001motion to go into executive session to discuss to discuss the employment history of the regular person. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. At this time, it is our public input on agenda and non-aggenda items. I welcome any members of the audience to speak at this time. on. No, >> I think it's time. Can you state your name and >> is now? >> All right, >> hang on one second. >> Try again. >> Hello. >> It's on. >> Good evening everyone. My name is Cheyenne. You know my last name? >> Yes. >> All right. So, I'm just for a little speech. Um I'm returning to
002you all from u issues that I had last year. Same concerns some about um the head volleyball varsity coach for the girls um in the high school high school. So I would like to speak on some responsibilities we have to these children as adults um and as providers. Some people believe that you know a ch a child's growth begins at home and ends at home but they forget about the in between and I let everyone know that the in between is the growth of the child within the school parents teachers counselors friends members and above all their coaches. I believe that a child is molded by the coach as much as the parents mold the child. So coaches are supposed to build up players, encourage them, provide support, give constructive feedback, recognize strength and weaknesses,
003and help develop and enhance a player skill. I feel like on these responsibilities as a coach to these children that my daughters will feel tremendously when it comes to that. I felt like and my daughters kind of feel like the same way but I believe that they were filled with doubt, confusion. They felt humiliated, their hearts were broken and they had tremendous distrust within the volleyball team and their coach. Um, I'm speaking up for others who will not speak up. I've always been this way and I'm always going to be this way. When I recognize wrongdoing, I always come up for and let it be known. I respect all the players and encourage them to do whatever they want to do. Same with my daughters. Okay. So yeah, last year this was the same issue
004and like I said, I'm just bringing it to your attention again. I'm here for encouragement for my daughter. I'm going to speak up for what's right for my daughter and other players. I believe that something needs to be done about this. I did email you board members on what actually happened and some, you know, things that transpired from last year. So, I don't want to really go into detail there, but I feel like someone here today should be reaching out to me so that we can speak about this and get this situated. I don't know. I think my daughter wants to talk a few words or whatever. When I first When I first joined the JB volleyball team in 10th grade, it was obvious to me that she that the coach has a higher status
005in other teammates as well as like compared to um compared to the other kids. And when she talks to it's different for each and every kid and it was very clear to a lot of us and when there is an issue she has um our full attention saying that she It did not encourage for us to have our parents come up to her and speak about issues that the child has had and talked about to their parent. And if there was, she would have a problem about it, which did scare me when I was younger because I appreciate talking to my mom about a lot of stuff, especially sports, as I'm always like always want to be included into these sports. Um, and by the way, with the way my mom is when it comes
006to helping out, she did want to say something. I at that time I was very scared. I didn't get much playtime around at first and I didn't want that to ruin for my overall future in varsity and in JV. But being a strong minded mother and wanting us to do great and everything, she has talked to her which which sort of helped, but overall Um, when I I was there a lot, I was I attended a lot of workouts over the summer. I put my time in. I even went into summer league. I played every every single time there was every Monday we had summer league. I played and I've put the time. I've gotten better. and she's never came up to me, told me about what she thought about my playtime, regarding um regarding
007serving as to what was the only thing that had me kicked off as I couldn't serve um serve consistently as I couldn't serve consistently. me. But as which is very disheartening and every as every volleyball game, there's always one one teammate that will that will have an unfortunate turn of missing a serve in every single game. So, and I haven't she's never really spoken to me about this concern and I've only learned about it after she's told me she told me that I was not um I there was not enough space on the team for me and and it's very it's very heartbreaking to me because with all the prior stuff that happened, me getting better and me showing up, me putting in the work for the team, having like having good relationships with every
008single teammate. Um, she's never really showed the um she's never really showed me the much amount of care that she put in with other teammates as I show as I seen. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you for listening to us. Um, and I would gladly appreciate if someone can reach out to me from this board member to let me know what the next step is and to help not only my daughters but other girls that have told me similar actions. Thank you. >> Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak at this time? >> Okay. Thank you. All right. At this time, we're going to have Mr. Carmelo provide us with a superintendent update. >> Uh just a very quick update um on the Winding Skill uh merger reorganization. Uh so next
009Tuesday uh this coming Tuesday uh October 28th 6 pm in the auditorium uh will be our first uh community meeting since the feasibility study started. There's been a lot of work going on already, a lot of data and information shared between the two districts and the consultants. Uh so we'd love for uh everybody to be out here on the 28th if you're available. uh we'll be presenting uh this flyer which will go out on parent square tomorrow uh which talks about a preliminary um plan that we have with the feedback we've gotten already uh from both communities and I think we've put a really powerful preliminary plan together. So uh hopefully it's well received next Tuesday but encourage anybody that's available to come. >> Okay, thank you. All right. At this time, we're going to
010have our school team presentation, our new Mr. Rossi. Welcome. >> Thank you. [laughter] >> Good evening and thank you for allowing us the opportunity tonight to showcase school 14. My name is David Rossi. I'm the principal of school 14. I'm joined by Mrs. Jenna Grith, our amazing assistant principal, as well as many of the outstanding educators at school 14 that make it a very special place. I would like to start by thanking you, the board of education, for your support of our school, our students, our staff, and our community. We're grateful to you for all that you do, and all that you do to ensure that our students have what they need to be successful. Next, I would like to extend a thank you to our superintendent, Mr. Cornelo, Deputy Superintendent, Mr. Styles, and assistant
011superintendents, Mr. Hotelling and Mr. Bossy. Troy is lucky to have such a talented cabinet and as I started out with my principal ship, they've each been an immense support to me and I couldn't be more thankful to work with each and every one of them. I also want to extend a thank you to Mrs. Karen Cludier, the former principal of school 14. She was a steady and dedicated leader at school 14 for more than 18 years. When she arrived as principal in 2007, it was a time of frequent leadership changes at the school. And from then until her retirement this past summer, she was a consistent, strong, and dependable leader who saw thousands of students pass through the halls of school 14 and guided hundreds of staff to success. And it is my honor and
012my privilege to be her successor. And I couldn't be happier that she is continuing her work to help and support our students. I mention this because while the data you will see in just a few minutes belongs to all of the educators at school 14, Mrs. Clutier led these efforts and I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge all of her hard work leading us through and helping us to progress and be successful throughout the years. [applause] Finally, I want to thank all of our teachers at and staff at school 14. They are by far the best staff I have ever worked with. They're each dedicated to their craft, to education, and most importantly to our students. Year after year, you work incredibly hard to get better at what you do so our students
013can get better at what they do. And I couldn't be prouder to be your principal. Thank you for all you do. On opening day, I spoke with staff about looking at our work from different vantage points. You may have heard people talk about a 30,000 foot vantage point. Up there, you see broad landscapes, rivers, fields, and towns, but not cars, sidewalks, or people moving below. I asked staff to think about why do we educate children? Why does nearly every every nation, every culture in every corner of the world choose to do this thing called school? For most of my life, I didn't think much about it. School is just what you did. I did it. My parents did it. Their parents before them. But the truth is far bigger than tradition. We educate children because
014society needs them. We need this next generation of learners, the ones who walk through our doors every day. Society needs them in order to endure. Education is the silver bullet. It is the foundation of a prosperous society. And whether we know it or not, teachers like these amazing people sitting here tonight make this happen. And with these exceptional and dedicated leaders and people teaching our students and inspiring them every day, I have hope for the future. After thinking about the larger picture, now like to come down and talk about school 14 from a 10,000 foot view. From that view, we can see an overall picture of our school. 25 years ago, school 14 looked like a different place. Different students and staff, different educational standards, and even the physical outlay of the building was different.
015And 25 years from now, the same will be true. However, the work we do year after year will remain constant because the work we do must go on. And with that in mind, I would like to share with you the work we do, starting with our ELA and math data from this past year. Starting with PLA, we look at proficiency trends over the over the years. You can see way back 10 years ago, we were at 18% proficiency. And as you can see from the trend line, there's been fairly steady growth through the years. I'm happy to report an overall 15% increase in proficiency in ELA from 2024 to 2025. You can see a breakdown by grade. Big gains for our fourth grade students and teachers last year with a 39% jump. You can also
016see increases in each cohort, meaning students moving from third grade to fourth grade to fifth grade over the years. Looking at the math data, we can see similar consistent and steady growth over the years with school 14 hitting 50% proficiency last school year. As we look at the breakdown by grade, we again see each grade making gains year-over-year. We are especially proud of the 15% increase for last year's fourth graders moving from 45% when they were in third grade to 60% by the end of fourth grade. Next, we look at school 14 from the ground level view. What are we doing to continue to improve instructional outcomes for all our students? Over this past summer, our school leadership team met a number of times to talk about what we hope to accomplish in this coming
017year. And from looking at the data and through our conversations, we created our school comprehensive education plan. We had three areas of focus. Academics, attendance, and equity. Since as a school, our primary enterprise is academics. We created our first goal around that. By June 2026, 25% of students who are intensive, meaning well below grade level, will mean to approaching grade level on grade level or above grade level. 25% of students who are approaching grade level will move to on grade level or above grade level. We chose this first because it is in line with district goal number one. But equally important, we wanted to build on our momentum from the previous year. Our school succeeds when our students succeed. And for students to succeed, they must have high quality targeted instruction. As I've already said,
018we have the most amazing teachers at school 14. And this year we've been having conversations [clears throat] on how we can make our instructional practices even better because anyone in any profession can always find a way to do better. And as Mr. Carmel asked us to do on the first day of school, we want to raise the bar. Doing [snorts] so will help to ensure that our students are receiving rigorous instruction and instruction that is responsive to their needs, meaning it meets the students where they are and takes them to the next level. We are implementing or continuing to implement a number of things in order to help us meet our goal. First, we are using UFI as tier one explicit phonics instruction. Additionally, each teacher used the month of September to look at their
019data from last year. Teachers met together and then with me and specifically, we looked at how teachers performed last year based on each New York State standard. Looking at the data, teachers looked at where they and their practice low last year, meaning which standards they students performed well on and also which standards teacher want teachers wanted to grow in in this year ahead. And they'll be working with instructional coaches throughout the year to [clears throat] turn their grows into glows. We continue to use data feedback strategy meetings to improve the work we are doing. We progress monitor students throughout the year looking to see how they are improving or what they may need. We do that by using our tri-weekly mini assessments in grades three through five. These mini assessments help prepare students for the
020state exams at the end of the year. We continue we are continuing with our word of the week. Teachers are goal setting with students. Goals are set by using student data. In many cases, students are tracking themselves and teachers help students create goals for a week, a month, or even more. As students reach their goals, they set new ones. We've made a big push for reading at home this year. During my address to family and families on open house, I compared reading at home to learning to play an instrument. Having started piano lessons at 10 years old, every week I went to my lesson where my teacher taught me something that would help me to advance. However, if I didn't go home and practice, I would struggle the following week. I asked families to think
021about reading in the same way. We need kids to practice reading every night in order to grow, learn, and achieve. We created a schoolwide reading log to for students and ask families to track their reading each week. And we are asking students to read every night at least Monday through Thursday, maybe a little bit on the weekends. Along with our SL along with that, our SLT team talked about how we can get more out of what we are already doing with the ELA curriculum. We have chosen to do more work with shared reading. We are implementing shared readings opposite readalouds. Shared reading is an interactive reading experience where the teacher and the students read a text together and it provides rich access rich uh access to rich text that may be above students independent reading
022level. It allows the teacher to model for the students and offers repeated practice for comprehension fluency vocabulary and print concepts. Whereas with a readaloud the teacher reads the text to the students. With a shared reading, the teacher and the students read the text together. And so students are seeing it and thinking about the text as they are reading. I think about it like going to the gym. You can go to Planet Fitness and lift a weight and that will build muscle and and you'll get better. Or you can go to a highintensity workout and you're going to work multiple muscles at once getting better results for the time you are investing. Shared reading will be our highintensity workout to give us our best reading results. We will measure our progress throughout the year with our
023benchmark testing, our tri-weekly assessments in grades three through five and ultimately we'll see a growth in the New York State assessment ELA assessments and math assessments. This time I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Girth to talk about our attendance goal. Thank you and good evening. I want to take a moment to express my sincere appreciation to our board of education, administrative counsel, and Mr. Rossi. Thank you for your trust you have placed in me as the assistant principal at school 14. It is an honor to serve our community, and I'm excited to work by your side impacting the success of all of our students. Diving into our second step set goal, school 14 commits by June 2026 to reduce the rate of chronic absenteeism by 10%. School 14's faculty fully supports the continuation
024of established attendance initiatives and demonstrates strong willingness to adopt new ones. We are committed to ensuring our scholars have the tools to access their education daily. Every day a student misses school, they lose 390 minutes of crucial learning time. Time spent reading with a teacher, solving a math problem, or making friendships. Attending school regularly provides advantages for every learner. School 14's attendance committee found many of our homeless or underrepresented students have disproportional rate of chronic absenteeism. As we continue to monitor our attendance goals and initiatives, we aim to break down systematic barriers so every young child has full access to learning regardless of their socioeconomic status. School 14's approach to strengthening attendance is built on family and student outreach to increase buyin. We must be proactive identifying and removing obstacles that keep our students home.
025So, how will we do this? To start, over the summer, school 14's attendance committee focused on reaching out to families of students who have been flagged with attendance barriers. The school team along with families establish a collaborative relationship, problem solve solutions as one unit, and set student attendance goals for the first trimester. Moving forward to the school year, new and continued attendance initiatives are already being rolled out, such as hosting high impact family engagement opportunities. Some examples include our monthly PTO meetings and events, the back to school barbecue, fall family, Lego masters, and multicultural night. These events are designated to encourage families, I'm sorry, they're designed to encourage families to collaborate and celebrate with student growth and their and build their success. The events are shared with families through parent square, hard copy flyers, and
026school 14's monthly family newsletter authored by the administrative team. In addition to supporting families, students have ample opportunities to celebrate their own attendance success with daily attendance calendars and trienal schoolwide attendance initiatives such as summer wean attend dance and a friendly but competitive kickball competition. Lastly, school 14 continues to utilize our stronger connections program to foster a love of learning while building relationships and regularly revisiting the importance of being to school every single day. To ensure our interventions are effective, we categorize attendance obstacles into four buckets. They include barriers such as illness or transportation aversions such as social anxiety or the unknowns of schools school disengagement such as limited meaningful relationships and misconceptions such as attendance only matters in older grades. By addressing these four root causes we can ensure school 14's comprehensive approach fosters
027partnership, transparency and accountability. Thank you and back to Mr. Rossi. Thank you, Mrs. Gur. Our third and final goal has to do with equity in science education. By June 2026, we will increase science vocabulary proficiency among African-American female students in grades K through 5 at school 14 by 50% as measured by our monthly science vocabulary progress monitoring tool using September 2025 scores as the baseline. When we met over the summer, we didn't yet have our scores back for from the New York State Science Assessment, but we knew based on what teachers were saying, this would be an area we wanted to grow in. Teachers had noticed that science vocabulary was holding uh students back from reaching profic proficiency. Without knowing the vocabulary, students would struggle to understand concepts and questions. At the same time, we
028talked about the importance of equity in science education. Research shows that African-American female students underperform in science as compared to their peers. We decided to set out and try to make some changes through early intervention that will build confidence and help students be more successful over the long term. With what we are doing this year, we hope to make our science education more equitable for students, promote academic growth, and close achievement gaps. Over the summer, our instructional coach, Mrs. Zetti led the charge along with members of our SLT team to put together articles and texts for teachers to use throughout the year so that teachers didn't have to go hunting for resources. She built a list of vocabulary words for each grade and developed a progress monitoring tool for each grade that teachers can use
029to track their students progress throughout the year. I mentioned that we have a word of the week and we've tried to gear many of those words towards science vocabulary. Additionally, we have set goals for classroom teachers to incorporate at least five lessons into their ELA or math instruction in the first half of the year and five into the second half of the year. And we're also asking teachers to choose three readalouds or shared readings that are science-based for the first half of the year and three for the second half of the year. And while all students will participate in this learning, we're going to specifically be looking at data for African-American female students to look for that 50% jump in vocabulary proficiency by the end of the school year. So to sum it up, we're
030looking to increase proficiency by 25%. Decrease chronic absenteeism by 10%. And increase science vocabulary proficiency by 50% among African-American females. We know that this work may not be easy, but we believe that with our hard work, our hard work today will benefit our students tomorrow and well into the future because what we do here at school 14 does indeed matter to a prosperous society and world. We can we will not the end of the story because we have a little [laughter] we have a short video for you. You probably know that last week was board of education appreciation week. The students at school 14 wanted to send a little message in the form of a song to tell you how much they appreciate you. Many thanks to Mrs. Plutier for working with the students and
031putting the video together. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as the students enjoy working on it. >> [music] >> 2 4 6 8 Who do we appreciate? You. We think it's you. 2 4 6 8. Who's the one we think is great? You. We think it's you. We think you're fine. We think you're candy. [music] We think you're better than Halloween candy. We think you're top a sunshine on a summer day. All right. Out of sight. Super duper dynamite. Yell [music] 2 4 6 8 We appreciate you. We think it's you. >> 2 4 6 8 Who's the one we think is great? you. We think it's you. We think you're fine. We think you're dandy. We think you're better than Halloween candy. We think you're topnotch. A shine on a summer
032day. All right. Out of sight. Super duper dynamite. YEAH. [screaming] [applause] >> [applause] >> Thank you very much for having us. Any questions? >> Mr. Rosie, it looks like you've been really busy. [laughter] >> We'll continue to be busy. >> Yes. So, congratulations to you. Great job. >> Thank you. Thank you. [applause] [applause] All right. Um, we're going to hear from Mr. Denovo on our August financials. >> Um, all accounts have been reconciled. Uh, we're still currently working to finalize, close out all the 2425 grants. Um, currently the revenue and expenses and all funds are on track with this year's budget numbers. Um, and the external auditors will are scheduled to come in present financials on November 5th. um the November 5th board meeting and uh that is all I have. >> Okay, thank you.
033All right, moving on to the agenda. Motion on the floor for approval of minutes from October 8th, 2025. Second. >> Discussion. All those in favor? >> I opposed. Um under superintendent recommendation, human resources staff matters unclassified and classified. Under a classified motion on the floor Perkins agenda items 1 through nine second discussion. All those in favor? >> Opposed under classified motion on the floor for consent agenda items 1 through 4. Discussion. All those in favor? >> Opposed. Under superintendent recommendations programs motion on the floor for consent agenda items one and two second discussion. All those in favor opposed under superintendent recommendations business finance motion on the floor for approval of item one as stated. >> Second discussion all those in favor >> opposed. Okay. Under district announcements, all future board of education meetings will be
034held here at the middle school at 6:00 p.m. Our next one will be November 5th. We will have our audit committee meeting at 5:00 p.m. And then our second one of the month will be November 19th where we will have our school 16 principal presentation. Our future feasibility community meetings. Um we have quite a few coming up. So anyone who can attend would be greatly appreciated. The first one will be on October 28th at 6 p.m. here at the middle school in the auditorium. The next one will be November 5th at 7 p.m. here at the middle school in the Troy room. Then on November 6th at 5:15 p.m. we'll have one at Wingsville in their gym. Um at on December 2nd uh the Questar Boseies um we'll have a meeting at the Quar Boseies
035at 10 Empire State Boulevard Hudson, New York. on December 17th. We'll have one at our Troy um board of education meeting here at the middle school and then we'll have another one on the 18th at the Win and Skill Board of Education meeting. [snorts] All right, Triumphs. Our varsity volleyball team finished their regular season undefeated with the win last night over Lansenberg. With a record of 18-0, the team heads into postseason play with significant momentum. Congratulations to coach Tamil and [clears throat] her team for their unmatched effort to bring home this significant achieve a achievement. Our Troy football is heading to the playoffs for the first time in four seasons. Coming off a win over Lasal last Friday and bringing the Ker City Cup back to Troy High. Their final regular season game is Friday
036in Amsterdam and will determine the number two seed in home field advantage for the section 2 class A playoffs. [clears throat] Our senior Joey Degen will represent Troy at the state golf championship in June. He placed fifth in the state qualifier tournament, earning one of nine spots on the team representing section 2. The field began with almost 300 golfers earlier this month. This is the first time in recent memory Troy has had a golfer in the state championship. Uh the Troy High Student Council and Durham School Services are teaming up once again to host a trunk or treat for all Troy Elementary students. On Sunday, October 26th from 12:30 to 2:30 in the Troy High School front parking lot. And on Thursday, October 30th, Carol Hill will host a trunk or treat from 4:00 to
0375:00. And school 2's trunk event runs from 5:00 to 7:00, same on the same evening. So, lots of good opportunities to get candy across our city. Our our sports are doing really really well. Congratulations to all of them. [clears throat] >> Anyone have anything else? >> John, you >> I have something else. >> Tom said Tom made me mad. He said I [laughter] So, great great job, Mr. Russy. Uh, and great job on the video. So, we have a different video. Uh Tom is um I think all of it right on the microphone. Um I appreciate the board so much. I say it uh all the time. We have the best school board uh individually and collectively. They are here for all the right reasons and um are always making decisions for students. This is
038board appreciation week and so um I say we put this together. Teresa did it really, but I gave her the okay to do it. Uh, thank you so much for all you do. >> My name is Serene. I am thankful for my school and Thank you. And >> hi, my name is Abigail and I'm thank I'm thankful for um the lacrosse program. [music] You are our best. >> Thank you for our [music] Hi, I'm Maria. [music] I love everything in this cry. >> Thank you. [music] ation. You're the best. [music] >> Thank you for >> Hey, Troy Board of Ed, thank you for everything you do for our students. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thanks to our board of ed. >> Thank you. >> Big thank you to our board of education. You make
039it happen for us every day. We couldn't do it without you. [music] >> [music] >> Thank you. >> This was [music] a vacation >> for all you do. >> [applause] >> Thanks, Teresa. >> All right. Motion on the floor to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Have a good night.