Board of Education Meeting February 25, 2025

001this is a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education good evening everyone and welcome to the February 25th meeting of the Brighton Board of Education uh tonight might look a little different up here at the deis because at the last board meeting um the Board of Education appointed me to officiate this meeting um in the absence of both board president Davis and vice president Dr Lee so with that I am calling the meeting to order and our first agenda item like usual is public participation is there anyone present who wishes to speak during public participation seeing no one we will move on um first up is the approval of the agenda you've all had a chance to look it over is there a motion for approval of the agenda so moved

002moved by Karen second second and by Eleanor and the motion is carried is everyone in favor is there anyone oos no seeing no one that move uh motion is carried and we will move on to the approval of the agenda nope the minutes um you've had a chance to look over the minutes from the last February 11th business meeting um is there um a motion for approval of the minutes so moved moved by Carrie Lynn second second and by Esther all those in favor I any opposed no then that motion is carried all right um as everyone is aware as we start this meeting um we are KNE deep into the development of the proposed 2526 budget um tonight Dr Macwan and Mr Lu Lio will be providing us with a budget update um and

003also uh please note that there will be this presentation tonight but we are also hosting a community Forum directly following our board meeting tonight at 7 p.m. where anyone can also come to provide feedback um and receive some of the same information regarding the bud um which can be shared this evening um we also post all of the materials on our website um where any interested Community member can also find the dates and times um of our upcoming forums and a variety of opportunities to engage on the topic of preparing our budget so I will kick it over to Dr mcowan thanks so much uh Dr gasparino so this is a very brief update one to provide you with some feedback that we've received from the community which we will also be sharing at the

0047 o'clock session uh hence the brevity of this and then uh some updated financial information that Lou will also share after I have a chance to kind of outline where we're at and what the community uh feedback was um to put it just broadly and uh generally for everybody we're experiencing significant challenges and they are really due to significant cost increases for the most part revolving revolving around health insurance Transportation some of the issues that we really can't control uh these are things that that you know we negotiate and we work through but ultimately there these are not cost increases that we can make choices about these are mandated types of programs and services and the other Big Challenge we have is the current environment and to be very honest with you the threat of

005tariffs we're seeing the cost of goods and services increase significantly and it is putting significant pressure on uh spending and our ability to continue to support the programs we've put in place over the last several years and that's kind of the more Global concept again Lou will give you more details as it stands right now and I'll speak to what the community feedback has been the topics really we're looking at is the impact of the executive budget so what the governor has proposed so far and uh local Revenue projections so we know that the cap keeps our revenues really low but we're thinking in terms of what is the state saying and we're not hearing anything about any significant changes to what the governor has already proposed the final tax cap computation again keeping those

006local revenues pretty low and then our update on our spending projection Staffing benefits Bose SE supplies and services and we're starting with Community feedback we put out the budget survey it is uh still open through the end of this week we've had a significant number of people respond at this point 458 which is uh 200 people more than responded last year and it is still open for the rest of the week so we do want to hear from people and help understand how people feel about what we should be prioritizing in our spending plan I won't read all the numbers at you again this is all posted people can go through this material it's much more qualitative than it is quantitative but this slide just represents who has responded to the survey it's pretty even

007across the board relative to uh the different School communities across the four buildings staff parents there's not one group over another that's dominating uh the results of the survey at this point what is interesting is in this format for last year and this year we've used their survey format different than a regular exchange where you see see every thought and you rate every thought we are asking simply for feedback that we see and people are indicating a satisfaction score at the beginning of the survey the gray and the green are essentially either satisfied to extremely satisfied thought exchange terms it in some different ways around passive versus dissatisfied you know we'd love to see everybody in the nine and 10 category I think it's important just to think about this relative to if somebody gave

008you a survey and said how satisfied are you score 1 to 10 I would say anybody rating it seven and above is in a pretty good spot we want to see everybody of course nine and 10 but if you look at it on the converse there's very few people that are in the extremely dissatisfied or dissatisfied category so 342 people are rating themselves seven or above or 79% so nearly 80% of people are pretty satisfied with the work who answered the survey I also try and think of this in terms of who typically will go in and answer things people that probably feel really strongly here or really strongly here right A lot of people in the middle of the road may not because they're like you know what things are good I'm fine it

009is what it is in whatever way either really positive or they're kind of figuring something won't change so I always try and think about it through the lens of who will end up really being motivated to go in and answer questions in terms of the groups of people and what they've experienced uh 32% are people that have experienced the Arts they can by the way uh select more than one which is why I add those numbers up there's more than 458 so you can check all that apply 41% of people Athletics 51% of people clubs and activities 12% without any additional activities outside of classroom or academic activities 49 people and4 uh chose not applicable so you know not quite a quarter of the people answering are either community members without children in school or

010staff members uh so not indicating one of those areas the key respon responses um in terms of the need for funding people indicated mental health support for students and families maintaining small class sizes arts and Vocational opportunities Equitable Transportation ADA accommodations classroom resources competitive teacher salaries came up very often and support staff compensation stem and second language program special education extracurricular activities including Sports and arts and diversity Equity inclusion initiatives updated facilities and ensuring a rigorous academic curriculum this is just an interesting slide that I won't read out you but it takes groups of people that had similar perspectives and says this is group a they generally had similar perspectives we put them over here Group B had similar perspectives they're not necessarily in opposition but they were common thinking relative to certain items and

011then where did they have common ground those same people group a was really focused on academic Excellence being very important and focusing on that in our spending priorities Group B was more focused on that's fine but also you should be really thinking about arts and curriculars in the middle were people that agreed perhaps with both of those things but their common thread and the Common Ground between those two groups was making sure that we're supporting our staff and that was really important seemingly to both groups of people from what uh the analysis uh played out I think really interesting to point out in our district and it's a compliment it is not that we are at all um oblivious to the idea that there are people concerned with cost or concerned with any other particular

012issues but the overwhelming number of people in this particular survey are really focused on academics Arts Athletics and supporting staff not anywhere overwhelmingly saying we shouldn't be doing this don't pay for this don't do this like the kind of sentiment that might be in other spaces is not part of this survey actually people really just focused on here's where you should be prioritizing uh the work over time I just think it's an interesting observation and then in terms of the top themes teacher salar uh were one was one of the five and making sure that we are compensating appropriately mental health uh support for students and staff was a significant concern as well class size continues to be something that our community values and mentioned in this uh as well in terms of feedback arts

013and extracurriculars again was a top theme supporting those and core academics was the fifth priority mentions by people these are not necessarily an order of priority just five different areas that people uh mentioned along the way the takeaways uh were to think about maintaining small class sizes promote effective learning individual attention important our community making sure we have competitive salaries we do I will say this this is not coming from a place where we don't but this is a concern that people would like to see us make sure we continue to we analyze that very regularly and understand where we are in the marketplace have priorities around that and we collectively bargain with the Brighton teacher Association but with all of our uh different units within the district and pay very careful attention to our

014competitiveness within the marketplace I'm glad that's a concern by the way that's a good thing for people to continue to say we support this and we Embrace that as well support a well-rounded education by including Arts music Sports vocational extrac activities stem programs advanced math science options uh also continue to be important make sure we prioritize Equitable access to Transportation ADA accommodations and diverse representation with our school Community continues to be uh something that our community supports and Contin support special education services behavioral supports and resources for students with learning differences so all this set super important right this is the feedback that people are giving us what we will look at now over the next several weeks is the financial information that Lou is going to walk through right now and starting to develop

015choices and different conversations in the community around this is all good and with all the money in the world we agree with you we're all in but how do we that with the cost and the impact of local taxpayers right there's nothing here that any of us disagree with in terms of how we support it and we're glad that the communties provided that information it's now a question of balancing that with and what can we afford to do L good evening so tonight we'll start with uh again on the revenue Side Of The Ledger and looking at the impact of the uh the governor's proposed budget if we look at Foundation Aid we see uh a small increase uh less than $600,000 an increase in Foundation Aid that's because over this time all of our

016wealth metrics and student need index has been being caught up right so there hasn't been a significant change from the Baseline metrics used in the 2425 output reports to our 2526 data runs that uh that the State education department runs so at this we're looking at uh less than a 3% increase in Foundation Aid and then we look at the impact of the X cost AIDS we talked about last year using a little bit of our reserves understanding that our excess cost AIDS are going to increase a little bit because we're spending more in areas like transportation and areas like excess cost uh excess cost categories for our students with needs so that's what's driving that and then we have the building Aid piece of it which you're going to see a significant increase in

017building aid but that's also paired with our investment in capital so as our debt goes up that you'll see on the expenditure Side Of The Ledger you're going to see our building a building Aid go over uh go up excuse me but the impact of that is going to be stable as it impacts our tax levy so looking at our revenues big picture-wise again we see a 3.3% increase in spending of that though you see a big part of it big portion of it is State Building Aid and this column shows proportion to spending so we've hit uh a plateau in our sales tax increase actually last quarter sales tax in mon County decreased so we plateaued there not much more new Revenue coming in we've adjusted some budget to actual in some of these

018categories and we look at um building Aid and again we look at you know the increase in Aid that's going to be matched to an expense and we look at the increase in state and federal aid with most of this being matched to expenditures with the exception of $600,000 um that supports uh an increase an incremental cost so with this our plan was to reduce our Reliance on fund balance coming going into the 25 26 school year we're going to need to talk about that given um you know given our our balance right now and then maintaining the appropriate appropriate fund balance which essentially is money that we have left over this year or anticipate having left over next year that we use to essentially deficit spend going into the next year so we've been

019really disciplined about keeping this stable over the last uh last several years the resulting impact on the tax levy is a two just over a 2% increase in the tax levy which supports about a 1.2% increase in spending so again just looking at the increase in uh the tax levy and the increase in Foundation Aid which are really our only unrestricted revenues that are coming in so you're looking at about $1.8 million Which is less than a 2% increase in spending from those un unrestricted Revenue categories digging into the tax cap which the board is considering tonight um for final approval that's more of a formality the tax cap formula it is what it is but we like to be transparent with the factors that uh contribute to the tax cap so we look at

020our Baseline tax levy and then we do have a small tax-based growth factor this year uh very small which generates a little bit of an increase beyond the traditional 2% tax cap as as people understand it and then the important piece here is our commitment to the taxpayers to ensure that our investment in capital is not driving up taxes we've created that car payment as Dr Dr mcowan would always say and we want to see stability in these two line items for the next several years is and we'll have the next opportunity for reinvestment when we pay off the debt for the 2017 Capital project we have the inflationary Factor although inflation rate is higher than the 2% the formula caps it at 2% uh so that again hinders uh the amount of new Revenue

021that's that's generated for the district so overall 6127 million rounding represents a 2% increase and supports a 1.2% increase in spending so then when we look at the expenditure Side Of The Ledger uh we can see the costs that are escalating beyond that 1.2% increase in in spending so we're looking at salaries and wages is up 3.9% which is generally consistent with our contractual and labor rates across the region as we look at our analytics it's also providing for new per uh positions about six new positions that are implemented or at least uh funded in the preliminary budget to meet mandates Andor um maintain our class size objectives when we look at employee benefits up 11% overall and the biggest one within here is our health insurance in the 2025 our health insurance premiums increased

02214.4% so we started at a budget deficit this year we budgeted you know around the 9% which has been the medical inflationary rate but because of our claims and cost escalations premiums this year were up 14.4% we're assuming 12.5% going into next year I don't really know where that stands right now uh we were caring car ing that for our retiree health insurance but just today uh our primary provider um has analyzed the impact of the inflation reduction Act and the changes that CMS is making for our over 65 plans and our rates are going to be going up 47% next year so that's an adjustment that I need to make to this budget uh that's going to impact all you know student mandates that are provided by bosis and the technology infrastructure and support

023um that are increasing beyond that kind of that 2% artificial tax cap number and dent and service again that's planned for we know what that's going to be and again we can plan generally count on the building Aid to match that so overall we're at a an preliminary and again this is preliminary we only really closed the board of education has accepted the financial reports for December we're scrubbing January's budget to actual numbers now that Bec comes our base we just don't add on top of a budget without really understanding what our Baseline cost is so still a ton of work left to do um in analyzing current year spending um but these are as as we roll over you know our inflationary costs this is our best first estimate and hopefully worst case scenario

024that will continue to whittle Whittle down so of that 7.7% increase in spending 6.22% is operations and the 1.44% is capital which again that was planned for so so this 6% again that marries with the increase in the unrestricted revenues which are generally at the 2% which then equates to about a 4% Gap U that we're working at preliminarily you know through the rest of our budget development season so just to kind of look at in again macro level uh revenues compared to growth and expenditures again if we do what we said we were going to do with reducing our Reliance of reserves and fund balances we have a 00,000 decrease in this category the foundation Aid again you can see the increase there about uh $600,000 the $1.2 million from tax levy and again

025expense based AIDS are increasing beyond that 2% but that's because we spent the money or expect to expend the money this year so that's not really unrestricted Revenue it can't be put towards inflationary costs and then we have you know small amount of growth in other revenues as we do our budget to actual projections on the expense side um which are a little bit easier to analyze the health insurance again we know what our Baseline is this year we we know what our bills have been for January and February and we can generally project our costs if nothing changes going forward without knowing what the rate increase is going to be for um uh 2026 because that's a calendar year plan so hopefully within the next couple of weeks excelus in our actuaries will help

026us on better understand if that 12.5% is a good number or not and hopefully that's that's worst case scenario and the 14 .4 is just a blip and we go back down to the medical inflationary rate when we look at contractual these are contracts that are already in place or or forecasted and you can see with the increase of wages and the payroll related benefit items so as salaries and wages go up that's an impact on payroll taxes as you would imagine and pension contributions and workers comp which is a percentage of our increases so those go down as our salaries or those go up as our salaries go up and vice versa and then again I mentioned that we have um new funding new positions in this about six positions to um you know

027to meet our um you blueprint objectives with class size then we have some other mandated tuition costs as we look at current costs and what we think our students are going to need going into the next school year we apply an inflationary factor to that and then contract transportation is um is a portion of that first student when we awarded the RFP last year they helped us defer some of those costs it was supposed to be close to a 19% increase last year they helped us spread that out over the 5-year contract but this year we're still at close to a 9% increase um it was going to be 19% in the first year and then 3% thereafter and again they helped us kind of spread that out over the life of the contract so

028that's a continued increase cost and continued pressure for specialized Transportation so there are some risk risk margins that are uh important in there and then when we look at other inflationary factors obviously this is where we spend a lot of time uh scrubbing but these are our utilities these are our insurances these are um other just inflationary adjustments cost of custodial supplies for instance which we're all seeing continued uh inflationary pressures well beyond the 2% um you know inflation number that's inherent in the tax capap number so these are all the things that we're scrubbing but just to give you a sense of kind of the big picture uh cost drivers for the district married up against the the increases in Revenue so with that you know we have some work to do as Dr

029mwan said we have to look at both sides of the Ledger and that's what we're committed to doing uh so these are going to be our strategies that we're going to be uh working through over the next several weeks that you know Dr McGowan and the Board of Education will be leading us through K you want to mention anything else to that so there's a lot of work to do I I want to make something very clear as we kind of dig further into this I say you know hesitate to say start this because this is all year you receive financial reports throughout the year you have a really good idea where we are financially uh these things don't come out of the blue other than like today finding out a $230,000 increase in insurance

030that you could never see coming you couldn't predict you couldn't plan for there is not a person in this District that is Expendable there is not a program in place that is not essential there is not an effort that is being made that is not directly tied to closing the gap for all kids and making sure that all kids have the best experience we are always focused on doing that as efficiently as we can but the reality is that everything we are doing is is essential to the work that we intend to do that is directly aligned to our strategic plan that is being done in an organization entirely focused on kids and their needs so this will be a challenging process to go through we're going to have to talk about any combination of

031strategies relative to uh strategic perhaps reductions strategic suggestions for efficiencies alignment to the blueprint and the programs that we're offering and conversations about the cap and hopefully conversations about additional Revenue as the state result vves the state budget but any number of those factors we'll have to put together to present to the community a fair efficient thoughtful budget that supports the needs of kids the way we do now which is what we have to continue kids deserve nothing less do you have any questions for us board any questions great no I think we just want to um you know commend Lou for his leadership in this I mean responding to the a very fluid situation and you know being responsive as things come in and it is a year-long process um and so I would

032also encourage people to go ahead and complete that budget survey um because we're still U accepting feedback um and again we're still working through this process um and we'll be soliciting more feedback tonight at the um Community forum and then later on at Future scheduled forums as we respond to this so thank you both very much I appreciate it I do want to make one more comment because we'll get asked questions so for people who are wondering we continue to analyze the impact of executive orders and what's happening on the federal level we received $2.3 million in federal funding the court on Saturday ruled that that could not be Frozen at this point we continue to analyze that that is of course a situation we're paying attention to also and those federal funds would be

033essential to operating it sounds small relative to aund million plus spending plan but it would result in over 5% increase to the levy to recoup that money our understanding at the moment and we had a a teams meeting this afternoon actually with Congressman morale to talk through more of that is that that funding is in place but we'll continue to pay attention to that also I just want people in the community to know if they are hearing well they're not getting that money this is not relative to that although that is something we will continue to analyze and be wary of pragmatic and thoughtful and approaching that to make sure that we continue to receive funding here also thanks excellent thank you um moving on to our next agenda item which is blueprint updates um

034it makes sense that this follows our budget update because a major driver of the budget process given our Focus as a strategic organization is our blueprint which is our District's strategic plan which sort of guides our work throughout the year and so we're lucky to have with us tonight um for quarterly updates L Lio uh Alis and Rio Diana Spagnola and Jeff Green to provide blueprint updates thank you good to see everybody and get us started with our updates oops and I'll start us off with mental health wellness and student support our overall goal for this year and and our area you'll see a theme of um continued effort and planning for other initiatives uh great deal of professional learning and planning for next year so as we take a look here under mental health

035um we are very excited last time I was here we were talking about initial plannings that we were thinking that uh the middle school would have its own site in partnership with our un urmc partnership and I'm really excited to say that next year yes the middle school will be its own Clinic based site um that doesn't mean that we will work in total isolation of the high school but um in terms of being able to get students in waiting list and impacts there um we're really excited that we'll be able to hopefully increase even more uh support in the area of mental health for our students right there at at the middle school we have an active weight list that's also what has helped us to move forward in that direction with the recommendation

036from urmc that they we can be a standalone cited at the middle school um I'm so excited Oh Betsy stepped out but I am so so excited because since we last met um we've had another parent University session and are planning our third session for the year and a huge shout out to Betsy Paddock and her plan and her working with PTSA and and different Community organizations to pull these off for us and pull the planning together in particular the last one that we held in January regarding uh navigating the challenges with technology was a huge and I'm looking around I some folks that were and in attendance that night in the auditorium at the high school hugely attended in-person event not only um were parents able to listen to Tom Kiren the author was

037our guest presenter but he presented both separately to the middle school and to the high school and Bethy I'm glad you just walked in because I was giving you a shout out for parent University so thank you so much for all of your planning and coordination and I want to put a shout out for next week March 6 which as you see here is going to be led by Dr Melissa Heatley uh it is a K12 perspective on fostering healthy PE peer relationships how to understand and navigate the K12 Journey with with your students so really exciting excited for that event which will be held via Zoom next week another opportunity and a shout out for our family Navigator Meg Goodman who is just in the beginning of pulling together um a grandparent group and

038this is for grandparents who are serving as Guardians for our for our Caregivers for our students um navigating that process with with our parents our grandparents excuse me that is just beginning invitation only but um I'm really excited about the opportunity we are uh really looking into what are the needs in our district and how are we meeting those needs and bringing folks together and I keep wanting to hit the wrong button all right more professional learning that is happening um our mental health team is really involved with a lot of different learning that is listed right there in terms of um attending uh the Moni Monique Burr sessions child abuse conference and then we are actively building wide uh across all of our buildings actively engage with Dr Melissa Heatley in the consultation sessions

039that happened and those hours have been filled and those are when individual buildings either small teams or it could be a mental health Team for a specific bu building is working with Dr Heatley around specific strategies for maybe a specific student or family need or how to look at things differently and um excited to hear that those hours are being filled and utilized to their fullest capacity uh and then planning again for next year as we start to um Caitlyn FY is beginning work with the principles on our seal survey and developing that more to come you'll see that coming out very soon our program mental health program evaluation continues we have a session next week when we'll be looking at developing a survey next week with some groups and our trauma illness and grief

040a Ka that is referred to as tick you'll hear us use that um anacronym a lot came together last month and a huge shout out to all of the members of that group um as we also look to see how we're going to continue to review our practices and procedures but mostly a shout out to everyone that includes um District Mental Health Providers teachers staff and administrators as we look at how we respond to um emergencies events or tragedy and uh what are our best practices and what are we learning from each of those experiences and the good news is the feedback is that we are we don't want to have to implement some of those uh strategies and plans but we are doing an exceptional job and only refining which is fabulous uh we

041are forecasting and planning and projecting this connects pretty well with the budget as well but how are we looking at our data for student needs what are those goals and how are we addressing individual student needs in developing their IEPs accordingly and the supports that are needed for next school year including planning for our extended school year which will uh that already begins now planning for the summer and planning along with Dr Rio I know that you may mention that as well but the superintendence conference day of how we're really specializing some professional development for our special education teams upcoming professional development tomorrow I'm excited we're a large group how many Dr Rio are joining total 15 people administrators teachers psychologists joining out at bosis to take a look at as you see there the

042um IEP and English language learner process and how we can um best address and support our student needs there and then we're looking at transition planning how do we support our students with special needs especially when they are uh between grades uh six through 12 and Beyond um looking at how students needs related to TA support working with Administration and looking at how do we support students needs in that capacity and how do we also then release that responsibility as well um to be more independent and I'll turn it over to Dr Rio good evening just happy to be here and giving some updates around academic excellence and I won't read through the goal but just highlighting some of the pieces that are in here our profile of a graduate and really focusing on critical

043thinking individual growth um responding to students needs and just celebrating um and finding joy and learning so many of these um I talked about at our first blueprint update and just wanted to give an update on where we are today so our transfer goal work has continued and our instructional leadership team and our teachers are getting ready for our March superintendent conference day where we'll be looking at student work across the grade levels from K through 12 again and different content areas in line with with our transfer goals and that will help to drive some of our curriculum work for this summer so we're really looking at what are some things that our students doing are doing that are really awesome and in line with the standards and our expectations in Brighton and looking for

044opportunities for growth and refinement and assessments and seeing like how things change over time so we're looking forward to that we are kneee in our math data and curriculum review right now we are looking um at a full textbook review for seventh and eth grade math right now and we've started the initial review um we've looked at about five different curriculum options that meet the needs of our teachers and our students and the standards of course and we're narrowing that down to two to three for a pilot this fall and we have a great team of teachers we have represent representatives from our K5 from the Middle School obviously and also from the high school and District um curriculum and assessment leader Julie cop so we have a great team looking at that and I'll

045be able to share more about that in upcoming meetings and another piece that we're working on that's pretty fantastic is trying to get all of our curriculum and scope and sequence into our new system um for curriculum and instruction storage this year and our 6 through 12 teachers will also continue that work on superintendent conference day just doing a review kind of an audit on what's in there and what we need to make sure is up to date so that we have a place where everyone can find the curriculum and access it um seamlessly we are also in our curriculum review so it's mid year so we're like in the middle of all of this good work that's happening we initially started this work in the blueprint and it says it's for K5 but once

046the school year got started and talking with Dr Edmonds we wanted to extend this to K8 so we've brought together um teachers academic service provide intervention service providers um administrators and we have started with a survey to teachers and AIS providers at K8 to GA some input and our hope is to look at that survey data in the next couple of weeks we meeting and um figure out what is the best curriculum and instructional strategies to follow for academic intervention and then again offer training or PD whatever is needed that follows so we'll have more to share about that in at the next uh review as well but looking forward to getting into that data with the team and we're also continuing the work around Equitable greeing practices so at TCMS Dr Edmonds has led

047a subcommittee around greeting practices um and has begun the work around investigating what that looks like at the middle school level and will continue that at a uh superintendent conference day in March and at the high school the professional learning team has been making great progress and they are also reconvening in March to talk about this but really focusing this year on the grading scale the 50% threshold and the rubrics and writing comments in school tool based on habits of mind so has been um some great work happening there our technology team at K12 is um working on developing District usage guidelines for students in the classroom for the grade level bands for all of our buildings and um Tracy Glazer Stacy cougal and Katie Fallon put together a um survey that was administered across

048the district to all admin um administrators and teachers we got many many responses and the district Tech team that you know I think it was in December or January to begin to unpack that and we'll have another meeting where we look at the recommendations and kind of where we're going with that and we also have a group of teachers meeting with our administrators to talk about our homework practices I don't have a big update on that now but again one of our hopes through our blueprint work is to end this school year with recommendations for what that looks like at Council Rock French Road and the middle school so that we have some consistency for parents and for teachers as we look at Homework practices um what's best what's research based and then what parents

049can expect and lastly lots of professional learning happening but the blueprints Focus this year is around artificial intelligence and as I mentioned at the last update we had some great breakout sessions at our fall superintendent conference day but there have been lots of opportunities that have continued around the district um many teachers are part of book studies there have been some awesome PDS put together by bosis that we have lots of teachers attending and uh the conference is that's been a hot topic for people who are looking to learn more after school or even asynchron asynchronously on their own and our curriculum council is continuing that work this year of learning more about artificial intelligence and what that means for our district so also looking forward to our summer 2025 teach Fest which will continue

050to bring some learning for teachers around Ai and those are the updates for academic excellence questions all right thank you everyone passing it over to Jeff Green good evening everybody um let's talk about the student and family experience so student engagement well we continue this ises not represent all of the wonderful things that are happening but um some of the highlights we have a big day coming up in our community Bright beles Day where each of our school buildings and the students in particular have a chance to become leaders and to give back to different local organizations and put in work um gets a little bit of a Sweat Equity in terms of caring um and being thoughtful for other people so we're really looking forward to that um we've had a lot of different

051events uh happened um bringing back something back to fras where we have some student leaders coming to talk about world languages preparing our fifth graders for um opportunities that may be available for them um we also have uh several high school students going throughout the uh to different buildings students going to fres for read Across America day to read to students um we have our black stud Union that's going to be going to council Rory for Black History Month um shout out to the team there they also did an amazing job with the Black History Month assembly along with um you know throughout the district many of our um buildings are doing different initiatives uh to get students involved to recognize a uh contributions of African-Americans um the student panel over here to my right

052one of our student leaders actually is a participant uh behind the camera here she did a wonderful job in preparing and talking to um giving advice to some of our many of our eighth grade Rising nth grade families um about what the transition is going to be like and you know looking forward to to hearing more about that with uh transition events coming in and then um we had several Brighton High School an TCMS students that had a chance to join um presenters uh for Black History Month cele excuse me the Martin Luther King celebration of the Town Hall um some of our students were selected to speak and um it was really really awesome opportunity to see them partner with other students around the area but to acknowledge um you know all of the

053kind RBS that he gave and the work that he's doing and continuing to uh to have that continue as we move forward family engagement um we had an awesome evening at the Council Rock where families had a chance to I know it's we're in the dead of winter right now but families had a chance to look at opportunities to uh to get their students and families engaged in summer activities um so thank you to Matt for hosting that uh District dodgeball game it's coming up uh very soon I know there was some talk in this room about it before uh we got started but it's obviously a very uh fun competitive event but more importantly it's a great opportunity to continue to have our community come together and um in a competitive Safe Way be

054able to uh you know see who's going to be able to maybe take on the seniors and and be the Champions um I'm not going to go over all the events but we continue to have many of our traditional events that families and students are engaging in um and we are very proud of that I know that Miss P already talked about Betsy in work with parent University so I'm not going to cover that piece but we very much appreciate your work Betsy with that and uh myself and Dan are continuing to look at forms of the different forms that we have of uh communication updating on our website and also um planning to work with the building principles on Ling in the building level when it comes to it and then uh next this

055upcoming Monday we also have the urban Suburban Family Social a newer event that um we're planning just to get our Urban Department families engaged in and acknowledging our seniors in that process so we're really excited about that event as well and then student Family Access um I know I talked about it earlier in the fall but Dr McGowan and PTSA partnered just to make awareness for the fund I'm send a letter out to the community I I can say that um you know the PTSA was able to get several hundreds of dollars um from the communication awareness and that's going to be able to go directly to students and families specifically students that are in need within our district just recently before February break had an a Say Yes to the Dress event which I

056know many of us are familiar with but it's really about access to students and families um giving back to others but you know there's a lot of students and families that may not be able to afford a brand new5 or $600 addess and it's a great event where students have a chance to uh give back but also be able to get so they can participate in the events uh Brighton wardrobe has kind of moved over to a pop popup event at TCMS once again to provide uh access to students around clothing I know that many of the clothes that Julie and Julene uh brought were pretty much all taken so uh students are still appreciative of the opportunity to be able to gather clothing um in a uh you know a nice a nice way

057and then uh Dan and I also are continuing efforts to uh consolidate some of the resources that we have for our families to make awareness so that people can kind of go to one spot um in the district and last but not least um huge shout out to the teams at TCMS and Brighton High School um we you know in our partnership with the Brighton food covered we recognized that they were running out of food and we were able to um the the students and families were able to bring in a ton of food and donate to the BR food covered 84 pounds it's a lot um and it's amazing so you know comes together with the themes around our students and our families working together the school Community to provide for those that need

058um so the work continues there's a lot of work um a lot of you know Wonderful stories and supports for students that are happening behind the scenes um but look forward to continue to work with everybody in the process and I'll turn it over to excellent thank great so within the operations um area the last um update we uh discussed the the areas uh shaded uh director moer provided an update on all the great work that she's doing preparing our administrators our faculty our staff uh through a comprehensive professional development program and preparedness program and then we also talked about the continuity of operations this month I'd like to talk about uh what we've done and Dr gasperino gave it in her update at the business meeting what the Safety Committee reviewed as far as

059a benchmark data report that's going to be reviewed by the district and adopted so what we focused on uh are developing benchmarks for success and the evaluation rubrics related to Safety and Security what we through brainstorming and looking at the the available data sources we put together a dashboard report focusing on uh Dasa which is dignity for all students Act and the Vader which is a a incident report that are cataloged within School Tool uh the services that we subscribe to with line line wise monitoring email and computer activity and the skate schools helpline which is the phone in uh Reporting System we also looked at you know if we were to look at and make observations and look at all the the small violations related to Safety and Security what are all the protocols

060that you know Teresa is doing an excellent job of instilling within our faculty and staff where are those violations are happening where do we need to reinforce where do we need to double down and then Community concerns so just to highlight what that looks like within the CPS data is uh we' reviewed that this this is our uh cataloging uh system for all events it's our threat assessment modules but looking at the number of cases type um the type in building so really be able to compile data where we can purposely review develop Trends and and forensically look at what's contributing to the areas that are being documented and cataloged the next one is uh not just school safety but school security excuse me but also school safety and we look at workplace injuries and

061here we have the benefit of looking at more Regional data uh through the workers uh workers comp Consortium that I'm a part of and so we have the opportunity to look at injuries what's happening across uh school districts you know slip and Falls uh fall from different elevations the different types of injuries that are persistent within a K2 K12 school environment and then we can look at our specific experience where are there where are our injuries occurring what can we do from a preventative a preventative safety standpoint and what I mentioned in the safety security protocols again just kind of a a brainstorm of everything that we want to look at you could see the list here certainly this is not an all-inclusive list but just a starting point of things that we want to

062begin to catalog begin to develop some Benchmark data form and that way we can establish Trends uh for uh for future an uh analytic so you look at security violations uh unauthorized access somebody gets through our security our single points of Entry unsecured windows and doors you know physical structure uh security violations inadequate supervision maybe inadequate supervision that contributed or failed to prevent you know a conflict among students for instance uh communication um of a reporting so is there something maybe we didn't follow up on then again we could have uh if we did follow up in a different manner may have prevented an incident happening so all those type of incidents that we want to be able to catalog learn from every example and make sure that we're uh implementing an appropriate corrective action

063um and that's consistent with our our shell uh emergency response procedures all the drills that we do in school noting each of those um you know where things didn't go exactly right learning from them and again implementing that corrective action with that anything any questions from an operation standpoint any questions about operations from the board or from any of our updates thorough good data very thorough information yeah thank you all I love the quarterly updates because I think it helps us all realize like the breadth of our strategic planning um and how purposeful we are towards reaching those goals so we do the quarterly updates and then every principal report also touches on our blueprint um and so it's really important thank you all so much for your presentations um also essential for spending since

064we're talking budget tonight um is not just the big picture thing but it's also the everyday things um it's our regular reflections of the work being done each and every day in our schools so we have some amazing Heroes here tonight to present principal reports um and I know board president Davis loves to be sort of cutesy with like you know how he calls people up and so we're going to go the traditional old school method and go from Council Rock up so let us start with Mr Tappen please I like to just say qy and Larry Davis in the same sentence first time in this room so he will be very excited I can't wait for him to hear that comment Kidd if you're watching on the live stream yes cut cutes well cutesy

065all right so it has been actually quite a while since uh We've presented uh so you're going to see some things and say whoa we haven't heard from the principal since then um so stay in bed and read day uh was the day before break uh the holiday break the long two week break this year um and we were so lucky I wanted to highlight this we have great reading activities all kinds of great things that happen but we also were uh really lucky to have some CMS readers come and share some time uh with our kids and as much as our kids love the adult attention it is amazing the oxygen in the room that like gets sucked out when these like peers come in and they get to sit with them and see

066these older kids so um really thanks to Katherine leel um and Michelle Peters who uh helped to or organize that and bring those students over um so the the picture on the right uh you may say why is Mr tapping dressed in a donkey costume so our first graders I know we've talked about wit and wisdom a lot um this year our focus is really how can we continue to make sure we bring in joy and fun with it so our first graders do an entire study of books and the impact they have on lives um and the biblio burrow uh so a traveling Library a true story of a woman who travels through remote parts of uh her Village to deliver library books to students is part of a huge part of what they

067read um so I visited all the first grade classrooms and each of them got a book on this day as well so the biblo burrow uh is still in my office and it will be used uh for years to come I hope so uh we did have stem club uh our first session concluded uh this is them learning how ice cream is made uh with you know some traditional science uh salt ice and the cream uh so some really happy faces we've got two more sessions of those coming up uh starting at the end of March and then traveling or going all the way through May after school sports clinics so this is something new uh that the district is offering coach creger uh has been in charge of it um so we've done basketball

068so far we've done tumbling we've done and it's uh concluding with uh softball and baseball it is amazing to see the number of kids who are able to engage in it so it is after school um Tuesdays or Thursdays we've had a upwards of 40 to 50 kids in each session um parents do have to provide uh Transportation but we've really tried to minimize any of the barriers it is free of charge for people so um we appreciate all the work that Max has done with that but also the parents who are willing um and really building up those skills and giving kids an opportunity that we've never had before so um the Council Rock toot is something we celebrate every year it is our version of the cicott award um and our kids are

069learning so much about the books uh and we actually come up well our librarian adal miches comes up with her choices for that before the cicott winners are announced and this year the winner for Council Rock was the last zookeeper um but a close second was home in a lunchbox um which is a great story um and that actually was a cicott uh silver medalist this year so very often some of Adele's choices show her expertise in uh in her field so uh we have had celebrations all through the months of January February uh for many different things things some of the celebrations I didn't even know so this is a pungle SE celebration um we've had a Lunar New Year celebrations um and then our kindergarteners finished with their first learning of all the

070alphabetic letters so uh each of them adopted a letter and then made a vest and did a parade all through uh through Council Rock sharing their new found knowledge of letters words that started with those letters and the sounds so you heard a lot of as they walked um and that was their their special time uh our kindergarteners also uh as part of some of their celebrations uh collected for the Brighton food cupboard uh and this was a Serial uh Domino's project uh that was caught by um by our kindergarten teachers uh great uh thing for our kindergarteners to start to understand how their impact uh can go beyond the classroom um uh second grade uh all of our classrooms were uh were able to celebrate kid inventor day um which is a national day

071all of our instructional leaders were able to come together to support this and the final challenge for them was how could they invent a robot uh to build a job and so the things that they came up with to solve it gives me hope for Humanity and our uh our kids are really thinking out of the box of what they'd like uh to have done for them um recess so we have been as of until this week really so when I made this we were inside for a long time um so when we finally did get to go outside and we did get that snow right before February break boy were they outside and enjoying that hill on the right uh was created by our incredible maintenance staff um you know as they plowed and

072tried to make sure uh things were clear but it also became quite a fun Hill um we did have to close it for a short time because it became very icy when it started to rain but um kids really just have enjoyed getting outside uh and they make use of their indoor time but teachers and kids appreciate when the kids can get outside so uh Mr Alo certainly covered a lot within the priority area of operations uh we are right in line with that working with our director of security Teresa moer um talking about clear communication working with our safety team teams within our building uh and our security guards about camera Technology support uh supporting our security guards on what that looks like um holding you know we're really one of the things we're

073looking at at Council Rock uh with her guidance is we've got a lot of points of entry in the morning happen feels like they are necessary to facilitate uh all of the children going in but I am widening my view to see how we can maybe uh what we can do to try to make that a little safer and make sure that our kids can get in safely but that we're also keeping them secure um and then just continuing the multiple trainings uh that continue to grow they're all important but finding the time and the resources for people to be able to uh have those ongoing trainings and stay up to date we're really excited this is jumping a little bit so this Thursday um we're really excited about a bonus author visit we will

074have an author visit that we have scheduled for May that you'll hear about but van white a local author bcsd grad reached out to us he has written a book called Sunset the dinosaur um and he has offered to come and do a complimentary give back to our communities so he will be at our building this Thursday it's a great end of our celebration of Black History Month um I've been told that there is a secret surprise guest Sunset the dinosaur might be showing up um so we will keep them hidden so uh if you'd like to join we will be doing three assemblies one for each grade level uh on Thursday morning we're really excited and thankful uh for Van really being willing to come share his work but also share a bit of

075himself so uh so this Friday we have the first ever PTSA sweetheart dance at Council Rock we'll see how that goes um interested in what that looks like to me it sounds like a movie night with no movie and I will see how that goes uh as uh Mr Green said our Urban Suburban uh family social bright and believe the district dodgeball game hoping to represent there quite well at at Council Rock PTSA family game night and then superintendent conference day at the end of March so lots of things have happened and lots of things were starting to roll into that Springtime amazing any questions any questions for no I don't know what's most exciting the alphabet parade the ice cream or Sunset the dinosaur we got a lot to choose dinosaurs always dinosaurs thank

076you Mr ta you're are welcome look at this look how this system works see it French Road knows see this is very predictable thank you appreciate that feedback will be given good evening I have a very little voice so I'm going to do my best to project for you for what's going on at French Road um it's been a very busy two months since we've presented last um I wanted to First highlight the snowy days we've had a lot of snow a lot of kids wanting to play and a lot of really cold weather that we couldn't get them outside so as soon as we could get them out in the snow we did and this is just showing the joy they had of just playing building Forts and just getting out there as much

077as they can and now we need to find all the Lost boots to make sure they go right back to the right homes that are linning the halls of school right now um keeping with the theme of weather we had James Gilbert he's a a weatherman on Channel 8 he was a former student of Mrs Higgins in fourth grade so we offered to come in and meet with some of our fourth grade classes talk about science and talk about weather and he um had a picture to he was able to broadcast and talk about his time with our kids at school so it was a really special memory a lot of our fourth graders got to enjoy that presentation from him and they brought one of those tornado tubes too so he was able to

078do a lot of Hands-On things with the kids um moving into black history month we've done a lot of work with Janine iello our um instructional leader for science and social studies we decided to do something a little bit different this year so we went or I shouldn't say we Janine facilitated finding a whole bunch of quotes and posters on different change makers across um our country and our history and she created two interactive bulletin boards and then we also have posters for each classroom each teacher picked a poster and the class did research on the change maker that they had the quote and then our students have been coming down from every classroom reading the quote and explaining the meaning of what that is on the morning announcements and if you want to get

079kids excited put them on the morning announcements in the morning so they've had a lot of fun I couldn't get the pictures fast enough they're just jumping out of their skin so excited to be able to present and talk to their peers um other guest that we've had this month is we've been working with the high school and we've been doing kindness lessons with BHS so we've had some students come down and do lessons on kindness um they've been coming with administrators who have been shuttling them over for us and they've been going into all of our fifth grade classrooms during Bruin's time and it's just really neat to watch these student leaders and I'm sure they'll talk a little bit about it in the high school presentation as well they all had a similar

080presentations a little bit different with their own flare um there's a group that came into today they were in three different fifth grade classes so they went through a whole cycle along with the counselors and everyone's just been really impressed with the kids their professionalism and just connecting with our kids um prior to I want to say it was right around January and late December Katie faen another one of our instructional um leaders she offered up the opportunity for students to come into the maker space and did Breakout boxes with our kids and the theme was a snow day so I think it did come true with her cold weather that we did have in January um the kids were great the teachers engaged with it you can see right there in the pictures the

081kids are doing all the different codes to try to break into the box to solve the different Mysteries and this is something that teachers can take out of the maker space bring into their classroom and build into lessons and concer areas as well um January was full of Music celebrations we had band concerts chorus concerts Orchestra concerts and we're getting ready for our strings concert again with um all the different great levels this Thursday uh the kids get up they again put them on a microphone put them on the announcement talking about their music talking about everything they've done to work up to being on the stage they presented uh in front of their peers as well in January and the really neat thing about that as we can come together as an entire School

082community and in this particular one you can see the picture in the bottom right we've also worked on having the kids come together and sing and it was really neat cuz we were sitting in there and all of a sudden all the kids in the entire School stood up and sang a song and together so we're hoping to make some traditions where they can do that together and we'll be doing that as well on Friday when van white comes to French Road as well we've also kicked off our student council we had 66 kids interested in student council this year and it's just really fun watching kids who want to be leaders and do things for the school so these are our um combination of two teams I've broken them into two groups just to

083make it a little bit more manageable when they come we spent some time along with um miss mix and as well as Mr Simmons they've been supporting this we talked about what makes a good leader how do the habits of mind fit into leadership and we created a leadership web and then we balanced a whole Hope on there and we talked about we can be stronger with just something as fine as string when we're re United and working together um when we finished that we did some different games getting to know each other because there are so many of them they don't know all of one another and then they helped kick off our mac and cheese drive for bright and believes day in March so they created their posters put them all over the

084building and they want to help organize that so it's nice that having the kids take ownership of some of the schoolwide events um a little bit that Mr Green had spoke to we had our world language teachers from TCMS come over and meet with our five go six kids getting ready for Middle School transition and they really talked about the different language opportunities and were able to connect with our fifth graders and it was nice getting teachers and adults into our space and have some familiar faces for the kids to look forward to when they move up to TCMS next year so that was a great um presentation we're hoping it's something we can continue with the transition year to year this is going a little bit back into um December but there is a

085local organization called lap robes and what their mission is is to provide a lap robe for veterans who have served in the military to make sure that they feel the warmth and kindness and gratitude for everything they did to serve our country so miss Len be's mom is part of the lap robe so every year she helps nominate someone and this year they nominated Mr Henry and he received a lapo which he's able to keep two at the front desk which is nice thanking him for all of his work that he did when serving our country when he uh served years ago so these were the kids just giving him a little dedication they did a speech for him the volunteers from lap robes came in and then they were also able to present him

086with his lap robes sore subject but we had a lot of excitement with Buffalo Bill season and some school spirit you can see kids are coming in decked out in red white and blue to celebrate the Buffalo Bills um we had families donating Flags to put in the cafeteria and there's just a lot L of Joy it just gave us something fun to unite with um keeping with the theme of Joy with sta to we kicked off our February break with you have a heart in the pocket again a silly game getting teachers to interact with one another in the hall um they were so quick to grab their chocolate and their prizes at the end of who had the heart in their pocket game that we do with the faculty that I didn't even

087get a picture um but we did have six teachers win on the on Valentine's Day right before February break going into operations I'm going to Echo a little bit of what Mr taen shared um that was showed by Mr Alo um we've done a lot of different work within our safety teams getting ready for different scenarios and role playing within our safety teams um we've been getting them ready as well for the tap app which kind of goes into the first and the four uh third bullet the tap app is um something that we use to call our procedures and it's a way we're hoping to use uh checking for accountability with students attendance at our different drills so we've rolled out the app and we're getting ready to practice using that um we've also

088been using the clips program and that's a able that's something that we're able to do to look at um you know threats you know of harm or just things that we need to check in with different kids and we work with um Teresa moer as well as Mr Alo just checking in to make sure that we're taking care of all all of our kids and safety issues that come so the clips program has been super helpful for that we've also been updating our protocols um updating our procedures now that we have the tap app we're going to be looking at our procedures with the fire drill again is something else because right now we do an accountability drill making sure we know where all kids are so as we go into a digital format we

089do have to make some additional tweaks um Shirley and I have also been part of the IC training which is a part of a safety training for administration so we've been going through that coursework too moving into rest of the month we have our district strings on Thursday and we also are kicking off our little mermaid musical club which is going to be a big hit with our kids um so there's a parent meeting on Thursday um we're working on getting all of those um practices all org organized in this um cafetorium after school and work with YMCA we're going to juggle a couple of things to get that going but we have a lot of excited children for that um this Saturday we have Festival of ideas here at TCMS Monday we have our

090Urban suburb Urban Suburban Family Social um we also have read Across America day happening on the 7th so we have guest readers coming in some of you might be there as well and then we're moving into bright and bles day the dodgeball game and then last but not least we have our science and social studies Fair which we are about to kick off for kids can come in and show all their smirs and all the things they're looking at so it's going to be at theuma amazing thank you so much so much going on any comments questions from the board that's amazing we've been singing Poor Unfortunate Souls now for like three weeks in prep for those so yeah all right next up TCMS good evening I tried there as Mr Tappen said it's been

091forever since we've been together so I tried to like consolidate all of the things that have been happening because I probably could go in for two hours about everything that's going on at TCMS um so I've got some lists but then I've got pictures for you to look at after um kind of in your in your own time at your own Leisure but we started um December getting ready for break in December taking care of staff so they can take care of kids um our student council leaders walked around the building one day with coffee and treats for our teachers just to uh show them a little bit of love we also had a student spirit week I think I had reported on kind of the staff underground spirit week we had had um we

092followed that with a student spirit week so they could be a part of it and and know that um they can have fun together um the week before break as well student council has done an amazing job this year they've really U the ante in terms of their fundraisers and much of their goal is to help uh give back to uh the student support fund to help their peers who need assistance with trips and other things that we're doing in the building so they sold candy grams before the December break carnations and Candy before Valentine's Day they've also um gone to a wrestling match or two and opened up a concession stand and raised money so thank you for approving all of those but thank you to them for having the ideas they're really student

093driven it's amazing this eighth grade group um has really been phenomenal in trying to find ways to support each other and make sure they all have opportunities we did our typical gingerbread houses and German classes and the competition before December break and uh Mr W our new social studies teacher at at 7eventh grade brought uh his own tradition um of Cent Claus and Cent Claus came in visit and left some treats for the students over a break which was really exciting left them in their shoes which Canta Claus is braver than I am to have touched their shoes but um it was it was really a hit for the students to learn about uh Mr Vance's own culture um but also to to have a little fun and be kids and love the magic as

094well so that was great um some of the work that student council is doing in addition to their fundraisers is they're really trying to U mimic the high school like Pep Squad you know the the cheering section um so they're trying to build a fan base at student events um at wrestling matches at basketball games and they're bringing signs and they're cheering for each other um it's super great I haven't seen that at middle school games and Middle School contests so it's it's awesome to see them cheering for each other so some of those pictures are um included in the next few slides um you can see the one on the bottom left is some of the signs that they're making to to cheer each other on so really good stuff um um in terms

095of building and maintaining the culture that we have at TCMS obviously we we celebrated our Winter concert season and believe it or not I think like Monday starts or Tuesday starts the the next set of concert season so um we're in it again we had our annual spelling be I think it's the third year now that we've had a spelling be at TCMS and been able to send somebody off to Regionals um lit in the library took a little Hiatus in the fall but has picked back up and the very first one that we did this year we had um Mr mccardy who is an eighth grade English teacher and he is um an author and so he was able to share some of his own writing and his newest book that was just released

096with students um and talk through not only the writing process but inspiration um and the the content of his text so he a had a lot of eighth graders that were really excited to be a part of that um our Muslim student union is growing and advocating for um different ways to to um make sure that they are not not necessarily being I don't want to use the term recognized but being understood and that others are empathizing with um the the reality of their lives and um so we've been talking about opportunities to observe um prayer but in a respectful and non denominational way um there was uh we did um world hijab day trying to continue to push that focus more on like the education and understanding about what it's like to live um

097in somebody else's shoes so that's a growing Group which is is nice and at the same time we also next week have our first Jewish Student Union um that is starting and so these are all student driven initiatives which is awesome to see the students are making sure that things that are interesting and important to them are being um represented in in the building we had for the first time um Brighton Town reached out and um asked to have middle schoolers be a part of their Town celebration of Martin Luther King Day so we were able to send I think it was it four kids we sent over for students who were able to read a poem um and participate in that and they were just amazing you'll see pictures like they dressed up to

098the nines it was it was so special for them and thank you for Jeff to getting them over to town hall to be able to participate the mentoring like everybody talked about continues we um continue to have BHS students working with students at TCMS TCMS students heading down to Council Rock um thanks to Michelle Peters for really doing a lot of work with that and Lance is helping her as well we are deep in five go six transition activities we had the parent night already um all but about 45 of the fifth grade students have selected their language and their music for next year so we're beginning to schedule for them um and we're starting our transition meetings with French Road to learn more about the students and better prepare for them um as Miss

099kogan said we did have our world language teachers go down and um each teacher did we had a a German teacher French teacher and a Spanish teacher and they did the same exact presentation but they did it in their own respective languages um so there's some fun video of listening to the kids try and uh you know speak some of the words that they were learning and um the fifth graders were really engaged we had our second Club Fair um which uh Miss Edwards has been doing a great job with really inre increasing um transparency around um what the clubs are that we have when they meet who can participate and getting involvement numbers up um our Quebec trip ran in the at the end of January and um I never go in January because

100it's way too cold for me but they go at that time because it's the amazing winter festival in Quebec and they get to experience um so much of the culture and all of that went super well activity night season we're in round two sixth grade activity night was in January we have another one this Friday night for um seventh grade we had uh a great Asian Lunar New Year celebration where students um came to celebrate with uh different foods different um Customs that they shared we are finishing up our Black History Month scavenger hunt at school and um a win Wednesday lessons that go along with um celebrations for the month and then um of course Dr mcgallen and Miss patino and I and uh Miss Lee just came back or Dr Lee just came

101back from Guatemala which was uh an amazing trip and I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunity to talk to you about it more I'm sure you've heard already a ton um but I will just say that uh we as um Brighton Travelers got so much more out of it than I think you know the the school and the community that we went to visit it was um extremely impactful um I was first of all it was spectacularly organized and balanced in terms of the days but I really appreciated the opportunities that were built in to learn not only about the Mayan culture um but also we we spent an afternoon learning about immigration um and it what was really amazing to me was they did not get political at all in their conversation but they

102did a great job of balancing kind of the rhetoric that's always heard here in uh in the United States it's about immigration and we were able to see um a human look at immigration and which we don't I think we don't always get in the United States not to get political but that was great again we learned um about the Guatemalan Civil War and the impact that that had um on the community that we were in but all of the people in Guatemala the 30 plus War um particularly um the Mayan civilization which I think I hope I'm not making this up but still 60% of the culture in gu Mala is Mayan um so the impact that the Civil War had on them and then of course being able to walk through the communities

103being able to walk through um the Mayan runes being able to spend a day in Antigua and learning about that City and um colonialism and the impact in the in the 16th century that it that had on Guatemala so well the service piece was a huge component the educational piece was was just as enormous um so I can go on forever about it but just great stuff looking forward to year number two and then these are just some of the pictures again I'll let you kind of go through them flattering flattering yeah and in terms of priority areas same thing um that all of the other uh buildings share just doing a ton of work with Teresa and continuing to ensure our safe environment I think we're doing a lot with clps and learning um

104how to use that for much of the work that we do with students um also the tap app rolling that out and how it's going to help us be even better about knowing where all of our students are at all times and um God forbid we should need at reunification processes so that's been um great like I said we've got District Strings this week Festival of ideas band concert vocal prison concert bright and believes day DC trip in a couple of weeks um I am going on that with Miss Edwards because it's her first time going casc with seventh graders so um she'll get that experience and then of course we have a conference day at the end of March I didn't want to interrupt to you but I just want to say your participant

105participation in the trip made it just that much more better for all the kids your son's participation also too a ninth grade or not in our district our only regret is that he isn't because he was just absolutely wonderful and a pleasure for our kids to be around too but thank you for taking the time and making it really special for our kids too oh thank you for having me and thank you for having him it was lifechanging for him too he's ready to go back awesome love that yeah plus he's really good at cement he's a strong young man so if we're doing that again next year he's definitely coming that's wonderful all right next up we have a special treat tonight we have uh two of our wonderful assistant principles from the high

106school Mark Lincoln and jaell Bowens welcome welcome thank you so much for having us here we're honored to be guests again I'm Mark Lincoln this is we are the special guests here The Replacements to be honest with you are fearless leader Dr Hall is off in France this week with our French exchange uh so I'm if I were to guess Dr Hall will probably wake up in the morning and and watch this video and uh so that being said bonjour Dr Hall all with one eye open right now watching it who are we kid exactly um so anyway no uh also a great time just looking how to use this really quick uh to discuss the wonderful events also going on in our high school here where our presentation bottom right sorry just getting oriented

107here thanks guys um yeah great time to talk about all the wonderful events going on at the high school over the past couple of months uh and get to discuss with you uh just the great things that we've seen our kids collaborate on uh and just to kind of start off uh to discuss our our Lunar New Year what a great example of our culture climate leadership team our Asian Student Association our International Club all coming together develop this great plan for how we could help Brighton High School develop a deeper appreciation for the Asian Lunar New Year um what we did is we actually had students come in decorate the building after school and create a special Home Room in which our students were able to uh hear and listen to a video that

108students created regarding our Lunar New Year like more of anational aspect to it uh they were able to make Chinese lanterns uh and also enjoy a mandarin orange donated by Pittsford Wegman's uh they read a poem about the significance of the Mandarin orange and this culture and just as I said a great way to see our clubs coming together and helping our student body better appreciate Asian Lunar New Year um Switching gears a little bit these are just some images from our BHS TCMS Mentor program which I know our students really look forward to and appreciate I was actually just speaking to one of our seniors Caleb today about this um and he speaks so highly of this program and the organic conversations that come from our Juniors and seniors going down to TCMS working

109with students enjoying some food playing basketball and answering all the many questions they have about what life at the high school looks like uh so just a wonderful opportunity to get our kids throughout the district um connecting with each other last week we were most excited as well about celebrating Black History Month uh with our black student union which brought in a speaker van judge van white which I believe was acknowledged earlier in our presentation um a Brighton Alum who spoke to a most interesting prompt he developed a speech for our students on how to find a sense of belonging in a world that often feels divided we talked to our students at length about this idea of feeling a sense of belonging how we want them to feel like they belong in our building

110and so judge white was able to talk a little bit about his personal experiences within the Brighton Community and how he better achieve that sense of belonging and the different things he got involved in students were most engaged in this assembly and it was just a really nice way to highlight black history month and the amazing work done by our um black student union also we had just last week um BHS Say Yes to the Dress another annual event that our students get most excited about where they're able to access free Formal Wear and accessories for all of our students held in our Auditorium uh this is now we celebrated the 10th Annual c um uh Say Yes to the Dress event uh and we're able to provide formal wear for so many students and

111it was just so great to see the kids coming in and and just seeing their excitement when they heard and we made announcements about going on throughout the the day and just seeing them go in during flex and during a free period to to check out all we had to offer um so just a really nice event cool speak well good evening everybody uh I had the wonderful opportunity to be a witness in person to our teen Institute uh they went to fres today in a couple days the week before break to talk to some fifth graders uh about being leaders and kind of spreading some kindness and they really did a great job at facilitating some uh wonderful activities to get them to kind of understand that uh that initiative that that push to

112be leaders um and one thing that they did a great job of EMP in today was uh there was a student had had a question I'm only in fifth grade do I need to be a leader now and the two students I had said yes you should be leader everywhere not just in the school either but everywhere and so they really did a great job of just leading that for them and leading those uh those uh those projects today so um it was just an honor to be there and witnessed that and and almost too uh just as important the the reconnection I would say that the students had with those fifth grade teachers I think it was just a great moment uh for them too uh outside of that particular project that they had

113if you were not able to see Mama Mia I think you missed quite the production uh Mama Mia is a very uh classic uh classic musical I love the music from it um but kudos to all the students and the staff and admin that were there to really support uh the student work um and just wow just wow w wow all around oops picture there of of our cast and what does this all mean uh for for us so we really cannot do any of the things that we talked about today without first ensuring that our students are safe and so we are uh committed to ensuring that we are always talking about uh the situations that we need to be ready for uh across the district and at BHS so we uh often do

114tabletop emergency discussions and situations along with um uh Teresa moer um who is great she's always there at our cabinet meetings and is a great person to balance ideas off of uh and we are going to continue to uh train and address Dao with our students and our staff so they know what what to look for and kind of how to navigate those situations uh when they hear about or experience those things um and then we are going to continue to focus on updating our facilities uh we have a brand new gym that we have been utilizing quite a bit very excited to have that and also uh a new security entrance that I think will make the experience a lot safer for our students as they come in exit our building every single day

115and if I could just jump in coincidentally you may have heard our radio go off in the middle of the meeting apologize for that but um it was actually our uh security team training a new guard who was with us on our Safety and Security protocols and they didn't realize our radio was still on us and so uh you saw in real time uh the Strategic plan uh in version of us bolt and out so yeah you timed that very very absolutely unpl outstanding got our steps in any questions for us at BHS you guys are great amazing thank you so much thanks guys you want to say good night to Dr Hall just wave can I just add I just I've said this in the past but watching um the authentic learning that occurs

116at all these buildings and the student driven learning is so exciting and awesome that you guys facilitate this all the time as well as the collaboration between buildings when I was teaching in Brighton we do we didn't do that as much and it really I think drives that goal of lifelong learning so huge Coos on with you guys awesome well said car Lance thanks um moving on to agenda item let's see ran numerals five seven no yes seven seven um every year the board of education is asked to approve the tax cap Levy limit um we all heard this presented earlier this evening by Dr Alo and Dr Macwan and it will be posted to our website for those watching at home um it is important to point out as we do every year that

117this is an algorithm that is provided by the state um and we as a district are not provided flexibility in this matter but we are required to approve the filing as presented by uh Mr Alo earlier tonight so um with that said um and having seen the presentation earlier may I please have a motion to approve the tax cap Levy limit as presented this evening so moved moved by Karen second seconded by Esther all in favor I any opposed the motion carries um we will now move on to our consent agenda which you can read there um may I please have a motion tonight to approve the consent agenda so moved moved by Esther second second and by Elanor all in favor I opposed the motion carries um before we adjourn our meeting tonight just

118some housekeeping um our next meeting after this evening's community Forum which is tonight at 7 um our next regular meeting is on um well it's actually a community budget forum is on March 5 from 1 to 2:30 and our next Schoolboard meeting will be right here on March 11th at uh district office here in the boardroom um as we say every week we couldn't run this without our wonderful helpers um thanks to Bill Mike and joy tonight for keeping things running and dealing with me as I fumble through my paperwork um um awesome thank you um with that may I now have a motion to adjourn to Executive session after this to discuss a specific Personnel matter who Moved moved by Carrie Lynn second second and by the birthday girl Esther winter all in favor

119I any oppos no motion carried we are adjourned this has been a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education