requirement so right now credit requirements are based on Carnegie units they're based upon hours and minutes of study um the state is looking at alternative ways of defining that we're not sure what that looks like yet if I'm assuming correctly and the number of credits for those required science math that that's taking bulk of uh students days and periods or freed up then this will be excellent but um for within that four years where our students still have to take those classes I'm a little bit confused if you go back to that slide where 11th grader so this is an

10411th grader who's taken two college courses College marketing College Virtual Enterprise and when did this person would have done two courses of college courses uh when I'm looking at our schedule there's not enough period to take those classes it is it possible for 11th 10th grader to take college courses M yes yes just like it's possible to take the AP courses um yeah each student is you know schedule is very unique but this is this is very possible that this can happen um and again this is choice this was this is a student who chose these courses unaware of the pathway they chose the courses so this is one example of many but yes there is time in their schedule to be able to do do this Miss um hi so so you had said

105that um these pathways are only on the diploma they're not on the transcript so how do the students let the colleges know that they have accomplished these pathway and then I have other questions but I wanted to get that answer first a it's a good question um because by the time they earn the pathway so let's take the seniors the 39 seniors we talked about by the time they take that exam they're either in college or you know or or they have to get it to the college so it has to go on sort of their resume because it's not on the transcript um the state is going to be releasing new transcripts in 20129 I think it is 2030 somewhere around there which something like this may be included on the transcript and it

106may shift how the program functions right and where we need some more of that flexibility to allow students to achieve the endorsement in in a in a window of time that we can communicate the accomplishment with the college right so we don't have a necessary answer to that right now and some students will complete these can actually complete some of these Pathways at the end of their junior year depending on the sequence of courses that they take so it's not just a senior that's going to earn it you might be able to earn this in your junior year get it on to your resume get it to the colleges in the application okay um so for me once it becomes known to the colleges it's going to snowball into the kids being restricted in the

107choices that they have so for instance I have an eighth grader and I've had multiple people come up to me who've heard about these Pathways and have said or business out or Society or whatever and have said okay my kid's interested in business or the pathway or whatever the case may be and so they're concerned about taking all these classes because they want to make sure that they get that pathway and so this now 13-year-old is now already setting themselves and it's under the guise of choice but they're already setting themselves on that path because they already feel pressure and that's like that's currently a real life situation of something that happened now um before even going to the colleges they're already concerned about making sure that that's something else that they could check the

108box of and so and like for instance like with with this business management pathway I have two kids in college both of whom are in Business Schools at the college that they're at they would not have qualified for and they were in business Honor Society but for whatever reason neither one of them chose to take Virtual Enterprise so for those kids who were business kids and who were pursuing business in college but chose never to take this Virtual Enterprise they would never have gotten this management pathway unless they chose unless they felt pressured to and then they gave it up but they gave up one of their other electives because they felt pressured to take the Virtual Enterprise to be able to check that box and now put it on their their resume to go

109to college and so I I know it's under the umbrella of choice but it's really not there's so many things that we tell these kids well it's your choice you don't have to take all these honors classes or you don't have to take the specific area of content but the reality is their choices are being limited by the pressure that they feel to check the box and accomplish these Pathways for whatever they want to go to next and I know that there's a lot of kids in college who are kind of having struggles because they don't know what to what they want to do because they they specialized almost for a lack of a better way of saying it too early and they didn't necessarily explore options in high school and I'm I'm super concerned

110that we're doing an enormous disservice to these kids by giving them the choice to follow these Pathways but they don't really have a choice and that they're going to be we're doing them into service and I listen I know the state and it's not I know you guys are doing the best but I I just it it makes me very nervous yeah I I hear it and I appreciate the feedback because this first interiew ation of these Pathways yes they they can they feel confining they do and and and that's why when we're we're developing and evolving programs the feedback is important so we can go back and say all right so we've got to look at something like this and say you know it's too confining and maybe we open up the pathway so

111when we go back and we looked at the different Pathways and I talked about developing Pathways we might have to go back and look at business let's say and there's got to be a more flexible way for the students to to engage in that so it doesn't feel feel like oh wait a minute let me work backwards from you know virtual uh Enterprise and then and then build my schedule over the four years so I can get to that point I I I get that and that's not the intent of the program at all to speak to the the college piece we have no indication that the colleges right now are going to be valuing necessarily these Pathways and what we what we do know right now is that the endorsements that exist the honors

112the Mastery that's already part of our culture right from for good or for bad but that's part of our culture and and so we do do all kinds of things to sort of help you know our families and our kids understand the balance of a schedule and choosing what's in the best interest of you we've had those conversations before right and here's this technical endorsement that's sitting there that we didn't have programming that spoke to that and the type of student that might go after that technical endorsement right as we build these Pathways maybe better more flexible and so there's there's more room for everyone to take take advantage of them we'll have a wider group of students who can take advantage of something like that and not tipping the scales to say okay all

113of your Advanced designation students now are going to all run over here you know to try to collect these technical endorsements we don't have reason to believe that because the the universities aren't shifting that way right now right so this is more about trying to build a program that's allowing our current students to engage in in interest that help them give them a little bit of direction for their future as to what program of study they might want to do what what career they might want to uh participate in can I ask yes so like on the business ma the business management one because that's the one that's highlighted the you know college marketing is required in college virtual Enterprises required is there a reason why like those two are specifically required instead of having

114multiple options to check the box you know like for the choice of Hospital you know the first one there's a choice of one two three four different courses so the likelihood of a you know a child taking one of those is obviously higher but with college marketing College Virtual Enterprise those are you have to take those two so is there a re like is there a way to expand that to provide you know multiple choices for that so that way they can check the box without taking those two courses yeah so what could really have happened on this pathway and all these Pathways once they're approved um we have the ability to amend them with the state which have to resubmit application so something like this in this conversation you might say well we can

115make it College marketing or college Virtual Enterprise one of the requirements by the state though is there has to be a dual enrolled course involved in the pathway as the state has it laid out right now so we have to have a partnership with the university on these so that's why you're seeing college level courses in some of these Pathways and again I go back to why we're pushing to get to the local part of it because if we can create it locally that's what's going to take some of these limitations off or the state has to say it can be it doesn't have to be a college level course in there so yes we can make this more flexible by making it at or college marketing or college Virtual Enterprise and that takes in

116this particular pathway it's requiring more than the three and a half credits as well so this pathway I think has four credits uh that that are required or four and a half credits that are required here so you you can take this in this situation you could lower that barrier you could put more choice and that's what we're learning as we're developing these Pathways so we're learning as we're doing this and and why frankly I I very much appreciate the feedback and the thought that's that's being put into this because that's going to help us grow in in the next iteration of this whatever it's going to look like so that by the time we get to the point where we really got to lean on a program like this to ensure that all of

117our students have all the opportunity in the world to earn a New York State graduation diploma that we have this program right okay and this is really the first year that it's it's it's in place right so I'm listening to to everything that's being said and I really do appreciate it so thank you thank you for all of your work I know how hard it is I know we kind of put you on the spot so sorry about that my pleasure thanks Dave I'm kind of gonna piggyback on Lynn and on Susan and Sha's points um because I feel like we have a lot of pressure on our students to check off the boxes um and um if everybody is not taking the most advanced and checking off every single box then there's a stigma

118that they're not doing everything they need to do versus where I feel like you want this to be like a great opportunity to learn and say wow I am interested in this I had no idea that um I'm in art class and I'm really good with my hands maybe I can be a surgeon um and there's all these there's all these other exploratory where we don't have time for that um and I kind of think that that's going to add more to our mental health issue um I know on I kind of agree with Lynn that we kind of need to have more options for instance like I remember a couple of years ago we had the fabrication machine that we bought um and we went down to the shop class and I remember sitting

119there and they were demonstrating to us and I asked them I said well who who who does the programming do we use like AutoCAD and the stud Professor was like yes the students so I remember saying them I said you could probably get a job today with those skills and not even go to college so I guess my point is is are we looking at other uh Pathways for students that may be manufacturing or other trades or something else is going to be demonstrated on here where they can prove their Proficiency in that area um and um especially adding also from both ends from kids that might not be going to college but then also um other emerging um areas that don't exist today and I don't know if that's under pre-engineering or AI or

120you know any of those other things because I'll tell you as a parent that's went through the whole asset school district and my child went to college and graduated college um it just seems like we're just checking off boxes versus like I'll bring up a question I said hey have you guys read any good books in college to uh my daughter's friends and they said you don't understand we don't have time to do that we we have so much work we just have to get through the course load so you're like where is the learning and the love of learning and exploring happening and I kind of feel like we're starting off so young that we have to pick something just like how we're doing with sports where you have to pick a sport and

121you can't do anything else because everybody has 10,000 hours so there's no you can't change Midstream because now you're at a complete disadvantage so so thank you so we're not asking kids to pick anything we're not we're not putting them in a lane we're not putting them in a pathway they don't have to choose anything ever if they don't want to they don't have to the conversation that the council will have with the student in 11th grade right so this is you know would be this time of year in 11th grade using our dashboard is to say hey do you even realize that you you have this opportunity should you want to have it no push there's no pressure there's no collecting of these things because there's no re the only value to that really

122is the recognition that we can provide to the students to say hey I see you I see your interest and I want to support it right and and what we're trying to do is build these programs in such a way right you could see It's tricky because we we're we we're coming at this from the the the educational standpoint that if a student is in a doing something they like to do in an interest they're going to feel better simply right I mean it's going to address the mental health issue not fully but it will help as opposed to coming from the the other end of it and say hey you're a ninth grader you want to be an engineer you got to take this engineering pathway and here's the coursework you're going to take

123I mean you know we don't want to you know put that kind of pressure on our kids at all so we want to have that that that that choice Choice there and we're working towards that in terms of recognizing students skills that they're developing the employability so each one of these Pathways actually has an employability profile that has to be filled out so that when the student finishes it it actually talks about what the student's able to do that employability profile stays with that student they they could walk around with that in addition to that which we had discussed in previous presentations I didn't included in this one but is the ability for students to earn micr credentials within the courses themselves so micro credentials that they can earn um they're learning skills in in

124whatever the course is so they might be learning um uh design thinking they might be learning how to use Excel and there are microc credentials out there that the student would take a an exam within the course that they that they're learning this skill and now they have that micr credential that follows them around for the rest of their lives right and that's recognized by industry so to your point somebody might work on a uh on some sort of machinery and get a credential on that Machinery to walk into an employer and say here here's the credential we have worked very closely in the engineering pathway on things like that with Arizona who's one of our neighbors here and they were gracious to work on our external review board with us and their Engineers talk

125to us about those things um and so all those points is is a yes and that's what we're trying to build and we have to build it with with with the Fidelity and and and with the right frame of mind on this we do not want this to be another I have to have this this is not a gold coin it's not intended to be a gold coin it's actually intended to allow our students to see them to see the the purpose in the work that they're doing we all grew up with the question why do I have to take math right okay no offense I know you're CPA but you know but but we all kind of grew up with that question right and now the idea of a program like this is that

126wait a minute now I can see math in this potential career I could see why I'm taking social studies I could see why I'm taking this course and that kind of understanding for a high schooler is going to increase their engagement it will increase if they can see the purpose in the future they will be more engaged in the present and it won't ju and the hope is that it won't be just the get to get something else right it it it'll means something it'll have purpose for them that's our hope with the program so it's year one right and year one you know we're goingon to we're going to again jog alongside graduation measures we're going to listen we're going to learn we're going to shift y okay you want to add something okay

127um M Mr asri um we're having a discussion after this right iing to Okay so I I I'll defer it um how do we how did you arrive to the four um currently approved Pathways here right so what is the process in determining which Pathways we're doing we would like to do right now um is it based on um the courses offered here that's I ask it now to our kids is it are we following demand so to speak are we following the state um sort of communicating what PA what endorsements and Pathways the state would like you know would like to see and also when we're putting them in a pipeline again how do we arrive to which Pathways to offer um next and also do we evaluate those on a on how often

128would we do that um you know for example you know before I I see here fashion design and and Merchandising management but nowhere here I see um political science public administration like how do we know what to add and what I'm just you know confused how that works so we have so we have at the high school we have our work-based learning coordinator uh who runs our workb learning program runs our internship program uh is also a business teacher um and oversees this program uh right now at the high school he also oversees the self-study team so the self-study team is comprised of teachers students administrators guance counselors uh we have uh enl teachers on there special ed teachers on there so that um we the that group of people that self-study group is through

129the conversations with the students is where these pathways are surfacing so these initial pathways surface because we know we have a lot of students interested in these particular career Pathways so in the Inception of the program was we can capture students and recognize these students for already doing this work and then the the the pathways that are in development to health services premedical and education that's all coming from what we're hearing from the kids and what we're trying to do within those the challenge we have in those is because we have to develop those locally right now given the confines of the state regulations around how you develop a pathway meaning the pathways have to be taught by CTE certified teachers that's a business teacher that's FCS teacher and that's a uh technology teacher so

130if we want to include other departments Social Studies English Science World languages those would not be counted towards the state we would have to then approve them and then provide the endorsements locally so that's some of the work that we're trying to do and advocate for what we're looking to do so we can offer all of those other sorts of Pathways and then get them out there quickly as opposed to and and using the coursework to your other point that we already have so taking the coursework that we have and clustering what's there okay questions only okay Dr Park I think it's wonderful there um Pathways and we are it's amazing that we already have these courses prepared and we can just um roll out like just like that so I think it just testifies

131how well we are doing as iasis but in our how many um graduating class at 2025 in the class itself uhuh close to 600 I'm not sure the exactly 600 about 600 right so um SI is very competitive and um no everybody knows that and this small group of selected group of people 39 so it's about six seven % of the graduating class is receiving this special pathway certification and this creates this uh pseudo higher status that puts pressure on to students and this doesn't need to be at this point because there aren't too many Pathways available so not getting pathway um seal certification when they graduating 2025 2026 it doesn't really mean anything it doesn't mean that they are less than those people who are getting the certification so what is your plan in

132action to decrease or eliminate that image because just from us we are uh thinking of this pathway as something that's superior but that's actually not it's something that's available and as more pathway ways become available there will be more students getting this pathway certification so what would will be your plan to decrease or eliminate that image so um I want to kind of go back sort of to First principles here so these endorsements already exist for the state so as you know I was the superintendent of nasau bosis prior to coming here every student who graduates from a bosis program has a technical endorsement on their diploma so there are some students who could graduate with a technical endorsement on their diploma without the need to go to bosis so that would be creating programs

133of our own so uh bosis offers a number of technical programs in some very specific um areas and kids who go to the bosis program they go for two years so they already are are specializing in something so this model is not new this is familiar and I don't know that someone uh looks at the technical endorsement on the diploma now and says this is better or this is worse you went to bosis because you're interested in medical assisting and that's what you wanted to pursue and you got to spend your time doing it you're going to get a technical endorsement on the diploma for that uh or you want to be a physical trainer or you want to do Automotive or culinary there're all these options at bosis and they have other technical endorsements

134now for um digital game design for example so they're branching into new areas of interest for students and they're building their own Pathways at bosis that lead to technical endorsements around these kinds of um Niche interest areas and you know kids have to give basically two years years half day uh to post these in order to earn those kinds of things but they want they they want the program they want digital game design and they're willing to make the trade in their schedule of the time that's necessary to get there so if a student wanted to earn a technical endorsement without needing to leave the high school we can build some Pathways that lead to that technical endorsement and we can think about well okay here are the the kinds of things that are offered

135at boses what are the kinds of things that we could offer here and we're starting from the premise of well what are the things that we already offer here and what do they cluster around and how could we describe those clusters so it it is no surprise to me that a lot of the initial ideas came out of our business department because they are entrepreneurial I mean it just stands to reason but we're looking at the opportunity here and saying okay that they've kind of they've been entrepreneurial they wanted to pursue this and they've kind of done the work of showing us how to get one of these uh through the state and approved but the critique that you're making of the program is that okay well that's great in business and if you happen

136to have this cluster of courses this will work for you without changing your schedule much but we can broaden this program but I don't know that we need to broaden it I don't know that we need to approach it as though it is such an essential credential that we have to wrap every course into it somehow because to miss this credential will will leave you aside I think instead the way I'm thinking about this not in terms of next year but in terms of 2029 2030 the state is saying that they're going to uh deprecate the value of the Regent's exam as the sole means of demonstrating proficiency against a skill so that means that there are going to be other ways to demonstrate proficiency against a stand that it's the standard is not going

137to change just the way of assessing your progress towards the standard will change so the pathways look to me like a likely place that the state will say either or you could take the assessment or you can demonstrate proficiency through this so we'll need some experience with this first in order to show that it's as valid an assessment as the regent exams are a valid assessment so I know you wanted to to kind of hold off on discussion for a second but I just want to offer my synthesis of what I've heard and what we've had this conversation uh as a an instructional cabinet as a team about the the tensions the opportunities but then the cost and then therefore the tensions and so here are my sort of five takeaways of of things that

138we need need to think about as we uh continue to iterate the first is to go to the minimum number of credits in each program so one pathway has four and a half uh credits but if we can get the same pathway with three and a half credits it frees up more time in a schedule for things like electives the second is this conversation about having more substitutions for um the courses that are in there so if you can sub one college course or another College course again it just opens up opportunities for students I do think that we should try and find ways to sweep more electives into the pathways but as Mr Steinberg points out one of the things that right now is a little confining about the way the state has designed

139this program is the requirement for a business FCS or Tech Teacher to be in the pathway because there might not be any of those three uh certifications in political science or public administration as Miss Levitan said so I think and we have been asking state to consider offering more flexibility in the the teacher credentials that can lead to a pathway but right now the state is very um they they're very narrow in their focus on credentials and they need to widen their lens in terms of focusing on the kids and not the credentials um I think we can build with that more Pathways in different interest areas with more flexibility from the state and then the fifth point would be I I think one of the tasks that's ahead of us is to get clearer

140on articulating the standards that each one of these Pathways demonstrates achievement in so that we can start to articulate how we see these as substituting for regent exams eventually so you know these These are My Five Senses of where we're going to iterate this program in order to mitigate some of of the concerns that we hear about stress um because if this is truly an interest based program kids will do it because it appeals to them not because they feel they're being chased into it so I think if we can work on these Five Points we'll get to a place where we build more of these Pathways kids feel less constrained to pursue the narrow number of Pathways that exist now the pathways help a student that struggles with a high stakes assessment it's a

141paper and pencil focused recall kind of assessment and um gives them other options and it just uh adds to the existing Suite of technical endorsements that already exists through bosis with some of our own so we'll still have kids that want to have technical endorsements and still want to go to both these programs that'll be great too thank you Dr Rogers okay all right thank you Mr Steinberg okay thank you for the presentation okay we have no uh legislative items and uh we're going to move to our discussion items and uh Dr Park has attended the budget uh the B the n b budget presentations and I know that uh she uh reported last month but she has uh a few more items to uh um update the board and uh jacked oh you you

142know I was just wondering why you wouldn't just finish the discussion and then go back to Bosey stuff after go go ahead go ahead go ahead all right so okay so we will do that discussion okay so Dr Park go ahead okay so both's budget meeting um the total budget proposed for 2025 2026 is 524 M522 th000 and the administrative operations budget is 27 m877 th000 and it's about 4.4% increase from last year and that's the part that we're going to be voting on next month and it is at 126 uh $1 12652 per a a water and that is 79% increase which is the lowest increase in uh last 10 years um um and the cost increase for the next school year it's same as ours health insurance the the ERS TRS increase and

143they will also use their Reserve uh to offset that a little bit a 5.5 million uh in total 4 million from ERS and 1.5 million from TRS um and L um Long Island High School for Art will be included in the threeyear average building model along with barch and um GCT Tech and it will simplify simplify the billing process and it will reduce the bill uh by about 10% for um the longland school of High School of Art students so just to put numbers to that tuition it's um it's going to be $1 15,693 per student for those special schools um and they have three uh positions two of them friend and Rob uh ba they submitted their resume to run again but the third person Ron uh haven't has he hasn't done that yet

144and um the if there are more than three people running um the meet the meet the candidate Forum will be April 10th and the budget vote is April 23rd thank you Dr Park does anyone have any questions for Dr Park on the anaso B's budget okay all right and then the next item is the nasal boses Board of truste nominations and Dr bark already shared with us that we have two candidates this year seeking re-election and uh our board has historically supported our nominations for members who are familiar with and I'd like to recommend that we do the same um this year and the the first candidate ban has been a tremendous asset not only to boses but to uh public education as a whole and as the former are Area 11 director he's highly

145dedicated and well respected and I've had several encounters with him through the uh nisba um uh uh events and I strongly recommend uh we nominate him and the other uh candidate is is a friend langner and um and she has served on the abos sport since 2013 and previously previously spent about 12 years on the great NE Board of Education um and um so I don't know if anyone wants to uh um share their inputs about these people or these two candidates or anything else otherwise I do recommend that we nominate these two candidates okay all right so we do have a resolution prepared later so we we'll vote on that okay and now going back to Mr ostri scop Pathways so I'll admit to um a significant amount of confusion so I thought that

146these Pathways were designed to be the next generation of CTE sort of Education and not sort of high order College preparation honors student competitive academic Pathways do I not understand what the purpose of these pathways are or is it evolving or is there just a little bit of confusion the answer is they can be both but don't have to be both so um give you an example of a student who's in a IAL assisting program in bosis um happens to be the child of two Physicians planning on being a physician himself uh decided to take that program because he thought that if he doesn't enjoy patient care he should learn it earlier rather than later after having invested eight years in school so uh but taking physics and chemistry and bio and all of the

147things back at the home school and then taking medical assisting at the bosis program so he he's since graduated but he he has a technical endorsement on his diploma for his POS program and he's also pursuing the most rigorous of classes that his home school has to offer so those two things are not mutually exclusive and the Arc of progress at bosis has been to take career in technical education and make it more academically rigorous and the arc here has to has been to identify where there are uh career clusters that exist alongside our academic programs and identify those as clusters that students can look at and see industry credentials that uh might assist them uh in getting better at one of the tasks in the industry or might be a CT endorsement alongside their

148honors diploma so right now we have lots of kids who have uh regions diploma with honors and a CTE endorsement those two things are I don't see them as mutually exclusive but they don't necessarily have to both be the same goal for a student sure I I I don't want to argue that they're mutually exclusive but in general the proportions that we're talking about of sort of overlap between those things I wouldn't again I may be guilty of confusion I I wouldn't think it would be enormously high I would think that would be sort of slices of it and not high percentages of what we're talking about is your question uh what does the vend diagram overlap look like between those two yeah I'm justed right so we'll I'll return to the just uh since

149it wasn't miked what what are we trying to accomplish and what we're trying to accomplish is identifying opportunities for kids to earn credentials that we think might have some value maybe to colleges but more likely in the world of employment so these micr CR cials for example so uh Mr Rola was talking about um the CNC cutting machine that's in the lab and it has to be programmed by computers the students learn AutoCAD and then they learn there is an industry credential that they can earn that says they don't just have basic understanding of AutoCAD they're actually certified at level one so that credential has meaning in the industry um they may just want to get the micro credential they may think that there's some value in having a technical endorsement on their diploma if

150they're going to go to let's say as a college one of the agant tech programs uh in the state where that technical endorsement does have value Sunni Farmingdale for example is one of the agant tech schools so again the the pathways are going to be as varied as the kids and the goals for why they pursue any one of these things is also going to be as varied as the kid um in addition we are trying to in know Mr Steinberg uses the metaphor of jogging alongside the regions as they revise these standards but in some ways we're taking a little bit of a shot in the dark to try and understand where we think this is going to to evolve to so that we're better prepared uh when that happens that we're sort of

151arriving there first so some of that is uh trying to calibrate alternatives to Regions exams as means of demonstrating proficiency as I said before that's a second goal in these programs uh the Third is um we've built these programs around clusters of courses that students already tend to group on their transcripts which is why 40 students unknowingly had already completed a pathway because these are just sort of typical groups of courses so recognizing that it's a way for students to have the credential that they really earned just appear on their diploma and it wouldn't have appeared otherwise had we not identified this for them so I think it's all of those things and I also think it's going to evolve so this may push how we design CTE programs uh as it continues to evolve

152I think you know certainly this discussion for me um accelerates the need to try and identify more Pathways in more diverse uh departments so that there are more options scattered across more interest areas for kids um but and I I think we have to have a 1.0 version in order to see where to take that the 2.0 version so I think this has been a healthy critique of the 1.0 version and some worries about what it might if it goes wrong what it might look like is more pressure for kids if it goes right what it might look like is kids being able to say I I did some work towards this thing that I'm really interested in and I've got something to show for it Miss I know but do you have any your

153question yeah I mean I drew a different conclusion which was why don't we just plan and not Institute it yet and wait till we have more developed criteria and the state is further along and instead of instituting a program where we're doing credentials why don't we just program plan alongside it and then give credentials when we're done and we know where we get to I'm I'm just just not understanding what the instituting of the program 1.0 gives us as opposed to just paper creating it and understanding and jogging alongside and then when we get to the end we know what we need to do Jack what what's your concern about starting it early um and I I've heard that from a couple of people but I'm curious what your concern is the the way I

154understood what we're waiting for is where the state is ultimately going to reach right so why are we stepping ahead of them before they get to where they're going to and having a credential that we're issuing until they get there what what do I I've lost the plot on what we're trying to accomplish by issuing extra credentials maybe I'm suffering from the same confusion Jack is suffering from Dr Rogers was was this implemented or at least conceived prior to the state making the change I I feel like I remember the concept of scop Plus or whatever its predecessor was being talked about before the state started to push this out yeah the state relaxed the rules on uh building these uh pathways and so we started taking advantage of that before the Blue Ribbon commission

155released its report so through the conversations that we'd seen the Blue Ribbon commission having over time have some sense of how those conversations are evolving and where they're going these these things are on Parallel paths and as both have evolved again the metaphor of jogging alongside we see how this thing that we're working on actually is going to serve us well in the future anticipate is going to come with new graduation requirements so it makes sense to not just build it in theory but to build it in practice because um seeing how students react to it whether the programs work whether they generate student interest or not um what students identify as stressors or uh values in the program all of that informs uh the the evolution certainly conversations with parents inform the evolution as

156well so we deny ourselves the all of those feedback opportunities if we only do it theoretically um I think if I'm not sure that any of us can predict exactly where this is going to go but my feeling is that this is much more likely to be a resource than to be an impediment and so it seems like a worthwhile place to invest our energies going forward Miss valov ah there we go okay um so however we can use it to help the kids who are struggling with the Region's diplomas or to help kids become more marketable who are maybe not going to college or maybe not doing a fouryear degree or whatever it is that they're doing that it's going to help them you know be able to be more marketable and help their

157future I think that's exactly what we should do and that's amazing and we should we should do that and and for what Jack was saying I think that that's one of the things that this is being used for which is wonderful the problem is is that when it becomes something that is now going to the college as an accomplishment or as something that you accomplish and the kids now feel pressure to be able to put that endorsement or seal on their college you know application or however it's going to be shown to the colleges it becomes like did you take the most rigorous course load did you take the most APS did you take take the most honors it becomes that and that inherently puts pressure on the kids whether we want to say it

158or not and so if there's a way and I don't know how this would work in terms of the state requirements or where the state ends up but if there's a way that it only ends up on the the child's diploma versus the college application I think that helps to eliminate the pressure that you feel because I think most of the pressure comes from those kids who are applying to college and want to put it on their application to say look I accomplished this because I was expected to accomplish this versus if it's on their diploma if they're not going to use it or they don't need it for their their college then it puts less pressure on them if that makes sense thank account um I don't remember if it was in 10th Grade

159or 11th grade we used to do those um like a Myers bre personality assessment that would say fill out this 100 questionnaire and you should be a teacher you should be a judge you should be a social worker um so I kind of feel like we're not shooting in the dark for this stuff there's other tools that we have in place that are kind of guiding our students to say hey maybe you took the assessment test and I don't do we do it in 11th grade Dave it is 11th grade 10th and 11th right so I think by that point you start having an idea wow like I'm really want to go in stem or I really want to go to the Arts but we're not just doing this one thing we have a whole

160bunch of other um tools that are kind of directing our students to say hey I'm interested in in this pathway now to delay it I would say since it's in place and there is obviously the Business Schools already set up why lose that opportunity for those students who are really interested in that and can get the credits um and I go back to what I had said before about taking AutoCAD like there's certain little skills like um that will get you hired just because you can do AutoCat like that's a big deal just to be able to have some of these just to be able to program in a certain language I'd spoken to a college student recently and they did biocam they went to Stony Brook um they were going to research and when

161they started to interview for research positions they said do you know how to program so that person was like I I I didn't take any programming classes I was too busy taking Labs so that was like another thing where there was this this other piece that now that now it's like hey I got to learn how to program now and some of the new languages which no one had said by the way you need to program if you're biocham um so I think a lot of these little things plus it's good to just like learning to be a lifeguard you learn something and you have a skill forever it's like we are trying to learn here you know this is kind of the point that we're doing here so all right thank you Miss koshia

162thank you um based on Mr Steinberg's presentation I just want to make sure I understand that the timeline of this really wouldn't affect college application because college applications are submitted let's say you know the the beginning of 12th grade so by the time you actually take this test to show that whether or not you have achieved this Mastery you've already been accepted to the colleges that you've applied to and you pretty much have chosen your college am I correct in that timeline students will earn the endorsement in their senior year that's because to take the three and a half credits and to have a balanced schedule as we promote for high schoolers we don't want students coming in and trying to get this done in two years right so three and a half credits is

163a reasonable Pathway to earn credits over four years and then to take the exam so like the class of 2025 those 39 out of 40 students that decide to take the exam are taking it in April and by the time those results come back those students already in college so it's not about you know collecting again as I said before like collecting coins to try to build a transcript to compete with your neighbor to get into a better school right it's really about recognizing the student for the interest that they followed and then giving them something tangible that they've earned already that they can walk away with upon uh graduating from high school so that when they do go for a job or they want to put it on a resume of some sort they

164can speak to that it's a skill that it's it's more than you know I know when we grew up it was oh I'm proficient in Exel right and everybody put that on their resume but there was no official seal as to what did that mean you you claim that but if you get an endorsement you get a credential now it's industry backed right and Industry will recognize that so it has that that strong meaning to it thank you because I'm I'm only seeing the benefit of this if a child has already let's say they decide in high school I think I want to do something in the business world they're going to take these credits that are offered to them whether they be part of their electives or part of a pathway so to speak

165they're going to earn this anyway they're going to take that test it's not going to affect colleges and college applications it may help them write an essay for the colleges but it's not going to affect them as far as being being accepted into a college or looking better than one student to another because of this accreditation because of the timeline when I had sat through a presentation probably about a year or so ago with one of the business teachers um at the high school I was under the impression when there was only those three business Pathways that the reason why the business department had started to implement this was because they found that it would make students um more confident in themselves going into their major as business students because it would give them more

166of a background to start with their classes at the college level but also um if they were let's say not to pursue College which some of our kids may choose not to pursue College after that accreditation allowing them to saying that they have that Mastery and they can do AutoCAD or all these things that we're mentioning would open up doors for these children um After High School without having attended College it would give them a leg up let's say to pursue like a resume and just start a job after school as opposed to college which I thought was really phenomenal the fact that we're building on it and now saying well you can actually do that if you're not looking at the business world and you're looking at medicine you're looking at education here's another

167way for you to do that um to earn these accreditations and then move forward maybe you want to work and developing I don't know starting a new camp for children now you have this accreditation I don't know I'm just you know throwing this out there just offers in my opinion uh different ways for kids to leave High School having achieved something else besides their high school diploma which is fabulous but gives them a leg up um in the world in my opinion but also let's just say as a kid you're like you know I think I wanted teach so I have this opportunity in this Pathways program I'm going to take these classes but at the end of the pathways program maybe you say you know what I thought I wanted to teach but now

168that I've worked with these little kids in these this program at the school I've now found that I don't think education's really the right way to go now they enter college and they say well I'm not going to apply for the education program because I know that's not what I want to do but you know my second choice was business so I think I'm going to start that pathway in the college World in my eyes you've already saved that kid two years or whatever it is in College of taking these credits and realizing at 20 gee I think I'm going to change my path now I'm not saying that's going to happen for all children I'm just saying it's an opportunity I think we have to look at this I I understand everybody's point I

169hear it but I'm looking at what are the positives of this because it has been a positive in the business department as per that um you know what what I've sat through with that teacher which was great but I think we're allowing now we're opening the the scope because not all kids want to be part of business so I I happen to think this is great I think it's definitely there's a learning curve here we're going to find things that don't work with this and we'll have to change it and and make it evolve get feedback from everybody and and things that we normally do but I'm seeing a lot of positives in this so okay thank you you want to say something I just want um and when you're mentioning about a student who

170might try a a pathway some of these Pathways might eventually include internships and things along that line as well get them real world experience doing something and in our research for the program we did visit other schools that have similar programs and we met with students who were in those programs at other schools and one of the two of the students that we did meet were in an education pathway um and they were they were doing internship hours within the district and going to the elementary schools and teaching and these two students the passion that they found they they were interested in education but when they shared their experience with us and they were so excited now to go off to college and study to become a teacher they felt so good about their decision

171the confidence the self-esteem all of that so I think just to that point we we have seen that we've heard that directly from students who have participated in similar programs in other districts and da right we went to that to the New York state conference where comac presented their schools and then they had students that triy certain Pathways and said we heard from the students that said we're not interested in that pathway and edad up changing it and save them right and it helps that it helps them to identify where their interest might be they think they might like something they tried they realized they don't yep mov and then M Edon um so I leis I fully agree with you that if that's how it works that's fantastic but I'm just confused because when

172I asked I like want to rewind the tape to see what your answer was when I asked if it was going to be used on the college application I thought there was a different answer I I thought it wasn't not being that it wasn't clear that it wasn't going to be used on the college application I I specifically I specifically asked that question during the presentation that how it would be used and I thought either you said it you weren't sure how it was going to be used or that it it could possibly be used that it because my understanding was that it was not clear that it was not going to not be used on a college application so currently So currently the the the endorsements are not put on the transcript right right

173so currently they're not being put on the transcript the state in this transformation of the graduation requirements is talking about a redesigned transcript for a New York State High School student they haven't said what that looks like so my comment was probably something along the lines of is it possible that at some point it can wind up on a transcript I don't know right right or an application a student might choose to put something like this down but the real it is and I think this was to an earlier point that by the time a student gets to a point where they're going to be taking the industry exam they're going to be in the second semester of their senior year for the most part so at that point already they've already submitted materials right

174so they might have used the experience to draw from when when speaking about something in an essay or an interview something along those lines Allway or will they be able to achieve the pathway as before and without an indry exam or put perspective pathway or you know how they do for Honor societies they don't always get the Honor Society before the applications go out but they put on their application Pro prospective National Honor Society membership which essentially is the same thing so if they say prospective pathway then you're not it's not working the way Lisa had listed as then it will be on people's applications so if we have a conversation at the if we have that conversation at the end of the 11th year programming 11th grade programming year um there's no commitment to

175the pathway so there's there's not a mechanism where the student going to say I'm committed or I'm declaring a pathway I'm declaring that's not what's going to happen the conversation will look very much as if I was your guidance counselor and I showed you the dashboard said hey did you know that if you took one more credit and that exam you can get the endorsement right I think we'd want our students to talk about that experience because it does speak to them you know being you know being focused and having a passion and trying something and then speaking to what that experience was and what did they learn right did they learn that they really do enjoy that subject area or did they realize you know what not so much for me I'm going to

176try something else so that's our hope in how it's going to work and just like everything else we have to be very intentional and it's why the progress of the program is slow it's it's slow because we do need to put some stuff out there test it out get some feedback and then go back and say okay how do we need to shift this so it's going to really meet our need um first you mentioned something about four and a half credits versus three and a half credits there are Pathways that are three and a half credits is that correct yes so let me start by saying I I agree with Lisa I I think I've said it a few times I see there are huge benefits to this kind of programming I have a

177lot of concerns that I think that we need some sort of is there a recourse I guess the first question is as we're starting to implement things is there a recourse where we can go back to the state and say this is detrimental in some ways or this is working or this is totally not okay the the answer is yes to that question question and Dr Rogers and I I think it was a little over a year ago had a conversation with the state specifically about this we got in a conference call and we talked about the confining nature of of New York State's program here in that it only allowing the CTE teachers to teach within this program so that limits our ability to create new Pathways and to include uh elective coursework some

178of the other core coursework Within These Pathways because we are limited to FCS technology and business so we we've started those conversations um the state has put focus in the graduation measures on increasing um its attention to CTE and what that might look like we don't know where what that might eventually evolve to become but yes there are mechanisms and we are tuned into that and having those conversations and the last and a half it's it's very doable for a lot of these kids and the way they function in our high schools in our high school to have it done by 11th grade are you not going to let them take credentials in 11th grade because what I foresee in the really ambitious I need my credentials I need my Pathways kid who's applying to

179college is they're going to double down on not having lunch and double down on following the pathway and getting as many done by grade especially the three and a half credit ones so that they have it on their resume transcripts and so on and test so with any program that we offer to the to our students they have to make a decision of what's going to be a balanced program for them so whether it's a scop plus program it's APS it's a dual enrolled Supa it's it's any of those you know courses however they plan their schedule so all the work we do do with our students to have conversations about building that healthy balance finding that healthy balance for you as a student trying new things right and and getting out there and doing

180stuff that's that's a larger conversation where this falls under that conversation as well so it's not isolated to that so um if a student decides they're going to pack their schedule out and not have a lunch I think that'll be a conversation with guidance counselors and parents to say what's the right move here I'm more men's the fit is to take the pathway like we were talking about choice and how it won't be on the transcript and how it's just something they graduate with to give them you know that next step and that those are excellent things or whatever they if they choose not to go to college I'm saying there will be there's going to be times more often than not where they can take it by the end of 11th grade because they've

181completed either four and a half and three and a half credits by doing whatever they do to their schedule and and getting there and that's all well and good but we have to recognize and understand that it will be part of the transcript and the culture not an afterthought for 12th grade after they've already applied and gotten it Mr Greco so Mr Steinberg I feel like I heard you say a bunch of times that you didn't think this would be something students would Chase uh and I think I heard Dr Roger say it as well that it the goal here is not to add pressure by including these Pathways and and I feel like as long as you know sauron's eye stays on those two issues um you know I agree with Miss koshia that

182I see a lot of upside uh in having these Pathways and I see very little downside so as long as it as long as that is what's guiding you in putting this together to avoid what Miss Abramson is talking about I I'm I'm fine with it and I'm fine with starting it now I me we have already so I mean that's my two cents obviously it's getting late so I don't want to continue but Mr rello would we be able to take these during summer school if you were interested because said hey I want to do photography but I don't have time my schedule can I take it down as long as it's an accredited teacher however the pathway is being built if it if they're earning credits on their you know towards graduation if

183that that course is part of a pathway certainly count yeah other point was um this exploratory and learning what you like and don't like I think it's definitely for families much more affordable for you to decide that I like something or I don't like something in high school rather than $60,000 a semester and guess what I really don't like marketing um that's tough um so I there's a big incentive especially for you know how expensive college is so especially if you have multiple children in college this is big help okay Miss Levon so I think it's critical when we explore something brand new like like this and and the premise of it is excellent Dr Rogers what percentage of our students graduating class um goes to college typically in saset it's still I'm going to

184guess it's somewhere around 98% four year and twoe together excellent so to a college admission committee a college is not in New York pick any college hypothetic or whatever North Carolina um they look at the transcript they see Pathways um how much value will what will it mean to them to colleges that typically use APS as a common denominator right as an equalizer if you will um the same way that historically um for college admissions purposes the regions didn't really mean much um because um it's New York a New York specific phenomenon has been um whereas an AP on your transcript has real weight if you take 6 APS 10 APS it's that's what differentiates the applicants so are we going to do our kids service by staring them you know sort of like promoting

185this um at the expense of taking another you know a couple of more APS in other words in what context are we approaching this you know recognizing their passion um something learn you know letting them learn a skill that might be useful I mean especially you know if they already know what they want to do I mean some colleges give you two years to declare your major so kids you know a lot of the times just don't know yet so I just my main concern would be um you take this Pathways you sacrifice APS and then you realize that it really for the college that you're applying to it didn't mean anything you know to them it's noise that's my main concern I don't know if I communicate clearly but that's that would be my

186fear I mean you know um I have a freshman in college in my last one so I'm done but I would be very concerned right now if I had a high schooler because you know um it's a risky it's we have to be so careful because it might cost them the College of their dreams and and you know by the time they get there you know it'll be too late to correct things because we were EXP experimenting with this and and it's to wait that's just my you know thought my two sents my concern so I think we have to explore that worry a little bit because if someone is going to choose to take a class that's in one of these Pathways and forgo an AP exam that they would have chosen otherwise then

187the my question would be why why did the student choose that so how does it either meet their interests or meet their goals so let's use a hypothetical example you want to go to Sunni Farmingdale because you want to work on Advanced composite manufacturing with NextGen materials probably taking AP Lang and AP Lit is not going to make any difference in in terms of the admissions conversation but having the AutoCAD program well but if you're looking to be an English teacher having the AutoCat experience probably not going to be all that helpful in the conversation there either so if the student is sort of blindly working their way through high school and taking courses because they suspect that this credential might be good for them then we failed them in the guidance uh conversations that

188we should be having all along the way with them and you know Mr R you talked about some of the tests we do with kids in 10th and 11th grade to assess their personalities but we're doing Naviance as early as Middle School to kind of get a sense of their interest and skills that should feed into their guidance conversation so the part of the reason for not having this conversation with students until they're juniors is to make sure that they're letting their interest and their passion sort of Drive their direction as opposed to you know uh chasing this as a credential necessarily but what should happen is if you have a student who is just really enthusiastic about business and so they're loading up on business classes There's an opportunity for them to earn a

189credential that recognizes all the business classes they loaded up on when they get to the end right I one little comment that um it's also a fact that a lot of colleges will literally take apart the transcript throw away all the electives no offense to business classes and they will look at your core and U APS so that's where we have to be careful we have to sort of correlate or or foresee what the colleges you know what the trend is there in admissions is it still APS APS and AP because it's it's the same it's a it's an equalizer across the states so you know that's why it has more value on the transcript um this still has to fight its place so to speak in the eyes of an admissions um officer in

190my opinion I don't disagree with that assessment and in our discussions about where we see the state going with their new graduation requirements to the extent that the state continues to evolve away from the Region's exams what we think is going to happen is that only increases the value of other kinds of exams like AP Supa the international Balor Etc because those things will exist outside of the State's graduation requirements to your point they do have sort of um a level setting not just between schools in the state but schools outside of the state so if anything probably the evolution of what the state's doing with graduation requirements increases the value of AP exams more than anything than Mr and Anna I agree with what you're saying too but I think when we had the

191speaker the professor from Carnegie melon come to kick off the year for the right um correct me if I'm wrong but I thought he had brought up a point that you can go on there's a PDF on College websites that tell you what the college prioritizes are they prioritizing your test taking or other skills uh um so that's not the case I don't think for all the colleges I think that certain have priorities that might be different than just you taking the tasks um um what was my other point I make um so we were at I think the the um scope dinner and someone from admissions from Colombia came over and sat at our table and one of the things that he said was oh saset we know you have a really strong curriculum

192so but again it wasn't just because the kids had all these AP classes but they had a recognition and were familiarity with our program and I had said I said oh do you do you know a lot of schools you know the other schools that do that and he's like no well we can't do every school but certain schools we know because we've had students from there we've had success with them graduating um so there were other factors it wasn't just like everybody takes APS and that's the only way you're going to get into college you know I just want to but there were other factors that you know thank you Dr Park so it um I would appreciate uh a direction from the administration and and place the appropriate value to the pathway so

193we don't want to undermine it we don't want to overvalue it and we need to know where um the pathway sits in terms of each child I guess and advise our children appropriately um and I think it's going to be different now for our students who are in high school now versus uh students who's going to be in middle school and elementary school so if we even among nine of us there's a very different understanding of the value of the pathway where how much it plays what significant role it plays in their future so if um you can advise correctly appropriately that will be beneficial missov um so my understanding so to an point my understanding with college admissions is they know what you what each school offers so they when they look at saset

194they know that saset offers a gazillion AP classes and all these opportunities and so our kids are expected to take a more rigorous schedule than a school that doesn't offer all those options because you can't take something in your school that's not offered to you and my fear is and maybe it's it's unfounded and this isn't how it's going to go and I hope that's true because there's a lot of benefits to these Pathways and I think it can be used so so beneficially for so many reasons but my fear is that once it's known that these pathways are something that the kids can obtain it's going to be one more thing that these kids are going to have to accomplish so in of taking two APS our kids have to take seven and instead

195of taking and it's all about choice right so they don't have to and it's a discussion they should have with their counselor and their parents and whoever else they want to talk to about and you know but the reality is how many of our sophomores and our Juniors and our seniors don't take lunch and that's great my kid does that too do I think it's good for them I don't but they feel pressure to do that because they want to keep up with whatever it is that these colleges are looking for and the more choice that they have the more pressure we are putting on them and while I believe we should have the choice and that there's benefits to that we need to be very cognizant of all these options that we're giving these

196children and we're putting it in terms of options and choice and it instead it's going to actually play out in reality as more pressure on what these kids have to do and have to accomplish and how that is affecting them and I love the idea that kids get to explore a specific career path so that they know whether they want to continue it in college or not but there's also something to be said for these kids to be able to take a broad array of subjects at 13 14 15 16 17 years old that isn't all down one field to see what things they may not know they like and to take a variety of things because then when they get to College if they have to start specializing they're never going to have the

197opportunity to take other courses and other subjects that they might have been interested in but they never had the opportunity to explore because they picked a pathway when they were 14 years old and now they're heading down that way and so I know I I feel like I say it all the time but the kid you wouldn't let a child who had a concussion choose to play into the football game we would tell them you can't play in the football game because you have a concussion whether you want to choose to play it or not and I think that we need to be very careful about how we are protecting our kids from the amount of pressure that they put on themselves especially in our our culture and our environments so that's it thanks Mr

198Mr Steinberg i i m valkov I completely understand what you're saying and I agree with it but I thought Mr Steinberg said something along the lines of that this is not something that we're going to chase and that this is not something that is going to be decided early in Pigeon ho holding kids because I do think there's Great Value in having a very broad um class schedule in the High School Mr sber could you elaborate on that so the conversation wouldn't happen with the students until 11th grade in terms of what their natural course choices look like so when students come in in their ninth or 10th grade they wouldn't they would only know know about the pathways By Word of Mouth I know about a pathway but and if they choose to take

199courses that lead them down a path let's call it a path because of their interest that's their Natural Choice to do something like that um the school would only have that conversation in the 11th grade year just to make them aware that look you have one more year in high school and if this is something you would like to to complete and get recognition for then you would have something like that um I do understand the point that you know the community sees sees this as another get and then becomes pressurized to do so but I'll go back to what Dr Rogers point was earlier that in our discussions internally about the impact this would have in our community by taking the value of the regions away right so then where what's the differentiating factor

200then for students who are competing for these these high-profile colleges it's going to be the AP exams it's going to be super so we have concerns that the pressure is not going to be on uh the pathway causing the pressure the pathway is going to be on I have to take more APS because the value of the regions has gone down and now the value of the aps has increased and so we we'll be back to having a the conversation we've had for a long time and and how do we help our students to you know create a balance schedule so they're not you know graduating with 40 APS under their belt because you know it it sometimes feels that's the direction we're going so we don't see as much the pathway the technical endorsement

201going down that road because there isn't a value placed on it outside there is no value in a transcript universities aren't placing any value on it so there isn't the value on it and I think ultimately as this rolls out and there's more and more conversation and there's more clarity around the purpose behind this and and the type of students it's it's truly going to serve it's really going to serve those students who might struggle passing regent exams for graduation and and this becomes that that that that alternative means of demonstrating proficiency outside of that Region's exam and why we were not predicting that this is going to be something that's going to have a thousand kids running through it it's going to be it's going to be there as an alternative but what we

202did Rec recognize is in the endorsements that we did not have a program that served our kids to obtain that endorsement and so through this program we now have that option for for for students to do that but ultimately because the region is going to be devalued in terms of its graduation uh importance APS will go up but all of your masteries and all of your honors and advanced designation endorsements are still in place so our students are still going to go after those things I just I just appreciate that message like I appreciate that being the message but it has to translate the right way down because sometimes that's the message here and it doesn't translate into the culture and I want to make I think that's like I think that's the purpose I

203don't think anyone says this is like the new like a new standard or a new AP or the high I think that what we're scared of is that that message gets lost and muddied and it becomes another part of the a culture of competitiveness as opposed to look at an alternative way to help our students succeed so I think you know let's focus that all right thank you we definitely have a lot of um discussions and a lot of conversation this P topic and um I do see this as uh something that's going to be uh keep evolving keep it evolving and um and uh with all the discussions that we've had so far from tonight from the board I do recommend that um the administration take all the discussions back and then do some

204sort of refinement and report back to the board do we have a consensus on that just based on our discussion and then have the administration and then do some assignment and then updated as you go along and um when whenever that becomes aent we another update are we okay with that are we okay with that yeah yeah okay all right are we all good all right thank you all right so this concludes our discussion items and we are going to move to um uh item 11a and that's the adoption of four goals and uh can I have a motion Please Mr second by m lean are there any questions Mr as a question uh yes I have a question statement opinion Etc uh edit actually um so we passed a lot of feedback on to

205the uh facilitator during discussion um and one of the goals the third goal about connected Community I think has I don't remember this statement being agreed to I remember there was discussion around it but there's a concept missing here that is I think absolutely crucial to to adopting the goals and that is that I think what this connected Community goal is trying to get to is collaboration and discussion but it's not a collaborative culture in decision making and there's a meaningful difference between us building strong connections between people and making sure people are collaborative in decision making when it happens and I think the difference is Meaningful enough that it needs to be amended do you have a recommendation of what you would change I do so I would rather Foster a strong collaborative culture

206in decisionmaking with all families and stakeholders rather than fostering strong meaningful connections say it again jack oh sure we will Foster a strong collaborative culture in decisionmaking with all families and stakeholders and strike meaningful connections can you just do the second part again yeah strike meaningful connections I'm in Connected Community goal 3 am I not being clear so it would read we will Foster strong collaborative culture in decision making with all families and stakeholders and take out meaningful Connections in the first sentence what do you mean by decision making I I understand what you're trying I I'm not sure if I understand what you're do you mean like what we when we vote like we at we're nine elected officials to represent the community so what do you mean by decision making because I I

207just want to be clear what we're trying to sure so these aren't goals for the board these are goals for the administration and and the district so when they're making decisions they're making decisions in a collaborative fashion with stakeholders and families involved this was we were discussing um at the a work session on January 30th and that's what at the end of the meeting um we we this is what we talked about and then uh uh Dr maaan said send us the a revised version and this is what exactly what it is I think Dr mowan sent this revised version to us for today I don't think it appeared prior to today he did he did repeat that at the meeting he did repeat what at the meeting and and Dr just shared that version

208just a few days after our meeting so early February we got that version and this is exactly after our meeting after we talked about it at a work session and Dr M we talked about the ver was and then he s ver to Dr rers and drers that was Bo a few days after January okay and this has been our first opportunity to discuss that right I don't disagree with Jack uh Mr ostk I actually agree with him I just don't know if I love the language um and I don't really have a response or better language for you but I do agree with the concept but I don't think saying a collaborative culture in decision making and strike a meaningful connection is the way to do it if we just do we will Foster

209strong collaborative culture with all families and stakeholders no he had decision- making in decision making what if we just do we will Foster strong collaborative culture with all families and stakeholders and make meaningful connections with all add collaborative culture we'll do I I think it would read I think we're saying it would read we will Foster strong we will Foster a strong collaborative culture and I think Brian wanted to keep and make meaningful connections with all families and stakeholders ensuring ensuring blah blah blah blah blah Mr asri may be including I assume you want the decisionmaking concept built into this sentence and I just think if it went towards the end and I I think that's great um if we want to have collaborative culture in the beginning of the sentence and decision- making at

210the end that's wonderful but ultimately the goal is or what I'm saying that I would like in the goal is that decision-making being of a collaborative nature is Paramount to us having what's the way I want to phrase it I think it's an important element of the culture that we're trying to create and I think that it needs to be incorporated into the goal so if there's collaborative culture and you want to you know work phrase the beginning that's fine and have everyone is a meaningful um um you know everyone feels heard supported and invested in success whatever it is but I I think the key element is is that decision- making needs to feel like people are participating and that they're consulted and that it's that we highlight it as a way that the

211administration conducts decision-making oh so this is my obvious first impression of hearing this addition to the goals so I'm trying to understand what it means so I'm trying to think of the kinds of decisions that get made and understand how collaboration would occur so I'm going to place decision making along a continuum um and use the extremes to illustrate examples so at one end of the Continuum we have a crisis there are a lot of decisions that get made in the middle of a crisis none of those are collaborative nor would you want them to be so that clearly doesn't meet the definition of what you're looking for in a culture there are other decisions that are choices between um two unknowns that may or may not have a good outcome and so with decision

212making comes accountability so when you have collaboration in decision making the people who are part of that collaboration have to also share in the accountability for it so at some point you say well there are really big decisions like having um a bond pass in the community to put a lot of the community's money into improving the facilities that's clearly a very collaborative decision making process that took place over the course of months with endless presentations and videos and documents and work with Architects and feedback sessions Etc and in the end the the community did make a decision in collaboration with us they decided that they wanted to make that investment so those are sort of the two extremes the crisis and then the public vote on something and then a whole bunch of things

213that are strewn all along a Continuum in between and I don't know how these words affect where the line between autonomy and accountability would fall with any of the decisions that lie in between those two extremes so again this is a reaction of first impression but I have I have to give it some thought as to someone would operationalize this in anything other than sort of an aspirational way the word participation which may take away your Continuum issue and meet your needs but if you said in the end of the sentence um and the like through if you added the word participation within this so that it feels like there there a more active community that are participating in the district and the community and have a true stakeholders like that maybe that'll satisfy without

214going into the abyss over there thank you Dr Rogers for talking for a while as I was able to write something um how about this Jack we will for a strong collaborative culture and make meaningful connections with all families and stakeholders comma ensuring an inclusive and Cooperative School Community where every person feels valued comma heard comma and has a true sense of belonging does that work Dr Park I was thinking like Dr R said when you said decision making I was thinking about masking there were a group of people who did not want to put mask and by um making decision of not putting the mask on okay so that's what I was thinking like that will lose funding from the state so decision making part was kind of um triggering alert from my sense

215but here it says the second sentence where through effective communication and deeper engagement shouldn't that satisfy your concern of being collaborative with the community so it's not it's it's community and stakeholders right so the idea that everyone who is a stakeholder in [Music] so you don't want to include the word collaborative Jack are you okay with what I read out loud is that a I don't know what the word is but is that a uh a middle ground that you would take sort of right this isn't the first time I um I wrote feedback to Mr McGowen about this um so it's not the first time this has come up in conversation um I guess ultimately when I think about this I'm envisioning the decisions like when we I don't know have starttime conversations right

216like that's a collaborative decision-making right we normally do those kinds of things when we talk about um curriculum making sure all the right people a wide group of people are involved in that conversation I'm thinking about just an organizational culture where the default thought process is do we have the right people and enough stakeholders and all the right stakeholders in the room to make good decisions and I want that to be the default thought for all administrators right do we have all the right people that we need to make these decisions collaboratively in this room we will Foster a strong collaborative culture and make meaningful connections with all families and stakeholders comma ensuring an inclusive and Cooperative School Community where every person feels valued comma heard comma and has a true sense of belonging period

217okay uh Miss kosia um I am I hear Mr Greco what he's saying but we have feels heard in the last sentence so we're being repetitive on that but I'm not okay I don't want to put the decision-making in I think we said that already but can we just change deeper engagement in the second sentence and put collaboration so we say through effective communication and collaboration we will strengthen relationships blah blah blah then you add the word collaboration which is you know working together to make decisions because it's it it is implied in here that it's part of it but I'm also a little bit you know we worked on this for so many hours and we're supposed to just be voting on it and to try to change and Wordsmith it after a threeh

218hour you know sitting here and having other discussions is very difficult right now and I don't want to sign off on something that we've put for like a long time in many many hours so I'm like not okay with that if if we can can we table it and just come back to it to to pass it because I don't want to just throw words and and approve it I really don't want to table it I think it's so important I I totally agree with you Lisa about it's late and we work so long on this and approving it but I really really want the administration to be able to start making um plans and to start implementing this like as soon as possible we work so hard on this and I really want to

219see like it com through fruition and really get a move on so if we could just spend like a few minutes and figure it out so we don't have to do it again that would be my vote do you think that there is a big difference between deeper engagement and collaboration do they generally mean the same thing are we saying the same things but you like the word collaboration better is that what is that the big change I'm just trying to get to the B so the bottom line that was a question if the question for me was was your change okay by me yes the one that you read to me I don't want the repetitiveness that Miss koshia brought up so drop the and her in the first sentence leave it in the

220second sentence and I think it works good catch Lisa fer collabora cure and making Min connection do you want to one Jesus um we will Foster a strong collaborative culture and make meaningful connections everything else Remains the Same are we okay with just adding these few words nothing else changes okay all right so and that's for the contic Comm connected community and all the other areas academic inclusive and the transparent and efficiency operations will remain the same and it's just the connected Community we're adding that one sentence only everything else is the same okay all right uh which is adding what you just read yeah okay all right um all in favor opposed any extensions okay okay 12 a is the appointment of assistant clerk permanent chairperson Chief election inspectors and election inspectors for the

221School District budget vote and annual district election on May 20th 2025 can I have a motion Please Mr R second by Miss koshia are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 12 B is the approval of staff changes can I have a motion Please Mr greckle second by Miss Levitan are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 12C is the approval of stiens and our leite rates 2024 2025 can I have a motion Please Mr Rolo second it by Miss koshia are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 12d is the approval of coaching recommendations can I have a motion Please Mr greal seconded by Miss Falco are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 12 is the approval pay rate for overnight field trips can I

222have a motion Please Mr Roto second by Dr Park are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 12f is the appointment of interim director of pupil Personnel Services can I have a motion Please Mr greckle seconded by Miss Le 10 are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 12g and 12h can be taken together and the approval of EX exams of an employee pursuant to education law section 9913 can I have a motion Please Mr Rolo second by Miss abenson are there any questions all in favor opposed any extenstions 13A and 13 13B can be taken together and there the approval of the committee on preschool special education and the committee on special education recommendations can I have a motion please M Lev 10 second by Mr Mr asri are there

223any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 13 C is the nomination of nasal boses Board of Trustees friend langner and Robert B Sean can I have a motion Please Mr Vero second by Dr Park are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 13d is the approval of new and revised policies 13 0130 District district complaint procedures for federal programs 11:20 School District records 4321 programs for students with disabilities under the idea and New York education law article 89 8130 school safety plans and teams can I have a motion Please Mr Greco seconded by m Levitan are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14a is the authorization of service contracts can I have a motion Please Mr Roto second by Miss koshia are there any questions all in favor opposed

224any extensions 14b is the authorization for special education and or nursing contracts can have a motion please miss Levitan seconded by Miss fov are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14 C is the authorization for Health Services can I have a motion Please Mr Rolo seconded by Miss abson are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14d is the approval of student Club Charters 2024 2025 can I have a motion please miss len seconded by Miss fov are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14 e is the approval of student group Charters 2024 2025 can I have a motion please Dr Park seconded by Mr Roto are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14f is the authorization of extension of agreement can I have

225a motion Please Mr greckle second by Miss Levitan are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14g is the authorization for picky backing s Hampton Union Free School District stage curtains bid SPS 23-3 first EXT first extension can I have a motion Please Mr Roto seconded by Miss koshia are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14h is the authorization for Picket back in South Hampton Union Free School District school supplies and M materials bit number SPS 24-4 for first extension can I have a motion Please Mr greckle seconded by Miss Leviton are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14 I is the authorization for piggybacking Southampton Union Free School District science supplies and materials bid number is PS2 24-5 can I have a motion please mrle second

226by Miss Levitan are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions 14j is the authorization for Picket backing Belmore mer building and grounds equipment can I have a motion Please Mr Roto second by Dr Park are there any questions all in favor opposed any abstentions 14k is the is the disposal of broken Surplus and or absolute equipment supplies in box can I have a motion Please Mr GLE second by m leitan are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions there's no audience to the public and this will conclude our March Board of Education meeting and the next meeting will take place on Wednesday April 23rd 2025 I know it sounds early but uh have a safe and fun spring break