001[Music] this quite a group tonight like to thank everybody for taking time out of their Tuesday to be with us and those who can't be here but tuning in remotely thank you Michelle do we have any agenda changes this evening um I do have a couple things um I had the addition to items for board action which was K the approval of a physical education plan and um I did provide the board with a hard copy of updated Personnel report there is some updates and there is side that out as well thank you very much you're welcome anyone assembled here this evening wishing to address the board on agendar related public comment things that we're voting on we taking action on see Michelle do we have any Communications all right we're going to move right
002into board and staff reports and I'm going to turn it over to our athletic director Mr Mike Mor um good evening members of the Board of Education and the Watertown city school district executive team thank you for giving me the opportunity to share some exciting highlights from our High School athletic program it's always a privilege to celebrate the dedication and accomplish Ms of our student athletes and their coaches and tonight I'd like to introduce a few exceptional individuals who have brought Pride to our school and Community First let me introduce the 2024 boys lacrosse team led by their outstanding coach Brian Naro thank you we appreciate the recognition uh this was last year was a phenomenal year the best we've ever had making it the furthest we ever had to the sectional finals uh we
003had nine seniors that graduated last year not with us today but they were a great group uh we were a great family it was a bunch of guys that cared more about the team over their individual accolades they worked really hard we had a lot of fun um we just we just did it together was our our fifth straight Frontier League uh title second year we went undefeated the Frontier League and and the furthest we ever made it again to the sectional finals which for the boys across team um you know it was amazing it was an amazing year on the field off the field everything was just great you know we had our our tailgates and our team dinners and you know some Community work that we did just a just an awesome awesome
004group that got together and it made made it fun for the coaches and parents and everybody so we thank everybody for the support I mean throughout the year the athletic department with Mike and d and Joanne they do a ton of good things for us they were really great last year the sendoff we had before the section of finals I mean that was that was quite a scene if you weren't there and we are on point and hoping we'll be there again this year to to do that one more time in the sectional finals we didn't have our best performance but uh we're hoping this year is the year we'll be ready so thank you everybody for the recognition appreciate thank you congratulations congratulations guys I'm gonna make you stand there awkwardly for the next
00510 minutes that's okay next we are thrilled to celebrate Molly Dickinson Molly has demonstrated incredible skill and determination in swimming Guided by her equally passionate and dedicated coach Lori Peters their partnership is a shining example of what commitment and collaboration can achieve evening everyone thank you for the invitation to be here tonight to celebrate one of our student athletes Molly Dickinson a freshman here at Watertown High School and a three-year Varsity member of the girls swimming and Diving team Molly was the 2024 Frontier League champion and section three class a champion in both the 50 free and the 100 free she was the only class a swimmer to win both her events at sectionals and in doing so she was voted by the coaches as the swimmer of the meat our goal of course throughout
006the season has been to qualify for the New York State Public High School Athletic Association state championship meet during our Frontier League meet Molly qualified in the 53 with a time of 24.5 n and during the state qualifier meet she won the 100 free with a time of 5526 qualifying her for a second event she competed against many talented swimmers across Section 3 including swimmers from F Manlius Liverpool New Harford James wwit CNS West gennessee Rome Free Academy and Syracuse City swimmers are only allowed to compete in two individual events at the state meet and therefore we are excited she is a t she is the only swimmer from the Frontier League to make it to the state meet this year and she is only one of 20 student athletes across section three to attend
007as well this is no small feat Molly will be traveling on Thursday with a section to Webster New York where she will have a practice out there Thursday afternoon and then preliminary competition is on Friday morning starting at 10: a.m. she is currently seated 23rd in the state in the 50 free and 33rd in the 100 free the top 24 swimmers in each event will compete again on Saturday if you have an account you can follow Molly on the nfhs network live feed or come watch her action in Webster on Friday morning I am extremely proud of her accomplishments this season and of course we wish her the very best as she represents Watertown and section three the hardest part is getting there now it's time to have fun and swim fast congratulations thank you
008so much good luck Molly I have I've watched the video I don't know how many times when you finished and you and Coach Peters your other Co and then when you realized that you had won and broke the record and the three of you was awesome watch congratulations thank you thank you and finally I would like to recognize Sam boo Sam's achievements on and off the tennis courts are a testament to her work ethic and drive she has benefited greatly from the leadership and expertise of her coach Brian Morrison who continues to inspire athletes and strive for excellence this one a little short uh Sam came to us to Watertown her junior year from IAC uh we're super thankful that she did she's one of the top players in our area um Sam when she
009came to us her junior year was undefeated and she stayed that way for the next two years on our program uh she had a 52 and0 record in four straight Frontier League first singles championships titles uh she was able to qualify for uh the sectional qualif tournament she got down there and she uh lost to the number two se but landed in the first uh top four uh from there she made it to the uh State qualifier tournament uh there she had to beat out about 200 plus kids in uh section three to be able to make it to that point and when she did she landed in the top eight uh she needed top four go on to States in New York City but we're thrilled that she made it that far um she's
010the first player from Watertown to do this in almost 30 years uh division one class a is extremely difficult group of players to compete against um so we're just honored that she was here and we're super thankful that she was part of our program and got to represent our district and our team for the last couple of years so he's a great Co that's it thank you very much I'd like to I'd like to thank our athletes for being so spectacular but it also takes an incredible coach uh and and all three coaches that were here tonight of Team firstand Mrs Peter I mean you when I was in School the swim the swim program was it was almost like Collegiate level and you've kept it there you know and uh and you know Brian
011uh we grew up playing although he won't tell you that I was better than him but um you know what what Brian's achieved in highly competitive area that lacrosse has become um is nothing think sure remarkable and uh you know Mr Morrison too and we're we're just so thankful to have you there guiding our kids so I think we need owe you another round and if you were here for the student recognition as an athlete now you can leave and go be a kid or you can stay whatever you'd like to do thank you all so much have a good evening congratulations okay moving along on board and staff reports it looks like up next is recognition of school related professionals so today everyone uh is school related Professionals Day School related Professionals Day and
012this came as a vision uh Tina and I and Matt berck have been meeting with the Union presidents of each of our bargy units which is six plus the management confidential we've been looking at ways that we could improve climate culture attendance and all of those different things that will impact our strategic plan and a part of that was recognizing the hard work of our school related uh professionals we've got nurses we've got secretaries we've got bus drivers we've got AIDS we've got Tas we've got food service so today was the day that we brought this to fruition on the national recognition day so I'm going to read a little statement and then I would like uh Tina to pull up a PowerPoint towards the end and then we have school related professionals that are
013here tonight that on behalf of the entire District are going to be recognized today is school related professional recognition day and it's a privilege to take a moment to honor the incredibly talented and dedicated School related professionals also known as srps these people are essential part of our District's success these professionals are the backbone of our schools providing support and service to our students in order for them to thrive srps are the unsung heroes who make a difference every day whether they're working in classrooms guiding students supporting families or maintaining schools or driving school buses their commitment and Care ensure that our district operates smoothly that every child has the support he or she needs to succeed this evening we are thrilled to recognize 117 School related professionals who have gone above and beyond in
014their roles this recognition is not just for those that are here tonight but for all srps across the district your tireless dedication is truly appreciated on behalf of my entire executive team Lynn Tina Brienne and Matt and myself we thank you for your hard work and your commitment please know that you are a vital part of our school community and today we honor and celebrate you some of whom are here being recognized tonight and we are excited to share a presentation highlighting their contributions please join me and celebrating our srps point is the pictures of all of our srps that were nominated throughout the entire District 117 in total e e e today we had the opportunity to take a caravan loc including district office and the Massie Learning Center and we had the opportunity
015to work alongside building administrators and acknowledging acknowledging these 117 people the amount of joy and uh tears that this brought to people being recognized um really was heartwarming to see how important this was to each of these people tonight we have selected people to join us so that you have a physical representation of some of these fine people what I would like is for once your name is called if you could come and stand behind uh myself what I would like to do is get a picture of you with the school board Michelle gella is gonna call the names all righty Mike grandie Linda Griffin hey Boer [Music] Andre Lanas Diana Stanton arm Torres and um Amanda Cruiser if we could put the board around them so that we yes it's an Android oh you're
016sa you want Mary Kirby I said Mary Hughes did not speak loud enough his too whatever you think [Music] while while they're arranging spe I will let you know that these people were recognized by students they were recognized by by administrators by teachers and by Community stakeholders good e he handed the individuals a letter so if you're wondering it's not a termination letter we did have when we went to case today they asked us that question we had no pink slip um but they were letters on the letter is the person's name who nominated the individual and also why they nominated them we felt that it was extremely important that the people recognized who and for what reason and then they received a pin that says you are essential in the Watertown city school district
017so thank you again for all of your contributions to our schools and our community and I just have to say something really quick and I'll make it really quick c a thank you doing this all the srps that in our district you're amazing and at this point if you were here for the recognition to student thank you so much thank you everyone you definitely deserve hey our group keeps getting smaller and all right up next on board and staff reports it looks like we have a spar cognition presentation that will uh come to us virtually hi good evening I'm Robert mcder with uh with Aon formerly spark COG uh it looks like uh let me share my desktop I'm pleasure to be with you all today so thank you for the opportunity uh you know
018I'm going to take you through uh this evening just a a short couple of slides about the use of AI in school safety uh the advances that's have been made what we're seeing in the marketplace and hopefully this will provide you with a good perspective on what's happening in uh you know in the you know in this field and uh you know where potentially we could be of some assistance so I'm going to start with a very short video uh there's no sound associated with the video but it's going to give you a flavor and a taste for what we uh what we provide relative to the use of computer vision AI in in school safety uh just a couple things to draw your attention to you're going to see some some boxes red boxes
019and different colored boxes associated with the scenes that are going on that's our AI technology detecting what's happening within a given circumstance and uh you know providing uh alerts and notifications based on what we're seeing so the way I like to describe the way our AI works is that if you could see it with your with your eye we could see it with our Ai and the AI will continue to build confidence in what's it it's observing in any given scene or any given circumstance so with that let me start this let me start with the U the uh with the video here so you see we have bounding boxes and we're always interested in understanding who's on campus and why so we could do license plate recognition we could do intrusion detection we can
020understand if someone is entering the building in a way they shouldn't be and you can see with the red boxes were detecting this most importantly we guarantee and talk about school safety around the detection of weapons and what that looks like in in today's world uh but as importantly it's the realtime alerts that come with that either through our mobile app or our our uh our desktop and and cloudbased application so you know our intent with our our AI is is a number of things one it's to keep as much as away from the facility as we can but also allow for a level of productivity and and and the use of AI in in other scenarios I'm going to talk a little bit about that now and so you know we've got uh a
021number of of uh of uh use cases that that I'll talk about with you but from a a computer vision perspective um you know what we're doing is is we're processing all of that intelligence at the edge so if you have a a VMS system or a recording system we're going to sit our technology right next to that uh and we're not the source of of Truth we're not there to be the uh the U the evidential components to video we're just there to inspect every frame of video that comes across you know our system uh we've got this deployed over 130,000 cameras across the world uh very quick out of the box deployment we're existing using existing camera infrastructure so it's a very quick to Market very very fast deployment relatively speaking uh and
022it's using and by using your your and other schools uh uh existing camera infrastructure no investment needs to be made there and again since we're not recording the video you know we're we're very much aware and sensitive to what's happening from a privacy perspective out out in the world and so um you know some of those use cases I showed before or in the video those those uh um those video clips we divide those into categories around health and safety security and situational awareness health and safety is a big one for us in in in schools accident slips and Falls uh distancing traffic control uh folks going up and down the the stairs uh you know uh you know if they're one-way stairs uh Etc PPE compliance for folks in the cafeteria uh you know
023we had one instance where a young lady in in one of our isds in Texas had excused herself to use the restroom um was in the hallway and ended up fainting and we were able to get the uh get the um uh school nurse and the and the school resource officer out to her very quickly so you know for us you you know being able to assist and understand the health and integrity of of students and and what's happening there is is a big part of of of our technology and from a security perspective certainly weapon detection intrusion detection again our intent is to keep everything is as far away from the from the campus as possible perimeter security uh Stadium security as well uh access control and authorized access I'm sure you experience it
024often you know you have got basketball games you've got activities after school you know are are people in parts of this uh campus and parts of the facility that maybe they shouldn't be did they wander off Etc being able to understand what's going on 24 hours a day seven days a week with a piece of technology that never sleeps and and provides near realtime uh alerts and notifications in terms of what's happening is is key to that that security component and then from a situational awareness perspective just really again understanding who's on campus and why right uh you could do student uh faculty counts heat Maps where you're keeping an eye on people moving through areas uh you know a bit of crowd control or or or kids you know in a large group gathering
025in a in a certain area of the school or or kids rushing into the bathroom potentially into the restroom U you know are there too many doing that you know those are the types of things that we can detect and alert you know folks and give the c or certainly the administration the right information at the right time to make the right decisions uh and so you know with that you know just a little bit about what we're seeing in the marketplace uh you know you know clearly from a sta itics perspective I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't already know that unfortunately you know in in United States predominantly active shootings are on the rise you know over 350,000 students have been exposed to some level of gun violence since Coline
026there've been you know close to 2100 school shootings and they continue to grow year over-year um you know deps can continue to climb and you know interesting enough that the the timing and the place of of these incidents vary right uh you know 20 almost 23% in uh parking lots you know Etc um know about 20% in the morning 10% uh at sporting events so it really does vary right uh and the intent would be to leverage the technology to help you know from a preventative uh component really ensure that you're you're providing the right level of Safety and Security for staff Administration especially the student population but you know another component of this is is the analytics that go with it right so while you know the odds of something happening from a weapon
027a weapons event within a given school is highly unlikely you know the insurance is there but you know the amount of analytics you get from uh a computer vision AI uh solution within a school setting uh you know is is tremendous and so uh you know by utilizing the technology you'll be able to understand student counseling locations right understanding you know in this instance how many people came in the the main instance uh the main entrance but there were 562 you know folks that came through the through the front door and then you can you can you know progress to Observation um that you know you had 87 or 90 folks in the gym right and they can apply some context to that meaning you know when you have that many folks that are in
028another gym you know you may need to go you clean the gym and and provide you know um you know the the maintenance staff notification that you know there's you know event is wrapping up and let's be proactive in in ensuring that we're you know we're we're tiing up so it's really understanding you know those types of statistics and and and um uh you know really get a feel for what's happening within the facility from uh you know from a status you know perspective and then you know you know when you when you talk about vehicles and and what's happening at the perimeter of the school you know we have the capability of of of uh identifying cars by license plate uh but also identify when you know a car you know enters a particular
029uh know parking spot right um we can also again put cont text around that meaning you know working with our our school and our campus customers we'll talk about things like well how long in the morning should it take somebody to exit their vehicle and if that's say five minutes we could set a timer that says if someone doesn't exit their vehicle in 10 minutes or eight minutes you know maybe it's an opportunity to send a school resource officer out there to understand what's going on so it it it up it up levels your your situational awareness really understanding you know what's happening within the environment so let me let me stop there I I really just wanted to give you you know a taste of of what uh AI means in in school safety
030and how we've applied it in in different environments throughout throughout the United States and and would love to pause here and answer any questions that you might have I have is this just a present on a potential AI platform correct can you hear me I can I'm sorry if I missed this um how many schools and including State have you are already using this you know I'll let me come back to you with a with an updated count uh you know we're predominantly using the the technology has been used in Texas Florida California uh so let me I'll come back with a with a with a count of the number of schools but we've got it deployed in in in many throughout the throughout the country so do you have any data on the success
031of this yeah I'll share some data in terms of you know success you know means a few different things and and and schools use it use our technology in a number of different ways right so uh you know in terms of you know weapons detection that's that's you know one area of of measurement uh you know being able to provide statistics and information in terms of uh uh you know student body uh flow in in in in terms of how students are moving through the campus um how people are entering and exit exiting the the the the restrooms Etc so I'll I'll provide you with some statistics on on how success is measured with the school systems that we've worked with so I would think that one of the things that would be interesting to
032see is if we were to invest in this you'd want to make sure that it is truly a deterrent um platform so if it's deterring Behavior so for example when you're showing the box with the guy with the rifle entering into a room I I think it'd be interesting to see where you've already delivered this system how many times did it potentially stop a potential disastrous event where someone walking into a building with a gun that obviously places a lot of threat on the student body I think piece of information that would be very interesting to see because if it acts as a deterrent then it's definitely worth the value I don't know how much more and I'm just saying this from Mina I but I don't know how much value we would have in
033trying to figure out what the pattern of behaviors are with kids going into the bathroom or how they R the hallways I mean we have a pretty good system here we've got the eole pass we've got the monitors in the hallways um we've got vaping detectors in the bathrooms I mean we have other modes of control in that way so I just think in something like this because I'm sure this is not going to be cheap I'd like to see some proof that it truly is a deterrent and that has worked in that fashion you know I I think in you know for me I think you know it's a you know providing you the ability to talk to someone that's using this technology I think is is a is a great next step right
034uh because as I said earlier the the the uh the odds of of someone with a weapon uh you know breaching a facility that happens to use our technology are are are really di Minimus right and so it really is more of of of an insurance policy but but you know our ability detect um you know intrusion people scaling fences people coming onto the property uh when they shouldn't be from certain areas we've got plenty of statistics on what that looks like uh and again you know being able to inspect and interrogate what's happening within the parking lot Etc so yeah I will provide you some some further information around you know those statistics and what that looks like and and the success associated with that as well as you know broker session if you
035so desire with with someone that makes use of the technology Liberty Hill for example one of the larger isds in Texas is a is a is a consumer of of our technology and it's it's the Cornerstone of of their safety posture thank you sure you uh mentioned Stadium security I know some of those Texas schools have some pretty big stadiums is there any ceiling any limit to the number of uh of participants in an event or the size of the stadium that kind of maxes out the system no the system really scales the way we we size our systems are are are based on the number of use cases and the number of cameras uh and so you know as long as the stadium is equipped with the right number of cameras to do the
036right to the do the level of inspection needed uh we just size the the Ed device appropriately and the edge device really is just an off-the-shelf standard issue GPU intensive server it's like a video gaming server because we're processing a lot of video so you know it's similar to you know a gaming unit and you know we'll just size that that that uh that edge device based on uh as I said the the the number of cameras and and the particular use case it's a bit of a bit of a math you know math Endeavor but but not difficult to size thank you sure anybody else okay well this was a great uh initial presentation and we look forward to hearing back from you in the not so distant future oh it's my pleasure and
037any questions I know sometimes you can see something like this and and not think of all the questions you may have but if there's anything please reach out to me and and the team and would be happy to answer it thank you again sir thank you and thank you both um you email me any of those resources that you have I'll make sure that I send that to the board thank you very much you're welcome Take Care thank you all we've all been waiting for my pleasure to turn it over to Mr John Kane with the exciting policy committee meeting report oh yes thank you thank you I don't know how exciting it'll be but we'll do our best um so the policy committee met um last week U because Lori was going to be
038missing from this meeting tonight we wanted to make sure we got that meeting in um so we focused on two main things we discussed uh policy 8302 again on complaints about curricular instructional materials that is on the agenda tonight we tabled it at the last meeting uh and then I don't want to steal any Thunder from our Librarians but we did get a sneak peek at the updated policy for selection of Library multimedia materials and that's going to be presented tonight and we'll be on the agenda for the board to vote on in December great didn't didn't let down was everything I thought it would really I mean I was really worried number one my feet won't fit but hard act to follow thank you J and rounding out our Board St reports Dr Larry
039sh just a huge shout out again for SRP and all those people that took the time to nominate one of our srps we're excited to have them in our district and excited that you took the time to recognize them with us uh this evening um I will let you know that last Friday we had our FEMA exploratory meeting um it um is supposed to be a phone call um they were enticed to come so they were physically here I think we had more people in my office than it actually holds uh for the Fire Marshall uh but in any event the meeting was an extreme success uh they had met with the city prior to the meeting with us and as you know could you've heard me say that open board meetings in the past
040that we have also had coordinated meetings with the city um as you know this building right here sits on a hill and down from the hill goes a lot of water and so we talked with the city about the water that comes onto our property and flushes down to Case and also the high school um we had that opportunity and then uh we immediately were so excited that we met again today um and so today we met for about three hours today um we had the FEMA recovery scoping meeting to talk about some initial uh things that we noticed um I did make it clear with FEMA while they were here that um I am including North Elementary School case middle school and the high school as you know um in this report we filed
041as a district um for those of you that don't know that are here this evening or listening in um we did have some water fountains um coming out of toilets and sinks and other um water options at north um and we had some sewage uh back up at case and we had a signicant bit of issue at um at the high school but that recovery scoping meeting today it was just uh what I did not want to do is um submit to a solid list of where we think damagers have occurred and I'll give you a perfect example that I did not know prior to this visit today um we would have given you initial reports and then today we decided to take a trip down to the high school case and when we walked
042into the weightlifting room um we noticed that the the platform that they used for the platform that they use um for yoga dancing all of those fun activities um is starting to buckle and uh we have Riley moonin who was there that gave us a tour of that space and then he let us into the into the gymnasium and said look there's more areas in that space um and so what happens is as a result of today's a recovery scoping meeting we have 60 days they say 60 it's technically 59 if you look at the calendar we have 59 days to actually come up with a list of things that we want to include in the report and there are two options the district has the option of utilizing FEMA where FEMA comes in and
043they do their own inspection or we can use our Architects which is King and King Associates um FEMA and Department of Homeland Security and emergency services in combination coordination we believe that it's in our best interest to use our own architects who are familiar with our facilities and so our architect Jason Benedict was also on staff today along with aella Osborne because what when we look at the buckets it's bringing buildings back to pre- disaster conditions it's bringing things up to code and it's also looking at mitigation and as I've said from the day one after the storm was that what we don't want to do is spend FEMA dollars on renovating our building or getting it up to code and then have the storm happen again and so there are some contingencies with how
044we have to look um the the meter really is a 500 uh Day storm and so we know we know those 500 day storms are happening more frequently and that we have to be prepared for that and when you look at where the high school in particular sits um it sits at a very low point and so it is bounded take on water so we we took the opportunity to tour that facility today so they could see exactly where the water came in um we talked about some mitigation efforts but we didn't commit to anything because what we want is our Architects to go through with a fine Troth comb identify any issues and then aella Osborne to go through and and really give us a good scope of we address these issues with the
045mitigation the chances of it flooding again in the future are less likely and so that happened today uh they enjoyed that meeting here today they said they would like to meet with us every two weeks um so on December 3rd we'll be meeting and then two weeks later um so we'll be meeting every two weeks until this happens now we have once we identify we submit and they decide to commit to what we are saying we need um and there's a process that it takes to go through that with their staff on their side we have to look at the en Environmental Protection Agency stuff there's a lot of different factors here um once that's decided on the district has eight 18 months um to actually have the work completed the um the approval rating
046with the New York State education perment does not happen that quickly um and so if we are not able to get it done but there's a chance that that may be the case because of the turn around time we do have options of hiring a third party reviewer if we so choose it it is fairly new so we don't know how expeditious that is actually going to be but in any event we have the the right as a district to go forward and ask for an extension um up to four years uh the state has the authority designated by FEMA to actually extend up to four years beyond that four-year point we hope to have the work done by them but if by chance it was not able to be finished um then we would
047have to extend beyond that and that would be a theme of decision um as you know we are also working on a capital Improvement project and so what we don't want to do is commit District dollars that are going to be covered by FEMA to address the uh disaster relief efforts so it's a delicate balance um you'll be glad to know that this is a new experience for FEMA for Department of Homeland Security emergency services our architect our construction Associates so we're all learning this together which I think really put the district in a good position uh particularly with the um the scoping happening at our architect level and not being sent out to FEMA to do on their own our Architects know our buildings they just uh completed our building condition survey um and
048we do have the results from the 1.9 million that we spent with Surf Pro to have particularly the high school and then the sanitation effort of case the lower level so exciting things are happening with that and we are going to continue working with them on a bi-weekly basis so you'll hear as we move forward with um board meetings more information uh regarding that the next thing I just want to mention is our impact aid forms we're hoping to get as many as we can before Thanksgiving break uh they are available on our website uh they are available on parents Square this our impact Aid allows us to collect federal aid that supports a lot of our programming here in the Watertown city school district um if you look at other districts around us uh
049kth at junan River they received monies for that as well uh the denominations are a little bit different depending on the number of students that actually complete the survey and send it back in and so to increase opportunities for kids we just ask that you take the opportunity to complete it and this year uh with Lynn's Direction uh we actually are collecting it in a paper copy they can do it online so we're accepting it in M multiple different formats to make it accessible for families um the next thing I would like to mention um Tina Lynn and I sat in the student advisory Council today I feel so relieved to see The Smiling Faces that sat around this very table it was pushed that way slightly but uh this table today the to think
050that these students are our future really makes me feel comfortable they have you know they come to this you know we added two big things this year they have to be willing to Mentor a student that's in need and they have to complete the project and today we gave them the opportunity they worked with Lynn today on an instructional piece uh more information to come on that later on they worked on writing thank you notes and the kids when they wrote those thank you notes for our SRP staff they they just like there was so much excitement um off of them as they were writing their notes and they were like can I go get them now can I go give them now now and then they were asking us for bus driver names because
051they wanted the bus drivers to be recognized um you know it was just an amazing experience but when you sit there and listen to the projects that these kids want to do they want to improve attendance they want to improve the academic and the athletic combination and how they play together they want to work with mental student mental health I I just it is so inspiring and so I didn't want to deflate their excitement today but I said what I want you to do is I want you to leave here today and I want you to go talk to as many people as you know about your idea because now we have to take it from being an idea to Flushing it out to actually bring it to fruition because then depending on where they're
052at they're going to be working in groups they're going to be working with Tina on HR and student services Lynn if it's a curriculum thing Bri if it's a finance thing facilities Brian one of them said food service was something they wanted to focus on and um so he'll be working with Mary Hughes um you know we've got an it question so would so what I plan on doing is trying to give them the support on my staff to make sure that they can bring their projects to fruition this year and I just am overly excited about it our student Representatives this year are a wonderful group of students um we talked about the new Cyclone Academy junor that I once started for next year for our eighth graders they gave me honest feedback about
053that they're just a great group of kids and they really do have the heart and soul of our district and our future and that's all I have thank thank you so much okay items for consent agenda all that consent agenda it and are hereby approved can I have a motion please second and John John all those in favor I any oppos motion carries items for Action resolve at the general Construction contract for the 2425 Capital outlay project with BC Building Systems Incorporated which will include repair to the sidewalks and star block Elementary is here by approve and this is a continuation of what we've already started with the sidewalks last last right can I have a motion in a second discussion I have a couple of questions I think you just so this is a
054the capital outlay for the we put sidewalks in Starbucks right yeah Capital outlay only allows us to spend $100 so we couldn't do them all last year so the committee last year when we met committee decided to continue the sidewalk so that's what this is okay anything else guys all those in favor I any oppos motion carries resolve that the approval of the school district agreement for consultant Services by in between the one city school district and the New York State School boards Association in effect for the 2425 and 25 5 26 academic years and shall expire on June 30th 2026 this agreement shall provide professional expertise in providing districts with state aid review services and is hereby approved motion please discussion is this a renewal this is brand new and this as I mentioned
055at the last board meeting there is a zero cost of the district so I felt like it was important to do with breeding new to our district um with Matt verdick in his position he's been in over a year now but this will actually highlight some things that maybe we're not maximizing on the foundation a piece that they can go back and help us learn from and if they don't find anything and everything is perfect then we don't owe them anything you're welome any else all those in favor oppos motion carries that's proposal for regulated building materials testing services to energy environment LLC as presented to the board is hereby approved I have a motion please John awward pause any discussion uh discussion yeah um so this is specifically I saw this is only for
056them to evaluate for any potential is bestos or any other products that might have been a result of the flooding so it's just cuz cuz I looked at how much it was it's so cheap on mon there's no way it's that cheap so it's just specific to that and we'll see different dollar months once we get into North and some other things we've got 60 days technically 59 today's meeting to actually give a true list else all those in favor I opposed motion carries is a legislature of the state of New York has enacted legislation to authorize municipalities to permit a real property tax exemption for developers and building owners to convert non-residential real property to residential housing units and Commercial mixed uses in accordance with New York State real property tax law section 485
057d a and whereas a school district may also authorize an exemption for this purpose in the same manner and to the same extent as a municipality that lies within the geographic boundaries of the school district has authorized the except exception um exemption excuse me and whereas the city of Watertown which is located within the geographic boundaries of the school district authorizes an exemption pursuant to section 485a by local law honor about June 3rd 2024 and whereas the school district has reviewed the particulars of various non-residential real property that could be converted to residential housing units and Commercial mixed uses in the city and whereas the school district view the existing residential housing unit and Commercial mixed use development in the city therefore be it resolved as follows number one the school district hereby finds the
058that additional residential housing units and commercial mixed use development in the city would be a benefit to the school district number two the school district hereby finds that the adoption of a real property tax exemption pursuant to real property tax law section 45- A which is applicable to property in the city would encourage and Foster the development of residential housing units and Commercial mixed uses in the city number three the School District hereby adopts an exemption pursuant to real property tax law 45- a within the city in the same manner as adopted and authorized by the city number four this resolution shall take effect immediately upon its filing with the assessors of the watert of the city of Watertown in the Jefferson County Office of real property and shall be applicable to all assessment roles
059paired on after March 1 2024 I have a motion please mil in a second any discussion yes so we had talked about this before and we had several questions and we were kind enough to go back um and get answers for us so I did a little bit more and apparently uh there is a developer in Watertown who's actually resides in Henderson and has done a lot of work in Henderson invested his own private dollars into developing the um community and he now wants to the water town so there was a concern about how much money are we really going to lose well there's only really two to three properties at most that would fit the picture of for mix use storefront and residential and we would only be losing not losing we would still
060get the tax base on the property value now we would just not get it on the additional for 12 years but then we could play catchup so as long as we are in a financially stable position right now which we are um I think that you know this guy has done a lot of good to the community the city is not as mutually mutually exclusive from this board so like if we were to vote this down it wouldn't affect the city the city's already supported this so it doesn't matter what we do but it does because in my personal opinion if there's a guy out there who's willing to invest dollars into blight in the city of Water Town I think as a school district we should support that I think it's a good effort
061at the beginning I think I was skeptical um but I've done more research and I think that the effort um is a good one and I think this is a good way to partner with the city so I just wanted to add that extra bit of information because I had not spoken in favor of this before and I just wanted to rectify my line of thinking I'll just add to that typically these are properties that have been sitting unmaintained and undeveloped for a while so this is the long-term View and and if these are improved and it also Spurs other development in the city ultimately this will benefit District in the long term and I like the fact that we're partnering city has already endorsed it and to me it just makes sense to join
062them in this effort to encourage this kind of development City I agree is there a let's say we change our mind down the road is it as difficult to get out of this as it is some of the other agreements we had is absolutely once they approve the right now there's one property that the city is honoring on their side we would have one property right now but there could be additional but again as both Millie and Randy said right now those properties are really not doing anything other than distracting from the city you know when you look at these developers that are doing a great job and really thriving um they're making these mixed Bo properties where they've got sales and residential and you know just to add to that this uh person his
063name is Dan queer he looked for this program within the state and he researched it and he suited and he approached the mayor and he went to the city council and he thought he sold his idea he had data to fs and outcome of what he's done in other parts of you know our communities and I think that when you have someone that does that you we really should Champion that we should really support a person that because that guy's not from here he's from out of you know he's moved he's retiring here and I think people like that really need to support them and I think it's a good thing for us to do if it was desirable to do these it would have been done by now right yeah and sometimes government has
064to provide incentives for undesirable activity so I mean this is one of those I think yes just to answer it because this this is specific to the city in a specific 12E period of time um but we do the district does engage with Pilots payment and lure of taxes and so we have other things that we do for large corporations and things within our cities thank you okay so all those in favor any opposed motion carries Jason uh we need to bring the next resolution back to the table with a motion in second can I have a motion to bring it back Randy in second favor all that the annual internal audit and annual res risk assessment of the school district as prepared by The Firm of Questar 3 bis for the 2324 school year
065and the corrective action plans Associated there with is hereby accepted and can I have a motion please a second yes mostly for great so thank you for getting us the report the presentation was a little confusing without having the report so now that we have the reports in front of us and we talked a little bit about this but I just wanted to highlight this so that everybody else is in um informed so basically on the we have two reports so the one on the internal controls of a staff attendants we really did not get what we were looking for as a board what we were looking for were attendance Trends within teachers and I guess that was just someone not us right no not us we were clear about what we wanted but somebody
066in Translation dropped the ball so and I think Milly that really so the quest that we met with last year in fnf that person no longer is employed through Questar and so then new a lot of transition I think a lot of stuff got lost so I guess I think as a board we need to decide you know is there any remedy to that and we obviously asked for something and got the complete opposite now in a positive light he did point out that we have issues with Frontline and end vision and they are despite the fact that they're compatible we're not using it effectively and that's already been highlighted and addressed and we're going to fix that so that's the positive side of this but I still think we didn't really get the answer
067to our question and I remember when he presented to us he said if you have any other issues please let me know this is a draft so I'm wondering do can we go back and say well this is what we really wanted would we have to pay for it all over again is it something that we want to do are we GNA that we legally have to submit something to the state we're kind of running behind on this particular report which isn't the board's fault again we thought it was being presented we didn't have the materials the the downside of the person presenting virtually not having physical materials in front of them um but what I what we could do is ask that to be a focus for next year I agree with what you
068said in the sense that we did have some learnings yeah um when he gave us the report I did meet with payroll I met with Tina in her Department Bri in her department so there were things that we looked at that were aha moments that we've immediately worked to to rectify so I think we did get something out of it we did we did and I think if we have to if we're running against a timeline we should definitely submit this I mean I'm happy to approve this but I just wanted to point out that we didn't get what we wanted and we could pursue it if we want more but um but the things that came out of here are good so that's my comment on that and just so you know Milly for
069the 2425 year it is yet a different auditor that is oh okay so I can always I can reach out to him and tell him what it is that you're specifically looking for okay so then the financial risk assessment I don't know if this is an error but the date on here is September 29th of 2023 yes um I had received an email from Ken zabowski proba about two months ago maybe saying that this report had never been approved by the board so it I don't know why I can't answer why it took so long to come to you and I apologize for that but I can assure you that going forward that will not occur but I can't answer to why we got it so late so this was last year this is the
07023 24 year so okay so just to caution you though like a I went through this report and one of the things that was most shocking to me is that when they're highlighting some of our deficiencies on the second half of it they give you the updates and some of those updates are really old like 2017 we address that they go back all the way back to 2012 so I'm thinking though if we're going to do this you know I would hope that we can provide a more current update because some of those explanations even last year I think I would have said something about it like some of those recommendations I mean some of the responses that were given really not yeah I I absolutely 100% agree with you and I had gotten a
071draft report for the 24 25 year just a few days ago and I shot him an email today asking you know these last 16 Pages they're they're you know 12 14 years old is can we condense that to like the last three years something that's a little bit more relevant something that happened 12 years ago no one around the stable is probably around that right I absolutely agree okay so as long as we're on the same page those are my comments about these anyway all those in favor oppos motion carries you resolve that upon the recommendation of Education hereby approves the following resignations retirements leave of absence appointment ter non probationary instructional appointments permanent appointments permanent part-time appoint appointments cyone Academy appointment winner coaching boys appointment substitute instructional motion please a second gotta we add
072to the math on the retirements got 0 years there it's great look at that 30 years I'd like to wish jco Blair good luck in her new assignment Miss to have her for as long as we did and uh school that GA is equally as lucky so good luck and again more Kudos Larry adding two more people to the Cyclone Academy Lisa Winkler incredible science teacher an English these are just you know just from the very beginning we've had really the cream of the clock participating and I think that that's really an asset to the students who need it that was a nice joint effort with ourselves our administrative Union and the WEA that met with the teachers and said you know the program is only going to be as successful as the staff working
073it and um you know we had 54 students in in um the first semester we have 17 students that want to join it and now we're already looking at what we can do next year to get our eighth graders caught up our current seventh grade cohort caught up so that when they go to high school so more information to come about that too can you make sure that we don't like lose the high school in the process of this we're not losing anything just keep heading on our high school's gonna disappear we're not losing we're only going up nice okay all those in favor opposed all right any you stand motion carries whereas a resolution was passed by the board of education on November 6 2024 approving the probationary appointment of Lindsay Ryan to uh
074with an effective date of um December 9th 2024 and be it further resolved that this amended resolution reflects in the effective start date to be uh November 25th 2024 and is hereby approved motion please a second any discussion I just I apologize and I don't mean to offend anyone but I'm not sure uh Lindsay Ryan where does she work uh she's going to be working school where special case middle school special teacher brand new employee here oh that's why I recognize a brand new employe okay you can she's able to start earlier which is great for us yes okay those in favor I any oppos motion carries at this point I'd like Mrs St an to please stand resolve that upon the recommendation of Dr Larry superintendent of schools the 10e following 10e appointment is
075hereby approved Trista Sange Elementary effective date December 194 I just want you to know how impressed I know I sent you an email following that 10e observation but I was overly impressed when I saw what you're doing in your second grade classroom and how you're inspiring your students um the the culture and climate that you build in your classroom should be in every classroom so thank you for being a role model and thank you for choosing the Watertown city school district well I mean we should probably make it official get motion please so B second H GI it was a tie um all those in favor oos motion curious congrat congratulations Jason at this time we need a motion second to bring another resolution back to the table all right can I have a motion
076please okay all those in favor hi any opposed that the following revised Board of Education policies and regulations are hereby approved been adopted uh 7500 education record 7500 point4 uh student privacy FBR notice to reflection to reflect the records officer as the district clerk um 8302 complaints about curricula or instructional materials 83021 complaint procedures concerning textbooks Library material and other instructional materials 83022 uh request for re-evaluation of instructional materials can I have a motion please John John a second Millie Millie discussion yes I do have quite a bit of discussion I think so since um we meaning me ran ply and Jason are not participants of the policy committee I guess my first question would be to you John and Tina um the thought process behind changing the policy as it currently stands sure um
077so this makes the policy more um user friendly rather than having one set committee where there may be conflicts of interest like if a teacher is challenged and they're on the committee and one of the um percula that they use is challenge they can no longer sit on that committee um likewise if we have a Community member who sits on the committee and they want to concern on the committee so this allows us to make this committee specific to the buildings in which the challenge comes from with the specialists in that building that know that curriculum know that material and I think that's really good I really do I think that's a really good way to approach it this way it's um situation specific as opposed to being General at the beginning I guess my
078more specific question is and if you would allow me the original uh policy 8321 reads by line item number three it says any written complaint will be presented to the reconsideration committee the membership of the committee which shall be submitted to the Board of Education the board for annual approval shall consist of and I'll just omit that L part because I have a comment about that so that that particular portion is now been removed from the revised policy and it is taking the authority of the board to approve the membership of the reconsideration committee I think that we have three jobs on this board we drive policy we like we protect the purse of the community taxpayers and we hire and fire our superintendent so when a revised policy is actually removing Authority that has
079already been there I have an issue with that and I don't know what the process the thought process was behind removing that so um I can speak for myself and some of the discussions we've had sure um number one the because we are the final Arbiter for if this works its way up through stages of appeal it'll go from the committee to the superintendent and finally land on the board's lab the board should have as few fingerprints on the lower levels as possible number one um if we appoint the peoples to that the the the people to that committee whether they're community members or whether they are um you know teachers that work in this District um we already have biases in who we would want appointed and who are appointing so we should eliminate
080that um and then the second reason um um is that you know we do hire the superintendent we have faith in the superintendent that he will appoint a committee that's going to do the job and do the job well uh and if we didn't have that situation then you know we have means to um you know remedy that um ultimately uh if the changes do not work it's still a policy it still comes back to the board in a year's time we could say that didn't work we can come back and change it so I'm glad you said that because you said we can always come back and change it if it doesn't work so I guess on a primitive level how has this policy failed us that we feel we need to now change
081it because as I understand it you know as a sitting superintendent you've never had to embrace or use this policy so now we have a situation who has that has become quite emotional and sensitive to a lot of our community members and it's been brought up that's why this is being high it so my question would be is why are we changing something that a we've never tapped into we don't identify the flaws in it because it's never been used and we have no proof that it's failed us we we have flawed because we were supposed to appoint that committee annually and we haven't um so we have dropped the ball on that and number two and correct me if I'm wrong here Dr Scheel um we haven't had to deal with it but other
082districts have and so legal's advice is that this is what they are advising districts to utilize as best practice from all of the experience that they've gathered in the field in places where this has been in occurence right but we don't need legal to tell us that we need to abide by our policies so the fact that we failed to abide by policy as written doesn't make us so so whether whether we had the issue or not whether we had community members right now that wanted to challenge some of our curriculum legal would have been sending us this policy written this way anyway why because they update policies on a periodic basis s the policy and say this is what we recommend for your District I thought policies are updated based on our request do
083they just uh no they are not just on the board's request because we get legal mandates that we have to incorporate in policy right but this was changed and addressed and visited because of what transpired with the I am Leo and hate you give that was what this that's what caused me to pull the policy to see what the policy was and to see if there was establish pinning eventually this would have come down the pipelin from legal anyway okay so I guess what I'm so so okay that's your answer to your first part the second part is is um the original policy says that an elementary and a secondary classroom an elementary and secondary principal or assistant principal the library media specialist Who Shall Serve as chairman committee and five members of the commit
084of the community so now it's been reduced to based on the verbage okay so you've got two classroom teachers which is fine and then you say a principal or assistant principal so is that a principal or an assistant principal at the same time is it one or the other it's not Andor so so I would I would ask for that to be clearly delineated that it's principal or assistant principal not both both because currently the reconsideration committee um is not like that the one can speak I can speak from the legal issues that I've dealt with as a union president or is very clear legally it's one or the other legally if they wanted to make it a possibility you could have both it would be and or yeah no I don't I don't I
085don't really care if it's one or the other I'm just saying that to me if this would be to me principal or assistant principal so we are all in agreement that that's that that just means one it's either going to the principal or an assistant principal problem is is not every building has an AP correct but and I get that so that's why you have to put that in there okay I just want to make sure that we're going to do one or the other and if we're all in agreement that that's what the language dictates then I'm fine with that the library media specialist which is fine and then so if you do that you have two classroom teachers you have one principal right so that's three and then you have the library media
086specialist that's four and now you want three Community people if this is a Community Driven complaint why are we topheavy and lopsided on the admin versus Community voice I feel like we need to honor the community's concern and make sure that they're equitably heard on their concerns and when you are presenting a committee that is already topheavy on the admin side and you're putting them as the underdog I don't think that's an attractive feature to a to a community member to speak out so it's not top heavy an admin I mean you've got an equal number of community members and classroom teachers that's not Community uh right but they're not but teachers are not admin um right okay so that's my verbage educator and so in my mind I want the people that are experts
087in that field to have a greater weight than people that are not how can you say that when it's a Community Driven complaint that's doesn't even make any true the Community member can take it from if they don't like the response there to the superintendent and then to the school board if they want if they don't get the answer they want so this is not the end all be this is the starting point and at the starting point I want the experts in the field the people that are educational experts or Library experts to be the ones that have not a not a super majority but a slightly a majority slight majority yeah okay I don't agree I would never Advocate that our teachers come into a committee like that where they don't have a
088majority okay so I can tell you from sitting in the Deb committee that because there are more Educators there than community members it is topheavy and any thought process that comes from the community is not well received I'm experiencing that right now and I have expressed my opinion about that and we are going to be addressing it so I totally disagree with that thought process if this is a Community Driven complaint then the community voice should be appreciated and heard the complaint is community right right but Bo to evaluate that educational material is not Community Driven they're two separate two separate things the complaint is Community Driven because it comes from the community comes from a parent but the process to evaluate that material needs to be separate from that complaint I I get that
089but you're you're still including less members of the community so I I get that so like the two people that complained about I am Leo and hate you give cannot be part of the committee I get that nor should any of the teachers that are teaching that completely understand completely Fair process all I'm saying is that those three other people from the community that are getting picked have nothing to do with that so you're not you're not you're already eliminating any bias in fact we have I have been told that the members of this committee could not have read the book before for this particular issue that we're having now they were not allowed to read the book and they were all going to be presented with the information read it for the first time
090and then form an opinion so you know on on a basis of principle like I feel like the policy committee has made a major change in the basis of this policy you are taking Authority away which is a check and balance people who put this policy together are not dummies they thought about everything that had needed to be addressed and now we're taking something and changing it without finding that it's broken because it finally arose and now we're changing something that we have never even tapped into we we've never even used this policy before I do agree with some of the changes I do agree that the superintendent should be selecting the committee perfectly F I think that we have a proven track record that we support a lot of what you do you and
091I have disagreed and we I had some concerns about some committee members and what did I do I supported your notion but for you for for for me to not be able to say yes I approve that committee because I think it's a valid committee and not have an Avenue from the outset to express some concern which he very graciously explained his position and I was like oh makes sense and I'm good with that but I I have a hard time with someone taking the authority that I'm granted by virtue of my position here which is only three things that we get to do and just give that up so I have a problem with that and I also have a problem that we are here to represent comme members and we need to encourage
092them to come and talk and express their concerns and if they're looking at a committee that there's more Educators or there's more admin or whatever the story may be it's going to be hard for people to think that they're going to be on the winning game and yes you're right if they come with a decision and they don't like it you go to the superintendent superintendent will come to us and then we can you know change it whatever but why do we want to get there I think that what we need to do as a ward is resolve things at the lowest level let's resolv at the lowest level so it doesn't come this far so those are my issues with the policy I don't know how anybody else feels but I am not in
093agreement of the revised the revisions I think they're shortsighted and premature so I did propose different verbiage I did sended in an email of what I what I would be fine with um in ch in revising the policy if you want to revise the policy I do definitely agree with the notion of selecting this committee live if it happens let's select the committee let our choose the members let our board approve the members let it follow the process and let's not let's not shut down our community by outweighing them and not giving them a bigger voice that's how I feel I don't know how the rest of you feel but that's my um input like to hear a little bit more about the disparity of the number it was a 55 now it's going to
094a 43 I mean I honestly don't know why legal recom did the change Dr SCH do you uh they recommended the change for the reasons that we discussed at the last week's or not last week the week before his board meeting they suggested that our policy is not addressing the fact that you have a need that comes up and you need to address it the other thing is is that when the policy was originally put together to add to what John what you were saying um and Lor's not here obviously this evening to speak for herself and Tina is but a part of that reconfiguration is the fact that when the original policy was intended it was intended as one body you serve the whole year you serve the whole District so the revision of
095the policy is to address issues when they come up like we had with the articles that Millie mentioned that we don't need when when you look at like the breakdown of like the community the staff we also don't have two administrators in there you know that was also cut back so the idea was with the five community members the district wanted to have representation at the elementary schools the Intermediate School schools the middle schools and the high schools because back then or with the current policy you never knew where the issue was going to come from it may come from a kindergarden issue or 12th grade issue and so you wanted a more broader representation of community because you wanted that prek through 12 Continuum represented and with this policy revision which was recommended as
096we said by legal the the need wouldn't be there to have a prek through 12 representation if we're strictly addressing issues if a prek ISS comes up or a kindergarten issue comes up we're addressing it at that building and so we wouldn't need cross representation from the entire Community when we're trying to address an issue at that individual building um so that was the thought process behind it to my understanding I have a problem with that because again if there were an issue at the kindergarten or Elementary level it would be a Community Driven complaint because the policy states and the process is is if a Community member has a problem with instructional material they are to fill out the form presented to the superintendent there's actually a step before that the first step should
097be a phone call with Lynn than myself a sit down a conversation I apologize you're absolutely right and I think that's the level that it should end that because I would think and in some cases we'll be a to resolve it there in some cases we can't for whatever reason correct so in terms of legal's perspective you know again that would never be an issue unless a community M had a problem with the instructional material again it's Community Driven there very few things the community has control over and if they're going to speak out I don't think we should drown them and that's how I feel when you're when you're cutting back and again you know I appreciate legal I'm not an attorney but I will say this again we all live in this community
098we know what our community feels we know how we want to help them and they don't live here legal doesn't live here and I don't think that our community is going to take it well when something comes up and they've got to sit in a room with five people that work for the district in whatever capacity and the three of them are sitting there like this like I think that's an issue it's an issue for me right now and I have a big mouth and I don't care what people think about me and it's an issue for me to sit on the dib committee so if I feel that way I can only imagine how late people are going to feel so I don't agree with that thought process my concern would be that if
099you stack the committee with community members that potentially everything gets challenged there are school districts in this country where the fact that slavery exists in a history textbook has been challenged yeah and I agree with you and I don't think it should be stacked I don't I I I think it should be if you're going to do five if you're going to do five you know admin then you go one up it's I think it should be one more Community member not one more educator or District of boy I think it should be the other way around what if it was even numbers you're talking four and we had four you could do that but Larry made a very good point he yeah we've talked about even which it was even before which I think
100was wrong too it was five and five some of the reason why your school board is seven or five their decision is not definitive it's a recommendation to so you could break th essentially if that was you have another internal if you really look the numbers you have the superintendent Rel internal number as well so if I have any issue with it it's the disparity I any of us that have fought City Hall on anything know how frustrating it can be to not be heard um and it could be any one of us even Educators could have an issue be on the other side of it and so I always think of it from that perspective I don't think it should be stacked either way I think it should be it's anything it should be
101Equitable but I don't think I would vote against it just for that because I again ultimately we have to have a faith and trust in our superintendent and if something doesn't go right and it continues to be a problem then we address it with their superintendent so it isn't enough for me quite there to be a point I think in this case there's a clear pathway if you if you do not agree with that first level decision to to move it up the ladder so so you're okay with the board being removed from approving a membership committee I am I honestly don't want board fingerprints on this if it's going to come to the board as a final Arbiter well you know I I we're not on we're not on TV here this is real
102life like we we have we technically have our fingers on everything if you really want to look at things like that we really have our fingers on everything so you know this is supposed to be open government it's supposed to be transparent and there's supposed to be a lot of trust between the board and the super intendent I personally have a problem when there is a policy that has worked or not worked who knows none of us know because it's never been used but to agree don't you also have to remember John you're not going to be here forever you're setting a precedent for all those people that come ahead but I also I also know that if there is an issue with what happens at that committee that it's going to end up in
103our lap anyway we are going to be the final Arbiter of of that case of that decision and it's going to work its way up to to the elected officials that the community put here to make those decisions anyway I understand that but there's a process and I think as a board it behooves us to oblig by what we are told to do and our policy is what okay let's take it the other way what's the downside from the from the board saying if our superintend what if it's another superintendent what if another superintendent comes in here and presents this you know committee that is just rfic for whatever reason then what are you going to do like you're you're we're all thinking about the moment we're all not going to be here for the
104rest of our lives and there been there may be disparity between the superintendent and the board we've seen that happen that's why I'm sitting here we've seen that happen so we have to think about the future and that's what the check balance is for where is where is the shortcoming and where are we losing out if our superintend we're probably going to support everything he we have we have a proven track record for doing that but what if he retires what if he leaves then what then what are you going to do so you can't think that way I think I'm not good I'm not good with not approving a membership for a reconsideration committee specifically because it's a Community Driven complaint and I feel like that's who put us in this seat we should
105be advocating for that so everything you said Larry I agree with 100% I think the process is good it should be an ad lib it should be designed you know when it the um situation takes place you should be able to select you know these teachers better than we do you should be able to select the convening the committee together come back resolution these are the me you just presented a reconsideration committee it passed unanimously did it not pass you we just voted on a reconsideration committee and we all voted and supported it we should do that it should come to the board we've already done it come to the board we've already exercised a policy we right now the way the policy is written that's exactly what we're doing right now both of those
106items are with the reconsideration committee we are actually practicing the policy and there's no flaw I don't know what's going to be the outcome of that and we may get to the last level when it comes to us but just approving a membership doesn't put our finger prints on the issue it has nothing to do with the issue actually because we're not really making any decisions unless we disagree with the recommendation I feel really strongly about that and I I I think you need to reconsider what your position and your commitment is to the community and I think we have a lot of committees in this District that are appointed by the superintendent that never come before the board that include community members and and we have to trust our superintendent to do his job
107and do it well not a community-driven complaint not is something that D that is driven by the community can I just flip this for a second to the superintendent he I know what legal says and this is what's being recommended but is this what you want in terms of how this is done in terms of your buy into this process I would say yes with the explanation that I received why I received it how I received it and the position that we were in when an issue did come up and we did not have the committee in place um looking at the idea of focusing on the individual building and not looking at a districtwide issue looking at we also lost an administrator serving on the team it was two we're down to one um
108so yes with that the other thing I know is true with policy and we've been doing that and that is the board's primary responsibility out of the three functions if there's ever a policy that does not meet the intended purpose at any time the board could ask the policy committee to say I'd like you to look at this policy but that's just my point like you just totally validated my point this policy did not fail in fact we are exercising it as we speak it never fail if we we did not have a committee in place and whose fault was that all of us because we none of us followed policy and had those had those community members not looked at the policy as I suggested at one of the board meetings look at your
109policy and try to tap into how you can access you know your complaints and had they not done that we would not be exercising the current policy I agree with everything you say I guess the other part of Randy's question is do you think it's okay for you to designate a committee and have the board removed from approving that committee as a matter of at end of the day I know with the disciplinary situation with this situation and many other situations anything I I am a part of the appeals process and that's what this governing part of the body is for and so at any point if their decision that I make whether it's Personnel related student related policy related at any point it ends at the board of education and so I I'm not
110taking it personally yeah I what I also don't want to discredit is the committee we had a committee of Lori Tina and John who spoke about this I was asked to place it on the agenda for board action tonight as it is written I mean that's what I did but I'm here to follow policies want to say one last thing before I go but I have high regard and respect for the committee process so I'm always going to defer that I think we need to respect that process and that and our colleagues who are on that committee and I will do that and I also put a lot of Defence to the superintendent I do think there's an escape Clause here if things don't go right we have an ability to claw this back so
111I'm willing to take a chance on this based on the recommendation of committee and the superintendent I think this creates flexibility so we can be responsive to the community at time rather than waiting for board action that's not my issue I don't think any of you are understanding and you're not really you know verbalizing what I am saying I don't have a problem with any of that I have a problem with a policy stating that we need to approve a membership committee and you guys are okay with saying sure we don't have to approve of anything that is my problem to me you are failing the community there is a policy that is in process it has never proven to be broken and you're changing it for really no good other than we failed to
112follow the policy and had this not come in front of the board this would be null and void we wouldn't even be looking at this had the hate you give and the IM Leo issue come out so this is again Community Driven it's a complaint driven it's very disappointing to me that you think it's okay to give up your power as a board member to just approve the membership you're not doing anything but approving and at the end of the day once the committee who has the sole power to make the recommendation to the superintendent if there's any flaw in that recommendation I'm pretty sure Larry's going to fix it before it gets to us he's never going to present any to us that he doesn't feel we're going to support him in but I'm
113not sure why you think it's okay to give up an authority that's already been granted on paper and you're actually exercising it right now the authority is to create policy not to approve committies yeah so that's what I'm thinking with as the policy that's what we're talking about here I there are lots of things that happen here that we have nothing to do with and in this case it's here but I'm trying to think of a an instance where the board would disagree with recommendation of the superintendent as far as the committee composition and and then that opens up a whole another series of questions about our objectivity I I I do have concerns about that I I don't want to take away authority of the board but I feel embedded in this there's enough
114Authority that remains for us to make sure if this goes astray we have an ability to bring it back so when this policy was first created you think they failed in that thought process not necessarily but because this was looked at in 2020 I wouldn't have recommended the change but this is what's before us right now I think times have changed and the information we have about what's going on in school districts in regards to this has been updated I mean the use of this policy and the frequency in which it get used gets used in some districts has increased since is there any way to continue discussing this before we vote when when Lori can be back maybe I mean it would be nice to have to chair of the committee the way in
115I've really only heard from one other board member on this I'm not sure if either of you have any thoughts um did you want to weigh in Tina no I think you guys did a great job I just think we should I mean we put a lot of work and a lot of thought into this the three of us and Dr schmeel and trying to be fair to everybody involved the community and the admin and the staff and everything and you know like you said it's you know people are complaining about teaching slavery so things have changed since 2020 and and I think that we worked on this I think that we all asked Dr shmigo to put this on the agenda and I think we did our best at trying to protect our community
116and our staff and our K I think we should move forward with it and take a vote so we can get all this taken care so so because I'm unhappy about it and it's difficult to tell that I'm happy about it um why can't we compromise and my compromise is keep the policy as it is but bring but bring the approval back to the bring the membership of the approval back to the board what what is the harm in that I think that we could kind I'd like to wait so L is here and have this full discussion because I think that there is a very simple compromise that that can happen here I I don't think it's the only thing that's really bothering me it doesn't seem this is that time sensitive so we
117pushed it that's what I think Lori I think I think yeah I would be on board with that is anybody against that thought process that's the most silent you guys have been in 20 minutes so I'm gonna motion to table it again then motion to Table in favor I will that we resolve that the following uh educational student trips as are here by F Rosman Gord to um date of the trip is May 14th 2025 and additional um T zo um May 1425 I have motion second John John discussion for par now you're dating your all right all those favor opposed motion carries where as the New York State education department requires that school districts develop and Implement a physical education plan that complies with the New York State physical education standard and whereas the
118Watertown city school district has reviewed and developed a physical education plan that meets the requirement set forth by the New York State education department including promoting physical activity Fitness and Healthy Lifestyles for students and whereas the proposed physical education plan incorporates age appropriate physical educ ation activities assessments practices and teacher professional development to ensure compliance with the New York state standards and support student growth and physical fitness and overall overall well-being and whereas the plan has been reviewed by The District's Administration um the physical education department and other relevant stakeholders for feedback and approval now therefore be resoled the Board of Education the Watertown city school district hereby approves the phys physical education plan as presented for the 24-25 school year in accordance with the state New York State physical education standards and be further
119resolved that the District administration is authorized to take all necessary steps to implement the plan including providing appropriate resources professional development and support to teachers students needed resolved that this resolution shall take effect immediately have motion John job discussion yeah I have a couple questions about this so is this a new directive that we have to do this is something that has to be submitted by the state education and if someone can just educate me I've never heard of the term of the um what is a physical adaptive P trip what I mean I I read what is on here but I've never heard that is that also like a new term that we that's definitely not a new term term it's typically a service that is on aized education plan okay and so have
120we had this already like do we have a full-time person that does this specific add that this year to our yes not providing the service but the position the position and so we will have one FTE providing um physical services on this campus between wely case and high school okay do we hire that person yet yes have a person in that position now it's a longterm uh position right now looking to fill it permanently okay so we do have someone someone interested but that person is also covering somebody okay so that's we're moving in that direction okay notes all those in favor any opposed motion car resolution very good anyone here to tonight for non agenda comment a couple things um I just wanted to advocate for some family um and individuals recently there was
121the boiler issue that caused the high school to um be closed and then following that incident there was um a letter that Dr schmigle spent to the entirety of the Watertown city school district regarding um staying up to date on the closures or the delays that happen in the district because we're snow toown USA and so that season is approaching um and I just kind of wanted to speak to that I don't I don't have a student in the high school so I can't personally um say how the communication went to me because it wasn't designed for me um but there were a number of observations and family members who they didn't get that um parent Square information it didn't it didn't come out and so um I think it's good to you know Market
122that that option is to the community I just I really question how accessible it is to all families and um caregivers um apps are really helpful there's a lot of beneficial things that um peric square has allowed there's a lot of communications that um do come through and sometimes you know the personal options with with teachers or staff has been really great um but there's a lot of people who are saying they're missing the other options of course I know the other options probably come with a cost and there's reasoning um but there's people who don't have access to the app technology they are hoping for a text message opion they are hoping for Alternatives um I I don't really know what the best solution is to advocate for when I was a kid and
123I go back to how it was you know it was like there was always a radio on or you always watch the news and in modern times that so often not the case um our house is really silent in the morning um people are getting away from watching um TV but maybe they go on to a website there's just a lot of different options out there um in the spirit of accessibility I wanted to advocate for their families there was an individual who is in charge of a residential program and she has you know students in her care who come to this District but it's is not a family member so parent score is not an option for them they happen to see a Facebook post um if they hadn't checked Facebook they would have
124been in the same boat as other individuals who showed up at school that day um I know that it's been said multiple times that parent squore is the only option I'm just pushing out for accessibility for as many families to be in the loop that is conducive to improving attendance rates um as an aside to that I think that's what brought me to this really random search on the school district website um speaking of accessibility there is an accessibility page for every school and then one for the entire District the one for case I don't know if anybody has found it since I put my feelers out there within the last few days but the one for case has not been updated since 2017 and it is the completely blank form that needs to be
125filled in so if you have a concern about accessibility um you're supposed to notify your school at you know it's just all the generic stuff it needs to be updated with the case specific email um it seemed like all the other schools were fine the district will fine I wasn't looking for it I just I was searching for something and it brought me to that page and I was like that doesn't look right Kristen what did the principal say when you called her to tell her about that Mrs cook so for that one I did not I did not reach out about that it's just came up anyone has any issues with communication my suggestion would be to follow our communication flowchart and go to the where's the flowchart everybody always suggest the is also
126on our webs okay is it very at the end we can show you how to get there so that you know but it is on there and it talks about like specific schools and where to click on who to go to what we really want is the person that has the answer answer to those questions to be given the first opportunity to answer them and if they can't then we move depending on where we go on the flowchart okay the accessibility piece um I know you mentioned text message as opposed to parents squar I guess that my question is with a text message and a parents were both go to a phone um because we also did the news we did news channel 7 so we put it out on news channel 7 also um
127and I'm just thinking if it's text messaging then they have to have some kind of device so sometimes the option with text versus the app is they don't have access to Internet necessarily to be able to try to say they don't have could be a phone without byi access or something well it would be a phone without an app store is that what you're saying like a flip phone yeah yeah um limited act like they might get access to text messages but not utiliz for um and there I know there is um because I went in and tried to relook at the settings I don't have my personally I do not have my I have my settings put in a particular way because like We wish all of our students to be off their phones
128during the school day part of that is distraction I want to get important Communications but a lot of the communications and a lot of the parents back me on this they don't pertain to their student and they're just bombarding them all day long and so that's why they use that digest setting and that digest setting is actually what's in the app it says we recommend this setting is the digest so your Communications just come at once at the end of the day unless whoever is sending the post puts it in as an urgency right um I did notice when I was looking at those settings that there isn't um text option in there but I want to explore that personally a little bit I believe I had that on at one point and that text
129message is it's not just emergencies like it's texting you all sorts of extra stuff so in the spirit of not making your phone a big distraction piece and keeping it to those really um urgent situations um I just text option or phone option or just keeping that thought process in mind that the app is not the most accessible option for everybody um and I hope that there might be some consideration for the potential to include maybe some Alternatives everybody everybody's different I think that we've had the option in the past whether we wanted to opt in to the phone calls or not I don't remember the specifics but everybody I spoke to about this recent situation had a different opinion I like having the phone option I don't like the phone option it goes off
130too early and I don't need it to come to me that early just trying to that a little bit okay thank you so much anyone else the on the agenda but just want to say about going be a tough choice next spring who to uh for the the you're going to have a nice selection [Laughter] of that easy to uh that's for sure sure con around me involved in choosing it make we can't win twice all happy to know that he had uh the other two vending machines that he asked for the one was delivered to case the other one's been delivered to Wild so we're working with Community Partners to fill those and actually in today's meetings he commented and he said I to come up with the transition plan like I'm graduating and
131I need to know who's going to take over the project when I leave and so he was eyeing a seventh grader he goes that is the F future Conor Brown that like that's the future Conor Brown so there may be someone taking it over in seventh grade that's awesome cool that something second thing is about read a book BR pack from within and it talks about how thisinformation formates society and how important fact checking is to society otherwise I mean if you have an opinion based on much information good is that opinion especially you know we're changing ministrations right now to F base of our country is a democracy still our democracy and and important to remember that we still need factchecking important for the country thank you thank you thank anyone else T nothing
132okay as long as I'm sitting here it's coming up every two weeks all right um items for this discussion and information we have two things tonight a selection of Library multimedia materials policy here first hello I'm Jamie Lee I am the case librarian I have some of my fellow Librarians with me tonight Nicole Stratton who's at North Jean hinley who is at Wy and Val Robert who is at uh starbook and nicker Bacher and also Stacy nuto is here as a library assistant at Wy and the high school so thank you for all for coming um so with board policy as we know um it comes up when there is an um an issue that happens in District um or there's something that's recommended by legal East as you said earlier um so in this
133case with this policy um it was actually written due to some um thing that came so you either revise it which we had nothing because Dr schingo wanted to see if there was actually a board policy related to um selection of Library multimedia materials which you then we would revise and in this case there was none so then this is what was created for you um based on um recommendations um by uh legal by the policy um you have a policy service I assume as well um so and then as a Librarians we took a look at it thank you Dr schle for allowing us to be the experts in the field and be able to provide that assistance um this is really hard for me to present because no at no time should you
134ever put multiple um tons of stuff on a slide but because the fact that you are approving policy you actually have to see the policy to be able to see it so that is why it is there is quite a bit on there you can you can oh I awesome thank you um so basically the policy starts off by describing what the program is and related to print and Library materials um any material in the library please know that can always be used as a Structural Materials so you have to include that into the policy um in relation to Structural Materials as well and that we always reflect New York State learning standards different points of view and we always try to meet the very needs and interests of students and staff um there is
135the definition of instructional material uh that is because um it's facilit it through formal and informal learning within the classroom you can happen in the library it can happen anywhere in District and there's multiple pieces of material I am not going to read those all for you you can see them but it is not just hard cover books it's not just textbooks it's a wide range of different things from microfilms pictures Maps so forth and so on okay and as it says that instructional material can be housed in the classrooms as well as in the library as well um so Library material has its own definition um is also not just print and non print uh we also have deal with a lot with our library mats online databases and we also do a lot
136of inter Library loan from other libraries which this also covers um we do a lot with newspapers magazines so forth and so on um but we pretty much have most of the material that resides in the library media centers um and less obviously it's checked out and is in a classroom um always have to give a meaning of textbook textbook the idea of a textbook has changed drastically over since many of us have gone to school um and we have to look at the fact that it's now including um books not only hard cover and paperback but workbooks manuals and there's tons of now instruction material available textbook wise through um electronic format which is crazy that we're getting to that um Point um so here's just the aspect of where it goes to textbooks
137um that youi selection adoption happens through the Board of Education it's based on the law and board policy which obviously you guys are reviewing tonight to help assist that um and then any objection should be handled in accordance with the board policy that you are previously talking about um and any other regulated regulations and procedures um So based on the fact of the policy which is great is that you establish a maintain Library Comm centers in each of the schools and that you allow us to have library and instructional material within those spaces to be able to actually make it a library media center um they're supposed to meet the needs of Elementary secondary um staff and that ensures that it's complimenting any instructional program that takes place within District um and that's where we
138actually as Librarians are there for we are there for the students the staff um and a big resources for um many individuals in the community oh well in the community in general as well um and obviously and you have to certify us um you have to have a certified librarian especially at the high school level at um the Middle School level and um we are lucky in our district to have many certified Librarians and that a testament to you guys supporting libraries which is fantastic um and then obviously following all that regulations and everything approved by the commissioner of Education okay and not all of us are here tonight but you all delegate us as the experts in our field to be able to um choose those Library materials for the district um we do
139work properly with anybody in District from the superintendent all the way down um to the students themselves okay so they have an understanding that we are always looking to provide their interest and needs um and we also want to make sure we're providing this stuff for staff um as best as we possibly can um we also have to identify order and organize the library which is a lot of work um and as I get further into that I'll explain that just a little bit um and you we also as I said earlier we use bosies um to be able to also provide uh additional materials and you build our Collections and we have a lot um through that so as just so you know these are all the libraries you entrust as we're all not
140here tonight um Abby wox is not able to be here and terrie Miller and Alison Spooner so um thank you for entrusting us we appreciate it um and so we always have to talk about money because that's one of your three things that you're able to do as we know um you provision F us to budget sorry I have experience some of you do know that I am actually a board member at another District so I've been on there for 12 years so I have quite a bit of experience on this end so you provide us the budget for to purchase our library materials and we also um may require students to actually pay for any loss um or excessive damage or redo materials um so here goes to the selection and how we actually
141select our material um so the board range and varing suitability of all forms of Library materials and I'm only reading this just because it's so important which are available for purchase demand careful evaluation before they are selected for use in the district's library and media centers it takes us a very long time to actually um select books to be included into our libraries I just did a previous you just got it an order um and it took me about three weeks to um give over about 150 bucks because the amount of time it takes me to do all the reviews um making sure I'm getting the best material and at a very cost effective to ensure we're giving enough back to our students um so we also have free and low cost materials that do
142come to us from individuals and we have to use the same criteria based on the stuff that I will be going over in a little bit um and you have to understand that it's not just print and not print materials I just actually did our non print our e through Sora um that allowed us to to lose online our ebooks for our students and I want to just Jamie highlight that piece that free or lowcost materials that was one of the piece when we met I jumped in on their library media meeting um to discuss this policy and that was one of the recommendations of our trusted Librarians to add that piece often times as a former High School principal I know this many people would come and they would try to deliver free materials
143to the schools uh but they didn't necessarily meet uh the mission statement vision and those things uh of the district so we added that to this policy okay so based on selection these are the things that we really have to focus on we have to ensure that we're meeting New York State learning and curriculum standards um that they also Implement enrich and support the district's curriculum and various programs and as we said before we always have to consider the interest the abilities and um their learning styles of every student um we also have to in include that with staff and then we also are selecting appropriateness for age ability level learning styles social emotional and intellectual development of the attended audience I read that specifically because we have a wide range of students in each
144of the areas you have a k through four building those students have different bearing experiences they have different um emotional and inal levels and we always have students as we know that um we always try to increase rigor and ensure that they have various independent readings that allow us to um provide them with material that they would be interested in um and we also have to present various sides of controversial issues because we want to ensure that we're developing those critical thinking skills along with the reading skills um to be ensure that they are truly making informed decision informed decisions as citizens of our community oops oops oh there we go okay we also in the course of that actually have to provide Global Perspective so we have a lot of different authors we try
145to choose authors that are not just um those in the United States uh across internationally and we also try to um promote diversity around with um that we're not just a singular um individual type of author that we hit all aspects because everybody has a great voice that they provide to students um and we also make sure that we are providing updated materials um that have VAR difficulties and we want to do it in a variety of formats because not all children will want to read a physical book we also look at audiobooks and so forth to ensure that they're getting um the ability to use different um modes um and we have we want kids to explore a diverse thing of literature because we want them to be lifelong Learners you don't go into
146becoming librarian if you don't want a lifelong Learners and readers I'll add that to it yes so okay so this is how we um begin to look at our collection and develop our collection uh we take as I said previously suggestions from teachers administrators and parents we take a look at the um amount of materials that are requested what is currently in our catalog which does our connection collection analysis to ensure that we are keeping up to date with the material because that's very crucial um many times like I just recently looked at all my Classics well all the classic books the covers looks about um probably from the 1970s sorry for those that were in that age range and around that time they looked exciting back then to a child today the 1970 cover
147does not make so I actually removed all the Classics for my U my collection and I updated them with them with new covers to replace that so that's one of the things you guys don't necessarily get to see you get to see us read our collection because that comes to you as a board but you don't get to see that what we're actually doing in the background which is sometimes in that case replacing those materials um we definitely like I said talk about the um intended audience the age group we look at those type of things I will let you know that age rating is basically very subjective um it happens where different reviewers from like book list School library Journal horn there's I mean we ccus review we go through all this and everybody
148depending on what they're reading determines what they believe is the best recommended age range and it can vary um I just looked at a book today that recommended 1012 and then some other one was saying s to um 10 I'm like well we're a little off here so you try to take a you that's why it takes so long because they have to look at everyone and why they're suggesting those different age ranges um you also have to look at currency and timeliness I just removed a book recently that said they can't wait to see what Steve Job does in the future and I'm like well I'm sorry to say rest in peace Steve Jobs but you are no longer alive so those are books that we have to make sure we're taking a look
149at and to ensure that the kids are getting updated information recently last year I removed quite a bit a few books from the catalog because many of our biographies the people had actually passed away and they were still saying they're they're alive and it was 20 years ago they hadn't had even updated of many of their accomplishments so you have to to take those out because you don't want kids to think okay I'm going to the library and picking up a book and it's 20 years old and doesn't even have relevant information should I trust what they're actually having in the library so those are things we have to take into consideration um we as I said look at National State and um standards in any wars and distinctions that come through and we always
150always want to make sure there's multiple perspectiv P perspective excuse me viewpoints and experiences um these are pretty much as we I kind of already referenced we want factual accuracy authoritativeness obviously the appeal is so important these kids see so many things visually say they if you've looked at a new cover of a book most of those books are now visually appealing because you're not TR supposed to judge a book by its cover but we all do and so do the kids so those are things that we take in consideration as well and then obviously we want to make sure there's the Merit of work um the relationship to the collection as a whole and that we're including everything from religion gender gender expression sexual orientation political views race nationality and social views we're almost
151there guys we're almost there okay um so this is going back to the maintenance and leading of the collection so we continually have to re-evaluate it um you have to recognize I don't know how long some of you have been on the board but the library and so this is my sixth year at District so um it's been six years since you actually had an official librarian in almost every single building the collections had never had a chance to be weeded so last year alone I took out 900 bucks okay because of the fact that most of them were almost 40 to 50 years old I am now working on the 25 to 20 year olds so it takes time to actually get through that and then update that collection and I know all my
152fellow Librarians are trying to do the same thing on top of teaching classes that we also do um so please note we are we we we care about the library we care about our students and we want want to make sure they have the most valuable collection they can um so we look at circulation stats um I also just use an example um when I first came to case I had 15 copies of Twilight okay Twilight yes is still a little bit of a popular book but it's not to the level of 15 copies I am now down to two Okay so those are things we have to take into consideration as well um obviously things are poor in conditions such as damage spine torn pages and staining which cannot be easily repaired that'll also
153come to you I had a book that I purchased brand new it was gorgeous it was on zoology kid had it within two days he brought it back to me and it was completely apart there was no way to fix it I had to actually remove it to the collection I was kind of disappointed because it was gorgeous the inside of it but those are things that do happen and obviously we have to discard that material if it's un we cannot fix it in any way or shape or form um obviously we take out materials that are accurate out of date I think there you had samples of that and then um we do also um remove materials that do not no longer meet the policy so forth and so on as we as we
154have found over the course of time materials actually do change in age rating um and so we take a look at that and ensure that those are still considered at the level that they need to to be able to ensure that the collection is meeting the elementary level the ya level so forth and so on um and because I use and I am a librarian and I have to to utilize my resources the pictures I used those are where I took them from so I made sure to quote my sources because that's what we also teach any questions and I project my voice because I have to all day as a librarian and so I'm talking to a big group I still do it so I apologize if I'm yelling at you I have a
155few questions okay um so when you define here the instructional material versus the library material I that's really good I like that you did that so I guess my question is um Lynn how what's your role as the assistant superintendent of curriculum in this process like do you work with her yes we meet regularly so in here it says that ultimately the um material it says that the principle the building principal ultimately decided what is appropriate material so I I just want to know what the process is and doing you're obviously doing a lot of handson in selection so do you do all your handon selection and then she goes to you and then you approve it or these independent than any Library any school library library is once we do it we take it
156to a principal the principal reviews what we've gone over they ask any questions that they have regarding our material we then and they sign it we send it up to LY who then reviews it if she does have any questions related to any of the material she obviously contacts us via email or phone depending on what she's questioning she then signs up then it goes to the business office and then they purchase the order and that's for both library and instructional material that I cannot speak on instructional material that's the library aspect of things yeah instructional material is different so who's in charge of the instructional material I I am just you well I wouldn't say just me I would say it's a collective a collaborative the teachers but ultimately you know what you ultimately
157you are approving cular material and instructional material correct and you're mostly responsible and I'm assuming you work with the rest of the Librarians for Library materials yes we are we only focus on Library material okay J thank you this has been very helpful um I had a question about you talk a lot about controversial subjects and multiple viewpoints so if you bring in a new book it has this Viewpoint is it a one for one or is looking at all the other things we have on that topic just walk me through how you reconcile the multiple Viewpoint piece okay so what's fantastic about most books today is that you can add they do sets or collections where you can actually go in so if you're looking at something related to slavery or you're looking something
158related to um uh journalism or um uh government you can actually buy a collection that goes through and actually looks at all the different viewpoints of something and purchase that collection as a whole and that's what we kind of try to look at so then we're consistent and the kids are seeing those different things there's also books that say opposing viewpoints and we also have a database that actually has that as well so we try to ensure that that goes throughout um in general um when we talk about that specifically different viewpoints is you're looking at uh viewpoints as of that you're getting it from um African-American native Hispanic so those are types of things that we also look for get lated to viewpoints when they're talking of a specific topic yeah and you talked
159about and I like this you take suggestions from parents is that unsolicited or do you sometimes actually ask parents to be to be honest we just tell anybody if they have a recommendation to us to let us know um I will be honest I don't necessarily go to the teachers I don't go to the students I don't go to them directly every single time I order a book I just kind of put it out there hey guys I'm ordering if you guys have any suggestions let me know I I will be honest I've never put it out to like hey parents I'm ordering let me know um but I do that as a but I just I want to be honest like I like it it's like I said takes so much time and I
160and here's the thing we're in our buildings with the our our colleagues I communicate with my colleagues all the time and I'm like listening to what they're saying or what they're teaching or what they're doing so I mean I don't know if we ever physically just say hey give me a recommendation I'm like oh you're teaching this did you hear any did you see any good books on that that you might re you might suggest to me that's kind of how we go about it am I answering that right my fellow Librarians regard to student requests um we keep a wish list generally so when they come to us with a request or if there's a certain series that they seem to be interested in we keep adding it to the wish list so that
161when we are ready to prepare an order we have somewhere to go to look for those and we create that relationship with kids my kids come up to me all the time Mrs Lee you don't have this book can you look about getting it for me I'm like yep I got it on my list I'll take a look because there is sometimes they've recommended stuff that are is very adult and I'm like I got to check on that real quick so yeah so that's another thing that we have to go on that process and we do always warn them we have to V it we have to take a look at it and we can't guarantee that it'll be added to the collection but we'll try our best well just that they know they can
162offer oh yeah that and tonight you told me something I didn't know about that so I appreciate it yeah I also want to highlight that I app appreciate that you um detail the process by which you go through book selection and also how you get rid of the books because as you know there was this huge notion a while ago that we were Banning books when all you were really doing is just cleaning house for inappropriate outdated material so I or duplicates you got always remember that like like I said 15 time you've saw Twilight 15 times like it's not like I'm getting rid of the Twilight because we don't want to read that anymore is just I can't if you want to give enough collection for kids and have the space to do that
163you can't keep holding on to like so much like we go through our the high school specifically because we're looking at renovating that space right now there's a lot of high shelving units that have a lot of blind spots in that Library so in order to reduce the number you know the size of the bookshelves we're going to have to reduce the collection um but also that was not highlighted in the thing that you're refer in was lost damag stolen yeah I mean and a lot of those ones that were pulled up in the main articles weren't even at the campus they were being discarded because they were lost damaged or stolen right how does how long does it take for a lost or stolen book to come off though um it well in our
164system we actually keep the loss for a little bit because you've never there's been a book that's come back at three years later but we have to we consider it discarded and then we just and then we actually have to add it back to the collection because it is taken out even through as soon as it hits us after the it's oh Stacey can add let see a phenomenal I had one come back after eight years oh look at that believe we have a really I think it we have a nice function on our library system we can pull up how many are in our collection we could pull up how many titles we we have versus how many Holdings titles being Twilight 15 would be one one title but it could be 15 Holdings
165so that number doesn't always look the same but I can tell you right now we've got roughly 23,000 books in the high school and roughly 32,000 at Wy so when you see 900 books coming out of a library not not even a drop in the bucket and the hours I could tell you they spend weeding those 900 books goes well beyond the three weeks that she spends building a book order the amount of work that goes into running the the Library part of the library is beyond comprehension until you are actually physically there so I appreciate the support of the libraries in our buildings because not every school in New York state has that and I want to say luxury because it's not a luxury to me it's the foundation of all learning it is
166essential absolutely essential so I appreciate your support and having her do this presentation for understanding and it's so comprehensive you did a great job how much usage do the libraries actually get from the kids um well it's all it's different at each level so right now um the elementaries teach classes so they see every single child in the building they are on a six day cycle so you're still on a sixday cycle um I you why am I talking Elementary go ahead it is a very depending on the ab buildings the elementary so school children I believe probably spend more time in the library because little kids they come in for not just lessons but they'll come in and out just to exchange books I'm sure it continues on um at Wy wy's the same
167we do a Monday through Friday schedule so every child gets to come to the library at least once a week yeah but we also have a pass system so they can come when they're ready to read something new and at case we have instituted where oh I have my schedule every day is booked I have classes coming in every single day and I'm connecting with all special areas um except for health um as right now um but then I have English teachers social studies teachers um coming in and they're doing projects and so I see six all 600 I almost know every kid's name in the building by right now because of the fact that they're the they the libraryies use every day all day long that's great great and they're checking out books too
168so they're learning from me but they're also getting so and so I just want to add back to that thing so you will be seeing a huge weeding list for me by the end of the year and the high school will have one as well so about 600 probably 600 900 books again for me okay Jason will try to find him at home but here let me add that let me add that last piece tlight please let me add this one piece and I think we forgot this every book that we do read unless there is such incorrect information or it's damaged unbelievably the kids get to take the books that we take out of the collection so please don't think that they're getting going in the dumpster only if it's so incorrect information that
169we couldn't put out that the kids do and the teachers actually get access to that material that was something I should add free cart for staff and students so if you do want that you return eight years agoop anything else I know you guys have been here a long time so I do not want to keep if you do have any further questions obviously send them to Dr schmeel and then I'll be more than happy and any of the Librarians here would be more than happy to answer any of the questions you throw his way Jamie thank you very much and the rest of you for our hope is toing hope is to have this policy at the next Board of Education meeting for that we can go ahead and move forward with new purchases
170and weeding to be weing thank you so Jason do we have the approval to lose more folks next up 's personnel and payroll audit report by Tina L good evening everyone um I'm pleased to be here this evening uh I did a presentation in August regarding personnel office payroll office and pleased to be here and to report some audit results uh for those of you who are Latin students uh the word audit comes from the Latin word Audi which is to hear so we heard a lot of different things from our uh Bose's colleagues they're great partners with the district and we learned and actually we've hit the ground running with the results so I'm here to share those with you um before we do that just want to give you a little bit of
171background let's Advance this slide if we could there we go baby surrounded by tech people here start the SL show [Laughter] unplug turn it off turn it back dark slideshow solve 90% of the problem what do you think it worked earlier yes it did you want to tap that maybe it's just something with mouse I show having a problem there we go perfect times a CH all right so before I get into the AIT audit results just wanted to give you a little bit of background the backbone of everything we do in our district is our strategic action plan so it's very important uh as we reflect on what we do uh for systems and practice in the district is to go back to these five goals which are Central to all that we can
172do so we're looking to improve looking for enhancements so that we're able to progress forward with our five goals here with our strategic action plan so Logistics uh Miss Mary and do Meer Jefferson Lewis Bose's Human Resources administrator visited the district she's a retired superintendent assistant superintendent and she's working with Bose now and it was a pleasure to work with Maryann uh true pleasure uh report she was here for the months of of September part of September and October and she reviewed all processes within the personnel office hiring practices and procedures and also payroll practices and procedures remember we're a staff of four I have an assistant Lisa weren and then payroll we have Nancy lavy and Maria denner so we're four an office of four for about 900 employees in the district uh we
173had 19 administrators building and central office staff and clerical staff building payroll and Personnel who were interviewed so Marian was very busy during the audit but she had a nice well-rounded view she reviewed the district's policies documentation and she conducted interviews with relevant Personnel to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of payroll and Personnel processes and she also took a close look at the structure of our Personnel files if you go to our office we have six filing cabinets filled with over 900 personel files so it's quite a vast collection of uh information regarding our employees so the objectives of the audit uh were to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of Human Resources Personnel and also to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of payroll processes and practices and finally to provide recommendations to increase the efficiency
174and effectiveness of the personnel and payroll processes and practices of the district all right so let's get into the audit findings uh for human resources so I presented to the board last year and then over the summer regarding our exit interviews and those we gleaned valuable information so Maryann took a look at the process of the exit interviews of course those are completed online paper copy um I also do them live and in person I've done a few of those over the last couple of weeks um based on the review of the completed exit interview forms the following themes and Trends have significance the training mentoring and communication of job expectations needs to be increased and enhanced continued focused on Improvement of student behavior is needed an increased emphasis on the needs of individual students
175and a better understanding of special ed by teachers is needed and also compensation needs to be looked at for support Personnel so we're going to continue as a district to employ A Student Success specialist uh to work on the student behaviors uh she and her team she was here earlier Crystal Wargo continue to work with our teachers administrators and students provide training and CPI uh we have a comment there so last week there was a workshop that was provided to the entire district and uh Matt verdick had over 70 employees 90 employees attend and uh autism awareness training last week at the end of the week great we were so pleased to hear that from Matt and his team um uh training in CPI last evening a training was um conducted tomorrow night it'll be
176part two of that pair professional training we have parab btes uh we're providing time for special ed class staff to meet plan for students IEPs uh we're also uh very excited about facilitating a mentoring program for our support Personnel our Tas and AIDS that's in progress as well also I provided Matt with access uh we work uh through a company uh Vector it's through UDA National all of our required videos at the beginning of the year are provided there Matt has now full access to that bank of trainings for special EDS so he's able to go in and assign the training to to our staff as well so we're trying to really improve our process of frontloading training especially for our special ed needs and Tas to help them to be better prepared as they
177enter into the realm of working with our special ed students benefits everyone so the second audit finding uh was the reference check process and as you know we've really improved this process as well uh they recommend that we should continue this practice with a reference check forms coming back to the assistant superintendent of personnel and student services as a final step prior to offer of employment so the administrators who were interviewed indicated that this is a good process and they have discovered that this is a uniform process that is used in other school districts so um the administrators and directors are now doing the telephone reference checks uh they have a form they can do it hard copy they can do it online submit it to me I vet each and every one of the
178reference checks we have nice discussions and it's a great opportunity for our administrators to get to know potential new employees as well so we're going to continue that process using the provided form that I just talked about and again I'll continue to review all those forms all right so we have something um called a uh tenure recommendation form uh Dr smel had mentioned that he's been in classrooms we had somebody recommended for tenure this evening uh he was in trista's classroom and we have a form that all of our administrators fill out during the tenure year it's actually a quite expansive form um it has uh everything from attendance to their APR scores uh their grade assignments their extracurricular activities if they were an advisor or facilitated maybe a stem club that all goes on
179here and uh then three areas of strength areas of professional growth so it's a really reflective document that the principal fills out uh before the teacher achieves or doesn't achieve tenure that was something we put into place last year because I was going inter room without prior knowledge of what was going on in a true picture and so that was something that we instituted that she's saying keep doing yes exactly as a as a high school principal um in a former District myself uh we did these forms and it was very helpful and in fact I you know I I actually I I contributed my own uh you know opinion into this because uh the auditor found that uh the administrator's interviewed indicated that this formalized process provides for a mechanism to point out any
180areas that teachers may need to work on prior to being recommended for tenure so that they can be given assistance an appropriate decision can be made which is the most important decision Dr schmeel and I often have this conversation is recommending somebody for tenure some administrators suggested that this form be completed every year on the teachers progression rather than waiting until the final year of the probationary period the district should continue the practice of having administrators complete this form and should consider annual completion of the form so potential issues can be addressed in a timely manner and that's exactly what we're going to do this form will continue to be utilized by building principles the form uh is to be filled out once per year during the first two to three years of the teachers
181tenure and then actually midy year during the teachers tenure year and then right before the achieved tenure two times that last year T yes um if a if a teacher is up for tenure and for some reason they don't get it do do they get told why they didn't get it yes and that I'm glad you asked that Tina because um they could be put on a teacher Improvement plan we've worked with Kevin and his team on teacher Improvement plans where it's a very it's part of our epr plan actually it's there's a format um so there's areas for improvement who's going to be involved in getting there what are the strategies the teacher and the principal they meet they go over the plan each person signs and then they uh work on those different
182areas of of maybe areas of improvement so yes they're definitely told by absolutely thank you great question all right number four uh many of you all of you have uh heard about the star Behavior Analysis framework this is something that Dr schmeel brought with him uh from his former district and we're finding great success with the star uh system it's a very objective system when we do interviews uh star stands for situation task action and result and the bottom line is we ask interviewees to tell a story so tell us about your philosophy on classroom management the not only going going to tell us the philosophy they're going to tell us how it looks maybe an example of their you know their teaching or their administrating uh that they've used um you know that particular
183process so this is a model standardized interview protocol that's being utilized for administrative interviews only at this point the district should continue use of this framework for administrative interviews and consider expansion of its use to candidates for other positions for example teacher candidates so we're looking as a district to uh start during the winter of 20 24 using this framework uh to be extended to teacher interviews as well does that framework take you any longer than what a standard interview would takes a little bit longer because what we do John is we brainstorm what we want to see on our next third grade teacher at shman let's say so we do that first it's worth the time because once you take that time it applies to everybody you're interviewing exactly right it's up there on
184the wall we take it down we do the interviews we put it back up and then we discuss at the end who met all or most of these don't mention names though that's the other really neat part about it all right so staff position demographic training uh is the next tracking excuse me so we're going to be developing by December 1st a spreadsheet so we have uh something that we call the yellow sheet but this is a new employee hire checklist that Lisa and I fill out she fills out it out initially and then when I hire somebody I fill in the information regarding column and step salary hourly rate uh what we would like to do and what we're going to do by December 1st is develop a spreadsheet that has everybody that we
185hire in one spot so it'll be a uniform spreadsheets a system it's a system we need to develop um so that we can track things like 10year date probationary period the individual being replaced the union the starting salary that's all here for each individ individual employee but we want to put it on one sheet Tina would that would also cover the EXL sprad should include their certif yes exactly because that's something that we like a like a directory of what everybody's certified in absolutely all right a personnel file audit uh like I said we have over 900 Personnel files in our office uh locked in filing cabinets so the recommendation uh the the auditor reviewed the structure of personnel files the review revealed that material appropriate to an employees personnel file is being maintained in
186these files separate f are maintained in the accountant's office or by the senior account clerk typus desk for healthcare and dental enrollment TRS and ERS enrollment I9 I 2110 forms so what we'd like to do we our files need to be cleaned up I'll pull a file and I'll see things like evaluations in the teacher file those don't go in there so we would like to uh recommend and we would need help with this um is to uh have a file so Tina Lane's file would have a green folder maybe for my payroll information or red folder for my application a blue folder uh for uh board appointment dates things like that so within that file and I've seen this done well um there there are sub files so you can just pull out I
187need to look at Tina's board appointment date I'm going to pull out the Blue Fold so we'd like to have a really a solid system there so uh you know we're looking to hopefully clean up those over 900 files in the personnel office how long after uh the district do you keep their files we keep them for years we we've had um you know things come up where we need to pull pull a file from let's say I don't know the 60s they're down in the basement locked up in a cage so we we keep we keep them allord yeah they're still on record and actually it's it's really kind of cool to to be able to pull those and to help out yeah okay so the Family Medical Leave Act this is something that
188uh you know we we've wanted to work on um it involves a lot of work a lot of clerical work but it's an important important uh Endeavor and paperwork that we need to get to our employees so uh the assistant superintendent for personnel and student services should continue to work with the Jefferson Lewis BOS Labor Relations and legal services department I've been working very closely with then I'm cleaning this up to ensure that the district's fem Le procedures and policies are being implemented consistently the administrative assistant um Lisa my assistant um needs training related to provisions of FEMA the district should provide an overview of FEMA to administrators and supervisors as well as building secretaries as the buildings departments are now involved in reporting we've already started this uh Lisa and I had a phone
189conference with b a couple of weeks ago um we're I'm continuing to work with Bose's legal department to align paperwork uh form 38f which is let's say Lynn needs to take some time to care for ill parent that's that's the 380f form um there are different all different kinds of forms so that form uh designates um an employee uh is is guaranteed job protective leave to care for a child parent spouse so that's been added to our bank we continue to work on that the golden rule is after three days of absence fem paperwork should be automatically mailed emailed to the employee so that's a that's a a real issue in keeping track of how many subsequent days in a row uh people are off why are they off so it takes a lot of
190coordination with our building clerical staff and our principles and directors as well all right so ASAP and my learning plan uh we had mentioned earlier I think it was Millie you had mentioned uh Envision talking with Frontline this this goes right along with that um so asop is our uh system um for absences and MLP is my learning plan Al Lynn and I work on that we working at my learning plan quite a bit Cara maybe and transportation does as well um but we really need to clean this up and we've started to do that as well uh Lisa my assistant's been working with bosis on cleaning some things up in here um we have certain departments uh they don't enter their absences food service for example doesn't use uh asop to enter absences we'd
191like to change that and have everybody enter their absences uh technologically um we have some ways to help with that some training uh work with the regional information center to ensure that Frontline is correctly reflecting employees time off right now if I let's say uh Bri logs in to take a sick day it's two weeks behind well that's all about to change when Bri enters a sick day uh in a couple of weeks here we're cleaning up Lisa's working with bosis uh you'll be able to see on the spot what your bank of six days is or what your vacation uh you know uh balance so that's going to be very very helpful we also I'm sorry before you go so is this ASAP part of The Envision no separate front line management system yeah
192so Envision is a business management software payroll accounting those two aren't talking very well though Frontline fit in this asop is through Frontline oh that's what I me the umbrella to ASAP into Envision okay they're gon to marry each other soon yes okay we're right now but which is what that AUD report yeah part of it yes part of it so um we also uh we're using time sheets in the district we have the time sheet discussion all the time we'd like to eliminate time sheets and streamline some things here um again Lisa continues to work with Bose's HR Director that's in progress uh so you know the auditor said that the district should ensure that Envision is functioning optimally to produce payment or payroll for the district utilize Frontline absence management system ASAP to
193the fullest extent possible for tracking employee time off for the app appropriate collective bargaining agreement and you know honoring the contract or employee handbook for each of our units so we've got a lot of cleanup here to do um and it's it's it's a it's a huge undertaking but I think in the end it'll be I know it'll be well worth it and useful to the district question yeah the a yes yes the good thing is is the bill for this came in less than what they were anticipated so we have more money for pizza yeah oh that what supposed to be used for so there are two more recommendations um the first one is Staffing and structure of personnel uh so the auditor said that a human resources coordinator is needed to ensure the
194interview processes personnel and probationary tenure tracking of employees is organized and structured greater continuity of personnel functions uh they would develop a comprehensive spreadsheet the one I talked about for increased tracking of vacancies hiring tenure and probationary dates how they could interface with the Rick on the district's behalf to ensure the district's absence management system in professional development system are appropriately configured they could customize a spreadsheet front line to be used for timekeeping in the district to export into Envision there's that marriage or streamline the current uh manual multi-step process of entering this information into Envision the coordinator could develop a spreadsheet report to be used for streamlining of professional development reporting for payroll so interface with payroll staff with a rick in order to ensure that Envision is functioning accurately for the district needs
195so uh the uh bosei staff the auditing team uh they proposed uh two titles Personnel specialist and a Personnel assistant so I'm going to pull up the specialist piece here this is the job description this would be one or the other right so this is a little bit higher level we've got two levels here we've got the specialist here and then Personnel assistant is more of a clerical position all right so basically um this position exists in a school and involves responsibility performing various phases of personel Administration including new employee orientations employee benefits payroll and Personnel transactions all right so supervision may be exercised over subordinate clerical staff does related work as required so I got to paraphrase that but when I show you the next one you'll see the the different levels here so
196this is the Personnel specialist a little more of an administrative flavor here with with this particular um position see if I can get back to my presentation okay so the Personnel assistant look to that one the highlights here this work involves responsibility for performing a variety of care professional level and specialized clerical tasks so that you can see the difference here employee in this class utilizes a knowledge of personnel Administration and exercising responsibility for the maintenance of a variety of personnel records processing of records and forms for employees and providing advice and assistance in matters regarding salary plans employee benefits and contractual Provisions so this is more has a more clerical flavor to it now get back to our presentation oh I think I just closed out of it yeah I think closed it got
197a lot of tabs open here let me go back to that the the nice thing about those two job titles it is we we have to decide what we want the person to do it can be a mix and match um Indian River currently uses this structure Beaver River currently uses this structure um on the PowerPoint that um Tina shared with us tonight um basically the salary ranges from 90 now this isn't the salary this incl is inclusive of retirement benefits those kind of things health insurance um 90 90,000 to 130,000 um keeping in mind that the Aid on that money because it would be run through the poster would be 50% return to The District in year two and then that pattern would repeat itself and so 50 % of the 93,000 45,000 47,000
198there and then um the difference with the 134,000 would that return be on a yearly basis as long as you have the um Services yes so you you it's a reimbursable expense so in year the first year you pay for then after then starting in year two you'll see the aid come in and the nice thing is if we decide at some point that we don't need it then we don't add it to the Bose contract of the following year so it's something that we can add or it's something that we can remove and it's also something that we get to create the position um so if it's something we want them to have their hands and payroll and HR and something else we can cross Trin the individuals as well and finally the payroll
199office location this was an interesting uh finding by by the auditor uh The District in the future may want to consider restructuring and moving the payroll functions to the business office leaving the personnel and students Services office staff to focus on Personnel human resources and student services functions now there's cons here we're still weighing all of this um but but this is a move that warrants further investigation and we've explored thoroughly and thoughtfully by the district and this one right now I'm not interested in moving forward with um Bree new to the district she's got it Food Service um transportation and we need to get things running smoothly there and then we'll consider that the option would be removing payroll and moving it with uh the business department BR obviously has a background with payroll
200so there's a benefit there but I'm not interested in doing that M stream we've got another thing other things capital projects FEA a lot of other things that we have to do right now because their time down and in my office too I asked I asked the staff and and they Lisa sits across from Nancy they're constantly all day long Lisa's work overlaps with nany's work and Maria's work there's a lot of conversation out there that goes on we all talk when I hire somebody I may call Maria over this person wants to hear about benefits I have her come in Tamara when she was working before she retired would come over it's just nice to have them there they're a wealth of knowledge and great resources so districts when they talked about their setting
201their their physical structure looks different in their district office right so their payroll and HR are all in one Suite but now they're in different spaces thankfully in the same building so I have two questions and one request um do you have an approximate figure of how many returned exit interviews you actually receive great question as oppos you know so you're letting go 30 people you're getting back half what what is your so you don't have a hard number I have well we have over we have I looked today we have I think it's 52 millie2 yeah 52 exit surveys return since we started which I'm not I'm not totally happy with but out of how many exits that number I'd have to get back to you 52 is really I mean compar that's pretty
202good yeah so so that's something that um we need to improve upon and what I what I'd like to some ideas that I have are uh you know having our directors and principales help out with that Lisa she'll copy me on every single one they get sent out with the return I'm not I'd like to improve upon so we need to do a better job than that sure um the second question is these a proposed additional position or would be one person would that person be under you yes yes okay and then my request is if you would be so kind to forward the descriptions for both of those positions I'd like to read them with you know pay more attention to the detail on that is I appreciate that anybody else okay thank you
203very much got some upcoming dates to share uh Friday the 22nd Saturday the 23rd 7 P.M peace musical is going to take place in the High School auditorium uh Tuesday the 26th we have a early go home smle drill Wednesday the 27th through Friday the 29th we are have Thanksgiving recess into December 3D we have the FF committee meeting at 5:00 pm right here and following that meeting is our regular regular Board of Education meeting at 6 pm and then Friday December 6th uh city of water towns 2024 Christmas parade which we have a float and a whole thing this year um you should all be as excited as I am uh here there's going to be a guest appearance by the Grinch himself so everybody get excited um I'll start tonight I've got a
204update from Matthew berdick um says last Thursday over 70 staff members from the Watertown city school district participated in an Autism inclusion training at case medal School the session was presented by Kylie shell and Kristen gold both Behavior Specialists from bosies and the feedback from our staff has been overwhelmingly positive and found the training to be extremely beneficial looking ahead we are planning parab bytes trainings for all par Professionals in the coming months these sessions will be tailored to each specific School building and will provide AIDS and Tas with practical strategies to to support students effectively additionally I'd like to give a special shout out to Alicia duy and Olivia Russell both speech pathologists for their ongoing work they have been providing augmentative and alternative communication AAC training to staff districtwide equipping them with the
205skills to to support students with complex communication needs um we already talked about the parade that's my event for the year that I'm excited about um you know I'll I'll just say I think I think with boards and and councils and things um disagreements are inevitable and I'd like to commend my fellow board members for meeting conflicting viewpoints tonight with mutual understanding and respect I think that that's something um that's that's really it doesn't take a a lot of training to do that but so many agencies La that um I want to remind every everybody however that we are on the same team and we're going to use our own personal experiences to get the final product correct so we cross that Finish Line together because at the end of the day that's what's truly
206important here that's all I have tonight and I'll uh we just go back to deal with Millie okay I just have one two three four things um but quick ones real quick ones um I've been meaning to bring this up and I just keep forgetting I apologize for that um so last year I you know have been very advocate for implementing stem in our academic curriculum for the elementary level and um you know I recommended that we look into the kid museum that has not come into has not come to fruition I was under the understanding that um Lisa and the stem Department we're going to make a presentation to the board about how what we have in place right now in terms of steming implemented at the elementary level so um if we can
207have if I can have like you know when do you think that that's going to really happen she's ready to present so I think it's just a matter of getting it schedule okay so if we can you know Jason if we can just get that scheduled if she's ready if we can have that at the next board meeting I think it would be really important I I really believe that we need to um well I personally like to Advocate I think it's a great thing not to be a dead horse but I mean the the scores just came out for Jefferson County and our school district is not where it should be in terms of proficiency for Math and Ela and again part of our strategic plans to make sure that we increase our graduation
208rate and if we don't Focus and put a lot of energy and investment into our elementary education then those children are going to be starting at the upper levels at a deficiency so we really need to um get going on that so I'd appreciate if we could have a presentation as soon as possible so we can move forward on that I was I'm not sure did we I'm not going to ask you because I know you don't know the answer to this have we ever had a backpack program here do we currently have a backpack okay perfect very very perfect okay because somebody asked me and I guess General Brown is starting a backpack program and someone came to my office today for a donation and the person who's running it asked if we had
209one and I really didn't know so it is very successful excellent want everybody to mark down that I actually knew that [Laughter] answer yeah it's yeah yeah that you know it's yeah no I'm really happy to hear that because I actually can go back now and say that we do um I I'm not sure if hospice I I asked um Kathy ardan who is works at hospice to reach out to you I'm not sure if she did did she from Haven seen not seen anybody yet so she approached me and with they had some thought at their board level about providing some brief services to our school on a voluntary basis and I think that conversation arose as a result of our young student um who passed away recently and I told her that we
210do partner with other agencies pivot and so and I did say that to her and she feels very strongly that the services that they provide at the hospice level because that is their special is different so I asked her to please reach out to you um to discuss that and I I even said to her you know you want to discuss with discuss with her superintendent I'm sure if you wanted to make a presentation you know he would be um amenable to that so I just want to put that out there and the next thing is also really good um so the manager of dpao her name is Trisha Schwarz she reached out to me and I'm not really sure how this idea arose but it arose over over the weekend and so they have
211two vans that they thought would be a really good idea if on the weekends they rounded the local restaurant and picked up all the extra food and delivered it to families that needed on the weekends um some her daughter is a senior here and um I guess through the grap Vine there are kids that are saying that they're not eating on the weekends I mean we we know that that's a fact but you know it it was so she asked me like if that's something that we would be interested in um and I told her that really what she needs to do is reach out she is trying to work the details of that and that's a New Concept for them but you know dpao is a wonderful organization they're willing to offer us any
212assistance and that you know want to partner with us I think that would be a really good idea so I'll just would be the contact for that you can just email me you okay um and presentations today were amazing I really like the library I think I think just kind of took away that whole notion of banning like none of us are into Banning anything she was extremely um eloquent in describing her process and making sure that when she's getting rid of books why she's getting rid of books I think that's very very good and um the library present ation the AI presentation thank you Tina for doing the whole payroll I mean I think there's a lot of good things and we are moving forward in a lot of good ways um I think
213this is the first time we've had an overt disagreement in today's discussion but I just want both of you guys to know that I respect you very much and I hope that you respect me and I think that as a group we have made strides in getting things done and mostly because supported our superintendent and I just want to make sure that everybody understands that we're all here for one reason and that's to make our community and our school district better that's that's all I have thank you so much Mr Kane uh what a great night I will plug the the the case U musical wizard of o one more time just because my daughter is in it I would get in trouble and lose daddy points if I didn't um Good Luck to all
214of our wiers sports teams it's hard to believe we're there already but we're starting up with that uh and I just want to you know kind of reiterate what Millie said those presentations were phenomenal one from our Librarians was was amazing um and to to see the you know you kind of have an idea the amount of work that Librarians put into you know maintaining the libraries but it is like so over the top and we are so lucky that we have a district that has supported having a true librarian in all of our buildings and not every District gets that um so we're fortunate there and then our srps um I know um they left but um you know as a teacher myself school buildings don't run without our srps and those people are
215so important a lot of times they are the first ones our kids see in the morning the last ones they see on their way home they are so influential in our students lives and there's not enough praise that I can Heap on them um so just thank you to every single SRP in Watertown and Copenhagen um and then um you know disag agement is the backbone of democracy like if we all agreed on everything it would be actually scary it be scary um so yeah so you know I never mean any disrespect I mean we are going to have aing Viewpoint sometimes um and I don't take anything that you said as disrespect and I hope you don't take anything that that I said as disrespect I won't change my seat that'll be the Telltale
216and then uh just good luck to Molly Dickinson as she goes swimming this weekend what an amazing young lady and a freshman just a freshman unbelievable John Tina fluro um I have a message to read from Katherine cook um she says hi Jason and Dr here is an around the District of State for 1119 we are excited about the upcoming case Middle School Musical The Wizard of Oz at whs Auditorium on 11:22 and 11:23 both showings at 7M four members of our case staff Gloria toe Katie Taylor Rachel Howard and Emily Massa showcased their personal musical talents last weekend in an international Barber Shop TCH competition in Kentucky they were featured on news channel 7 for their um achievements sorry congrats to them and then she has a little link um our case winter ccer
217is coming up on 129 Tech Teacher Nate nataline took four case students to JCC on Thursday 11:14 for the spaghetti Challenge and here is some information from Nate competition would took which took place on The JCC campus on Thursday November 14th allowed student students to Showcase their engineering skills and creativity not only to build and test their prepared designs to also engag with JCC engineering faculty and students it was a unique opportunity for Hands-On learning and Innovation we're incredibly proud of our students in the Middle School Division grades 6 through eight students Cecilia doe [Music] kayen sorry Kaden um owski L Peters and Evan web from case Middle School Place second and students from HT Wy intermediate Place third athletic signing on 1113 case librari and jam Lee did a fantastic job of getting our
218case Library ready to host the athletic signings on Wednesday afternoon since whs was closed Jerry lman even shampooed the library C the library looks great for the event and 7even news was there to capture the celebration that was that um all I have to say is srps obviously is my heart um congratulations to every SRP that we have um we know without them that the school would close down if we all got up and walked out for a day so they are highly needed um congratulations to our Sports people that were here I think they did a great job our lacrosse team looked so happy to be here um they did great job and to all the kids all the students all the staff um in our district kudos to all of you for being
219here and the kids to get up in the morning and get here because 7:25 is quite early at the high school so just congratulations to everybody thank so so much Mr Goen um yes I'll be very quick because it's closely approaching my bedtime just to just to congratulate all the student athletes I know we've said that and the SR srps as well I love the fact that the PowerPoint presentation included the flying Cyclone logo um as far as the discussion um for disagreements I couldn't agree more um but just just wanted to clarify for anyone still watching tonight um tabling of this policy we didn't ask for anything to change we just want to revisit it right that's all I got cool last but not least it's all been said but uh I think we're
220best when we do it right that's what we're here to do and I think our community is fortunate to have people that care that much um I respect each one of you it's a different L you don't want it's done said you don't want seven people around the table all thinking the same way with the same perspective that's why we're here I think it's totally comfortable I I think some people find it confrontational I find it comfortable I think it's healthy I think it's good and I thought tonight we were at our best so all been said but I would just want to say that again and again the presentation's very informative and helpful and always great to recognize our staff and our students I had the high school uh greetings from Watertown High School
221the holidays just around the corner we are very busy preparing for the season rehearsals for our 2024 holiday concert well underway all of our vocal and instrumental ensembles will take to the stage on Thursday December 12th at 7M at the whs auditorium please mark your calendars you'll see you there on Friday December 13th students will enjoy a special schedule as they take part in our second annual winter blast this is a day full of teacher Le activities like a pancake breakfast ornament making cookie decorating and crafting uh back by popular demand winter blast is fast becoming a Watertown High School staple HS wishes wishes everyone a wonderful and peaceful Thanksgiving Holiday full of gratitude and good cheer as always we are grateful for the privilege of serving our District's children and their families best wishes
222Leslie ainson our student advisory kids today asked for that to come back and it's back it didn't start dear Jason I ever gets dear joh oh I yeah nobody could top either of those comments so we are in need of a executive session to discuss fending or current please second favor next time