001This is a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education. Good evening and welcome to the May 27th meeting of the Brighton Board of Education. This meeting is called to order. I am Sue Gasparino and I am serving tonight as president for this evening's meeting. As at our last agenda, we announced that Mr. Davis and Dr. Lee are both um unable to attend this evening. Uh to begin our meeting, we're going to start how we love to start and Dr. Dr. McGawan. Um we'll begin with our Brighton Believers Awards. Thanks so much, Dr. Gaspino. We're very excited to be presenting some awards to wonderful people this evening. The Brighton Believes Council selected these nominees to receive these awards for demonstrating the Brighton Believes character traits of integrity, respect, responsibility, kindness, and self-control.
002The award winners are students, teachers, staff members, parents, coaches, and community members. And again, we remind people the nomination form is available on the website at bcsd.org org/believers. Please nominate people today. These are wonderful examples tonight of the great work and things that happen in this community. Our first nominee, if I could ask her to come up please, would be Jordan Betts Sar. You come on up. Jordan is the director of community mobilization for Miss Julie's School of Beauty. She was nominated by BHS teacher Dan Wilson. He wrote, "Jordan is a Brighton community member who absolutely embodies what Brighton believes. Jordan has come in to present to Brighton High School's 12th grade law and government classes multiple times. Through these voluntary presentations, she has shared the remarkable impact she and other employees at Miss Julie
003School of Beauty have on victims of human trafficking in Monroe County. This amazing organization offers a lifeline to sex workers who have been victims of human trafficking and are being coerced into a life of abuse and manipulation by others. Jordan and her colleagues educate but be buticians about the warning signs of these victims, help the victims get out of their dangerous situations, get clean from the dependencies they may have picked up as coping mechanisms or through forced addiction, and even train them so they can be gainfully and legally employed going forward. She also raises awareness of human trafficking with Brighton students and offers cautionary tales to increase empathy and knowledge. She is a fabulous resource for the Brighton community and deserves to be recognized. [Applause] Congratulations. Our next nominee is Margaret Margarite Opet. Margarite, come
004on up. Miss K, if you could come on up. Kelly, if you can come on up. And uh Corwin uh Hull is a nominator. And uh Mrs. Wheeler, if you'd like to come on up, too, please. You work with [Applause] Margaret is a FRES counselor nominated by student Corwin Hall and his family. They wrote, "Mrs. OPED has been working with Corin since he started Fres as a third grader. She helped him manage big emotions and has been a helpful, friendly guide for him since they first met. When he is at school and whenever Corin might have any kind of difficulties managing those big emotions on his own, Mrs. ZPED provides him a safe and warm place to calm down and reflect. With his help, with her help, Corbin has shown dramatic improvement and has grown
005much more mature. The frequency of these outbursts, the big emotions, has decreased and when they happen, he's better at verbalizing his frustration and collecting himself faster. Good for you, Corin. That's fantastic. Because of this growth, he's able to make friends and enjoy school. He's become popular among his peers and his teacher evaluations reflect his great maturity, focus in the classroom, and super social skills. Mrs. OP's patience, kindness, insight, and hard work have done done so much to help Corwin. We really appreciate all that Mrs. OPED has done for Corin, and we would like to nominate her for this Brighton believers award. Margaret, congratulations. [Applause] Corin, our big emotion is how proud we are of you, too. That was really nice of you to do that. Uh, next up is Kristen Jaru. Kristen, could you come
006on up, please? is a long-term substitute teacher. And Shirley's up already. Colleen's up. Lonnie, if you'd like to come up, we'd love to have you also. That'd be great. Kristen nomin a Fres long-term substitute nominated by Lonnie Maserowski. They wrote, "From the very first day she joined our school community last September as a long-term substitute for my teaching partner, Mrs. Drew has been a perfect fit, embodying our core values of respect, responsibility, self-control, integrity, and kindness. For example, every single day, Mrs. Drew records an explanatory video for caregivers walking them through how to support their children with assigned math homework for families that may not have the necessary background knowledge. This is a true testament to her dedication to both students and families. She consistently meets students where they are and works hard to gradually
007increase expectations to help each child grow. Kristen even gives up her own lunch breaks, inviting students to eat with her to build social skills or to reward their work. Kristen is deeply reflective and intentional. She sets personal goals for herself like finding more humor in daily life and it has brightened not only her days but those of everyone around her. Her level of preparation and organization is so impressive, it leaves her colleagues wondering when she finds time to sleep. Yet, despite her incredible work ethic, Kristen balances her home and school life beautifully. Her actions show clearly how important both her family and her students are to her. She's not afraid to be silly to keep student engaged, and her deep knowledge and love of learning inspire everyone around her. Kristen brings unmatched effort and excellence
008to everything she does. She adapted to the fifth grade curriculum with remarkable speed and confidence, making it seem like she has been teaching it for years. She is always the first to step when a step up when a colleague needs help, no matter how big or small the issue. Her students absolutely adore her, and it is easy to see why. Kristen is the true definition of a brighten believer, and we are beyond lucky to have her. [Applause] The BHS Muslim Student Association leadership team of Aisha Usell Aram Olec and Amina Usell. Could you come on up? Nominated by Jen Wheeler. If you could come on up, Jen, please. We have a couple of high school administrators here, too. Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Ko, Mr. Bowens, Mrs. Paddock, come on up, please. Mrs. Wheeler wrote, "Our Muslim
009student association leader, student leaders helped to organize our school district's very first celebration of Ramadan and Eid aleter on March 27th. Students work collaboratively to produce a script and short film explaining the meaning behind the holy month of Ramadan and Eid celebrated by more than two billion people on the planet. We ensured that within the script, religious and cultural parallels were drawn with other popular and traditions to make their cultural sharing meaningful. Students also helped to explain the importance of doing good deeds and spreading kindness during this holy month of the year. The home room activity MSA chose was to create cards for adults and children with cancer through the organization send a smile today. Students then sorted and organized 1,200 cards of goodwill that were mailed out. The ripple effect of completing a selfless
010good deed is immeasurable. All students modeled the values of integrity, respect, responsibility, kindness, and self-control throughout the script writing, video compiling, and home room planning processes. I cannot think of a more worthy of more worthy candidates. All students helped in the spirit of selfless sharing in order to create a schoolwide student center project which endeavored to celebrate diversity, but also in helping those who are suffering from disease. Students, whether they realize it or not, helped our entire student body and staff to learn collectively about a holiday that is celebrated not only in other regions of the world, but also in the United States. The video could not have also been accomplished without the magic that is Eric Gruner. [Applause] Congratulations and wide angle there. I know. Great job. So, he often uh is behind the
011lens, but I do want to take a second and just acknowledge uh Dan puts so much of this together, works carefully with Kim also, but is always taking the pictures. Can we thank Dan Goldman for And thank you very much. That's wonderful. Congratulations to all our Brighton believers awards winners. Um, and just as a reminder as we continue through the rest of the meeting, you are all welcome to sit through um, however long it takes here. Um, but if you would like to go home and do the things that you might have scheduled for this evening, now would be a great time to step away. U, but congratulations. All right, moving on. We are going to move to the public participation portion of the evening. Um, is there anyone here tonight from the public who
012would like to speak? And if so, we'd ask you to please come to the podium, state your name and school district of residence. Seeing none, we will move on. Um we are going to move on to the approval of the agenda. Um the board here has had a chance to review tonight's agenda. Um is there a motion to pro uh to approve the agenda tonight? So moved. Moved by Eleanor. Second. Seconded by Karen. Any discussion or comments? All those in favor? The motion carries. Now on to the approval of the minutes from our meetings on both uh May 13th and um May 20th. You've had a chance to look over the minutes. Is there a motion to approve the minutes for each meeting as provided? So moved. Moved by Esther. Second. Seconded by Carrie Lynn.
013Any discussion or comments? All those in favor? Motion carries. All right. Um now very exciting. It is time to move on to our monthly reports from each school. Um we're excited that this month, as we did last year at this time, we have some special guests with us. Um and we have the opportunity to hear from our assistant principles making it happen every day in our schools. We will start tonight with Katie Schaefer from Council Rock. Thank you so much. So, I'm excited to present some of the things that Council Rock has been doing over the last month. One of the first pieces I want to talk about today is our Equacenter field trip. um and two of our classrooms uh went for the first time as a group um on a field trip and
014got to learn all about gardening, agriculture, and how to take care of horses. So, all of our students were able to participate. Our occupational therapists attended, our speech pathologists attended, um and they really had some great authentic language um and motor skill tasks along their experience. And the kids had an absolute last. It was really fun to look at all of the pictures. Um, after the field trip, we did share the pictures out on our big screens at Council Rock, so the whole school got to experience what they got to experience that day. The kids really had a blast. We also celebrated Walk, Bike, and Wheel to School Week. Our PE department is phenomenal. Um, and they celebrated with a big inflatable and the Bruin came. Uh, and we had dance parties every day to
015the point that on a couple days we had to say, "Okay, we got to get to school. It's 8:21. We got some learning to do." So, um, the kids really had a blast walking and biking to school. We celebrated teacher appreciation week. Mr. Tapin and I did a lot of baking and a lot of cooking. Um, but we had a lot of fun. We gave the teachers the gift of time, the gift of treats, the gift of a meal. Um, and then also had um schoolwide assemblies that week where we talked to um the kids all about kindness and we're building a kindness tree in our front um entryway. Um so the students can kind of connect things that we talked about in our assemblies to their acts of kindness in the classrooms. One of
016the other pieces that I wanted to talk about tonight was our author visit. Um Alicia Clpise came um and did grade level um assemblies for kindergarten, first and second grade. She's a non-fiction author who really focuses on the process of writing um stories. So she does a lot of different research. Um she goes to different countries. She tries different foods. she um really gets herself into a different culture, learns all about it, and then she's written some really awesome books. So, we actually um have each of her books now in our library. Um and so that was really fun to have her um present to all of our students. Her main message is to explore the world, to be curious, and try new things. Um so that's what she shared with our students. One of
017the things that has um been in all of our hallways um in the month of May are different um portraits of historical figures. Um we had a collaboration between our art teacher and our librarian and um they came together to do a research project um all about different important historical figures to kids and then they created these portraits that lined um our main hallway. It was a fun way to display art and connect it to their library special as well. We also had a really fun day. Uh Miss Rowan Foster got to uh shadow Mr. Tapen. Uh she did do a lot of learning that day um but had some really hard work as you see in that middle picture um to get accomplished. She helped um write the birthday cards um and pass out
018pencils. Um so she really had a fun day shadowing Mr. Tapen. some of the fun upcoming events that we have going on. We've got um play day. We've got our second grade field trip to French Road. Um and we also have our end of year family picnic. So those are some of the things going on at Kilt Rock. Amazing. Thank you so much. That's amazing. I would also like to put my name in the in the drawing to shadow Mr. Tapen for a day. So if that is arranged, that would be amazing. Um, all right. Moving on, um, to the amazing Shirley Wheeler from French Road. Good evening, everyone. All right, let's see what I'm doing here. It's right here. All right, so so much greatness happening at French Road the last these last few
019weeks. We'll start off with how we ended April with our annual staff wellness day. Uh we had our usual volleyball therapy dog. We had silent reading. Um we also had our walk along the canal which is really one of the most popular ones that people sign up for. Um this is our second year with burn boot camp and for the first time ever we actually offered art therapy uh led by one of our phenomenal art teachers, Mrs. Tobia. We also had our annual Red Wings game performance. Um it's always a hit. We love us just the joy that we see um with our families and our students at this event. And then um early May, we had an opportunity to celebrate our wonderful kitchen staff for school lunch hero day. A huge shout out to
020Tom and the kitchen staff for always serving our students with the smile. So, we had our ice cream socials. Um, they're always well attended. This year, we opened fourth and fifth grade with our their chorus concert, which many many enjoyed. Um, I also thought that combining these two events also helped families so that they would only have to come for one um one day versus two separate nights, but it was very well attended. And in addition to that, many many thanks to our art teachers, Mallerie Greger and Amanda Tobia, who put together our first um art show. Uh they worked so hard at making sure that every student had at least one piece of art for their um ice cream social. I will say that the fifth grade one was out of this world. It
021was very beautiful. You walked into the gym and it felt like an art gallery. It was very impressive. And then our first annual color run. Uh the kids really enjoyed uh despite the muddy field. Um we were very lucky that the rain held out. Um and we honestly look forward to our second annual color next year. Here are a few pictures. You could see their excitement. We even had a dog visitor join us. Many of our staff. It was a great event. And then just to highlight, we're at the time where we start getting um our second graders excited about French Road. Uh Miss Kaggin, Mr. Green, and myself. We visited Council Rock and gave them a little preview of what to expect at FRA. Um we also invited, you see him in the background,
022uh the Bruin, who helped us um answer some questions for our second graders. The Little Mermaid Musical is right around the corner. Uh here's a picture of our students who are working very hard practicing for the musical and we hope to see everyone there. We have our staff appreciation week. Um it was great. Uh we did a fill your cup theme. Um each day varied from writing a kind note of appreciation to a colleague and putting it in their cup to a water station and ice cream floats just to name a few. And then some innovative learning. So we have here Mrs. Gaffry's class in engaging in Spirro Robot Obstacle Challenge. Um they had a fantastic time engaging in this. They did it in the maker space in collaboration with Mrs. Fallon. Um using an
023iPad app, the spirit robot were controlled through block coding to manage their movement, their lights, and their sounds. Uh Mrs. Gotfried's class applied their mathematical knowledge of angles, distances, and speed to code the robots robots to navigate the course um without bumping into the little obstacles. And those are little bottle caps if you see them in there. Um the students did an excellent job at working together as a team, thinking flexibly and persisting. And then to highlight another innov innovative learning from Mrs. Jeru's class which you got to meet her earlier for the Brighton believes award. Um her class is engaging in science myth busting. So they're exploring science related questions that students have. Uh many students see things online and um that could be real, could be fake. Uh the goal is to make
024that make them more aware of how to be smart digital consumers and while also exploring different um exploring the scientific method. Um, as I walked around, kids had different questions such as, "Can they make slime from shampoo and conditioner? How many rubber bands will make a watermelon explode?" Um, to can balloons u make people fly like in the movie Up. Um, but overall, Mrs. Sheru was really good about reminding the kids that the project has to be safe at school. No watermelons. Yes. And then some press events. So, we have our third grade ELA field testing coming up this Friday. We have our fifth grade crossover activity night at TCMS. Uh, we have our field day next week. We have our second grade family orientation bingo night. Um, on the 5th we have the musical.
025We have um actually three different times. So, the first one is on the 6th at 7 p.m. And then on the 7th, we have I believe a 3M and a 7 p.m. There's two shows on that Saturday. We have our fourth grade concert, third grade uh zoo trip, and the fifth grade seabbze trip. We have our fifth grade celebration, and then the last day of school for this year. And that's all. Any questions? Well done. Amazing, Shirley. And we appreciate the the STEM emphasis today at the K5 level. So, that was awesome. Really cool to see the robots and the science myth busting. Very cool. Had an excellent time. Can you explode a watermelon with rubber bands? Oh, yes, you can. Okay. Y we'll try that next next week. I don't think they'll try it
026at press, but we'll see. Very cool. Thank you so much. Okay. Uh moving on to TCMS, we have Sean Brooks and Ashley Edwards. And the amazing Betsy Paddock. [Laughter] Sorry. Good evening. I am Sean Brooks here to present about uh what's going on at TCMS. So, we have a lot going on. You never realize how much you have going on until you put together this show for you guys. So, this explains why we're all always so tired. So, I'll start with our sixth grade Greek banquet. So, I visited a sixth grade classroom. Well, I was invited in a sixth grade classroom, but they invited me at the end, so I didn't get to share the food with them. So, they celebrated their unit about Greek culture and mythology with the sixth graders that day. As
027you can see, they get dressed up in their garment and they have, um, Greek food to celebrate and things like that. For seventh grade, um, activity nights. So, this captures the last activity night they had. Um, they went a little old school. They brought the twister challenge board. Um, so that was pretty fun. They had a good time. As you can see, the open gym is always a always the popular one. And then I didn't get any pictures of the dance floor this time around, but that's a popular one, too. So that was our seventh grade activity night. And then our eighth graders had their um more of a formal dance. The PTSA really jazzed it up this year. Um as you see, they made a little red carpet for them as they came in.
028Um all of the kids have grown tremendously from sixth to 8th grade. So I wish I had more pictures to display that. But we designed our atrium and balloons and it was really sort of a dress up gala. So that was a pretty good time as well. Um then we have Brighton Town Clean Sweep. This year we combined with the high school to do clean sweep around our campus. Um so that was a pretty good time. The rain held out. It rained literally maybe an hour after we finished. So um it held out. We did good. They um the kids had a nice time. Um survivors play. JCC put on a play for our eighth graders. Um it was very interesting. It was about an hour and a half played. Um, and they allowed time
029at the end for students to ask questions and a lot of students asked some pretty engaging questions. So, these are just a few pictures of the cast, um, different scenes from the play. Good evening everybody. I'm Ashley Edwards, also one of the assistant principles at 12 Corners Middle School. And it is really nice to get an opportunity to speak about all the fun things that are happening in such a short period of time. But um this past month we also were fortunate enough uh Mrs. Ellis and Dr. Wagstaff who are co-chairs of our diversity committee of the PTSA were um able to secure a guest speaker for our 1214 and our um 15 to16th grade ELA classes and uh Miss uh Stephanie Parites Maraposa came in and presented to the students and she did this
030really interactive engaging um experience where students were able to ask questions. She also read to them the book um called Just Ask by Sonia Sotomayor. Um and it was a really great opportunity for students to ask questions and to for her to talk about how celebrating our differences makes us all better um and part of the community. Additionally, we had both of our jazz bands led by Claire D. Feliz and Justin Perez um perform at the Lilac Festival. students had an amazing time. Um along with Chris Cole's select choir this year is a new um singing extracurricular activity that we have at TCMS that worked really hard for their performances and had an absolute blast. We also celebrated teacher appreciation week early on in the month with this VIP Hollywood stars treatment. So each day
031had kind of a mini sub theme within the theme for the week. You'll recognize the red carpet on the bottom there that was used for earlier things that then they repurposed for this week to honor the teachers and all of the hard work and dedication to our students. We redid our faculty lounge um to honor that. And you can see some of the lights, camera, action, VIP treatment that they received. Oh, and two other things that I don't have slides for. Sorry. Um, one was brighten your wardrobe came to all of our lunches which was really great and students had an opportunity every student that wanted something or was interested in looking and seeing was able to pick something up um and take something home and even for younger siblings which was really um sweet
032and thoughtful. And also we had our five go transition meetings. So Dr. Edmonds along with one of our school counselors Michella Peters and many of our TCMS students went over to FRES to present to the fifth graders and allow them the opportunity to ask any questions about coming to the middle school next year. So that was a really great opportunity too. Hi everybody, Betsy Paddock here and I am the administrator for TCMS and BHS for the Aspire program. So it's great to be working with both teams here. So, I love this because I get to talk about these trips that we go on as part of the eighth grade um world languages. So, the German trip um who's put that is put together by Maryanne Walter, one of our German teachers who does a fantastic
033job. Um from May 14th to 16th, they went to Stow and they all stayed at the Vont Trap family home. All of you know that name because the memoir that was written was the inspiration for The Sound of Music. And some of the highlights for this trip is that they do a tour of the grounds. Um they go to Ben and Jerry's factory tour. Um they tour a maple sugar shack and they go to Lake Champlain, the chocolate factory that is there. And they also have an Austrian buffet um which was quite enjoyable from what I understand. And then I was able to be on the Spanish trip to New York City. Um it was a little bit rainy, but that didn't dampen anybody's spirits. We had 77 students and two buses. So all of
034you are thinking, "Oh my gosh, how did you manage all those kids in New York?" Of course, we did it beautifully because we always do. Um it was a jam-packed few days and Heather Morgan did a fantastic job of putting this trip together. Um, the tour guide was a woman that we had last year. Her name is Amy and she is from Washington Heights. So, she was born and raised there. She even showed us where she grew up as we were heading up to the Cloysters. Um, some of the highlights for this trip were the salsa dancing at the Alvin Alley Studios. So, we had a professional dancer that worked with the kids. We had dinner at both Cuban and Mexican restaurants. We toured Ellis Island. We took a tour of the cloysters. Um, we
035went to the top of the rock, which is definitely the best view of New York City. Um, we tooured the Living Garden, which is a new structure that they put up in 2021, I believe. Um, tooured Central Park and just had a great time with the kids, and there were so many kids that had not been to New York before, and it was highly enjoyable. And then finally, we had the TCMS talent show uh last Thursday and it was the largest crowd that we've ever had. Um there were 13 acts, there were pianists, there were violinists, singing, dancing. We had it all. Um just amazing. And I'm always so impressed at the courage it takes for middle schoolers to really step outside their comfort zone and get on stage in front of all their peers.
036Um, we also had a panel of judges, which are our some of our teachers, and they get all dialed up and they walk out and they make up a bio, and it was so much fun. And, um, Kristen Haligan and Erin Bertner did a fabulous job. And then we had two MC's that are fantastic performers in their own right. Um, Katie Lair and Taylor How. So, they came over and MCed and they even did a little number themselves, which was really fantastic. And then I have some upcoming dates here. And as you can see, we have many um concerts coming up. We have the crossover night this Friday. Um we have the spring celebration, the eighth grade bonfire, which we will say farewell to our eighth graders as they go over to BHS. Um and
037then we have the TCMS play, 30 Reasons not to be in a play. Um sixth and seventh grade students on the last day of school will go to Seabbze. Eighth graders will go to Darian Lake. And I always like to say, you know, with with these concerts and um for the plays and the musicals, it's like that is their game. So, we want to make sure that we encourage people to come out and support them. So, thanks so much. Thank you so much, T. Are you going to stay? That's why I didn't introduce you before. I'm just going to stay here with the high school. All right. So, let's bring up to join the amazing uh Betsy Paddock. Uh Mark Lincoln and Jerrell Bowens representing Brighton High School tonight. Oh, and Matt Como. I'll get
038this by the end of the night. We're gonna have everybody mentioning Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about all the great excitement that's happening in the high school throughout the month of May. uh especially with a variety of student life events going on, whether it's senior nights at our athletic events uh or concerts, there's so much excitement in the building. That said, it's also a critical time for our students academically as they finish up a lot of class pres class projects, um AP exams, gearing up for final exams in a few weeks. So, no shortage of energy at our high school right now. And this is a little snapshot of the great things we have going on. So, uh, as, uh, AP Brooks mentioned earlier, uh, we had the
03922nd annual Brighton Clean sweep few Saturdays ago, uh, the rain did hold up, which was awesome. We had over 65 students come and, uh, share a a donut or or a bagel together and participate in a great community event. Uh, all for for a great cause. Um, we also had just last week our senior decision day. A big shout out to our counseling center for organizing this great event. Uh on the surface, a great time for seniors to get together and take pictures and talk about colleges, careers they're going into, trades, military, gap years, whatever they're doing and excited about for the future. Um but on another level, it's a great opportunity for our underassmen as well to see all the great places that BHS can take you. Um and it's just great to hear
040the freshmen asking questions and seeing all the things they're doing throughout this decision day. But our counseling department does an incredible job bringing a special level of excitement to this great event. Um and then also we want to include this um picture here. This was a ice cream social we had last week sponsored by our friends of Rachel and our culture climate leadership team. This was one of about five afterchool events that we had this year open to the entire building uh that became really popular. As you see, we had over 70 kids uh come for this ice cream social. Um and just a great opportunity for kids who are really busy in the evening. Sometimes hard to commit to a club or a big special event. Uh but they certainly can stop by after
041school for some ice cream with some friends before they go home. Uh and these are things that we hope to continue to do more of next year as um a lot of students are reporting really positive experiences with it. So I'll turn it over to Betsy once again. So, um, I had the opportunity to go to the junior prom and once again it was at Aronda Quay Country Club. The kids had an absolutely fantastic time. It was one of those nights where it started to rain and then it stopped raining and then I think they had some sun for some pictures. Um, we had about 300 kids who were there and around quite certainly didn't disappoint. It was beautiful. The food was excellent. The kids were really well behaved. The DJ was fantastic and they
042all had a really amazing evening. Um, the senior bash. So, this was Thursday, May 22nd from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. There were 200 seniors that were in attendance. And, um, highlights were the whole entire first floor had a miniature golf course set up. So, that was really fun. Empanadas were a huge hit. And to end the night, they had a mentalist this year, not just a hypnotist. And the mentalist is a mind reader and a hypnotist. And um the kids really seemed to enjoy that. And they, you know, it it's just such a huge tradition at Brighton High School and it was really neat to see it in action this year. And then finally, we have Springfest. And this was actually the first spring fest that I was able to participate in because I was
043over at the high school before during CO and I think it all got cancelled. So we have, as you can see here, an abbreviated schedule in the morning for classes and then um we had a whole bunch of different activities going on for a couple of hours there. As you can see, um it was indoors, but that did not stop people from having a fantastic time. Um, we had basketball, cornhole, face painting, snacks. There was a huge something that resembled like Hungry Hungry Hippo but with people which was the kids loved playing it. And it ended with a talent show. Um, and the talent show is was for both staff and for students. And the fourth episode of the BH BHS office um came out and the kids really seemed to love it and it
044was just a great time. And I also want to say, you know, you do a fantastic job with all of the clubs and activities and and all of these special events, the amount of time that goes into it. And then we have the ball coming up um this weekend as well. And I also want to say um you know, Jabrell, everything that you've done with APs and you're going to talk about that and then Matt, so much that you do with scheduling, this is a really wonderful team to work with as well as the people at the middle school. So, thank you. Thank you. Uh well, good evening everybody. I'm Jerro Bowens. I oversee testing at BHS and we just completed three weeks of AP testing. Uh this year uh was the first year that
045AP our college board has offered hybrid or fully online testing. And uh I'm sure there's a lot of things going through your mind when you hear about that. uh and we did experience some some issues that you're probably thinking about. Um but overall it was a great experience for all 533 of our students who took over,200 exams over a three-week span and as you can imagine that takes a lot of planning and preparation and flexibility. So I I really do want to thank our custodial staff at BHS and at central office and I want to thank all the teachers who did their part in prepping our students to be prepared to sit for those exams. Uh special shout out to Sandy Helman who came out of retirement to help me uh with these uh so
046I'm very very thankful for her um and I'm looking forward to working with the next person to get that going for next year. Uh but on to June exam. So it went went pretty well this year. Hi everybody. I'm Matt Ko bat and cleanup here for the team. Uh here to talk about the construction projects that are all going very well. Um we have a number of them as you know coming up over the next couple of years. We'll highlight the two that are actively underway. Uh we are building the new entrance to door 20 which is going to be also the uh new attendance office. It uh it's bumping out, you know, the construction zone into the parking lot. But that whole uh rerouting of traffic over there has gone really well. Um it
047really seems to be moving along. We're excited to have that entrance. It'll be a a nicer way for the students to uh come in every day and have the attendance office right there as everyone is uh right there. Security and attendance right in the door 20 area. We're also setting up for work on the tech wing. So, if you take a look there, that part of the building near the creek is fenced off at the moment and they are getting ready to uh start work on the tech area. you look at the drawing, it's going to be really pretty amazing. Um, and everything seems to be moving ahead on schedule, which is also super exciting. We're always very happy about that. We also have many, many upcoming events, uh, some concerts. We have our, uh,
048sports signing in the gym, the fashion show, the second annual, that's super exciting. Um, awards night is coming up on the 11th. Amazingly, uh, we're really close to the last day of classes on June 16th and graduation on June 24th. Thanks so much. Thank you. So much going on. Thank you so much to our assistant principles for coming out tonight. Like your passion for students really shines and we're so appreciative of all your work. So, thank you very much for presenting tonight and for all the work you do. Um, moving on, we are going to talk about um our blueprint. And so the Brighton blueprint, which you hear us talk about throughout the year, is really um the roadmap, our roadmap of the district. It's the annual plan that keeps us focused, aligned, and clear
049in our goals, our objectives, and our work. Uh this week we'll actually be sending information out to our community asking for their input into next year's plan and asking for community volunteers to participate in the planning process. Tonight we are very excited to learn more about the work completed for this year. And so here to share with us tonight are Dr. Allison Rio, Diana Spagnola, Lua Limo, and Jeff Green. Welcome. Thank you. So excited to be able to take a look at I'm going to highlight mental health, wellness, and student support. I'm going to be highlighting some aspects between the last time we came out and shared, but also celebrating the work that's gone on all year and the work that will be continuing to next year because it's not a necessarily an end goal.
050We continue, we refine, we become more targeted and specialized with where we want to head next. So just to highlight here uh just last week the district mental health team met with uh the URMC team and there'll be more information coming about an upcoming program called space supporting parenting parenting I can never say that fast for anxious childhood emotions referral information will be on its way but that'll be beginning this summer for parents in particular hopefully in person but we will also be able to offer some um opportunities for families both virtual as Well, we're really excited about this partnership and again another example of how our partnership with URMC and Galisano continues to grow and expand to support the needs of our parents in our community. Uh Mr. Green's going to be talking about
051I know in his slide coming up about how the mental health steering committee coordinated with him in terms of updating a family resource page. Really excited about that. So get again for our parents to be able to get information um more easily and more readily. Um another shout out to Mrs. Paddock and uh parent university. It has been extremely wellreceived highlighting there the uh three different parent university sessions that were uh provided and offered this school year. More to come on topics that will be identified next year. But I've been sitting in many different forums where whether it's parents or leadership or staff asking to continue parent university. So full steam ahead and thank you Betsy for your work on that. um continuing to look at curriculum in the area of social emotional learning. Um
052and you can see some of those pieces highlighted there. Also continuing to look at our professional development day. Our district mental health team spent superintendent conference day taking a deeper dive into the alignment of this social emotional curriculum and the mental health transfer goals really drilling it down even more specific to where uh activities and lessons by building would be had. I didn't sit in that. I'm looking for some confirmation for people over there, but I know that they said if if you're doing this, for example, at French Road, we should be doing this particular lesson at the middle school or vice versa. I'm just giving examples of that, but they really um took that to a much more detailed level and we appreciate the work on that. The mental health program evaluation will be
053continuing through the rest of this school year, this summer, and into the fall. So, more to come on data that comes out of the social emotional learning survey. We had members of our program evaluation team come together to identify and look at the questions that went out to the community, went out to staff, went out to students as well. What will be the questions that will help move the work forward or help us with our program evaluation? And we are planning on some student focus groups to be had in the fall that will help also with our program evaluation there as well. Special educators K through 12 were able to be together on superintendent conference day so we could take a look at all together. It was the first time in a very very long
054time where everyone was together at district office to we could ensure some consistent practice, ask questions, people got to see each other and meet people they maybe have never been in the same room with before. And we continued our professional development series around the 1214 programming in terms of some of the curriculum that we're using. That's going to continue into this summer and the fall. And we're really targeting our professional development not only for TAs to develop much more specific and targeted professional development specific to programs, but what our parents and our families are seeing and our TAs are saying that is needed. And then really collaborating with the teaching learning center around a professional development series specific to special education and training needs there for years one, two, and three. And we're really excited.
055I was invited by uh the special education PTSA group uh a couple weeks ago. Carolyn, you were there in that session and it was really great to be invited there. It was very, very well attended. Um, very excited for structuring our meetings for next school year and forums that will meet the needs of all of our families. Thank you. You all right? There's so much to say about the whole year in this short time. So, I see Diana going through it so quickly, but so much amazing work has happened and I'm going to try and do the same. But um it almost doesn't do it justice. We've done so many great things through our blueprint work this year. But in terms of academic excellence curriculum, we've accomplished a lot of great work this year. Um
056as I mentioned earlier in the year, we moved to putting all of our curriculum and unit maps into a new program, empower school, and we were able to do that at large throughout the school year. And on our March um conference day earlier this year, our sixth through 12th grade teachers did a curriculum audit to see what was there and what was missing and kind of help guide our work as we move forward into the summer this year. But we are moving forward in really awesome shape and also on our superintendent's conference day continuing our work around transfer goals and um the opportunity in the spring to look at student work for our 612 teachers together to see how students work is progressing over the grade levels and seeing what should we should be thinking
057about as we revise our curriculum. And then at the K5 level, we had choice breakout sessions for our teachers in ELA, math and technology, and social studies based on the findings from our student work analysis that was completed by our instructional leaders. But our K12 instructional leadership team at large led all of that work, all of our teacher leaders. So awesome, awesome work from them and all of our teachers who participated. And the the other focus we've had this year is trying to take a look at our curriculum for academic intervention services at K through 8. And we held a committee this year and each building council rockfres and the middle school has left with recommendations for their work. So they all look a little bit different depending where they are and the next steps
058that have to happen, but um we've left some recommendations to continue that work moving forward in each of those school buildings. In addition, we've made some great progress around our equitable grading practices at 612 as highlighted in the blueprint. Um Dr. Edmonds and Julie Cop led a PD at the March conference day to kick off that work. um and have been really rocking and rolling moving that forward with the staff there. And huge kudos to um the professional learning team and Dr. Hall at the high school and everyone who's been part of that work. Um they have put together just a phenomenal document that outlines equitable grading practices put together really with a lot of input from the teachers and what's actually happening in the classrooms and their voices are just all throughout this whole
059document and the building will unpack that together as part of their work next school year now that it's complete. Additionally, the district tech committee spent the year working on gathering input from different stakeholders around the schools and um the community to kind of me make a recommendation on what should be next around technology guidelines and expectations which is kind of tricky because you know it looks very different at different levels. Um but this summer we will be rolling out um through professional learning for all teachers on our district professional days some technology guidelines that really highlight this edtech triangle here. I won't go into de in too much detail right now, but the focus of our work will be around um looking at the different levels of technology and having teachers think about the different
060uses for it and why they are using technology to make sure that it's purposeful and thoughtful and really more on the transformative level as much as possible, you know, and and the other levels you might touch upon for different things. So, we have some great PD that we're putting together for this summer and huge thanks to our assistant principles who sat on the district tech committee with um Dr. Glazer and Eric Jordan and myself and I think we'll be able to have some more clear guidelines that will be rolled out this summer. In addition, we are wrapping up just putting together homework practices and making a recommendation for each grade level um at K8 and we will roll those out before the start of the school year. So, we're finalizing that as we before June
061and we'll share that with teachers as we get into next school year. And then, as the blueprint mentioned, we had a strong focus on professional learning around artificial intelligence over this school year. The curriculum council did a full year study of looking at the different um pieces around artificial intelligence that we should be thinking about, which has grown and changed every single meeting we had as new information came out. really excited because as a result of our work, we've decided to purchase and we have purchased um an artificial intelligence tool for our students and our teachers to use be beginning next school year. Magic school it's called. And again, our summer professional development for all of our teachers will be a training on how to use that as well as guidelines and um barriers that
062we should be thinking about, you know, to help keep everyone safe as they're using artificial intelligence, but also to encourage the use of this tool as a for teaching and learning. We had quite a few program evaluations this year. So, I just want to briefly briefly touch upon them. You heard from Diana already that the mental health program evaluation is continuing into next school year, which is fantastic because just because the school year's over doesn't always mean that the work is over. It depends when it ends, right? So, she's going to continue on. music is wrapping up um by the end of this month with some recommendations, but we've had two program evaluations wrap up already this school year and two of our board members sitting on those. So our health program evaluation, thank you
063Eleanor for being part of that with our team, but the team has come up with some awesome recommendations. And one that I just want to highlight that I I just love is continuing to build a collaboration with health, physical education, and mental health because a lot of the work they do together is around decision- making, goal setting, things that we should be using common language for our students, you know, no matter what kind of program they're in. So there'll be some summer work around that, but some other um highlights here you can check out as well. And in world language, thank you to Karen Hatch for joining that group. Um we also came up with some just amazing recommendations. The team was so fantastic. We got to talk to kids. We got to talk to
064teachers. We looked at some survey results and um you know came up with some great recommendations. But really their their main work has been aligning their curriculum across the grade levels. That's been a project they started undertaking really seriously a few years ago and has just been growing just like crazy. So really proud of their work and the collaboration across 612 world language teachers as well. And now I will pass it over to Jeff Green for the student and family experience. Thanks. Thank you. Good evening everybody. Hope we're doing well. I know there's a lot of information at night. So I would like to start by saying thank you to the assistant principles. you really did a great job of being very very specific about all of the wonderful things that we have going on.
065So, a lot of this is going to be um a little redundant, but that's the whole purpose. Um so, it was mentioned earlier that we had our first second grade transition assembly at Council Rock for our rising third graders, which we're really really excited about. We have a ton of uh transition activities that have been happening the past several weeks, continuing tomorrow. We have some of our student leaders from the high school coming over to talk to our eighth graders about what life is like at BHS. When it comes to student leadership, I know that the team at TCMS has been working on their CCLT uh work and are planning on wrapping up that work and looking at uh input from students on ways to continue to make the culture and climate at uh 12
066Corners Middle School a better place for for everybody. The inclusive language protocol has expanded throughout every buildings. our teams at TCMS and FRES had a little bit of a um head start beginning last school year. Um but I know that uh at Council Rock and at uh BHS introduction has been made with Kylin Fetline, our partners at Boseies to introduce the concept to the staff with the idea of expanding it more uh in the coming years. school based equity teams are wrapping up their work, continue to find ways um to meet the needs of the individual needs of students and families that may need additional support, finding ways to engage um finding to be proactive around some of the channels we're facing. I know that I was working with uh Danielle and her team around
067suspensions um and disproportionality with that. Uh we also met recently as a district to get feedback on what it's going to look like next year of some some areas that we can uh focus on. A big one is transfer uh students and families, finding ways to support them. That was loud and clear from a lot of the committee members and we're looking forward to uh opening up the putting our minds together to figure out ways to continue to engage our new families. So, as you heard loud and clear, there's a lot going on uh this time of year. the past couple of months. It is the time of celebration, the time of concert seasons, um ice cream socials, a lot of different ways where our students and families have an opportunity to engage both in
068the district and out at different community events. Um the we recently sent out the family climate and culture survey. We want to continue to get feedback for our families. We had a really great number of families that responded to us. plan on meeting over the summer to look at the data and continue to try to make our school environment um the best it can be for all of our students and families. Um myself and Dan have also been looking at communication um when it comes to the way that we are communicating with families. We are continuing to update the website. Um some of the old ways that we have communicated with we're going to be taking off um and continuing to look at ways to engage families with uh parent square. And last but not
069least, I know it was already mentioned with the awesome fun run um that we have. It was an amazing event to engage our community and families and students. And luckily I was able to escape without getting any color on my clothing. Um but uh most importantly that dollar amount is really really connected to the uh student access piece. $12,000 is a ton of money. And just to, you know, friendly reminder everybody, the student support fund, we get all of that that those funds from our great PTSA who are amazing partners and Colleen and Shirley. What an amazing event for the whole community. But more importantly, those funds are going to be able to go directly to students and families that need it um the most. So, we're really appreciated appreciative of that event and looking
070forward to continuing it. I don't know what I just did. And then last but not least, uh Diana kind of mentioned this in partnership. So, I got to give a shout out to Dan. He is the magician when it comes to the website, but working collaboratively with our mental health staff members to really consolidate all the different resources that we have. Um, shout out to Matt Goodman as well and uh the steering committee members to really find a one-stop shop for a lot of the resources that our families can go to uh in moments of need. So, that is now live and really really excited about um we also put an announcement out to the community that it is live and hopefully it'll make things easier for families to be able to access um some
071of the outside resources and internal resources uh instead of having to go to different places. So, with all that being said, looking forward to um my five minutes of fame when we do our uh blueprint planning and looking forward to continue to work together uh to support students and families. Good evening. And from the operations standpoint, again, our three big rocks within the operations uh area, safety and security, continuity of operations, and investment in human capital. Um, as we presented over the course of the year, we spent a lot of time in safety and security. uh director Theresa Moer has done an outstanding job putting together a comprehensive training program for really all stakeholders and that's our commitment to partner with all our administrative team to again um you know do a gap analysis where
072do we need to spend more resources where do we need to spend more time in the objective of always being prepared. So she's done excellent work on that and I thank all of our uh leaders uh here tonight for that as well. The one thing that came up in our last leadership meeting um specific to training um from our administrative team is we're we're great. We're great with our tabletop drills, but we need to test ourselves a little bit more. We've got to get the adrenaline flowing a little bit. We got to really test how we're going to do um in a crisis situation. So, that was a challenge to myself and to Teresa. And uh one of the steps towards that is to participate in I love you guys training, which is more of
073a largecale training um exercise, two-day exercise. is we're partnering with Honey Eye Falls, um our first responders, and just really looking forward to uh continuing to always be prepared and how we're going to execute um God forbid something was to happen. Along with the continuity of operations, we've spent a lot of time on the technology and building systems piece of it from a continuity of operations standpoint, but we've also challenged our departments and our buildings um just really documenting what our standard operating procedures are so we can again always be ready should there be some disruptions. Our principles and administrative team have done an excellent job, excuse me, with just coverage schedules, getting our directors into the building, making sure they're aware of the happenings within each of the buildings. So again, next person up
074when needed in investment in human capital. That's something that we're going to recommit to over the summer and really look closely at uh the objectives within that uh blueprint area. Thank you. Excellent job everyone. Thank you so much for that overview to all our presenters. Um and that really is I mean you packed an awful lot of material into a very short amount of time. Um and again it's great for us to review you know the plan that keeps us focused. This is why we do what we do. So really appreciate all your time and presentation. Um, next on our agenda is the approval of new textbooks for the 2025 2026 school year. Um, and Dr. Rio has previously sent us a memo um, regarding these approvals that you've had a chance to review. Can
075I please have a motion to approve the new textbooks as recommended? So moved. Moved by Karen. Second. Seconded by Eleanor. Any discussion or comments? All in favor? I um motion carries. Um moving on, I would now like to ask for a motion to approve the tenative agreement for successor contract between the Brighton Central School District and the Brighton Teachers Association. May I please have a motion to approve that? So moved. Moved by Eleanor. Second. Seconded by Carrie Lynn. Any discussion, comments? Dr. McGawan, anything to add? Yeah, I just would uh like to thank first of all the BTA for their partnership with us in this effort. Uh every time we sit down to do this work, we want to make sure that people are fairly and thoughtfully supported uh from a compensation perspective and that
076we continue to mutually focus on the conditions that allow people to do their very best work for kids, which they continue to do. So from their team and the work of our team and our board president, Larry Davis, of course, was on that team representing all of you. um as of course were uh us administratively, Dr. Rio, Mr. Lammo, myself and we had a very good working relationship with the group and came to a place that we think is uh again thoughtful, effective, fair, but provides the right conditions for people to do the great work, continue to do the great work that they're doing. So, thank you. Excellent. Thank you so much. Um all those in favor, we did it first and then we did the discussion. It's a little different. Um motion carries. Um,
077we have the opportunity to participate in cooperative bids for a variety of supplies and food and beverage items. Um, I would like to please have a motion to approve the cooperative bids and I am going to be reading the names of all the cooperative bids and then I'll ask for um a motion to approve in a second. So, the cooperative bids are for ice cream and frozen desserts, school lunch paper and plastics, for food, for beverage, fresh produce, and athletic supplies. May I please have a motion to approve those as read? So, moved. Second. Moved by Eleanor, seconded by Karen. Any discussion or comments? I do like to tell Peggy when she asks me why I what I do at the school board, I say, "Well, sometimes I I approve how much ice cream we
078buy and the toilet paper." and she's like, "Well, okay. So, tonight, Peggy, this one's for you." Those are exceptionally meaningful things to do. I won't ask what we prioritize, but both are fantastic and certainly the most glamorous aspect of our of our jobs here. Yes. Um, all those in favor. I The motion carries, especially for the ice cream, don't acknowledge that you participate in purchasing the brown towels in the bathroom. So, I wouldn't recommend taking credit for that. Paper products wasn't on this list this time, so we're good. Um, finally, we have several items on our consent agenda tonight, including personnel changes, fundraising activities, and several generous gifts. You will hear me talk for a long period of time because there have there are several generous gifts. I will read them and then I will
079ask for a motion. So, the gifts being presented tonight um is a gift in the amount of $200 from Brighton Education Cultural Life Endowment Fund at Rochester Area Community Foundation for the D. Bradley Smith Art Awards for 2D and 3D art. Also, a gift of two three tier spectator bleachers from Tom Braun, BHS varsity softball coach to the Brighton Central School District. Additionally, a gift in the amount of $1,275 from the Brighton football boosters to the Brighton Central School District Athletic Department to support to support the varsity football team to be used specifically for the purchase of a go root system. Also, a gift in the amount of $5,000 from Frank Spezio to the Brighton Central School District 12 Corners Middle School to the Aspire program. Also, a gift in the amount of $331 from
080the Brighton Lacrosse boosters to the Brighton Central School District Athletic Department to cover the cost of field rental for the lacrosse team and a gift in the amount of $3,000 from Friends of the Arts in Brighton to the Brighton Central School District Visual and Performing Arts Department. These funds are to be used for Brighton summer arts scholarships. May I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Moved by Esther? Second. Seconded by Carrie Lynn. All those in favor. I. The motion carries. Before we adjourn tonight, I would like to thank Joy, Mike, and Bill who have helped us run this meeting smoothly. Um especially with an acting interim president tonight. Appreciate you. Um Dr. McGawan, anything that you would like to add? No, just a well, yes, I guess I shouldn't say
081no and then add something, but I I'll say uh just a thanks to our community for their support of the the proposed school budget. Um which, you know, 83% of those who voted approved and uh we appreciate their engagement in the process, but also really exceptional support, positive support in our community for the work that best supports students and staff going forward. Congratulations to our returning board member, Karen Hatch, on her reelection. Eleanor, thank you for your service, of course, and I know we have our newest board member, Clayton Jones, who's in the audience tonight. We're excited for him to join us on this really amazing team as well. So, congratulations to all of you, but a special thanks also to our our chief financial officer, the leader of this work, too, which is Lu
082Limo for his work in presenting such a thoughtful budget that helps us now, but for long into the future as well. So, thank you. Absolutely. Um, with that, may I please have a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting? So moved. Moved by Eleanor. Second. Seconded by Carrie Lynn. Um, thank you very much. Um, thank you, Sue. Thank you so much, Dr. All in favor of adjournment. I motion carries. We are adjourned. This has been a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education.