001Can I get a motion to exit executive session? >> Motion by Frank, a second. >> Second by Derek. All in favor? >> A motion to enter public session. >> Motion by Frank, a second. >> Second by Derek. All in favor? >> I. >> Okay. Sorry. Last minute contract to review. >> Okay. Report of student representative bill. Good evening. Um, this school year has been off to a good start so far. Um, Mr. directly involves town hall meetings and I think most of the people are following the basically on Sunday the seniors had their picnic and they worked really nice and most classes have are are doing their officer elections and for office which On October 18th, the junior class is adding a car show to the fall fest to support prom. And next Tuesday, we
002are having our first council meeting to elect officers in the next four years. Sports are underway for the fall season of soccer, cross country, girls. Um, so far girls varsity soccer is undefeated and cross country just wrapped up their season. >> Thank you. We'll move on to minutes. The regular meeting held on August 19th, 2025. Motion by Frank and second. >> I'll second. >> Second by Kim. Any comment? >> Okay. Kim, how do you? >> Yes. >> Penny, >> yes. >> Derek, >> yes. >> Frank, >> yes. >> Rebecca, >> yes. >> Elaine, >> yes. >> And I'm Yes. >> Okay. The minutes from the round table held on September 4th. I get a motion by Frank. A second. >> Second by Kim. How do you vote? >> Penny, >> yes. >> Derek, >> yes.
003>> Frank, >> yes. >> Rebecca, >> yes. >> Elaine, >> yes. >> And yes. Okay, we will move on to consent agenda items. Public comment. No. No public comment. All right. We will move on to consent agenda items A through J with K being approval of the consent agenda items with the addition of one personnel item. Um and I will read that resolution which will be included under personnel. Uh resolve that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board of education of the Burland Central School District hereby appoints Darcy Mu Makoule to the position of central services clerk effective September 22nd, 2025. Resolved, the board of education of the Berlin Central School District hereby approves the attached contract for central services clerk Darcy Mui. Any other items to pull? >> I'll make the
004motion for consent. >> All right. Motion A through J with KB in the approval of the consent agenda items by Frank. A second. >> Second by Derek. Uh Kim, how do you vote? >> Yes. >> Penny, >> yes. >> Derek, >> yes. >> Frank, >> yes. >> Rebecca, >> yes. >> Elaine, yes. And yes, as well. Right, we'll move on to the president's report. Um, so I just want to say welcome back to the new school year. Um, I've heard that it's gone off um, very nicely for the students in both buildings. Um, and then, you know, I'm going to give a pitch the um, community. I encourage every community member within our five towns to attend events in our district. Um, our events and fundraisers showcase the diverse talent of our students. So I
005request that you know the community comes out and shows support um whether it be fundraising, plays, sporting events. Um our students really highlight our communities. Um the next item is the board committees. I was supposed to do this at last meeting and I forgot to bring the list. Um, the audit committee is Frank, myself, uh, Sheila Huitt, and Andy McGuire as community members. Health is Kim. Sports is Penny, Kim, and myself. Facilities Derek, Frank, Rebecca, and then Trevor Jwitt. Um, and policy committee is Kim, and Elaine. And then the last item I have is the date for the November round table needs to be shifted from the 6th and I was thinking either November 5th which is the Wednesday or November 13th. We don't have a chance now. um Ken can work with administrators that
006need to be present at that meet them to um hold which day works better and the board can look at their schedules and get back to us on which day works best. And that's all I have for the president's report. Next is superintendent's monthly report. >> Good evening everyone. I have several things to update everyone on. first is just came into the new school year. It's off to a very smooth start. Uh welcomed teachers back in late August this year. That was the first for me in my educational career uh having an August open day. But uh we had two significant conference days teachers, staff um all departments completed their New York State required trainings and parttook in professional development including datamate 338 assessments offered by Ariel Gilbert our also excel training. Uh we're focused
007on strengthening our use of data to identify gaps and improve instruction. Want to thank our leadership team and Steven Town firehouse uh for the back to school barbecue for staff. It was really a nice way to kick off a new school year together. Uh I'd like to thank the board of education and Questar and our early learning principal Mike Burns. Uh right as school school year was starting we collaborated together and we restored one section of pre kindergarten. In my opinion, this was the right move for our young learners. I had the opportunity to visit the classroom at opening day. Um was there as well and it was really exciting to see the staff. They were excited to be there and back in the classroom and it was great meeting some of our youngest students
008in the district. If my calculations are correct, this was a class of wait for it that we welcomed in. So that was exciting for those those students um to be in the building. really great vibes to that. I think a positive way to start the year. So, thank you to everyone involved with that decision-m process to make that happen so quickly. I'm excited to announce that our district has been approved by SED, the state education department to offer the civic seal of readiness. This is a new graduation pathway for our students aligned with forthcoming portrait of graduate measures. It's going to open the door uh for more student-driven authentic learning opportunities. It's going to strengthen student good civic knowledge, their skills, and their experiences. Um, I'm a former social studies teacher, so maybe I'm overly
009excited about it. Mr. Birdsley back there is as well, but this is really some important stuff that's happening aligned with where the state is going right now with instruction. Um, a lot more information is going to be on our website thanks to Rachel Tretzky. We're uploading information on the superintendent corner, a video that work today. I think a big shout out to Mr. Eric Viner, Mr. Bob Gold, Principal Burnsley, Ariel Gilbert, Mitchell Tresky for your collaborative effort. Uh Mr. Miner, Mr. Gold especially put a lot of work in front of getting this in motion that we've got across the finish line and it's going to be just a great opportunity for our students. We'll start with seniors this year, but eventually we're going to be opening this up these opportunities which is going to really
010create partnerships in the community for students and really meaningful capstone projects and opportunity which is going to go beyond just you know lecturing in a classroom. is good really driving the instruction learning that they want to partake in. So it is some really good stuff and um looking forward to seeing more of that in the future. I want to welcome Darcy Makui to our district, our new central offices services clerk. I'm super excited to work with her closely at district offices on a daily basis. I know Colleen Mills is as well. It's been a process. Um we we've been interviewing and looking very closely position making sure we have the right skills and right um fit for the district office. Darcy um is coming from Nerk where she's a program 2 coordinator. She's got extensive
011backgrounds and skills um great references coming to us. She also um is someone who has familiarity with the district although she lives in Costa Hill which is technically Eagle Park that she actually did work in Berlin previously in the middle school high office in 2011 if my research is correct. Um she's gonna be taking on a lot of responsibilities and roles. Um data coordinator, accounts payable, contract vendor management, tax collection, sweeping floors. Just joking, but there's a lot. Welcome aboard. Uh tomorrow, Mr. Burnsley and I will be joining our ex official student board member, Miss Bella. Thank you for an update today, Bella, for unique leadership opportunity and experience. Um for our student board member, we're going to be participating with uh NISBA and NICD and our local Boseies. A lot of acronyms there. So
012New York State Education Department, New York State School Board Association, local Boseies. Um she'll be meeting with Commissioner Rosa. We're going to be doing virtually tomorrow. Um but nonetheless it's an opportunity for leadership development for for Bella and for us for her to meet the commissioner virtually and ask questions along with other exopicio uh student board members across the state. So we're excited for that opportunity tomorrow together with Bill. Lastly um I'm excited to welcome Senator Jacob Ashby to the district. Uh he's committed to meeting with myself uh in early October. Uh Colleen will be joining me. Um may also have a board member as well, but we're going to be discussing u the district uh the direction the district's going, where things are now, talk about the great things that are happening and talking
013about where we are in terms of rural schools and our fiscal challenges. Uh he's familiar with Berlin, been here before, but it's not for myself as a new superintendent to meet with him and really uh talk about how we can work together. And so I'm excited this is um this is happening here in October as well. So that's my update for today. Thank you, Ken. Very busy. Moving on to administrative snapshots. Business office. [Music] We're waiting for our audit. auditors have been into the office for records they need and we're expecting to receive a draft with any of the on that will be able to schedule the committee meeting and its MTSS. So first I want to thank the board again for a great discussion around special education and MTSS during the round table meeting
014and Sam and I have been working to gather that data for you all that we discussed and hope to have everything we can by the end of this week to share with the board. We've also had a great start to the school year and I wanted to share a little bit about some of the things that have been different this year. So, I've had the opportunity to work closely with quite a few different agencies this year, including the Office of Mental Health, Department of Social Services, and the Office of Persons with Developmental Disabilities, help support some of our families with our highest need students. So that's been a great opportunity just to be able to help the families but also to learn more about the supports that those different agencies have and help families connect
015with those supports and just kind of serve as a facilitator and go between to just help make sure that our students are getting all the support that they need both in school and out of school. I'd also like to thank Megan for bringing unified sports into the district starting with Bachi Hall this fall and thank for coaching botchi. I think this is a great opportunity for students and I will not steal her thunder because I know she's going to tell you all about it. So I will be back to her to share in more detail. >> Um so I just have a couple quick updates. So the fall ISL diagnostics started yesterday. So the students have been taking that um both the reading and the math. And then once that's complete, the data will be
016collected and analyzed for both buildings to just kind of look at our starting point and then where we can build on from there. Um, and right now I'm currently working on um MTSS meeting schedule for both buildings and getting the agenda set and sent out to the teachers who work with those students. And I am also going to be reaching out to grade levels and team leaders to schedule monthly data meetings. Um this will give me an opportunity to discuss how all students are doing um and then if they need any more resources or any more support that I can help provide them. >> Thank you. >> Transportation. So good evening everybody and welcome back. I hope everybody had a nice summer. School year started out amazingly well. All the drivers in attendance are all
017getting into their daily routines. Um, as you know, we went without a GPS for about two years. Um, and it was a it was written this at the last board meeting. We talked about implementing that at the beginning of the school year. We did. It's been growing really really well. Everybody's um uh utilizing the app. Parents and students are happy with it. I want to thank Rachel for her help in communicating that out into the community. Um we took possession of two buses that were purchased on last year's budget today. Um it took quite a while for them finally here. Um we were told hopefully by the end of the calendar year we will take possession of this year's buses. Um we've been successful in keeping the bus lane safely rotated over the years and
018um we want to thank the board of education in the community um for the continued support in that. Thank you. So installation work of the safety fence at Rland Elementary School began today. Um I expect that that work will be completed by Thursday or Friday of this week. um audiovisisual corporation has completed all the work on phase one of the projection sound and audio system upgrades that they've been doing here in the district um through the smart schools bond. Phase two involves installation of a projector and u sound system the gymnasium. I'm hoping that I can get that scheduled to be completed within the next couple of months. Um the annual PM service of the commercial boilers and the heating units at all of the rest of the facilities um has been scheduled and that
019work is expected to be performed in the next couple of weeks. The maintenance and custodial staff are taking care of routine repairs, cleaning special requests and it's certainly been a busy school. Thank you. Technology. Okay. Teacher uh desktops of both buildings have been all replaced. Most special area received computers formally from the classrooms that were updated. Windows 11 and additional memory were installed in them and they're replaced. Main office, computers, PPS department, guidance office, and the health office at BES still need to be replaced. We're working on that replacement plan. Chromebooks for students were finally distributed in their entirety on Friday, this past Friday. Uh, new phones were installed by NER. All old phones have been collected and I hope to work with Sarah to get them surplus and on the agenda for next month's
020meeting. There's still some phone issues and NERC is handling them as they're reported. They also have audio visual scheduled for the 23rd to come in district to discuss the um conferencing type equipment in the new district conference room that the superintendent would like to to have in it. Thank you. [Music] >> Hello. Um like everyone else said, we had a great start to the school year. Students are settling back in and very excited to be um at school and we're excited to have them. Um thank you for everyone for like making that a very seamless transition. Um, we started out by our student support team visiting each grade level classroom really focusing on the importance of treating others with kindness and respect. Um, we spoke a lot to everyone about um that we all have
021same dignity and how dignity for all students act will also help ensure that students feel safe at school. Our focus this year is really being on an upstand being an upstandard and standing up for yourself and standing up for others and really um being just a positive impact in our community and our schools. We also um had a great meeting with the librarians. We had a meeting with all four local librarians. Um we just had that the other day. We discussed our plan for collaboration this year in order to provide library experiences for our students. Um, we had two librarians commit to coming in at least once a month to provide programming for our students and the other librarians were also on board with volunteering on maybe an as needed or something came up coming
022in and spending time doing some volunteering um in our library. So, it's very exciting. They were excited about it and we're really excited about that collaboration with them. Um, tomorrow we're going to begin our afterchool PD hours and just take some deep dive into the standards that we teach at each grade level and identify the priority standards to focus on. Teachers will have time to discuss how they can provide support for students as well as additional educational opportunities to practice those skills. That's going to be a year-long process for us and we're excited to start begin that work tomorrow. And also um we began our ISL diagnostic testing. Um you know there were some glitches and you know getting everybody comfortable logged on but once they got logged on um students were working super hard
023really committed to doing their best and we're um looking forward to being able to get those results and really sitting down and looking at those so that we all can identify some of our major goals and improvements that we need to make for this school year. Thank you, Jody. Bland Middle High School and Athletics. Um, so for the fall season, we have about right now at 148 students enrolled with our fall sports teams. So, we're happy with that. We're able to field a JB boys soccer team, which we're very excited about. And then we were able to get a modified girls team going. So, we're excited for that. Um, we did introduce the Bachi, the unified botchi program we're really excited about. And thank you, Coach Burnsley, for taking on coaching with um, Mrs. Anel.
024Um, >> working on my motivation speeches, getting ready. We have a friendly kickoff um tournament on September 24th and then we have our first home match on September 29th. So if you're interested in coming in with Unified Boti, um we are also working on um setting our senior nights for our varsity sports. So I'll give that information to Ken so he can share that with you guys. Uh last thing, we have the student athlete climate survey out to our student athletes. So I'm just looking forward to getting responses on that. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. So I'd like to echo some of the statements. uh we're doing a lot of the same things that spoke spoken about so I won't get into that but we have had a very good transition to the beginning
025of the year and it's just not you know I I don't give credit just the building obviously my staff's been amazing but also transportation food services technology grounds we're a team and we can't do it without each other so I'd like to thank all of them as far as Tonight I'd like to break down academic focus. Uh I've been working closely with Miss Gilbert on a series of data points we'll be present to staff. Purpose is clear. Identify and narrow our learning gaps. This is about being intentional, data driven, ensuring every detainee has opportunity to rise academically. Student life and culture. Last year our senior started a new tradition. Payton has signed uh parking spots. The pride and ownership. This generates exactly the culture we want to foster. It's about students taking ownership. Uh this
026past Sunday we had families come and get involved as well. So as you know said earlier, we want the community to get involved. Here's another way that we're trying to get the community involved. Um it's already become symbol of senior unity and school spirit. Enrollments. We are currently approximately 25 students above enrollment last year. This growth reflects confidence. I'd like to think this growth reflect confidence in our school community and the hard work of our staff to create a welcoming student centered environment and leadership committees. Our building leadership team reconvenes in two weeks. This group continues to be a cornerstone of uh distributive leadership given staff, students and families a voice in our school's direction. I believe three of the board members are part of the team. So I thank you very much. We also
027have created an attendance committee to address our ongoing attendance concerns. This team will be analyzing patterns, trends, working with families, and putting supports in place so our students are present, engaged, and successful. Closing. In short, Berlin Middle School is moving forward academically, culturally, and organizationally together with our staff, students, community. We are building something special. I'd like to thank the board of education uh for all their continued support. >> Thank you. We will move on to opportunity for public comment. New business. Any members have any new business? Okay. So, the next item is the date and location of our next two board meetings. We have a round table scheduled for Thursday, October 2nd at the elementary school. The topic will be on data and our regular meeting is Tuesday, October 21st at this building at
0287:15. Any other comments? Okay. At this time, we do need a um executive session including county bills for legal purposes. Can I get a motion to um go into executive session? >> Motion by second by Derek. All in favor? >> And we do not anticipate any action after our executive session. Thank you.