001this is a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education good evening welcome to the brighton central school district board of education public meeting for tuesday april 26th great day to be a bruin you will notice our surroundings look a little different tonight we set a goal at the beginning of this school year to do a public board meeting at each of our four schools and we are at 12 corners middle school tonight and with that we will have held a meeting at each of the four schools the board had a chance to tour the school for a little bit see some projects that were completed and some projects that are in need of completion and for those of you who are here tonight all those white packages out there are a
002new roof that's going to go in so that we have to we can actually pull up all the white buckets that are catching water for us that are coming through the roof so uh grateful to be able to be here and uh hosted by daniel evans thank you very much um great new tradition we're going to start again hearing some uh brighton believer award winners dr mcgowan i'll turn it over to you thank you very much uh so last school year the brighton believes council selected 30 nominees to receive a brighton believer's award and we didn't forget about those members of our school community wanted to make sure they're recognized for the work that they've done for demonstrating the brain beliefs character traits of integrity respect responsibility kindness and self-control these award winners are parents
003students teachers staff members coaches and community members and we're so glad that you and your families could join us tonight so what i'm going to ask you to do when i call up the nominee for the award if you could come on up and the person who nominated them if you could also come on up and stand next to them i will read the nomination and then we'll ask you just to stand here for a moment while we take your picture so we can spread the word far and wide about the wonderful things that you've done for our community our first person to be recognized is anna miller anna was nominated by julie lanavara if you could both come on up [Applause] we're going to pretend that mrs lonovar is standing right here couldn't make
004it uh you're now at 12 corners middle school 6th grader of course mrs lanavara wrote anna comes to us and i should say hannah or anna hannah i just wanna make sure i say the right way anna comes to school eager to learn and always puts forth her best effort i don't think i've ever known of another student who consistently demonstrates these traits math and social studies teacher rebecca rauscher added she genuinely cares to do her very best with whatever task lies in front of her our teacher aaron burtner wrote given the chance to get to know anna you will instantly fall in love with her personality physical education teacher mark salerno wrote anna is a role model for classmates to look up to music teacher debbie parker added anna miller personifies what the brighton
005believes award is all about did you have any staff member that did not participate in this award you're a remarkable human being anna and congratulations thank you for all that you did congratulations talia ferrara please come on up uh nominated by classmate ella cats 12 corners middle school 8th grader was nominated by classmate ella katz ella wrote talia ferrara is always kind thoughtful and respectful she demonstrates everything that brighton believes stands for she is an amazing friend person and student talia tries hard in every subject and not only works hard for her grades but helps others too classmate mira grossville grossfield added talia makes me laugh talia doesn't want people to be sad ruby jen added talia is a wonderful person for many reasons carly leuchner wrote talia is such a great friend because she
006is so caring and welcoming she lights up every room she is in with her positive and friendly attitude she's also really good at telling stories and making me laugh i'm so grateful to have her as my friend you had an entire committee of friends congratulations [Applause] claire nolan and mr lapaglia come on up mr ropaga claire nolan now at 12 corners you can look you should look at all your adoring fans now at 12 corners middle school sixth grader was nominated by fres ed teacher rick lepagli he wrote claire is one of the students that validates my decision to become involved in education she continues to be an absolute joy in pe i can always count on claire to be doing what she was told and doing it at a high level claire is active
007in softball lacrosse dance and tennis she can also be found at rock city circus doing aerial sk ariel silks hoops and the trapeze and is a self-taught gymnast contortionist ballet dancer and trampoline pro her classroom teacher jessica cordova added claire comes to school prepared every day ready to learn and always has a positive attitude she says claire is kind-hearted a great friend and a kind classmate to everyone also the first person in their award to ever be referred to as a contortionist congratulations claire on being a wonderful human being [Applause] ali anthem martin also nominated by michela paglia this is rick lepaglie return to school night so great to see you now at 12 corners middle school sixth grader was nominated by fred's visit teacher rick lepaglie i feel so lucky to have ollie in
008pe this year every day he comes to pe he is in a cheerful and happy mood he has a smile that just lights up the gym during the remote pe sessions ali frequently sends me a four to five minute long video of him performing the activities at home he laughs and smiles so much during the videos he is active with a fast swim team cub scouts and loves to hike travel explore nature and cook his classroom teacher mary giordano added that ollie is always so excited about school she said he is a kind and gentle boy and she has been lucky to be his fifth grade teacher ollie we are very lucky that you are a wonderful student here at brighton congratulations [Applause] three great job [Applause] oh mr lapaglia to go don't go too
009far nominated by students trevor and claire nolan trevor and claire noah you can come on up too rick lopez who just retired from being a french road elementary school physical education teacher for 27 years he started when he was like 15. right you can tell the students wrote about him we're nominated i'm sorry by students trevor and claire nolan and their parents vin and kim the students wrote he is always looking out for his students when he notices that one of the children isn't looking like normal he makes sure to check in with them we all feel valued and important around mr le paglia because he treats everyone like they matter regardless of appearance skill or gender their parents said we're grateful for the education in pe and as a role model of these traits
010mr lapaglia has given what will serve our kids well for the rest of their lives we think this is a great way to see him off and know that he'll be missed by many also a great way to bring him back i speak from the same experience as a parent whose kids have done nothing but enjoy being around michelin paglet each and every opportunity we miss you greatly congratulations mr lebanon [Applause] and teddy anthem [Applause] thank you nominated by mr tapping construct principal now at french road elementary school third grader nominated by mr tappin who wrote teddy is such a thoughtful kind outgoing second grader at council rock primary school each day his greeting to me and many other adults puts a smile on my face he is one of the rare children who is
011genuinely interested in the answer to his question when he asks you how are you his enthusiastic great really shows his positive approach to life in the classroom he is a helper going out of his way to help clean up and support a friend teddy shows his bright beliefs traits each day and i'm so proud of him teddy thank you for making this a much better place to be an example for so many congratulations [Applause] so at these meetings we talk about a lot of important things and the board thinks about policies that will help everybody and support everybody we talk about the budget quite a bit and having enough resources for people dr leaner will present tonight about innovative student learning and a lot of great programming but at the end of the day i'm
012sorry dr rio will present about an innovative student learning at the end of the day this though these awards and this conversation and the things that you're doing to make this a better school community and to just brighten people's day is so much more important than anything else we do it is really what we do right being together as a school community and being around great human beings who do good things for other people is really a special special thing and we so appreciate you making our school community better so one more round of applause for all of you and thank you that you would like to stay and hear the principal reports and the update from dr ryu or you might have a lot of homework at home that you need to attend to
013and some other things at home so for those who came for the brighton believer awards that need to get back and do some other work school work in particular you are welcome to get up and leave now you are otherwise welcome to stay as we go through some other things [Applause] we'll wait just a minute for the room to clear right back on thank you as is the case with every public meeting we have the opportunity for public participation is there anyone here who would like to speak see no one next up on the agenda is the approval of the agenda you all previously received tonight's agenda i need a motion to approve please move by karen seconded by sue all those in favor aye opposed we also have received the approval i'm sorry we
014received the minutes from the april 12 business meeting and executive session does anyone have any changes or edits to those minutes motion to approve the minutes as received moved by andrea seconded by esther all those in favor aye opposed approved so help me is dr rio or mike leonard it would appear as though it secretary i knew that really but you know okay yes i saw innovative student learning and just jumped right there so yes doctor we are going to have an update on innovative learning from dr rio we have a learning update so that's what we're going to have today thanks alison yes hello and um today i just wanted to kind of give some updates on some of the work that's happening around the district that you might have heard a little bit
015about throughout the year and some that you haven't heard about but i wanted to frame our work today in the work that our teachers and students are doing around our culturally responsive and sustaining education framework and i just wanted to bring this up to kind of frame our reference for my conversation today and the four areas that i'll hone in on are welcoming and affirming environment which is everywhere you go all the time so there's no way i could highlight that in its entirety but i'll highlight a few pieces of that inclusive curriculum and assessment our high expectations and rigorous instruction and our ongoing professional learning that we have for teachers and this is from the new york state education department's crsc framework in a nutshell this is really tiny here on the screen but
016i'll kind of give you an idea of some of the work that we've been doing over many years around this framework and i've mentioned this before but the framework is new as of last year to the state but it definitely is a representation of the work we've been doing over many years here in brighton so you know some of the things that you've heard a lot about are learning spaces restorative practices social emotional learning family engagement our hiring practices all of the things we've been looking at fit right into this framework already so this isn't new but really just an affirmation of the work we've been doing and these are the four parts again that we'll touch on today so as i mentioned you really can't go anywhere in our district without feeling that welcoming
017environment as you walk into classrooms as you walk into school buildings you'll see it in lots of different ways so today i'll just highlight a few ways that people our teachers have shared with me and i've seen around our school district this year right here at tcms this is an example of some of the quotes that were painted in the hallway this summer and that's victoria mosetti school psychologist here who's kind of leading the way but the environment that the students are in every day should be they should be able to walk the halls and feel that they are welcome they're affirmed and these are the kind of things that you'll see around tcms and in other school buildings as well but these positive affirmations you matter you're valued you are loved you are worthy
018those are the kind of things that have been added to tcms this year which is pretty fantastic and welcoming and affirming environments isn't just what you know you see on the walls or what you see in classrooms but here is an example of ellen harp's technology space where she tried to create a safe space through her work in her classroom thinking about not only what her classroom looked like and how students were sitting and arranged but even the different religious and cultural prohibitions and types of foods that they could interact with she has this unit that she does where she reads this book about creating this marshmallow sculpture and she shared with me last year that this is a unit that she you know bought marshmallows and prepared this unit and lessened with the students
019and some of the students said we can't eat this because they're not vegan or vegetarian or all the different dietary restrictions so with her students this year she um had them create a list of all the different things that they could include and this year i don't know how but she has marshmallows that are vegan vegetarian kosher gluten-free omnivore and halal so like all different types of marshmallows and she was able to purchase that through a grant that she got so you know that's creating a safe space for students within the curriculum too so that they can be part of everything that's happening and not feeling like they're excluded because of their culture or their beliefs or their dietary restrictions also here at tcms you heard about this i believe earlier in the year with
020a principal report from mrs edmonds but this is just an example of students who are painting rocks for the peace garden for john mcfadden golden heart award or john mcfadden's garden that they're creating with these kindness rocks and decorating rocks and it's an example of creating an environment in the school where people are celebrated for the traits of kindness and working hard and caring and students are part of that celebration too and then on a bigger scale we've continued with restorative practices in our school district across all four school buildings in addition to our community building circles and the work that's happening in our k5 around those circles on a daily basis and 612 more academic at times but still including those circles our administrators and counselors have also started training around restorative discipline and
021have started to think about what that looks like on a different level of thinking about what restorative practices could be included as opposed to traditional forms of you know discipline like suspension and those types of things so that's something that we've taken a little bit more of a dive into this year and we'll continue as we move forward but all of that is in terms of thinking about our environment here and how students should be treated and how students can fix harm and move forward and continue to be a productive student here and continue to learn and grow jumping into some instruction now you've probably heard a lot and if you've been at frus you've seen all the change makers exhibits through black history month but this work has continued on in some of the
022classrooms at fres beyond just black history month and this is an example from mrs fallon's 4th grade class they are reading literature that they selected where change makers identified a cause and acted on it and these are two examples of the books that they're reading simon b ryman about a student who encourages people to celebrate music and brings that into the world and then a long walk to water and the class together has been looking at how they can make a difference in the community and they've decided to make toys for lollipop farm and they're reading lots of change maker books and creating a great change maker hall of fame that will be showcased showcased very soon if not already so lots of great things happening in our instruction our literature is something that we
023continue to reflect on across all of our classrooms k-12 and here's an example of some of our second grade students in mrs linton's class just diving into some new diverse texts and instead of using the text that um our students have traditionally used in the classroom we'll keep those and add some more so that there's that continuation of something we've been looking at for years but just having texts where students can see themselves represented where they can see others perspectives and representation of their friends and family and all the kids that are in our school community and then as far as spaces we're thinking about what maker space looks like across the district and council rock has developed a maker space in their library this year that we're getting off and running and fres is
024also creating a maker space right now the middle school has plans the high school has completed a makerspace so this is really about the environment for our kids to kind of learn and grow in wherever they want to in many ways and we were just talking in the hallway about maker space and what does it really mean but what it means is that it opens up the window for kids to do a lot of exploring in their learning and thinking about you know what they're interested in learning but also having opportunities to make things and show their learning in a different way sometimes we just literally don't have the space in the classrooms to do that we don't have the room the supplies and that kind of could stifle some creativity for students so more
025to come about that but you'll see learning spaces throughout the district here's another example of a learning space which is pretty cool this is in robin leckinby's class and also jessica willis fourth grade class some tables that they made actually that are made out of white boards that the students can write on and participate in groups and just kind of use that as a space to learn and show their thinking and collaborate with each other we also have included some promethean boards at council rock and fresh so you will see these in the classrooms at council rock and in some classrooms at french road as we move to include them in all of our classrooms but these have really brought a new spin on our learning and this is a classroom just wanted to show
026you a promethean board because that is able to move around the classroom so that's how it looks a bit different than a smart board the smart board would have been mounted on the wall the front of the room but there are a lot of benefits for students and i just want to highlight a few of them here the mobility obviously can move around the room you don't have to be tethered to one spot in the classroom but really what's awesome is the ability to collaborate so you can see in this bottom picture that is the work of many students at the same time who are responding to a problem so the difference you know a smart board where one person can come up one person can write at a time now we can have lots
027of students collaborating we can have connectivity from different users so if a mental health provider ess teacher for example comes in the classroom they can connect with their device so that they can easily participate in the classroom and keep the flow going lots more student agency in the classroom students are able to show their work really quickly so they can share their learning they can make their learning visible for their classmates and for their teacher and you can see in this picture there's a student sharing the work that they had on there and you can also have a split screen where you can have you know a piece at the top which is some instruction and some other work at the bottom and then there's lots of great built-in features like the smart board but
028there's you know timer spinner whiteboard lots of different things on there but it's been a really awesome addition to our elementary classrooms and has definitely helped to change teaching in a way that allows kids to show their thinking more collaborate more and also just be responsive to the fact that we have one-to-ones now so we want our kids using ipads we want them to be able to show their work it's a really great way for them to be able to do that and then just a quick snapshot of some professional learning we have lots of book studies going on around the school these are just a sampling of book studies that are going on right now across the district we just had earlier in the month superintendents conference day with lots of professional development for
029teachers to choose from along the lines of mental health and wellness and equity and all of our blueprint kind of topics we had lots of great work come out of that day so that was pretty awesome and last i just want to highlight three classrooms so there was a lot to highlight here um but there's some awesome work happening with in terms of curriculum and assessment so mrs b otto's kindergartner she shared this with me and i wanted to share it with all of you she's partnered with rit with her kindergartners and she's working with a class of graphic design students who have to create for their final project a design based on what kindergartners have created so they've created this choice sheet which basically is very basic for kindergartners but they're going to make
030buddies for them so what do you want your buddy to look like my buddy is going to be real or imaginary small medium large and there's all these questions that they go through and they collaborate with the kids they ask the rit students ask for feedback from the kids the kids go back and forth and then the students at rit actually have to create this buddy for the council rock students and tomorrow they're going to share them via zoom so the students can see what their buddies look like and their collaboration but a really great way of showing our youngest learners connected to the rochester area connected to different types of programs and students and both of the classes actually have a lot of different types of learners in them mrs biato shared that the
031rit class has several students who are deaf the both classes have ell learners in them so really cool collaboration that she's really proud of and i i actually can't wait to see how this goes tomorrow i'm going to join in to see what the buddies look like at the high school level jumping all the way up now to bhs but i wanted to highlight just two really interesting equitable assessment practices one in science and then one in math and in science we have a group of science teachers who have been working with an nsf grant with the u of r focusing on diversity equity and inclusion and one of the things that they've tried this year is to shift their assessment practice from a traditional lab write-up whereas probably many of you have done when
032you were in high school you write that lab follow the format similar format but instead they're creating a flip grid where the students can create an oral demonstration of what they learned and turn that into their teachers teachers can watch it and still get that same information because one of the things that we found especially in science education is that students are able to communicate differently verbally than written i mean that's goes true for everything but in science when you're listening to a child explain how something works or why a lab works a certain way it often is different than what they write on that paper so this was a way to access what the kids have know and what they learned in a different way that still has a rubric associated to it that
033still holds them to that same rigorous standard but offers them a different way to show what they learn which has been really cool so far and i'll get some more feedback a couple classes have gone through this process couple more are still working through and then we'll hear from the students too to see what they thought and then our algebra one team and math has also taken a look at grading a bit differently with their grading for equity book study that they did last summer and we have more teams jumping on board this summer as well at the high school level but the grades they've decided that the grades are going to base this year on summative assessments with retakes and format assessments with self-evaluated practice tracker so i'll tell you what that means but
034this the practice tracker is a way for students to this is just an example from one of the students one notes it's a way for students to kind of self assess what they are learning and what they need more help with so this is a way for teachers and students to stay connected to like what i need to keep working on and it's a way for them to inform what they need to do to teach a bit more to students and as far as the retake students are able to retake parts of their math tests that they didn't score well on or they didn't understand and they are able to get re-taught take the retest again and take the test until they've learned the content which is the goal right we want our kids to
035leave learning the content for the class and not just not getting the grade so it's been a lot of work for them i really applaud their efforts they've done such an awesome job and we're looking at um andrew doyle our 612 math leader has done great work with this looking to expand this beyond just algebra one into algebra two and beyond next year too and the last couple of slides i won't read through all of these because i know i've been talking a lot here but this is just some of the feedback from students after and the students were given a survey to see how they felt so what impact had the retakes had on your feelings of mathematics you can see here from the students just how they're feeling they understand the subject better
036it's less stressful it's not scary less anxiety they feel more secure if they get a low grade they don't have to worry about that's the end they're done you know positive things about grading systems that they shared here and they just really the feedback is you can take as long as you need to get what you need to get and as long as you keep putting in the effort you're gonna you're gonna get out of it what you need to and you're going to do well so less stress the point really is for finding ways to help our kids become the best learners they can be you know so it's not about the grade in the end but about the learning that they that they experienced and just wrapping up with a quote from zoretta
037hammond around culturally responsive teaching reflecting and being willing to listen and change in order to respond positively and instructively and i hope that you've seen that's kind of a demonstration of what our teachers are doing every day here they're looking at our students they're responding to what they need and they're thinking about different ways to reach all of our learners thanks questions questions for dr rio that was impressive thank you thank you questions we talked about in curriculum council through the years find their way into our classrooms doing the right things for kids thank you and all that work lines up nicely with both rigorous coursework and equity which are two focuses of our blueprint obviously i think the way that we're teaching now is more in line with the real world too you know
038um you know we know that there are different types of learners so being able to give a presentation orally to say what you know i mean that just that just makes sense or if at first you don't succeed try again you know i mean that's i just think it's more absolutely realistic too so it's very impressive thank you yeah thanks okay thank you well ms edmunds we are at the middle school so i suppose you should get to go first nice try principal tapping i just asked him how much he paid you to go first but okay so i feel i actually if you ask kim lands of fame i sent her my presentation like two weeks ago because i feel like i haven't presented in so long what's up well we just want to
039make sure that we're on on top of our game here so anyway so i have a lot to share because i feel like i have two months worth of material to share but i will go through it quickly with you maybe so i'm going back to march it was music in our schools month and i just want to point out we started out with a bang in our district wide strings concert that actually took place in our gym as well as other areas as well but it was an amazing start to the month we had numerous concerts here as well and at french road for our band orchestral and vocal music groups we had 29 of our 6th through 8th graders were also selected for junior high all county festival this year and we actually
040also had two students in the new york state that were were selected to participate in the new york state middle school honor band so we had a wonderful array of things going on in march to celebrate music in our schools month and along with that we also had our brighton believes day where we had three presenters who joined us via zoom uh one per grade level so we had someone from asbury talk with our sixth graders someone from habitat for humanity with our seventh graders and then somebody from keeping our promise for our eighth graders and all of them spoke around the theme of um struggles with insecure and lack of housing and so the school together decided that we wanted to collect items for ukrainian refugees in our community and you can see this
041is one of our transports here this is the back of the falters car with many of our belongings that we collect students also created pins and bracelets that donations were accepted for as well as you know guess the candy jar and things like that where students were able and families were able to make donations so very successful group effort as a school so that was wonderful we also had our winter spring-ish activity nights for all three grade levels again wonderfully attended and i continue to say that i can't say enough about the ptsa and their organization of these nights they're just every detail is taken care of and they run seamlessly the kids really enjoy themselves lots of laughter and you just see them let their guard down and be themselves it's it's it's really
042a lot of fun we also had stephanie elkins overcame her fear of taking the district van to rit and she took our students to the e3 competition which hasn't run live in a couple of years obviously because of covid we had uh mostly grew a group of sixth graders this year and uh for their first time participating we had second and third place winners in the group and a great experience for them just to see what students in other buildings and other districts were doing i may have shared that before our book fair was also in march and this year it was really nice we moved on to using a local vendor book culture from pittsford and the diversity of text was amazing and certainly representative of our students but i will say kind of
043uh you know off to the side what i really enjoyed was it was a book fair and we sold books at it and um all of the other kind of side things that are normally sold at our book fair were not existent and the students were really focused on texts and uh they they did they did very very well so that was super exciting one thing that i didn't say about march and i can't believe i didn't put it in here was we had our first trip to dc since covet hit so successful trip shelly camp organized it and took miss paddock and mr green with her and they took quite a few buses of students had great weather and it was an awesome trip so so nice to be back in that routine again
044of um one of the things that we're so proud of which is our seventh grade trip we also um prior to break spent some time with our sixth graders in their uh sixth grade academies working through many of the restorative circles uh that um in community building circles that dr rio was talking about we had our counselors engaged and our sixth grade teachers and they spend a lot of time talking about our culture and climate in our building and making suggestions about what they love but also about what they would love to see be better over their next two years in our building and amazing opportunities for them to share their insights and just feel safe being with each other and sharing their opinions it's amazing what students will share when they just feel calm
045and that they're in it together so those were fantastic we also know said this before but we closed down when for the week before vacation and what i mean by that is students didn't go to other classrooms for academic help they actually spent each day engaged with their teachers and win on activities centered around each of the brighton beliefs habits and what they did was the students gave input on what will become our building-wide matrix for what does it look like to be kind in the cafeteria what does it look like to be kind in hallway what does it look like to be kind online so we had all of our students participate in that all 850 and we have an amazing amount of information that the administration and counselors and i are working to
046put together and then we'll create our signage and and that will be our language and that will be what we live through and next year we'll be able to tie that into our work with habits of mind and make those connections so that we're we're building this culture that the students said that they want to see so none of this has been adult driven it's been compute completely student driven which is fantastic facts continues to engage in all of their projects they spent seventh graders spent much of their time creating their pillowcases this year and they donated all of them to keeping our promise which was one of our presenters for brighton believes day and we also had i know i've talked earlier in the year about our students making dog biscuits and sharing them
047with um with local agencies so they can give to their their puppies it's almost may believe it or not as i've been walking around the building our science classes are already engaged in their lab finals so these are our seventh graders in mrs twilliger's room burning things up and loving every minute of it so engaged in hands-on activities and then also the ptsa was able to put in for a grant and get us some blankets for our students to be able to eat lunch outside on nice days so this was the first day on the right here that we were able to take our students these are sixth graders outside cell phone free and enjoy themselves and just conversation and food and they've been doing a great job of cleaning up after themselves respecting their
048time together outside and it's really been nice to see them enjoy the nature so we've taken advantage of the few nice days that we've had and gotten them out there and again thank you to ms moran who continues to wash those blankets for us so that they're clean for students to sit on spring sports began in april so that's ready to go you probably saw some of the students sitting outside as they're ending their practices and then our last thing is very new from yesterday mrs kantz was surprised by news 8 and was awarded the news 8 golden apple award one of our sixth grade students isabella wrote an amazingly wonderful letter about her isabella is 6th grader new to our student new to our school participates in our urban suburban program and she couldn't
049speak enough about how mrs kantz has impacted her love of reading and writing but perhaps more important to me she spoke extensively about how mrs kantz makes her feel welcome here has helped her make friends and that she feels like she's a part of our community so kudos to mrs kantz and kudos to isabella for representing what we do every single day and what we believe in we're in the midst of new york state math testing day one was today day two is tomorrow our talent show is tentatively scheduled for the 12th though we may push it back to june because there are some other district-wide events on the calendar that night and we don't want to compete and the 18th through the 20th our 8th graders will be going on their annual world language
050tours to new york city vermont and quebec that's it thank you marine good evening i don't want to take tom's thunder here we go awesome so similar to danielle i've also been very eager to present this information it's been prepared for quite some time but we've had lots going on at french road and something really striking that you'll kind of catch as you're through the hallways most recently are just some new art installations which i'm always just in awe of what our art department has students create when i'm in there observing and dropping in you never quite see this finished product it kind of is like a one in a million when you're there the day that it all comes together but seeing these things come out and be up on the bulletin boards and
051hearing students kind of share about the process and their thoughts i just happened to catch a couple kids right before break and talked through the thoughts around some of the pictures right in the middle of the cats it's just really cool to hear their thought process and and what they got out of those projects together similar to danielle music in our schools month in march brought us back to some concerts at the building again which this is actually great time because we're just about to embark on another round of concerts coming up in may where we're really eager to have all of our students together to come and listen and be a part of a school community all together to listen and support their peers which is wonderful we also had several participants on the
052monroe county all monroe county elementary all-county festival so students were super proud really eager to make that trip and to play it's really amazing given all of the changes in the schedules and practice schedules that kovid brought the talent that our students possess really never ceases to amaze me and so these students did not disappoint our health moves minds fundraiser has been going on for quite some time and really it went on for a very finite amount of time but then as we continue to collect the money and we tally we continue to kind of find these tidbits and nuggets of really awesome work that kids did so i presented maybe it was last month or even the month before that about two young ladies at our building that raised about 800 we had another
053student in our building harrison who created his own elevator pitch and went around to community members family members and ended up raising 2 200 so um you know he knew it needed to be short and sweet and needed to catch people's attention so that he wasn't just kind of going on and on about health moves minds and pe but he certainly caught some attention and um we had actually several students who raised five hundred dollars um and right around right around that 500 mark which is really exciting so we uh ended up raising right around 19 and so our pe department gets a really nice chunk of that we also are able to donate a huge portion of that as well and pencils and paper who's the group that i've talked about quite a bit
054is actually going to be coming back out to french road to say a personal thank you to a lot of our students who raised right around that 500 and more mark and will be able to to speak with them directly so we're looking forward to that our student council continues to surprise me each week we again i'd spoken earlier this year that any student who applied to be in student council this year they wrote a full application and gave their reasoning for why they wanted to participate and instead of selecting a really small number of students everyone was able to participate and we just organized it differently so that different groups of classes could kind of come together in little plcs or professional learning communities their teachers are organized that way so the students were
055organized that way for student council as well and they've really done a wonderful job each group has had three sessions that they're able to meet over the course of a month and then they have another access to student council another set of three sessions later in the year and this group here right around st patrick's day was able to put a bulletin board together for all of the reasons why we feel lucky to be a fresh student and they were able to make little shamrocks to staff and put adjectives or reasons why they felt connected to specific staff members we had a staff list and we made sure every single person was on that board and not left out so they did a really wonderful job and we also headed outside we've been outside in
056this really beautiful weather that we've had cleaning up along the fence some of the areas that you might not see easily every day they've taken that really seriously and have done a really great job caring for our school the previous group of student council prior to the folks that you just saw they recognized and prepared for bus driver appreciation day which was earlier in march i believe around the 15th or 19th and so they were really they're just the sweetest they all remember their driver name we got a full list of all of the drivers that drive for french road but they were able to write some nice notes on the buses and we worked through student council and some local businesses associated with french road to do cookies for all of the drivers that
057the kids all delivered to them and they made a huge sign that we put outside french road too so we wanted to say thank you because they do so much for us we also have a really exciting opportunity our health teacher janice mix put together a grant to enable us to bring another author to french road this year to give our students another opportunity to zoom with someone who writes a lot of books that they're really familiar with susan verde teams up with peter reynolds to create these beautiful pieces that you see here i am peace i am one i am yoga i am love i'm courage i am human and janice uses some of those texts as she works through her health curriculum and talks about things like mindfulness and other topics related to
058these texts so we're going to be able to zoom with susan on may 2nd so we're really looking forward to that we also zoomed earlier this year with peter brown and that was a wonderful experience for our students brighton believes day was another opportunity where our students were able to connect with the community over at pencils and paper as well as bavona child advocacy so our students created bookmarks in addition to over the week of march 11th we did a building-wide used book drive pencils and paper has this great nook within their facility where as teachers from rcsd come and get many school supplies they can also come and actually look through this mini library and get books for their classrooms and so they have this in-house resident volunteer librarian at pencils and paper who
059works really diligently to review every text that comes in make sure that they have high quality literature on the shelves and so we did a huge drive so that we could support some really specific needs that they had for particular grade levels once again as danielle said i can't say enough about ptsa because our ptsa reps came in and sorted all of the books we really got a ton of books um and they came in and sorted them and made sure that we were identified we were able to identify specific needs for bavona they really wanted some particular text too for some really young readers and then for pencils and paper as well and it just had this added bonus every morning we had all of the books out in the live the lobby and
060every morning when i'd come in right around 7 30 you'd see kids who the lobby gets a little um it turns into a little bit of a ruckus some mornings but every kid was in there while we were doing that book drive with a book in their hands reading quietly so that was some food for thought for maybe some future things at fres this is also the the person that i was speaking of right at pencils and paper who does the the book review in the library there our therapy dogs are also hard at work at fres we talked about them at the beginning of the year but really truly as this year has gone on it's been a really interesting year in a lot of ways students are seeking out these dogs throughout the
061building they're used as rewards because our kids are working to earn time with cosmo pictured here or with charlie and they're just really an integral part of our building and they've certainly helped us get through a lot of bumps in the road this year we also had kindness club begin at fres and run for a few sessions this spring they've really just brightened a lot of people's day they're the kids come together on thursday afternoons and they've just been popping in notes of kindness to staff to students they've set up a little table in the building where people can come and get a little note card and pass along notes of kindness to one another and so this is a really student driven initiative and it's really great to see students kind of rallying around
062this our movie night is back at french road i just wanted to give that a little plug quickly it's coming up this week on april 28th our doors will open at 5 30. we'll have popcorn and pizza we're watching in kanto and it's going to be awesome so tell all your friends we'll be there uh so just a couple events coming up i feel like i've been talking for a while so i apologize um we have lots of things happening so as you can see i listed some april dates for you as i thought i was presenting a while ago where just in case you wanted to know what we were up to um we are in the midst as danielle mentioned with our new york state math testing we're embarking on day two tomorrow
063day one went really smoothly we've got movie night coming up we have lots of really exciting things planned for teacher appreciation week i cannot wait we will be at frontier field where our chorus will be singing the national anthem at the red wings game on may 5th we will have clean sweep coming through fres sprucing things up on may 7th and we will be out of school in celebration for eid on may 3rd so just to share a couple of those things with you all thanks so much thank you let's see now it's my turn all right i guess it's tom hall thank you all right so i'll go back to march as well early march when we had our brighton believes uh uh brighton believes day of caring um we had an incredible food
064uh drive and probably one of the biggest ones that we had i thought last year was the biggest we've ever had this we raised even more and this is just the food in the upstairs we had food at door 20 as well in the back so an incredible amount of food went over to the brighton food cupboard and they were extremely appreciated appreciative of our efforts akapalooza if you're familiar with all of our acapella groups we started with crazy pitches many many many years ago and now we've branched off into about six different acapella groups and acaplusa was on march 12th mockingnet's brewing ants and crazy pitches all performed uh an incredible night tons of students there supporting the other students and their parents just a phenomenal night all directed by sarah stebel as the
065advisor but all of these groups for our folks at home are student-driven and student-run and they uh take turns um having solos as part of the songs that they're performing and also their student directors who pretty much choreograph and run through all of the the lyrics and what they're going to do is part of these songs that develop their own so that's where a lot of the learning happens for students in high school i mean that is truly teamwork collaboration you know working through conflicts it's amazing and it was an amazing concert to watch kudos to them big i wish lila was here lila's coming up in the next slide lila monger our board rep she and the exec council plan brew and march madness so we've used to many many years ago this is
066probably when i was an assistant principal did have a march madness for a while and we do different activities during the week but never quite like this and i think after a year of you know kind of being sheltered and very limited school activities um kids put together a fantastic week of themes and we got to wear hats wear burn gear got to wear grout fits if you don't know what a grout fit is basically it's gray from top to bottom doesn't mean you're in your sweatpants and sweatshirts you can wear gray suits you can wear gray uh bruin shirts which did you much enjoy suit dr hall i did not wear a gray suit that day was a total bruin fest for me so that week i think i wore a tie once maybe
067no once i did i didn't look at a jacket tonight and everything but i had a i had a wonderful hat on on monday it was just i love the theme weeks and uh so you know we'll continue that dr hall i know uh and we've got to do a candy gram i just have to be careful we can't sell the candy or give out the candy during school hours that's a no-no so kids now instead of getting them in homeroom you order your your candy gram ahead of time and then kids came into the gym and picked up the candy at the end of the day i know it's just wrong but that's what we do um but they sold a lot it's well as power wellness part of our you know school lunch
068program it's what we do we follow the rules um and we did so the kids came down and got them but they sold that was a fundraiser for the senior class they actually did really well and um they had a evening pep rally which we haven't done for march madness before and a pie in the face contest which you could donate money and get pies in the faces several celebrities sitting here had pie stone in their face lila and beanie both exact council selling the tickets for candy grams the teacher and the pie in the face and selling you know old senior shirts so this picture just the one of jess wasserman who's a special ed teacher um so she got slammed with the pie and i was getting pictures taken and just the the
069cream just flew all over the gym it was supposed to stay in one place but she really got hammered and we had a lot of fun a lot of fun events the kids really for midwinter activity probably one of the better ones not the best of attendance compared to homecoming pep rally but i think it's definitely going to grow and we had a promposal if you were there it was really exciting to see two students who did the promposal and they'll be going off to prom or actually senior ball together those are our seniors it was a red night for them actually the largest turnout were seniors so that was great i think it was good for the freshmen to see that so next year i think it's going to grow even more in popularity
070but kudos to the exec council their advisors theresa mosher and all the administrators helping that out so in our drawing one classes we've never done this project before i came through the building and i thought people were starting to hang artwork but then realized it was all tape i hadn't i didn't realize we were doing this i didn't know this was a project so then i finally figured out who was representing because she had a sign there stating this is what we're doing for drawing one and so this linear representation um of something that is real or imaginative um and you can see putting so you can walk down by the art rooms and the band rooms and seeing all these murals they're much bigger than what you can see on my pictures here and
071this was just maybe halfway through so they're completely done now but a variety of murals that they created and put up all just tape colored tape on the walls i've never seen anything quite like it and creating um you know right next to the music rooms a music display and really it's quite colorful and not one as far as i can tell not one kid has touched or wiped off anything or peeled it or did anything to it which is phenomenal when you think about how many kids are walking through the building and the open campus and structure we have so but kudos to our art department for trying a new project we had a phenomenal ptsa um luncheon for our teachers kind of a little bit early for teacher appreciation week they put on
072tons of chilis and soups and salads and this particular picture of the salad fest basically you go through and every topping you want ptsa did a phenomenal job i want to thank them but that idea started back at french road with a parent who now has a two kids graduated and one who's a freshman and just a phenomenal job with all of us so thank you to ptsa i know the teachers look forward to that every year and one of the things i think just a few of our teams do it hockey does it and now boys lacrosse where they'll invite a teacher or two teachers to come so all the seniors our senior boys invited one or two teachers to attend a senior night with them and they recognized them they had a little
073blurb that they they had read on the announcements and gave them you know some flowers and just you know it's just so nice to see teachers come everybody showed up for the recognition to be with those students and it was just a fun night and uh just appreciate the the coaches for for for advocating for that and for our um parents who were basically ran the whole thing and putting it together so thank you to the lacrosse program third quarter report cards the grades come out on thursday and we're we're only six weeks left of the fourth quarter believe it or not i know it's amazing six weeks left exams will start up ap exams start next week may 2nd to may 13th senior ball on the 21st at ccr so we will be at
074a location uh spring fest is back in the 27th going to be a little bit different this year exec just like they've done all year they're planning all sorts of different things we're going to have a shortened schedule of classes in the morning and then they're going to have activities and a pep rally again to end the year the end the day so it's going to be a little bit different but coming back with a vigor so we're excited about that um lots of upcoming activities as well i'm just thinking well talked about a lot of it there any questions a lot going on as always thank you very much thank you and now saving the best for last don't know what i did oh board president davis so we are going back to brighton
075believes day much like my colleagues did thanks to dan goldman who came over and really captured a lot of great pictures but our kids were able at the k2 level were able to complete a lot of different projects and again thanks to the ptsa who always does an amazing job but they organize get the materials get the directions for kids make the connections with the organizations but we had over 200 cards and several centerpieces to the brighton jewish home for people to celebrate on their special days made by our kindergartners and our first graders and these are just some pictures of kids at work thanks to dan the bethany house charities and centers for youth we made over a hundred single-serve laundry detergent packets by our kindergarteners over 300 dog toys braided for lollipop farm
076and then for willow domestic violence center and house of mercy uh 50 dental hygiene kits made with toothpaste toothbrushes and uh notes from council rec students so again really connecting to the organizations and who they were able to to serve and then uh 125 snack bags decorated and packaged by our kindergartners for the ronald mcdonald house i love the variety that we do i know other buildings kind of choose one i love that our kids have those experiences throughout each grade to learn about a lot of different agencies and how they're helping our pe classes are practicing lifetime fitness we had a special guest there if you see dr gasparina was there teaching some zumba i was joining in the fun up there we had teachers joining in it's just a really great time but
077really highlighting lifetime fitness within our pe classes activities that can continue so this week we had karate demonstrations from a local karate instructor and then we also start with our bike and pedestrian safety where kristen cooper and max have guests in from a safety agency to talk about bike and walking safety which leads us into next week is bike and walk to school day uh so many of the board members were there volunteering for our ice cream social which also was our book fair and i just have to say it was really one of the most joyous events we realized kind of as we went into it that none of our kindergartners first graders or second graders had experienced an ice cream social before because the second graders it was canceled in march so the
078joy of seeing the kids come in with their parents for a lot of parents it was the first time they were back into the building kind of with open rain to it this year and seeing the pride that they had and the excitement that they had about it returning to school seeing all and showing their parents all over we sold a ton of ice cream a lot of books much like the middle school uh we had book culture um run our books and like mrs edmonds i very much appreciated that there were books and not erasers and posters and although that stuff is fun there was a lot and we sold a lot of great books a lot of great donations to our teachers libraries from parents it just was it was a great event
079overall um and we got tons of feedback um from families and parents about how much they appreciated it so really glad to be back and and have it be such a great hit last night uh ptsa hosted an extracurricular fair at council rock um luckily we got everyone in before the torrential downpour sideways downpour that happened but we had representatives from sports and music and cheer and all kinds of things for parents to be able to come in with their children and get information sign up and hopefully keep their children uh busy outside of school so it was really great and thanks to ptsa i know next year we're really looking at partnering with french road to make it a bigger event and maybe a little bit earlier to also include the summer sign ups
080for summer camps and things like that so we're looking at that so stay tuned this is a math wall that stefano montaquino and kathy hudder our two kind of math specialists within the building have put together and you can't really see it but it says the question could be so the answer is posted at the top and underneath it it says the question could be and this is posted right outside their offices but it's conveniently located in a high traffic area right across from the um gym as well and so the answer was 10 and you can't really see it i wish you could kids are adding what the question could be so eight plus two could be 10. so just all different iterations and getting kids thinking and there are pictures and there are
081number representations and teachers are stopping and doing it with their kids kids are stopping and doing it on their way places it's just a really great way to get kids thinking differently and showing their math thinking which was really fun so appreciate that um i reported uh last time i think that we were doing personal body safety lessons a little bit differently in partnership with bavona and those lessons have all taken place with kindergartners first graders and second graders and then this week we're celebrating a blue ribbon week with a whole bunch of theme days unlike dr hall i wear my tie on theme weeks but so and it just reviews it's a great way to review the five rules that they go over so it's know what's up spot the red flags make a
082move talk it up and then no blame no shame which are each of those has a special movement that goes with it that they teach the kids really enjoy it they understand the context of it and then we have a special dress up for um day so wear blue today was wear bright colors or a tie dye tomorrow's where your sports jersey and they each go with one of uh one of the safety rules upcoming events so i think mrs jeffries mentioned next week no school on thursday as we observe eid our ptsa lifetime life achievement awards we're really excited to congratulate two of our council rock friends liz files first grade teacher and jenny robinson who is one of our special educators so we're really excited about that and celebrating them and then friday
083we have our in-person author visit from jardine nolan who we're really excited about we will be celebrating her and then the following week we're going to have this special birthday book because she has a new book coming out and where each class is going to get a book that's going to be wrapped again special thanks to the ptsa for helping with that and they'll get to open it on the birthday of the book um and we got special permission to get that book ahead of time because it's being actually published the week after she comes um and released and we're getting it on that day and then uh i'm sure mrs jeffries and i will talk about this but this beginning of the transition season for us for our second graders to third grade um
084so on friday may 6th tucked in the middle of all those um those uh presentations of the author uh mrs jeffries and i will be meeting uh via zoom with parents at noon uh about the transition to fres and we've got a whole bunch of other activities movie nights uh transitions a field trip over to french road to have our second graders really start to get accustomed and understand what uh third grade could look like and help them ease that transition any questions i'll just make one quick comment that library continues to impress everyone and i heard that from a few people at the ice cream social so just kudos for that because it's just an outstanding space awesome thank you comments or questions okay any comments do you want to hit dates for my
085campaign yes you should so just real quick um because it'll come up quickly next week is may may 11th will be candidates night that was sent out on a public announcement by dan goldman so remind that obviously may 17th is the budget vote and the candidate vote um 7 am to 9 pm kiwanis food trucks at the central office not at the high school just to remind everybody our next meeting we're back in the board room on may 10th any other comments or questions motion to adjourn you move by julene second seconded by sue all those in favor we are adjourned this has been a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education