001this is a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education we'll call this meeting to order of the brighton central school district board of education public meeting for tuesday february 1st happy lunar new year happy black history month and happy first day of february to begin with we'll start with public participation i will note public participation is an opportunity for your board of education and district leadership to receive feedback from the community as previously stated we want to hear from the community we represent in a respectful open-minded manner we allocate three minutes per speaker in order to give everyone a chance to speak while also letting the board conduct its business for the on the night's agenda over the last few meetings i've tried to be as flexible and respectful as possible
002to speakers however three minutes for speaker allocation is morphed into four minutes which is turned into five minutes so i've asked karen hatch my fellow board member to just put the timer three seconds when each speaker starts and then three minutes excuse me not three seconds i apologize thank you the three minute mark and uh she'll let you know when that three minute mark has hit as always 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 to begin please note dan goldman over there raise your hand if you'd like to speak you can give him a card i do have three
003up here already thank you very much i'll begin to call the speakers in just a moment and all we would ask is you give your name in the town as previously stated for security reasons you do not need to give your street address first up we have melanie bernhard hi mulany brighton thank you um today i just want to talk about something a lot of people don't think about or talk about for immunity and how to build your immune system one of the most important things you can do is get adequate oxygen i don't think people realize when you wear these masks all day long you change your co2 and o2 ratio which does impact your health there is no long-term studies on what masking does to your organs your body system and long-term health
004our children have been in these masks for two years our first graders have now experienced school always in a mask they don't know what it's like to not be in a mask in school according to a child psychiatrist dr mark mcdonald covert related policies have caused significant damage to children the current generation of children has lower iqs signs of social brain damage and he cites the masks the zoom schools lockdown mandates lack of social contact not being able to see faces and being stuck at home causes degeneration in kids another study by the nih children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal motor and cognitive performance than children born pre-pandemic eight out of ten children and adolescents report worsening behavior of psychological symptoms or increase in negative feelings due to the covet-19 pandemic oxford
005university professor carl hennigan cites fear-mongering as a major contributor to psychological problems in children and adolescents he says that health officials should have de-escalated fear and anxiety concerning covet-19 and kids and the risk of serious illness is so low they should not be worried so my question is you know i'd like to see more data from the school on what the studies they're fine we're two years into this now i would think there's a lot more data a lot more studies out there what all these coveted policies are doing and how to educate our children i'm asking what are we teaching our kids are they doing any research do they have any idea that on january 23rd there was a march against medical mandates in washington d.c thirty five thousand people showed up doctors scientists
006nurses firemen vaccine injured people showed up to speak it was over three hours long senator ron johnson the following day had a coveted second opinion panel roundtable with attorneys scientists doctors nurses again seeing talking about cures different ways we should have handled the pandemic has anybody looked at that has anybody taught taught children to do research and question ask questions why do we keep doing the same thing for two years with no different results the other thing that is happening that just started on the 29th i don't know if you're aware of there's a freedom trucker convoy that started in canada over 70 000 truckers canada and us went to ottawa to parliament to protest against these band-aids i don't even know if our students are even aware what is going on around the world
007because of the censorship i'm so sorry thank you thank you thank you my only response would be we've not had the same information mullany again we're functioning from two different sets of information and uh dr mcdonald himself who suggested the deworming medicine i've mectin as a treatment for covid has been discredited in many ways as well so we're functioning from two very different sets of information and we see it differently so thank you next i have karen molecki karen from brighton um last time i was up i spoke of the millions of dollars that have been received by brighton for the cares act and esser funds i spoke of the the change the documents that have to be submitted every six months to state what the school system has has to submit and there's a
008lot more that go that been going on that these funds are used for i mentioned critical race theory the last time it's been re-branded to speak called social emotional learning or culturally responsive and sustaining education i know we've been we're using that here it provides free anti-racist therapy for white educators it's used to psychologically manipulate students beliefs values and worldviews to shift them into socialism secular humanism and a new world order the first president bush of the united states had that in spoke of the new world order in his speeches the first was september 11 1990 and then they continued this education is a vehicle for marxist-based theory to indoctrinate children the biden administration is also pushing a handbook titled roadmap to reopening safe safely and meeting all students needs suggesting districts use social emotional
009and mental health programs for children another guide the guide for racial justice and abolitionist social and emotional learning promotes the narrative that america is a racist nation in addition 40 percent of schools have used their funds to upgrade their hvac system to sanitize the air with toxic chemicals there's more please do your homework several of these recommendations are illegal years ago i can remember learning from consuela newton a well-known health care advocate she spoke of how in the past tyranny has been forced on populations to control them she stated the way to weaken or destroy a population is through harming their children that is what is being done here they are literally using our money to harm our children destabilize and eventually destroy our families and thereby our communities those of you on the board
010i hope you can find it in your hearts to change these plans to stop taking this money from the federal government and instead save our children from these tyrannical acts i also hope you are not being forced into doing these acts and that you're not being threatened i want to mention to you that i'm vaccine injured myself it was 36 years ago that's three minutes thank you okay thank you i can i'm sorry no i just want to point out critical race theory is not culturally responsive education or social emotional learning they're very different definitions we're not teaching critical race theory and i'm just going to say and not debate it or discuss it there's nobody here acting tragically and there's nobody here who is hurting children the educators in this community continue to do
011a tremendous amount of work on behalf of children families suggesting otherwise and accusing them of harming children intentionally is frankly shameful but you've expressed your opinion i've had an opportunity to express mine so it's happening all throughout the country i will tell you that no one here on the school board is being threatened in any way shape or form we continue to encourage open debate and provide the best possible opportunity for our kids thank you very much for your time uh next up i have um heather coyne hi everybody heather coyne brighton resident i just wanted to take a minute to thank the district and the board for continuing to support and promote literacy comprehension compassion and growth whether it's about accepting how science actually works understanding that you don't determine health policy with a
012parent poll encouraging people to grapple with ugly real history or recognizing the necessity of life-affirming memoirs you've refused to cave and cater to the voices of a loud minority i'm thankful to live in a community that for the most part supports what you're doing keep up the good work and know that we've got you thank you dan do we have anybody else for public participation okay that will include that will conclude rather agend item two which is public participation next up was approve of the agenda however i'm gonna have to make an amendment to the current agenda under uh article eight which is approval of first read policies we will be adding a third policy there's an existing a and a b we are adding a policy c for a first read uh entitled i'm
013sorry it's policy five six eight nine and it's entitled masking on school grounds and within school facilities so i'll discuss that when we come to it but with that amendment to the existing agenda do i have a motion to approve the agenda so moved moved by karen second seconded by susan all those in favor the agenda is approved next up we've all had a chance to look at the minutes from january 18th the january 18th public business meeting any questions or edits to those minutes motion to approve the minutes of the january 18th business meeting moved by andrew seconded by julene all those in favor next up very special presentation by a member of the brighton volunteer fire department this is a presentation on the to be proposed volunteer first responder property tax exemption dennis
014jeffries good evening and thank you very much for having me tonight to present on this exciting opportunity for the fire department my name is dennis jeffries i'm president of the brighton fire department i'm a lifelong brighton resident live in the 12 corners area now i joined our explorer post back in 2000 and the fire department in 2003. thank you so this is an exciting opportunity for us like i said the legislation was passed with senate sponsor senator broke and assembly sponsor assembly member lunsford governor hochul signed the bill in december of 2021 after a recommendation from the new york state task force to about booster the volunteer ranks and fire departments and ambulance courts this law is specifically impacting monroe county and what it is proposing is a 10 percent reduction in property assessments for
015volunteer firefighters and ambulance personnel who have served for at least two years this is just for monroe county but it is not a new concept in new york state monroe county is the 11th county in the state to have this enacted and it has shown positive results elsewhere in the state so when governor hook will sign law she said when trouble calls our volunteer firefighters and emergency workers are there to answer these selfless volunteers deserve our full support and i'm proud to sign the legislation that rewards them for their sacrifice and encourages others to join the ranks to keep our communities in monterey county safe so i think it's important to point out what the local municipalities are doing because we have to work with every municipality in brighton we cover parts of the town
016of brighton county pittsburgh we actually cover five different school districts but the majority is pittsford penn field and obviously brighton so the town of brighton already introduced it at the town board meeting and the public hearing is february 9th the town of pittsford is having their public hearing two nights the pittsburgh central school district had their hearing last week and they've scheduled to vote for next week penfield school district we presented to them last week and they scheduled their public hearing for february 8th with the hope that they will vote on it at the same meeting and then monroe county legislatures introduced it earlier in january and their public hearing is also next week so the good news is that all the municipalities we work with are moving through the process we are under a
017little bit of a time constriction because when it was signed into law and when it needs to happen by and i can go into that a little further so our organization we are a combination fire department we have been since 1925 so almost 100 years of volunteer and career personnel working together we have 36 career firefighters and line officers and 84 volunteers i do want to point out our chief deputy chief and assistant chief are all volunteers we responded to 2 274 incidents last year which pictured you can see some of them top left was a motor vehicle accident on 590 with the person trapped the top right was a house fire over by our station one bottom left was actually in the town of pittsburgh during the windstorm in june but the brighton fire
018department was first on scene we found the tree that had uh ripped off the front of the house and there's still an elderly resident she was in her mid 80s inside so we were able to get her out she was actually up in that bedroom where the corner is and then bottom right was uh just at the end of last year that was a motor vehicle accident where the car wound up in malik's bakery parking lot the occupant was trapped in that and we had her extricated in less than five minutes i just want to point out that these are the incidents we respond to it's not just house fires it's motor vehicle accidents it's emergency medical service we also pump out basement when there's a lot of water which has been happening lately so
019we do all sorts of different things now big thing for us is new member recruitment and retention because with 84 volunteers we've got to keep our sports struck two or three years ago we actually got a grant from the federal government to bolster our recruitment budget in the last three years we have had phenomenal results of recruiting 36 new members nine of which were district homeowners within the brighton fire district and that's important to point out because we retained all nine of those bright fire district homeowners and of the 27 that were not we retained uh 16 of them now a big reason for that is that their people are moving and do different things are happening in life if you own a house you are more likely you have roots in the community and
020moving is a significant life event if you're renting an apartment and you know something better opens in another community or you're looking to purchase a home you're more likely to move so that was a big accomplishment for us was retaining all nine of them so that means we need to focus on our district residents for community aspect our volunteers are involved in a lot of different aspects we do the dwi reenactments we do school visits station tours for different schools and community groups community events we do the homecoming parade which is always one of our favorites uh we get our bagpipe band to come out we get a lot of people all our trucks on display it's fun to do it in front of our own town sports escorts brighton athletics has had a really
021good last year so we've been doing a lot of those and they range anywhere from you know early evening to sometimes really late at night we're always happy to get out of bed for those because it's so exciting for those kids and what they've accomplished bonfires top right is a good example of that that's the middle school bonfire that usually happens at the end of the year we do open houses the farmers market which is uh you know at the high school through the summer we usually have a presence at that some of these have changed over the last two years and we've been coming up with unique ways to adapt to the situation but we've tried to remain out in the community as much as possible our explorer post which i was a member
022of is still extremely strong we have 17 members 13 of which are brighton high school students that has always been a phenomenal way for us to recruit young individuals and get them introduced to the fire service and then join when they become 18. so the biggest thing for us was we want to do the due diligence and show what the effect of this law would have on for our members and then the rest of the residents in the school district so right here it outlines there are 21 fire department members that would be eligible in four of the brighton volunteer ambulance members there is some overlap with the brighton central school district and the pittsburgh fire department and henrietta fire department we confirm with both of them they don't have anybody in brighton they would
023qualify so this is a true representation of what it would be of the 25 homes the total assessed values are about 6 million with school tax of 165 000 so 10 reduction would be 16 553 and we are aware that just doesn't go up into thin air that has to come from somewhere so with a 10 reduction on the assessments it puts more of a tax burden on the rest of the school district residents so to outline that we took the tax levy from last fall and the rate and then we deducted out that 10 assessment and the new tax rate was 26.530450 so on a 250 000 home the taxes will go up 1.92 per year so we do acknowledge that this is a fantastic opportunity for the fire department in recruiting not new
024volunteers but it would have an effect on other residents and we want to make sure you are aware we acknowledge that and we want to really justify why that is a doable thing so valuable volunteer firefighters so we are a combination department we've been for almost 100 years a bunch of our neighbors have gone to a more career-focused department and have very little few volunteers if any so as you can see our volunteers have kept our tax rate low and bright so some of them are doubling even triple that so the dollar ninety two a year increase on a 250 000 home has really the opportunity to save them hundreds of dollars a year and fire taxes if the volunteers all went away so i look at is that dollar 92 is an investment to
025keep your whole tax bill low so the other question that might come up is you know are they getting a better service because they're paying a higher tax rate the independent uh service organization which they do insurance ratings their group they do 48 000 ratings of all fire departments in the country they do a scale of one to ten one being the best there's 178 ones in the country there's eleven hundred twos in 2017 brighton fire department was upgraded from class three to class two that puts us in the top two eight point eight percent of fire departments in the country how that's impactful to residents is that your insurance bills actually go down because the insurance looks at your fire department and says if you're less likely to suffer a fire loss we can
026insure you for less so actually our the bills for brighton fire district residents have gone down with their insurance companies due to that so we are still providing an exceptionally great service to our residents while trying to keep the tax rate as low as possible district homeowners as volunteers 40 out of our 84 members are homeowners within the brighton fire district it's important to point out that they have an average years of service of 22 and non-homeowners have an average service of 13 years i do want to point that out because it is important for us as we focus on who we recruit is when we can bring in those district homeowners they've got deep roots in the community they do stay for a lot longer and provide a lot of service to the residents
027now on top of that just utomo is leadership so we have 21 leadership positions between our line officers civil officers and commissioners 20 of the 21 are filled by district homeowners the one that isn't is an individual that's 50 yards into the city of rochester because his job requires he lives in the city of rochester so everybody is really in the center of town and able to respond quickly but i think it's also important that fifty percent of the brighton fighter uh members that are homeowners in the fire yes you're serving leadership roles so not only are they staying for longer but they're stepping up and serving in those leadership roles which are crucial to our success the opportunities created by the new legislation obviously recruitment of current brighton fire district homeowners that is our
028number one focus those are the people that have shown that they are in the fire department for a long time they step up in leadership roles the other important thing is with them living in town they're able to respond to emergencies quicker time is of the essence in these emergency situations so that is a huge reason why we focus on the homeowners increasing retention of current volunteers is that our homeowners so our current volunteers will see an impact on their tax bills and it will be noticeable so that is a very much of an incentive to be able to remain with the fire department with dual income families and the sort the fire department is not getting any easier training requirements are going up it is a significant time commitment away from your family and
029if this is a way to help justify that to yourself and your family that is very important to us it also incentivizes our current volunteers to buy a home within brighton you know if we assist with making it more affordable as well but now if you're looking at buying a home and you've been a brighton volunteer for two to five or however long in brighton it will be an immediate impact if you move to another community you have to serve with them for two years before you can realize this so in the essence it immediately makes it more affordable for our volunteer firefighters to purchase within brain and that's where we need them and want them to be so our action items are requesting that a public hearing be scheduled at the next board meeting
030and request that you would pass a resolution to enact the partial tax exemption as i mentioned we are under a strict deadline here because it has to be done by march 1st if it's not done by march 1st it would not impact until the september 23 school tax bill so we're looking at a 20-month runway for that to happen and there's been some really good press on this and we're really trying to take the momentum into our recruitment campaign so if we have to wait that long it just kind of puts us behind a little bit so we really want to get out ahead of this and really take the momentum and the pub pr around it and be able to run with it and keep going with our recruitment efforts and that was all
031i had so i appreciate the time and if you have questions i would be more than happy to answer them you know i just say first i have a past personal connection to the volunteers so my father was a 35-year volunteer and you all do great work so greatly appreciate your service um and we'll give this additional thought we look forward to asking that the community weigh in through a hearing in our 2 15 or february 15th which is two weeks from tonight board meeting and we'll take a vote on this issue but before i'll let you get away from there i don't know if any of the other board members have any questions for dennis sure anything you want to ask i really appreciated exactly how you laid it out thank you very much
032thank you i tried to not take too much time no he didn't karen wasn't timing you but it was very helpful i was worried about the three minutes i was like i'm gonna try and be quick but three minutes is tough thank you dennis uh just you know we experience on a first-hand basis here all too often the response of the fire service the very quick response a very professional response the very supportive response so first and foremost thank you for that in fact today several uh pieces of equipment had to come here as a result of a mechanical issue that caused an alarm and so you're here very very quickly and work quickly to get our kids who are standing outside back in the building quickly right so it's it's this great collaborative relationship
033where uh you're so helpful to us all the time and i know so many residents feel that way as well speaking as one of them who i think was about a year ago several of you including you were in my basement because of a faulty alarm right so we experience these things all the time and all of you giving up time getting up from the dinner table leaving your families to come help the rest of us is a great example for our kids about volunteerism and putting the common good above all else and we really appreciate that so thank you for that this was really well done and a lot of great information for the puerto rican center thank you very much appreciate it thank you thank you very much uh next up it's february
034so it seems like a great opportunity to hear from nate merritt uh regarding health physical education and athletics i thought man tom hall infiltrated everybody's presentation it's not just the high school tomorrow all right welcome everyone um i just want to say to the brighton fire department while i have a chance um he had mentioned when he was up here our escorts i can't thank you enough for all of that our athletes um when we happen to win a sectional title are more than thrilled uh coming home with an escort so i i personally thank you and making that call the chief builder is is always a phone call so i appreciate it um tonight i'm going to walk you through health physical education and athletics um just some highlights from this this past year
035um again looking at our health curriculum continued work with mental health and wellness our k-12 staff has done a really really nice job of looking at our you know critical topics as we have left the pandemic here and really what's important takeaways for our health curriculum really every environment you walk in very very warm inviting environment as you see janus mix up at the top at french road working with her puppet it has been a fantastic year and really things that we've taken away from this time have been great ads to our curriculum and we look forward to building on that for sure one thing that we've noticed in the past year though is obviously having the kids in front of us health is a a topic where group discussion uh debate asking questions it's
036really critical for kids to gain insight by by talking it through so all the way from french road and especially up at our high school levels the discussion based classes have really really come alive again and we are really excited to have that not be on zoom any longer and face to face with our educators and peers talking back and forth talking about experiences asking those critical questions and getting some of those answers as they they move on in their lives we also had the opportunity to restructure a little bit this year as our k-12 scope and sequence we moved our what normally lived in seventh grade down to sixth grade uh reason for that was we really felt at our secondary education we had six then eight and then ten um it was really
037nice transition for us to go every other year in the secondary education and we've really seen some some great great um results from that with our sixth graders being first year middle schoolers a lot of stress a lot of anxieties going into a new building and having that ability to hit them right off the bat in the sixth grade building on that in eighth grade and then obviously having their high school experience in 10th grade we really really are happy about that we look forward to building upon that as we move forward looking at physical education um physical education obviously over the last couple years has been a challenge when we weren't in school looking at how we remotely taught physical education and kept kids active was a challenge i can tell you that after
038obviously this time we feel really good about where we are curricularly we feel that we can transition to kind of anything at this point with our curriculum we talk from you know a zoom location a lot of our secondary curriculum is all online for kids now if kids miss a day of class we have resources for them in the moment to meet those requirements given to us by the state but again goal is to keep kids active if we can provide resources for them not only when they're physically in a classroom but also resources up from the outside when they're filling up their laptop or tablet at home that's ultimately the goal so moving forward we've had great success we have an online physical education class at the high school which has been really really
039helpful for those that have been on medical leave or are credit deficient to give kids the opportunity to graduate on time but again that has now morphed into really our whole curriculum being online for kids to access at all times so something that we're really happy for again we're prepared for the future i think we we can really maneuver our curriculum in any way shape or form at this point and that's really been a good um a good highlight for us in the in the past couple years is that i think part of my worry as a leader of this program is how could we transition to you know being away from our kids how could we really ensure kids that we're being active when they're away from us and and i think what we've
040done and um and been able to accomplish from an online stance but also now getting back in person i really feel confident in the future of moving our program forward and really we didn't have a delay in the last two years we pushed forward and quickly kept on building lastly we had some great additions to our staff some moving around but again we got to hire some great staff this year exciting new young educators that have already given a lot to our program which we're excited about looking at athletics if you if you look at athletics over the last year year and a half it has been an absolute crazy year from that spring where we shut down all of sports to the past year where i can say with all confidence we were able
041to host all of our varsity jv and modified sports in some way shape or form yes with mass on yes with spectator limitations we were able to do so and i think you know if you look at the next next bullet there participation is at an all-time high kids need to do something kids need to be involved with whatever that might be extracurricular but athletics has given them an opportunity to to be active and participate uh in a team setting in a group setting which is vital at this point so we're really really happy that you know over the last year we were able to host all of these teams and do so as safely as possible it's interesting the coaches you know our coaching staff has had to just like our teaching staff has
042had to look at things very differently um practices their practice spaces the limitation of of spacing and moving kids around they've had to think about coaching a sport very differently and and i can i can honestly say that they've done so you know very very well and they've looked at things with with opportunity in mind is giving kids opportunity to enjoy what they love and so taking that every day has been a blessing for not only them as coaches but obviously for our kids that come in contact with them as well if you see the bottom picture and i wanted to point this out you know last is creating some normal for our kids i can say you know even talking with some of our upperclassmen this year some of the most you know memorable
043moments for them this year was having homecoming having a sports assembly having a pep rally having things that they have not had over the last couple years and and to be able to do so out on our turf this year was just fantastic and it was it was a great community moment for us but more importantly you know our athletes got to enjoy themselves and and what we would consider a more normal setting for them and uh we were really thrilled that we could provide that before them um in this year i you know like the you know the fire department mentioned we've we've had a really really good year um you know as far as success goes brighton was named the school of excellence by new york state public high school athletic association that
044means that every one of our varsity teams had a great point average of 90 or above that's the first time that that's happened since i've been here and and again is one of those accolades that we've been i've been talking about for the last five years and we were able to accomplish it this past year which is a just a great mark for all of our varsity athletes we won six sectional titles we have nine individual sectional champions six additional finalists um in the sectionals and over 30 kids represent our school at state competitions um you know the fire trucks have been coming down winton road quite a bit for all of these accolades which is great and we're very very proud of them and and i can say you know our student athletes have
045really taken advantage of the time that they've gotten and enjoyed themselves it is great to see the stadium full it is great to see the gym full with kids enjoying what they really truly love to do so again you know i get to enjoy my job a lot more when kids are enjoying their time for sure just looking at future items again we talked about pe continue to look at flexibility for kids how can we truly make it work for each kid um how can we look outside the box and and and find them their requirement that they need from the state of new york but more importantly make them you know understand ways that they can enjoy moving their body um and to stay healthy and to live a healthy lifestyle continue looking at
046mental health in the in our health curriculum really looking at some internal partnerships our health department really works very closely with our counseling department but in addition to internal you know programs looking at external programs uh vavona is coming into our school and working you know with our health teachers as well so it's something that we're really looking for to make all those connections to make it a really holistic approach to our health curriculum and lastly athletics you know continue to provide you know these great opportunities for athletics it's not about winning sectional titles it's about the experience that they leave brighton with we have now come up with ways to collect feedback from kids i want to hear about their their experience i want to hear the good the bad the the ugly but
047more importantly so that we can get to the best place possible for them and again our coaches have been great in asking for more professional development how how can i become a better coach how can i look at things differently so things that we're going to be doing moving forward though so thank you i appreciate your time thank you very much any questions for me great job great to hear about all the successes thank you very much next up is principal reports and i think danielle i had you go last the last time so you get to go first as danielle's coming up i just want to point out one thing back to the beginning of nate's presentation about everything people had to do to make things normal in terms of events masking conducting an
048athletic program so i just want to make one point hey if you could just stand up for one second so i can embarrass you number one nate last year was our covert coordinator which goes unsung but needs to be pointed out so thank you for that everything you did but the complexity of operating athletic program in the first place relative to scheduling and safety creating safe spaces and events in a normal whatever that means anymore a year is pretty complex but to do that in the midst of a pandemic and think about masking for kids the return to play protocol which is very complicated all of the medical issues around that but just creating a space we talk about finding ways for there to be normalcy our visual performing arts people and our athletic people
049our activities people did everything they could to adjust dramatically so nate thanks for your leadership and i just want to point that out [Applause] okay i don't need to um speak for nate but interestingly and ironically as he was speaking uh coach elkins was sending me a text of a whole bunch of pictures of the girls modified basketball practice today and the team building activities that they were doing so when nate talks about it not just being about championships that was a perfect example and my response to her was i can see all the smiles on their faces underneath the masks so um just to add to that nate that that's such a valuable portion of what we do every single day the experience we provide for our kids tcms was very very very busy
050this month which was fantastic one of our bright stars no pun intended here was our martin luther king day celebration where our students had the opportunity to do what we called shining like martin and each of our students watched a video about martin luther king tailored around kindness and they each read a variety of quotes and then picked one that resonated with them and based on that they created kind of an icann mission statement of their own and that's what you see posted there in our atrium so it's a fun activity for students to engage with and really think about kindness in terms of our bright and beliefs qualities and how that connected with the work of dr martin luther king additionally we had a joint ptsa meeting with french road where individuals from vivona
051came to talk about aaron's law and all of the work that they would be doing in health classes with the students really throughout the entire district their presentation was obviously focused just on the 3-8 curriculum but basically aaron's law if you don't know is a law that was named after a childhood sexual assault survivor and the law requires that all public schools implement a prevention oriented child sexual abuse program so bivona is helping us with that to to train our teachers and to provide age-appropriate developmentally appropriate deliverables for students to teach them about sex abuse and telling a trusted adult and all the techniques that go on with that so we had a great opportunity to share all that information with parents and had some fabulous dialogue with parents about what students can expect to
052see in in the coming weeks at both french road and 12th corners middle school we also had last week our orientation for our five go six students this is the first time that we've done this so early in the school year and it was very well attended we had presenters where the tcms administration jeff green had an opportunity to introduce himself and his role in the district we had representatives from the ptsa talk about what life in the ptsa realm looks like at the middle school our counseling department talked about the continuum of supports that we have in the transition timeline for students our school psychologist and special ed department or special ed department chair also did separate presentations regarding the iep process and 504s and what they look like at 12 corners middle school
053with a presentation from our world language department and instrumental and vocal music department so that students had the information and families had the information that they needed in order to start doing their course requests so we're already in that that land right now where we're asking fifth grade families to think about course selection for sixth grade really really well attended we recorded it shared it with families but i think you know as i said to families that night this is the first time they're getting that information this year but they're going to get it in so many other ways over the next few months as we prepare for the students to head on into the middle school so we're really excited about that we had our first scripps spelling bee at 12 corners middle school
054last week was the final round and ian doerr was our sixth grader who will be representing 12 corners middle school at our regional competition in march so fingers crossed we'll keep you updated on on his uh journey and how he does and aurora gray was our runner up as well so mrs debay kudos to mrs debay and mrs coyle for organizing that this year it was just for sixth graders the intention is to scale that up to seventh and eighth graders they presented it virtually this year next year hopefully we'll have a nice live in-person event last week our chess club and our acb teams had their first competition and they they kind of demolished the competition they did it was really nice but super exciting um you know obviously we don't want to we
055don't want to demolish anybody but they did really really well they've been working for weeks and weeks and um they you know they were ready to shine and they did so great group of kids and miss lopez is actually running both groups and they just they a lot a lot of laughs but they're serious competitors too so great work by them and so many things going on throughout the building the upper left hand corner our facts eight students made dog biscuits that they shared with the rochester animal services and they drew all those tags that you see there and they put them in each of the bags of biscuits that they shared with animal services and so they were sued that organization was very appreciative of the work of our students we had gia caballero's
056mom came and presented in our sixth grade science class about her work helping to run studies to help people with hemophilia so um the students were wildly engaged because it was a you know a parent of a friend but also in the topic was super engaging as well the end of the marking period was last week so that always brings about the co2 co2 car races as well as our build bridge our bridge building competitions and technology and then in the bottom left mr white in our general music classes this year engaged his students in studying sound design he used the scratch coding app and he had students code games and then they had to pull either from a bank of sounds or had to find their own sounds in order to animate and add
057the audio to it something new that we've never done in in general music before the kids were really engaged in that i just love you know i welcome you to come through our building at any point because all of our our walls are filled with with learning and you can see you know our sixth graders were writing their one-word poems for the for january the new year lots of math diagrams and correlational charts coming around the building comics use of technology in order to tell stories and and visualize themes that students are studying just all throughout our halls i think i talked about this last time but we have our bruin you can see mrs halligan is holding our bruin on the upper right hand corner and she gave him a mask but each week
058we've been trying to honor at least one faculty member in the work that they've been doing in the building to support obviously students but each other as well i can't say enough about what staff have been doing to hold everything up at this point the classes that they're covering they're just above and beyond every single day and then in particular i just want to highlight our nurses in the last three weeks in particular with everything that we've been going through with covid they have been phenomenal they have worked close to i would say 20 hours a day to keep up with all of the changing regulations and who can eat in the cafeteria on this day and who needs to eat in the auditorium and who can come back after five days but who has
059to be back in 10 days and making sense of all of that and they've done it all with a smile and with grace so we are so appreciative of them and also you can see andy over there who's one of our night custodians they really took quite a hit in january with coven and they were working double shifts non-stop to make sure that our building was clean that all student surfaces were sanitized and ready to go so those people right there we couldn't have done any of this month without and we're hopeful to not have to lean on them so much moving forward thank you and we do um owe you a tour of your building so we have that on the list so we will be over there at some point we'll just not
060go near the locker room that's okay principal tapping you look ready to go good evening everyone we're president davis keeping us on our toes not knowing who is going to be uh so uh january uh in miss flanagan's kindergarten class uh she celebrated january and talking about the key brighton believes component of taking responsibility so students actually did a hunger helper responsibility drive so they collected food for the brighton food cupboard and talked about responsibility and what it looks like in the classroom what it might look like at their houses what it looks like in our community and then you can see there in the bottom left they hosted a parent zoom or a family zoom where they shared some of their work they've written a digital book as a class about responsibility and what
061they had learned and then you know my favorite is mo willems and they did uh don't let the pigeon and then they got to fill in what they shouldn't let the pigeon have a responsibility to do so there were things like do the morning announcements or drive the bus or some other things that they should not have responsibility uh allow that responsibility it was a great time and the parents really seemed to enjoy it although it was through zoom it was still a great connection with the classroom first in math is a resource that actually the new york state department of education has purchased for all new york state schools but it's a really great resource stefano monachino who is our math coach at k5 has been introducing it in many classrooms and i was
062able to go in this is a first grade class mrs aiello's first grade class when she introduced it and the visual plus the um kind of game-like way kids were so engaged in this um they earned stickers just simple little they're not stickers that but they're and they were screaming about oh i was and they were practicing math and it really practices the fluency um along with some of the other skills that we found within our program maybe aren't reinforced a lot and this is really a great supplemental uh tool that we are hoping to have in all of our classrooms as it's being provided for us by new york state education so and then in second grade geologist tyler lucero who i am proud to say was one of my former students in henrietta
063he was one of my eighth graders he is a active working geologist and he visited second grade classrooms again last last time i reported on andrea yaman our enrichment specialist bringing in someone to talk about the science and the launch of the telescope she has brought tyler in extending her and connecting to her extended studies curriculum and science curriculum where students were able to talk about what the story rocks can tell us and having kids really look deeply and closely at different rocks and seeing what do the characteristics tell us about where they came from and learning about that new year's always brings about planning and teaching students about resolutions and then goal setting so you can see just a bunch of different creative ways so skating into the new year students were making resolutions
064and goals for the year sledding into the new year talking about what they're hoping to be able to accomplish by the end of of the school year and then just some different creative ways so this is how our halls are alive with making our learning visible and then our first graders are all doing rent winter research but it's really interesting to walk around the building because each class has kind of adopted a different technique or way to go about it this class researched penguins this class researched owls this class researched polar bears so it's all kind of within the arctic animal theme um but really learning those first steps of how to read a source how to pull information from there how to summarize it and how to to represent it and then we also
065celebrated martin luther king jr day in a variety of ways a lot with martin's big words and talking about the words that they hope to represent as well as what dreams they have connecting to martin luther king and celebrating uh through art visual and talking about how they can make the world a better kinder place much like martin luther king jr upcoming events um so a big day valentine's day and i'll also say 100th day 100th day has always been around a certain time um we are hoping to maybe with now full day k half day k always left that a little bit like we had to kind of have a window i'm hoping next year to be able to set for everyone what that day is because the interpretation but it's around the week
066of the 14th and teachers have a little attitude um to pick within that and we will celebrate those hundred days in school uh obviously monday the 21st through the 25th we have no school for february break looking into march march 9th is our brighton believes day and i'm sure we'll talk a lot more about that within our next presentation and then monday the 14th of march we will have and we'll be publicizing this because it's not on the calendar uh a ptsa meeting with the principals and i will combine with mrs jeffries to talk about our building-based diversity equity and inclusion work within our committees to talk about what we've been doing so we're excited to see that any questions no just excellent job to you and the vice principal on the new student orientation
067i think there's one or two board members over there one who's going to have a student enrolling this year we'll stick right along that back row and go to marin next sorry tom good evening how is everybody phil doing well we're doing great over at french road um we are coming off the heels of a really exciting virtual author visit and we i know i had spoken last time about inviting peter brown and the work that our ptsa and justin mcvay had done and bringing him to the building and i've got to say throughout the world of like virtual experiences this is definitely one of the best ones i think that our students have been able to be involved in he really did a wonderful job engaging our students we even had some teachers who
068were out due to illness or other issues and they're taking the time and making the commitment to be there and zoom in so it was a really wonderful way to bring our school community together and like i said the way he engaged students in the thought process the creative process and really the way that this author developed some of our students particularly at the third through fifth grade level their some of their favorite books um was really engaging so we're very thankful for him and his time um we are very excited to be celebrating and coming together to explore black history month this month we have lots happening in the building and we've had some great collaboration with families with students again with our ptsa and then right directly with our staff as well so
069the building is taking on this concept again of change makers something that's been explored in the past but we have a multitude of change makers who really worldwide who are families and folks of color who have innovated change and are moving things forward in some way so students in classes are welcome to choose any one of these people explore them we've invited them to decorate their door or show their exploration and their learning in some way and then throughout the month toward the end of the month students will have the ability to kind of explore the building and see what folks are doing in other classes we also will be hosting malik evans later this month he'll be speaking to our students remotely but speaking about his experience his ties to rochester and the work
070that he is currently doing we're very excited about that and we're also going to be exploring several different read-alouds this month and also be highlighting different change makers and folks who are impacting our local and broader community through morning video announcements as well we have also continued the work that renee uidor has done through extended studies really has been so far reaching with our students several weeks back i had spoken about the beginning stages of a lot of the projects that students through extended studies were engaging in and at that point they were in my office kind of pitching these ideas talking about things that mattered to them things that they wanted to see changed both in our local community and globally and ms sweder's call to action and something that they could choose to
071do was make a creation that really um kind of brought attention to the amount of plastic so for students the upper left that's really a tall tower of bottles and those students were really talking about removing plastic from the ocean and trying to demonstrate and and create a visual impact for how much plastic really lands somewhere as you can see with the lower right hand piece as well so kids really took it to the next level the top the top right chocolate milk container was talking about students trying to help create awareness around the impact of straws and what that does to the environment long term and their call to action was trying to ban straws or decrease the use of them to our to the extent possible so once again great work that's really
072being seen and noticed throughout the building later this month we have a really exciting partnership with a local organization called pencils and paper and in connection with jewish family services french road is going to be collecting supplies to support pencils and paper and i actually had the amazing opportunity to travel to their location right on j street with our physical education teacher crystal forsyth and we were able to get a tour of this facility that really serves as sort of a warehouse so to speak where teachers from rochester city school district can come and actually shop for their students directly they're given an allotment of money each quarter i believe and they're able to come and shop they can there's highlighters there's books there's notebooks there's general paper supplies you name it this place is
073is supplying it for students and teachers so it's a wonderful organization in our third fourth and fifth graders will be collecting 24 pound crayons elmer's glue and highlighters among each grade level and then working together to package and kind of bundle these items for pencils and paper to distribute directly to rcsd teachers so it's a really awesome partnership i can't wait to see what happens this month coming right up this week we have our math team new student information meeting with mrs weidore we'll be from six to seven on zoom so we're expecting quite a large turnout i'm excited for that and to get that rolling we also will start our in-school collection like i had mentioned for health moves minds that'll be february 7th through 11th and then that celebration week is when students
074will be doing some of that packaging and kind of a culminating activity right in pe throughout their classes over the week of the 11th we also have the rescheduled fourth grade chorus concert coming up on the 17th we'll be out for our recess and then we jump right back in when we return for read across america week which is always really fun um as we typically do french road is opening our doors to all sorts of readers hoping that several folks can join us and come and share a story or two with our classes so looking forward to that any questions thank you very much any questions [Music] great job thank you very much so the true home of the bruins just a quick brewing update because i think we talked last time about the
075bear costume the brewing costume we are nate and i finally have a vendor and um we're working through that we've got funding hopefully from the nancy background um that's going to pay for the majority of this and it i cannot believe how many months out this company is with all of the different mascots they're putting our goal is that we'll have it by homecoming next fall it takes that long it's unbelievable the process but more to come i'll keep you up to speed because it's going to be exciting so our eighth grade family so i look at the powerpoints and i think the class of 2029 going in the sixth grade the 20 class of 2026 coming into ninth grade um and just you know when you think about 2030 coming up it just seems
076unbelievable uh but we had a great turnout we did a live event in the auditorium for parents who wanted to come and we had it streamed live through the music evpa website which was fantastic so people at home in school very similar to the middle school i think our orientations are very similar in terms of the highlighting first parents with students with ieps file fours and then we had a general session for everybody to talk about high school life and what that was going to be like when they get to the high school and very excited jeff was there as well jeff green and looking forward to a fantastic transition and lots of things planned and for this group to make a very smooth transition into the high school in the fall of 2022 senior
077nights they mentioned you know a lot of the athletic stuff going on this is just one senior night with the hockey team really enjoyed the cover of their brochure but all of our senior nights are happening many more happening next week bowling tomorrow night basketball next week and you know that's just a part of what we do each season just exciting uh the kids it's fantastic as nate was saying too to see them playing and and you know competing um in a year that you know even though everybody's still wearing their masks everything else seems fairly normal i mean right now so it is really exciting um one of the things in the classroom that i caught um in heather banadana's english 12 class it's dystopian literature and that's an elective probably we've been offering
078for the last five years it was an elective that students chose um they wanted us to start teaching so that's one of the courses that heather teaches anne rand's anthem futuristic novel again dystopian society she they read that book together and then she had an opportunity from the ann ran institute um there was a professor there i forget his name professor ben bayer as an instructor and fellow there at the institute and was there in on zoom interacting with the kids talking about um ann rand as a person growing up in russia and being a russian author and um you know giving his perspective on everything he knows about henry and and all the novels that she's written it was a fascinating uh class to be a part of and hearing the questions and the
079interaction that they had live stream again our goals and initiatives coming up as an upcoming meeting but our number one goal for this year was to successfully open up and implement a five-day week schooling program which everybody wants to but as we continue to do that and move forward i think from our nurses to our custodians to the teachers and everybody in between has just done a fantastic job to keep us moving and being in school every day program planning continues so our counselors are meeting one-to-one with students that was a change due to covet but a very positive change every single student will meet with their counselor one on one for a 15 to 20 minute or more meeting depending on the students needs to choose courses for next year and talk about their
080careers in the future so that's happening now through march 11th the program of studies is all out and we'll be discussing staffing considerations and course offerings uh at the end of march say yes to the dress that's an annual event we missed out last year due to covid but we're back on february 17th that'll be happening at the high school and very excited for that to return and if you don't know anything about vhs say yes to the dress many gowns suits um tuxedos are donated mostly gowns but for our our students to to get for free basically for upcoming proms and balls um in uh this spring and i know julian gilbert's a big part of that and we're looking forward to having that so is andrea we're just interesting so we're looking forward
081to having that back in the auditorium um this year speaking of the auditorium beauty and the beast that will be presented next week thursday night friday two shows on saturday in the bhs auditorium sign up for if you want tickets you can go online it's it's completely professional now you can choose your seat in the brand new brighton high school auditorium and pick exactly where you want to sit if it's available ham jam 2022 we missed ham jam again last year but senior fundraiser it's one of the biggest fundraisers for seniors any sort of talent ship talent that a student might have nine through twelve we'll be doing that in march um that's back in action we're hoping to make it a really fun event and for our brighton belize day coming up in march
082we're planning a gigantic food drive similar to last year for three days of march any questions uh i would pass on uh tom that i know you guys had a little bit of a water challenge um yesterday i had those pictures for next year yeah but um the facilities team i'm told did a great job of having everything ready for school today so our thanks to all of those people who had to scramble and make it happen yeah absolutely it was it was quite the mess but um you wouldn't even notice unless you looked up in the ceiling and so no ceiling but other than that everything was cleaned up and we're just drying out and we'll get the ceiling tiles back up and hopefully it'll be like it never happened imagine i imagine a
083number of teachers had to scramble to get lessons ready and all those things as well that day so our thanks to them as well everybody pitched in it was a great remote option we had the snow day schedule ready to go and you know pulled the trigger on that and everything seemed to run pretty smoothly good thank you very much thank you uh as always great to hear from all the principals there's so much going on all the time it's a great answer to what's going on up there and there's a bazillion things is the short answer um next up i'm sorry do you have anything else you want to do no no no next up approval of first read policies this was the amended agenda item at the beginning of the meeting we've added
084a third this is a first read as always and um i'll do a specific read on the part of policy 5689 which is the one in regards to masking this board is supportive of continued mitigation through the use of masks but is equally interested in the development of if you will an offering that allows for the flexibility as conditions improve and then when supported by changes to state mandates public health officials school health personnel and district administration nobody loves wearing masks but it's necessary to keep the spread of colburn and other communicable diseases down and when it's safe and appropriate to do so we want to be able to take them off so first uh three policies tonight as noted in the beginning policy um listed under letter a policy six one five zero personnel
085alcohol tobacco drugs and other substances staff policy seven three two students alcohol tobacco drugs and other substances these are rules around keeping everybody safe basically let me quickly add here for letter c masking on school grounds and within school facilities and i'm going to quickly read this the board of education recognizes the importance of face masks as a strategy for mitigating the spread of communicable illnesses such as cobia 19 and the district's role in providing for the health and safety of students and staff the superintendent will be responsible for developing an in-district masking policy to be implemented when a state or local mandate is not in place and will provide flexibility based on absenteeism rate of infection and ability to provide alternative mitigation strategies the masking policy should consider the advice and guidance of public
086health officials the school physician the cdc the new york state department of health the monroe county department health and in-district health office staff members of which we have many excellent people the masking policy will also reflect the ability of the district to effectively provide other mitigating strategies such as distance between individuals and the ability of the district to effectively trace potential exposures as noted in the beginning this is a first read for these three policies any questions with regards to the first reads motion to approve her first reading so moved moved by karen seconded by christina all those in favor aye well item number nine approval of secondary policies these were obviously discussed at the january 18th meeting you've had a chance to review the i'll read the three policies and then ask if there
087are any additional questions first policy 6213 personnel registration and professional learning uh was listed as letter b policy eight one three zero instruction equal educational opportunities and under literacy policy eight two two zero instruction career and technical occupational education any questions with regards to these second reads motion to approve the second reads some move moved by susan second seconded by andrea all those in favor all right uh item number 10 the consent agenda you've had a chance to see this fundraising activities friend and me book drive which will provide children's books to the pediatric unit at the golisano children's hospital um motion to approve moved by julian second seconded by andrea all those in favor aye superintendent mcgowan do you have anything you'd like to add nothing else all right thank you motion to adjourn
088so move move by susan seconded by karen all those in favor we are adjourned this has been a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education