001To the flag of the stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Yes. Before we do anything, you were saying happy birthday. >> Yeah. Um, associate vice president for government relations, Kirk Hive, reached out to me a couple weeks ago. They're doing campaign. It's their 200th uh birthday on their anniversary for our guys. They're asking community members uh to wish them a happy birthday. So, they've asked the board and cabinet to kind of just uh get together and uh give a happy birthday RPI. Can we give that to them? What do you want? Um, I think we can just get all count. >> Yeah. All right. 3 2 1 >> Happy birthday. >> All set. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate >> you At this time is our public input
002our agenda and non agenda items. I welcome any members of the audience to speak at this time. Due to the time constraints we cannot respond during the public comment period. Comments may be recorded or responded to by board of education or superintendent at a later date. Comments related to a specific personnel matter or to student will not be allowed to be made during the public comment period. The board expects members of the public to speak in a respectful and courtous manner. We ask that all persons keep their comments to 5 minutes or less. We just had this discussion. If anyone has would like to speak, please feel free to come up to the right. Just tell us who you are. Okay. Oh, no. >> Can you hear me? I'm here to uh speak on behalf
003of municipal club. Um member, board member of an organization called Strong Me and Strong Me is spearheaded by my wife. She's the president, Dr. Janice Cra, who's a pediatrician and therapist. She couldn't be here this evening, but she entrusted me to provide these remarks. Uh so strong me is an organization that's been working with school too over the last almost three years and probably the best thing to do uh is to read this uh so I don't get off track. Okay, that's my task. Uh so I'm Terry Boon. I'm an attorney for board member of the nonprofit organization Strong Me and we have worked with school to principal uh business Amanda public for almost three years to provide community support of her efforts to improve outcomes for the children attending school. So strongly just uh
004a little background real quick and provide this written statement if you like uh for you but it's uh like I said the founder is Dr. Jennifing pediatrician and family therapist. uh she couldn't be here this evening due to an out of town engagement but she wanted me to convey her strong support and appreciation for the work uh principal has done in her school too. So strong provides educational services to schools and community programs largely in underserved areas and the idea is to strengthen resiliency in children and their families through development of healthy habits of exercise, healthy eating, mindfulness and forging social bonds, learning how to get along with people. Uh Strongly has alliances with the Albany NAACP, the Troy NAACP, the Albany links of the Capital District, uh Delta Sorority of the Capital District, Secretary
005of Independent Media, uh and churches among others. And so, Principal, uh Coffin has been very receptive to the outreach and participation in Strong Boo. uh she has resulted on strong means participation in career days at school too. Strong uh mean board members are from the community. Uh my wife and I live here uh in Troy in more Troy North and our members include a social worker, two physicians, two pediatricians to be precise, two lawyers, a therapist, a teacher and a community member. And uh we have participated in career days at school and offer mention a very thrilling experience for us. uh principal coffin also allows them to to serve as a pulse fight for a very successful uh organized by all capital district in consultation with Dr. proud of a strong name. It was focused
006on school to families as well as the Nor community. Uh so beyond the usual offering of medical outreach you know such as hypertension and diabetes the health fair designed focus on engaging the students of the school uh through nutrition education uh arts and craft workshop educational games uh designed by my son who's a teacher uh in the Shen district and uh laptop dealers has also worked with Dr. Proble to meet the sanctuary of Troy to provide an age appropriate STEM offering to school to the students and this initiative is conducted and uh led by an experience coordinator in the field. Last one I mentioned is that uh principal Clark has made her resource director. Mrs. Stenny is readily available to work with strong assistant programming to address the students uh most pressing needs. business include
007everything from uh uh clothing drive to uh food contributions and relationship with food banks and also uh making nutritional education more relevant such as teaching healthy cooking on a budget. So, so it's just Tom's observation to wrap it up based on his experience working with the school and principal club that she has shown resourcefulness uh openness and passion to understand and tap into the community resources to assist the children here too. So on behalf of strong me to commend her uh for that excellent work. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody council reconcile member? Um, we have received up to date the majority of the revenue for the grants, including an additional $3.2 million that came from the CO grant after we finalized it. Uh, within the next week, we're going to generate projections to
008get ball rolling for next year's budgets. Um, we also just made it through a child. Um, proud to say that we aced it and that we're good for another five years and come back for us. Um, I want to thank everyone involved. Uh, Chris Bon and Rich Hollander and all their staff. Um, that's all I have to any questions. Thank you very much. School two principal presentation. Okay. Good evening, F1. Thank you for that pretty nice comment about school, too. definitely wouldn't be possible without our amazing team and community. So, thank you so much. I first want to just everybody here. Thank you, Mr. Carmelo, uh Dr. Watson, Mr. Holy, Mr. Wonderful Board of Education. just one of these. >> Okay. Thank you. So, of course, we know our mission in Troy. We lead with
009our mission with every representation. It's very important to us. Detroit School District will provide a strong educational and social foundation to graduate all of our students college and career ready. Huge priority for us. And we have our vision of school too. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I want to point out some of the important words that we really focus on. partnership with our community, engaging equitable opportunities, educate diverse needs of every child for lifelong learning and college with your readiness. So that is what we focus on at school too with everything that we do. Just quick demographics about our school. We have around 270 students preK through five. The majority of our students are black, multi-racial, and Hispanic. We have 18% of our students identify with a disability. And we have
010100% free and reduced lunch. What's not on here? We have amazing families uh who we love, amazing students, and we love serving them. Our journey. Okay, everyone. Here's what we're ready for. So our journey, we've been in receiverhip for approximately 10 years and I'm so so excited to share this board meeting that as of this year we are out of receiverhip. Mr. has been here for a very very long time, has been leading the work intensely in collaboration with all of the people here. Uh he really led the work with the previous principal, got us to where we were and then together we took that journey. So couldn't have done it without Mr. Meadows and he likes to sometimes put a serious face underneath. He's really he's really not so serious and he is the
011one champion although uh I try to be young until the kids but you'll keep that title. So seriously though our journey uh as school 2 we receive off the receiver list. We're very very proud of that. More work is to be done. That was only you know the beginning of our new journey. And so last year at the end of the year we um announced that we are offering receiverhip. We did a little celebration. Mr. Carmelo came by. We had some sparkling juice. Celebrated the hard work. This isn't everybody. Uh if we could put everybody here, it would be so many people here, other principles, district, board of education. Everybody is a team effort. All of our community agencies as well. Uh so really we couldn't do it without everybody. I want to update you
012on our proficiency from the ELA and math exams. You can see 2021 2022 we were at 13% for proficiency for ELA based off the state exams. We went up to 27. That was a large jump for us. We went down to 17% uh based off of last year's score. However, we did increase from 13 to 17%. And so we're focusing on going up with that trajectory. We're making some um site changes to really incorporate some other strategies to address some of those gaps that we analyze um our testing. So we feel confident that we are still going upwards from that. You can see 14% 19% and a 33%. So that's a testament to everybody's hard work. There's attendance focus, there's support for building positive relationships like Mr. Meadows with our students. um we have a
013great curriculum that we use and really practice our routines and procedures such as fluency for math. So we're very very proud of that and we look forward to continuing that growth. So step to success as you know last year I talked about our attendance focus. If you look outside we still have that huge attendance focus the attendance boards we talk about attendance all the time. I can speak to it for about an hour but I'm not going to. You can see for chronic absenteeism, that's a huge focus for us. We're in the green positional, please. We're the green line this year. Chronic absenteeism is when you miss 10% or more of a school year. So, you'd be chronically absent at 18 days. And we track every month where we are with chronic absenteeism. We have
014high school students, who's at risk, we make phone calls, we do home visits, and we celebrate success and attendance. everything that we do. So, we have joy and fun in everything that we do that makes kids want to come to school and that's most important. We also look at the daily average attendance rate. Students know every day what our previous attendance rate was. So, if you were to ask a student, I don't see anyone, but let's see. Staff, do you know what our attendance rate was for yesterday? >> That's right. 93%. as we are accelerating but not quite. Um so we do talk about it all the time. We attended fund uh through the PTO to try to fund some of these fun uh ideas and projects. So we did a 204 summer golf ball
015event open to the community. We raised about $4,000 for that. We're using that this year to pay for some different fun activities such as DJ dance party, ice cream, all different things. So, we're excited to continue that. We're also doing a fun bowling uh outing as well for students with positive attendance. These are just some examples of really bringing on the fun joy in the learning community. We have great escape here. We do attendance uh raffles. We go to Thatcher and do course works to build those strong relationships. Uh Mr. Carmela came by one day when we had our attendance poster. Uh you know, celebration. I think maybe next time we'll dress up, but another strategy we focus on really is our relationships with the community. We do so much with that. We have the
016city, our liazison, Mr. that always reaches out mento and helps support uh with whatever they need. We have phone calls, emails, uh inerson visits. We also have many partnerships with outside organizations. I'm not going to list them all, but we have many, and there's, you know, some that aren't listed on there, uh we do a lot of work with outside agencies and partnerships to bring uh supports and activities to our students. We also link everything we do. We linked to learning and we make it fun. A lot of competitions. So last year we did something called the math sprint through the links organization. Uh I had kids compete at tables uh doing math really fast and then we calculated the score. All the kids got different uh trophies and certificates and just really made fun
017with that. So we're looking forward to continuing that again this year. Dad instructions. Everything we do is based off of data. Uh so teachers are always reviewing data. We have our instructional coaches. I see we have two here. They're leading different uh workshops and teaching students uh teachers and empowering our staff to review data and to use that data to make adjustments to uh instruction. We also focus on our social emotional learning. We have a great team at school too. We have a counselor and three social workers too. Thank you. Psychology. >> Got it. And school psychologist. Okay. So, with that large team, we're so great. We do so much to support our students. Uh we have a leazison for every different groups. Uh and we love working focusing on on the social emotional learning
018with our students implementing second step implementing morning reading and teaching our students how to uh identify emotions and strategies to be successful in school. A new strategy that we haven't talked about is academic parent teacher teams. So we are focused on having really strong engagement. I was able to go to a conference last year. Thank you to uh Dr. Watson, the board of education, uh Mr. Carmel for approving this. We were able to go and listen to Karen Matt from Harvard talk about family engagement and how specific strategies really improve attendance with academic achievement. We brought that back and we're implementing that this year. So I'd like to tell you just a little bit about that. We're doing academic parent teacher teams. The reason why is that this increases ownership and creates strong partnerships with
019our families. We celebrate the success and it's really the students who are leading the work. So this year grades three, four and five are doing studentled conferences. We started in the fall. We introduced that to our families. We're preparing now for our parent teacher conferences. And every student in grades three through five will be making a binder and talking with their parents, their families about their successes and their areas to focus on and what they're proud of. So, we're really really exciting. We're we're giving that worship to our students and we're excited to have them come in families as partners. And I'm going to play a quick flip and this >> danger. >> This was after our first round of academic parent teacher teams in the fall. And some >> I feel like James has
020been here since UPK. So, I've seen the growth. I've seen schools grow and it actually made me stay in trouble and to just live here and have to go to school here and I made my commitment to stay right here until all my teachers, you know, throughout the whole school district cuz all the schools are I'm really pleased with everything that goes on here at school, too. And I really feel like you guys are all for the kids. Um, every experience I've had here has been something great for my daughter. I love it cuz I like I said I've been here so I'm really hands on so I like to know what's going on to be involved in here at school and they really really make you feel welcome whether wants to be an actor
021I'm saying um and that's partly because the teacher say she wants to go to Julliard so anything that can help her get into Julia I just love the environment here I love the environment here for him uh they make me feel comfortable here to come didn't discuss anything about my kid. >> They name the wings every floor after college. And so and every time they grow um expand in their field like math or anything like that, they get little certificates with school colleges on it like oh you have graduated from me or something like that. actually came to the school district. She done from out. So, I'm I'm very happy with this whole school district. >> They're very into the community. Um that's a big thing for me. So, it's I just love the energy.
022>> Julia came around last year. Um at first my daughter didn't want to go to college and so um with that um certificate for sure he wanted to go to colleges for my youngest James he was I was nervous when he started school so for him to I was very nervous when he started school cuz he's very different and he has a lot of energy but um you know the school team here they work for him and they they did a good job and I can see when we come you know your kids are very respectful kids you know they greet everybody. They're they're kind and you know that's that's good to hear as as a parent and then as a school be doing that. Uh they really take care of him and make sure
023he's on the right path and they really care about the kids. That's that's the the genuine feeling that I got to be completely honest. They really care about their success and their future and that's just most important for me. Everybody in the um everybody in the world struggles and I know my family can struggle and we can have ups and downs and um it's good to be able to reach out to anybody in the school too and say hey they had a rough night with family. and they're struggling. Um, hey, you know, this summer was a rock star, so you know, I have to reach out to me. I don't know if I'm going to be able to give the kids school clothes and see where, you know, to be able to feel comfortable enough
024that, you know, there's no judgment and everyone understands. I love school, too. I've been every I have, like I said, I have five children. My two oldest, they're 15. their household forms at Georgia High and they started here in Denver. So I love the school a lot of my mind to be here. >> Growing up where I grew up, it's a lot of negativity. So I wanted to keep him away from that. And being in a place like this really keeps his mind focused on nonsense. >> I remember King realized being here, my kids are all here, it's not just about them like, oh, they're not just here to get a paycheck. They actually genuinely care. They get to know you. They get to know your family outside of just a kid at most of
025the school. So, I would describe the whole team like it's just one thing. So, we're this is truly because of all of our amazing staff, our leadership, our team, uh all the support. So, I think the parents said it best. Um, who we are and what we are at school, too. We're a family. We do whatever we can to support each other, but we work hard and we learn. Uh, two slides left. We have a schoolwide positive behavior uh intervention program. This was developed in conjunction with Sunni Albany. We received a grant and part of that work is that we developed that. Uh, we're very proud of the work. It was rough in the beginning. If you weren't in the room, there was hurt feelings, arguments, really tough conversations. Not really hurt feelings. We all
026just feel really proud about what we do. But through those tough conversations, we created something really amazing. We created a matrix for behavior and we teach behavior and it's been very successful. We presented as a team and we were recognized for a very strong presentation as a model. And so we're excited to continue building this. Um, as you can see, if you rise, that's our mural and students rise up. This is a celebration. Every month we have a celebration. Uh, if you earn 90% of your points throughout the day, you're a part of that celebration. And if you didn't earn all those points, that's okay. We're going to teach you the skill and then you'll join the celebration. So, I'm just going to show you that matrix real quick. But before I do, this quote
027we use a lot. If a child doesn't know how to read, we teach. If a child doesn't know to swim, we teach. If a child doesn't know how to multiply, we teach. If a child doesn't know how to drive, we teach. If a child doesn't know how to behave, we teach. Or punish, we teach. We teach. There's consequences, but we teach. And so, if you look at the next slide, we develop this as a whole team and we teach these expectations. So everywhere a student goes, they know exactly what's expected. It's very explicit. It's very positive. And we give positive feedback. And we know maybe if someone needs teaching on the playground how to be safe, we can do that. So it's all just like we teach alien or math, we want to teach those
028skills as well. And it's been very successful. It's helped our behavior and our discipline uh as incidents have decreased because of that. And lastly, equity isn't everything that we do. Uh we do have a specific equity goal, but I feel strongly that with everything that we do, we're focused on equity. Our specific equity goal is that we're focused on uh increasing ELA and math achievement of our black, male, and female students in grades 3, four, and five. Some of our key strategies we're doing our strong strong connection with mentoring uh I have instruction parent teams tutoring and data informed decision-m and lastly we are champions so we are school 2 we are very proud of our journey we're excited to continue it and we wouldn't be able to do this without everyone we can we
029will story I like to say we are uh and continue to do that. So, thank you so much for all the support. Uh, thank you very much. We're so grateful. >> Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Motion on the floor for approval of the minutes November 6th, 2014. Second discussion. All those in favor? I superintendent recommendation human resources staff matters and classified testify under a classified motion on the court consent agenda item 1 through 11. Second discussion. All those in favor? Opposed? Under our classified motion on the floor to consent agenda items one through eight and a second discussion. All those in favor superintendent program motion on the floor consent agenda items one and two second discussion. All those in favor I opposed. Superintendent uh recommendation business finance motion on the floor consent agenda
030items one and two second discussion. All those in favor announcement of we have two more meetings December 4th and December 18th. one at middle school, one at school 14 6:00. I think the most important thing is to announce our vote. We ask everybody here, please spread the word December 3rd. We definitely um I was told that I would tell people to vote yes because there's no money involved. So, please get people out to vote. All we're doing is reverting paragraph. So I appreciate the the principles for pushing even though some people are complaining about parking areas where you handle that well. You handle that well. >> Yeah. Can we just go over like have just a brief recap what we're about brief? >> Very brief. Very brief. Um so we mentioned all the parent groups
031which uh really been great well intended and well received. So, December 3rd, uh, coming up, we'll have a vote for Tuesday night in the regular voting time location. And just like Dan just said, there's no new money that we're being asked for. We'll put something out on parent square in the next week or so, so the voters know. Um, it's really a wording change. The new tech, which is the last phase of our $56 million project that was approved in 2019, uh, we originally put the proposition out there. We were going to renovate that space. We are now got approval from the New York State Education Department to add a new space and demolish the current technique. So, uh we have to tell the voters explicitly that have to change that. Oh, >> too late.
032>> So, that was um so again, really the only thing that's happening um on December 3rd is a change. The voters have to vote yes or no on a change of the wording, which is a change of our plan, which better for the kids. It's going to be a brand new facility right to the uh south of the building right there. And that will demolish the existing original tax. The money's already been approved back in 2019. >> And there were most of us, most of all of us that live uh received postcards saying where to vote. And that was a big issue with the room. I got my and you're so we got here. So um so that a lot of people are going to ask what the cards are >> and that going forward
033that that's a company we're working with for all voters without all >> because the district the districts did change. So, some of us that going to the same school for the past 45 years got moved and um not that I was still working school. But anyway, um and I don't have written good news, so I'm going to look out to the audience uh for somebody to give me some good news. I mean, the world needs good news. So, just tell >> Oh, Mr. I'm going to stand up in front. No, truly uh my heart goes out to everybody probably here and especially Anno. Okay. Uh Diane at U and Eron who showed up for our fundraiser and all the people that provide for our fundraiser for our school. It really provides clothing and warm gifts
034for our students. It was an excellent turnout. Uh we raised some really good money. Uh we're really excited about it. Uh really special thanks to Peter Marts of uh UW Marts company again for his extremely generous gifts. Uh just a great turnout. Special thanks to Beth Day. This is our ninth annual fundraising event. Heart and soul. All staff gets into it. It was just amazing. event. I love you. It was great. Um, okay. You're going to make me pick on somebody out there. Um, thank you for approving the cop tonight program. Um, I worked with them when I before I came, I was the director in Casville. I had students who went there. They're running um a very small preschool program in Lakeum, five classrooms, but they have a clinic um that implicates some school
035aid. So, some of our students with more significant needs related to autism, I'm going to bring families there to visit to see if that's another service. as well as um with the um grant proposal in here um or the contract here. I'm going to have them do some consultations to our 12 month classrooms, have them do some parent trainings that they said will all get a passport and we reported to parents can access at any time and as well as maybe some professional development in the future at some of our superintendent or PD days. Thank you for that. I'm excited to work with them. >> Great. Great. >> Okay, I'll stop. Um Motion on the floor to those in favor. >> Everybody have a great Thank you.