001To the flag of the United States of America and to the world for it stands one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all [Music] agenda nonaggenda items. Any members of the audience wants to be up to speak, please do so at this time. Okay. Uh then we'll move on. So I'm proud and excited to introduce our first presentation tonight. Uh few weeks ago, I came here at school 18 to um I was invited to help out with the after school program. Kids First is doing a lot of work with us and all of our schools uh all our elementary school after school programs and partnership for uh internships at the high school and work development uh programs. Um but I got to watch the karate here at school 18 and I was so
002impressed that I talked to uh M rounds and Mr. Pompy uh about bringing them here tonight. So uh I welcome uh Mr. Tony Butler and his team uh and the students who are not only for 18 but 18 16 and Carol Hill. So it's all you >> I'd like to thank the mics there. I'd like to thank in the school board and all parents would be because you know without you we don't and it's wonderful to see so big normally when we have something wonderful parent this is wonderful give your parents a And we got very short time, but I'd like everyone to introduce yourself to the superintendent and the school begin. My name is Zach. I'm 9 years old and I go to school. >> My name is I'm 9 years old and I
003go to school 18. >> My name is Atlanta. I'm 9 years old and I go to school 16. >> My name is Rashad. I'm 9 years old. I go to school 18. >> My name is I 10 years old and I go to school 16. My name is Mason. I'm 8 years old and I live. >> We're family. And what is family? >> What is it? >> Wow. >> Daddy, what's this? >> So, look at our extended family. Isn't this wonderful? >> Isn't it? You know, I enjoy coming to see something different. We got new yellow belts and such as with everyone. How do they develop? But I have a couple questions. Maybe help me out. What does Dom do origin? >> Thank you very much. And that's that's Japanese term today. Correct. >> Yes,
004I like mean walk. >> Yes. So we try to use a little terminology Japanese because power is what? >> What is it? >> Yeah. Can no one take this? Correct. >> So if don't or st is saying very how do we say you are very welcome >> everyone? Joey dash of God. Correct. >> I gave you a new um word. I want you to think about this word. What was it? They just said it. Everyone mind up all day. Every day. >> Mind up all day. every day. >> And you know what that means? When we get up in the morning, we keep this up. Keep this up. And I'm just positive. Oh, cuz sometimes we get a little lazy, especially getting up in the morning, coming to school. We can't do that cuz we
005know that this is what? Mind, >> body, >> spirit. >> I'm going to turn it over to Sensei Deb. So, my name is Sanders and I'm not going to tell you how old I am. Um, I have the privilege of teaching the students at five different elementary schools along with my sister. We are thrilled. It was little brother. these kids what you're going to see tonight. So, first of all, I think you gather. What type of karate do we study? >> Japanese. >> So, let's count to 10 in Japanese for the school board. Oh. >> Oh, Si [Applause] Okay. There's also some other basic terminology that we use here every day. Kyoske, what does Kiosk mean? >> Good. Ra Mason, what does Ray mean? >> Nice. Yoy, >> Atlantis, what does Yoy mean? >> Ready.
006>> Very nice. Okay, now follow my commands. Right leg back. left hand side step. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Now, we're in really tight quarters, you guys. So, let's be careful on your lang. Oh, prepare to mate. Monte and just scoot over a little bit. Very nice. Okay. Now, when we come back, you're going to show the school board your little block. Oh. Oh. Prepare your hands. Jack. Ready. I prepare top prepare she prepare go I prepare rope I prepare prepare my t my needs to turn And our back leg comes to our front leg. Oh, sorry. Back to ready position. So, there's three things to do to earn a D. Nothing in our program is given to them. They earn everything that you see here. So, who can you tell me one of the things that
007you had to do to earn your key Japanese by themselves in Japanese? >> You have to do your >> You have to be able to do your in >> and you need to know the student which we will recite to you and I think of it at class. Awesome. Now, when you can do those three things with instruction, you need your D and white belt. As you can see, these guys are not white belts. So, what did you have to do differently to get a color belt? Hudson, you remember? No, it >> we had to do it by ourselves. >> You have to do the product all by yourself, which can be very tricky. Awesome. What you just saw in basics are the three things that they need to learn in order to do their
008path. So we are just going to spread you out a little bit. No stale. Hudson step back step back. Now we have a little challenge for you. The first half is in the form of a letter in the alphabet. So we're going to see which one of you can pick out whatever that letter is. All right, here we go. Guess games. Great. And we teach the students in progression. So, when they're first learning, we give them a lot of cues. And I'll show you what that looks like. Touch your hands. Good. Touch your left leg. Prepare your hands. Ready? Knee. Touch your front leg. Prepare your hands. Front behind back. H knee. Coming down the middle. Touch the front leg. Prepare your hands. Ready. Knee. Good. Prepare. Knee. Prepare. Knee prepare back down the middle.
009Knee si prepare back leg spin. Knee prepare front and back. Knee. Enjoy it. beaches. >> All right, we're going to do it one more time. And the reason we're doing it one more time is you can so I can show you the progression. These kids, I don't need to tell them what leg moves or have to prepare their hands next to because they have a color belt. They did this all by themselves already several times. So, this time I'm just going to count. I'm not going to give you cues. Boss, >> get ready. >> Trep your hands. Ready? knee. Itch knee itch knee itch knee itch knee itchy [Applause] itch. knee. H Bice and one capitalize the first time. All right. Now, you see Arshock who's had school team. He's been our leader for a
010couple years now, right? And our shot is very patient with us because a lot of times we have to catch other kids up. But as you can see, he's g our senior. He knows four block. He knows all the basics and he knows three patterns, not just one. So he's gonna show you his third right now. Now >> begin when you're ready. I Cool. That's what we got. So, as you can see in that photo, he did a lot of things yesterday. You know, yoga, he did high opposite. They're all things that are a little advanced for seven year olds. All right. So, finish our presentation with our student creed. We end all our classes with the student creed. Um, this is really the most important part of our program. It teaches them how to
011live and we that better and their teachers are seeing difference in the students that awesome. >> I will develop myself in a positive manner. >> I will develop myself in a positive manner. >> Important anything that can produce my mental growth and physical health >> and import anything that can produce my mental growth and physical health. >> I will develop selfisipline. I will selfisipline >> in order to bring out the best myself and others. >> In order to bring out the best myself and others, >> I'll use common sense for self. >> This is a blackout school. >> This is a black school. >> We are dedicated. >> We are motivated. >> We are on quest to be our best. [Applause] Oh, but before we just like to say we have over 90 students in
012all over 90 and we are so blessed to have this program anymore this program. How many schools have a program like this in the elementary school? So this is phenomenal and again we thank you so much for allowing us to work with you parents. We thank you so much. It's crazy. [Applause] Now what do we say? [Music] And we say Great job. Thank you. Good job. >> Before we get to our game, we said Heat. Heat. [Music] She's coming. [Music] Can you guys see? At this time presentation school. >> All right. So, good evening everyone. Thank you for being here at school 18 tonight. Uh, thank you for the annual opportunity to represent school 18 and speak about the wonderful things that take place here because of all the people that work here. As you
013know, everything is a team team. It's a team sport, okay? So, none of us work at this or we can't accomplish anything alone. So all that I share with you this evening is because of the teachers, the pair professionals and all the staff that are um coming here every single day this uh Halloween. You know, we always dress up and we have a uh you know, we have a a theme and then share it with the team. So they got to uh choose what football team they want to be and then they thought it would be fun if Lucy Bone and I will referee. So, we had a great day um celebrating Halloween um but also doing something fun together and because we work together, because we make decisions based on what's best for children
014with through our practice and that's why we can show progress. That's why we think our children enjoy coming to school and learning and working with our families. It's um it's all about relationships, right? So, the relationships we have with our families, our children, and each other help propel us forward and help our children to grow. So, I have a lot here. It's going to go quickly, I promise. But I overdo things sometimes. So, you know, you can give me a look if you'd like to. So anyhow, we always begin we always begin with our district. I have this. All right. So if you can't hear me, let me know. We always begin with the district mission. Uh this Troy City School District will provide a strong educational and social foundation to graduate all students college
015and career ready. Then we go on to our school 18 vision. Um this is fairly new through our seven pandmic have um adjusted and made better our school vision. Uh school 18 exists to provide equitable learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of each student. We are committed to creating an environment that allows students to realize and reach their full potential while fostering a lifelong love of learning. Our demographics, we have 319 students and we have a variety of students here. Uh we've grown our multilingual language learners. Uh we have a variety of students with various um um needs and also um promise and talent and uh we have students who come to school that need extra supports from us that we will talk about um throughout the presentation or I will talk about sorry.
016So we're going to move on to um curriculum and instruction, but assessment is of course important. So, we come to school each day to make sure that we are teaching the New York State learning standards. All right, the New York State learning standards, they articulate what students should know and be able to do as a result of the skilled instruction in the subject areas or the grade levels. So, our teachers are teaching tier one New York City standards every single day. And the resources that they're using are resources that through Dr. Ross's leadership and a variety of supports and that you've approved those um those resources that we use to teach the standards are stated above. We have you know our reading and math square, the Lucy Balkans units of study for reading, writing and
017phonics. We have our our one assignments science science and the PNW focus. We also have um supplemental materials that are listed above as well. um part of part of the work with the with the resources that we have these wonderful materials but we have to make sure that our teachers are expert at using them. So there are a couple ways we ensure that you thank you have provided us with instructional coaches. I'm fortunate enough to have two instructional coaches that have been with me since the beginning since the beginning of of this um initiative. So they have built relationships with the teachers in this building and they work with the teachers weekly. They do embedded um coaching cycles with the teachers. They run data meetings and they are um doing collaborative planning to make a
018new things. So in addition to the coaches being here each and every day, we also have the uh good fortune to have professional um embedded development from the resources from from the units of study moss from Eureka math. they come and they're teaching all of us the greatest techniques and the best ways to make sure that we're meeting all of the students needs that are in front of us. So those are two ways in which we are ensuring that we're teaching the state standards to all of our children regardless of the level that they're working on at the tier one level through the resources that we have all agreed to using. And then we have our coaches and we have um professional developers helping us become more and more expert every day, every week, every
019year. just an example. You have it in front of you. I thought it would be nice for you to know that this is an example of a 43 reading uh unit. We call our um ELA stuff units. So, this is an example of where in this particular unit, the teacher could look at this. It's located in the Moscow um website web page that we have a treasure test to treasure chest to and all that. and it shows the teachers exactly what standards they're teaching when they're teaching these units of study. So, I wanted you to see the correlation of the tie-in between the choir standards and the materials and resources that we're using and the um expertise of our teachers and how we get them to always stay on the cutting edge. And then, of
020course, I can't leave math out. Math is full of modules. So here in the modules you will see that located right in in there um the state standards that the teachers are teaching in this um third grade math content. So well now assessments um I'm going to briefly talk about state assessments, district assessments, what we do with the assessments to make decisions about future instruction. So um this is like eight years of school 18 um test results. We continued what you'll see is there's a trajectory here. We continue to go up. Sometimes we kind of like hang about we might go down a little bit but then we catch up and grow even far um even more. So um that's due to all that I've seen so far and the teacher dedication to the profession.
021We have a new we have a new assessment this year and I heard you learned all about it in school 14. So I'm not going to get into it with you. All right. But I am going to report out that we are currently wrapping up our second diagnostic. So we have about 95% of our students having completed the diagnostic thus far. These are the results for now. And look at there. Okay. So there's two graphs. The top line of each graph is the result of the second diagnostic. There's more green there. That is very good. You can look at the specific numbers on your own. Just notice more green and less red. Okay, that means we are moving. And this is a brand new assessment for us. We are really working towards making sure that
022our students are meeting the 40 minutes weekly in reading and math. And the more that we do that, the more acceleration we're going to see. Hi, my name is AJ. I'm in second grade and this is my dad here. Hold on. Sorry, >> Sam. So, we tried that in the worst and so um I have to click to keep this going better, right? Uh Mrs. Brown technology like that one you said with auto. >> All right, here we go. You have two little kids talking to you about um how they're tracking their progress as learners. >> Hi, my name is AJ. I'm in second grade and this is my data here. Here's where I track my attendance. This is my writing checklist. Um I already did the beginning and I didn't work on transitions and
023endings. This is where my back necklace. This is where I turn my snacks. Here's my home for writing. Um, the minute I'm good at sounding the words I read, I need to work on breaking the longer words. to work on it. I plan to clap all the syllables. So, my goal for this room is M. >> Hi, my name is Pel and this is my second grade folder and here's where I track my attendance. This is my pen and rain checklist. And I'm very in my organization. I need to work on my um beginning transitions and the endings. Okay. So, this will drop my snacks in 228 and 228 snacks. You are good at reading hard words. reader. I need to work on understanding a few vocabulary words that are wrong that I don't really
024understand. To work on it, I need to look at glossery or maybe like look at the words and pictures and find clues around these. See what they actually mean. Here's my math. We're we're doing adding and subtracting and very good compensation. And I um need to work on like not rotating through my exit tickets because I can know because I know I can do it in math lessons. My fall reading letter score was Q. My goal for the winter was R. My winter reading score is R. And my goal for the spring is S. I cannot wait to keep track of my goals. Sorry, we have a car that's locked in. Um, if you have a white Acura SUV JP L4, [Applause] >> thank you. Eddie, you got to come back. We will. Okay. >>
025One of our goals is to also get to student le conferences. We're not there yet, but the work that we do in the classroom will lead that we'll help lend that to students being able to speak at the parents conferences. >> So, thank you for watching. All right, moving on. Um, so in kindergarten, kindergarters learn so much, but one of the greatest things they need to learn are the letters. But not only do they need to be able to um identify the letters, but they also need to be able to know the letter sound and the letter formation of all 26 letters to own the letter. It used to be, oh, okay, they they know what that letter is, but they didn't necessarily have a sound out and they weren't able to necessarily draw it.
026So we, you know, the standards are always rising and our children are um meeting that and right now 50% of our students have met the goal of the 26 letters of owning them. So we are um thrilled that you know the teachers continue to assess and make decisions about how and what to teach and different ways to teach to get the children to learn um clearly the letters and the sounds and to draw. Snap words. Snap words are those high frequency words, the words that you know in a snap, the words that are most um often seen in the books that they're reading at the levels that they're at. So, um we took a look at our our um first and second grade and they just finished assessing this month. January is a very busy
027month of assessment and uh 73% of our students at grades one and two score above benchmark on knowing your snap words. the more words you know, the more you can read and comprehend text. So that's another very important um data point so that we can get kids to comprehend text. So the found of the nail benchmark assessment is another district assessment and this is where we are looking at how students read orally how accurate or oral reading is, what strategies they use to figure out unknown words. Are they skipping it? Are they sounding it out? Are they looking at the word the the sentence around the word to figure out what that word means? There's so many different strategies that they are taught by their teachers to to read. And then there's the comprehension piece.
028Well, we can read something, but do we really understand it? And to what degree do we understand it? And you're seeing that we are moving higher into getting more kids reading at level two and level three. Um, you might say, well, why are there some kids that are not, you know, they're going down at level four? So, Lucy Penelopey there, she said that she was at an S and she was still at an S. There are so many levels and so many skills that you need to acquire at a level of text. You know, you have to be able to analyze and synthesize and evaluate at S. So, you might be living at an S a little bit longer, but also there's a chart that as you're moving along. So, sometimes you're not moving along
029at the same rate as the chart exact expects. So, you can hang out. You might start off in four, but if you stay there, oh, then you're maybe in three, then you're catching up. I mean that could be a whole other hour conversation but I'm sure you don't really want to know about. So that's that's in case you're wondering why. So um the teachers are like constantly doing running records in addition to um the fast benchmarking. They're constantly at taking the pulse of where are our children? Because you can't just test three times a year and think that your lessons that you're creating and the small groups that you're doing are meeting the needs of all the children because there's so many different ranges of needs and knowledge and you're constantly changing. They're constantly changing
030um small groups and making decisions based on yesterday's work and what the children learn. um so that we're just you know taking as much time as possible to hit the targeted skills that children need. All right. Social emotional development. It's last but it's really first. We have to have our children coming to school fed resident and feeling like they have people that love them like our children here has telling us. Um they have to know that that it's a safe haven here and that the people that the adults that are in their lives here at school um are there for them. So we have an amazing uh social emotional team here. They're just wonderful and they work every single day with our teachers and our and our students. Um, every morning they're they they have
031like two meals each every morning they're going to each classroom and they're checking in with the children and the teachers already checked in but they're like help and then they're holding lunch groups like this is an example of Miss Sawyer. She's our guidance counselor and she's having a lunch. There are different lunch groups that are offered every single day to meet the different needs of our children based on what's going on um with them. We use those regulation, you know, happy home day and we work for them again um to work with our students so we can stay on the cutting edge of what is the best way for us to support our children. Sabers sabers is an assessment of our students emotional well-being. We do that um three times a year as well. We're
032just in our second administration. No, no, no. I take that back. Sabers hasn't happened yet. We are preparing here spring of 24 when the children left at the top in fall of 24. Our children left at 83.3% and they entered at 83.44%. Which means, okay, there's a high risk, medium risk, low risk. 83% of our children are at low risk for having social emotional issues based on this assessment which is wonderful because the next chart shows you fall 2023 73% of our students were at low risk. Now this year 83% of our students are at low risk. So, we're seeing improvements because of some of the to come activities that we've been implementing to support our students um whole person. >> Hi, I'm sorry. >> No, my baby. Don't you steal only [Music] [Applause] All
033right. Hi, I'm the principal assistant in school 18. Um, every year I talk about two things. I talk about discipline and I talk about attendance. Two things near and dear to me. Takes up my entire day. Discipline and attendance. Okay. So, a couple in attendance. Well, we can't because then she'll talk. >> All right. Okay. So, um, >> this is what goes on. >> Yeah. So, a couple of highlights from an attendance perspective. Um, we're holding steady at 93% uh attendance. Um, would I have liked to have seen it go higher? Sure I would. But you know what? We're holding steady. And with all the sickness we've had this year and uh this cold weather, I'm happy with the 93. Historically, our kindergarteners have the highest absentee rate. And this is something that I talk
034to you every year. I come in and I say those kindergarters, we really got to work hard for those kindergarteners because I think a lot of parents feel it's just kindergarten. This year, our absences are at this time compared to last year. We have 91 less absences in our kindergarten cohort. I am absolutely ecstatic about that. And I really believe all of our efforts in working with the families and getting them to understand how important that year is, I am confident and I really look forward to tracking that cohort to see how that uh lends itself to their social, emotional and academic growth because I think it's going to be gamechanging um that they're here um and and doing that. I need to do a shout out um to our attendance support specialist who is
035here tonight and to those of you Where's Vicki? All right. And to those of you who supported our car because I really believe that those two things have just totally changed the game and have really enabled us to do so much more in getting these children to school. Um and having that extra person making those phone calls, making those home visits um has really been wonderful. We have uh almost decreased our chronically absent students uh by 7% compared to last year at this time. And that's a big one because those chronically absent students are the ones that stay tracked for us and that's coming back to us every single time. So, I'm really um thrilled about that and I um I appreciate the support because prior to the car, prior to Vicki, I was doing
036a lot of it myself and um it has been really wonderful to have that extra support. Um this is the highlight of my night to introduce to you my friend Elizabeth. And what I want you to know about Elizabeth is she came to us as a kindergartener last year. Prior to that, she was in prek. While in prek, she missed 100 days of school. Okay? 100 days of a prek year. She came to us in kindergarten. And we had we were challenged. We were challenged working with mom and getting her to understand um the needs for her to be in school, helping her deal with the challenges that were keeping her from getting to school. Um she was social, emotionally behind. She was academically way behind. This child is now fast forward in first grade.
037And the child that you're going to see is not the child that came across the uniform. Um, I do want you to notice her jewelry. It was very important to her when she knew she was getting filmed that she looked appropriate. Um, so we're going to share Elizabeth with you and um this artifici I'm Elizabeth and I'm in first grade. I do my day since kindergarten. I got $100 math test and I love my snaps. I love going to school because I love my teacher friends. What she told you initially was I doubled my days. So what she's saying is that I doubled by watching her tracker, working with the tracker, she can see that she has doubled the number of days that she had from last year, which is probably quadrupled what she had
038in. But I will say this, Elizabeth is just one example of the many that are really sharing in this wonderful success. Um, and it's it's really awesome to see. So, um, that's my Elizabeth. Okay. Love her. All right. Um, let's go right into discipline. I'm pretty short and sweet with uh discipline. Uh, we are continuing to decrease our number of referrals. Um, and that is, as Jimmy said, that's a team effort. This is not me decreasing referrals. It's not me just not writing them. It's everybody getting involved in addressing what the students need and how to keep them on the right track. Um, relationships, communication, and collaboration, parent communication in meetings, PBIS, character education, inschool supports, the, you know, we've got like the other schools, my brother's keeper, the launch groups, the second step. Um,
039this year we have the introduction of the stronger connections mentoring program, which has been phenomenal. um and really get into the needs of individual uh students. Um I want to echo Jimmy one last time in saying that this is a team effort. Uh we are all in at school 18 in in finding out what our children need, what their students, what their parents need, uh dealing with the challenges. Um, and I couldn't be more proud of the work that's happening um at our school uh and more more pleased with with these lovely people that come every day because they're really the ones in the grind doing it every single day. And I'm just really on the outro supporting them. So, um, thank you and, uh, job. All right. So the social emotional support really covered
040that just so you know all of our children are tracking their attendance every single day and then students in specialists doing other sorts of tracking setting and um our again our social emotional team works with many of our children in addition to tiered supports our children get so everyone gets um a people services person coming to check in on them every But sharers, if you have three children, they will get individuals like food counseling or lunch with the counselor or attendance support or you know food on on the weekends or for snacks. So there just so many different ways that work on supporting your children social emotional health. So now practice up with equity. So this is our equity goal for this year. Our equity goal is focused on our um black African-Amean students. We
041want them to be um having increased academic achievement and profic proficiency rates under New York State exams. So we talked you just heard about reduced absenteeism. So I'm not going to talk anymore about that family engagement. So we have community outreach. to go out to some of the communities where we have more of our families that can't get here. We make home visits. We talked about the vehicle. We have parent conferences. We're in constant communication. We'll go to their homes and we have monthly events here for our families. So that's more family engagement. And then um equitable resources, the academic after school uh tutoring. We have targeted our children of this cohort. They were the first students to get the tutoring. um that is so that they get that two to three times the expert
042instruction outside of the day as well as during the day. And we have our McKini mentor tutoring. We have said the backpack program and um our libraries the libraries that we have in these buildings and I'm sure you've seen them all. We continue to always add more culturally relevant books so that children continue to see themselves in in those books but also see others and learn about others. And it's so important that those those supplemental materials are the ones that they love, that they hug, that they sit in the on the rug with, that they take home. That's building the love of learning when they have books that they can really enjoy. So, thank you again for always supporting that. And yeah, stronger connections. again that was opened up to our students in this subgroup
043that we were targeting to increase their equity and opportunity to be um on grade level and proficient. So there you go. And tonight's demonstration says it all. Here you can read all the varieties of ways that we offer opportunities outside of the school day to our children. Um, I remember when we didn't have after school programs. I mean like sports programs. Our grade three, four, five kids. They love it. We have 25 kids and sometimes we, well, we do we sneak in maybe 27 to 28 just because it's hard to, you know, turn the children away. So, the gym is full every day after school with our children really enjoying that. And, um, all the other things here. I know that it's a little lengthy, but we are so appreciative for the opportunities that are
044offered to our children all year. And then there's um we're going to end with these three little girls. I can't click it or one of them is going to start talking. Um they're just telling me what they love about school 18. And what I love about school 18 are all the people that work here at school 18 work together and come and bring it every day for our children. and I am thankful for each of you at the table for always supporting us and listening and um doing what's best for kids. So, we'll end with three children telling you what they like about school 18. And I thank you for your time this evening. >> All right. What's your favorite thing about school 18? My favorite thing was creating exam for >> my favorite part
045of school and I love my teachers and I love my friends. >> All right. What's your favorite thing about school? >> My favorite thing about technologically savvy. >> My favorite part about school is doing hard math. Thank you, Jenny. I was wondering if the uh teachers of school 18 or the staff the staff of school 18 could stand up, tell us who you are and what you do for the school 18. Hey, third grade teacher here at school 18. Um, and I love teaching you. >> All right. >> Hello, Victoria Neto. I'm the attendance improvement specialist here at >> Hi, I'm Olivia Sharter. I'm a special education teacher here at Hi, I'm Matthew teacher at sport. Hi, I'm Bianca. I'm a teaching assistant. Sam Brown, special ed teacher. I'm Siobhan South. I teach first grade.
046I've been here since day one with Jenny and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. >> Laurel Don, second grade. Sophia Vanigan, first grade teacher. And it's my third year in first grade. I absolutely love it. I love her picture on She's a teacher. >> Hi, I'm Michelle. I am the new secretary. >> Love my great teacher. my first year here [Applause] as board members. We see the names. We don't see their faces. We're not necessarily in the schools. So, thank you. Um, does anybody have any questions? >> Can I ask questions? Sorry. >> Jenny, so this is I haven't had a chance to meet you before. Excellent job. Uh what's your biggest challenge and what do we need to do as a board to support you to overcome that? >> I don't have a
047biggest challenge. >> Okay. >> I think I think you support us whenever we come sometimes with little things. >> All right. So sometimes it's the little things that um we appreciate you listening to and and responding. Like it used to be books. We used to be a book desert. Maybe you've heard that before. We're no longer. Now we are a rich oasis in every single building. Um and that the you know again like the cars I um I just think you know keep giving us food for our children. You know we always need they always need food and snacks. Maybe snacks. If you could get us more snacks that would I'm being serious. We would like more snacks for our children, not for us. Thank you for asking. >> I guess there's the other word
048concern. I hear you talk about the kids first program and sneaking kids in. I think even being able to sneak in two additional kids means the world. I mean, these kids up here, they're the next leaders, right? I mean, you can see the confidence. So whatever we can do from a board to try and pour more resources into that program and allow these kids that extracurricular social emotional health, I think we should really take a look at. Seems like an awesome program. Those kids were super impressive. So yeah, it's a great program. >> And they were impressive when I got here. So one of the things we are said is try we're trying one of the things that I learned when I came here to watch was these kids get blue belt yellow belt and
049then they get to middle school and it stops, right? And so we're going to try to add a middle school this spring. So actually uh Tony B who's nationally known s is going to teach the class. He's going to do it himself. So uh yeah we keep trying. So great job really. >> Our meeting won't be long. you guys. >> Uh so this week um we have financials passed along for the board review. Um all accounts are reconciled. W2s went out earlier this week. Um I got 1099s in the mail today. The stuff all myself. Uh we had our internal audit uh beginning this month. Um I think it went pretty well. Uh the preliminary report says we're doing pretty well. um was pretty extensive stretch back to uh the 22 23 school year um
050and we'll pass along those reports when they're available. Um I wanted to thank my staff uh Chris Baitman and Nicole Davin um for gathering all the information making the process go as smoothly as possible. And that is any questions? >> Motion on the floor for approval of minutes January 8th, 2025. Second discussion. All those in favor? Opposed? Superintendent recommendations human resource staff matter on classified or classified under a classified motion on consent agenda items 1 through 13. >> Second under discussion I have statement to read. >> Okay. Detroit City School Board. As president, I shared my statement, "The Troy City School District extends its deepest gratitude to Dr. Watson for her exceptional service, leadership, and dedication over the past 12 years. We wish her nothing but the best as she begins this well earned new
051chapter. [Music] I give you a speech again. Oh no. But I will just say thank you for the joy that it has been to work with all of you. Thank you so much. That's all about I got to work with you all years. So I thank you and students in the school breaking up a great team. Hopefully I can do more presentation before we do a virtual. >> Thank you all so much. Um also under discussion. Um we have a retirement and we have a tenure Sam Congratulations and welcome to our family. All those in favor really boring under testify. Motion on the floor consent agenda items 1 through three. Second discussion. All those in favor? I opposed. Under superintendent recommendation programs. Motion on the floor consent agenda items one and two. Second. Discussion. All
052those in favor? Opposed. Under superintendent recommendations, business finance. Motion on the floor for consent agenda items one and two. Second. Discussion. All those in favor? That opposed. District announcements. Our teacher board meetings. All meetings will take place at 6:00. February 5th will be in the middle school. February 26 will be at Carol Hill. Good news. Several Carol students have their artwork featured in the virtual news in New York State with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. student art and essay exhibition. School 16 will again host Junior Achievement Day in a day, no junior achievement in a day on January 24th. Next week, school 18 will host families for PTA family paint night led by our teacher Maria. Last week, seniors at Troy Higher from Glenn Merrick from the New York State Lab Rivers Union about careers
053and trades. modified boys basketball team is undefeated with a record of seven. And the CBA Troy Columbia voice team broke a 35 year school record last night in their connect inity poverty. Congratulations. That is [Applause] anything else. [Music] So >> at the last meeting we're talking about a retreat and after retreat uh we get a pitch there and uh we had a winning team and I must have had one board member who had a perfect score when we was drawing. So um I forgot the prizes that morning uh but I've since purchased them. So the winning team was Evie, Donnie, and Annette. And the perfect drawer was >> Okay, Jenny J. advance to our audience. Thank you. Motion on the floor to congratulations. Thank you so much. [Applause] [Music]