001school board. If everybody can rise to the flag of the United States of America and justice for all the All right. Uh, thank you very much for attending tonight. We have to start us off our board of education report. Just a couple things I wanted to uh discuss with the community, make sure the board is aware of. Heath, Matt, and I met with Dr. Broy, who is the recently appointed president of Hudson Valley. Uh we had an outstanding conversation and are very hopeful that our very strong relationship with the college will continue. We talked about some of our key points which is improving CTE and moving forward with giving students the opportunity to earn an associate degree while here at Averil Park. But uh he was great, very receptive and is going to try to
002work with us on connecting some private partnerships for equipment and upgrades and really wants to work together that associate degree option. So, we're excited about that. It was a really, really good, positive meeting. >> Yep. >> Are you able to hear on that or double check to make sure >> Yeah. Are you able to hear so? >> I can hear I can see >> and then uh the second thing is the bus driver shortage. So we're struggling in transportation to find enough drivers on a daily basis. We've gone through quite a few different things to try to solve this problem. Right? We did the survey over summer where we asked parents to opt out of transportation if they didn't need to. We've decreased the number of our bus runs which obviously causes lengthening the time
003on the bus for students and we've been partnering with our neighboring districts to share runs. It is putting a significant strain on the system and we know that that leads to then cancing bus runs as well forcing parents to transport their children and uh also causing us to use other uh proper properly licensed folks like our mechanics to drive buses as well which keeps them from doing their work. So overall it's been a big issue certainly during the day and then you can see the last part about the after school activities including after school just regular help clubs activities and in Alangquin the CARES program so we've had significant challenges there we are working hard to address this we thank CSA for their partnership in that as we are looking to collabor collaboratively address the
004issue and get us uh in the right direction. So that's the report portion and we have our celebrations of success video. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] So that is uh this month's highlights video. Thank you to Deborah for putting that together. And then last but not least, we'd like to recognize the board as it is board appreciation week last week. We gave you the week off so you have to come and do a meeting. But we want to thank all of you for your service. And I will certificate for you Samantha Hicks. Thank you very much, >> Jessie. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you. Michelle couldn't make it tonight. >> Lauren Jacobs, >> congratulations. Thank you. >> And our newest elected member, Chris. Thank you very much and welcome. And we can't forget our
005student rep. Thank very much for doing this. So, congratulations and thank you to our board for all your service to the district. >> And that concludes the uh superintendent report. >> Uh that brings us to our first public comment period of the evening. This is for items on the agenda. We do have So I will hand back over to Jim and >> Yes. So we will move to our independent order report presentation. K you want to introduce >> Mard is here for Um she's our onsite supervising auditor. I'm not sure if that's your formal title but from men bar. Um she's here to give a brief overview of the audit for fiscal year end of 2025. >> Yeah. So not my official title but I like that one. Um so I'm a senior assurance manager
006with MMB. Um and I've been on this audit for a few years now. Um, so we met with the audit committee on October 7th to review the financial statements and comm um communication letters in detail. We discussed the numbers, what they mean, we answered questions. Um, so I'm really just going to do a very high level, very quick summary um that goes over the results of the audit. So there's three pieces to the audit, two of which the board members received tonight. Um, so you have the audit of the financial statement that we have were in final. We have the audit of the extra activity funds that we have run final and we have the single audit which is in draft form. So um the reason that is in draft form is because we are
007waiting on the government to do something. Um so the federal government the office of management and budget puts out a compliance supplement every year and the 2025 compliance supplement should have been out in May and we have not received it yet. So we are not allowed to issue a single audit at this point because we are required to audit to the compliance requirements within that compliance supplement. So if we don't have that, we have a draft form. But if we don't have that, then we don't know that we've satisfied all of the testing that's required for that single audit to be submitted. So what we did so that you were able to submit your financial statements to the state on time was we actually broke those apart this year. So, you've got your district financial
008statements, which were over to Carrie for the 10:15 deadline, and then as soon as we have a compliance settlement, we'll regroup with Carrie and get that issued. You're not at risk of being late until March 31st. So, I'm really hoping that I'm not looking at school financial statements in March, but we're really at their mercy. Um, so for the financial statement audit, you have an unmodified opinion, which is the highest level of assurance that we can give you as your auditors. That's a opinion, that's always what you're striving for. We did have an emphasis of matter this year. Um, there was a new accounting standard for compensated absences. It was Gazsby 101. That did have a material impact on your financial statements. So, Carrie had to go through a very vigorous recalculation of your compensated
009absence liability, which really only matters on the full governmentwide financial statements. That doesn't fall into your general fund or anything like that. it did have an impact of about $1.7 million in her recalculations. So, it was really just a matter of the way that the standard requires that liability to be done. Um, we had no findings in the audit. So, that's fantastic. We did have one finding that was removed from last year's report. So, last year you had a finding for excess fund balance in the child nutrition program. Um, this was twofold. So, one, you guys spent down some of that fund balance. um you know that was a a concentrated effort to do that but also the state increased the threshold from three months of expenditures to six months of expenditures so that really
010helped make that funding go away. Then we have the extra classroom activity fund or ECAP audit. The purpose of ECAP is to teach students about budgeting and reconciling a checkbook and planning and all of those type of things. Um and really teaching them fiscal responsibility. So the state provides specific guidance um and that's why you have to have an audit of those funds to begin with and we look at that guidance to determine what our audit procedures are and what we're looking for. So there is a qualified opinion and that's due to insufficient accounting controls over cash receipts at the point of collection. This is not unique to your district. This is not something that your business office is doing incorrectly. This is not something that anybody across the district is doing coror incorrectly. This
011is really a function of the type of funds that these are. So it's cash being collected by students being handed to an adult being handed to another adult making it to the bank. So that process of collection to the bank is the unknown. So our audit really starts at the point of money being in the bank. So those are cash basis financial statements. We also had a management letter for ECAF. This um includes some findings and recommendations. These are all very similar findings and recommendations to what you've seen in the past and we actually see them at other districts as well. And again, it's not something that you're necessarily doing incorrectly. It's a function of who's performing the duties of these funds. The single audit, again, that's in draft form right now. We did have
012an unmodified opinion on the compliance for the major programs. This year, we tested the title one program in the child nutrition cluster. We had no findings, which is also fantastic. So, that's going to be a opinion once we can actually issue it. Um, and again, we're not sure when we're going to get that compliance supplement. I was really holding out hope that it was going to be before 10:15 and that did not happen. Um, as always, thank you to Carrie and her team. They're fantastic to work with and the information that we get is ready to be audited, which I think is important to to point out and note. Um, and management's great to deal with. So, any questions for me? >> Thank you. Yes. I just want to thank the audit committee. consistency. At
013least for my trust building. Thank you. So we uh start off our building level learning team presentations at the high school. So will walk us through what is going on. >> All right. Thank you guys for having me. I hope that the opening to the school year has been as good for you as it has been for us. Tonight I'm going to, as I do each year, take a little bit of time to give you a snapshot of how we ended last year. And then with that information, I will share with you how that led into what our goals and objectives are for the upcoming year so that we can continue to take our work to the next level. Um, in terms of student outcomes from last year, uh, it's probably not a secret by
014this time that we really had a stellar a banner year at able to student performance outcomes. Um, the first thing that was really exciting was that we ended last year with 92% of our students passing all of their classes. And you can see there the historical trend over three years. This was the highest rate we had seen in a very very long time. Um on the other end of the spectrum, the number of students who were consistently or more persistently struggling was the lowest that we had seen. Um we define that by students who are failing two or more or three or more classes at the end of the year. So we had really nice outcomes in terms of academic performances. This also carried over quite nicely into our AP exam outcomes. As you can
015see, when we ended the year, for a student to be viable for that credit from an AP exam to transfer into a college, they need to score a three or better, you can see our percentage of students that scored a three or better on each of those exams. And then next to it, you can see what the comparison statewide was. So, you can see that our students when compared to students across the state have tended to do much, much better across most of our exams than the state average. So again, really nice outcomes in regent exams. About a year ago, I came to you and I talked about some significant struggles that we were having with some of our entry exams, things like earth science, things like algebra, geometry. Now, Matt is going to come
016a little bit later in the year and give you some more comparative data in terms of what we look like compared to other schools. It takes a little time for that to come out and to be available to us, but The good news is that we saw some pretty significant increases in our performance rate, particularly with algebra and geometry and some of those entry level math exams that we were a bit concerned about a year from now. So, a lot of the work that we did last year paid off and we're going to continue to do that. Again, that's going to come with some comparative data in a couple more meetings just so that we have a better snapshot of what this looks like compared to other suburban council schools. In addition to this, last
017year we had some of the lowest student behavior issues or incidents that we had seen in a very very long time. Um, you can see that we were down to 730 referrals over the course of the entire year. If you were to go back just two years before that, we were doing about 1,333. So, our students were really doing an excellent job. You can also see hearings were reduced pretty significantly last year over the year before. Right? So, from a number of different metrics, we doing really well and our students were showing a lot of growth which we're very proud of. Now last year we focused uh on student engagement in the building and a sense of belonging. Uh one of the interesting things is we did a survey at the beginning of the year
018to find out how many of our students felt as if they belonged during their time at school. 61% felt like they belonged in October. I've got to share the data. 59% felt like they belonged when we got to March. And I'll talk a little bit about what we're doing about that as we move forward. But one of the interesting components here was when we asked our student leadership team and other students around the building, what was happening, they told us they do not want to take a survey during advisory when they would rather be in clubs and extracurricular activities or doing things around the building. So we have changed our strategy and I'll show you some new data because it was quite interesting. And finally, as we wrapped up the school year, um you know,
019we also had summer school outcomes. So again, there were about 51 students in the building out of 865 who were failing two or more or three or more classes over the course of the summer. 30 out of 30 students received and recredit and and uh or received or recovered two or I'm sorry, recovered at least one or more credits during summer school. So a lot of our students were able to get back on track. In addition, you can see that students were able to um take an exam and pass it that they needed for graduation. And we know that for multiple years we've had a program called Operation Graduation that works with our most identified atrisisk seniors. This year 14 out of 14 students were able to graduate by August. It was 13 out of
02014 for June and then one person was able to graduate in August. So again, we had a really nice year to work off of from last year and to set the springboard for this year. So our work this year is obviously aligned to the board goals which you guys have provided with a great amount of consistency that has allowed us to keep working on the same things and not shoot all over the place from year to year. We appreciate that. So our first goal is always about academic performance and our building learning team over the summer. We feel good about the fact that we have 92% of our pass our students passing all their classes. We decided this year to shift our focus right to the 51 students who are failing two or more or
021three or more uh courses at the end of the year. So our goal for this year is to really zero in on our population of most struggling students and to affect a reduction in the number of students who are failing those quantity of classes by the end of the year. So we're really shifting now to most struggling students. In order to make that happen, we are continuing with a number of different action steps, right? And I've broken these into steps that teachers take, steps that are shared by the school community, and steps that are more systematic like we've built them into what we do. You'll see that our teachers are going to continue to focus in on the professional learning community work that they've been doing for the past four to five years. um they
022are continuing to zero in on what are the most important things students need to know in every class. How do we know that students know those important things and what do we do right when students don't know them? That's the intervention piece. In addition to that, um, one of the biggest shifts that we've made this year is last year we began to provide teachers who teach similar courses with common planning time so that they had access to each other during the school day to talk about what's working, what's not working, what best practices are making a difference for students. This year we've a expanded upon the common planning time during the school day so that more teachers have access to one another to collaborate around student performance while at work. Additionally, you know that we
023have Monday meetings, right? We have the ability to collaborate as professionals. We shifted things around so that our teachers have 28 opportunities in addition to their common planning time over the course of this upcoming school year to be able to get together in teams of different configurations to collaborate around what's working in their classrooms and at the grade level, what's working within specific cohorts to help specific students do better, right? So, our teachers have a ton of different tools. In addition, this is our second year of having um instructional student team meetings that incorporate teachers. As you know, IST in an elementary and a middle school have always been able to have teachers at the table. In your traditional high school, that can be a bit of a challenge. We have been able to build
024in at least monthly IST meetings that allow teachers to actually sit with the counselors and the service providers to discuss atrisisk students and to come up with solutions that will work in the classroom. So, this is our second year to do that and it's also something that we've doubled the time on in terms of frequency of those meetings. So, that's been a really big thing. The other piece that we're doing is for the entire school every Monday morning, we're providing a gradebook report from the previous Friday afternoon so that every service provider and faculty and staff member in the high school every single Monday morning is able to see a list who who as of that moment is potentially in at risk of failing two or more or three or more classes. So, we're able
025to every single week take a look at that list and make sure that we're really working hard to track those students. And then from a systematic perspective, we're continuing with our supported advisories. So, our most atrisisk students in each cohort have the opportunity to be in an advisory where they have a one-on-one relationship with an adult in the building who can keep track of how they're doing. Our structured halls have continued. So every five weeks if you're failing two or more classes, you move from a general study hall which has a lot of freedom. Play ping pong, maybe even listen to music. Don't necessarily have to do a specific thing. You go into a structured study hall where we have a person who says, "All right, let's pull out your grades. Let's pull up school
026tool. Let's see how you're doing and let's get you back on track." As soon as you're back on track with the next five weeks, you can go back to a regular study hall. So again, we have a lot of really great things that we've been working on this year and that we're increasing in terms of intensity and frequency to make sure that our students are doing better this year than they even did last year. In our second goal, we're really talking about student engagement and belonging. And I had told you that we went from uh 61 to 59% last year. Our goal this year is to have more students report that they feel like they belong or that they fit in when they're at school. Now, the good is that one of the strategies and
027I don't know if it's even a fair one yet. One of the strategies that the building leadership team and our teacher team came up with in the summer was to give the survey during lunches and to make a game of it. So this year for example the survey was given in all of the lunches and there was a wheel and they could spin the wheel when they participated in the survey and there were prizes and other incentives and things that were really fun. Right. Well, automatically as a result of that, it automatically started with a baseline of almost 70%. Which isly different than last year. We know that we want to see more kids feeling like they belong. We are continuing to struggle with how to get a really fair metric of that because it
028almost feels unfair. Like if you had gone into the cafeteria that day, everybody was laughing. They were getting snacks. They were having fun. They were spinning wheels. They were answering surveys about how they feel at school. From a statistical standpoint, it sort of did the job. But our team is really kind of digging in with our student leadership team like how do we really get to the heart of that in a way that might be a little bit more honest right to the whole process. So our building leadership team is going to adjust that um that number. So we'll come up at our next meeting with the um the new growth target that we're looking to to achieve because our baseline is now 69 instead of 59%. Now, throughout the course of this year, our
029English teachers are going to be um working with Bard College on a diversity training. So, they'll be working with Bard College to look at how to incorporate lessons around diversity um in all of the literature that they teach. So, we see that as an opportunity to really help help students find a way to see their own selves and how they belong in the school community through the content and the literature that they're learning in class. In addition, our student leadership has taken this on as a really big project. So all of our class officers, all of the students from student government um and then students who in the past have participated in the regional elevated student voices uh consortium have been working to put on monthly theme uh programming throughout the course of the year.
030So in September and October um well in September and part of October we were doing Hispanic um heritage month. Now we're doing disability awareness month. And the students are putting all kinds of programming. They're doing educational slides on the TVs throughout the building. They're doing tableabling events where they're bringing in resources into the cafeteria. Um this past Friday we did disability awareness trivia in the cafeteria. So every lunch we had Mr. Minkler as the MC and a microphone and we did a lot of really fun trivia and we're seeing kids really get involved with these activities and frankly learning quite a bit. Um so as we move through the year we're going to continue to celebrate these. We're putting a lot of this um of the onus of this work on our student leadership team.
031We want for them to really really help us as much as they can to identify how do we make the school a place that's most belonging to students. And I feel very confident that our students are going to tell us that better than our building leadership team of adults are. So really our student leadership team has taken this on as their primary focus for this upcoming school year. pressure. >> And then finally, this year, uh, when it comes to digital fluency, um, as we ended last year, you should know that in a pilot program that we had at the high school through a multiple through multiple different, um, departments and areas. We finished the year with about 350 students having made a digital portfolio. So, we have a really solid baseline throughout the school of
032students who have begun to do work with digital portfolios. Our goal as we move into the 26 27 school year is to get to a place where this is aspirational. We'd like to open next year with a systematic way to ensure that every incoming nth grader has a portfolio going into high school that we can grow and develop as they move through all four years. So that is one of our goals. The other goal when it comes to artificial intelligence or AI is that this year every single one of our students at the high school will engage in two lessons in AI. One is on ethical considerations of the use of AI plagiarism, how to appropriately use it, when it's appropriate, when it's not, and the other is specific to the tool that we actually
033use at Averil Park High School, which is Magic School. So our library media specialist, Mrs. Morgan, has created these workshops. She did over the summer and every student in their English class is going twice to do a lesson with Mrs. Morgan over the course of this year. So, we really want to make sure that we're increasing our exposure um for students in terms of how to use this. Matt Clayton always tells me my favorite story. He says, "Well, remember when we got the internet and we just said, "Here, go ahead. We've got the internet. Have fun." Right? Our goal is to not do that again. Our goal is to say here we have this tool artificial intelligence not go ahead have fun here's some ways that you should approach considering this that are responsible and
034that will get the job done in a safe way right so that's a really big goal for us um and then in addition to that we can't just have our students developing capacity in AI we have five workshops this year on artificial intelligence that our faculty will participate in um during their faculty meetings as they move through the year so we really develop their knowledge of what AI can and can't do for us as well as their ability to use the tools that are available in the profession. >> Yes, I have a question to the end or >> I'm about two slides from the end. Okay. >> Do you want to hold Yeah, >> I wrote it down. >> Okay. All right. Appreciate it. Not a problem. So, the action steps for this particular set
035of goals are actually quite self-explanatory. Um, we do have a digital portfolio team that's going to work throughout the course of the year. We have a teacher from just about every department on that team. We meet monthly. Our goal this year is to continue to make sure that more of our staff have access to the tools and the ability to use those tools as well as to start to plan what would systemization of digital portfolios potentially look like for the upcoming school year for all of our students. And then when it comes to artificial intelligence, obviously I told you about the student instruction component. We're also going to do that with staff. So the second to last slide is everybody's big question mark. So this is the big topic of 2526. We're now a personal
036device free school. And I'm sure in the minds of everyone you're wondering how is that going? Um this has been interesting. Logistically it was like it never happened right within two or three days of procedures and bringing kids in and ending the day and you know opening the under pouches and closing them everything went super smoothly. Right. It just worked. Now, as we've gone more deeply into the year, I can tell you at the on the positive end, it is having an amazing impact. I can't find a teacher in the building who will tell me anything other than this is the best thing that's happened to engagement in my classroom since I've been a teacher. Folks are very happy with it. They're saying that students are more engaged. They're paying more attention. They're engaging with
037one another more. Right? This is very good news. I can also tell you that at the fiveweek point of the first quarter, our students across all grade levels were 5% better in terms of academic performance than they were last year at this time during the same five weeks. So on one end of the spectrum, you can see some really good things have started to happen. Um you can go into the cafeteria and kids are playing ping pong. They're talking to each other. There's a lot of engagement. It's loud, right? The cafeteria is louder than it's ever been, but typically for good reasons, right? not a bad thing. On the other end of the spectrum, right, we have definitely seen some growing pains with regards to student behavior. Right? A year from now, I'll be telling
038you this year's results. I can tell you right now, discipline has almost doubled at Averil Park High School over last year. And it's not stuff that's happening in classrooms. It's not stuff that's happening in structured environments. It's the kinds of things that are happening when students don't have a phone and they don't yet know how to manage themselves in these new social situations. So, we are off to a very busy start when it comes to student behavior management, but we are seeing some really great growth in the first couple of months and I think we are fairly confident that we will see that go down as we continue to teach students the skills that they need to kind of negotiate large social environments without their device. You got to be honest, that's a huge shift.
039It's a huge shift. Um, so by most facets, this is going quite well. In six months, I can come back and tell you if it actually needs. Um, so on that note, I would say thank you for your support. Um, we do use our theme that you make AP a great place to be a lot. And so I hope that tonight you received your I make AP a great place to be t-shirts because that's what each of you guys do when you come here every month and do the work that you do. So what questions? >> And there was something in there about parents like AI. I just wonder if there's what communication might be given to parents like if we can get what we um just because I think like as parents we may
040very well be scarfully but I definitely don't know what I don't know so as a parent I don't necessarily knowense what I don't communicate like I get all this stuff and I say that recognizing that it may get lost right there's a whole pages but you know some of the best advice I got was from Mr. Chrome source from your very handy tool. So I'm wondering just from anoints that is there participation to be helpful >> I will definitely add it to the list. Yeah absolutely yeah if you think about it our presentation hits students and right there's a third part to it so I have written it down for sure thank you Thank you so much for the presentation and everything on top of it. I wanted to circle back to the students that
041you're engaging but I'm curious what that engagement looks like. How much engagement are you doing? to help them in terms of help. But also curious if there's been any discussion around engaging um some upper classmen to you know student mentor some of the younger kids or potentially engage students who were previously at risk who pulled themselves out of it to help mentor the kids who might be struggling or if there's anything like that that's been discussed. >> Uh so to start right there it is definitely being discussed in fact two or three months before hit, we were in the process of developing a mentoring program at the high school. It is still something that we hope to do in the next year. Um, so we are talking about the mentoring specifically because we have so
042many students who are doing so well that we want those kids to be able to be a resource to the students who aren't. So it is on the radar, right? Um, and in terms of what's happening right now, um, with those those lists coming out once a week now instead of every five weeks, that's spurring immediate phone calls by that's spurring teachers communicating and getting together on a weekly basis. In fact, it's gone so far in terms of the support network that we've gotten to the point where, you know, one of our home monitors will bump into a kid who knows, right, isn't doing so well out of science class and they'll say, "Hey, come on. Let's go back to science class." Like, we're really looking to make sure that the services and that the
043recognition of support for all of our students are really, really high. And I have to tell you, all the we've done in the past two years, the structured study hall has been the most effective for these students. Um, typically if we have 90 students go in at five week point, way over 60 or 70% of them don't return in the next five weeks. And in the days leading up to the assignment of structured study halls, you can walk through the building and you can hear students saying, "Hey, you need to go check your grade book, talk to your teacher, and get your grades up because you don't want to go to structured study hall because they want to play, right? They want to play ping pong, right? And when they get in there, I I
044will sing her praises. Mrs. Mackey, for those who know her or maybe don't know her, is our structured study hall person and she is mother extraordinaire, right? Let's sit down. Come here. Come here. All right, I'm going to pull up your grades. Let's I mean, she's right on top of every one of those students and making those kinds of connections. Um those lists are also generating all of our weekly um SST meetings. So, those are the student meetings. So the frequency has made a huge difference, right? And we're hoping that that impact can be seen. We will keep mentoring on the radar because it is without question an amazing impact. >> So I just want to say I appreciate you you and your entire faculty and staff in the building. There's so much hard work
045goes into those metrics that you show, all those numbers, how we're above the state average. It's a lot of work from a lot of people and um I appreciate that. I also want to acknowledge and thank you for the fact that you listen to your student feedback and you made changes um based on you reacted to their feedback, which is great. I'd love that all your um action steps to three goals. Um, has multiple layers of participation from multiple people in the building. Um, it does take a village and I like the way you guys have structured it. So, you're all working together towards those common goals and to support our students, especially those ones that are um at the most risk. And in terms of the engagement, um it was interesting to me that
046last year, I mean, maybe it wasn't um statistically different from went from 50 or was it 61 to 59. >> So, it'll be interesting this year regardless of where you put your new metric goal. Um does it stay the same or go up or go down in the spring? That'll be just interesting to hear. So, I'd be curious on that. have that survey completed in next April. >> Absolutely. And you know, to give credit where credit is due, the class of 2023 student leadership team was the student leadership team that actually created structured study halls. They they came to a student leadership meeting and they said, "If you want to make a difference on how we use our time, why can't we have two different kinds of study halls?" And it was a whole discussion
047and it's actually been super impactful and student student. >> I love that. But But thank you. And please from us to your entire building. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> They're on. >> Somebody just turned theirs off. All right. Um, one question and one comment. The com the question is about the region scores and the AP exam. I remember them from last year and I was super excited to see um the increase. So my question for that is you know what you think the main driving factors are to have such a steep increase over the span of a year. That's great news. And then the comment is just I'm actually I'm thrilled to hear that you have such a positive attitude about the behavior issues because I I I think you're getting to the heart
048of it. These kids don't know how to interact. Like we're saving them before they to the real world where they have to succeed or to succeed they need to engage with other humans. So, I'm so happy that you have such a positive spin on it and I hope that you're able to endure for the year because um I do think there'll be a light at the end of the tunnel and I actually be very curious to know how things are going six months from now with that now that kids are acclimated to screen free time. Yeah. Um but anyway, yeah, just a question about the >> the region scores I think. what we did in Matt that I know added value, but I think the key is Matt's going to come in a couple of
049months and it'll be interesting to see did the region move at the same pace or will we an outlier, right? Because that will tell me more concretely that what we did made more of an impact and it wasn't a shift in the assessment itself. So, I want to be careful. >> But AP scores increased too or no? >> Our AP scores were a little bit better. Our region scores were marketkedly better, right? But I will tell you that um the math department did a huge shift in the delivery of algebra and geometry. Um, and previous to last year, there was really only one or two pathways to attain the the the completion of that credit and or the exam. Um, two years ago, so last year being the first year of its implementation, we created
050pathways so a student could could take algebra in three different ways. They could either take algebra um for two full years and then take the exam. They really as you know, as a student that they really needed more time with that content or they could do it in one year in a block and a half, right? Or they could do it in one year with just a block, right? So, we created different ways for students to approach it. And we used open enrollment so students and their families could make a decision as to what works best for them, right? Huge shift and we did that in algebra one and we did it in geometry. So I feel confident right that we're going to see that there was a lot of value added by that shift
051model. >> What we're waiting for is how much value as compared to whatever happened with that test and the rest >> um I know you everybody is early on into the implementation of like you know personal devices um but the observation you made about the correlation between I was just curious had opportunities to check in with other districts like are they seeing something similar because I'm just thinking about like a broader movement of conflict resolution or social emotional learning that thankfully were implementing things are getting that younger but these high schoolers you know did not get that younger and have this added piece of uh you know the movement in terms of use of technology so I was opportunity to connect with any other districts are seeing other trends or like sort of what strategies.
052>> Yeah, it's a it's a pretty solid trend. This morning was our monthly suburban council principles meeting. So this morning at Gilderland, I was with all the principles in suburban council and everybody is seeing a significant change in student behavior. Um I think what's most market for us is that in previous years I went to those meetings and people had student behaviors in other school districts that were far significant, more significant than what we see at a park, right? So, their baseline was already kind of high. So, they're seeing changes. I feel like the impact in our school community feels different. So, low like I literally we're talking about the same students as we had in the building last year with the minus the subtraction of one cohort acting remarkably different with the change of
053one factor. Right? So, for us it's been pretty impactful. Um it's happening in other districts. They're not talking about it as much because I think the volume of their discipline just tends to be so much higher than what we see in the park. But it is happening for sure. No, I mean it's really fascinating and just fact I will say one of my experiences with all the buildings to building their students and there's there's a personal interaction seems exhausting it gives you insight into the dataise. Anybody else? if you can send >> it'll be on board docs too. >> Thank you. All right. Number six, we have two seconds. Any discussion to approve discussion against >> September 15th we have And then 6 Orisgan as Turn the consent agenda. >> Making a motion to pass
054items and a second on the table by Lauren discussion. All right. I just wanted to thank Andy Halford for his donation of an acoustic and electric guitar to the high school musical uh music program. And I just wanted to take a second and thank him um for your time with us um for establishing consistent procedures for the HR department which we really needed um and we're actually um the time we had in our policy committee and leading that and helping us get organized as best we can because there's a lot of healthy discussion that goes on in those and we appreciate your work with that. So, thank you so much. And then I also wanted to take a second to welcome Brian to his new position. Um, I look forward to working with you. Congratulations.
055So many of the staff I also want to say on the policy we got a nice system going and nobody needs to talk to All those in favor of approving the consent agenda item to approve the purpose for the purpose of First discussion in favor to approve resolution to revise the trust capital discussion. I can't take credit for this. >> All those in favor of the district report. I just want to thank the district's extra extra classity. Any discussion in favor? All those in favor of education school participating for the 2026 authorization to I just I want to point out my regular life and then also in recent events locally where the academy and things you know not going the way it should I continue to always be proud of me to protect appropriately. I
056see a ton of cyber related things like that. No further discussion. in unanimous policy couple first meetings. So 11 reading of our policy transportation. I'm going to struggle with the wording of this, but I'll second the motion to approve 11 and 11. I'm sorry. We have a second adopt. Okay, >> that was how we just wanted to be clear. >> Um, I have a couple things to point out. Um, 8410, I think, and 8411 are both local policies, but I believe strongly we should still have them on the book because our student transportation actually goes above the state mandate. Um, and so I think that's clear to point out to the community and that we do pick up every student at their home or a consolidated bus stop. We don't um and provide transportation for
057those students um less than a mile from the buildings. And I think it's clear I think we need to keep that on the books so people understand that. And then um 841 is talks about consolidated bus stops and I think that's also a tool that the department can use um as guidelines for if and when parents have questions. We did um bring in Mark Primo and when we talked about all these policies and asked him what his opinions were and what his thoughts were and how often he refers to them and that was super helpful for us in in reading these policies and doing some consolidation because really a lot of are actually being mentioned already and we made sure it was clear in the other meeting. All those in favor of approving given policies.
058We can send that to make a motion for items 11 C through 11 H to resend policy policy 84.1 policy 8412.1 policy 842 and policy 84.7 as these policies are represented in other First, any more further discussion? All those in favor of that is item 12. change. We are at our second Brian. I'm here representing the gentleman here in uniform. Uh they're able park uh scout troop 2526. uh they're currently taking a merit badge called citizenship in the community. Uh it's part of the eagle path. Um part of the requirements is for them to kind of uh understand the structure of and uh you know get a a sense of participation in local governance. Uh I guess with the ideal of you know one day instead of sitting in these seats they're going to be
059sitting in those seats. Um so if the the court will allow not the court I'm sorry the court will allow wrong run profession. Um I'll ask each student they have index card they like to stand up just tell them uh have them tell you their name grade school one thing they think their school district does very well and one thing that they would like to see done >> you want to lead us off >> my name is inth grade and school. One thing I think they do really well is they give a lot of opportunities and one thing is more options. And I'm sorry, what was your name? Middle school my school as well as all the sports teams. One thing I think is >> there's one scout who couldn't join us. is uh Lucas
060Hef 11th grade Able Park High School. Uh what he believes the school does well is providing and maintaining uh a good educational environment. And one thing that could uh be better was supporting students who are looking for help uh when it comes to being bullied. >> Thank you for your time. >> Thank you guys for coming and providing actionable feedback. Perhaps Dr. Rhoden's last 10 days at O'Gon could get the >> back. All joking aside, All right, speaking of headmol, but I'm loving it. Um, recently in my high school, as you saw in the video, we had spirit week and we had our pup just having that kind of time as a class dance. >> Um, so I just wanted to touch on a couple things that Keith actually mentioned in his report I was
061saving mention now I thought the bring up the structured study halls you guys as well that seemed like a really cool idea and a great way to keep students accountable and on track something that I think I know from my school that's a great idea um I loved hearing the student leadership uh teams of the high school really being the ones to kind of drive student engagement and trying to build student belonging. That's great. You know, teachers and administrators can throw around ideas all day, but often times it's the students that give the best feedback and the best ideas. Um, and it's good to hear with the no phones that engagement way up. I'm definitely I'm seeing that in my district as well in the middle school level and some of the behavior issues as
062well, but students definitely talking, interacting more than ever before. And that's good to hear that's happening. I'm looking forward to the New York School Association conference that they'll be integrating and talking more about AI was a big topic last year as well. I'm looking forward you know, there are panels specifically on mental health, which is of specific interest of mine. So, I'm looking forward to bringing back anything I can learn about those two topics intertwined to make sure that um we're doing that in our district. But, in my experience last year at the same conference, I was just um felt like there were a lot of affirmations that our district is ahead of the curve of many others that were um present there anyway in terms of media literacy um having some of these So,
063I look forward to that. I want to thank our scouts for joining us tonight. Um, I would love to see you guys take it a step further and engage with your building ads to try and come up with a positive resolution to the things you'd like improvement on. Um, and continue to keep those lines of open. It will serve you well, especially for um the younger folks as you get into the high school years, being able to not be afraid to engage an adult. Um leadership is about being willing to listen and come to a compromise in a lot of ways. And so much about what we do in leadership of the district also stems from being able to step back and let the really talented professional folks that we have working with us here
064um do what they're best at. So, it's always nice to see success stories, but that comes from a ton of hard work and dedication from the folks that show up here every day and are putting in the long hours and the hard work and I appreciate it so much. Um, I really appreciate presentation. Um, you know, it's I know there's been challenges, but I think that, you know, everybody's focused on a good pathway forward. So, that's good. And I know they're having the I think tomorrow um at the high school. So that'll be a great opportunity for our students to see different things that are out there um you know different pathways to go forward. Um and just my 11th graward I too want to thank everyone for the presentations because I think tonight um
065especially shows how we as a district continue to excel not only from Keith's presentation about the high school and the positive attributes of that but including our administrative level and the really clean audit report we received um because I think it does take everyone involved to keep our district running smoothly in all aspects. So, it is all appreciated. So, thank you. I think there's some theater coming up in a couple weeks that I'm really excited to see. Um there's there's some some of our students I think there's there's all county stuff coming up the extent to which our kids go out and do things out in Brunswick. have to pull something together. But you know our kids can do that. So just investing high school, but it's that consistency that administration has exhibited over. We
066get these audits every year and they're boring. That's awesome. Um, but it's, you know, it's a consistency and integrity and things are not perfect. He shared some datath worked well and how it future. Thank you for coming tonight. That's all I have. All those in favor of