001this is a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education hello and welcome to the brighton central school district board of education public meeting for tuesday january 4th 2022 happy new year first please take note that board vice president julian gilbert and board members christina lee and karen hatch are attending this meeting via facebook live due to family commitments and potential covet exposure situations due to the nature of facebook live they can attend but cannot participate to be clear your full board of education is here tonight begin we begin tonight's meeting with public participation we had received advanced notice that members of the brighton community have feedback regarding the effectiveness of the coveted vaccine jingle bells and the proposed land acquisition adjacent to the brighton high school grounds so to review public
002participation at our school board meeting is for members of the board event and school leadership to receive feedback on any issues of concern to the brighton community it is not set up as a forum for debate your board of education is responsible to review all feedback and discuss with school leadership when appropriate there will be written responses as follow-up to speakers we do not tolerate personal attacks of any kind we do not tolerate personal attacks of any kind diverse points of view are respected and needed and the brighton believes values of integrity respect responsibility kindness and self-control are expected we are role models for our students please let dan goldman know dan could you raise your hand wherever you are back in the back there thank you please let dan goldman know if you plan
003to speak and he will give you a card to fill out with your name in town so you'll be called when it is your turn street addresses are no longer required due to security concerns voiced by past speakers each speaker is allocated three minutes and i ask that you be mindful of your time regardless of our differing points of view it is not that difficult to be civil to each other over the last couple of weeks we've received voicemails and emails from anonymous sources that have included just some awful things we've also received a lot of very respectful feedback with some disagreement on some politics policy decisions that we've made in all i'll say again we are role models for our students and we can be civil to each other and have different opinions having
004said that we'll open up public participation the first name i've got here on the card is rogina davis i'll just make a quick comment regina before you start i am going to ask that everybody stay masked with the spikes we've seen with omicron we're all going to remain masked typically when we've had the opportunity we've let speakers remove mass we're going to ask that people keep their mass up i'm sorry regina go ahead okay thank you you made the national news with the jingle bell song a song no longer being sung in the district because someone might be offended well myself and many other parents are offended by this book and your decision to keep the book in the library a book containing pornography by the very definition a definition that you disregarded in our
005meeting with four witnesses by saying pornography isn't in the eye of the beholder a book containing sex acts does not belong in the school library a book you said was only in the library and students wouldn't come across it accidentally yet it was photographed by a student on a shelf in a multi-use classroom in your email about the jingle bell song you wrote if many many songs are available to accomplish the same objective why wouldn't we use those i asked you the same question during our meeting there are many many books in the brighton library that accomplish answering questions on gender and more specific to this book gender dysphoria in a much better more educational way than the book genderqueer does finally you said if there is ever a question if whether or not something
006might be ex experienced differently by someone else shouldn't we respect be respectful of that well there are many parents grandparents students and brighton residents who feel differently than you do regarding this book and we are being disrespected thank you for your feedback melanie bernhardt hello it's melanie i come every board meeting as long as the covet update letters are put out i will come up with an alternate perspective so i'm just going to read one paragraph from the letter that came out on the second we continue to promote and support vaccination as a means to protect yourself and others we also encourage anyone who can be boostered to do so currently students to the 16 and over category who are fully vaccinated at least six months ago are eligible although the omnicron variant seems to
007be more easily spread it appears as though those that are boosted are more likely to not get infected and if infected to experience less severe illness so what i'm going to read is a letter from dr robert malone that supports a lot of parents teachers and taxpayers point of view here in brighton i loved how he summed it up he was recently on joe rogan it's a three-hour discussion i highly encourage you to watch it it's on rumble you're not going to find it on google through google or youtube uh it says this is a letter by dr robert malone it says my name is robert malone and i am speaking to you as a parent grandparent physician and scientist i don't usually read from a prepared speech but this is so important i wanted
008to make sure i get every scientific fact and word correct i stand by this statement with a career dedicated to vaccine research and development i'm vaccinated for covid and i'm generally pro-vaccination i have devoted my entire career to developing safe and effective ways to prevent and treat disease infectious diseases after this i will be posting the text of the statement so you can share it with your friends and family before you inject your child a decision that is irreversible i wanted to let you know the scientific facts about this genetic vaccine which is based on the mrna technology i created there are three issues parents need to understand first the first is that the viral gene will be injected into your children's cells the gene forces your child's body to make toxic spike proteins these
009proteins often cause permanent damage in children's critical organs including their brain and nervous system their heart and blood vessels including blood clots their reproductive systems and this vaccine can trigger trigger fundamental changes to their immune system the most alarming point about these once these damages have occurred they're ever preparable you can't fix the lesions in their brains you can't repair the heart tissue scarring you can't repair a genetically reset immune system and the reproductive damage could alt affect future generations of your family the second thing you need to know about is the fact that the novel technology has not been adequately tested we need at least five years to research and testing before we can actually understand the risks harms and risks from new medicines often become revealed many years later ask yourselves if you
010want your own children to be part of the most radical medical experiment in human history one final point the reason they're give the reasons they're giving you to vaccinate your child or child is a lie your children represent no danger to their parents or grandparents it's actually the opposite their immunity after getting covet is critical to save your family if not the world from this disease in summary there is no benefits for your children or your family to be vaccinating your children against the small risks of the virus given the known health risks of the vaccine that as a parent you and your children may have to live with for the rest of their lives the risk benefit analysis isn't even close as a parent grandparent my recommendation to you is to resist the fight
011to protect your children and i'm just altering offering that as a viewpoint of many parents teachers and and taxpayers in the town of brighton and larry did want to thank you did respond to my last comment so thank you thank you next up i have karen malecki i pronounce that correctly hello the u.s department of health and human services authorized the use of the pcr test as a diagnostic tool for covid19 which themselves are experimental products authorized by the fda under separate emergency use authorization a pcr test can only test for the presence of a fragment of the rna of the so of the sars cov2 virus and literally by itself cannot be used to diagnose the coven 19 disease further the way which the pcr tests are administered guarantees an unacceptably high number of
012false positive results cycle threshold value is essentially the number of times that a sample usually from a nasal swab is magnified or amplified before a fragment of viral rna is detected the ct value is exponential and so a 40 cycle thresh threshold which was formally recommended by the hhs means that the sample is magnified about a trillion times the higher the ct value the less likely the detected fragment of viral rna is intact alive and infectious for several months experts have highlighted the two cause behind the covet 19 pandemic namely in the incorrect use of pcr tests set at a ridiculously high cycle count which falsely labels healthy people as coven 19 cases as in reality the pcr test is not a proper diagnostic test although it was promoted as such an important question that
013demands an answer is whether the experts at our federal health agency and the who were really too ignorant to understand the implication of using a test at excessive ct cycle threshold or whether it's done on purpose to create the illusion of a dangerous out of control pandemic on july 16th 2020 an interview discussed discussing pcr deficiencies with dr anthony fauci the nation spoke person on covet 19 stated that the pcr test is useless and unreliable for diagnosing covet 19. on july 21st of this year the cdc put out a lab alert and withdrew the pcr test because it cannot facilitate detection a new test will be used starting in 2022 that will be able to differentiate between covet 19 and the flu there is currently no test for the delta variant or the omnicron so
014where is the data of these cases coming from the faulty pcr test the whole premise of pcr testing to diagnose kovig 19 is in serious question as a practice appears to be based on erroneous paper that didn't even undergo peer review before being implemented worldwide regardless of those in char those in charge need to be held accountable the german corona legal inquiry committee is in the process of launching an international class action lawsuit against those responsible for using fraudulent testing to engineer the appearance of a dangerous pandemic in order to implement economically devastating lockdowns around the world think about it for a minute testing non-symptomatic people makes no sense being tested to prove that you're healthy is like saying saying guilty until proven innocent we have a case stomach not a pandemic once you know
015the truth you can't unknow it please do not be complicit in perpetuating the false narrative these are crimes against humanity what side of history do you want to be on what do you want to tell your grandchildren the center for disease control and prevention will no longer recognize pcr tests as a valid method of diagnosing covid19 the cdc announced a lab alert on its website that it will be withdrawing its standing request to the fda to grant emergency use authorization for pcr tests to be used to deduct detect cyrus cove ii the request which was issued in february 2020 has been withdrawn as of december 31st 2021 a move which signals that the cdc no longer approves of the use of pcr tests as valid diagnostic tools for covet 19. think about that for a
016second just how many false positive pcr tests were included as positive covet cases and how many people got vaccinated because of the fear that extreme numbers induced and now our children how many health care professionals were silenced think about it this is worldwide i could go on and on i just hope you can hear me thank you for allowing me to speak tonight thank you that was my last card dan is there anybody else out there no thank you very much agenda item number three is approval of tonight's agenda motion to approve that agenda so moved i'm sorry no that's right i'm sorry before we approve the agenda i apologize to both you i would like to ask kevin if you'd like to follow up on any of those comments i forgot you had mentioned
017that you wanted to do that so i began no no that's right um i think though there and there are many people here that certainly including council are staff members that i think uh one i would like to say i appreciate your attendance and the reasons for your attendance on a very heartfelt level and thank you for that thank you for being the colleagues you are but i will say because i think it's important for people to hear this message and and that there are many community members who watch this they watch this after the fact and students frankly who we know are watching too who more than anybody need to hear this because kids are watching and they're listening and they're thinking and they're thinking about how they act and behave and engage as
018citizens it's definitely been a disappointing moment for many people as educators for me personally as a citizen a parent as a colleague and what really began as a simple inquiry from a community member about something on our website regarding diversity equity inclusion and the curriculum that we use and how we teach what we teach became frankly a gotcha story and it evolved then into an example i think of the profoundly divisive political and cultural war that grips our nation what began frankly as one teacher's very thoughtful inquiry decision and this is what i really want people to hear thoughtful inquiry decision that is done each and every day by our staff members that we support entirely this needs to be heard over and over again has turned into a ban of a holiday favorite described
019as a ban of a holiday favorite because of some type of supposed proposed liberal overreach at the expense of children who are now being robbed of a tradition that is somehow so essential to their development that to take it away from them must mean you are a nazi or a communist someone hateful of america who is destroying our nation or far far worse among the nearly 200 messages just received by me personally on this topic but i will tell you mr tappin dr rio have also received an exceptional number of messages i can count on one hand one hand the number that were respectful thoughtful curious or the least bit open to discussion or in search of greater understanding the vast majority were profane at best heat-filled and threatening at worse it's unfortunate i think
020that we've lost for sure seemingly completely our ability to respectfully disagree to debate to discuss to find compromise it's a sad it is sad that many in this community fell for i think the low-hanging fruit the dog whistle politics of the day the quick shot you better stand up for yourselves or they're going to take away everything you hold sacred even if those things may offend or hurt others that apparently shouldn't matter if it makes us feel good makes us feel joyous about the season so on this topic i just want to make sure it's clear that i personally continue to and i know many people in this room without hesitation without pause without any concern whatsoever support the work of our staff that we think is so critically important to analyze what they teach
021how they teach using the lens of equity as an important in fact essential perspective for us always to consider i further support finding balance in network i think that's important i think that's something that certainly has been expressed and that we do talk about here internally making sure that we're not pushing one agenda over another one political perspective over another one idea as an absolute i don't believe though that inclusivity and equity are political ideas that are being pushed in fact i think it's an insult to many that assume that equity is only the concern of one political party or one group it's not politics it's humanity and i think in every way that should be apolitical that should be a concern of anybody whatever their registration or lack of registration might be so i
022support i know we support here debate discussion thoughtfulness and seeking to understand as opposed to seeking to divide so kudos to all of our staff members here and all of our staff members throughout the district who continue to do this work know that you're going to be supported and that we appreciate your courage and thoughtfulness we will continue to let the educators educate let the professionals analyze what they teach and how they teach it and then continue making decisions in the best interest of their students as they always have we want feedback in that people should participate in that we have committee volunteers throughout our curriculum review process in our diversity equity work throughout the district in our annual strategic plan i challenge anybody to find a district that includes parents more in their child's
023education the decisions that are made but at the end of the day we receive that feedback and we depend on experts to make decisions about the work that they're doing with kids that includes that feedback that respects that feedback but that makes the best decisions possible for our children in the work that they're doing each day and we should make sure that we continue to have a rigorous process to support discernment and ensure that it's balanced that it's thoughtful and it's responsive to the needs of students and standards the standards that they're charged with meeting and frankly exceeding with regarding the with regard to the gender queer book and it's available in our library i would not support in any way and i want to reiterate this again it's removal and will not recommend such
024an action having heard since the last discussion of this from several students and adults in our community and frankly would like to thank you for bringing it up because it has reminded us of how important it is to provide opportunities for young people to see themselves and their human experience in the materials that we are providing for them and giving them access to i've never been more convinced in fact to the importance of this book and ones like it being available the need for all children to see themselves in the materials and to understand they're not alone in their human experience to find comfort to find consolation and hopefully pride in who they are and what they're experiencing is at that core of who we should be there's a vast difference between use of curricular
025materials in a captive manner and making sure material is available to students who would benefit again as a human from relating to seeing themselves in the materials we have available in other words jingle bells being a captive experience being used in curriculum that children would be singing as part of instruction not by choice but frankly by putting being put in that lesson in that situation as opposed to the opportunity to find yourselves and your human experience and the materials that are available in a high school library which pale in comparison to what is available on the phone that's available to most students i sense that there's no shortage of an opportunity for children to participate in singing songs that their family chooses that they sing outside of school that literally was the decision of a
026teacher who said you know what this song doesn't feel right to me for reasons that i have been exposed to i'm going to use one of many other hundreds of songs to accomplish the same objective nobody banned it the use of the word banning in the literature was absolutely incendiary at best and intentional it's unfortunate that we fell for it it was a teacher saying i can do better i'm going to do something different i think we should be awarding that instead of criticizing that and finally with regard to covet we're frustrated too we'll do everything that we can to remain open for in-person instruction i want to make sure people in our community hear that everything we can we recognize how important that is and we want people to be patient and show grace
027and we'll communicate clearly with people they may have delayed bus runs they may be asked actually to find a way to get their child to school because the bus will be so late if we are reduced in terms of our staffing or they will have to wait longer for food and our food service will be delayed or their classes will be covered differently things may be canceled we'll have to move people around but we want kids here we recognize the importance of that in that sense of normalcy we're going to analyze everything we do capacity events and keep people safe to the best of our ability we do support vaccinations and boosters most importantly at this point we'll enforce masking and not standby misinformation that is costing people their health their livelihood and in some
028cases their lives dr malone who's claims to have invented mrna vaccines when he was 28 33 years ago i'm surprised he couldn't find those five years for the further research he's a well-known spreader of misinformation to be very candid with you it's unfortunate that he continues to do so i think it's dangerous matt tappin thank you for your leadership dr rio thank you for your leadership lisa button countless other staff members that are doing this hard work and are courageous in it again should be recognized for that courage for that thoughtfulness for the way they are including and recognizing every human being in their experience kids are watching everybody the experience that many of us have had with social media lately i can't imagine the pressure on children who are exposed to that same type
029of behavior that frankly we wouldn't tolerate if we knew about it in school yet it's been okay for adults so kids are watching i think we should think about that let's invite rigorous debate let's have discussion but that doesn't mean we have to do in some of the awful hurtful ways that have been done i think it's what we would want for our kids we should want them for each other so i wish for better in the new year for everyone to stay focused on keeping each other well in every way by thinking about our impact our intent and our actions so i appreciate the opportunity to respond and uh let's move on thank you appreciate it uh for tonight's agenda approval of the agenda let's start over again with that so moved second moved
030by susan seconded by andrea all those in favor aye aye thank you approval of minutes from december the december 14th business meeting we've all had a chance to review those minutes any changes at its corrections additions to those minutes motion to approve the minutes as written second moved by andrea seconded by esther all those in favor aye aye the minutes are approved next up i'm very excited to get an update through luolimo and uh the brighton buildings team and campus construction the tcms uh facilities improvement plan update great work has been done over at that school and they'll take a tiny little bit of blues commentary i'm sure this is one of the many committees that we're all involved in that i get to participate in and it's impossible for me to emphasize to all
031of you as a community the great work that rob luce and john nevelli and the folks that they work with do for all of you the way they watch your tax dollars at work and the way we are able to apply their knowledge to get great solutions for learning spaces for our kids so i feel incredibly fortunate to work with those two guys usually fortunate to work with lou too um so all good from there but lou i'm gonna let you take it away good evening so this is our fourth installment of the facilities improvement plan update and as usual i'm joined by our owners architects construction management team i'd just like to recognize everyone here certainly john novelli district supervisor of custodial operations rob lewis our buildings and ground supervisor in the second row
032here we have nikki bolito our project manager bruce snap principal at me engineering david hallmark designer at sc sei excuse me and we have patrick arrow with campus construction he was in addition to our team this year nick tomaselli our principal at sei and gary huffman with campus construction so this is our team i'm proud to be a member of it and i'll invite campus representatives up to take us through the the presentation highlight all the great work we achieved we're accomplished good evening thank you for having us again as lou said this is our fourth and uh final update on the construction project today we get to highlight the work that we did at 12 corners middle school so i'd just like to take us through that we did a bunch of different improvements
033here uh mainly we did a full library renovation we did a cafeteria renovation that included a new accessibility ramp and upgrades to the kitchen we did an art room and science classroom renovation we renovated the adaptive pe and fitness center area we installed new lighting within the gymnasium we put in a brand new pa system throughout the entire school we also updated and put in a brand new fire alarm system throughout the entire school we did multiple student bathroom renovations and we also did multiple locker room renovations to achieve ada compliance within the bathroom areas as well as two locker rooms that we did a full renovation and changeover some of the accomplishments that i think we had throughout this project which were many but here are some that i'd like to just highlight for
034you we renovated the library to a more updated facility to meet the needs and use of the space for now and into the future what i mean by that is the traditional library the card catalogs of yesteryear and all that stuff that's gone the way that we are using these spaces has changed and i think now you will find when you have a chance to go through the tcms library that it will really allow our students within the district to utilize the technology and space much differently going forward when we had a successful installation of the new fire alarms system this upgraded a primary life safety system to get the building um to where we wanted it to be we completed the cafeteria renovation and it beautified the space and it made it so much
035more accessible with the locker room renovations and the adaptive pe in the bathroom areas we were able to make all those ada compliant and finally we were able to complete the scope of this work through all of the cova complications and supply chain issues and staffing concerns i know we've said that in every presentation but it has been a huge challenge and i am really happy that we're able to make it through finally our our challenges that we had on this project um and there were many as well but a couple just to highlight here the kitchen cooler and freezer installation on this project we had to do that probably three times um no one wanted to but it's what our commitment was to make sure that we got it right there were some challenges
036that just occurred you know maybe some faulty items but we did it three times to make sure that it was done correct and now uh the kitchen staff is very happy with what we have provided another challenge was the unknown that we find out about when doing construction that caused some delays and redesign we always want to stay on budget we always want to stay on schedule but sometimes things happen that are going to cause us to have to zig or zag and we did have some of that on this project as well but luckily with working with the team that lou has identified and with lou and the district larry yourself as well we were able to work through those and come up with some unique and interesting resolutions to keep everything moving forward
037and finally again the challenge of working under covert guidelines and restrictions the main thing is that all these challenges were overcome by having a lot of coordination meetings between campus sei and the brighton high school staff in addition to some very accommodating contractors i'd also like to say accommodating staff within the school the principal the head custodian dave luz and many other people who were involved specifically in tcms um it i never heard the word no uh and i appreciated that you know going through this what i'd like to do now um i know you were gonna do a walkthrough perhaps earlier today but that did not happen so for those of you that have not had a chance to see what we've done we have put together a bit of a slideshow with some
038pictures so you can see some of the stuff and i will offer out to you that pictures don't do it justice so if you do get a chance please go and take a look for yourself the cafeteria so in this space we gave it a full facelift brand new floor brand new ceiling paint all around some new countertops throughout really came out beautiful just another look at some other views in the cafeteria and you can see it made the the new line look beautiful over there the equipment all remain the same but it's amazing what some paint and new flooring and some new ceilings can do to a space in some cases new lighting i think yeah yes i'm sorry larry you're correct i forgot about that new lighting as well this is one of
039the art rooms that we fully renovated it was fully gutted in room 436 and 438 were entirely gutted and redone so this art space is now a whole lot more user friendly a lot more room tons of storage teachers were very excited about being able to display student projects and and have space actually put things while they're drying or curing or whatever it may be so this came out really nice and this is the other room done very similarly and there is an adjoining office between these two rooms that both of the art teachers use that i was also fully renovated simple bathroom renovation and we did i think about four to six bathrooms within tcms student bathrooms full full guts and and redid the entire thing we also upgraded the faculty lounge down on
040the the basement floor new flooring new lighting new ceiling new paint just to give teachers uh and staff a place to be able to take a break and and feel comfortable we put in some brand new lighting within the gymnasium there's that dreaded kitchen freezer and cooler again we got it right on the third time it's there it's working awesome and has met the needs of the district this is the accessibility ramp that was put in uh to get down to the cafeteria area um so that did help us with our ada compliance the library i would like to say you know no parent has a favorite child or i guess they might but you don't want to tell the children which one is the favorite i've presented three times now and i want to
041say that this library is my favorite thing that we have done of the entire project and hopefully the pictures will do it justice but we gutted this down to floorboards studs redid the entire thing i'm just going to let you look at that for a second because that is the wow i've done a lot of projects with campus and um did a lot of work here i don't have a picture that looks like this anywhere else and maybe we just took a great picture um but not to be facetious this space is phenomenal and please please please go and check it out but this is the this is the spot that i am most proud of and i know our librarian katie is excited about it as well this is a classroom that is off
042of the library um that is used by um classes as they come in there may be some faculty meetings in there but this was also a full gut and added on to the uh renovation of the library space and then there is also a faculty work room that is attached to this and it adjoins the library and we did a full renovation in there as well this is one of the locker rooms that we did an entire renovation on again all the way down to the floor redid the entire thing brand new lighting brand new floor all these brand new lockers there are two locker rooms like this they are pretty identical they're on the ground floor this is the adaptive pe area so we renovated this entire space put in brand new mats the
043rubberized flooring you can see a lot of the equipment is pushed up against the wall in this picture new ceiling new lighting new paint fitness center um phenomenal fitness center yeah we were walking through it the other day and someone said this is a middle school what do they need that for and i said well it's amazing what we can do here what we can provide you know brighton has phenomenal facilities and a lot of the different teams do come over and utilize this space as well it came out amazing this is one of the upgraded science classrooms again a full renovation flooring ceiling countertops furniture technology and that's it i appreciate your time for indulging us over the last couple of months to go through four presentations of this again i just want to
044echo loose sentiments this was not a one-person show i may be the mouthpiece up here but there was a team that was with me not even behind me but with me leading me guiding me um and could not have done it without you and again we'd be remiss if we didn't thank lou and larry who have been very instrumental in all of this i mean i'd also just like to thank the board for allowing us to do what we do um we have completed this project and i will honestly say we are looking forward to many more with you and we hope that you will have us back thank you thank you very much again kudos to everyone we will get over there and get a tour we just had a bunch on our plate
045here tonight so we will get over there and do a walking tour the extent to which all of you are available we'd love to have you do that with us when we go so absolutely fine no i think you saw this was a great balance of design enhancements to our instructional space and then core infrastructure engineering that went into this project i just wanted to recognize what nick pointed out but the teacher involvement that we had in designing this project the library spaces the heart room spaces the pe space a complement to our teachers who we gave an influential voice in the design of this project and to our architects for for taking that feedback and putting together a great program certainly our tcms administrators their flexibility allowing us to work through difficult situations it
046was very much appreciated and again just my compliments to our entire oecm team mr davis for your participation just really proud of the work we were able to achieve throughout this project so thank you for the opportunity so including lou there's nine uh people and and if i rattle off other names it's gonna sound like the starting lineup of the yankees again so i'm not gonna do that although i'm going to say the first four that i want to mention are the four most humble people that will not love this but i need to say it anyways larry on the on the committee and at all of the meetings your extensive background in this work has been essential on behalf of the board and taxpayers and that lens to think about how we spend what
047we spend and what we're doing and the effectiveness of that but you brought with it this expertise in your own professional background that was absolutely essential and appreciated john and rob it's john and rob john and rob john and rob throughout the whole district your leadership in these projects but just the day-to-day the work that we're doing right now and managing that during this period of time right let's not forget all of that was happening well these two are trying to figure out how we can remain open relative to covet how we can move furniture how we can clean things that's not something we've talked about in the other meetings see there was something else i had to say to you i know thank you in the other ones but this huge undertaking of moving
048things all over the place keeping it a safe environment for everybody but just the leadership that you provided in the in the roles that you're in i i cannot say enough about that and and lou who's now hiding behind people and your internal leadership of this work [Laughter] yeah you and me both lou jump up and down behind john and we still can't see each other but uh you know your your leadership in all matters financial administrative buildings and grounds uh the capacity you provide us and the the the way you are committed to making sure that our staff has what they need to do what they need with our kids and that our kids have an environment that is so conducive to them achieving the success that they do and the leadership you provide
049again can't can't say that enough times or thank you enough for that and into our partners campus emini sei thank you very much for all the work that you've done with us so so appreciated and uh and noted and great great work and the evidence clearly speaks for itself throughout the whole district so love being your partners and appreciate that a great deal thanks i'll just have one thing for john and rob because i want to do this john and rob daley handle uh requests complaints concerns from the teachers and those are the two people that the teachers go to because they're not going to get answers and you know they're going to get the straight skinny and so i appreciate that sort of unseen role that they take on every day and make sure
050those voices get escalated so i appreciate very much okay great work on tcms up next is principal reports as long as we're at tcms looking at a great great work product you might as well hear from the tcms principal all right so as danielle approaches the podium i do want to point out that this is uh in in some ways although the appointments are on the personnel general next meeting her first official presentation is not the interim principle but the principal 12 corners [Applause] not to repeat the entire press release that went out but after extensive experience as a teacher and just incredible work as a leader here in different capacities over time and most recently as the interim danielle we could not be happier than we are to have you leading the middle school
051so thank you for that and congratulations thank you i appreciate it i'm just as happy to be here okay and um just as happy ironically enough to follow that presentation because i stepped out of tcms as the construction was starting and i walked back in as it finished so it was like excellent timing it was perfect we couldn't ask for anything more than that no really i do hope that you get an opportunity to come over i would love to walk around with you um certainly the library is a focal attraction and it's beautiful and amazing things happen in there every single day but you should check out that science classroom in real life and see what that looks like and the art rooms uh and all the amazing things that are happening in those
052spaces it's it's really an awesome place to be and i couldn't be more excited to be there not only because of what the building looks like but for so many other reasons as well so i will give you a quick update december was a crazy month as i i think i talked about last month concert season started at the end of november and we had all of our groups able to perform their their concerts orchestra bands uh chorus and our jazz van as well and it was really neat i think more so for our sixth graders this is our sixth grade band up here and um that was their first concert in almost two years so it was really cool to be able to see them live on stage at tcms for the first time
053in so long and they were amazing they were fantastic if you had an opportunity to catch the live stream it's hard to believe that they hadn't done a live performance in so long our clubs were super busy and uh what is really neat to start to see happening at our building is that our clubs are starting to dovetail with each other and work together and so this was an example of where our black student union and our school store clubs work together in order to do a fundraiser they raised 400 pounds of food to send to the brighton food cupboard and they also made a donation of 400 as well and that sleigh that you see there mr darling made himself and it's hard to see but it's made out of mostly candy and there's
054some other trinkets there's an itunes gift card and all sorts of stuff there and students either brought in a food item or they wrote notes of kindness to be attached to the food that was brought to the food covered and when they did that they got a ticket for a drawing for this donation that mr darling made and this was our lucky winner he was pretty excited to walk out of school the day before break like that so uh continuing on with extracurriculars right now we have 24 clubs up and running with great participation numbers i think i've mentioned that each time because i'm still in awe of how many students are participating in our clubs every day after school as you walk around you can see at least 15 kids in in so many
055classrooms engaging we actually have two more clubs starting up this month we have um our environmental club is starting up and our muslim student union also met today for the first time so all in all we have over 400 of our students are participating in clubs and activities at tcms which is pretty wild basketball wrestling swimming and cheerleading are continuing and we have over 100 students participating in athletics this is our girls modified basketball team and they um they did a food collection for the center for youth just prior to break and this is an example of all the things they were able to collect before actually donating it we have visitations continuing with our seventh grade science group and um they also came in the shinchinham group came into the mosaic club to present
056on hanukkah as well so um this was kind of an interesting lab that the students were really engaged in there were lots of things going on and those little beakers that you see happening there more than i could ever explain to but you can see that all of our seventh graders were wildly engaged in the activities tinkering continues to happen in the library it happens with library club but it also happens daily as students come in for study hall they have opportunities to engage in coding this is with the ozobots right now happening and students just always have an opportunity whether it be to do a puzzle or in to engage in some sort of tinkering in our library we're also pushing on our positive postcards home initiative which is tied to the brighton five
057qualities the brain beliefs qualities and so many of our students are are getting these at home and we're hearing from parents that it's super nice and families that it's super nice to just get a little note of recognition of what students are doing well each day looking at the month ahead obviously we spent this week welcoming students back so excited to see them all talking a lot about health and safety we'd be remiss if we weren't doing that we're starting to prepare for computer-based testing um we'll do a little test of our our network system and our computer capacity in the coming weeks we also have some celebrations around martin luther king day that are going to spread into black history month as well there'll be school-wide efforts we will have our first at least
058ever since i've been in the district um scripps spelling bee for sixth graders at tcms where students will compete and they'll have an opportunity to go on to regional competitions and who knows maybe even down to washington dc and be on espn so um we'll we'll be watching for that with super excitement um going along with our postcards that we're sending home we're really kind of coming back to basics with brighton believes you know in initiating our bright and still beliefs and our five qualities and developing common language in the building and moving some common lessons ahead along with that we have covid permitting junior high solar fest coming up later this month where we'll be hosting probably over 400 kids in our building 60 of whom will be our own 7th and 8th graders
059and our 6th graders are also preparing for their solo fest in pittsburgh later this month as well program planning is beginning with our eighth graders moving on to ninth grade i'm sure dr paul will talk a little bit about that and um we're also meeting at the end of the month to start shifting our fifth graders into the mindset of what it's going to look like to be sixth graders in our building soon so that's kind of all the news that's fit to print right now lots of ski and snowboard club coming up this month and um some of the other things that i've talked about the second marking period most importantly comes to an end at the end of this month as well no shortage of activities no not at all which is great
060any questions that looks great great thank you again congratulations thank you principal tapping let's hear from you happy new year to everyone i hope everyone had a great holiday and a great break so um one of the things i want to highlight that happened at council rock in december um we have a father dr david ehrenstein who volunteered he was one of the nasa engineers who worked on the telescope that was launched into space i was supposed to be the 21st and ended up being the 24th through the weather and he presented to all of our council rock first graders individually in each of their classes he spent six days so many thanks to dr david arenstein dad decora in mrs allen's class um he spent six days as an engineer coming in and talking
061to first graders all of this was orchestrated by mrs yaman who's here our extended studies teacher he did an amazing job and then mrs yaman extended it of course and tied it to her extended studies where the kids had to actually because he taught about how the telescope needed to be folded and then put into the space so there was an activity for the kids to get hands on it was so great and i had just happened to watch it on 60 minutes the week before learning about it and then it tied right in and then i've been watching all the updates our kids were so thoroughly engaged and really excited about it and it was a really unique and wonderful opportunity so again thank you to him for volunteering his time and thank you
062to mrs yaman for organizing and and having him there as a guest the kids were super excited about it so many of you volunteered and we want to thank you as a councilwreck community as we celebrated stay in your pjs and read day it is absolutely one of the best days to be a council rac citizen every day is a good day but it is just so fun it's a great way to lead us so we have dr mcgowan there miss flores who's here tonight myself with the kindergarten class and there's dr rio many of you were there i didn't get to get pictures of you because i was reading most of the day but we really appreciate it it was really awesome and the kids engaged all day with guest readers as well as
063all kinds of reading activities it keeps the lying very nice and calm as we enter into the holiday and it can be difficult to do that so appreciation for the teachers and everybody who volunteered that day so um one of the things we've talked about within our diversity and equity lens is um second steps is our social emotional curriculum that is led by our amazing counselors at council rock um and we really looked at how to incorporate some learning for justice lessons and one that we did school-wide recently is a lesson that created a school-wide quilt so many thanks to our counselors kimball and dana peterson who helped to do that but also our art teacher mrs lisa jordan who um helped to facilitate this and really the goals for the lesson were to explore
064those concepts that we want all kids to be thinking about what does it mean to be the same what does it mean to be different what do we have in common what is unique to us and what kind of celebrations can we do of those uniqueness um and really helping kids to recognize that and it is now very proudly slowly going up um with some painters tape brought by john to make sure that we didn't peel any of the new paint off but it is up and being displayed in our front foyer uh right outside of our library and it is really great to see it go up but then what's even better is to see the kids looking at it reflecting on it finding theirs but then finding other people's finding exactly what the
065goals of the lesson were similarities and differences um you know holidays that they celebrate that someone else celebrated while also saying oh i don't celebrate that holiday but i know what that holiday is and it really is a wonderful wonderful way and it brought families in and it brought culture and all kinds of wonderfulness so again kudos to them we have a ptsa meeting with the principal planned for next week january 12th at 7 pm it is going to be via zoom and it really is mental health and looking at mental health an overview of some of the district-wide initiatives that we've done for our council rock families i know we've talked about a lot here at the board meetings um betsy paddock has come and shared and you know talked about those initiatives but
066specifically for council rock and then talking from our mental health team mental health support for our council rock students what that social emotional learning lessons are um the second step curriculum and then really talking a little bit more about the personal body safety lessons i know that is a con a topic that's being talked about k-12 and what it looks like to be appropriate at each level and what is needed um so our counselors will be there along with answering any questions um about that mental health support it's so important right now and we're so so glad to have the district and the board support are the needs of our kids upcoming events so we do have that meeting with principal no school on monday uh dr martin luther king day and then thursday night
067uh two thursdays from now uh the 20th is our incoming kindergarten information night much like danielle talked about kind of moving the programming forward it's time for us to start to talk to our incoming kindergarten families we will be doing that at council rock right now unless something changes um we will also have that live streamed as well as taped for people who cannot make it or aren't feeling comfortable but we are hoping to have people in uh 7 p.m have a chance to talk about our amazing full day kindergarten program and what we have to offer and how we start to do the registration process for kindergarten itself that is it for tonight thank you very much any questions for principal tapping no that's great thank you very much how about tom hall sorry
068marin [Laughter] um before i get started i just i want to give my thanks to the board kevin and just for all that you do especially in this last week with everything that went on it's 25 years in the district and just truly appreciate the support and you know your level of passion and what you do and and you know doing the job you know for not a lot of money so thank you thanks tom we are home of the bruins and again everyone changed assessing those emails too 25 years that was one of the best decisions i feel that was made um i really enjoy having the bruin and we're getting excited because uh nate mayor and i are finally narrowing down a mascot costume and uh does it fit you like okay not
069good we actually have a fan application prepared for students to complete if they're interested in being in the mascot costume they're going to be try outs um would a board member like to make a motion for tom hall to be in the middle i will not get in the suit that's going to be students i think you know i did the purple bear french road but this is beyond me so the kids i think are going to be excited we've been talking up a little bit but as soon as we can get that in the works you're going to see it and another you know historical thing for me working with drosophila flies um if you are ever in any biology class this is one of the most studied organisms in all of science in
070terms of genetics and we do this lab at the in the ap biology classrooms i'm not sure if the region's kids work with it as much but they might get a chance just to sex the different flies in terms of determining males or females but um i think through ap biology you know i did this lab but it's come even a long ways from there but this particular fly if any of our students are going off to college they're probably going to be working with this and they learn how to anesthetize it and study it and you know do all sorts of other experiments but it's one of the most studied and i was just happen to be walking into the labs when they were doing that so these are also the fruit flies that
071you'll see and just so happens we start to see a few more fruit flies in the building during this time so unfortunately uh crossroads so they did not have their annual trip to syracuse university um to for the press awards but they did do an online version and crossroads yearbook they called it retrospect it was the best overall yearbook in new york state even during covent so congratulations to them hard work i talked about this last time that we had an opportunity thanks to nicole vandermeen in the food service we the high school won i swear i did not click the link to make us win i think the kids did i don't know maybe rob did but we had a we had two things that we won from from clicking on the link for
072you know reading about the american dairy association virtual farm tour which there were several students there um and that was exciting for me you know coming from the farm area but the zoom call with the buffalo bills tackle harrison phillips was really exciting that was that day you see actually robert right down the road [Laughter] and uh and there's phillips and i can honestly i've never met the man and he was great entertaining and he does a lot of community service and we talked about that too but he just answered their questions it was really fun when it was during a flex time it's one of our first actually events where we actually had a speaker and students in the in the large group room which is great now so um this con continues to
073be our mission statement at the high school we want everybody feel safe welcome cared about professional be in a professional environment free of harassment and our cclt continues to meet we meet at least once a month with all of these different groups bringing in their particular insights and experiences lived experiences in many of the groups and our subcommittees are moving strong we'll have some data to share in our culture climate survey our sexual misconduct education committee met with our health teachers they gave a presentation on what we do for sex ed at the high school and really did a phenomenal job john feltes and aaron um and aaron dwyer sorry aaron aaron dwyer and john feltes did a phenomenal job answering questions we're you know some of the kids come up with some really good
074questions our student policy committee with ms mosher and our multicultural or collaboration so moving right along we'll have some evidence to share with you later i can't tell you how great it is to be able to have therapy dogs back in the building um because we didn't have them when we're in hybrid mode you know still figuring things out with them but there are so many kids who utilize these therapy dogs on a daily basis it's it's incredible and again i like to support the board for and kevin for allowing us to to start this project and it's it's been phenomenal as one of the faculty meetings we had one faculty meeting in the auditorium this year right before break and i was wondering why people were laughing and i was like what did i
075do did i sneeze at myself and there was lily walking behind me on the auditorium we had our class at 2020 reunion it was a little bit small but a great group of kids they actually the thing they wanted they wanted a tour of the building and see all the new facilities so we had a good time right before break program planning is underway at the high school here until the end of january something brand new that came out of covid are our counselors instead of meeting with a group of 15 to 18 students they're actually setting up individual meetings so 1227 students will be meeting one-on-one with their counselor sometime between now and the end of january and into february for those kids who didn't make it but they'll be meeting for those one-on-one
076meetings and talk about time involved but they found it to be so useful and the kids found it to be so useful and uh so that's we're continuing that now and we'll probably continue that new course of studies online and uh we'll be figuring out staffing and what courses we're offering into march with family night for the class of 2026 is coming up on the 27th right now it's an in-person event we'll probably be well we'll be streaming it live anyway so we'll see it's still going to be in person but we'll see how things go in the next few weeks our goals and initiatives for the high school here i'm looking at for a future report put that in there so you can see it and right now [Music] the five day a week
077schooling program and implementing a successful week again where we we're hoping that we are moving in a really good direction with that our teachers really want to stay in school just like the kids so again i think that sums it up we are on all this together and hopefully everybody has a great new year [Music] another great update questions from the board no just a comment i took some time as my high school mascot as a mid lakes eagle so if you ever like want any tips or to compare notes let me let me know we will have a panel to judge excellent we'll have you come over for that really not at all surprises not surprising that is awesome panel selection committee we've got our board member thanks tom for your kind words we
078appreciate it awesome there we go thank you for your patience of course absolutely saving the best for last it's good to see everybody hope you all had a good new year um let's get into this here all right so we are moving at full steam over at french road and similar to what danielle showed we really had some wonderful performances in the month of december even just as special as the students being able to perform for their parents caregivers and family members they were able to share those performances with their peers in school too which was just really cool to see that same but different excitement for them to be able to play in front of their classmates and to have students enjoy that so the first round of performances we had all of our
079fifth graders as audience members and we'll continue through the other grade levels as the performances continue throughout the spring as i move around the building prior to the break i had the pleasure of observing in quite a few classrooms and it just so happened that to align with this facing challenges unit and i was just really struck by the moves that some of our teachers all of our teachers i should say are making as far as acknowledging the different experiences and viewpoints that students in front of them are bringing to the classroom each day the conversations that i was able to listen in on be a part of and observe were really just a testament to their work and to the great knowledge base and experience that our students bring with them so it was
080just such a pleasure to be part of these lessons the work is throughout the building and it was great you know as part of the unit students are able to choose a common novel and they're grouped up and they're able to work through that book and just to kind of be throughout the building seeing kids working together reading in groups talking about text it just gives you that great feeling as you're moving throughout the building so something may not seem as significant but really feels great when you're part of the school that way uh our extended studies program is led by mrs weidore and the first group of students were able to engage in several projects and many of them took an environmental issue or scenario and then were able to work as a part
081of a small group with other students to decide how they wanted to you know become activists in uh solving things like the great um pollution issues in the ocean and i had a fifth grader who stumbled across something called team seas and it actually uh was something pretty big on on social media with our that fifth grade age group and so we did a little bit of research and we ended up taking it on as a building and um this group actually ended up removing close their goal was to remove 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean by december 31st and uh or january 1st i should say and so they came there they came close to that i clipped this prior to the break but our students at french road were able to
082raise 463 dollars and students were eager to be part of the announcements and to be talking about this and that we had family members hopping on with the hashtag on the tmc's website to show support for students and this was truly something that was student-led and driven and really connected nicely with the other projects that we had going on in the building as well coming up later this month we're really excited to host author peter brown on january 21st and 22nd it will be a virtual author visit and he's the author of some really wonderful books that are pretty familiar to our students the wild robot and the wild robot escapes and so our wonderful ptsa is supporting us in this venture and we can't wait to host them we have some exciting things coming
083up next week we'll be hosting a parent information night in partnership with the center for missing exploited children it'll be part of their netsmartz curriculum where we're just kind of going to take a few steps back and review those very basics to digital citizenship for our students as we enter the second half of the year in relation to our use with ipads and technology in school and out of school so we're going to start out with a parent information night and then student students will receive presentations by grade level throughout the week we'll also be having our student math team information meeting with mrs weidor on january 11th oh i'm sorry that was moved to february 4th i apologize i wanted to note that because that went out in the previous communication there will be
084no school on martin luther king jr day and we have our fourth grade chorus concert that will be on the 19th so we're looking forward to that and then as i mentioned our office visit later in the month on the 21st and 22nd great thanks appreciate it questions for french road no sometimes if there's a question regarding the work we do and the purpose of the work we do we just heard from poor people the answer to that question next up approval of the second reading policies we looked at these was it two meetings ago last meeting well these will see pro forma in um in sort of form and format these are incredibly important and you'll see that by the names i'll read each one and then we'll pass them as a subject to
085the whole first is policy 6110 personnel code of ethics for board members and all district personnel b policy 6121 personnel sexual harassment in the workplace c policy 7550 students dignity for all students any questions or comments based on either the first or the second read a motion to approve the three policies as stated second moved by susan um seconded by esther all those in favor aye opposed second reads are approved finally uh approval for of election workers for the january 25th special vote regarding the land acquisition next to the high school this is a normal step taken prior to any vote it's noted that we utilize the board of election workers for these events so it is a paid function for these folks questions in regards to approval of election workers motion to approve still
086move second move by after seconded by andrea uh all those in favor aye opposed okay before we adjourn any other comments or questions you would like to ask no thank you no motion to adjourn move by susan second seconded by astor all those in favor aye we are a jury this has been a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education