001this is a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education good evening welcome to the brighton central school district board of education business meeting for tuesday november 9th great day to be a baron or bruin geez i said that backwards that's the old one that's the 81 graduate apology it's a great day to be a bruin i apologize uh first up we have the opportunity for public participation i will note that the meeting is set up a little different tonight we'll be doing the business meeting now at five o'clock and then there will be a community forum at seven pm which will be another opportunity to participate is there anybody in the audience who would like to provide any feedback approval of the agenda as we all have received here motion to
002approve the current agenda so moved second moved by care and seconded by andrea all those in favor we also have with us the approval of the minutes from the october 26th business meeting we've had a chance to review those minutes does anyone have any corrections edits or changes to said minutes motion to approve those minutes moved by esther christina moved by christina second seconded by esther all those in favor aye aye great thank you all right first off tonight we'll have a great chance to both get um some feedback or some initial feedback from lua limo on the budget which will be followed by the blueprint good evening tonight's presentation sets the stage for the budget development process so i'm going to take you through a visual we show every year that usually dr mcgowan
003presents just what our cycle looks like and this is where we are right now when the box is shaded in red where my role in more of the financial planning is just listening listening to our instructional administrators evaluate last year's results assess current needs and then identifying the issues and next we'll begin develop developing plans and designing the plans so i'm very much in a listening phase right now certainly contributing from you know participating in financial planning but it's a lot of the work and data analysis right now so i want to start where we always start our budget development process is looking at where we ended last year uh the last meeting the board of education accepted our independent external audit results and in the management discussion analysis provides a narrative of how we
004ended the year and that sets the stage for for going forward so i just want to quickly provide an analytic and how we're looking at things ending last year and then beginning this year so the graph on the left hand side shows where our expenditures were year over year so remember we were ending the the 1920 school year mid-year shutdown in march and then we had a hybrid instructional model in the 2021 school year so starting at the bottom i'll just provide very high level analytic to explain the expense drivers for this and again listening to those we can predict what we'll be planning for going forward so starting at the bottom we have the um kind of the onboarding of our debt and our debt service from our 2017 capital project so you see
005a significant increase in expenditures there we'll go through that a little bit and then we have our other contracts services supplies and just analytic in the format that i provide to the board of education on a monthly basis looking at the big categories so the big increase there 18 increased 1.5 million dollars the bulk of it was contract transportation if you remember we stopped our contract transportation costs because of the shutdown and we were essentially delivering a full transportation service model even the hybrid learning program so that's close to nine hundred thousand dollars of that the second most um significant expenditure in this category was the purchase of instructional technology so we're trying to ramp up for one to one one-to-one environment building in our infant infrastructure and that contributed contributed to our costs about
006half a million dollars of that so then moving forward into our boces again we are back to full placements within our boces program and there we also see an increase in instructional technology and that's actually the purchase of the devices so we see a ramp up there and now we are a one-to-one so we'll have to look at that repair replacement reserve and expedite that planning so you'll see money going into uh the 2223 budget to make sure that we're weaning our way off the uh the capital instructional technology reserve and building in that repair replacement cycle uh with our base year budget employee benefits and salaries are obviously our biggest expense and starting at the top then we're jumping to the top we actually see a decrease in our salary expenditures so part of
007that was budget reduction significant amount of that was budget reductions we had a lot of turnover and unfilled vacancies going into the hybrid learning model going forward in a full full in-person model i expect to see that ramping up and and then we're going to see responses to labor market and through our collective bargaining increase in minimum wage so we'll start to see those wages going forward over the over the foreseeable future and the benefit side we do see health insurance continuing to rise inflation rates and health insurance are between six and eight percent so we'll be factoring that in and then with increase in in staffing levels you also see increase in participation or health insurance and then pension costs are a relatable cost to that as well so oversee you see our budget
008to actual results on the right hand side see where we've been over the last several years pretty steady surpluses at the end of the year and where we started i've only been able to close out the month of september but we're off to similar trends so i see margins and this is what we report to the board of education on on a monthly basis we will absolutely close up um the boces programs and intuitions as we get later in the year and then all the other supply services and contracts as departments incumber funds and shrink that down so it's a snapshot right now i feel good about where we started the year from a budget to actual standpoint but we'll look at the high risk areas closer and each month that we report in in
009the treasurer's report what we did with that surplus where the board of education allocated those dollars a comparison from uh year over year you can see in june of 2021 we started to deplete our capital reserve we've drawn that down a little bit what we're planning for is a reinvestment in our capital and that's one of the things we talked about with the purchase of land is taking that opportunity to re-establish a capital reserve to give the board of education the opportunity for continued capital financial planning we maintain the four percent in the undesignated we put more money into insurance reserve based on uninsured liabilities um and though that we're obviously monitoring closely retirement reserve is a liquid reserve account that we can pull from in the operating budget appropriated fund balance so that's about
01011 of our total financial position so that's the amount of surplus that we reallocated to this year's budget in lieu of taxes so when i look at that and we look at how much of that can be replenished should we not have as should we not generate as much surplus going forward so we have that three million dollars that would first come from the unassigned and then we would pull from retirement so we have a few years of contingency planning based on the amount that we haven't unappropriated so i feel like we're in a good position there um and you know we can continue a similar investment always being mindful of you know long-term matching of recurring revenues and recurring expenditures foundation aid so a much different position with the adoption of last year's state
011budget you can see what our receipts have been in foundation aid compared to the amounts due very very static over the last since 2008 2009 and we've seen a ramp up and the commitment from the state over these next couple of years to fully fund foundation aid so that's putting um that's the promise of new money that would alleviate uh and begin to fund some of our recurring expenditures so something we'll look forward to that that promise from from the state one thing that's new this year that's worth talking about and to be transparent about what we're using the federal dollars fund there's three buckets of federal dollars and how we're using those so the first one is the gear funding and that is our coveted response so that's my first go-to when something comes
012up uh in is part of the instructional model you know we initially put the budget together for continued infrastructure for audio visual equipment so now that we have one-to-one we want to make sure that our classrooms are fully prepared to embrace that model as needs come up we're drawing down from that allocation to technology for instance we added the tents at the high school in the middle school we're using federal dollars for that for our visual performing arts program and specifically our music program we purchased air purifiers for the room to continue and improve to improve the air turnover rates so we're using federal funds for that any ppe need that's come up to be responsive to our school community from a health and safety standpoint this is our first go-to funding for that so
013whatever is left we will continue to invest in in technology infrastructure then we have the carissa and the arp the american recovery so both of those are earmarked for supplemental instruction and to support and be responsive to programmatic needs so we're talking about tech integration professional development responsiveness to emerging mental health needs adding staff in in support of that intervention learning recovery and addressing learning law so all new positions new infusion of resources to recover from from covid and instructional model the hybrid instructional model just getting kids and supporting kids supporting our faculty that's what these dollars are are allocated for for really for instructional use they're not a fund balance tool there isn't a funding clip with those so we need to be strategic about it but they are here and available to support
014the needs of our students and our faculty so the budget to actual factors things that we're looking at on a monthly basis we're looking at salaries in response to student needs we are seeing and i'm hearing um you know the emerging student needs so we are adding special education staff we're adding teaching assistants we're adding additional mental health supports so we are adding again we're using those federal dollars we're optimizing those but those are trickling over into the general fund so i'll continue to update the board of education on where we are budget to actual within salaries uh substitute costs something we'll monitor we're struggling with that with capacity right now with with absenteeism and quarantines so we have to continue to watch that in recruitment strategies to build capacity benefits we've started off in
015a good good spot we've budgeted appropriately for what turned out to be the rate increase the premium increases so the only thing i'll be looking at is salaries and then benefit costs related to the salaries boces we're struggling with capacity of our boces to accommodate out of district placements so that's something that we're watching closely and finding alternative placement to meet student needs that's going to have a financial financial impact and along with that is specialized transportation we're really struggling with which our first student is struggling with drivers so that increase in transportation demand may require us to add more buses or to find alternative that's that's putting pressure on our budget to actual results our enrollment just a kind of a snapshot this is our starting point for staffing allocations and for um i
016guess mostly person uh staffing allocation so where we started the year we were we overestimated enrollment at the primary level 101 students at council rock part of that we were being conservative as part of our capital planning we wanted to make sure we built enough classrooms so we were very very conservative in our enrollment projections but you'll see being short here has an impact on the long-term enrollment projections i do the model is not showing it but i do expect that we're going to get more enrollments back from the private schools over these next couple of years uh when we when we truly emerge from from coven and you see the other um the other three buildings we're we're pretty accurate in our enrollment projection so this is something that we're going to be monitoring
017very closely is our enrollment projections at the primary level and update our model every single year it's a five-year model that we that we develop each year so considerations and as we think about developing a rollover budget or you know a maintenance budget we're looking at salaries and wages um this is a collective bargaining year so we're going to have to assess the impact of that the impact on inflation of goods and services that's really where our departments are struggling you think about our buildings and grounds you think about our health services supplies we are experiencing exponential increases in in our costs and commodities that we normally purchase people are pulling out of our competitive bids or the boces level um food things like that so we're really watching that i don't have it's very
018difficult for me to say to our buildings and grounds for instance that you get the a consistent allocation last year they just don't have the luxury of not responding to building needs into stakeholder needs so that's something that we're monitoring very closely retirement again once we build our salary projections we have an idea of what the rates will be boce services they're struggling right now in in meeting and hiring staff so they're going to have the same staffing and salary challenges and that gets passed on to us as far as rate increases so the next coming months we'll have a better sense of that generally they're in the three and a half to four percent range but we may be experiencing higher rate increases from boces special education services all of us are competing for
019hourly staff hourly support staff uh and so the pressure on on the minimum wage and the hourly wage is going to continue to drive up tuitions and services so a lot more to be analyzed over these next coming months but when we get down to debt service we are stable i'll show you a slide in that in the next so we built up we've funded the capital project and we're in good shape there so this is the capital project planning just a brief history of where we've uh where we've built up so we actually were receiving more building aid than capital um than our capital expenditures that's because we were paying cash for projects for a number of years we were doing 1.5 million dollars all of that was generating aid without any debt and
020throughout the capital planning process dr mcgowan used the analogy of building in a car payment we've built that in now so over these next couple of years we say the impact on the levy the gray bars we have stability there we've achieved building in that car payment but we have to look ahead because some of our old debt comes off so if we want to maintain that investment in our facility so it truly has no impact on future taxes we have the opportunity to do another capital project in these next two years so we're working with our financial planners to determine the amount of it and the amount of the ability of the certain scope because that would be my recommendation to the board of education if we've got this levy in there now let's
021make it budget neutral from here on out and keep reinvesting that in in our facilities otherwise we're going to be using building aid for instructional programs and then whenever the facility needs to hit again we're going to have to rebuild that car payment in into the operating budget so a lot more discussion on capital planning um and there'll be a presentation upcoming um you know in the next within the next year from our financial consultants to show you exactly what that looks like and what we should be shooting for tax cap just a brief history over these last two years so 21 and 22 fiscal years you can see what our tax cap number was 3.83 and that's as we were building up the levy um for the capital project that began to stabilize right
022now the board of education allocated additional fund balance so we did not um we did not go up to our cap limit of 2.85 percent and so the next year i'm anticipating this point based on the factors and the debt that we know about the inflationary trends assuming it's going to be two percent for the foreseeable future our tax cap number would be just over just over two percent 2.07 percent and again going forward as our debt and a capital exclusion goes through you could see then it lowers our our money so unless we reinvest in capital here that keeps our then our tax cap number will lower and then we're using building aid for instructional program if we reinvest in capital here we'll maintain more of a two percent tax cap over these next
023several years so capital capital project planning has significant impact on future tax cap calculations just always something we need to be need to be aware of and so this is where we're heading next continuing to assess needs to continue to identify issues but now we're beginning to design plans putting numbers to those and begin to develop budget assumptions more concrete budget assumptions going into the executive budget proposal which is targeted for mid-march sorry for the long presentation technical presentation but it's kind of sets the stage for every for the work that's coming over these next several months lou quick question for you do you have a sense that our partners at first student are starting to look at what they can do to retain and recruit retain existing drivers and recruit and i'm talking for
024this year but like for future years do we have a sense of what contingency planning they're doing obviously that has an impact on our costs if they increase the rates for their bus drivers yeah over the last couple years they've invested in a full-time recruiter and marketing person so we've been fortunate at least on our contract for a student has done all right in providing service to us we could see you know other districts neighboring districts are struggling with that um they're a collective bargaining unit too so they'll be negotiating and that's actually one of my my biggest concerns is that as they collectively bargain and driver wages are more competitive they may not be able to honor the cpi adjustment so they could say to brighton we need to rebid our contract um and
025then you know we're in an open market and then you know anyone can come in and throw a bid are they going to be qualified and they going to be able to recruit recruit drivers they're doing everything they can from a recruitment standpoint that's their business right um so beyond just a full-time recruiter and full-time marketer and hr commitment i don't have a better answer no i think that's the answer your sense is they're doing everything they can you can't go two days in the paper without hearing challenges both in the suburbs and in the city with bus drivers so that has the opportunity to impact us even this year if we lost a few drivers just in terms of the short term so i appreciate that you're on top of that thank you i
026do if i could just make a quick comment while you're talking about drivers uh the city continues here rochester city school district continues to hear proposals regarding transportation for public i'm sorry for private charter school and urban suburban students and this is a conversation happening in many places but i do want to point out that this is a significant concern for us in terms of the transportation for urban suburban students coming to our district not for 2021 but for 22 23 moving forward and i would encourage people in the community who are rcsd residents although students and i say in the community in our school community to continue to voice their feelings on the matter with regard to the board and their decision making relative to that transportation for insurance students is essential in the
027program throughout the rochester area and we obviously support anything that can be done to make sure that continues to be provided the other comment i would just make is thanks to lou for the presentation a lot of detail really early in the process although as we've talked about for many years this happens throughout the year for us and it's really lose financial stewardship over the previous years that have gotten us to the point to say to you we've weathered a really significant storm but the moment right now is working through all of the lack of predictability that is around us knowing there is more revenue knowing there's coveted relief funds et cetera that we went into great detail but providing long-term stability and really thinking carefully about how to position ourselves for the long term
028and that capital project slide can't be undersold the thinking about our debt service and how to make sure once we've really lifted and all of you as a group have spent a tremendous amount of energy on that concept of putting that car payment in making sure that that funding source is available then over time with no new cost to the community that's the key no new cost to the community but to revitalize our facilities and continue to to do that work to really have 21st century facility so i think that that's a really important point that lew's made but thinking longer term now is both an opportunity for us and something we haven't experienced before so thanks lou yeah i'll just one final comment justin karen knows this karen and i said on the audit
029committee um we continue to get extraordinarily favorable ratings for any of our bonds and our our debt service because of how well both dalia watts and lube manage the finances basically our taxpayer money for this district so echo that up next is the blueprint and i believe we're going to hear from allison first i will say to anybody currently watching or who watches this live or on on delay if there is ever a time when you need to be listening it's right now this forms all of our priorities for the entire year this is updated each summer to make sure we're we're doing the things we believe we need to do this is a pretty broad document we're going to hear from a few different people tonight but sometimes people say why are we doing
030what we're doing or what are our priorities this is the answer it's the blueprint it's available online mark was always good at reminding everybody that all these documents are available online but it's impossible to overemphasize the the importance of what this blueprint represents it's everything we're doing and why we're doing it and why it's a priority allison with that i'll ask you to take over an introduction thank you so um tonight you'll hear from me and lou and diana and betsy paddock about some of the work we've been doing this year around our blueprint and just to give a quick overview here we have three buckets that we have focused on this school year continuation of last year's work but also kind of looking at things through the lens of where we are right now
031academic rigor for all which i'll speak to tonight systems and and dei diversity equity inclusion and mental health and wellness and as we get into each section you'll hear a little bit more about the priorities for that group the action steps that are being taken and what is in store for the rest of the school year so the academic rigor for all objective really is very similar to similar to last year but looking more at looking at individual needs of students so as we return from a year of uncertainty and mixed learning models and lots of different things going on thinking about looking at students as individuals and addressing their needs as individually as possible continuing to be culturally responsive celebrating and accepting differences and working on the growth mindset so these are things you're
032going to hear as i give an update tonight but um you know our real focus is looking at the strengths and needs of individual learners and before i jump into updates you're going to hear me use a lot of language around culturally responsive and sustaining education and we also call that crse and i thought it was important to share that definition per new york state education department but really this is the definition that we look at as well culturally responsive and sustaining education is grounded in a cultural view of learning in which human development in which multiple expressions of a diversity and there's lots of examples here race social class gender language sexual orientation nationality religion ability and others are recognized and regarded as assets for teaching and learning so really that's the part i
033wanted to touch upon because you're going to hear that come up throughout the entire presentation but these are assets that we're looking at as educators and that the individual pieces that our students bring to the classroom should be celebrated and part of our classroom community so that's what crse stands for so one of the action steps for the school year is to continue to build opportunities for faculty to learn about culturally responsive and sustaining education and we started that work in a couple of different ways this school year and will continue on as we move forward but we started with a partnership with re-center race and equity and education and we're working with five different consultants one in each school building and one consultant who's kind of helping us with that broader view to provide
034some professional development for teachers and on superintendents conference day we continued that work which built on the foundation of the work that was started last year really around focusing on our students as individuals and addressing all the pieces that they bring to school with them and how to incorporate that into our teaching and learning we've also started some school-based equity teams and that is a shift from previous years where we had a district diversity team but now we've broken that down into school specific teams where um a consultant from recenter is working with each building principal and with each building committee which is comprised of anyone who's interested at the school building level board of ed members and parents and families who wanted to be part of that committee as well to really hone in
035on some specific goals for each school building so more to come about that as the year goes on and we're starting some faculty meeting work beginning just in a couple of weeks around student agency and really again going back to students as access assets and what they can bring to the classroom and that work will continue throughout throughout the school year and on curriculum council we've taken on habits of mind as our focus for the school year and looking at how to incorporate that beyond all the great work that's been done at council rock and into our third through twelfth grade so more to come on that but that's where we are to start right now we're also looking at uh continuing our work to adapt and revise curriculum to support teaching and learning within
036that culturally responsive framework and a lot of that work happened over the summer and some pieces will happen throughout the school year and more work will happen next summer but this past summer we had nearly 50 units written or revised that took on a lens of not only continuing the academic rigor that we've come to know and expect in all the work we do but really looking at being inclusive building cultural competence in the classroom and a focus on zoretta hammond's ready for rigor framework which really is about building a community of learners within the classroom embracing all the students that you have creating a learning environment and creating that awareness of all the kids that we have in front of us additionally with the return to five-day in-person instruction we've as lou mentioned use
037some of our funding to think about supports in different ways and we've added a literacy and math specialist at the 612 level to work more individually with students either in small groups or even one-on-one in many cases to support some of the targeted needs that we've identified following the return from covet and a great resource has been our k5 and 612 math intervention leaders who are working with teachers to support what that intervention looks like in classrooms so with the math focus in mind because that was an area identified as a need for us as we move forward but really helping our teachers to think about their instruction differently to include all individual learners and more to come on this hopefully later this month or in the next week or so but we are working
038on an on-demand tutoring support for students in grades three through 12 in the evening where any time after school they could check in through classlink online by clicking an app and asking a question looking for a tutor for any content area from elementary right up through specialized classes in high school and getting some support in that way so just lots of different ways to think about how to support individual students as learners so what's next as we continue this school year and even into the summer we're going to continue our assessment of the curricular instructional strengths and needs of each school building so what do we need to look at what are our areas of focus for moving forward and what are we doing really well we'll continue to look at texts content the resources
039that we use in classrooms and really develop an alignment of the experiences that children have from kindergarten through 12th grade and continue our work with teachers and faculty around you know resources that they can use and we look forward to building more opportunities to learn for parents and families through our building ptsa meetings with the principals and other venues as well so that is academic rigor for all and not show any questions there's a lot there so for the systems and dei work three categories that we're working on diversity equity and inclusion what you hear about is a summary and continuation of our hiring practices work looking at recruitment retention and environment practices health well-being faculty staff what we focused on this year is re-evaluating the start time so we're working as a committee to
040to look at that with the objective of how we might be able to start our secondary students later in the morning and then the innovation in the development of alternative learning environments is an internal review of our maker spaces playgrounds of generally of our facilities to make sure their every child has equal access and able to fully participate so hiring practices what we're focusing on this year we we're going to learn from recenter and we're going to build on the building building level teams and look at systems all of our systems and processes procedures to diversify our faculty and building cultural competence so again all three of our pillars we're hoping to learn from from re-center take a step back from the work that we've been engaged in over the last couple of years and
041see how the hiring practices committee can evolve into more of an almost an oversight committee advisory committee where we're pushing pushing ideas questions data to the building level and then also hearing their feedback and looking at things from from a district-wide standpoint so we will be meeting on 11 23 with recenter sharing with them the work that we have been engaged in the playbook that we developed a couple of years ago get their feedback and really develop this year's work plan this is just a visual of of the work so we are in the process and continuous process of executing strategies identified in the playbook especially on the recruitment end building on our community referral program for every opportunity that we receive continuously refining our hiring practices so once we receive canada interested candidates how
042are we designing and engineering engineering those processes to make sure everyone has has a fair shot everyone is welcome and has equal opportunity to participate and then i want to invite dr rio to discuss her work and she's really taken the lead on the development of the teacher pipeline program so invite her back up thanks we were trying to find the right spot to put this into the presentation today but wanted to give you an update on the work that's been done in collaboration with st john fisher college and it started probably early on in the summer last year where we brought together a group of st john fisher college instructors as well as some of our brighton instructors to work together to design a an experience a program that would support students teaching candidate
043students of color who are at st john fisher college enrolled in their school events excuse me education in um being supported and doing all their field work and student teaching in our brighton schools and then with the hope of coming back here to brighton to work with us so kind of building an experience that starts early on in their teaching education career and then you know builds that relationship so we had a group of teachers who worked as i mentioned in conjunction with st john fisher college professors to design some summer professional development and so far through that work we first met with some teachers at french road elementary school that was the first cohort that we have going through because that is the age level that the teaching candidates at st john fisher needed
044to work with and they went through the professional development thinking about bias thinking about how to create a welcoming environment with their colleagues lots of things that support the work we're doing around diversity and equity but really through the lens of bringing somebody new to the team and there have been several opportunities to go to professional development together around those topics the students at st john fisher as well as our brighton teachers together and that's been a great experience so they've been doing their field work this semester and we'll start student teaching in the spring and along the same lines we started a future teacher club at the high school and that club has two teachers at the high school who are co-advising the club alongside two professors at st john fisher college who are
045helping students to think about where how they might want to pursue a career in education the club is welcome welcoming of all students but particularly looking for students of color who might be interested in the education field so that they could go to st john fisher college and then kind of come back to work with us so it's really a bigger picture and we're at the very beginning of this program but i'm really excited for the opportunity and how it might grow over time in connection with st john fisher other colleges and really just supporting kind of a different approach to including you know looking at the bigger picture when we're hiring starting right at our high school and into and college also on this slide just highlighting the ongoing professional learning and credit to
046maria maurizio our director at the bryan teacher center um we've partnered her you know her really her center as the director and human resources have partnered for ongoing professional development to build cultural competence she designed a professional learning opportunity for our security guards and the superintendent's conference i just did a phenomenal job the discussion that she was able to generate and the learning that happened it was it was really impressive to be to be a part of so certainly kudos kudos to her the school start time so we had a meeting on 11 4 and we began to we began looking at the 2016 and 2017 work the survey results trying to understand what school stakeholders were telling us back then we have great representation from each school community parents teachers our building administrators and
047so we're in the process right now of looking at the survey results looking at the options that were presented back in in 16 and 17 refining survey to resurvey the results we've i think we have some we're expecting some different results post covid um as it relates to it and then trying to figure out the best way to do it operationally um and i'm facilitating that from an operation standpoint it's not a question of whether we should be starting at how best could we accomplish that considering all the operational impacts from a facility standpoint from a transportation standpoint the school structure so great work that's happening in that committee and i look forward to our next meeting is on november 18. so the action steps for innovative learning um really the reporting work i want
048to give credit to marine jeffries at french road she's been leading a team with barb flender our occupational therapist to look at our playground space so that's an ongoing view right now they're developing a master plan that we expect to present to the board of education with our our capital drawdown in the spring just thinking about things much differently than we have in design of our playgrounds in the past how to make it accessible that again all kids can can have equal access from the equipment that's being selected to the pathways this is just one example of bart blender coming to us and say we need to do a better job of children being able to navigate or traverse the playground the wood chips while they're ada compliant they're not the best that we could
049have done so we purchased these the rubber mats to allow children a child in a wheelchair to be able to navigate the full playground area and then dr mike leaner and maria maurizio designing the makerspace at the uh at the high school the ihub center which we're currently developing that's just one example of the review that will be will be ongoing in each of the buildings so what's next um again we want to learn from recenter we want to make sure we're looking at the charter and the action plan for our hiring practices committee um start time we're going to be updating scenarios looking at the three scenarios that we previously surveyed the community community excuse me and um putting together some dollar impacts for for those and what i just talked about with the
050learning environments established building level those are designed right now is internal facility planning committees but again looking at every makerspace opportunity every play space opportunity to see what what we could be doing better so with that i would like to invite diana thank you thank you so as alison referenced before i'm really proud to take a look at the mental health and wellness objectives as she said earlier this really is supporting the whole child but as we look at how do we support the individual needs and strengths of each and every child and these objectives really help us in order to be able to do that the initiatives that or the objectives that we designed for this school year working alongside with betsy perak who is going to talk more in depth and in detail
051some of the the nuts and bolts and the nitty-gritties of the work being done across the district uh really was a resurgence of some of the initiatives that started pre-covet but then also we adjusted and really took into consideration what our student needs what our staff needs what are the wellness needs that we need to think about postcovid or i shouldn't say postcovid as where we are today because of um and part of that also was taking a look at separating areas into continuing to look at social emotional learning restorative practices and then restorative discipline as well and betsy will be talking about that a little bit further we have increased some staffing in order to support these efforts across the district and so you will see very recently as of last week some postings
052that include really developing our district mental health team and those team members include psychologists social workers and counselors so you can see there we're looking for a k-8 district psychologist a social worker and counselor at the k-5 level and also a three-five social worker and or counselor at um either one of those categories at grades of three through five to support these initiatives so we're really excited about these opportunities which will also help develop the opportunities for more staff members to be right in classrooms supporting teachers supporting students but then also helping to consult with teams or looking at what do families need maybe even considering other hours of the day to support what our staff and our families needs are as well so i'm going to introduce betsy paddock who's going to continue to
053look at the in-depth and the detail of this not only is she an amazing assistant principal at the middle school but she also oversees k-12 mental health wellness she's been boots on the ground visiting with our mental health teams in each of the buildings listening thinking about what they need we're diversifying the needs in each of the buildings and thinking about those considerations for us she's been working with the wellness committee the district mental health team and also the mental health steering committee so without further ado i'll turn it over to betsy well it is certainly great to be here with everyone i realized it's been it was uh january i think of 2020 when i last presented uh face-to-face at a board meeting so it's really great to be here near and dear to
054my heart is mental health and wellness and right now we know that we need to continue to build community create connections and we have to do that with great intent and so the three areas i'm going to touch on today are restorative practices restorative discipline and social emotional learning and so we knew with restorative practices that we needed to re-engage all of our staff around restorative practices and community building and create professional development and training opportunities for our faculty and staff so we started out with training for all of our new teachers during induction so katie falter us one of the sixth grade teachers graciously said hey i'll help you out and so for two hours we met with the new teachers and we gave them an overview of restorative practices i was amazed at
055how many of them already knew about restorative practices had done it in other districts but we wanted to make sure that they had the language that they needed and were familiar with what they would be hearing during the year and they they did absolutely great we have reestablished our building level restorative practices teams so every building has one they meet monthly and we talk about ways in which we can use restorative practices in our buildings we are utilizing circles for creating and building connections all over the place k-12 i can certainly speak to the middle school and what i have seen there daily i know that at the elementary schools they're using this as part of their morning meetings it is with great intent and that's something that we know is so important and we'll
056continue to do that we have a great partnership with partners in restorative initiatives or piri and we had perry present at the second half of our superintendent's conference day and it was to give people more practice but it was also to make the connection between culturally responsive sustaining education and restorative practices and that was certainly a valuable training for all we are doing community circles in our faculty meetings at our opening meeting and i can speak to the middle school about this we used circles we broke into those circles we talked gave people prompts we want to make sure that our faculty and staff is comfortable with doing circles so that they have that tool they can use it with their students and we shared information with our k-12 faculty and staff just on the
057guidelines on some conversation starters and some sample circle plans but i also want to say that this is not the only way in which our teachers are making connections with kids they're doing it in lots of different ways we know that circles are one way to do it but we are seeing uh in lots of different ways across the district sorry went the wrong way so in terms of uh restorative discipline this is something that we have been doing but we finally had a group that were formally trained by perry over the summer it was a combination of mental health staff members and also administrators and so we had it was a really great training it gave us a chance to get all together i don't know if perry always loves it when we get
058together because we have such great conversation we go off topic we do little zigs and zags but it was great to be back together face to face and learning more about this topic because it's something that we would like to do throughout the district we know how valuable it is when there is harm done to be able to repair that harm one of the things we talked about a lot is utilizing restorative conversations with students and in school tool now there's a line where under uh the discipline tab you can actually put down if a restorative conversation was used i can tell you i have done 10 already this year and they have been just great conversations and what's happened within those conversations is that students are able to connect in a way that they
059wouldn't have if you didn't get them back together because little stories come out and it really is an incredible tool we also created a restorative conversations cheat sheet that as we move forward we will be sending out and it's prescribed so that people are asking you know what are you talking about in these restorative conversations we have a specific set of questions that we're asking both parties and it's really nice it's scripted and it's not like throwing a curveball at anyone it feels very comfortable i think for those who are involved um and that's something that we will be sharing as we go forward and then social emotional learning so we want to make sure that our students and our adults are feeling connected that they're learning different ways to navigate the world socially so
060that they can just be better versions of themselves so they can have greater interactions with one another more positive interactions with one another and so they feel better about being at school so one of the things that we're looking at are sel screening tools we're doing this through the mental health steering committee we're meeting with a representative from panorama panorama has done work with schools around new york state and they have a screener that seemed to be quite effective we looked at it at our k-12 mental health meeting just a snippet we'll be talking about that more at um council rock and then with third grade they do still use the teachal teacher child rating scale that is something that if it is working we don't want to throw that out but we know that
061we do need more for grades 4 through 12. we had an administrative professional development on sel so it was just an overview for our administrators and alison graciously asked if i would do it and i said of course i'd be happy to and so it was a really nice time to get together and to really go over the nuts and bolts of sel and to be on the same page with our language and then we're also i'm really excited about this because it's so timely we are going to be doing uh lessons through bavona child advocacy center in grades three through eight and so we are scheduling those lessons right now there is an sel component to these lessons they will all happen between uh february 1st and the end of the year and all
062of the kids will have this training through vivona and we are really looking forward to that so what's next well there's a lot still happening uh we have our continued partnership and consultation with peery so we continue to meet with representatives from peri regularly they'll be we'll be talking about the feedback from the thought exchange so that we can plan steps going forward i know that in some of the schools they're looking for more information about academic circles and how to implement those and that's something that we'll certainly be looking at we want to have ongoing professional development through the teacher center this could be on restorative practices restorative discipline and also sel we want to continue to examine our community and restorative circle implementation so you know what is our plan going forward not
063just for this year but for other other years subsequent years we are trying to update our student services website to reflect sel and rp initiatives so that the community knows more about what we're doing and so that we also have those resources out there for families it's always nice to have members of the community be able to speak the same language and therefore reinforce things with their children and then the district wellness committee is going to revisit something they used years ago called parent university so what we're going to do in our next meeting is we'll be talking about different topics that we feel parents could benefit from in terms of supporting their children and we will have members of our faculty staff administrative team present on we would do this on a saturday be
064like a three three-hour thing you can sign up for whatever you choose to go to and we're hopeful that that will be useful to our community any questions no i'll just quickly say to all of you thank you very much this is a ton of work um it's something we're looking at all the time and we greatly appreciate the effort not just that you for putting into this excuse me but the number of different teams and teachers that you're working with so thank you very much all right on to reports um financial reports i think are in so there's nothing more to add there so i'll go ahead to b student representative lyla um hello everyone uh so there hasn't been a lot of new stuff with the students happening since our last meeting two
065weeks ago um right now a lot of the students are in that final push to get all their work in before the quarter ends on tuesday as well i know all the seniors are in full swing with applying to colleges or figuring out what they're going to do next year most early decision admissions decisions come out in the next month so everyone who is all submitted is waiting anxiously for that this past weekend model united nations had a successful conference the conference was at hilton i believe and it was the first live conference in 20 months so that's pretty awesome i wasn't able to make this conference because i had sectionals but i know everyone who went had a lot of fun there were a lot of students representing brighton as chairs of their committees
066and we had seven students win either the best or the outstanding delegate award which is a pretty large number um this past weekend was the last sectionals of the bright and fall teams overall the bruins had quite a successful fall season we only had one sectional title girls tennis tennis did go on to states in new york city where they made it to the semifinals which is awesome but the bruins had six sectional runners runner-ups um so football field hockey girls cross country girls swimming girls soccer and our gymnastics team which is especially impressive because this was their first year competing together so i didn't know we had a gymnastics team until like they won sectionals which was really cool i was like wow okay so then two teams are still practicing together swimming in
067cross country many swimmers made it to states which is in ithaca and two runners made it to cross country stage with which is in binghamton additionally girls cross country is looking to go to the federation meet in bowdrin park in poughkeepsie um this meet is a meet for like the top teams in the state regardless of class so it allows the best teams even if they're in a competitive section to compete um so with the wrapping up of fall sports we have the winter sports tryouts starting next week so that's going to be really fun for everyone just to get back to it like semi-normal winter sports season um so yeah that's it thank you all for having me here to speak tonight congratulations for your performance on the cross-country team thank you all right
068before we go to the board of education i made a mistake i want to circle back to just letter a under reports which is the finance reports it includes both the executive summary the treasurer's report as of september 30th in the approval of the corrective action plan i actually need to have that motion go forward for approval from the board so uh on the report section letter a which is financial reports the three things noted there motion to approve please so moved moved by karen second seconded by andrea all those in favor all right all right thank you thank you uh board of education uh monroe county school board association labor relations i can just quickly say that's next week on the 17th so uh that one is an upcoming uh luncheon next week do
069we have an update on information exchange i believe the meeting is tomorrow tomorrow okay this this meeting sort of falls funny with all the meetings of the month are going to take place and legislative we met last week and i can i can definitely tell you that all of the districts in monroe county are experiencing some of the pressures that lou mentioned in his report regarding supply chains and staffing there is a lot of uncertainty about how we move forward with foundation aid and and and what that landscape looks like as we come online with more funding for schools but the the big issue for this committee this year really still is the bus driver issue we talked about that last year about providing carve-outs for alternative licensing opportunities for bus drivers because it really
070the current requirements make it difficult to get the license in in every single way um so in order to bring more people into that profession the state needs to to work on their end okay and that's the obtaining of a cdl or a commercial driver's license which obviously is required um the boces report was submitted by mark kocanovich it's going to be posted i don't have it in front of me other board member reports anything from some of the sub committees any of you all are participating on as i said this meeting sort of falls in between when they're next scheduled so we've had um i've been at the math curriculum review along with larry we're just just really getting into the material and and digging in and separating out into groups writing up um
071our surveys of what we want to to get out of this this review and i had we had the dei um meeting at concert as well so just starting that process i want to wait for a second did you talk about math curriculum quickly yes thank you we also are just like andrea christie and i are sitting on the science curriculum review um which we had our first meeting which is mapping out a survey led by dr rio to survey all our teachers to see where we're at with science curriculum and areas that we can improve and expand and it was the first meeting of several and it was excellent any other board member reports at this point i was just going to say the new york state school board association the dei committee we
072had a retreat this past weekend it's been almost a year since we started meeting monthly so we just took a assessment of where we wanted to go in terms of and what resources we wanted to provide for school board members across the state it's a a committee that you're representing not just the brighton community but all of this district so thank you for that you're feeling pretty good about progress so far yeah i think it's been a really great group and really interesting to learn about all the other areas in new york state and what they're doing great okay uh bta right thanks for having me i don't have a whole lot to report just because it's been a short amount of time um at council rock they're starting the habits of mine so andrea
073yaman's been going into kindergarten rooms and using eric carl she's starting with thinking interdependently and they actually decided to make a snack for the caterpillar and the very hungry caterpillar and created a very interesting snack with vanilla ice cream and eggplant and strawberries mixed it all together and then each student was able to take a portion of the snack home and along with the caterpillar to be able to talk about how they could think independently and work together she also wanted to add that there's an eric carle exhibit at the strong right now through january 2nd in families can purchase tickets at the strong so that was really nice second graders at council rock participated in voting and they also we attached it to the strong museum of play they have a toy hall of
074fame so we took the we created ballots of all the nominated toys the one that won from council rock was a pinata but the official winners were risk sand and american girl dolls and mrs youngman's class actually learned about how to be accurate and honest because they were tallying the votes we also had lots of lines so they learned a true voting experience and there's some awesome pictures of the kids behind the little voting booth curtain it's really nice at french road students in the fres rainbow club led by lady masrowski and ashley ellis met for the first time on october 18th it's an elementary level uh gender and sexuality alliance with a focus on showing love and support for lgbtqia plus community 42 students from grades three through five met after school at fraz
075they worked on community building finding their why and learned about international pronouns day on october 20th they reported leaving feeling affirmed respected and excited for their next meeting at brighton high school students in mr morse's college economics class and they had a syracuse university professor professor emeritus dr jerry ivensky who writes wrote their textbook has written their textbook he flew in and visited with students he conducted a seminar and students asked about economics current events controversial issues any future economic study and he said it was a wonderful and engaging experience and that's all i have thank you thank you very much ptsa okay um like everyone else i don't have a lot let's get into focus uh we're now accepting applications for the nancy f beck memorial fund uh the goal of the nancy f
076back memorial fund is to carry on nancy's good work by awarding annual grants from long-term child-oriented hands-on programs and equipment that benefits the greatest number of children teachers administrators and parents may apply for these grants please visit our website for more details on how to apply uh come meet some of our new take a step back here some of our new families brighton families had a meet and greet yesterday at the high school november 8th at 6 30. apparently it was well attended uh ptsa thanks everyone for all of their purchases of spirit wear we are in the process of distributing the law tell your kids to look for announcements to school ptsa has been happy to return to hosting activities and events uh some things have been changed for safety reasons but we welcome
077new ideas for activities and events reach out to your building chairs our next community meeting is on november 17th at 7 p.m on zoom please consider joining us to learn more about what is uh happening and that's it thank you thank you very much dr mcgowan a couple quick items first thank you to those that responded and have had a lot of positive feedback about a note that went home last week and we talked about glass board meeting that i could just sum up by saying to people please just be nice people are working really really hard to support your kids and families and kind thoughtful supportive interactions it doesn't mean that everybody has to agree or love everything all the time but being polite and respectful really gets people much further and is helpful
078to the staff that is doing everything they can to support kids so we appreciate people's both their patience but their support and above all respect and kindness the same things that we'd want for kids we are hoping for from everybody we're really excited that we will have a test to stay program monroe county department of public health is developing the final details of that program and essentially boiled down to unvaccinated exposures so people that are unvaccinated kids who would come to school having otherwise needing to quarantine would be able to test at school over a period of time and stay in school instead of having to quarantine and we expect those details to come out again within the next week or two and in all likelihood it would start sometime right after thanksgiving so we're
079glad for that we're also glad that children can now be vaccinated ages 5 through 11 and through both pharmacies largely pediatricians and some of the county clinics as well and we continue to support that as an effort it is not mandated for school that would be up to the state to require we don't see that happening any point in time particularly because these are emergency authorizations at particular age levels however we're very excited that this opportunity is available to our kids and hope to see a lot of people take advantage of that to keep everybody healthy just a reminder on the along the same lines keep your masks up please to our students i think dr hall says it in his sleep over the nose is the way it goes and uh certainly it's a
080well-known phrase because it has to be said often so if we could please remind people to do that it is super helpful as well and we will be at seven o'clock tonight having our community forum we will talk about the purchase of property that we mentioned at the last board meeting very very briefly at the beginning because we'd like to give everybody the opportunity of course to offer any feedback through the community forum as they have in the past thank you okay next up we have the approval of the second reading again reviewed at the last as a first reading of four different policies i'll read each of the four policy titles and then put those forward as a motion for approval all of these are basically changes in law and language and needed to
081be updated based on those changes in law and language policy 3420 non-instructional business operations non-discrimination and anti-harassment in the district policy 5676 non-instructional business operations privacy and security for student data and teacher and principal data policy 7420 students sports and athletic programs policy 6120 personnel equal employment opportunity you've all had the chance to see these are there any questions motion to approve so i moved second moved by susan seconded by karen all those in favor opposed okay next up is the approval of a capital project municipal advisor services agreement this is an agreement for our bond advisors to continue working on our behalf for the capital projects um we've been working with this the same organization for a little bit they've done outstanding by us they've been excellent partners we'd like to continue to work
082with them this is an approval to have that agreement completed questions motion to approve some move moved by andrea second seconded by esther all those in favor aye opposed uh kevin dr mcgowan just referred to this approval of a resolution to call a special district meeting for the purchase of acquiring real real property which is the land between the high school and the church um and this is not to approve the purchase but to approve having a meeting to hold a vote to have the purchase just to be clear so um that we'll have the opportunity to you know hear feedback tonight as well at seven o'clock but this is a resolution to call a special district meeting in order to have a vote just again it's unclear questions motion to approve so moved moved
083by karen second seconded by susan all those in favor aye opposed motion passes uh consent agenda we have both personnel changes that you've had the chance to see recommendations from the committee on special education approval of recommendations from the committee preschool special ed i'm also going to make note of a just an outstanding gift from kate cerulli and chris thomas in memory of their son owen thomas a gifting amount of five thousand dollars for the ptsa hardship grants it's just an outstanding gift um greatly appreciated um and just a great way to honor owen i happen to know owen and chris and kate just outstanding people um thank them for that gift um motion to approve the consent agenda as written moved by christina all those in favor all right opposed no uh before i
084do the motion to adjourn i will note that the meeting on the 14th which no that's not the um thank you november 30th we'll be at the high school november 30th this year the 14th is a thing okay i know i had it right no november november 30th is here and then december 14th we're at the high school that's okay so i'll say that again next meeting will be here on the 30th december 14th will be hosted by dr hall at the high school motion to adjourn [Music] second this has been a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education