001this is a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education the forum for the Brighton Central School District to begin I've turned it over to Dr McGowan to begin with some of the Brighton believer Awards thanks so much as we have sat at several past meetings just like to remind people that the Brighton believes Council selected 14 nominees last year to receive a Brighton Believers award and we are continuing through this year to have them come to be recognized by the school board and our school Community they have demonstrated the Brighton believes character traits of Integrity respect responsibility kindness and self-control these Award winners our students teachers staff members but of course nominations are open to parents coaches community members as well the nomination form remind everybody is on the website at
002bcsd.org we encourage people to recognize those around us who are demonstrating praying beliefs we have two people this evening being recognized and I'd like to ask first Autumn Hayes Allen to come on up please along with Dr Hall foreign the administrative assistant to the coordinators at BHS was nominated by 12 Corners Middle School staff members Katie Lambert Arium acoustic Denise mantel Jenny to williger Katie cants and Danielle Edmonds they wrote in January of 2022 Autumn assumed the responsibility of assisting TCMS with purchasing at that time she had met none of the building staff and was taking on new responsibilities during one of the busiest times of the budget cycle Autumn is diligent and will help troubleshoot If an item or quantity is not available including seeking alternate vendors when needed when a potential order encounters
003a roadblock in terms of timing or approval Autumn lets us know right away she makes the process as effortless as possible Autumn's kind and helpful personality comes out in her written and verbal Communications though Autumn's office is located in another building she does not hesitate to come to TCMS to meet in person explain or approve processes Autumn is described by TCMS staff as quote unquote a dream to work with put simply Autumn has done amazing work in the few short months she has supported our building congratulations Autumn and great job it is our pleasure to present this award to you foreign [Applause] just so you know the way things work around here we're all a little bit shocked that Dr Hall allowed in any way shape or form anybody to work with you because you
004are so outstanding that there's a little bit of a concern that people would hunt you down in another building and feel free to go somewhere else so great job and thank you very much I know Tom brags about you all the time just not loudly enough for the other principals to want to steal you that's that's his key Barbara Morlock come on up please foreign [Laughter] administrative assistant and I should say long time staff member that worked with many of us in this room was nominated by former family and consumer science teacher Amy Moran she wrote Barbara Morlock demonstrates the Brighton believes traits in many ways whether it's her voice of positivity in her emails or personal interactions she shows kindness to everyone she encounters Barb has supported TCMS at a time of transition and
005done so with a genuine Spirit her level of Integrity shows in all of her work Barb shows respect to all she emulates the brain believes traits daily and her actions and words we all know that middle school can be a trying environment this does not scare a bar nothing has ever scared she exhibits self-control by always being calm and even in Jack's a sense of humor into her work the mindset has been a refreshing injection to TCMS Barbara's an amazing person her ability to make those around her feel cared for and appreciated is a true measure of her depth of character Barb's heart is one that defines the bright and believes traits and I can say many of us in the room can live experience say you always have thank you so congratulations thank you
006[Applause] last but not least did want to mention that another Award winner who cannot be here tonight was Chuck Kane he taught social studies at 12 Corners middle school and nominated by student Harlow Putin deck now an eighth grader in the school Harlow wrote that Mr Kane is a great teacher is nice and is fast at grading teaches us so well we all get 100s on the test his students love him so he should get this as a reward for his hard work over many decades so we thank Chuck Kane as well thank you very much thank you oh this is a public and Community Forum so I will say two things to the award winners on behalf of the entire School Board congratulations again and thank you very much for your service to our
007community and then secondly some of you may have to pursue such items as homework other work at the house and things like that so if you need to go now you are welcome to if you'd like to stay um that's okay too um in regards to this being a published Forum if any member of the community would like to get up and speak and uh provide feedback in any way shape or form to us we are more than open to hear that um is anybody here that would like to speak principal tap in your set okay anybody a couple of non-government students here are there a couple of long-government students wait wait we'll wave to you okay this would be the best choice ever for a meeting to come to by the way congratulations this
008counts right this is credit you're here that's up to Dr Hall for sure any other comments questions from the school board I'd say tune in to the the YouTube channel where our meeting uh from earlier was posted or is posted will be posted with the blueprint updates lots of great information about what's happening in the district and of course the concept of community feedback is definitely not limited to tonight every board meeting there's public comment and of course we always gather public feedback through many emails and phone calls and any interaction so people are always willing to do that as well well the documents that are shared at the public board meeting are always post to the website as well so they are immediately accessible um do I motion to adjust a motion to adjourn
009this community Forum so moved moved by Karen second seconded by Sue all those in favor aye we are adjourned this is a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education good evening and welcome to the Brighton Central School District board meeting for Tuesday November 8th call to order I will note that this meeting tonight is being done in a little different order we have a business meeting at five o'clock and then we will be back in here at seven o'clock for Community Forum which will include presentation of some of the Brighton believer Awards that's always a lot of fun uh to begin with we allow it any public meeting the opportunity for public participation is there anyone in the audience who would like to get up and speak now we'll move to
010approval of the agenda you all have the agenda in front of you some uh motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting by owner second seconded by Susan all those in favor aye next we'll do the approval of the minutes from the last meeting the October 25th business meeting we've had a chance to review those minutes does anyone have any changes or edits to those minutes as received motion to approve the minutes of the October 25th meeting moved by Jolene seconded by Esther all those in favor aye I will note for our agenda item five it is the bright believer Awards and we have decided to move those to the seven o'clock Community forum next up we have our first budget Outlook um I think Kevin always calls this a period of prognostication but we'll
011turn it over we'll turn it over to Lou as we start to talk about the budget for the next year lower limo thank you good evening so this is our opportunity to reflect on the year that we just closed look at Trends and things that we're identifying this year and then use those Trends to begin to set some assumptions and expectations going into the into the next school year or next budget year excuse me so this is our budget cycle where we always present where we are in the process so right now over the summer months and into the fall months the instructional Administration is evaluating the results from the prior year doing A needs assessment and identifying issues I'm listening intently for what's that mean what that means for cost implications Staffing implications so
012I'm participating in those discussions but a lot of the work right now is is with the instructional Administration so to reflect on the year that we just finished so the Board of Education adopted our external financial statements that reflected these numbers but what we show in just our general monthly Financial reports is by object and we look at expenditure Trends and then we look at unencumbered balances essentially where we're gaining Surplus at year end so starting with the graph on the left hand side here you can see salary and benefits is our obviously our biggest expense we're a people industry you see the significant increase in Staffing costs part of that is because of the implementation of the full day kindergarten we also have the minimum wage adjustment if you will so that contributed to
013increased expenditures we're looking at you know stability in our debt which is good we're fully phased in our 2017 project but then we have some incremental costs here transportation we talked about a lot last year boc Services we've talked about so we're looking at those Trends and we're looking at how those are going to project into the future when we look at our unencumbered balances on the right hand side here we look at the last couple of years we have our covet years here which generate a little bit more Surplus we are budgeting for full programming and we had some we realized some savings under the obviously with the shutdown year and then with the hybrid last year we cut into our margins if you will pretty significantly and you can see the drop off
014in our unencumbered unencumbered balances especially in salaries as we did the minimum wage adjustment as we brought on staff as we had shortages in different areas we had long-term substitutes things like that and where we opened the year is is more consistent with the prior years even before covet so what's most important to me as we opened up September and as we go through October is looking at the unencumbered balances and salaries and benefits so that's where I'm looking at how is our budget to actual projections in those areas how would our staffing ftes compared to what we have budgeted so we're in pretty good shape I will expect you know areas you know to be cutting into some of the other areas especially this other supplies and services we'd spend that down of course
015the year it's there's not a really good projection model for that but at least we have a good start and foundation and financial strength heading into the 22 23 year the things that I'm worried about you know we'll talk about in a second but what I want to do is take this opportunity to show our reserves and where they were in 2017 prior to our Capital project and where they are right now and I think this illustrates how our business risks have changed over these last five years if you look on on this side of the graph we had most of our money in the capital reserves we spent a good chunk of that over these last few years with the investment of the 2017 project we also have money in our retirement and that's
016our stability so as rates go up incrementally and we need to protect tax cap and instability in the tax levy we have the opportunity to dip into our retirement appropriated fund balance that's the amount of money left over at one year that we roll into the next year so 2.6 million dollars and then you have some other expense-based reserves that we set aside for liabilities that we recognize and you'll notice we had this hundred thousand dollar Reserve right here the intent of that in 2017 was as we were working towards a one-to-one program we established an insurance Reserve to for break fix fast forward to 2022 we are a fully one-to-one District post covid and we've built that money into uh into our our general fund budget so there's not a need for that insurance
017Reserve anymore however business risks have changed and now we have 7.7 million dollars in our insurance reserve and we redefine the purpose of that for uninsured claims under the child victims act and we also have set aside money now for cyber security risks so we're essentially self-insuring for cyber security risks using that same hundred thousand dollar Reserve so 7.7 million dollars in insurance and you can see our capital is down to six million dollars so I hope as those risks transfer then we'll be able to over these next five years put more money into our capital reserve as we look towards more uh investment in in our buildings we've seen we've built up our retirement again that's for stability of operations so as rates increase you know we have protection in that regard and we
018have increased our appropriate fund balance again from 2.6 million dollars to 3.4 million dollars some of that was because of the full Decay the one-time incentivate that was expected to be paid over a multi-year period uh the state reverted back to an old rule so we appropriated more money just to phase in that and we'll have to expect to fully fund that with tax levy dollars prospective tax levy dollars over these next couple of years so part of my advocacy to the superintendent to the Board of Education would get this would be to get this 3.4 million dollars back to the 2.6 so that way I can better manage risk margins within the budget to what we're appropriating in future years so here's our history and and the promise of foundation Aid you can see
019the the long journey that we've had but we finally made it where we're expecting full funding in the 20 24-25 school year uh I'm sorry 24 25 school year my concern is that's great and that's that's going to help us tremendously is with the expiration of the federal funds and with the inflationary costs that we're experiencing but we have really no idea what it's going to look like once Foundation Aid is phased in so my concern with the reoccurring revenues from from state aid that aren't expense driven we're just not sure what that's going to look like going forward and how is the state going to be able to help us keep up with the inflationary costs from mandates and the escalation of costs so that's definitely uh a future concern that we'll always be
020mindful of as we're managing our reserves and as we're budgeting for our risks in the budget so here's the federal use of federal dollars and you can see the three different buckets and the dollars that are allocated and importantly the expiration dates so at this time I'd like to invite Mrs spagnoli and Dr Rio just to talk about how we're using those federal dollars and the impact and the planning that's going into the expiration of those money of those monies and how we can continue to build capacity and continuity a program for some pretty important services that we're providing to our school community thank you hi everyone so I'm going to speak a little bit to the um green and the blue columns here the positions and the professional development we've provided to teachers and
021that all the positions that we put in place to support our students and curriculum and instruction and mental health which Mrs spagnell will speak to shortly but um some of the positions we've created are already built into the budget to carry over as we move forward including the instructional support that's been put in place for technology for K5 and for 612. so that Tech integration piece was something that we really needed in the district to carry that our one-to-one devices and returning from covid and especially during hybrid and remote and all of the different things we had going on as far as technology goes those positions will carry through as we move into the general budget in terms of some of the other positions that are listed here are intervention positions our literacy intervention or
022math intervention and then our K5 and 612 math intervention leaders those have been really really powerful positions as well in terms of the support provided for both staff so they can be the best they can be for students as far as learning the curriculum and supporting with interventions needed and also the adults that are actually working with kids one-to-one in small groups at the 612 level and at French Road as well so that has been an increase in a math intervention teacher at TCMS and BHS who has been working with students at the tier three level and we haven't had anyone in that position prior so she's been really able to Target kids needs who have bigger gaps who need more intensive support who need a greater frequency of support and we've seen the same
023thing at the reading level in ela so we have a reading teacher at 612 we haven't had somebody at the high school before in Reading we've had a teacher at the middle school but increasing that position to support again in the same exact way so tier three so those kids who need more intensive or or greater frequency of support have been able to receive that through the use of these funds and we've been better able to meet the needs of our students additionally our math intervention leaders at the K-5 level and the 612 level have helped teachers to narrow down the curriculum at the especially the 612 level that they were teaching in terms of all the gaps that the students came in with following our return to full-time instruction and um that has been
024a huge asset to our teachers to prioritize curriculum and to design assessments that work for our students and also intervention that works for our students where are the gaps what's the curriculum that we need to address it how do we group our kids and regular looking at data across both of those positions multiple times through the school year looking at how students are doing and regrouping students and providing the supports needed so those are all positions that have definitely enhance a learning for our students so you know of course I advocate for all positions curriculum and instruction I know that we might have to make some decisions moving forward but that has helped kind of this Gap especially as we've returned to a more typical school year additionally we've provided some professional development to all
025of our teachers over the summer and into the fall around social emotional learning and restorative practices and crisis training which Diana will speak to in a moment but we were able to do that through the use of these funds as well to bring in some supports for our teachers and that will continue to carry on through the school year as well thank you thank you so in terms of I'm going to speak a little bit to the green and shift a little bit over to the blue as well so in terms of mental health we were able to use the funds uh last year to hire some additional Mental Health Providers at the K5 level in particular we hired a new counselor at Council Rock and Another counselor at French Road if to add to
026the way we were able to deliver Mental Health Services in addition we reallocated and shifted our family Navigator support to shift that Focus to the 612 level in addition to that we also are really proud of the partnership that we've created I'll speak a little bit later about that in the blueprint slides regarding our partnership with urmc and golisano in terms of our clinic setting more to come about that in particular we've been able to use the funds to support training for our teachers in terms of the delivery of some of our instruction related to bavona in particular sending our teachers to the Train the trainer training that's a little redundant but so that people have the skills to then be able to deliver that to their colleagues and go into our classrooms to deliver
027that instruction at the K2 level and our French Road staff will be participating in that training one staff member this fall and another one in in the spring in addition to that we also expanded our use of the Brighton support center in particular at the middle school so that students could receive more access to Executive functioning as skills training and we can reach more students for the tier two and tier three level before we maybe are looking at the the special education the CSE table in addition to that in terms to the crisis training that Dr Rio alluded to a few seconds ago superintendent's conference day we were able to provide some training to our security guards and to our teaching assistants that day around an overview of therapeutic Crisis Intervention how to respond in
028the moment how to also have some more proactive strategies when dealing with students who struggle either behaviorally or social emotionally to access the environment and to help again to de-escalate those situations we've been able to through this make sure that we have a mental health support more accessible and more available to all of our students across K-12 and we're really proud of those opportunities thank you let's add another piece for both of us that um some of the funding is accounted for in the general budget some of it is for PD or for supplies or for intervention tools for teachers to use and that's kind of a one-time thing and we're moving forward and then there are other pieces that we're talking about reevaluating in terms of the intervention teachers and those supports how can
029we move forward and include what we what benefits our students the most um in services to them and knowing that you know everything won't be able to carry over thank you and I apologize I must have seen a shiny squirrel I missed the last two digits there but that's 2.2.5 million dollars so what's actually real last referred to as an important point though that I want to highlight we've been planning for this right so over the last two budgets we've been thinking about it and we've been double budgeting for some of these positions like the tech integration positions are in the general fund right now but we're claiming them out of the federal fund so if you think about the relationship between that appropriated fund balance and the Surplus that generate in that salary line
030we need to realize that that's going to tighten up once the expiration of the funds and we start utilizing those funds so it's a really important relationship that appropriate fund balance to the margins that we budget within uh within the different line items so our budget to actual factors we talked about um you know one of the things that we look at and we every every month we're looking at our budget to actual uh to see where we are what ftes we may have added in response to student needs um substitute costs is obviously something paying overages when we can't find substitutes in long-term instances that's that's obviously a premium so those things that we look at and we we do that budget to actual on a monthly basis the benefits we're looking at our
031health insurance rates we budgeted accurately and what the um the rates have been we've been um our Consortium has been working really hard to to manage expenditures and the health insurance plan and we've I think we've set up really good models predictive models for health insurance now obviously something could always happen with with rates or changes in mandates or something but we feel like we have a pretty good handle on on on what those rates are in each year utility costs I'm really worried about utility costs this year we've seen exponential increases in our utility both consumption and our rates so that's going to be something that's going to eat into our margins this year and that we're going to have to make up for going into next year uh something we're looking at closely
032as a buildings and grounds team obviously our OCS services and tuitions in particular we are experiencing regionally a shortage of programming for high needs students so alternative programming and the costs associated with that the specialized Transportation that's something we work closely with pupil services on and then just general special specialized transportation out of District runs keep in mind we have have four schools within Brighton but we transferred to over 30 30 some schools so those individual requests and we're fully relying on contract Transportation without a lot of room or our capacity within the afternoons the expense adds up quickly so as we start you know as we look into the future years we start with our enrollment forecasts and where we see our predictions going forward so kindergarten seeing some stability we're thinking stable numbers
033this year what we really need more time post covet to look at is the number of kids and students that move from kindergarten to first grade typically before when we had a half day kindergarten program we'd see increases of 30 to 40 percent from the half gay kindergarten program into first grade I'm still carrying in the model 25 26 percent increase so I think we're being conservative in our in our first grade numbers going from kindergarten to to first grade and all the rest we see we had an increase at third grade as well and we're you know expect that to continue and we'll have to make some staffing adjustments going forward so just rolling forward Staffing and looking at at the ratios you know preliminarily again this is no decision budget decision at this
034point but just looking at the impacts of adding a teacher or decreasing a teacher and the impact on the class size ratios if we wanted to Target 18 at the kindergarten we would be adding a section to 13 to respond in the first grade again if that 26 percent increase is is accurate or holds true you know that may require an FTE so going up approximately three ftes at just the general general education K5 classrooms so what we're looking at going forward obviously is the results of our collective bargaining and our contract increases generally about four percent we will be opening up some contracts with hourly workers and that is likely going to Trend above the four percent just trying to keep Trend with inflationary adjustments the impact on inflation on goods and services certainly
035paper cleaning supplies everything that you would experience in your household we're experiencing significant inflation on our consumables so that's going to put pressure on our department budgets our building budgets so we're going to need to look at that health insurance while predictable that's still a big number and that has that has a big impact relative to the allowable increases under the tax the tax cap so we're watching that closely we're watching participation and as we have retirements at turnover and staff you know we still have an increased number of participation TRS is is stable for this year we do expect the rates to go up as as the rates as the market catches up with the rates so while it may be stable this year I'm worried about three four years down the line with
036increases in TRS and ERS rates but that's why we have the reserve right so we're planning for for things like that BOCES Services three to four percent are generally a rollover assumption and then we'll look at participation in the special education services out of District placements obviously those are it's an important service but there there is cost implications to that and he doesn't follow until the following year Debt Service stable and predictable equipment again we've been running a good repair replacement program but the cost of equipment is is increasing and then obviously Department allocations relate to inflationary adjustments and enrollment trends the one thing I wanted to point out that I point out as often as I can is the capital project and the opportunity for investment so if we look at the net Levy
037that's related to investment in capital investment in our buildings what we've built up over the last couple of years and where we have the opportunity for stability in these out years with the drop off of old debt as part of the restructuring 15 20 years ago we have an opportunity for about a 20 million dollar Capital project so we've been working as an oecm team with our Architects and Engineers working on putting forth a plan a for investment to the board of education for your consideration and at the January meeting I would welcome the opportunity for our financial consultants to address the board and just do a little workshop on on what this means and how it impacts on the tax cap implications on the tax cap going forward with the tax cap again not
038too much that impacts our tax cap here in Brighton except for the capital exclusions and you can see as this drops off an absent a reinvestment in our Capital you'd see our tax cap numbers from an operation standpoint go go through so our goal is generally to keep it as close to that two percent as possible with the factors that are allowable thinking that with inflationary Trends this two percent is going to be the the standard at least for the next five years we don't expect significant growth in our tax-based growth factor so really it's just our Capital exclusions that we need to manage prudently to have stability in our tax cap number going forward and this is just the next step in our in our budget cycle and ultimately we'll get to financial capabilities
039determined that's generally in the uh the February to March time frame uh so still a lot of work to do in these next couple of months thank you thank you to all three of you appreciate your stewardship Lou and your teams obviously of all of our sort of financial planning if you will a lot to look at as always our contribution from state aid will be the one of the critical things that we'll learn about as we sort of roll forward into the future a special thanks also for the work on the capitol planning from a buildings perspective we're getting a lot of things updated right now and the students and the teachers benefit from that next up I'm sorry any questions for Louie ran over its head down but I forgot to ask you
040any questions for loan that's all right I'd just like to take a moment to thank Lou and his team for the planning they do around our Reserve accounts just thinking especially about the retirement Reserve um any uh rays in those rates that has the opportunity to eat up our entire tax cap and so having that Reserve in place makes a huge difference in how we can budget so thank you for that attention so next up we have our Brighton blueprint action plan updates you'll hear us frequently reference rather the blueprint it's our sort of guiding document it helps us focus our priorities to get too spread out and I think we'll have as a regular part of these public meetings updates on where we are in a number of these initiatives so I think we're
041starting to balance it sure I just want to point out Lou's second side is introductory side with the graphic around the blueprint right so our financial plan directly to enter our strategic planning and the priorities that our community expressed as we went into last summer and then a large group of community members coming together to say and this is what we ought to do about it this should be our objective and this is the update to you on all of the things we said we would be working on what's happening in each of the areas that have been prioritized for the district we do this again in the middle of the year three quarters of the way through the year and of course at the end of the year and as we make budget proposals
042in the spring they're based off of the blueprint work as well so helson [Applause] thanks for the intro if that was helpful and I didn't have to say it to them so these are five priority areas that we focused on this year again to Kevin's point with the community feedback at the end of last school year and into the work that we started this summer with um a large stakeholder group representing all different areas from our families staff members board members leadership team and these are the five areas that we developed some goals for for this school year so before I dive into this what you're going to see today is you're going to hear from five different administrators to speak to each one of these pieces and what we've done is just highlighted the
043work that's been done thus far in this area so if you look at the full blueprint online you'll see that there are other bullets that maybe we haven't addressed today and we'll give updates on those as we continue through the year as well okay so I'm going to kick us off with academic excellence and this is our blueprint goal for academic Excellence but really we are focusing on reaching all of our Learners wherever they are and bringing them to where they need to be that's kind of how to sum it up so we're thinking about how to do that with a growth mindset for all of our Learners by being culturally responsive by making sure that everybody's needs are met and their strengths are highlighted in in what they're doing and that their individual identities
044are also part of the work so you'll see some of the things that I highlight today relative to our goal in this area the first one is um The Learning transfer goal development for each content area and this is a piece of our blueprint that is important as we think about aligning our curriculum across K-12 and aligning comic experiences for our students we have amazing teachers as you know here in Brighton we have teachers that develop curriculum that are you know thinking about how to make amazing experiences for our students but what we really want to do is make sure that the experience that a child gets all the way through from kindergarten to 12th grade is thoughtful and aligned so this practice is helping us really think about how to always kind of reach
045that goal at that end in mind so whether you're at third grade or fifth grade or 12th grade when you're thinking about each content area you're working towards that same goal but just at a different level for our children so we started that work this year on superintendent's conference day in October by gathering some feedback from all K-12 stakeholders and that work is going to continue between actually next week and then through April with our instructional leadership team and some other teachers that have volunteered to join in the work to help develop the goals and then bring back to the teams for feedback and our hope will be to share that out with faculty on our April conference day to get some more feedback and kind of move forward into our curriculum work next summer
046having those goals in mind additionally on that day we focused on the profile of a graduate and that will also help us kind of keep that end in mind of where students will be where we want them to be when they leave us as Learners in 12th grade and how their Journey all the way up from K-12 helps secrete that so curriculum council is taking on profile of a graduate this year so you'll hear more updates again curriculum council is also meeting next week so we'll kick that off and more to come on that one of our goals was to really dive into our Panorama data and you'll hear that in bits and pieces throughout this whole presentation because we've used it in a lot of different ways but for school-based Equity teams our principals
047have led their teams through looking at that data and identifying you know what their focus was for the school year based on what staff or students and or families have shared with them so all of our school-based Equity teams are looking or have looked at that data and have created a plan to increase wherever the need is for their individual School habits of mind planning continued for our schools that are just starting kind of getting it kicked off at French Road in the middle school and the high school and each one has a different plan to reach that goal of incorporating common language around habits of Mine by the end of the school year lots of great work it's happening there and Council Rock has even increased their commitment to habits of mine with their
048Hab lab which you've heard Mr Tappan talk about in previous presentations but you will see bits and pieces of habits of mine now in every school building around the district and that will just continue to grow as time goes on we've already rolled out parent Square for staff and families and students at the high school so check that one we did it this summer so continuing to provide support though to teachers and to families and our goal is to continue to utilize that tool but know that we have a learning curve you know we're learning as we go we're trying different things out we're seeing what works best but we're working towards that goal of having everyone communicate on parent Square and then an ongoing piece that you'll hear about this school year is the
049technology application review we have a lot of Technology tools in the district that is not a bad thing necessarily but a lot of things came to during covid and when people were remote and hybrid and finding all these great opportunities that were out there but we kind of want to hone that in to a smaller group of applications so if a teacher is looking for a particular tool to do something in their classroom we would be able to say this is what we support here in Brighton and that's through the work of our instructional technology coaches and also Dr Tracy Glazer who's working on that this year so right now we're collecting data on what tools are used and thinking about which tools best meet the privacy of our students through red lot 2D and
050our goal will be to land with a list of like the most reliable tools that we can use for our students so instead of having to find something new all the time you can say this is something we already have access to within the district so that's ongoing thanks I'm going to pass it off to Diana spagnoa for mental health and wellness thank you so our goals listed here I'm not going to read it to you but getting into the work is if you look at the blueprint we have many different objectives to get to our goal that are listed there I'm highlighting the ones that we have addressed obviously since the beginning well since the summer and up to this point this school year I don't want to be redundant for you'll see some
051different bullet points on all of our slides there's some carryover in all of our areas which really just reinforces that we're all working towards the same common goals which is really important here I want to highlight on this slide while you're you're glancing around at some of the other points I referenced earlier when I was up here before about our new partnership with golisano urmc and right now we have conditional approval from the office of mental health and I want to thank Caitlin O'Neill for her work and her time spent working with them especially with with working with our 612 mental health Team in terms of developing a referral process developing scheduled meetings that we meet monthly with that agency so that we are collaborating together about student needs but beyond just the clinic service
052that we're also gaining professional development and collaboration with them we're really excited about that opportunity they have we've shared this information not only with PTSA but they're also going to be coming and presenting in December they are the featured guests of the December PTSA meeting the date is escaping me off the top of my head but I know it's in an evening meeting in December which will be really exciting so more to come about that but it is really targeted towards students and families who are facing challenges to access mental health community-based Mental Health Resources Beyond school-based mental health services so if you are they are not connected or they're having trouble finding a counselor and they they have a need this will be a an available resource right within the school which is a
053clinic setting and then also a availability to access their main campus setting through through golisano but the partnership that we've already established is very very strong we are very very anxious to get started and we are eager for that that green light and we the room is set up we're ready to go so we're very excited about that opportunity um we've began together both Caitlyn Dr Rio myself a program evaluation that you see listed here in terms of RTI and mtss to really streamline our process and procedure to make sure that students all students have access to all different tiered levels of support both academic and social emotional behavioral and that work started this summer and in a couple weeks we have a half day release where we're working together to continue the hard work
054that's been already put in place I'm not going to read these slot these bullets to you but you can see some of the different pieces of work that have already been started across all of our buildings in particular the direct instruction that started both at the middle school and the high school with bomona in terms of addressing those lessons I referenced earlier to train the trainer that has already been had by some of our staff but then future will be coming for those some of our French Road staff that will be participating in that training as well I reference that we've been partnering with PTSA not only to talk about our partnership with golisano but also our family Navigator Meg Goodman came and introduced herself to PTSA and spoke about that how the family Navigator
055can support both students families and staff and her office is located here at district office and she supports students both at the middle school and the high school as well and I rep here I'm being redundant I always referenced earlier too some training that we've provided our security guard cards and our teaching assistants and the superintendent's conference day on how to be proactive and how to intervene in the crisis we had the highest turnout of teaching assistance and security guards for the superintendent's conference day sign up voluntarily for that professional development it was a packed house both in the morning and the afternoon session which was very exciting so more to come and can't wait to share more the next time and I'll turn it over to Jeff Green thank you foreign hello I hope
056everyone's doing well I'm not going to read to you either um so I'll get started so one of the things I've had the great opportunity to do is um join in with the pts chair meetings with all the building principals over here thank you for allowing me to to participate in that it's giving me a great opportunity to learn more part of the blueprint is I'm looking at all the opportunities events that we have in all of our buildings give me kind of a K-12 perspective um and just to partner and also give like vertical alignment with a lot of the events that we're doing in the district it looks different at every building but it's been really helpful and there have been some opportunities where um you know I've been able to let each
057building know how some of the other things we're doing like we're going to be starting movie Nights at Council Rock which has been good and you know being able to learn from the great success that we have from friends is always a great opportunity as well um curriculum nights was a great opportunity for families to come and re-engage with the school after our time away with covid um very well attended but as you know with attendance sometimes we can there are some gaps can come up and one of the things we found out especially at the elementary level was sometimes families there's a big need for families to have child care our great PTSA was very supportive but we're going to be looking um for next year at ways that we can improve the child
058care because there's clearly a need but we also want to be supported the PTSA and you're looking at ways that we can engage students and provide support for families so that it's also a safe environment for everybody we have enough adult supervision during those so that's something we're going to be working on another project I'm going to be working on soon supposed to meet with Kristen yesterday but we had to reschedule something with her next week we're trying to build a family Network when our new families come and join our school Community many of them especially if they are coming from other countries it could be a huge transition and we want to create a support system with some of the families that we already have in our community that may have already made the
059transition when they have maybe similar language or similar cultures where they can connect with families to help navigate the big shift in oftentimes culture um not just Brighton culture but also sometimes American culture to help support that our UNL teachers are to do a great job of doing that but with me supervising the school registration we want to be able to connect families as soon as they're registering um so that's going to be coming down the pipeline soon uh Deanna and I are going to be working together to bring back the I've never experienced it there it's great the new family event that we put on pause since kovid we're looking forward to doing that that's going to be coming up in January yes and I also am going to be facilitating an urban Suburban
060Family Social which you're all invited to but uh that we've gotten some feedback from our some of our Urban Suburban families that uh they would like an opportunity we do a great job with our orientation but everybody kind of joins our school Community different times we like to provide an event where they can actually uh socialize with each other regardless of when they have joined our community and make connections because sometimes you know if you don't physically live here you can sometimes feel like maybe they're not a part of it and to be able to experience it with people that have a similar experience that's what we want to do so we're going to be doing that this uh February as well looking forward to that uh in the spring definitely be starting the transition
061uh projects that we have from building the building we had a lot of success last year and looking forward to involving more student leaderships uh leadership opportunities at the K-12 I talked about that this past uh late spring when we had uh at the blueprint uh planning day so just looking forward to having more student leadership uh K-12 I'm looking into a potential movie night I love Dr Hall we've had a lot of conversations we don't know what's going to happen logistically there's definitely interest but um we also do not want to set ourselves up so we're looking I'm trying to look at events where we can have families and students from multiple buildings and work with each other uh in a meaningful way so we're going to be doing that as well and then
062lastly I'm going to be developing a committee to analyze some of our suspension data some of Uma recruit to be a part of it we want students we want families we want our staff faculty to be a part of it as well just look at the disproportionality of our suspensions with our students of color and see if we can not only look at the data but look at the interventions that we are doing to we want we want kids to be in school we want to you know when we're in this Equity Journey we want to make sure that we are our practices are Equitable uh so those are some things we're doing I appreciate everybody's time and look forward to uh working together so if I type in the shoulder don't be surprised by
063trying to recruit you for some of us so thank you you know look forward to it thank you right so I have the pleasure of sharing about our staff support and building a collaborative culture so our goal is allowing staff the opportunity to build connections with each other and and more opportunities for collaboration so we the staff came together I don't know if Dr Rio talked about this but on superintendent's conference day and opportunities to work within their departments and sometimes across grade levels so they were working on those transfer goals and buildings have been hosting different social events for staff to connect Council Rock and French Road even held one together to bring those staffs together like Dion and Allison talked about the school-based equity teams are really digging into that data and for
064this particular goal they're really looking at that sense of belonging and related to staff so each building has kind of set a goal based on what they noticed within their own data so some examples is uh Council Rock determined that there was some need for some different professional development um actually same as French Road but different kind of different goals but all still related TCMS has been has been using an approach of identifying with a problem statement what are those barriers and then what are those goals to address those barriers and BHS is working with focus groups with students to learn more from them and then planning for the spring panel again because that was so powerful uh fact building faculty connections each of the faculties have been uh giving time at their faculty meetings
065to really build connections with each other and really taking it a step deeper than just you know what's your name what do you teach um there were some examples of questions that went really in depth to um you know what makes a person what are their experiences what has shaped them and and the faculty is able to connect and build those connections another part of the collaborative culture is continuing to use restorative practices to build that community so this has been a few years in the making of getting to a place that those Community circles are just part of our classroom routines like Diana talked about with second step our counselors and our teachers are using circles to give that social emotional curriculum but also for different restorative conversations either student to student student to
066staff sometimes involving families in that as well and TCMS has shifted their 10th period on Wednesdays to really focus on social emotional learning so Danielle and her team have been developing a specific curriculum for those days that all of the students are getting that are receiving and part of that is using restorative practices and circles and that is awesome and related to safety and planning for the future I'm going to focus on on the first sentence and I hope that you've gotten a sense through the previous presenters that this is when we talk about systems and training and Facilities planning this is really woven into every area of the blueprint well I appreciate that it's it's Standalone you heard Mr Green talk about family student and family engagement and connections and obviously there's benefits to
067that from a school safety standpoint Utah Mrs Magnolia talked about the training and de-escalation those are all have residual benefits for creating a safe School environment so I'm just going to elaborate on on some of those specific to the facilities planning and this is a slide that you've seen before at least the one half of the site you've seen before so facilities and our emergency communication program we have submitted through the state the smart schools Bond act a comprehensive facilities program to increase our mass communications looking at signage boards looking at the Blue Light emergency response systems supplemental speakers to our emergency PA systems so in the event of a status change in the building or some type of emergency situation everyone is communicated to in real time they have an opportunity to know what
068was going on and to respond appropriately as trained so that's ongoing right now I'm really proud of where that where that has landed I hope to get approval from the smart schools agency within SED get that PO cut and have the have the work begin in the installation another system that we've implemented A system that we implemented is line wise and this is a monitoring of School Technology and you can see the areas that this system monitored by a third party administrator looking at Advanced things that are being typed real time in these areas and soon as something is typed we're immediately notified if the the analyst if you will uh triage is that to raise to a level of you know three four or five on a five point scale so our administrators are
069spending a ton of time responding to these triage and these touching base with with kids um and doing uh doing uh risk threat assessment and certainly follow-up um if if they sense a child is in need or a family is in need of anyone so this is a system that we're really proud of it's It's a ton of work for our administrators um but it is is proven to be an invaluable and valuable tool so that's just a couple of updates on the facility side our building condition survey is ongoing um and as I talked about in the budget Outlook we're prioritizing some capital projects certainly with safety investments in mind especially at the middle school and high school so you'll see those coming as we outline as we unveil our Capital priorities in the
070coming months thank you great um any questions from the board I'll make just a couple of quick comments first on behalf of the board greatly appreciate all the work that's being done a couple things that jumped out to me Jeff used the word Journey because that's all this is It's not like a destinationist we just keep on going and trying to get better so I think it's important to remember that Caitlin you talked about focusing on teacher support as we're a school but strings it sometimes feels like we're so focused on the students which is great we forget that there's this teacher Network behind there that we've got to check in on so I appreciate that and it's a little thing but as we get the chance to go to buildings I always appreciate this
071a number of you addressed the inclusion of our security guards in a lot of the activities and I always think our buildings personnel and our security guards are often the one the kids see a lot and they have the chance to interface with directly or indirectly certainly when we're coming into buildings we see them as a board from time to time I sometimes wonder if they're an under appreciated resource not by all of you but by our community they really understand all the things those folks are taking on so I appreciate that we're recognizing the importance in this particular case of of security guards um because I think they're incredibly important and a lot of them make meaningful connections with the kids so thank you for that Dr Miguel for nothing else Dan thank you
072for saying that I just couldn't be more impressed with the work that's done the way this um discussion Guides of work throughout the year thank you I'd also know we're going to find warts we sort of talked about that suspension data we need to get more information on that but we've got to be very open with that as well as with our successes so appreciate that as well I'm now on to reports um this is sort of a date wise and time-wise a funny meeting because we have many of us haven't had a chance to get to that next meeting since our last update um I think Eliza will have to think I can see that Eliza is not here so uh I'm aware of that I'm Board of Education rather than just do Monroe
073County I'll start with Esther and just work this way any reports committees or events you had a chance to attend that you want to update on or that are coming up that you want to make note of of hiring practices uh committee are we're determining our dates for meetings for the coming school year curriculum council is meeting next week as well as the school equity-based committee for Brighton High School as well as next week thank you I attended legislative committee last week for the Monroe County School boards Association we firmed up our position papers their revisions a couple highlights the committee will be focusing on advocacy around zero emissions Transportation there's a mandate that we convert to zero emission Transportation by 2035 and Peggy graduates in 2035 so that feels like a long time away
074but when you're making plans for something that will be millions of dollars that is not a long time for us to do that so that's a deep concern to every District across New York state so we'll be working on that a great deal with our local representatives and then the other piece that really Lou mentioned it talking about Foundation Aid in that full phase-in we've been very excited about that over the past two years but it's settling in again for districts across the state that that's a that's a formula that was developed 15 years ago and it doesn't exactly represent our conditions on the ground so working with our local representatives and all the folks in our government to understand that the foundation Aid formula in order for it to work it must reflect current
075conditions in school and that's going to be a big piece to push forward for us it it impacts every District in the state as well as the transportation and then the last piece that we talked about again for all of us is mental health for students and for staff and that that like many mandates that come down from the state those those mandates really need separate funding streams um so lots to think and talk about with our Representatives instead of a December trip to Albany we'll be doing a day of advocacy online with our local Representatives on December 5th those have actually been surprisingly useful I know we think that meeting face-to-face is um is better but I feel like we get actually more time and more we have some more in-depth conversations than just
076dashing into an office for 15-20 minutes so I'm looking forward to participating in that thank you so um November's information exchange committee is actually tomorrow and I'll be unable to attend it but I believe Julian will um it's about how Board of educations can support their District's focus on Dei so it's extremely aprophobic and I can watch it afterwards they always record them to watch later but I did want to I had attended one in September um that I don't think we ever presented on and it's just it's applicable to what um Lou had spoken about with school safety and so in September the topic was school safety and we started at information exchange talking about what does school today safety mean and a lot of the conversation was very concrete and it was about
077security systems and metal detectors and then we step back and we looked at things that everyone who spoke about the blueprint spoke about today it's really deeper than that it's about Connections student to student it's about having a person for each child and so some people who might not connect with their homeroom teacher May connect with the security guard and that's their person and so I think the concept of school safety is larger and so we've been doing that and I commend the work in our blueprint that's focusing on that so I just wanted to make sure I brought that back great thank you and I was just going to add about information exchange that after tomorrow's meeting the next meeting is in January of 2023 and when I saw that in writing I went
078whoa whoa we're going to be halfway through the year before we know it so anything else that's that's it Christina um the Brighton teacher Center policy board starts meeting uh next week unfortunately I can attend next week but um this is my second year on that um on that committee and um it's been really interesting to learn the way that our teacher Center thinks about professional learning in all the buildings um and then uh there was also which I don't think any of us could go to but the New York state school board association's annual conference was last weekend and I heard reports back from the subcommittee on diversity equity and inclusion and they said the thing that impressed them so much was how holistically the conversation was happening in many of the sessions at
079the conference so not just as a separate subject right not just different right not even yeah not as a subcommittee a subcommittee work so I thought that was really important feedback to hear um I'll do a quick update first from Mark okanovich who is our representative to BOCES he sent along an update which included their full review of ongoing capital projects with campus construction and label Associates um there are also uh getting an update this week from the Monroe one restorative practice is as well as the Dei plan around developing and developing a welcoming and affirming environment excuse me and then they did have to your point Christina a large contingent at the nisbah New York State School Board association annual convention last week which happened to be in Syracuse it moves locations each year
080I make note of the fact that we're not going to hear from Eleanor oy tonight because she had to scoot out and she's working as a volunteer at the polls so we greatly appreciate her service there um and then finally just from my standpoint it was the other construction meeting yesterday I'm going to ask Lou a question in just a second I'm finishing out that first big Capital project that started in 17 working on the current capital project and as you heard Lou address in the budget Forum that longer term one that will take us out 25 24 25 26. it's not being done in these schools but the big thing that we got the update on yesterday was if you were out Brighton this summer you saw there was a lot of activity on
081that 12 pointers Middle School roof there was cranes there at different times there's a lot of materials we did have the walk through an inspection find out what it's typically called the punch list for the roof a TCMS and they'll just shout to you did we get approval from that part of the walkthrough I know there's another one pending okay so great great news there rain will not come through and get on our kids um so that was BOCES anything else from the board before I turned to Nicole no Nicole thank you so sexy by the pictures of our friends musicians enjoying their lesson it was a quick turnaround from our last business meeting to the swim which also included Halloween on a Monday and then if you look at the next page it's from
082we have a few submissions from Andy Conway for BHS the 12th grade economics class they actually had the author of their textbook come and visit he's a Syracuse University professor emeritus and he came in to talk to the class and they got to ask lots of questions hear about what their academics going into college might be was really awesome he also shared that the shin shanim students came and he didn't have the photos that time but they came to discuss how it looks different in Israel versus in America so he said that went great and then Dan Wilson and Andy Conroy shared that they had been having speakers come in for their law and government large group which is in the big lecture hall at the high school so so far they've had Dr Hall
083the bright police chief and the mayor so nice um or supervisor so just how wonderful an opportunity that is and how they look forward to more speakers coming and that is it thank you I think Peter's unable to be here from a PTSA standpoint so I will turn to you Dr McGowan to see if there's anything you would like to add a couple quick items you mentioned suspension data there's an article recently in the paper that we've discussed and a children's Institute report that we'll be reviewing review internally and certainly we'll be reporting back to the board on that information as well as an article recently in the Albany Times Union about the use of timeout rooms across the state and we'll be following up on that as well we do have a board policy
084about that and District practice that will be updating you on and I just want to thank the community for their tremendous support and thoughtful approach to the current situation that we've been working through staff wise in the district again one to reiterate one that this is certainly a situation that we never feel represents our staff even though they certainly will feel that way and take great responsibility for the kids that they serve as we all do and how important it is to keep focused on the lightness overcoming the darkness in terms of the great work that's done each day with our kids by each one of our staff members and appreciate that our Community has been thoughtful I think in responding to a situation that frustrates us all and we certainly feel a sense of
085responsibility and we'll think about ways with the Board of Education that we can talk about policy implications and what does this mean for us in thinking about our practice going forward and our kids never being in this situation and finally we've been approached multiple times about Diwali being a holiday on our calendar we would love to continue to think about ways to be as inclusive as possible in our school calendar and we will do that as we go into next year's thinking around the calendar and look at where Diwali that's a five-day Festival Falls in that and the one day that we are learning from the community that celebrates July the Hindu Community which day is most important as we did with Eid and we will continue to think about in 2024 when Eid Falls
086and when we will know for sure what the aid is and how that connects to the rest of our school calendar and where we can find flexibility in that so I do we just want people to know we're thinking about that and thinking all the time about how to be as inclusive as we possibly can and before anybody even asks I know this might be on your mind before you pull out your 3D glasses and bring this up there is an eclipse in 2024 that is apparently a very big deal and so we will need to accommodate that in our school calendar as well so it is a topic of conversation around how to manage that and transportation at the end of the day because apparently the world will turn to complete darkness and Chaos
087at a certain moment I really am sort of mostly sincere about that but in all sincerity my sarcasm inside we do need to think about what the implications are and the people in the science Community are talking to us a lot about that and make sure that the safe situations for all kids and families perhaps the legislative committee can work on advocating for a 179 day school year and then we can all take a look with the appropriate eyewear on that thank you that's all okay finally we have the consent agenda you all have received updates with regards to Personnel changes recommendations from the committee on special ed and the committee and preschool special ed there's a number of fundraising activities listed as always plenty of opportunities to eat and two field trip approvals the
088Spain trip and the BHS whale watch are there any questions in regards to these items on the consent agenda motion to approve the conjun consent agenda and the items on it second moved by Susan seconded by Karen all those in favor aye uh and finally a motion to adjourn Ed moved by Julian seconded by Esther all those in favor all right we are adjourned this has been a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education