001this is a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education good evening welcome to the Brighton Central School District Board of Education public meeting for Tuesday May 23rd this meeting is called to order first on our agenda will be the Brighton believer Awards and I'll turn that over to Dr McGowan well thank you very much I'm so excited to have two people that were recognizing tonight with a bright believes award awarded selected by the Brighton believes Council the nominees receive these awards for demonstrating brightened beliefs of Integrity respect responsibility kindness and self-control the award winners our students teachers staff members parents coaches and community members and as always we encourage people to nominate folks for the award at bcsd.org our first recipient tonight is May Mooney May would you like to come
002on up [Applause] uh Mr Tavern would you please join us as well Angel Davis yes thank you May is famous for being the sibling of the water again May and her wonderful family are here tonight so thank you for joining us Jill Davis music teacher counselor I can nominated you for this award as you probably already know me and she wrote simply put May as a delight to work with a role model for other students and a truly inquisitive learner this year may has exemplified the traits of Brighton believes within my classroom I have observed May lend a hand to students in need I have watched her support and cheer on other students and I have watched her become a peer leader without being asked one specific example of May Sharing kindness respect and responsibility
003involves her unofficial peer leading to another student in her class who is learning English as a new language one day I asked me to partner with our new friend in a classroom activity as I felt she would be a patient and kind helper since then without being asked May has helped to Mentor her new friend within music class she has helped to model both behaviors and actions it could be a challenge to any new student coming to our class mid-year today I witnessed her assisting a student with packing up written materials when we transition to a new activity May doesn't do this now because I asked she does it because she is a kind friend showing compassion and a sense of Pride and responsibility to make sure her peer is comfortable and successful for anyone
004this is commendable for a second grader this is truly special May thank you for being a bright light in our classroom which is a great way to describe thank you for demonstrating Brighton believes especially of kindness we are so appreciative making the environment in your classroom and our entire District a very special place [Applause] she needs a cup of water for sure May thank you very much for being so wonderful you're really fantastic Sora sacks another wonderful fantastic person nominated by her husband Mark please Dr Marshall former board member Mark sacks [Applause] just perfect Sora will let you have it about that later I know sorosaxer for many years as the district's Monroe won BOCES Board of Education member so eraser children in Brighton and continues to be a Brighton resident a friend and neighbor
005to all and a person who simply cares deeply about this community sir is nominated by her husband Dr Mark sacks as I mentioned a former Brighton Board of Education member came in sat down in one of those chairs before Ms lansfame had to usher him back no I'm just kidding a very dedicated person to this District in his own right Marv wrote Soros served on several School committees while her children were in school and so was the District representative to Monroe on BOCES for 19 years as a BOCES one representative she ensured all of our students receiving BOCES Services got what they needed for success in school despite my bias in nominating my wife I truly believe she deserves this recognition and the committee agreed and everybody in this room especially those who know sir
006solo would absolutely agree as well I will go on to say that as a BOCES board member sort of is well known to be a deep thinker a fierce Advocate and an educator unfailing in her commitment to each and every child sir kept us updated in this room regularly and consistently while always asking for feedback and providing essential information Sarah was the conduit between our organizations and helped Foster a strong relationship truly exemplifying I think the word Cooperative in Board of Cooperative Educational Services the words that BOCES stands for sir we're so grateful for your work in the example you provided to the children and community members here in Brighton thank you for all that you've done thank you very much before I ask for public participation I will note we have a very detailed
007agenda and that some of the people here might need to get home for homework and bedtime and stuff like that before we get going and want to give people the chance to do that for just a moment foreign [Music] this is the case with all of our public board meetings we have the opportunity to hear from the public in the public participation session is there anyone here who would like to speak seeing no one we will move on with the agenda first you all have received a copy of tonight's agenda we need to move that and approve it please so moved moved by Karen second seconded by Sue all those in favor next up is the approval of the minutes first from the May 9th business meeting and also May 16th annual meeting and election
008and I'll have a comment about that second one in a moment but we've received the minutes from both the May 9th and the May 16th meetings any questions edits comments on those minutes motion to approve both of them move by Julian seconded by Esther all those in favor and we'll thank the community for coming out to vote we passed with one of the highest rates I think we've had in 20 something years 84 elaborate third third highest in 50 years third highest 50 years so that's all right I appreciate that um just great for the community to come out and support and it says a lot about the leadership team under Dr McGowan as well as the teachers and the staff who are always putting students first all the time so again thank our thanks
009to the community for coming out and voting next up um Kevin says this all the time so I'm going to steal his line and that is the blueprint is our Focus it's what we do it's how we prioritize our work it's what we say is the most important things to work on in order to best support our students so as is often the case we will get a blueprint update tonight from Dr Rio Deanna Spagnola and Lou alaimo and I don't know what order you guys are going in down hello we actually have Jeff Green and Caitlin O'Neill here with us to share out today too so there's five of us that'll go we'll um kind of give an overview tonight um the work that you've heard about all year and just like where we've
010landed so you know just to summarize where we started and where we ended up and you'll hear some things maybe sounding a bit familiar but also kind of putting closure on some of the items we've talked about throughout the year today so again we'll go through the five different components of our blueprint and you'll hear from five different people with these updates but really it represents the work of our entire district and all of the school buildings as well so I'm going to give it a start us off tonight with academic excellence and our goal that we've talked about throughout this school year and really exciting because you know our Board of Ed has been talking about this at their board updates but this is our profile of a graduate that we came up with
011through the work of curriculum Council this year and this was a big piece of our work a profile of a graduate is really a vision that's intended for the entire district from kindergarten right through 12th grade with input from all stakeholders is um you know students and staff and families and thinking about where we want to see our students when they leave us as Brighton High School graduates so for us the process really focused on Gathering feedback from staff students and families we looked at a profile of graduates from other districts around the country and kind of gathered some feedback on what we thought worked well in Brighton we came up with some draft words with some input from our faculty at our fall superintendent's conference day and then took that to our students at
012Brighton High School one day this winter to gather some feedback about what was important to them and then curriculum Council worked through writing some definitions of what each word meant and we came up with this image after lots of different revisions and this will kind of guide some of our work into next year so I know you'll be seeing more of this as we get into our blueprint work next year as well but a huge thanks to our curriculum Council for their dedication and work in kind of Landing us here at this small image that just kind of represents a lot of work over the course of the school year in addition we talked about transfer goals this year and um for for a definition for everyone a transfer goal is really what you would
013want a student to be able to do within a Content or a discipline in the long run so what's our ultimate goal for students in each discipline and then how do we get them there along the way again starting at kindergarten and working our way right up through 12th grade so again Gathering input from our faculty and our fall superintendents conference day and then this goal went through the route of our K-12 instructional leadership team called iot plus some additional members who came on to support the work as we don't have every area represented in iot and they took the feedback of the faculty and kind of developed these goals again bringing it back to teams in February bringing back feedback kind of a process going back and forth and came up with anywhere from
014three to five transfer goals for each of the content areas that are listed below so I won't read through all of them but you'll see the main core content areas plus all of our special areas have come up with content area goals which is a really awesome process because it really gives us that vision for where we're going so as we write curriculum this summer and we revise curriculum we have the end in mind and we're looking at our students and thinking how does every step along the way get them to that final goal so I put a few goals in here just for to give you an idea of what a transfer call is again there's many transfer goals because each discipline has three to five but if you read them they're really more
015broad they're not discrete skills they're more broad um skills that we would want students to take away as they went through that K-12 Journey so our work for the future will also come up again in our blueprint I'm sure but thinking about like how do we align those assessments to build upon each other for children so they see the value in what they're doing and they see how it connects to that bigger goal and some of the other things I just wanted to report out on that I've touched base on throughout the year the habits of mind integration and roll out for grades 3 through 12 has continued throughout the year in all of the school buildings Andrea Yaman from Council Rock has been a huge support to our buildings at fres and the middle
016school and high school and offering support in professional development and readings and meeting with the principals or all sorts of different things to kind of build that connection and keep it going we've also been supporting some individual practitioner certification in three different areas awareness implementation and assessment through the habits of mine Institute and we hope to continue to send some faculty from all the buildings to that as we get into next year and you will see the habits of mine more in the schools just last night at French Road we had our fourth and fifth grade chorus concert and if you were there you would have heard that every song was connected to a habit of mind and the kids picked the habit of mine and why that was the one they were working on
017with that song whether it was from you know the way they selected the piece or the type of music music they would have to learn it was really awesome so the whole concert was really themed around that which for our students is like a no-brainer because they've spent so much time at Council Rock in the habits of mine so you really see that rollout starting to happen now across French Road and and the secondary schools as well we're continuing our evaluation of all our Tech tools Tracy Glaser has done a ton of work in that area with our Tech team this year and I mentioned earlier we had over 600 applications in the district and we're trying to narrow that down to close to 100 so it is a work in progress and we're getting
018there Laura deckman has also been a huge help in that work she's new in her role this year as application specialist and it's really helped us to kind of hone down those applications and then ongoing our high school team is continuing to look at how to increase access to AP classes I've already talked about this at a previous update but this is ongoing work that I just wanted to mention again today now I'm going to pass it off to Tiana Spagnola good evening everybody good evening I'll speak a little bit about where we are with mental health and wellness goals and we're really excited about how our golisano partnership has grown and expanded and since we I last presented in February our numbers of students who are seen have have definitely increased with the addition
019of the second day we have a vibrant wait list students are transitioned either exited from being seen or they're seen at the main campus of strong but they're closely urmc is working with us to close closely monitor if a third day will be added next school year because of that healthy wait list and again this is students are able to be seen both at the middle school and the high school and that site is located at the high school so we are a school-based site and who knows what the future will bring for that we are actively involved with consistent consultation with urmc and building based teams working with teams and expanding that in terms of professional development I'll allude to that a little bit later but at the K5 level we also still benefit
020from this partnership Dr Melissa Heatley consults regarding individ with individual families with individual school-based teams at French Road or at Council Rock and then even joined and participated at the Council Rock School community meeting so there is an active vibrant presence it's not just a name or someone behind on a an email or a phone call they are actively engaged with us and I want to give a shout out to Caitlin O'Neill also for continuing to Monitor and process with them in terms of numbers and who's being seen and where we stand with that and actively advocating for all of our students across the district speaking also Caitlin I have the opportunity to partner with her and with Dr Rio this year over our AIS RTI mtss program evaluation and some of you joined on
021that as well we have completed that process and we were able to complete some shared document that will be shared among all of the bill buildings across the district including also what is our common practice what is our common procedure that we want all of our buildings but then what are the common practice is going to be developed within each of those buildings where forms repositories process procedure terminology is all common nomenclature across all of our buildings summer we're excited to have representation from each of our buildings joining us to complete the work and then also to continue to plan the rollout in the professional development how that's going to roll out in the fall and continued ongoing professional development around this work once we get up and running next school year hey we had
022teachers who participated in training the trainer our TCMS Health teachers and we had some members of the BHS mental health Team participate in this training so that next year the direct bavona instruction will be provided by our own staff which we're really excited about that to happen for next school year uh our communication with families how to access service has been increased and we want to make sure that people know how to get to the services and what this means and how to find them and how we can help families find other support whether in the community or in our schools either through our family Navigator Meg Goodman but also continuing our partnership with urmc and thanks to the PTSA and also Caitlyn for organizing that too because we were able to have them be
023the main event for the spring PTSA evening session on school avoidance and it was a very very well attended event so we were really appreciative of that partnership not only with golisano but PTSA as well we're looking forward to also Jeff and I will be working together on a new family event for the fall we our family event that was held in January this school year we're going to try to push that back into the fall maybe we can even be outside have a Food Truck Rodeo type model partnering with the PTSA around that as well so that we can have our community members come in again but earlier in the school year that was some of the feedback that we received after our new family event that sooner would be better and then look
024at other ways that we can continue to look at that event in a different way maybe a second event in the spring if needed to make sure that all families who are new to the school district feel welcome and invited and and know all of our our ins and outs and our organizations that we have that we can help families with professional development is vibrant as I was just referring to earlier and we have some great opportunities that are listed there coming up this Summer that not only administrators but staff will be participating in and not too long ago our district mental health staff participated with the county TIG team trauma illness and grief representatives to go through some tabletop activities to look at what are who are the people we would be calling what
025are some some Gap analysis that we might have what do we need to look at to strengthen our TIG team our communication and in particular a lot of focus was given to making sure that even though our TIG team has in one does a wonderful job responding but also the making sure that we allow for some time for debrief to always look back at how we can grow and become bigger better and stronger in that way and support anyone who needs support in those times listed there again are some other opportunities some more TCI training for us for our staff but also we're going to be offering that for our security staff and you see some other things listed there as well so we're really excited about what will be available to folks for training
026this summer as well good evening everybody hope we're doing well yes thanks for answering so last time I was up here to present um I I talked about many events initiatives that we were doing that hadn't yet occurred all of them have since occurred and I know that we have talked about them but I did want to highlight one of them up there I'm at Council Rock back in February in partnership with the librarian Atkins Rock we had a chance to bring students from the high school specifically African-American students to read during Black History Month it was a really great event the kids had a chance to read books they could have chosen any books but most of them chose books that came from authors of color it was really great chance for the students
027to see not their peers but older kids who are still students being able to be leaders and engage in the work and seeing some of our minority students doing positive work and engaging in in a great way so we're going to continue that next year but everything else many of us were a part of some of us may have got hit in the face with the dodgeball at some point we've talked about the HBCU trip which was really really exciting but um just thank you to everybody that had parte partooking all those activities So speaking of activities myself you know this is our first full school year kind of post covet and our buildings were open and families were really excited to have an opportunity to get back into schools and engage in various activities
028and I've continued to work with all the building principles in the PTSA chairs on providing those opportunities for students and families to engage and we continue to do that there's some other things we're considering to do doing to engage families like the potentially the new family reception moving to the fall so that's continued work and I think many families there's been a lot of positive feedback around the ability to be able to engage after we've been restricted you know with code restrictions the past few years suspension disproportionality committee been working all year I'm going to be presenting the findings and recommendations to Dr McGowan on the June 13th board meeting so I look forward to sharing the information with everybody here and it is transition season myself and colleagues mental health team members the building
029principals we're really focusing the school year on capitalizing on student leadership and our students being a part of it so we've been working hard to we're having some of our BHS students go to TCMS to give an assembly to the 8th graders and talk about what the transition is like to high school what it was like for them individually this year or something we're doing something new we are also going to be actually tomorrow we're bringing some TCMS leaders to the fifth graders at French Road to talk about the transition as well we're looking forward to that um we know that the students are excited with it and even just this week um Matt Tapp and Shirley Flores and I have visited the second grade classroom to talk to all of our second graders one
030of the superstars that won one of the awards she was one of the few kids that knew what my name was in the classroom so I was excited about that and um and we just look forward to doing that we're also doing we've identified with the Mattel team members some smaller groups of students that might need a little bit of additional support we're having them have um meetings earlier to meet their support team members in their new building so our counselors from the high school and from TCMS are going to be meeting with small groups and we've worked with their families and other families are really excited so that their children get a little bit of additional support so hopefully everybody's getting a little bit of what they need all the kids are super excited
031also super nervous which is very normal but it's an exciting time of year for when kids have a chance to move from one building to the next in our district and then the tutoring center we have I continue to call this the Hidden Gem of Brighton many families and students do not even know of it or what we do but it really the team Deb Appleton and the tutors that work in the tutoring center I have to give a huge shout out to them they really do a phenomenal job of supporting students with various behavioral social emotional or academic issues right now is our busy season we are supporting many many students that we are trying to get across the stage with credit recovery so they can experience the Awesome event that we have coming
032up in the few weeks with graduation so there comes there are some of the silent Heroes that we have um just let everybody know like give a little bit of data about it so when I when I created this slide last week we had 33 students since then we know I have 42 students and um you know we talk about the focus on Mental Health post covid out of those 42 36 of the students that we are supporting are with us due to social emotional needs and the it's real when it comes to the need and the social emotional uh support of our students and the team does a really really great job in really unique individualized ways to support students so and we've also I talked about it earlier this year but also started
033tutoring at TCMS we have 10 students right now that we're working with students that were struggling academically needed some help with managing all the different classes for some of them just having a place for them to go after school just to work with an adult it's really been a success actually just as today I I had a chance to meet with the advisor of the future teachers club we we did not achieve our goal of getting that started this year but we are going to hit the ground running next year to have students to be there supporting students as well to have them engage with each other and we're looking forward to that to give those students authentic experiences to work with students and they say they want to be in a career where they're
034going to be working with students every day and then last but not least I mentioned this last time I was up here but um you know it's a privilege being able to work with all of the the team here the administrators mental health team members teachers uh you know the team meetings we do the really unique things that we do on you know all the buildings to provide individual individualized support to our students and our families I enjoy being a part of it and you know there's a lot of students and families that we still need to work towards reaching and getting and some of our families are very happy and they may not need the additional support but uh it's a continued effort uh to just really make things individualize and give people what
035they need versus what size fits all for everybody so those are the updates I have then turn it over to the wonderful Jeff please take this please take this as a compliment but it feels like you've been here for five years you are just off and running and we all really appreciate the work you're doing so thank you very much thank you I appreciate it enjoy being there hi everyone so I am sharing out on staff support and collaborative culture so this has been a goal of each of the buildings including here at central office um I will hit on each of the the areas so one of the goals is around establishing time to collaborate so the wagon is back in action and celebrating teachers um so thank you to the PTSA and each
036of the buildings who who honored our teachers during teacher appreciation week and made it just a special week for people the buildings continue to host different social events things like scavenger hunts mix and mingles I saw a lot of great posts of different scavenger hunts on superintendents day and and heard a lot of good feedback about people being able to just connect with each other in ways that they don't normally get to um it was Wellness month so buildings planned different activities for the faculty and staff either during a faculty meeting or during the whole month and people could choose to participate in whatever activity um brought Wellness to them and Council Rock night out was a huge success organized by Mr Tappan and his team but really a time to get people out from
037Council Rock to visit different sporting events visit the art show and really just connect with other buildings and other students and families each of the school-based equity teams continue to work this year to review that Panorama data and and work towards their goals we in April at the different faculty and staff participated with recenter So based on each of the building goals they worked on a specific training with a different recenter person to really Target what their goals and objectives were for their staff staff we are in the middle of administering Panorama again so the faculty and staff survey went out in April the student surveys have been completed at TCMS and are upcoming with at fresnbhs have actually started at fres um and the family survey is currently open so though if you can
038look for that in the principal's newsletter as well as Dan Goldman's parent Square messages about that survey and then let me go to this um just again continuing to build connections so each faculty meeting principals have committed to that time to build connections whether that's a circle those mix and mingles those scavenger hunts so again really focusing on people feeling a sense of belonging and and a sense of community with the people in the buildings that they might not normally get to connect with and the last piece of this objective is around restorative practices so these restorative practices continue to be in each of our buildings whether it's through circles or restorative conversations TCMS has done an amazing job this year with their SEL Fridays but really that idea of a tier one support that
039every single student is participating in common activities common learning to address that social emotional learning but also to build that sense of community and the last piece I'm just highlighting that as you look at restorative skills you can find that throughout all of our curricular areas so when Allison was talking about some of those transfer goals a lot of those are embedded into some of the restorative practice skills into all the different curriculum areas thank you good evening bed and cleanup here safety and planning for the future So within this priority area you can see there's really two scope of two scopes of work um first is the the standards on School Safety and Security um and then there's the master planning and Facilities planning specific to the Safety and Security um and previously we've
040talked about the systems and the structures that we've been developing over the course of the year we talked about the emergency communication project we talked about the development of a threat assessment system from a buildings and ground standpoint we've dedicated resources and Rob loose looking at physical security the doors security cameras all things that are related to to facilities on the security end we were able to establish a system that will develop with a night supervisor Bradley Hearst we were able we're fortunate to be able to recruit him back and that'll be a position that will be able to um to grow and to have that really that Incident Commander during the evening so we've got that system and that's structure in place so where we went then is looking at the long-term Leadership Model
041for Safety and Security and we went through a process we initially had started with the vision that we needed you know somebody with extensive law enforcement security background for the preparedness piece of it and then we looked at this model from the New York New Jersey school boards Association and we started to think more deeply about it and what what do we really need how can we optimize resources considering the benefit that we have in this community of a partnership with the Brighton police department and so we started to look as a team and we look at the impact that leaders have had like Jeff Green like Caitlin O'Neal from K-12 and we said all right how might an administrative position be able to to tackle and to help us build capacity in each of
042these key key priority areas related to school safety so certainly with security having a dedicated administrator that extends to each of the four buildings that acts as a direct liaison with our security guards be able and then is able to sit at the cabinet level at each of our buildings and share that feedback be able to influence the building level response plans the police School relationship trust having administrator right now our building principles are the incident commanders when something happens it's our building administrators that are running the show not one person would be able to get there but if we had a dedicated resource and extending our administrative team to build capacity into into further develop you know our response and that relationship with the police department is already there we're working with Sergeant Woodard
043we're working with deputy chief just saying we work directly with Chief Catholic and the investigative team so we have that trust and we can build on that with potentially with with a new model the preparedness and Facilities piece of it the one things as we were going into the process and the most probably impactful feedback from our community as we were going through the posting and the hiring process was in these areas Behavioral Health student and staff Behavior Trust so the power of expanding our administrative team to participate with our Mental Health Providers and doing those those threat assessments be able to participate in in student investigations be able to see things from you know the act from you know surveillance of what's happened where you know where students are gathering what contributed to an
044incident participating in in the restorative conversations that we have a much better way more effective way I think of doing that by extending our our administrative team not to mention our special education piece event and looking at safety plans our number one incident of workplace injury has to do with interactions with students so having somebody with a special education background again helps us build capacity and looks things holistically from a School Safety and Security there so we're coming today with kind of the results of of our blueprint planning and a recommendation to the superintendent to think differently about you know the lead long-term Leadership Model and consider the expansion of an administrative position to to oversee these areas and be a K-12 resource like Jeff and like Caitlin are for our building principals and tackling
045each of these each of these key areas on the second scope that we talked about this is the results of you know the capital work that was approved by 86 passing rate at the budget vote and I think you could see in here by the scope um again it's it's thinking critically about school safety school security excuse me but also um you know with um at the high school looking at a renovation of our industrial technology and our music space it's it's I think in this scope of work we really achieved all the areas that are um part of our blueprint priority area so really proud of that I couldn't be more thankful for our owner architect construction manager team board president Davis is a member of that and be able to prioritize this scope
046of work present it to the community and gain such overwhelming support has been I'm just really thankful for that and appreciative with that I would open up to questions for any of the leaders here not so much a question there was a comment in regards to security we as a board should expect to continue to have difficult conversations about how we balance security and freedom and an open campus and keeping our kids and our teachers safe I appreciate the critical luck that you and the team did at going what are our opportunities here we should just expect certainly as a board and obviously as a leadership team these will always be difficult conversations they will often make people uncomfortable and we've just got to be open-minded to hearing points of view but I'll say one
047more time these will be different these will be ongoing difficult conversations and we're prepared to have them um and uh just appreciate all the work you and the team have done as well in that regard any other comments for any member of the team I just want to point out this is really interesting in that it's the excuse me the end or the summary but it's really the beginning so it's the beginning of next year's work this Friday in exchange will go out to our community asking how we are doing and what else should we be thinking about as we prioritize our work for next year along with this report for people to take a look at and an opportunity for folks to volunteer if they would like to be considered as part of an
048application process to be here on the blueprint day with us this coming June this represents an enormous amount of work and we hold ourselves accountable as you said at the beginning this is the work this is what we do all year long and it's really a pretty profound summary of a tremendous effort by everybody in the district and I appreciate the five leaders who presented and took on a leadership role with these groups last year we sat with them in June we worked with them again in August and here they are at the end of May reporting to you that we said we would do these things we did these things and here's where we landed and here's how it will impact kids as we go forward so it's really exciting maybe I need more
049Hobbies but it's exciting to see that that's our work that we did and what will be coming and it really does have a big impact on the organization so thank you and cheers to all of them for their work thank you you had to put a finer point it's June 27th I believe is going to be the blueprint day and people will be able to apply to be a volunteer for that day it's an all-day event and we can extend a considerable amount of brain power to figure out how we can get better each year so appreciate that opportunity thank you thank you all right principal reports I will in the interest of full disclosure note that I was approached at the beginning of the meeting by Dr Hall that he go first so I
050will call Dr Hall to the stand please our high school enl teacher so as part of my presentation we have a very special award to talk about and to a student to recognize um it's it's called the New York state seal of by literacy which is something we as as the state as you hear from Jen has just um put into practice and we have our very first students who are making history here tonight at the Brighton Board of Education meeting with one of our wonderful students who obtained uh this distinction the New York State sealed by literacy is in recognition for a student who is proficient in at least two languages one of them must be English um and if they obtain this particular there's several things they have to go through once they
051do that there's a certificate which I'll have two to present tonight and um a very special envelope metal so um the award is given to recognize high school students as Dr Dr House said for speaking at least two languages proficiently in listening reading speaking and writing and Ximena exceeded expectations in all areas of language proficiency um so this was passed and actually our own state senator roebok was one of the sponsors for this particular distinction along with assembly woman or Arroyo and approved on July 31st 2012. it was officially adopted by the Board of Regents in April 18th of 2016 and here we are June 2023. 22 23 23. um to earn the sale by literacy a student has to maintain an 85 percent or higher average in English and World languages and Ximena has
052exceeded that because she's a straight A student so why the CEO by literacy and for a number of reasons um from employment to encouraging students to obtain the proficiency of speaking another language in addition to maybe one that they're already proficient at employers universities you know recognizing how valuable students like this will be in the 21st century and the just to honor the multiple cultures and languages in our community foreign language teachers English teachers and administrator and a counselor the team this year included Tyles Dorsey patros and Linda Palmer who evaluated ximena's final project our English teacher was trishanese our counselor was Carrie Crowley and Matt Cuomo was our administrator so quite a rigorous process to go through and a project to put together and this year's recipient is Sandra Ximena dueñas [Applause] I have
053one certificate from Brighton High School and recognition of academic excellence and recognition of your outstanding performance and dedication earning the seal by literacy Brighton High School probably presents a certificate on May 23 2023 to Sandra Jimena duenas Romero a brightens first sealed by literacy student and a special certificate from the state of New York from the office of bilingual education in World languages New York State education department this certifies that Sandra Mina duenas has fulfilled all the requirements to earn the New York state seal by Literacy for the academic school year 22-23 by demonstrating a high level Proficiency in English and in other world languages [Applause] and our dad is joining us tonight [Applause] thank you very much that is a great picture um so just congratulations again our first ever um sealed by literacy
054uh graduate so very proud of you uh several things going on at the high school I'm going to cut it a little bit short but our senior nights we had all of our senior nights it was you know I can't represent all of them here I'm sure Mr Merritt will also be sharing some of the photos and the goings on at the senior nights but just a wonderful spring season onto sectionals right now we even the tradition of our lacrosse players and several of our teams now recognizing teachers as part of their nights this is in addition to the recognition of seniors and I just want to thank the coaches for doing that our bright and clean sweep and cleanup day the high school and the middle school been doing this since spring of 2003
055Rob Thomas and I the assistant principal started it and we're very excited there's a continuing you know 20 years later and we had our biggest crowd ever come out on that that Saturday with 61 students several different clubs participated plus the entire track team was there so we really they had a great turnout and had a great day cleaning up the BHS grounds always surprised to see what the craziest thing we can find can't always say them on TV but we did find a car seat that was thrown into the woods and the kids were just excited about finding it so they got the award for the most interesting object also on that same day the BHS leadership Club our leadership class sponsored another blood drive and they've been doing this now since 2013 and
056Zoe is one of our seniors she was the thousandth um donor and she got an award a special recognition for a thousand donations for the American Red Cross Chris Kansas is a teacher that runs the leadership class and the students in the fall in the spring for each of the semester classes puts together blood drive and you know just they love coming to Brighton and they usually do quite quite well uh we had our superintendent's conference day on April 28th we did a variety of things a lot of Staff activities in the morning as Caitlyn was referring to we heard from Dr Rio about transfer goals then we broke up into our own faculty we took the Panorama survey and we learned about artificial intelligence and chat GPT from Dr Glazer and Stacy Kugel and
057we had our annual PTSA luncheon I want to thank them and then we jumped into our grading for Equity work and uh grading conversations have been a part of our building goal for the year um and this particular day we've had probably 60 I think we're up to about 63 percent of our staff have now read uh grading for Equity by Joe Feldman a book that several of us have been reading middle and high school and then this particular chapter we have people reading from a different tax by Tom Shimmer but very similar ideas um continue our conversations and we reviewed a document with four areas we're going to study next year and two of the big ones we're going to be reviewing our grading scale so we used to be an ABCD E and
058F school we changed to percentages at one point in time and we're really looking next year and looking at what the abcdf scale would look like again and as far as a lot of the research we've been doing as far as the equities sake and not having a hundred different points in our grading scale but five so that's something we'll be exploring next year and formative and seven of Assessments um heading into next year as well with all of our departments a lot of events coming up as as we head towards the end if you want to hang out at the high school on Friday Spring Fest is back looks like great weather will be outside all sorts of fun activities faculty Channel shows around one o'clock two o'clock assembly in the gym and we
059have classes in the morning that's what the kids have kind of stuck with since covet and you know we're okay with that we have a much higher attendance rate than that um award assembly is going to be at night again a little bit of another change from covid but we're doing that at 6 30 for junior 7 15 for seniors in the auditorium uh the last day of classes if you want to come down cheer on the seniors there'll be an ice cream social again at three o'clock on the fields senior parade around Council Rock French Road and the middle school on the 15th and graduation on the 20th and the turf any questions any questions for Dr Hall I know you okay got a special mom over there are you okay yeah just in
060a meeting today planning out the bash and final details and graduation gifts and it's happening thank you very much Danielle they're preparing us [Music] all righty may it was a busy month moving into a very very busy June we just recently had our students return from the Vermont trip that our German students go on and the weather was perfect this year of course because I didn't go they had the best weather yet but they had a fabulous trip this year for the first year uh the German trip brought seventh and 8th grade students it's the first time that they've done that they have always only brought 8th grade before and Mrs Walter said that it worked out wonderfully great uh camaraderie the kids really bonded well and they had a wonderful time so always a
061great trip of course getting ice cream at Ben Jerry's is always the Highlight but the maple syrup and the Sugar Shack doesn't disappoint either we also at the same time had our eighth grade students we had two buses of eighth grade students head down to New York City for a jam-packed trip they did not stop I can't believe what they actually squeezed in and that that small amount of time but the kids had a great time talked to a couple of eighth graders yesterday and they said hands down their best school experience yet and we couldn't ask for more than that so really just a great trip great sites Spanish Harlem and just some of the restaurants they were able to do that really really a great time Ellis Island was new that's kind of
062a new thing in the trip this year and they really enjoyed that as well on our superintendent's conference day we started the day much the same as the high school where we learned about transfer goals and and profiled graduate from Dr Rio but we moved in a little bit of a different direction we um we had a actually I should skip a slide we had a scavenger hunt in our building and I have to truly confess the day before the superintendent's conference say I said Allison I'm out I have no ideas left what are you doing tomorrow for your for your uh camaraderie building and and team building and she said I'm doing the scavenger hunt I said great I'm going to steal the idea so uh we had 18 different rooms we put facts
063about teachers random facts in all 18 of the rooms and we divided up into 18 random teams it was absolutely hysterical I just stood in the hall and listened to the teachers laugh like little children they were giddy I said it almost feels like you know when you hear a baby laugh like just that it just feels so good that's what it felt like for an hour as they were running through the building we realized very quickly who are super competitive people are sue you would have been right up there with them but some really really competitive people and some really just kind of chill people drinking their coffee but the greatest part is as you look at these pictures these are teachers that are together that are from different departments they don't get to
064spend time together during the school year so it was really a lot of fun so Allison thank you for letting me steal your thunder there it went super well and then what we went into after that is our folks from recenter came together with us as a as a school on zoom and they helped us analyze uh some of the anecdotal data that data that we we pulled from students we had done kind of a chalk talk activity with all the students in our school we asked them nine questions about you know ranging from one describe a time when you felt most safe at school describe a time when you felt most unsafe and we asked them to do it without names but just descriptors and we asked all sorts of questions like that and
065we took all of that data you can imagine how much of it there was when we had almost 800 students responding to nine questions but they helped us sort it and make some sense of it and it was really powerful because we can as adults stand up in front of staff and tell them this is the way students are feeling or this is what they say but when they actually see it in the student's own writing with their own spelling mistakes and you know it's so authentic that's the powerful piece of it so we actually really that was the one thing that we wish we were able to do more of was spend more time digging into that data so our various committees are taking that on but following that work what they did was
066they gave us three awesome scenarios uh that all had to do with diversity equity and inclusion and then they put us into random breakout rooms and just asked us to talk about the scenarios how would you approach it as a teacher um again great to have kind of the heterogeneous mixings where people were meeting with people that they don't normally meet with so some great ideas were were shared and then then teachers went back after that and worked in their departments to kind of unpack the day unpack the data that they saw unpack the scenarios and talk more about it so super powerful work we're looking forward to continuing that work actually out of that came the idea that in our uh through our school-based Equity team that next year every other meeting faculty meeting
067or so we're going to do more of those scenarios where we have time to actually work together and and share ideas and learn from each other it's a very powerful day we also celebrated teacher appreciation week I have some pretty pathetic pictures up here but uh the PTSA was wonderful and catered a lunch for all of us from Nathan's it was way more food than we ever could have eaten and it was fantastic we also had on Monday some of our student council members and TCMS strong members went around the building and provided uh snacks breakfast snacks and coffee and tea to all of the teachers went to all their classrooms and then they did the same thing to wrap the week up at the end of the week they went Friday afternoon with snacks
068cookies chips water and all of that and the teachers loved it but I think the kids really liked it too we have our clubs are still going strong even though we're hitting the end of May Miss Anam here one of our secretaries in the main office joined the Mosaic club and did henna art with our students a few weeks ago so that was fantastic our Green Thumb Club is meeting just about every day of the week working not only in the greenhouse but also outside cleaning up the garden so it's fun to see them out and about we too participated in the bright and clean sweep we had about 20 students this year that met at TCMS in the morning for some breakfast we took the bus around town and cleaned up a couple of
069different sites again I have to tell you French Road was the cleanest spot we went there was not a lot of garbage to pick up it was pretty impressive but they really had a great time again I know I keep saying this but a group of kids that they don't normally spend time together it was a mixed group and really to see them over the few hours that we were together on the bus and cleaning up it was really a lot of fun of course they stopped at every playground they could and so that they had time to play but it was it was well worth it so really nice job by those students the field hockey theme a lot of these students were members of the field hockey team as well we had our
070students perform at the Lilac Festival last week and the poor students had like the worst day it really weather-wise wasn't bad but the wind was atrocious so they couldn't even get on the Mainstay or on the stage they had to be out in front of it and they were working there their clothesline clips and trying to keep everything together but they did an amazing job and we have had a lot of students perform in different competitions in the last few weeks as well and then just the most recent was on Friday it was so exciting they had Kelly Baptist who is the author of some of the books you see below come and talk with all of our sixth graders the book um Isaiah done saves the day is the one that a lot of
071our sixth graders read and um it was it was awesome I've done so many zooms with authors and then or other individuals other Educators I've never felt like I was truly right there with a person like we did with her she was great she was engaging with the student she had activities that got them up and moving while they were in their classes she answered so many questions and gave so many morsels of great advice and grit and determination that she shared with the students so it was really excited or it was a really exciting time and Jacoby and Renata were the were the two sixth graders that introduced her they gave a little profile at the beginning but was really cool about 45 minutes and she talked about a text that she's working on
072writing for the future and the main character's name is Jacoby so you can see Jacoby on screen there he just about lost it he thought it was the coolest thing that she's writing a book with a title character with his name so it was awesome and it sets up even more enthusiasm and excitement for Jerry craft who's coming in June he wrote a new kid and a couple of other books in that series that our seventh graders read and he's actually coming in person which will be fantastic I don't know how we were so lucky to be able to link onto a visit that he has in a school in in Buffalo so he'll be here a couple of the teachers are going out to dinner with him students will have lunch with him it'll
073be a really great experience and then lots of upcoming events in June we have all of our performing groups that are finishing up we have we are going to uh fres tomorrow to meet with our incoming sixth graders we have uh folks from BOCES coming and training our TCMS strong leaders uh around interrupting harmful language and quite a few members of our school-based Equity team are also going to attend and any teachers that want to attend are able to come as well so that's an exciting training that they'll be able to put in to practice next year with their peers we have one more state test we have to get through which is science eight and we have our crossover activity night on June 2nd bonfire June 10th always a big event and then our
074just end of the year exams so we'll it'll be here before you know it it's crazy ask any teacher they'll tell you how many days are left no shortage of things to do yeah thank you very much questions for Daniel principal Tappan keeping us on our toes well good evening everyone so uh Council Rock if you were there at all the first week of May uh it wasn't the best week for weather um but we had a great turnout for bike and walk to school week um we had our PE teachers they're just amazing coach uh Cooper and uh coach Krieger they were out there every day rain and shine dancing with music um and really inspired us to continue the fun on Friday so if you come by Council Rock any Friday from now
075until the end of school we're encouraging people to continue to walk or ride which is obviously the goal of that but you can see coach Krieger and Mrs Cooper there they have a different theme every every week this was hula theme but they dance and play music and it really just gets us off to a great start so thanks to them uh combined with that they did pedestrian and bike safety uh was taught in PE and it's through the lens of floor hockey but it's talking about how to walk in a parking lot how to cross how to all combined with um with that safety uh lesson that leads up to bike and walk to school so our kindergartners will be going on a field trip in June uh to the Highland Park uh where
076they will go through the conservatory and have a picnic but our first graders went on a field trip to the Planetarium um and I can tell you after talking with some of them they said it was the best day of their lives um I know they're young but it was the best day of their lives so these are just a few pictures all of the first grade classes have been it connects directly with one of their science units and then our second graders are in the midst we have a couple classes still left to go of traveling to Mendon Ponds Park um and it's an incredible kind of Full Circle so I think I talked about Tyler Lucero who was one of my students in Rush Henrietta he is a geologist that we've brought in
077to help teach one of the units in science and be an expert he comes back and is the tour guide that leads us through Mendon Ponds Park which has a really rich history of geology and how all the formations of the land walks through and talks to all the kids about that and it's really really amazing uh we had the TCMS brass Ensemble perform uh for us if you look very closely I am in there I did play the French horn uh which I did all the way through college um as well as Jill Davis who played the trumpet with them but it was really great to see our eighth graders so many familiar faces um but come back and speak so eloquently about their instruments about their passions and about why they're excited we
078played the Council Rock song that was arranged by one of the French horn players which meant that we had the melody because we never get the melody as French horn players so it was really cool to uh to see them and to have them represented and they were led by Mrs D Felice so all the other buildings I have talked about superintendent's conference day we too uh started uh much our morning was very similar we had welcome and connections I have this whole activity planned it was not a uh scavenger hunt but I have an entire thing planned and we did a potluck breakfast and as I sat I canceled what I was gonna do because they just were sitting talking with each other and connecting and seeing different people so I just said all
079right you guys are going to just talk and continue to eat breakfast instead of do my activity and then we did profile of a graduate and transfer work that circled back from the beginning of the year and then for us we spent two hours with our representatives from recenter who I think so it was how to support conversations around race at the elementary level with students families and colleagues and that came directly from our Panorama survey from the staff saying that that was where they felt they were weakest they didn't know how they didn't know what they didn't know what the entry point was and I think kudos to recenter and really Natalie at recenter who's our head consultant because they listen so closely to you know what our team shared and what was important
080to us in terms of we had two primary Educators who let it they understood what our teachers do they understood the level of our kids and they brought it right to us they brought resources that we could use and I think there were a lot of aha moments because I think we uh believe while we're doing pretty well we've got representation in our books and things like that but the real main resource they shared with us really went a step further and talked about where race even began in a really kid-friendly language where how is skin color determined in a very scientific kind of like oh and it's great for our kids because our kids are like oh okay great and it just kind of moves them along and then talks about what we can
081do about it and it was I think eye-opening for our staff to see this way that we could go about that so we're really looking to continue to expand that to continue to look for other resources that we can use and then decide how can they be reused across the board so that it's not if you're in this class you hear it if you're in this class Maybe um to make sure that that is all the way across and then after lunch um there was a follow-up that I think was also incredibly powerful because there was a lot of information gathering during the first two hours but they challenged our teams to really think about situations they had actually been in that brought up uncomfortableness and then a chance for them to talk with their
082in kind of a non-threatening not that you're in front of the whole class and someone says something that you're like I don't know how to do it but to talk with all of their colleagues about what would you have done what could I have done differently and the conversations were Rich they were vulnerable and it was really great and people said they felt like they got a lot out of that so we're also as a school-based equity team thinking about how can we continue those conversations into next year and really use that momentum so we're really excited about that uh staff support and collaborative culture I don't think I meant to leave that in there um because Caitlyn talked about all of that already uh we've got a busy upcoming weeks I know everybody does
083um but we've got our second to third grade orientation coming up uh on Thursday I'm sure Dr Rio will talk about that half day on Friday our dismissals at 11 30. I will go through this you know I've sent it out many times Dan Goldman has sent it many times our buses will be pulling out of the parking lot at 11 30. if you're a child coming home normally we normally dismiss at 2 45 if your child comes home at 3 that's a 15 minute ride you can think that at 11 30. your child will probably arrive home around 11 45. give us a few extra minutes as things might uh not go exactly as they usually plan so Monday we're off for Memorial Day we've got um a second grade field trip to French
084Road as well so we can see we've been planning a lot of transition activities for our second graders thinking about all the different opportunities with family being able to come to French Road for a movie night being able to come with their class and their classmates the people they're comfortable with to be able to take the tour uh Friday June 9th and this is a change from the date that is on the calendar we've sent this out to everyone but just a reminder play day has been moved to Friday June 9th and Monday is the rain day we've got incoming screening for kindergartners the incoming kindergartners we've got our second grade celebration which is our second annual where our second graders will be celebrated and have a concert out on our lawn hopefully uh we've
085got the high school graduation parade we've got our Council Rock family picnic which is a fan favorite and then our last day with students questions as always after each presentation we say there's a lot going on in this last month or so there sure is thank you all right this is the great part about going last so many things we've kind of heard throughout other people's presentations but actually it makes me really excited I love hearing about the consistency across the school building so just some old traditions that have been around a long time but still are amazing we have our trip to the Red Wings game where all of our students were able to sing and perform and that is just awesome to watch the kids there lots of Council Rock families there and
086French Road families there and staff members there miss O'Neill was in the audience there lots of people celebrating our kids we had that whole section pretty much sold out and the rest of the stadium was empty so what's going on but it was awesome um more Traditions coming back we are doing high five Friday every Friday it's been awesome at French Road the different teams have really picked up what this looks like so you know years ago when we started this at fres it was walking through the hall high-fiving as many kids as you can getting them psyched for the day well now there's music going on in different Corners there's a school we gotta you know got some mosh pits starting not really but it's getting it's really awesome to watch the kids dancing
087and having a great time and for our vote on a budget vote day our students voted for a song that we could play over the PA and on our last Hi-Fi Friday so the whole school can kind of have a giant dance party and they'll be dancing to Dynamite so they're super excited about that um and we'll let that go as long as we possibly can that day because it's a lot of fun and then I didn't have a picture of this because I didn't take one but it's such a great new tradition that we started at French Road this year and the credit goes to our school counselor Marguerite opet who invited in all of the grandparents who are caring for their grandchildren as the primary caregiver and we brought them together and had
088a breakfast and I was like yeah let's do it Marguerite this sounds great it was probably the best thing that I've done the entire school year because we built a community of people to talk to each other and hear each other's stories and um really kind of exchange phone numbers and this is something we're going to do every year and to celebrate grandparents you know who are caring for their children grandchildren for all different reasons and um they felt like just to be able to talk to each other and laugh about you know the homework and all the kind of pieces that come along with it but um it was really powerful and we hope to continue to grow that at French Road in years to come with our counseling team so that was pretty
089fantastic concerts Galore literally all the time I talk to I don't have the fourth and fifth grade concert in here we had last night that was amazing but we've had band Red Band blue band Orchestra chamber orchestra the chorus concerts and we have fourth grade concerts coming up um as we get into June but kids are doing fantastic work our teachers have done such an awesome job with our students and every time we get to the end of the year concerts it's just amazing listening to the growth of our students so they were so excited and have been doing an awesome job there so I know some of you have seen them we also celebrated teacher appreciation week we are having our luncheon from the PTSA this week on our half day on Friday but
090we did lots of different uh treats throughout the week for teachers including you know making pancakes for them and a cereal bar one day because they were seriously the best um and just celebrating them as much as possible so that was a fun time and Miss Flores first time making pancakes was that day ever yeah I can't get over that literally um we also as Danielle mentioned had a staff scavenger hunt on conference day I don't need to go into depth because we did the same thing the middle school did but part of what we did do is ask people to take these selfies and then airdrop them to an iPad we had in a cafeteria and then we played them all and Shirley and I picked our favorite ones to give a prize so
091they had to be there were some criteria they had a lot of fun to Danielle's Point like just going in the hallway and listening to people laughing running being so silly just for that short time to start the day was fantastic and continuing to build connections with people that they don't see or don't know at all so that was a great way to start the day and then similar to our other buildings we went into the transfer goals and profilable graduate work at fres and had the same topic as Council Rock because we decided that was a topic we needed to look at K5 on how to support conversation conversations around race at the elementary level with students families and colleagues but kind of taking a different route so once we started planning with recenter
092we realized the route Council Rock needed to go was a bit different than where we wanted to go at French Road so the work that we did was recenter had sent a survey to all of our fres teachers ahead of time to kind of ask for feedback on some situations they've encountered where they felt like they could use more support and they collected some really awesome scenarios and created some case studies for our faculty to work through giving them resources videos to watch articles to read and they facilitated the morning part of that work with our staff and then after lunch the teams broke into their grade level teams or content area teams with people that they work with and are comfortable with on The Daily to kind of dive into really what this looks
093like a little bit more so they have their own work to do around the scenarios and they were able to leave with um really good conversations again that people want to have more of that they felt were really needed but also supported with act with research and articles that kind of you know gave everybody that common point to speak from as they were learning so that was really helpful and to Echo Matt's Point recenter did a fantastic job of just individualizing this work for each school building we have some science happening here in fifth grade we are I had to pull in some curriculum it's getting to the end of the year but we are still learning and doing work um these are some of our fifth graders working on their final design challenge in
094science so they had to design a water system to pump and treat water for their town and each one of the groups is assigned a stakeholder group and had to decide what they were going to do to allocate the water and how they were going to budget for that as well so these are some of the kids working on that in Mrs Gottfried's fifth grade class we are in the midst of ice cream socials third and fourth grade are down we have fifth grade next tomorrow and it's been really awesome our special Area Teachers have all kind of joined forces in the library this year setting up some different exhibits for kids to come to to make it easy for families to find them all in one place and Mrs harp every week has been
095creating some green algae drink for the kids to drink which has been very popular and it looks very gross that's not the drink that's the experiment they did in tech class right there next to it but our students have really enjoyed it and then you can see there with music they're in their classrooms they're in the cafeteria having ice cream and it's been a great time at French Road and super thankful to our TCMS strong students from the Middle School who have come to help with the ice cream social they have enjoyed being back at French Road and kind of remembering when they were coming for the ice cream social and looking at the kids um and I joked around with them but they're like oh we're time has flown by we're so old you
096know it's been like only like three years since we've been here but you know it feels like a long time for them but they were awesome we're so thankful that they were there with us lots of events coming up as I mentioned some of them the concerts um we already had one of the concerts but ice cream social we have the half day Danielle talked about the crossover night Matt talked a lot about our second grade event so um lots of exciting things happening at French Road throughout the end of the year so check out the calendar people there thank you very much any questions for Allison I love the grandparents I'll also just briefly no and I think this is great all of you talked about getting really productive discussions out of the superintendents
097days and it's really great to hear that that you sort of embraced that opportunity so thank you very much for that next stop uh we need a motion for approval for a particular Jewel agreement between the Brighton Central School District and a particular employee you've all reviewed it motion to approved move by owner second seconded by Karen all those in favor next up is a bid for uh I'm sorry an approval for a Cooperative bid for natural gas you have that PDF uh here any questions on that motion to approve moved by Julian seconded by Sue all those in favor next up is the consent agenda I will briefly read the gifts as is our practice a gift from Keith and Susan Miller in the amount of three hundred dollars to the Visual and Performing
098Arts Department to the Dennis Miller scholarship fund in honor of the late Arthur L Miller a gift from Nancy wolf Jordan in the amount of a hundred dollars to the visual performing arts department to the Dennis Miller scholarship fund in honor of the late Arthur L Miller and the gift in the amount of 200 to the Visual and Performing Arts Department to our Bradley I'm sorry D Bradley Smith art purchase award made possible through the Brighton education fund also note as always great opportunities to eat in our fundraising um in three different fundraising opportunities that are listed here um that is our consent agenda motion to approve move by Julian second Ed by Esther all those in favor aye aye they will now ask for a motion to adjourn to Executives session to discuss a
099particular Personnel matter move by Karen second seconded by Sue all those in favor aye we are adjourned this has been a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education