001this is a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education good evening and welcome to the may 24th brighton board of education meeting it is today is an educational meeting and we're going to begin first i'm going to turn it over to dr mcgowan for a minute thank you i would like to ask the people here to all consider for a moment joining in a moment of reflection for the role that we play we all play in division in promoting hatefulness and propagating conspiracies that divide us and nurturing a lack of trust and for the victims of hatefulness in texas today and most recently in buffalo i think we should reflect on doing more being better and being contributors to ending hate and divisiveness that has led to these terrible tragedies thank
002you we're going to begin tonight with one of the highlights of our board meetings and that is the brighton believer awards and i'm going to turn that back over to dr mcgowan again good evening and thank you for coming for this great recognition tonight as you've heard several times before for several meetings last school year the bright beliefs council selected 30 nominees to receive the brighton believers award we didn't forget about these members of our school community wanted to make sure they were recognized for demonstrating the brighton beliefs character traits of integrity respect responsibility kindness and self-control the award winners are parents students teachers staff members coaches and community members i would ask that when the award winner is called they come up and join me next to the podium along with the person who
003nominated them if they are here this evening first up is mark henritta nominated by principal matt tappan mark henrietta social worker council rock primary school as i said nominated by principal matt tapping who wrote mr henrietta goes above and beyond every day the relationships and rapport he builds with kids and families allow him to fully support the whole family he tirelessly advocates for students and their needs as he works to teach help students understand and grow and build independence in children over the last year he has gone above and beyond meeting with students over zoom finding ways to connect changing his background to a variety of places around the country and making kids guess where he was mark is a lifeline for many kids families and staff members he gives of himself at all times
004he embodies all of the brighton believes traits congratulations mark so [Applause] robin ackerman mr chapman come on back up robin ackerman please robin ackerman a second grade teacher at council rock primary school was nominated by principal matt taplin he wrote robin is a most amazing teacher and human being her kindness emanates from everything she does the students in her classroom are quickly brought into the community of connectedness that she creates as a remote teacher she continued to build a positive kind nurturing and supportive culture even through zoom in the building mrs ackerman's positive energy can be felt at every meeting and through the hallways mrs ackerman is a true treasure and embodies each of the brighton believes characteristics each and every day of her life congratulations rob [Music] [Applause] nominated by megan michelle she [Applause]
005maria caceros a sixth grade social studies teacher 12 corners middle school mangan wrote about her mrs casetos built a relationship with my son through the additional time she spent with him and that relationship turned into a motivation for my son to want to do well in her class my son once told me one day i want to be a social studies teacher like miss cassettos when being asked why he said i want to show pictures of taiwan like ms cassettos shares her photos taken at the parthenon greece i think a beautif a teacher with a beautiful heart and teaching passion should be acknowledged and i believe the brighton believers award would be a good one for recognizing the great work miss consetos does we agree congratulations [Applause] dr scott stein nominated by jim herman [Applause]
006dr scott stein nominated by jim herman who wrote the 14 year old river flow soccer club teams got coaches as a blend of races and backgrounds and scott's patience kindness and quiet strength brings this diverse group of teens together to form a cohesive unit with covid closing school and cancelling the season along with the unrest related to the presidential election and the murder of george floyd the world seemed to be turned upside down in 2020 this is where scott's steady leadership and warm caring personality proves so vital to his players and their families something as seemingly mundane as youth soccer provided them with a foundation they could stand on and a sense of stability in a wildly unstable world while so much of our country is divided scott's team has proved positive that diversity does
007make us stronger thank you dr scott [Applause] katie falter nominated by student ashton ellis asking if you're here please come on up and mrs edmonds [Applause] katie fault our sixth grade social studies teacher at 12 corners middle school as i said nominated by ashton ellis he wrote mrs falter represents the qualities that brighton believes in she is kind engaging understanding respectful and always goes above and beyond what's required mrs falter cares for each and every one of her students and also makes you feel valued she spreads joy hope and excitement in the classroom and beyond it's relaxing to be in her presence knowing that she's not just a teacher but a friend i'm grateful to have had the opportunity to meet mrs falter and to be her student thank you so much ashton for that
008and thank you [Applause] i did say it should go on the refrigerator and mr falter should have to acknowledge it when he walks by indeed ashley ellis nominated by lonnie mazurowski teacher at french road steve and tracy lee there's a whole list here by the way a well-nominated person so come on up and parent jennifer castle [Applause] i can only do this justice if i read from all three perspectives but i don't want any other award winners to feel like you got short shift on this the reality is there were three nominations so there's different perspectives that i would like to share and it's wonderful to think about all three of these lonnie masrowski wrote there is no bigger fan of brain believes than miss ashley ellis she lives and breathes it this marks her
009third year in our district but it's hard to remember frez without her miss ellis marches to the beat of her own drama her first conversations with students often center around a disabled cat named lil bub or the legendary monster godzilla she definitely threads social emotional learning into both miscellas works to create shared language with her students that makes them feel respected listen to and honored she meets kids where they are and helps them grow as members of a community her love for her students fresh and brain schools is evident in every single thing that she does miss ellis was also nominated as we mentioned by parents tracy and steve lane they wrote ms ellis made an immediate and lasting impact on the life of not only our fresh student but our entire family one of
010our children needed additional support and got that from miss ellis when moving to brighton ashley and the fresh team reassured us that things would be different here ashley was able to see past the negative behaviors that may have existed and see a kid who has so much to offer needed caring adults to help him learn how to express himself appropriately and she gave him that he's learning how to manage those and to be supported thanks to ashley's work we feel so blessed to have had ashley in our lives the past two years miss ellis was also nominated by parent jennifer castle who wrote miss ellis has been a vital contributor for my daughter at fres without her continuous positivity and creativity i'm not sure how well my third grader would have done i know ashley
011has the best in mind when it comes to her ashley deserves more than just an award and i hope she knows this for all of this and all this work and this right here is the award and the gift and congratulations to you [Applause] so mrs gilbert if you don't mind i'll give them the polite uh we'd love for you to stay but unless you have a burning desire to listen to the rest of the board's important but not as interesting work on a beautiful spring evening now would be the time but two things that i want to say you are the people doing what i mentioned at the beginning in terms of spreading love spreading support for each other and being examples of thoughtfulness of caring of connectedness in a world that is struggling
012with that so i want to thank you for that and certainly wish you a good night but also acknowledge the fact that dr scott stein is here also with dr mordstein a longtime board member and teacher in the district and he said to me beforehand scott that everything that was mentioned about you was because of him so i thought that i should bring this up but i also want to acknowledge dr stein who did so much to help us here and build the tradition of excellence here over many many years as a board member as an educator but clearly most importantly as we acknowledge as a dad and so thank you for that too so again thank you so feel free now would be the right time um for me no i almost didn't talk
013ready to move on to public participation but before i we do that i just wanted to say that's our last um presentation of brighton believer's awards for the year but it has just been such a joy to see each presentation each award winner and and the folks who have nominated them so if anybody's listening if there's someone special who's touched your lives in the district or in the community please go to the website and you can download an application form because we're going to hope hopefully continue to do this at our board meetings next year too and now we're going to move on to public participation which is an opportunity for the board of education and district leadership to receive feedback from the community we allow three minutes per speaker in order to give everyone
014a chance to speak while also letting the board conduct and complete our business for the night i will note that whether directly or indirectly our students are watching all the time we consistently state that personal attacks or denigration will not be allowed towards anyone you can provide your feedback or state your disagreement with policies or practices without attacking a person's character i do have the name of melanie bernhard who wants to speak if there's anybody else who wants to speak dan goldman is over there in the corner and you can fill out a card with your name on it so mullany if you would like to go to the mic now you can hello i'm back um so today i'm not only addressing the board but i'm really addressing also the members of the community
015that will be viewing this i first want to say it took a lot of courage for me to stand up here in multiple board meetings and speak up about issues that are impacting our children i know i get a lot of eye rolls every time i come up and i expect a few negative comments from community because i know my views don't align with everybody in the community which can be incredibly stressful but i've always been respectful and polite but unfortunately i'm learning that this community is not isn't always the same toward everybody else if anyone knows me they can come up they can count on a few things one i love this country and and believe in freedom two i love my kids more than anything and i just want them to grow up
016with the same freedoms that we did when we were in school um finally if i see there's something wrong or something just doesn't sit right in my gut i don't sit behind my keyboard and complain i i get involved i stand up i speak out i truly believe that being part of the school board would have allowed me to get involved to make a difference which is why i had decided to run i knew it would be difficult but i was not prepared for was the behavior from this community that i have been a part of for 25 years for all the platitudes about equity inclusiveness and social justice it was shocking to see the intolerance and the viciousness of people that live here if you don't know what i'm talking about go to the
017brighton community facebook page and see how much i was attacked grown adults were reduced to childish behavior that you would see in a group of middle school bullies i welcome a debate about any subject and i support that everyone should have a right to their opinions but what i experienced was nothing short of character assassination it got so bad that my kids were coming up with excuses not to go to school and i was just a mom running for school board along with a local publication members of this community went to work attacking me personally instead of challenging me on my views a lot of trouble was taken taken to track down pictures or information on me that we were used to falsely slander my reputation i have never hidden my views about the policies
018on kovit or my support for parental rights i have stood here wearing moms for a liberty shirt many times and spoke on these very issues and just a quick blurb on the mom's liberty it's just a non-profit organization of supporting parents just like the new york state council of superintendents support superintendents the council of superintendents is not a right-winged extremist organization and neither is moms for liberty the organization has 90 000 members and was founded by two moms in january of 2021 that sat on a school board and saw the need for parent representation and a resource to support them but this is just one of many clubs and organizations that i belong to but for some reason that one organization was highlighted conveniently the day before the election i just thought i just want
019to point out that uh a board member raised that you've reached the three minutes so oh okay so just remind you again i do represent a group of people of like-minded parents teachers and taxpayers that do share my views and i hope that you as the board would reach out to me and sit down and want to understand what our concerns are instead of just slandering us on facebook thank you so all right melania if i [Applause] i would certainly uh wouldn't speak for any board members i do want to point out to you though that in our review of our facebook page the dialogue that you're discussing did not happen on our facebook page not even in the comment section it was unrelated to any publication anything related to anything the district was doing
020played no role in any of that we obviously don't support the slandering of anybody or participate in that nor did any board member or staff member administratively i i did not notice either in any of those comments anything that i saw where the district had any involvement or anybody at this table had any involvement whatsoever that you understand how parents are being treated that might have a different view because i know you constantly stress that and there is still another group that is completely ignored thank you is there anybody else if not we're going to move on and can i ask for a motion to approve the agenda karen ii sue second the agenda all in favor next we're going to have an approval of the minutes from may 10th our business meeting and from
021may 17th the annual meeting and election could i have a motion to approve those minutes andrea second esther are there any questions any discussion any any corrections okay then um all in favor all right okay we're ready and now we're going to move on to our math and science program evaluation updates dr ryu dr kanekar and andrea doyle all right hello again everyone um i'm here today with two of our instructional leaders um both who work at the 612 level andrea doyle who's our math intervention support teacher who has been working as an instructional specialist this school year and alpha khander who is working as our 612 science leader so we have two of our awesome instructional leaders and i just have to say before we start because they're going to jump in and participate
022in this conversation as well that we definitely wouldn't have made the progress and the growth we continue to do in curriculum without the support of all of our instructional leaders especially the two that are here tonight so i thank you all for being here and presenting on your programs i'll give a quick update on programmable and what it is so everybody has a little bit of background i know that some people were part of our program evaluations this year for math and science and others and years past and then andrea and alpha will give us some updates in math and science so why do we do program program evaluation just to um continue to review the information that we have about each one of our programs from each content area across the board we operate
023on a five-year review where we're just looking at everything that's changed and shift and our goals that we set in the past and making determinations about how we can continue to move forward what's working well that we should continue with what we might want to reassess as we're looking at different curriculum or as we're looking at different instructional practices that would support shifts in whatever the content area is and i'll talk a little bit about why we do that but really our focus is on two pieces one is on our students and one is on our organization as a whole and when we're thinking about the work of our students we're looking at how are students achieving and how are they learning so what does that look like it might look like looking at student
024data it might be talking to students it might be looking at the curriculum that we've put in place for particular content areas and then also looking at the focus of our organization as a whole so how do we set students up to move through the programs to have access to the courses to have different experiences and those are two of the key pieces that we look at when we're doing a program evaluation in general some questions that we think about in program evaluation and ones that we looked at across both math and science are about how well our students are achieving and how we're supporting that achievement looking for overarching themes for our study or specific indicators what what are we seeing in the classroom what would we want to see more of in the
025classroom and also is our curriculum getting at the standards that we want to and is our curriculum getting at different ways for students to experience learning throughout the year and throughout you know the whole k-12 experience we think about how students are learning if they're having different learning experiences we're looking at assessment practices we're looking at the whole gamut to whatever kinds of questions might come up this is our general plan and process we look at previous program evaluations and we kind of assess our current state to see where we are and where we want to go the program evaluation committee works on developing goals for the focus of the work and then spend some time over the course of the school year that started in the summer last year and then over the course
026of the school year we met and talked about possible data sources surveys focus groups data review collected data which our instructional leaders will speak to in a little bit analyze that data and then making recommendations recommendations for moving forward for the next five years this is just a quick glance at some different types of data we'll look at you'll hear about a little bit of what we looked at in terms of surveying our students and staff members and some data that we analyzed but really considering all the different aspects of data including demographic data who's enrolled in what class what you know when students take particular courses and when they enter the program for that class looking at perception data how people feel about their learning how students feel when they feel successful how teachers
027perception of instruction that's happening in curriculum we look at student learning the assessment data that we might have on on our students and then just the processes so when we're considering a process we're thinking about you know when is a student able to start acceleration or when can a student have an opportunity to take a different class for example and i'm going to pass it over to andrea now to jump into our math program thanks andrea thanks dr rio so we've actually had several program evaluations in math and so we actually took our time to reflect and read back uh what has already happened and what reports we already have to look at if we actually did accomplish the recommendations put forth the last time and then what's currently on our mind uh in the
028world of math education so these were the five goals that we established when we did that um you'll notice culturally responsive education is a part of that that was not something we were talking about six years ago when we did our last program evaluation and then we've also adopted everyday math at the k5 level since the last program evaluation and then it was really important to consider are we meeting the needs of the current students who have been influenced by our advances in technology and the pandemic so it's important to note that this program evaluation focused more on surveys than past ones have our data was interrupted by kovids so we had to rely a little bit more on surveys than we have in past evaluations in the survey teachers were asked about training if
029they needed training if it was meeting the current needs of students how they felt about pd when they wanted pd what kind of pd etc and also you know differentiated instruction and the status of our culturally responsive practices we were then able to sort demographically we looked k5 k12 612 also at you know special what special ed teachers were saying versus enl teachers versus academic support intervention specialists and then we also got to survey students so we surveyed fifth eighth and eleventh graders and they were asked about how they feel about math and being a mathematician and also how they feel in math class i was fascinated though not surprised how many students measured success by their grades and that students felt valued when they participated in class we also was they were able to
030sort that data by gender race and whether they were accelerated or not so i've actually been a part of the math leaders group that meets you know quarterly or so throughout the last few years and the 506 transition has been a common conversation at that table so that was definitely something that we needed to think about in this program evaluation it was also exciting in my role this year to be able to see firsthand the everyday math pilot that we piloted at sixth grade investigating what was happening there through the teacher planning meetings that i attend and also through being able to pop into the classrooms and observe the lesson that was actually happening and then also since my role has been academic intervention and addressing how things are going i realize that there are
031some differences in how ais is determined and administered and i've worked very closely with the tcms math department to establish some clear entrance and exit criteria for their ais that we hope to put into place for the fall which was kind of happening coincidentally with this um an interesting observation that came from the survey was that 50 of math teachers say the program math program does not differentiate so that's something we definitely need to look further into and as always when you ask teachers they always ask for time time to collaborate time to work together and the principals and dr rio have been very supportive in keeping some of the common planning time that 612 teachers already have and also in creative ways that we can we've already started brainstorming to have them work together
032and then from the survey we are off to a great start with our professional development on culturally responsive practices but teachers definitely ask loud and clear for that to be mass specific so that's something i'm going to give you a minute since these are the recommendations that the committee put forth just to read those hmm so the math leaders actually met uh last week and started brainstorming and have already established a day to address the first bullet uh in the summer where kate we are hiring several k new k5 teachers and that they would be able to have some training directly on everyday math and be prepared entering into the school year um inquiry-based math programs that we currently have at the k-12 level require continual support and that was something that came through the
033program eval and that we need to be cyclic with our math pd um i look forward in my role to also supporting teachers in culturally responsive practices through the classroom talks so that the students who felt valued said they participated and you know sharing practices that will help encourage that throughout my role this year i have also started to support courses to identify problems or create lessons that will fill the gap from covid or repeat the skill extend the thinking to allow for access and equity to all learners and look forward to continuing that and then everyday math will be extended to sixth grade starting in the fall and part of our work we actually visited a fres 5th grade classroom so that we could see what they're experiencing now to help with the 5go
0346 transition and of course thank you to everyone who participated i do find program evaluation to truly be a fascinating experience because of the variety of people and the different lenses and insights that everyone brings to the table and the unique perspective so thank you to those that took the time and now i'm going to turn it over to alpha thank you hello i'm alpacandar and i'm serving currently as a high school teacher but also in a part-time role as a science instructional leader 6-12 um we had some similar goals as the math department did for our science program evaluation one of the things that was one of our goals was to capture what curriculum and concepts are taught at each grade level and to try to get a map of it another thing that
035we were interested in is there are new standards that have been put forth for science the next generation science standards that in new york are known as nislis which stands for new york state science learning standards um we call it nestless all the time forget what it stands for but um so this has been something that when my position was started which was about seven or eight years ago um it was floated that new standards are coming and then they waited and new york state waited new york state waited so it's still despite the fact that it's been seven years the first actual implementation of a new test is going this year sixth graders will in be taking a new eighth grade test um so it's still two years out um and so that's the
036current timeline so one of our things that we were looking for is how how much are our k-12 teachers aware of this implementation process have we been doing a good job in communicating and are they preparing for and also to do a gap analysis of where are we now and are we ready to be where we need to be in two years and three years and four years another thing that we're looking at is developing culturally responsive methods for students to communicate the scientific method um i think that there's a common view that maybe culturally responsive education doesn't have a role in science or in math and i think that we are learning that there are definitely some students that feel like they belong in science and some students that don't and that's a question
037that we're asking in our and one of our goals is to make sure that every child who walks through our halls at brighton is a student who feels that he or she can consider themselves a scientist and the last thing is this is something we're still holding off for the future is to look at data to look at who accelerates in science in brighton who ends up in ap courses and do we have any unintentional barriers in the way and so that's one of the questions that we are asking as well so we also implemented a survey and we asked teachers um as far as crosscutting concepts and science practices this is new language that we're using so i think when you teach science we think about content and that you're going to learn about
038an atom where you're going to learn about a cell but i think one of the things that is changing is we're learning that learning how to analyze data learning how to ask a good question learning how to interpret patterns that these skills are science too and that they need to be explicitly taught and so we surveyed teachers about which cross-cutting concepts and practices they are using which ones are interested in learning more about in terms of use of curriculum we have purchased curriculum k5 and also purchased some curriculum six eight and so we're curious as to how that curriculum is now being implemented and what further support teachers need so that was another thing that we asked teachers about what are the needs for further professional development as andrea mentioned we're always interested in more
039time and more learning and i don't need to list all of them but another thing we're looking at is the culturally responsive practices in science as well so in terms of our survey one of the things we learned is that with the curriculum that we purchased it's still very challenging with all the demands on the teachers for them to get to everything that they're supposed to so we need to make sure that there is time for us to prioritize units and prioritize content and make sure that the things that we are making time for are the most important things another thing we're looking for is k-12 vertical alignment our students growing in the skills that we want them to be growing in and finding more time summer time after school time department meeting time to
040continue to support these initiatives and looking at more professional development specifically around the culturally responsive practices with respect to science and identifying barriers that are in place so this is a long list but the recommendations that we're looking at now that we've completed the evaluation is developing a vertical curriculum map that includes not only the content but can we identify where students are constructing explanations arguing with evidence analyzing data and looking how at how that's growing and spiraling through k5 kindergarten right now doesn't have clearly defined science concepts so that's one of the things we're trying to look at to make sure that there is some fidelity to some curriculum that's happening in our kindergarten classrooms and continuing to help teachers understand what the new york state science standards are in addition to the content
041and that's something that we're continuing to work on i think most of us who are in teaching learned a certain way but the way that we're being asked to teach and i was a little bit different than how we learned ourselves and so there is definitely some pd and some mind shifts that are involved in that and we're going to continue to review some student data as well to learn a little bit more about what opportunities we're offering our students and looking into possible roadblocks so i think that's the last slide okay and thank you to our committee members who helped us along the way this year um this is the i think the third program evaluation have been able to be a part of and so thank you to the board for continuing to
042support the science instructional leader positions and in all in math science english and social studies we appreciate it okay thank you all right thank you any questions no but thank you it looks like you got an enormous amount of work done this year we did you really did very exciting i'll note too that over the years that i've been involved as both a parent and a board member i've watched how this process is being refined and i think that that that has great opportunity for and i i can't resist i have to add something as well i'm currently taking a biostatistics class as a as an adult and i wish i got a survey question about how do you feel in math class because i feel awful and so like i wish someone would ask
043us so it's amazing that like we're surveying our kids and saying how do you feel and everybody should be able to feel like a scientist so it's it's so important so i i i love being a part of this i think it's awesome thank you thank you thank you [Applause] we're going to move on now to our principal reports and mr tappan you want to go first [Laughter] so this is our final uh presentation of the year which is hard to believe yes it is so an exciting event that we had at council rock was uh jaredine nolan a visiting author came to council rock and it was it was so great on many uh many points but first it was the first assembly that we've had in the new space we realized it was
044the first assembly that any of the kids at council rock have had because they haven't been able to since we closed and weren't able to get back together she was amazing inspirational funny the kids laughed she so without disparaging other authors just because you're a great children's author doesn't necessarily mean you're a great children's presenter you think the two go hand in hand um she has the gift of both she had the kids in the palm of her hand i compared her to a pixar movie because the adults were also hysterical laughing the kids didn't know what we were laughing at but she had us on both levels of humor she shared stories she shared where her inspiration comes from as a writer connecting to our kids and um you know sharing that she is
045just a regular person who loves to write and a lot of kids got some great connections with that she shared three presentations one for our kindergarten students so it was definitely geared to our kindergarteners and then one to our first mixed first and second grade two two groups um and she was just fantastic a ball of energy she was just great um and there she is a special thanks to the ptsa who helped to fund that um and our amazing librarian adelmotkovicious who planned the whole trip and jodeen gave her a lot of credit because she picked up the phone and called and said are you jeredi nolan because i want you to come to our school and um she connected that by having an amazing and inspirational librarian was what brought her here so
046um then we had an extra added bonus um again through the ptsa and through some grant money um a book that she co-authored with tiffany haddish called layla the last black unicorn coincided so she was here on friday the 5th or 6th i believe and the following tuesday the book was coming out she shared some pictures and a little bit about the story and kind of teased our kids like i hope one day you'll be able to get this book and you know see it and the kids were like yes we hope so too they had no idea that we were throwing a birthday party for the book that day the ptsa did amazing work we got pre-published i mean we worked with the publisher to get them the day that it was released which
047doesn't happen liftbridge cafe or liftridge book book company got us the books there and each class got a hand wrapped gift with unicorn hats and party blowers and each class unveiled and had a birthday party for layla and then read subsequently as we do every year to kind of get the reminder about the budget and the school board vote we voted on what was your favorite jaredine nolan and like landslide normally we don't have that was layla and so they really connected with the book and it was it was a really great treat so again thanks to everybody who helped to make that happen these are pictures of robin ackerman's room celebrating we honored two of our great teachers at the ptsa life membership awards uh jenny robinson and liz files it was a great
048night for council rock to celebrate the greatness of each of those ladies and our entire staff so we also have field trips back another first they have not happened for several years our first graders uh went to the fish hatchery um and this is a picture of liz files class um we did have one mishap of a child in with the fishes um so that wasn't liz files class um it was a different class i won't mention that teacher's name but they did come in but we had of course the most prepared parent it wasn't their child who went in but they had a full change of clothes for their child in case they went in and it was given to the other young lady who ended up in the water so but a great
049day uh connecting to their science curriculum uh our second graders led by our geologist who i've reported about before tyler lucero a former student of mine i had him in sixth grade english in rush henrietta he is a geologist he gave a tour of mendon ponds and all the geology and amazing geological features that are there that connect with directly with the science unit that they do along with work that they've been doing with mrs yanman and this particular group went on a day you can think about all those beautiful days that we've had they went on the one day that had the crazy downpour um i was so worried about them they came back they had more fun than any of the other classes so um they danced in downpours and had a super
050great time and then our kindergartners will be going to highland park to complete their uh and go to the highland conservatory and um complete their study of plants in june so that hasn't happened yet no pictures of that and then a second great transition to french road has begun with augusto so um we have a whole list of events that mrs jeffries and i have collaborated with we've brought in miss evans and miss flores who will be there in the fall to help with that but we had a ptsa meeting with the parents we had classroom visits by ms flores ms evans and mr greene to introduce themselves to our second graders and kind of talk up some of these upcoming events we also had the first second grade movie night which was luca very
051very well attended it was like this great wonderful new thing that they got to go and lay out a blanket and watch a movie in in french road so hopefully just getting them comfortable third grade orientation is next thursday for families for uh for those second graders becoming third graders next thursday from 6 30 to 7 30 we will all be there and then we have a trip planned from council rock to french road on wednesday june 1st where they will have an opportunity to ask questions meet with a third grade classroom play on the playground because that's very important even though we do have great playgrounds they're french road playgrounds and they're so excited about them and then receive a tour um from staff there at french road to to just see the entire
052building we've got a lot of upcoming events so i mentioned that orientation we do have an early release day this friday i always like to explain it i'm not the best at explaining it but we roll out of the the um parking lot on a normal day at 2 45. so parents at home who are wondering when will my child get home so take 2 45 and when your child normally gets home if they get home at 3 15 it's about a 30 minute bus ride we will roll out of the parking lot at 11 30 on friday those children would arrive around noon so give or take be out there about 10 minutes early and then we have no school on monday as we celebrate memorial day that field trip to french road is
053on monday the first we have our fun day uh on june 3rd organized by our amazing pe teachers if it rains which it's not going to uh it would be uh moved to monday the 6th wednesday the 15th we have our first ever second grade celebration concert our two music teachers are collaborating to have students singing and joining we always did something but this is actually a presentation that parents can be invited to again we're hoping for weather to be cooperative and it will be in the back field and there will be ice cream that you can buy and then friday the 17th our council rock family picnic which is replacing the hot dog roast but during your child's lunch time so a lot of fun events a very busy time um celebrating all that
054has been on a pretty amazing year so any questions just hard to believe that you're reporting on all the end of the year things are ready i don't know where the some days it feels like it's been a minute and some days it's been this life that's life thank you yes man oh she's up before i even said her name you're welcome good evening everybody matt stole a lot of my thunder so i'm glad i was selective on what i added in here um something that really when i started putting this together is at you know first and foremost on my mind these days is mrs evans and how grateful truly excited um eager and i'm all things that i am really and just so grateful to already be working with her in many ways
055um she had an event that she was able to join which was one of our most recent in-school band and chorus concerts where we're now able to have the whole student body going together which is awesome in and of itself but she was able to sneak out and come and join us for that and so um that was just really something that you could feel the energy in the room we've been talking a lot about it there's a lot of conversation going on amongst classrooms these days particularly as students start to mentally plan for the end of the year that started maybe a couple weeks ago but this was just a really positive event and like i said i'm already starting to tap into her lots of questions and heads up and just looking for
056ways to connect and it's really just been a joy so we loved that we've been really thinking carefully and trying to reflect on the experiences that our students and families had as a result of kovid and what we really found as a building is that it it had been a while for some of our families to be in the building with their child and so this fall we were dipping our toe in kind of walking back slowly toward the things that we typically did with our curriculum nights and this spring we wanted to offer ice cream socials for all of our grade levels and so this week actually tomorrow night we're going to be wrapping up all three of those making sure that our fifth graders also had a time to be able to enjoy
057with their children what their kids have been up to aside from just the fifth grade celebration and that more casual end of the year wrap up so this is a student in fourth grade who um i've known for a long time and has just really done some remarkable things this year but some of the things that our students showed off this student was able to create an actual change maker so that is barack obama that you see right there and they were able to use an app called chatterpix to then speak as that change maker and give a little synopsis of some of the work that they've done and the accomplishments that they've made so on the child's ipad that was there you saw a photo of president obama and that child's voice kind of
058emanating to to speak what they had learned and what they now know about that character for that person i should say we also were able to participate in a really wonderful event that again we've been away from for a while the ride for missing children we actually partnered quite a bit with this organization this year the center for missing exploited children as they provided some instruction to our students around cyber safety and how to be a good digital citizen we also did a parent information night where they actually came and did a nice presentation for parents just on what we really need to be thinking about and being knowledgeable about these days and things that questions we need to be asking our students at home and so we had the ride last week and our
059students were able to come out and celebrate and just be part of the broader community even for a few minutes it goes pretty quickly as matt mentioned in connection with the budget vote and to just involve our students in the community once again in that in that task of voting our students voted on a fres spirit day and so our student council came together they came up gosh maybe 30 ideas of what types of spirit day we could have and we really focused on ways that we could make sure every single kid was included we didn't need to go out and buy things you know what could we really think and be clever about so we decided uh to put out a few options for students to vote on and our student body decided that
060we would have a day last friday where our students dressed like teachers and our teachers dressed like students and so our kids had a blast with this and you can see here this is one of our fourth grade friends who chose to dress like mr henry uh and then we had students dressing up like some of our brighton believes award winners there's mrs ellis on the left mrs leckenby and a familiar face on the left there who's also a fourth grader mcgowan's in that photo and we have two other teachers here on the right that were complete with their coffees and name tags that i was able to snag of them at the entrance so it was just it was really awesome and if you if you knew what the teacher in the middle what
061she typically wore what her style was her class really nailed it perfectly so it was just something fun and and just having a little fun together oh well that's okay so that's what happens when i have a student participate in my presentation and support some of the work that's happening so far more advanced than i am apparently um so uh we we partnered with dr ryu as we recognized and celebrated some new calendar events and some special holidays with our community this year and so we wanted to support teachers in classrooms and making sure that we had literature to support eid ramadan and then coming up juneteenth as well so dr ryu generously supported us in getting several texts for our libraries both at council rock and at french road but this is one of
062the books that one of our fourth grade classes read about eid and it just so happened that a student in this class celebrates eid and she really took the lead in a lot of the ways that just brought the classroom community together supported the teacher as the teacher owned this is my own new learning also this is what i've come to know now but as we read through this book you know please excuse any mispronunciations i'm learning and if you could help me or guide me i'd appreciate that and so the student that helped participate in this presentation as well kenzie is a fourth grader and uh she wanted to share she's really loving powerpoint also um when you go through the slideshow view it doesn't actually um walk you through these pieces so let
063me just get to kenzie's big ideas here oh they're coming so really what what we focused on were the background behind the holiday itself the back work that the teacher did in preparing prior to reading the book and really as she's saying these things and sharing with the class about the preparation that went in and you know that this is something new for her too this student chose to create a pronunciation guide for the teacher to just kind of walk through the different things that would be encountered in the story itself and so you can see it's even she even has it broken down on how you would pronounce each of the syllables they talked about this as a class very openly before the book was shared and so this is her own synopsis of
064the book she summarized it for me as she provided this information and part of the story talks about the significance of bengals with the culture and with the story itself eid and the moon bangles and so as a result uh they had continued this conversation this is i'm telling you uh they continued this conversation and this is a teacher that constantly looks to build community within her classroom and strengthen that and so uh some students came in with bangles one or two here or there and the teacher brought them in and just offered them up and said you know if you want to connect with the story further i have some bangles if you'd want to put them on or this is every hand from that class so hearing that student share that this was
065a new entry point for them to be able to share their culture in a way that was more than just standing up and presenting and kind of being that soul person to shoulder the responsibility of sharing really guiding and learning alongside her peers was really inspirational for her and i think really developed her leadership within the classroom too so we have lots of events coming up at french road as i mentioned tomorrow we have our fifth grade ice cream social we have our third grade orientation at fres later this week which i'll be partnering with mr taban on and we're hopeful that mrs evans will also be there at that event as well so we're looking forward to bringing those new families in as matt mentioned we will also be dismissing students early at french
066road on friday parent pickup will begin at noon in our bus dismissal right around 12 30. we also will have as matt mentioned our second grade visits to fres and also on the other side of the transition our fifth grade crossover activity night which our ptsa is really looking to add some new creative ideas to make that night really fun and exciting for students we also will have our fourth grade band concert on june 8th our field day which will be very exciting we're looking forward to it it will be on june 14th and then again our observation of juneteenth on the 20th and the last day ending the year on the 23rd so i also recognize this is my last board report of the year but also you know just in terms of making
067the transition back to council rock and i just wanted to share you know this has been a really special experience but one that's given me a really different perspective on the team i was already a part of and just reflecting more broadly on the community that we serve and the interactions with you all each month so thank you so much and i'm very grateful so thank you wait wait don't don't go away don't go away too fast because then if you go away you're not on camera which you should be so you know i just want to say to you marin on behalf of everybody you've done just such a wonderful job at french road throughout the year and we're so excited for you to come in and fill in in a space that we
068really needed somebody and you've gone just above and beyond to make it a great experience for kids and the staff and to smooth that transition and to watch you you know one come to the conclusion that you wanted to work at council rock and be in that space and do that work and cherish the opportunity to be at french road and then work with lashara in this transition has been really remarkable and it says a great deal about your character and who you are and who you are as a leader so we're excited that you will continue to lead us and work with us in the capacity that you have always been so outstanding and it's been a pleasure to watch you grow and learn in this role too and think about how you can
069keep contributing to kids and then to watch the counselor kids that you had a french road that you previously had a council rock be so excited to work with you in this time it's been super cool too so thank you very much thank you [Applause] so mrs evans is going to come up and dan is pulling up a couple of slides because mrs edmonds was very jealous that hers did not have that curtain effect and the variety of transitions that were possible apparently there are more fantastic slides to come clearly completely unflappable and i was encouraged to speak slowly as i said that there are some slides that are coming in so you would think as a as a technology person that i met i might have a better filing system but i don't i
070have multiple iterations of the same presentation so the one that i sent kim was not done the one that i shared to dan was so he's pulling up the complete one those lightning quick fingers of dan goldman not only a concert pianist but an excellent communications coordinator i do also want to know julian that had larry been here i would have gone first [Laughter] [Music] i'm sorry i'm feeling a little i had a good run i had a really good run going do you want to make another presentation before the end of the year i can arrange it sure well we are at almost at june which is unbelievable i do feel like it's been a year but it doesn't feel like a year this has gone so quickly so i can't believe we're presenting
071at the end of may already and what's really super exciting is i feel like for the first time in may a lot of things a lot of traditions at tcms have have finally come back so it's really nice to be able to present on some of the things that our students were engaged in in may starting with the jazz band performing at the lilac festival i think it was may 12th we had our jazz band out there and we had about 15 8th graders and over 27th graders participate on a beautiful day it was amazing and their sound is always amazing and it's such a treat for them and they they beam with pride and they have their tcms jazz band t-shirts on and they just feel so good and such a part of it
072and the smiles on the teachers faces are still there like they're just so proud of the students and what a wonderful day an opportunity so i'm glad we continue to be able to do that year after year i'm also glad to say that tcms is finally and legitimately on the therapy dog train we have two new additions this spring to our third therapy dog population we have millie pirillo and we have murphy caiman both have joined us and as you can tell the students love them they've been coming in one dog probably about once a week and getting the students are really good i think the other teachers are learning to acclimate more than than the students are i think the students are are used to having the dogs around and i think um both
073ms perello and mrs cayman push into other classes in a supporting role so i think the other classroom teachers are trying to figure out like what does this look like when a person and a dog comes into my room and and but it's been really really great so it's been a slow transition we're looking forward to the fall when they'll be with us more regularly they are the most adorable dogs on the face of the earth sorry for everyone we also brought back our talent show which has been away for a few years and we had quite a few acts you can see we had some orchestral acts we had plenty of dancing singing piano playing and just the excitement not only of the students on stage but all of their friends and family members
074who came to cheer them on it was just such an amazing experience we're so glad to have it back it's super fun to see uh the adults that um that do the judging and emceeing it and the kids just have a good time being outside of the classroom with their adults and we're really glad we were able to bring that back and we really do have some amazingly talented students at tcm us we also had some fun time in classes and sixth grade classes as students were working with mrs lambert on some persuasive work and some research study students were studying uh greek gods and they each had an opportunity obviously to dress up as their greek god and they gave a speech as their greek god and they also created these awesome business cards
075where they had to persuasively sell their their attributes they had the most safe snack distribution you can see the nice thing of sanitizer right there but there was also mrs parks with all of her her toothpicks handing things out and keeping the kids separated and it was just really great they there was a lot of laughter in the classroom so the sixth graders really enjoyed this and you could see our student on the right really went all out um i put i was jokingly put that best of armor on it weighed more than i did so it was interesting watching him try and get that into the classroom but exciting to see kids participating and having fun and lots of laughter through the learning we have some clubs to highlight our environmental club i think
076i spoke about this before this was a new club that started in uh january and what they ran for about 20 days in may was an eco challenge so they put out challenges to the entire school community and then anybody in the school that wanted to could log their their completion of those activities and then they gathered points over the 20 days so the students were were accumulating all the points everybody was tallying them and then the three winners are able to adopt an endangered animal so they can adopt a panda a chimpanzee or an orangutan and all of the money comes from the eco club and and mars dixon put in for a hillshire grant they secured two thousand dollars in this grant so there's going to be quite a substantial donation and it's
077really fun to see the kids get so excited the the environmental club sat out in the atrium every morning trying to get everybody excited about it and get kids engaged in it and they really did a great a phenomenal job truly student led and developed and mrs falter helped guide them but it was really cool to see because many of them are sixth graders to see what they were able to put together and the enthusiasm that they have for it so i'm excited to see what what comes next year and then we had our science bowl team they were national semi-finalists and unfortunately again because of kova they weren't actually able to go to dc to compete but they did compete virtually and we'll lose a few to the high school but we have a
078great team and we did some recruiting last week with some great activities and lunch so i'm sure that some of those holes that we're losing over to to bhs will be filled with some really strong students so we're excited to maybe make the finals next year and then our last big thing is our world language trips returned this year after a two-year hiatus on the left we have our students in quebec in the middle is central park in new york city and on the right is at the von trapp family lodge in vermont with the german students i was fortunate enough to have gone on the vermont trip i have previously been on the new york city and quebec trips this is my first time to vermont i have to tell you that it was
079the greatest experience i i still am like beaming with pride over our students because everywhere we went people stopped us to tell us how wonderful our students were and that you know i'm not like i wish i'm not making it up it was just amazing that every single place that we went in the in the lodge while we were eating we there were plenty of people who were there just on their own vacations they were coming and interacting with our students and i was just sitting back and watching them and our students were amazing with them you know listen middle schoolers can be like awkward and funny and weird and you never know what you're going to get when a stranger comes up to them and starts to talk to them and they were just
080they made eye contact with everybody they were respectful they carried on like 10 minute dialogues with with people and they just they made me so so proud and i know the other i spoke to miss newcomer and i spoke to miss lopez and they just said you know the students really rose to the occasion and and showed what tcms students really have to offer the world so i i'm so glad i had that opportunity to go and just be with them and watch you know obviously i had a great time of interacting with them but sometimes it was really nice to just sit back and watch them be and it was fantastic so the trips are super well organized they are well oiled machines and i'm glad that other people organize them and i don't
081you did a great job and lastly like everybody else just big time of year so we're finishing up state testing with our science testing that's going on we have performance testing and then actual you know written testing going on in the next few days we have some concerts going on as marin said we have our 506 crossover activity night we're actually really excited about this our tcms strong are organizing it they're taking the lead and what they've created for the first half an hour of the night is a scavenger hunt throughout the building and all of the sixth grade teachers are leaving little bits of information around the building that students have to gather we've invited their parents to come and walk through the building with them and do the scavenger hunt with them for
082those 30 minutes now obviously we're going to have orientation again in august but just to hopefully like allay some fears as opposed to just hanging out in the atrium and the gym they'll actually get a sense of the building a little bit in a more relaxed atmosphere so we're excited to do that and to and to meet many of the fifth graders and um our bonfire is on the 18th so we're really excited about that we were working with some of our teachers to set up some of the games that are going to take place we have um on the 16th mr green and i are heading over to french road to go into all of the fifth grade classes to meet with all the students and and do a little meet and greet answer
083their deepest darkest questions that they have for us and um and then lastly on the 23rd i put a big asterisk next to that it's normally our sea breeze and darien lake experience durian lake is not open so we cannot take our 8th graders to darien lake and we're having some some issues with busing in terms of getting kids to sea breeze sea breeze doesn't open until and our buses have to be back here with students by 1 30. so it makes a trip to sea breeze and the cost and everything that goes with it something that is kind of up in the air so we're trying to be creative and think of lots of different other opportunities in order to have to allow students to have that final day activity so right now we're
084in the planning stages and we're looking at potentially a couple of different things throughout the day that students can experience where they can be together have fun a little bit on campus a little bit off campus so put an asterisk next to that and to be continued but we're definitely going to create something for the students so they have that special end of year day all right thank you does anybody have any questions or comments thank you and if you change your mind about that last meeting let me know dr hall yes hello good evening all right i think i'm gonna have to up my game on the slides and hire marin's student to help me out but see how we go tonight um so just a celebration of a lot of things that are
085happening at the end of the year you're going to hear some similar things too but our best buddies uh club which is a club that works with students with different abilities uh we had two students who participated in the friendship walk as a fundraiser um shawn and brandon from the high school and just had a fun time it was a cool day but they had a lot of sunshine and really enjoyed it and they were just excited to tell me all about it when they got back students lilly coyne and sebastian zebrick uh i presented on this before and they will be recognized at our award ceremony on june 3rd or no june 2nd but they took an exam and basically scored high enough on this german um written exam that they have won an
086all-expense paid trip to germany for two weeks all expenses paid both flying in germany as part of this organization but incredible um you know they've worked really hard and i'm sure they were in the von trapp family lodge way back in the middle school days but did amazing and just want to celebrate them clean sweep was back after two year hiatus we had our a record number 48 students help out from teams to clubs to just students random students who came and faculty advisors and coaches started at the high school on clean sweep day and cleaned up the entire school grounds senior nights continue these are just a few of them from girls in boys lacrosse softball and baseball and had previous ones i think i shared even in the last meeting but they're wrapping
087up and now everybody's heading into sectionals believe it or not and finishing up their regular seasons i want to give a shout out to all of our counselors if they're listening at home for putting together our senior decision day in our new maker space and it was basically an entire day where counselors were on hand we had food we had cards for them to make of saying where they're going either off to work if they're taking a gap year going into the military which we have several this year heading into the trades or heading off to a two or four year college and so they were in this room all day celebrating making their signs hanging them up taking pictures and just it was a great day all around senior ball we had we're back
088we're at ccr this past saturday uh 350 students at one point in time that's higher than our record of 280. um it was quite the student body and we were out on the patio until about 8 45 when you maybe recall the thunder and lightning and it wouldn't let up rain deluge everybody had to come inside but had a great time anyway uh great job with the the advisors miss rivera and ms crowley and jenny vigiani who helped do the decorations there theresa mosher and just all the chaperones we had plenty of chaperones there to help out and just a really nice time kids thoroughly enjoyed it a couple more pictures of the other rooms summer weather if you come out i'm wishing i was hoping that friday for spring fest would look kind of
089like the pictures on the right in the left but it doesn't quite look like we might have an indoor spring fest this year but with the nice weather kids playing spike ball this is a class on the left reading the great gatsby in 11th grade and sitting and then having discussions right on the front front of the high school which i absolutely love and that's during flex on the right kids on the turf kids under the tent kids playing games i mean just a nice like middle of the day break time if you're not with your teachers our nurses we celebrated nurses day in early may janet amanda andrea and lakia who've been amazing we've got them all big huge spring plants and just talk about nurses and the unsung heroes of the last two
090years they have gone through so much plus all the other things that they normally have to do and then tracking covert and dealing with all the phone calls and emails and just it's never ending so thank you to all of them our spring art show which was k-12 opened up may 11th and that'll run right through the end of this week had an opening reception on the 11th some incredible artwork all around from every building and now it used to be the first grade to 12th grade and now we've added kindergarten which is amazing and i'm just highlighting this one piece done by ava voss i i mean i'm not a i'm not an artist i don't do ceramics but i know this took a ton of time and that particular piece probably took her
091four months in terms of the painting and everything that she did on it and she's going to donate it to our office to display in the main office when she leaves so quite incredible and i'm really appreciative of that so upcoming things we have a ptsa meeting with the principal tomorrow we're going to talk about some new cell phone policies that we're rolling out for the high school next year that we've been talking about basically just in the classroom it's nothing earth shattering that we don't already kind of have in place but we're going to be much more vocal about it and just make sure everybody's understanding why we're doing this in the classroom in particular and then it's pretty much there's no cell phone zones as we go into next year q a about
092the whole year and things like that we've been doing and mike leaner was going to talk about our light speed system to monitor internet use usage and website visits from our students but that may be on put on hold till next fall so we'll see spring fest is back with a completely new format we have classes in the morning for 20 minutes the student council preferred to have classes and have their classes meet rather than having a speaker or getting together to do speeches so that's all been revamped to do speeches electronically and vote electronically and not pull people in and out moving around so that's what's going to be for spring fest our award ceremony also a new format we're sticking with the evenings 6 30 for the junior 7 15 for the seniors
093in their brand new auditorium though this year um june 1st u.s history regions canceled so we will not have a u.s history regions but all the students know about that today award ceremony the prom is coming up that's going to be on campus on june 11th we have a meeting thursday with all of our juniors to talk about that last day of classes no flex period there will be no flex on that last day of classes kids will have to eat in class which they can now or on a free period and then we'll be counting down with the seniors with ice cream out on the just after the turf when once we count down regents exams start on the 15th through the 23rd and graduation on the 21st and i did not mention here
094and i don't think any of my colleagues did either june 17th another making history day will be traveling to council rock then french road then to the middle school with our seniors and their cap and gown and so we're adding the middle school this year to run around and we managed to finagle some buses even in this time to get us over there and back so they can do the end of the day runs questions busy time okay very good thank you great job tom thank you i love you that's awesome thank you okay next on our agenda tonight is the approval of the 2022-2023 board of education meetings um we had discussed those dates previously can i have a motion to approve those so move andrea second was christina any questions or comments i
095would just comment that andrea seemed very enthusiastic about setting the dates for meetings for next year very she jumped right into that i i want you to all be there [Laughter] all in favor all right and next we have um approval of first read of policy 7552 and it addresses uh the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming students can i have a motion to approve that policy so moved second second and karen and then christina any questions comments i also just would like to very quickly comment that many many years ago now this district was among the first in the state to have a policy that said you are who you say you are whomever that may be we will love you care for you and support you whatever that means and this policy doesn't
096change that it only reinforces it interestingly the changes you are making in this policy are reflective of new state and federal law that provides that same type of protection long overdue however it now institutionalizes memorializes and codifies something that is happening now across the state so it's a moment to be reflective on one the work that was done here and congratulations to all of you and those that came before you but also good news that that's happening other places now so this policy really just reflects that and changes our approach to the use of pronouns within the policy itself actually ironically a much more appropriate use of language not not significant change to our practice really none it's really more language yeah all right thank you did we vote all in favor okay next we
097have the consent agenda that it includes a field trip approval for the speech and debate club to washington dc it includes a gift in the amount of 250 dollars from mr madhavi devara dev i practiced this and now i'm not going to be able to do it deborah conda and i hope i said that right you did you nailed it did i he's a rotarian and a wonderful man yes and that's to help um uh graduating seniors who may have some special special needs um some financial special needs and finally um there was a fundraising activity and it already has happened it was on may 13th for the south asian student society student council and it was at nantastic restaurant in henrietta and could i have a motion to approve that so move sue second
098second second from esther any questions comments all in favor aye and our last business of tonight is to call for an adjournment can i have a motion so moved karen second second second esther all in favor aye and we're done for tonight thank you folks this has been a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education