001this is a special presentation from the brighton central school district board of education good evening and welcome to the brighton central school district board of education education meeting for february 9th 2021 i please take note that the board of education of the brighton central school district in response to the continuing pandemic emergency and the circumstances caused by that pandemic and consistent with the new york state governor's orders executive orders we are conducting our scheduled public meeting this evening february 9 2021 beginning at 7 pm held via zoom and streamed through the district through our zoom webinar feature on our website in a moment we will offer the opportunity for public participation if there are any members of the public who have joined us this evening and would like to either comment or ask a question
002of the board please use the chat feature on the bottom of your screen and put your name and your address please and we will call on you to allow you to ask a question or to make a comment in addition to that any members of the public watching us live or on rebroadcast at a future date you're welcome to contact us through email telephone or postal mail all of our contact information is on the district website and we would be happy to entertain any question or comment that you wish to submit to the board of education dr mcgowan has anyone yet uh logged in on the chat feature for that no they have not okay we'll keep an eye on that and again remind folks that they can contact us through our normal contact information
003also uh board members then i would like to ask for a motion to approve the agenda for this evening so moved i can karen and seconded by christina all in favor any opposed thank you that is seven in favor and unopposed next we have approval minutes from our last uh meeting the meeting on january 2021 business meeting could we have a motion to approve those minutes please so moved second that would be larry and andrea does anyone have any corrections to the minutes additions or deletions i see that um dr sachs is still listed instead of me on the participants so we just switch that you know like a bad penny dr sachs he keeps obviously no no we all we all know and love marsacks and dr sax is still he is among us
004and with us however he's not attending the meeting in any official capacity correct i'll fix it thank you dr gasparino and uh we will make that correction every time he tries to get out we pull him back i know i know we're trying to try to do that so i think he's something's going on in the electronics i guess there so all right with that correction does anyone else have anything additional to add all in favor aye any opposed seven in favor and unopposed this evening uh we welcome our director of health physical education athletics nate merritt for his report to the board and to the district in the community uh on our health physical education and athletics program nate welcome and thank you thanks so much i'm just going to share my screen here
005real quick um so obviously exciting first slide here and i see the smiles on on the screen right now we are very excited as we are the brighton bruins now to officially have a secondary level and an athletic symbol on our left and a k by five version um on the right that we're really happy about and excited about the that will come out to the community very shortly here um so we are very excited about this so i thought that was a good way to start um with some excitement as we moved into this year obviously with many challenges i can't say enough about the health and physical education staff um in their flexibility and and the way that they navigated through tough times to continue to push forward with curriculum to continue to
006meet students needs and and to do so in a really creative way obviously our health educators so much of the time spent with kids whether it be on zoom or physically in class so much focus was on mental health how we're relieving stress at this time how kids are able to balance the hybrid model or the remote model and our health educators have really taken a strong initiative to really look at different ways to um you know to relieve some stress for kids in creative ways and they've made really great connections they continue to do really innovative things in and out of the classroom our online presence with our educators and our students has been remarkable and i will talk about that a little bit more at the end of the phys ed model as
007dr baker and myself had really good conversations um throughout this school year in in the progress that we have made um one thing that has continued and i brought this up last year in my report at the the secondary level uh we continue to really have critical conversations um bring local professionals in um to talk about uh real life situations um and and put our our secondary students in spots where they're seeing things and able to ask questions firsthand with with working professionals in in many areas of of health fields mental health drug and alcohol but all of the above and we've able to maintain that through this hybrid model or remote model and that's something that i commend our secondary health educators to continue that um as it was a success when they brought
008in guest speakers and we've been able to been able to do so um so far this year and and it's been a highlight for kids for sure moving on to physical education you know physical education as many of us know with uh all of the gyms closing over this past year um it was one of those content areas that you know we did have the ability to um really take our curriculum and move it to an online presence to keep kids active obviously you know creating connections has been the big thing uh all of you know our k-12 physical educators really look at ways to make connections with kids to ensure you know physical activity again a great stress reliever for kids at this time and to continue creating ways that they can move their
009body in a safe and healthy way and also give some relief we've you know looked at our curriculum and you know to my point from earlier in the health slide one thing that dr baker and i have talked about at great length is uh you know i feel really really good about where we are as a health and physical education staff right now and i i can say that with no doubt the adjustments that have been made you know over the last year as we've kind of you know you know hit a time that we have never seen before um i can say with without a doubt that you know we could um adjust on the fly if we had to go all remote tomorrow um both of those content areas could do so with
010ease um and and continue to uh get the curriculum that we need out to kids and and i and i think that's you know i applaud uh our staff members that have you know kind of taken some risks stumbled a little bit uh learned from the mistakes and continued forward to still reach you know kids in different ways and and i think this year what we have learned will only make us better for the future um in the two content areas for sure uh this year has been a really interesting one as far as athletics go uh you know across you know across the country and locally as well last spring you know i always start with the spring before and if we all remember this was the time where we were leaving school and
011um our sports seasons were canceled our seniors didn't have our the opportunity to finish up their athletic careers we moved into the fall really not knowing even if we were returning to school uh definitely didn't have an idea of athletics at that point um and they made a choice at the state level to approve um some low and moderate risk sports and we were able to offer those at the jv and varsity level um i can tell you our staff went you know took a lot of time and effort to put the safety protocols in place so that we were playing soccer in the fall you know we were playing field hockey and um it went off really really well and and we kept our kids safe and at the same time doing what they
012love on on the field at that time this winter we moved into allowing phase one of our winter which was the low and the moderate such as our swim and our ski programs and then recently a couple weeks back we at the state level approved our high risk sports so within a week's time uh february 1st we opened up jb and varsity basketball wrestling in hockey we were just watched the end of our um hockey team on um on the live stream right now and they already played their first game you know a week and a half into the season so it has been a a whirlwind of a couple weeks here and again everything that we've done even with the hydro sports has had safety in mind and the district has done a really
013nice job as taking a really strong stance on safety procedures in order for us uh to continue doing so safely the spring outlook obviously we're going to try to offer as many things that we possibly can for kids from the modified jv and varsity levels so that we can finish up this year strong while keeping kids safe uh we always i always like to point out to the board of education and the community uh even during this tough time you know this this year from fall to now without having our spring sports um you know we were able to capture three sectional titles our fall varsity sports all of them earned the scholar athlete distinction at the state level which is a cumulative gpa of 90 or above for the entire team you know it's
014it's a great honor we say this every year but our kids are really truly student athletes um and we see that season every season one thing that i was very excited for if you look at our numbers um just for our jv and varsity sports for that short and fall season we had 130 participants which was fantastic and and already this winter with the newly approved sports we will have well over 200 athletes and 200 student athletes you know in the gyms and on the ice rinks and in the pool so again our act our participation level continues to grow in the community uh and you know something that we're very proud of we we you know we continue to struggle with you know offerings and and and giving kids opportunity because of our numbers
015but again participation we have we have a ton of opportunities for kids and and we are very happy with the amount of participation that we were able that we see in the district uh lastly as we look ahead moving forward for this year and in in our future years um i think with all of the content areas with health physical education and athletics you know our highest priority right now is to you know keep kids safe in the classroom you know both health and physical education and on the athletic fields and everything that we are doing at this time is is with that in mind first and then creating a really good environment for our kids to participate um and to be safe and healthy um we will continue to look at creative ways to
016to really get kids what they need and experience um new things and i think that's been a highlight as we've moved into this hybrid model and learning remotely we've had we forced ourselves to as educators to look at different ways to reach kids and give them different experiences and we will continue to do so and lastly you know the the pride point for me again as i said you know we're in a very very uh good space with our staffing um and and i think that is a testament to you know the staff how they've continued to learn in different ways and i think that's something that uh we're definitely going to take from this past year and and you know move to the future and continue to get better in in all of those
017areas um and we're really looking forward to what the future will hold for all three of our content areas thank you very much nate we appreciate that uh board members are there any questions uh of nade or comment uh anything that he presented this evening i guess we would i would make note on behalf of the group nate first of all uh you know we're very we're appreciative that we can make athletics work uh in our district for students and uh i think that's uh something that certainly would help in moving forward with everybody's uh well-being and thank you and everyone involved for assuring that that can be hel uh continued on as safely as possible i guess i would say number one number two i think to our physical education folks to be able
018to continue to offer that program in a way that uh that you have been able to do it both with hybrid and remote involved and i i just think that you know we've seen that in some of the principal reports and some of the other things that we've posted online it's just incredible uh uh the the you know the way that folks have gone about you know ingenuity we've used i've used that word a hundred times i think since last march but i just think it's amazing and the board is very appreciative and then lastly you know you have a huge role as our safety officer beyond what you reported on tonight and you've done a an outstanding job uh you continue to do so and i know that that work is far from over
019but for all of your efforts on that front uh to keep everyone as safe as possible buildings open systems functioning the interactions with outside agencies and entities so thank you so much from the board for for that effort too thank you everyone appreciate it that happens right that's a that's a that's an applause from all of us right there you know over the summer when we had to to appoint a covid coordinator and everybody ran away nate was just the slowest one out of the room at that moment he was caught up in a deep conversation actually but you know the thinking was you know obviously we have a very capable team and and wanted to make sure we had a capable uh person who could think through this but also with athletics at that
020point not part of the picture uh part of the idea was that nate might be able to devote a portion of his time or resource to that yet quickly after that athletics was back on the daca yet the covid coordinator did not disappear and here's a person who's had to figure out a testing program figure out you know the communication pieces the daily attestation the emails that people are getting uh the contact tracing the everything and manage all the different safety questions along the way while trying to figure out athletics in an entirely different area that came online and with only a week to do that with the high risk sports most really recently so i would just join the american saying i wanted to point out to people what a great job nate has
021done in those primary years that are normally part of his responsibility but a giant job that he took on this year also so again thank you nate on behalf of everybody great work it's fantastic at the round two yes well thank you so much we are going to move on now to the next item on our agenda principal reports uh and we will start out this evening with uh matt tappin principal council rock primary school good evening everyone i'm gonna share my screen i hope everyone's staying warm and doing well let's see all right all right so as many of you may know i think nicole your elise shared last time uh mr tappan has been a bills fan his entire life and it has just come full circle since high school that i've been
022a pro well i've always been a proud bills fan but to be able to see them so uh we did celebrate with uh both students and staff wearing our bills gear i did contrary to popular belief allow other teams to uh wear their uh their jerseys or their uh memorabilia but i was not gonna show those in the board report very proud of the bills and congratulations to tom brady and the buccaneers so uh we'll move past that i was hoping it was going to you know be a different story um so i just wanted to highlight uh like we have kind of all year our librarian uh adele moleskovicious and her assistant kawasaki and really all of our special areas have continued to adapt and make adjustments and find ways to um to do
023uh the impossible and you know continue to service our kids and you know not just settle with what we started with as our plan in september but continue to grow so um our librarians have uh our everyone in the library has worked on creating because our library is also kind of sequestered now in the construction zone and set far off um from where it's really accessible so we've set up kind of mobile uh remote places for kids to be able to check out um you know one of the things that's been a limitation too to the schedule is our special area schedule kids you know not getting the regular time they're getting it but it may not be as regular as when we're in person five days a week so kids still have the opportunity
024to trade in books they've worked on how to do remote pickups and remote dropouts for those who are learning remotely and the kids just love it and really it's been awesome to see um you know how they've thought through so i wanted to thank all our special areas uh our generosity and our community's generosity has continued during the pandemic our incredible ptsa community service committee organized a toy and book drive after the holidays uh and this is kind of the bounty that came from it we got a lot of great uh toys and books that were donated to the rochester city school number 33 which also has a community center attached to it so many thanks to the ptsa for helping to organize that and everyone who is able to donate so winter has arrived
025outside and inside so the middle picture here is one of uh the really awesome features in the new section of the building and i loved how when i walk by um people are using it eventually kids will be able to be in there reading books and things but for now we're using it for display we've got if you walk around there are snowflakes and all kinds of projects having to do with snow and snowmen and how to build snowmen and then outside kids are having the opportunity as long as it's warm enough uh to get out there and play in the snow just a reminder to parents i send that every week in my newsletter but uh as long as it is above 20 we will head outside so make sure your children come prepared
026for recess we want to get them out moving playing and outside as much as possible so in january we have lots of celebrations of diversity martin luther king jr so this is a great project that was done by adele linton and kathy banbury um reading martin's big words um and then talking about the dreams that they have and then creating their own words um artistic so i see a lot of uh people really utilizing kind of that interdisciplinary art writing uh listening and really tapping into the kids creativity to to make these great projects and here's another project when i think of martin luther king jr i think of and they had to share um what they what they thought after doing some reading and then again some creation so it's just really impressive to
027see the way our kids are thinking and gives me hope for our future in terms of their thoughts our first graders uh are writing all about research papers so together they wrote all about polar bears and snowy owls learning and understanding how to gather facts and then kind of synthesize those back into writing and now they are working independently uh on their own choice papers um for those research so this is a big project that all of our first graders are doing and this is an example i believe it's from nicole yearlies um but inspired by the book daniel's good day by micah archer second graders uh did some sun sunrise pictures kind of symbolizing the light and then talking about what makes a good day for them so this is in their opinion writing
028and supporting their opinion uh within their writing so just really beautiful again sprucing up those the hallways and it's great to see so much kids work out there upcoming events uh we have our virtual town halls this thursday at council rock 5 30 is specifically for kindergarten and then six o'clock until seven o'clock is kindergarten through second grade uh next week is uh school is closed for february recess and then right after the recess uh mrs reed head and mrs ball who are two of our school counselors um who lead the second step uh social emotional learning program i know mr merrick talked about you know that the importance of keeping that social emotional learning at the forefront and they have friends they have two puppets snail and uh god snail and someone else who
029uh do the asynchronous lessons and they happen it's snail and puppy they're household names yes thank you snail and puppy i didn't want to say the wrong thing i knew you would know dr gasparino so uh snail and puppy will be making a live appearance uh with mrs read head and mrs ball um and they're gonna do three different sessions one for kindergarten at 6 00 p.m first grade at 6 30 and second grade at and that is all thursday february 25th and i know mrs reed head and mrs ball are really looking forward uh to there's gonna be a little project that the kids will be able to do with their families and really just to introduce them uh their families and uh get that live look at second step so that is all
030i've got for you thank you very much matt we appreciate that we'll move on to french road elementary and dr rio hello everyone and good evening i hope you're doing well thanks matt it's funny matt when i watch your um presentation it looks a lot like mine and i didn't actually see yours ahead of time because we're doing a lot of the similar things in our schools which i always love to see so at french road just also having a lot of fun in the snow at recess it finally came and our kids couldn't be happier about being able to be outside and playing in most days we've been able to be outside a couple of days we're too chilly but the kids have been making snowmen outside building forts just having a lot of
031fun and as much as i sometimes don't enjoy standing out in the snow i do love seeing our kids out in the snow recess it's awesome and now the first few slides are going to focus on our remote learners we have a lot of stuff going on in the school but we've really tried to hone in on some of the things happening with our remote learners too and miss o'neill and i have been doing mid-year meetings with all of our fully remote students and just doing some check-ins now that the year is halfway over how they're feeling the things that have been going really well for them some struggles that they might might be having and letting the kids share that so we've met with each grade level and done a check-in and we'll continue
032to do those throughout the remainder of the school year and also we started some breakfast and books with our third grade remote learners we did lunch and laughs with fourth and fifth grade and it's just been a great time to connect with the kids on a different level you know we do pop into their classroom zooms and small groups to try and catch up with the kids and see what's going on as far as learning but we had a lot of fun before school started just having kids bring their breakfast reading some books telling jokes and we're going to continue that as well throughout the remainder of the school year and trying is you know to connect with our remote learners as much as we can sending them notes every now and again sending them
033stickers in the mail just letting them know that even though we can't see their faces in person we are thinking about them all the time so this is one of our remote learners whose mom took a picture and sent it to me and and um we just continue to think of ways to engage them and make sure they feel like they're part of our french road community because they are they're a huge part of our community so we're also getting into black history month at french road and we have a lot of things going on this month but um this these are overarching kind of goals for the month we are looking at just really helping kids to just develop that understanding of the importance of black history month connecting towards that feeling of empathy
034for other people understanding how to stand up for what's right and then we want kids to leave feeling inspired to take action for the things that they believe in and what they're learning about and every week throughout the month started last week and will continue on tomorrow and through the remainder of the month we've been having some segments with video interviews of brighton community members and some of the faces you'll recognize and our kids recognize from school and some are new friends to them too so just answering some questions each about you know why black history month is important why being black is important and uh each week we'll share a different question and you'll get to hear from all of these members of the community in addition what our classes are working on right
035now is a black history change maker walk in every classroom in the building both remote and hybrid will be sharing um about an individual that they're learning a bit more about and we're hoping to touch upon some people that we don't know a lot about yet so we put together a really extensive list of about 60 people and many of them are unfamiliar names to many of our students and staff and myself and our goal is to celebrate the impact they've had on the community in some way big or small and make a walk through the building where kids can walk through and we're planning on using qr codes to connect all of our remote learners to what's happening in the building and vice versa and also be able to share that with family so
036more to come about that but as you start to walk around french road if you were there you would see lots of this in action already outside classroom doors research and it's an exciting time for kids and for adults too this is a book that um was part of a second step lesson with our school social worker mrs o'brien and miss kosov's fourth grade class so they read a book it's okay to be different and then the kids put together their own book which was awesome and actually if on seesaw you can listen to the whole book being read through the kids found pictures and they decided all the different ways why it's okay to be different and they each created a page to make this class book and it was really pretty awesome what
037the kids put together so here are a few pages just highlighted for you to see and i think this might have gotten shared earlier by betsy balling but i put it up again because it's our annual take what you need board at fres and this is always always such a hit with our kids especially during this um covid time of year right now where kids are we're really looking at their mental health a little more deeply right now but you'll see post-its all over the school where kids have taken things off the board and put them on their lockers or their desks or they take them home and you know some things are simple like you can see a picture over here says donuts and other things are you know more like their friends or
038family or different things that they might need as well so kids really connect to that and i think our mental health team for putting that together for us and along with what mr tappan shared our special areas are kind of coming back together here so here are some pictures of our fourth graders in the library so we just opened up the library in january again with some restrictions and special thoughts around what we've learned since september but it was time to get it open again and get kids back in the library and it's been awesome having them in their safely small groups following all the safety procedures that we put in place and kids or couldn't be happier because our library was remodeled over the summer and the kids haven't been able to see it
039so we're still pushing into classrooms for library class but now we have some open library time where kids can come into the library to explore and check out books and our kids are also back in our music classes at french road so again these were finished up very early in the school year but we had started the year with specials in the classroom so um again as time went on we kind of brought specials back to special area classrooms and these are some of our friends at every grade level actually engaging in some music activities safely and dancing and being able to just get their bodies moving and i was just in there today they're loving having this space and being in the new music room so that was fantastic to see upcoming events we
040have our friends town hall on zoom tomorrow night and then also again um as mr tappan mentioned no school for midwinter recess we are doing a read across america day at fred's at the beginning of march all via zoom but we have lots and lots of special guest readers coming into the school building and then we'll be gearing up for brighton police day thanks fantastic dr rio thank you so much and again as with matt thank you again for the look into the side fresh and you know we just feel like uh the way that your principals have been able to keep us connected without being in buildings has just been tremendous and i will add one quick reminder to the community the uh videotape talks that you did in honor of black history month
041are tremendous and they're available to the community they're available through the website you can watch them and they really really are well done and each of them has got different messaging different individuals so i kudos to putting that together i think that turned out really really well so it's a nice community share also so thank you so much um next up we're going to move over to 12 corners middle school principal jim nunez uh thank you very much and i will share my screen here make sure i try to do it right before we get going and excellent there we go all right so thank you very much for having me here tonight i'm happy to present on the work that we have been doing at 12 corners first up here we have some sixth
042grade ancient egypt work our sixth graders have been working on a unit on egypt this is part of their culminating activities that they've been working on following their unit this activity here was asking for significant images that students found relevant to their studies and writing a postcard based on what they had learned and so there was a lot of great evidence of learning here and artifacts that they had shown throughout the course of the unit next up here our family and consumer science classrooms have been working on an interior design unit and here students were asked to design their dream bedroom with that they had been taught some certain elements and principles of design so they were to put that together with some of the unique attributes of a classroom and this was their first
043place winner um for their contest which was very unique and very um colorful and uh the the the design of their bedroom and here were a couple others to show from that these were also done in a shoe box so that's the other interesting part of it as well and this was the last one here again again some nice uh some of these students uh have some talents and interior designing so they've got a bright future there for themselves here's we have some eighth graders working on abstract expressionist painting much of this was based on lyrics and the emotion of colors as inspiration so it was quite interesting walking through and seeing them work on this and listening to great music inspiring them and their artistic abilities so it was nice to see them on
044that work here our sixth grade band here we're working on rehearsing for their upcoming um rehearsal and their upcoming performance that will be recorded this week so they were working hard at um putting this all together they will be recording that via zoom so that will be a nice performance that they will have coming up for themselves a fun activity that we've had leading up to the super bowl was the play on words in super bowl and we had the super bowl challenge grade level competition for a food donation at the building it was a great level competition and each of the administrators myself mrs jacob and dr malloy each were responsible for a grade level and the winning grade level had the opportunity to get the losing administrators with a pie in the face
045and so that was quite fun i had the sixth grade class mrs jacob had the seventh graders and dr malloy had the eighth graders and yes the sixth graders did win so i did find my way out and needless to say the coach and me came out for those two weeks and it's also nice to have sixth graders are easily motivated so it was nice to have that and here is the lead up to it we have mrs jacob there prepared for the pie and not to get anything out of retire as dr malloy was also getting ready and here we have the evidence of it all so that was nice and fun for our sixth graders to do and not only did they have to do it once but they had to do it
046twice for both cohorts so that was also the fun part of it so we had to make sure that everyone had an opportunity to take part in the fun so that was great for black history month there's been a number of things that we've been working on there the black student union have been working on a timeline of historical events that is posted outside of the library which is nice and really informative for all to see they also had a very um great um opportunity to meet with our town supervisor and our chief of police which was motivated and inspired by the students and they wanted to have a conversation with them about how to better um have stronger community relations um in the community and how they do that and on the next slide
047i'll show some questions that were asked i thought that were rather poignant for our students to be asking them we've also had staff readings on the morning show staff have been reading um information and highlights of significant figures in african-american history throughout the world and also our remote students will be taking part in that as well there's been such a high turnout for it that we will be taking it into march um so it's been nice to see the staff taking part in that and our students have really enjoyed that as well so two this is a little evidence of the conversation with the town supervisor and chief of police that our students in the black student union had with them but again to the questions that i was referring to this was a number
048of questions that they did ask and i highlighted a few there in the middle how do you suggest our community should encourage inclusivity and how do you plan to work empathy for others into law enforcement and what is the plan to change discrimination within our public systems um so those are some really pointing questions that our students had for them and i know that they really were inspired and appreciative of that time that they spent with them so we do thank them for their time spent with our students here we have an upcoming ptsa event that is unique to our families this was born from a previous ptsa meeting with the principals um and this one is facilitated by aaron cusano and eric oliveri two of our counselors and um at one of our principal
049meetings a few months back the focus was parenting and pandemic and it was a very nice opportunity to families to share what their struggles have been with adjusting to raising their kids in this pandemic and how to deal with the change in it and our families really found a great deal of value in it so they have a follow-up meeting which is coming up on february 10 for them and we're very happy and excited for that opportunity for our families to have upcoming events as we know we have the school closures um also tcms on february 23rd we'll be having our schools to watch review um with state officials and so that'll be an interesting process for me my first time going through it um so i'll be happy to have that in addition to
050our upcoming uh ptsa meeting with the principal and deanna spagnola along with another one on march 4th which that one will be focused on restorative practices our families wanted to know more about them what our restorative practices and how we're using them in our schools so we'll be very happy to share that information with them great thank you very much jim we appreciate that thank you for sharing the questions from our students for uh chief catali and supervisor maylie i mean just fantastic and phenomenal when you consider middle schoolers asking questions of that level and it's a it's a great opportunity too because chief cataldi and the brighton police department are currently engaged in a community review of how they how they practice law enforcement and so it's a great opportunity to you know gather
051that input from from young people in the community so thank you for sharing that this evening and we turn now to dr hall to wrap up principal reports with his report from uh brighton high school and i see he used the aggressive bruin well this is kind of the unofficial aggressive bruin i have not been given the the the logo the official logo yet but i'm sure nate's going to share that with me tonight and it's just killing him that he doesn't have in his powerpoint right now i just want you know the next presentation does have it dr hall because i couldn't help myself i'm sorry i know this is painful for you what's the mascot costume i was actually trying to text um dan goldman to see if he could send it to
052me quickly so i can switch it out but you know it's all right we got a bear and we're excited about it okay um so a couple things nate shared a little bit uh but with our winter sports season getting started we kind of have two seasons bowling alpine skiing nordic skiing and swimming have uh began uh back uh january 1st and then our basketball wrestling ice hockey is as you know and track and field started february 1st uh very excited about that the kids are excited um and and wrestling got started uh back on the the first um and we actually have our first uh section five championship our kudos to our girls nordic skiing team coached by craig matern and rachel madden they just won that on monday night so kudos to them
053uh an incredible event i'm not sure if you were able to tune in as board members but um our dr lo lauber who is our orchestra director hosted on january 25th pretty much a celebration of music day and hour on the hour starting at 8 a.m she was posting some recording some live youtube videos um of duet solos groups performing from her orchestra from the entire fall season and all the preparation and prep work that they've done and you could tune in throughout the day parents had links to get to i tuned in a few different occasions during the school day and some of the music was just absolutely incredible and kudos to her and the kids for helping to organize it and i think it was great for them and it was great for
054their parents and family members to see college career night we this was our fifth college and career night we started that here at brighton i truly believe we have one of the best college career nights in the entire area um western new york over 200 parents showed up for the night kudos to the counseling department who does everything to prepare for this and lining up 15 different presentations from college admissions officers military recruiters gap year specialists people who are experts in the field of athletics and scholarships for athletics what it takes and also visual performing arts scholarships and programs and they are there everything was via zoom this year and it seemed to run really smooth and just again kudos to the counseling department for taking this on um it was quite an experience and
055again very appreciated by our families and our kids who showed up our culture clarement leadership team continues to meet uh talked about them back in december we had another meeting in january and we as a group decided to roll out the united way's 21 day racial equity challenge as part of martin luther celebration of martin luther king and black history month but uh all of the rochester area pretty much the faculty and staff of most of the districts in the area participated in the united way's 21 day racial challenge and we are modifying it a bit for students but we get we sent out a welcome video last week and we'll be rolling out the second challenge this end of this week and we're asking students with club members or teams friends to get together
056and do the challenges together read watch read the articles watch the videos and have discussions together and then we'll be promoting some of the challenges to be done actually in classrooms throughout the remainder of february and into march probably right up through april break bsu are black student unions promoting several guest speakers and when i prepared the powerpoint it wasn't quite done but they are going to be doing actually tomorrow at the end of the school day uh seeing the viewing of july 64 which tells the story of the race riots the three-day race riots right here in rochester and after the viewing they'll be having a talk back with the director chris christopher who actually directed that documentary so that's one of many things that they're planning we're also meeting uh tomorrow actually to
057brainstorm the ideas we came up with with january this is a subcommittee to continue to talk about how we can make our school environment more culturally responsive to everyone that walks through our hallways in our building and now that we have the logo it's going to be even better but part of our task is to also promote the bruin at the high school level as everybody's mascot not just the athletes but everyone um at the school so there's some real creative ideas i'm very excited about that these are the clubs and the student leaders who are part of cclt oops and our class of 2025 8th grade parent night we had that back at the end of january 178 parent participants were there we had tcms staff bhs staff we talked about everything from choosing
058courses course selection in january 2021 all the way through what midterms will look like in 2022 and everything in between for our eighth grade parents talked about all the transition supports that are built in link crew brighton support center freshman activities that we'll have planned just a few things that we'll be doing as we welcome our new class of 2025 just that's unbelievable uh we're well underway with doing our program planning uh right now through march 1st from january 12th to march 1st counselors are actually meeting one-on-one with every single student in grades 9 10 11. so our six counselors will be meeting with all of their kids to choose courses one-on-one meetings from january 12th through march 1st and then we'll be running the numbers looking at courses that are under 10 and then
059courses that don't meet at least 15 as a minimum and we'll be then talking about staffing and preparing everything for the building of the master schedule over the april break and matt cuomo will be ready to tackle that this year january early grads we had a record year of january early grads this year and i think you know the pandemic was definitely an impetus for that we've never had this many early grads but several kids who chose to be remote decided to double up take what they needed to graduate we had 13 students graduate early this school year which is quite quite an endeavor and an accomplishment to finish up their senior year like this i'm in the middle of calling all of them and just congratulating them letting them know about junior or june
060events and if those students can't participate in our regular graduation ceremony we'll be holding individual ceremonies for them or anybody else who wants one while we're still on the pandemic but our hope is we're going to have a big old celebration on the turf and june 22nd and as i get closure here you know going back to our quarter one failure rate you know you hear about the data from around the country around the state of how kids are doing with the pandemic and hybrid world versus remote world you know quarter one we had a double uh we had a our failure rate doubled um from in quarter one that was hybrid and remote students from eight point six percent to almost of our students failing one or more classes quarter two um luckily again
061a lot of interventions and put into place while the percentage is higher historically it basically went up four points uh from you know last year of almost 13 um to 17 so didn't jump as much during the second quarter but the interesting thing is about 15 of our hybrid students failed one or more but in remote world while seventy percent of the kids are doing well thirty percent are failing one or more so that's quite significant we're working hard to work with them and their families um and we've been meeting with our remote students every month uh once or twice a month with all the remote students to bring them still into the fold they're part of cclt some of them are playing athletics um some are in clubs and activities that are meaningful zoom
062so if they want to they can all participate but um you know the remote world is challenging for many kids um and then just looking ahead we have uh our first day of the marking period was this past monday and we're starting the second semester already town hall tomorrow night with dr mcgowan 7 15. family of color group meets on thursday at seven and then our report cards are mailed home just in time for the february recess break kids always love that we don't usually mail report cards home but because of the pandemic we're trying to make sure they get everything they need so they're on the portal right now but they'll be mailed home hard copy as well and that's that's about it and questions thank you very much uh tom and uh you
063know the one thing that strikes me uh again and i've said this a number of times but i think it's bears repeating um you know you spoke at uh toward the end of your report there about the failures the the our monitoring of failures and you discuss remote students hybrid students all of you all four business all four of our principals in your reports all year have highlighted all of the outreach being done to make sure we're doing all we can no matter how a student is learning right no matter how a family chose or had to had restrictions that they had to choose and all of you worked so hard at that and all of our teachers and staff we know that some students are going to need additional help supports recovery uh as
064we move forward but as a district i think we should all be very proud of the ability uh that our that all of our folks our leaders and all of our folks have shown to incorporate hybrid and remote folks reaching out where needed and trying to provide anything that they can along the way and it's still a challenge it will be a challenge but the board is very appreciative of that continuing and ongoing effort so thank you very much we did want to make sure we mention that again it comes through every time we do through the the principal report so thank you moving on next we have an agenda item this evening for approval of the 2021-2022 school calendar and prior to the board handling that motion and handling that item i'm going to
065turn it over to dr mcgowan to provide some information there it is dr hall liking your chops sorry you didn't have it ahead of time we don't rarely get one up on you but there's there's the logo as uh i can't take it off the screen either no you can't um don't worry you'll have it soon enough and then it'll be everywhere far and wide from dr hall's email uh different a little bit different this year in terms of calendar and wanted to present uh to the community in the sense and to the board an overview of what we're proposing to you and information that we've been sharing with you uh first to discuss a little bit about the process of how the calendar's developed which is probably a mystery to many people um we
066we go through a series of steps to to collaborate on the calendar but to recognize what happens around us and in terms of the requirements from the state in order to develop the best calendar we can and it boils down to a bunch of steps first of all the state dates being determined relative to regents exams the rating day at the end of the school year any other dates that the state needs us to recognize 338 testing for example being another and there are scoring windows and make updates around those three through eight tests in particular that we have to take into account when we're developing our calendar also we have to look at our contractual agreements who works when and what the agreements are in terms of the number of days that are worked
067we also participate in the development of the region regional calendar through boces and as a matter of fact representing the area on that committee is judy wegman our vta president on behalf of maryland county teachers and i also participate in that discussion as a as one of the monroe county superintendent reps to that committee we take a look at goals that we have internally for our calendar and think about what we would like to accomplish for our kids and our staff in developing the calendar and then develop a draft calendar collaboratively work alongside the bta in that conversation as well thinking about the instructional priorities and the work requirements around that as well and then present a draft calendar to the board of education for you're considering consideration the challenges we had in developing this
068year's calendar are really boiled down to six buckets or so so to speak first a late labor day is one thing that we had to consider um coming into the second week and so that really takes out a chunk of september that we would normally be able to have school or at least a few days the positioning of holidays that we have traditionally observed in this case rosh hashanah in particular taking place on tuesday and wednesday after labor day which if both of those days were days without school for students and staff would be problematic in having an opening day for staff on a thursday for example and then the start for students on friday so we've made an adjustment there to hopefully accommodate both of those issues the rating day which originally was scheduled
069for thursday that last week in june the thursday was eventually switched by the state to the friday but we had to take a look at where that would fall as well and that's significant because at the secondary level at the high school level in particular counts as a day of school not for the elementary the scoring windows uh another example is that the scoring window for 338 tests ends on april 13th so the break taking place during that week which would have then been inclusive of the traditional good friday day off uh would have eliminated opportunities for scoring of the assessments a desire to to develop a more inclusive calendar if we're going to talk the talk we should be walking the walk and thinking about how to honor all members of our school community
070to the best of our ability and the snow day pilot program this year the state gave an opportunity for school districts to consider remote instruction days in lieu of snow days in other words on a day you would have otherwise called a snow day there was an opportunity to have a day of school by offering remote instruction and so that was another consideration for us as well the objectives in the development of our calendar as i mentioned before we had some considerations but also some additional objectives we wanted to meet our state expectations for the number of days of course that those are the guidelines we follow develop a calendar that honors and includes members of our school community and be more inclusive than we have been in the past consider what our calendar communicates
071the calendar communicates quite a bit about a school community what the school community honors how we are inclusive how we recognize holidays take advantage of scoring and make up windows to the best of our ability as i mentioned that three through eight issue and provide certainty and predictability as well to the community around the the times when we take breaks etc and to honor the boces calendar remember some of our students particularly at the high school level attend a boces program for only half their day so if we have instructional days that are far off of the boces calendar our kids either uh have not know where to go in the afternoon when they're in our school program or they miss days of instruction at the boces program if we don't have school that morning
072and so we need to always be considering that in the development of our calendar as well and finally the uh proposals that we're making in our calendar this year and i'll show an image of the calendar in just a moment would be we're proposing indicating a recognition of indigenous people on the observed federal holiday of columbus day and so we're proposing a titling it on the calendar that we are observing columbus day as the federal holiday and recognizing indigenous people and i would like to point out that the board was presented with a series of letters over multiple years actually from seventh grade students who had explored this topic debated this topic and made a variety of recommendations and i think this is a really good way to address an issue by both observing the
073federal holiday which continues to be named columbus day and in our state it's been made very clear by the governor that it will remain as such in new york state but also recognize the uh the plight the burden and the experience of indigenous people related to columbus related to the founding or the discovery of lands here by european explorers and have a conversation around that without changing the name entirely and ignoring that important aspect of history as well and so we'd like to name frankly it both on the calendar by observing columbus day and recognizing indigenous people we'd like to utilize the second day of rosh hashanah for a superintendent's conference day prior to school opening and accommodate staff members who would be unable to attend that day and make sure that it is comfortable
074for them as well while maintaining two days of instruction then in that first week of school we'd like to leverage technology to promote remote instruction during emergency snow days and where that has gone very well this year people really adapted to that process of teaching remotely that would look similar to our current wednesday schedules but we would encourage not just encourage but we would be providing remote instruction on those days hopefully the state will continue to allow that to be counted as a school day the warning is and i have two warnings so to speak at the end would be that we'll have to reconsider the calendar because the use of those emergency days right now those snow days and doing that remotely allows us for flexibility in the calendar if they don't allow that
075the state doesn't allow that we'll have to reconsider that flexibility in different days on the calendar that are convenience day so december 23rd november 23rd for example but are not holidays we would need to reconsider those particular days so that we have enough a cushion going into next year for the emergencies that may come up and finally we'd like to be more inclusive and thoughtful in providing a day off for the muslim holiday eat and in recognition of juneteenth this june and so i'm sorry that would be next june on june 20th and i think that it is important again for us to be a more inclusive school community and not ask members of our school community to put their religious observant observance aside on that day but rather recognize where an important day that
076eid is for our muslim students and families and staff members by recognizing that on the calendar and of course juneteenth something that frankly historically many of us have not paid nearly enough attention to learned enough about or experienced in a way that is very important and we ought to be recognizing that day as well as an important moment in our american history and our experiences should lead us to want to honor that day as well so our implications for the future i'm sorry our two additional considerations would be implications for the future in other words these are days off that we think are very important they should become part of our regular consideration in the development of the calendar part of our regular routine and the snow day issue is one that we'll have to
077consider as we go forward and understand whether this state will allow us to leverage that time and whether that's an effective use of time as well if that remote instruction is working or if we'd be better off in future years to still reserve days we'll have to consider that as we move forward i'm going to stop that sure and then just share what the calendar then will look like so on your screen is the current format for uh the school calendar then as we move forward and you can see just a few of the highlights as i mentioned that september issue around rosh hashanah the superintendent's conference day then would be on the wednesday and the first day of school for students on the 9th we would observe yom kippur on the 16th as we
078have and just looking for tonight i'm sorry i said november uh 23rd so it would be november 24th is that day before thanksgiving we would have to take another look at and then december 23rd of course the regents exam schedule um is in we can see they're scheduled right now the 25th to 20th in january and the 15th through the 23rd with a day off for juneteenth being recognized statewide as a matter of fact um in june and the additional holiday for us would that would be new again eat on may 3rd any questions on the calendar the big date that people are usually looking for is the date in april for the break and that will be the third week in april that is in the regional calendar as well and as i mentioned
079having it the week before proved to impossible because of the scoring windows that would still exist 11 through 13 in april provided by the state any questions from any board members if anybody has any specific question uh to what dr mcgowan presented and now would be a great time uh but what i would also i guess i would entertain a motion to approve the calendar in a second and then we'll have further conversation and discussion uh in more detail i guess that might be blended into one might be a good thing so uh may have a motion to approve the calendar as proposed so moved second aaron uh so so uh i guess for the board uh let's let's talk about this a little bit obviously for the community first of all that that calendar
080like all of our material is posted on the agenda for this evening on the website and uh will be available and as dr mcgowan said many families uh most families you know they're usually checking with us in january and february immediately with regard to vacation breaks right for the next school year and hopefully that those can be held in a more normal fashion going forward but we also uh want to talk this this evening a little bit uh about the our approach this year and the discussion around being more culturally responsive i think to our entire community around certain holidays and certain periods and the changes in the ads that we've made that have been recommended to us the board has that input on this goes back a long time we've had a number of
081community members over time dr mcgowan mentioned students our seventh grade social studies group for a number of years has during their um who deserves a holiday lesson has written us very informative poignant uh well-thought-out letters on all aspects of that discussion around specifically columbus day and indigenous peace peoples but really taking it beyond that uh we also frequently will receive letters from our law and government students especially but other high school students will email us around observances and calendar and how it works and i think that uh you know what we've tried to do in this discussion over the past few years is look at this from from a lens of first of all the county calendar and as dr mcgowan clearly articulated once the calendar gets approved on a county-wide basis the ability to
082maneuver within that calendar is is somewhat limited and one of the things that does did open things up for us were uh you know this uh one of the benefits of our pandemic learning and and the ability to to instruct students remotely and to look at snow days a little differently so from a board standpoint i wanted to add that bit of information to the conversation um board members fellow board members does anyone have any questions or comments or anything that you'd like to add at this point well i just it was brought up earlier mark by a couple of people including sue but i appreciate that we've had a chance to hear consistently from the students about that and have that feedback um provide influence to what we're talking about i also want to
083say in in my years on the board i don't ever remember having as much serious and thoughtful conversation about um what our calendar should look like and i'm really proud of where we are right now and i think everybody has done a very wonderful and thoughtful job of looking more broadly at our community and i'm most appreciative of that you know and i would add to that julene i i i wouldn't want any members of the community to think that we believe we've accommodated 100 of families and individuals whether they be staff members or students obviously there are many other days of recognition within cultures communities faith communities but we do endeavor and we work very hard as a district to accommodate any needs that any individual has but we've tried to address areas of
084a substantial population in ways that are are doable for the district so uh you know i think you raise a great point there too and it is a proud time i do believe and i agree with you any other members of the board that wish to share thoughts or further questions or further input uh dr mcgowan knows that he and i go way back with our conversations about snow days i love a good snow day but i think that this is a really reasonable way to honor more members of our community and i'm happy to have to i'm hoping that the state will continue to allow us to do that i mean there's plenty of years we don't even have a snow day right um but i just think it's this is the best use
085of our time thank you karen great point uh anyone else at this point but one thing i would like to add we touched on it but we also have had uh discussion the board has and we've had that discussion with with the leadership kevin and dr baker and mr limo it's important to the board it's important to the the work of the district moving forward that we continue to make sure that we approach curricularly the these different designated days if you will we mentioned that we have received letters and assignments have been given to students to explore um different parts of history and culture and we it is our hope that these additional designated days that we are taking action on this evening will also spur further conversation and thought at an age and grade
086appropriate level as we move forward i'm glad you mentioned that mark just because you know a lot of times like i think it it's easy to get caught up with just checking a box to say you know you know to cover our dei we're going to check a box and say but i think that a lot of the discussions we've had is let's use these days off and let's you know let's see the words on the calendar and really use that time to to reflect so i think it's it's meaningful days and a lot of thought has gone into it and again we've all mentioned the seventh grade students but reading those letters really you know it was it was uh it was really moving you know and it's nice to be able for our
087board to reflect the thoughts of our students because that's that's why we're all here thank you well said sue we do try to we do try to listen and take stock anything further any other board members who haven't spoken want to share before we call the question all right then thank you thank you kevin and all involved it's not easy to put this calendar together ever and this is particularly challenging so thank you for everybody that's worked on that and then i will ask yes julian i think christina wanted to say something okay no it was just uh just thinking about the calendar i just wanted to wish everybody a happy lunar new year for any family celebrating this weekend with some yummy food or money for the kids or uh sweets so it just
088made me think that i'm glad we're doing this and i hope everybody gets yummy take out this weekend thank you christina so what a great ad right to wrap it up uh thank you christina we appreciate that uh all in favor aye any opposed and we have approved the school calendar for next year seven in favor and none opposed thank you everyone thank you very much i want to thank you for a lot of really thoughtful conversation around i didn't want to weigh in in the board member section before you voted but other than to say again thanks for the conversation on this because as board members one of the things you can do in your practice and in your part of the organization is think about what do your policies and your practices communicate
089to the community as the elected representatives of the community and so this is a really great step forward i think to communicate great messages and to the point that's been made by several of you about what it says about who we are and that it's not a check the box it's a we're going to recognize that this is an important moment for people in our community that hasn't been an opportunity for them to celebrate or to reflect and that often what happens is uh people in our community in underrepresented groups will have to sacrifice because of their desire to make sure that in their mind they assimilate or that they are not a burden or that they are uncomfortable asserting what is really important to them and we want to make sure we're proactively finding
090opportunities to embrace what's important to everybody in the community and be reflective about that and this is not a common com conversation in places i don't believe any other district in monroe county now or has taken eid off and we're not interested in being the first to be the first we're interested in being leaders in in how we think about our entire community i'm very proud to be a part of a group that has done that so thank you for that much appreciated thank you very much dr pagano we appreciate those words and finally this evening one other item on our agenda our consent agenda may i have a motion please to approve that item some move second by andrea seconded by larry all in favor aye aye any opposed that would be seven in
091favor and none opposed that's the extent of our agenda for this evening dr mcgowan anything further tonight nothing at all i hope you all have a wonderful evening stay healthy stay masked stay distanced thank you uh board members anything else that we uh need to deal with this evening when we next meet on february 23rd we will remind the community that night will be a business meeting at five or it's a yeah business meeting business meeting at 5 00 p.m and it'll be a community forum at 7 p.m but lots more to come on that um then i will entertain police of motion to adjourn so moved second oh sorry karen seconded by julene all in favor okay and he opposed seven in favor and unopposed and we are adjourned this has been a special
092presentation from the brighton central school district board of education