001this is a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education welcome to our community forum that's a little bit of a different format this year we're trying to think about not just improving but innovating and looking to bring more people into the conversation in every way that we possibly can so we're joined here in the room by several community members also this is a facebook live event so hopefully there's a lot of people tuning in by video I can say just from the 90 some people that have already participated in the exchange that's far more than them three four five sometimes seven or eight people who have been able to come to forums in the past so we have a lot of really good feedback for the board to consider as they're
002always considering and thinking about how to continue to innovate and move forward so the rundown for tonight is a little bit different and we walk through the schedule with you briefly we'll talk a little bit now again about format I'll walk you through this and then we'll get into the exchange information that people did share prior to meeting here tonight will then ask Debbie and Lou to walk through five minutes of fame each which is just a quick five minute presentation and a particular couple particular areas that rose to the top in the exchange and then we're going to walk through and I'll talk about advocacy and timeline around the budget as well which was something people are really interested in learning more about and then at 7:25 or so ballpark we're probably up to
003it's now about seven thirty one will do it will have a hot stove discussion on the exchange feedback so other questions that came up that weren't part of some of the broader topics but they were smaller quicker items that we can give real fast answers to we've got a lot of administrators and board members here too so where it's applicable or appropriate we may jump in and ask them to perhaps answer a question for people meanwhile you'll see a QR code on the bottom right hand corner of the screen for the people who are here tonight there's also a link on several slides that will come up and that link went out this afternoon as well and is posted on the Facebook page and that link is to a live exchange for tonight so that's
004different than the information I'm about to share with you if you just hold your phone up and point it at the QR code and the camera function it'll take you directly to that exchange and the idea is for you to be able to ask questions make comments provide suggestions based on the information presented tonight where anything else is on your mind that didn't come up in the previous exchange or if we didn't answer a question that you had in the previous exchange and you like it answered tonight and we'll pull those questions and comments up on the screen as well after we walked through this information and have for the about the last half a little bit of a facilitated discussion regarding those additional items that people like to provide input on and this is
005all all the information has been more realized for the board to be able to look through later for community members to have access to and certainly for the exchange that we launched tonight to continue to weigh in on and start really doing gauge and other people's thinking as well in trying to really broaden our horizon and be as inclusive as we possibly can so that's a but we're gonna wait an hour they're not reser now I want to walk through for people real quickly the information that has been exchanged already and the way people engaged in this initial exchange a real quick discussion of what this meant and who participated kind of how the exchange went the demographics are that 93 people participated like I said far more than the first the initial forums that
006we've always had which were 3 4 or 5 people would come and talk to us this is a lot more people providing a lot more feedback which is great 70 thoughts were shared and a total of over 2000 star ratings were assigned to those thoughts the thoughts well let's just talk about the first 10 and you'll see how we landed at the topics for tonight really revolved around funding around advocacy and and then several other comments in the exchange about technology initiatives the one-to-one initiative etc which is why we wanted Debbie to speak on that tonight so the top thoughts what is the district administration team doing to increase New York state funding if this advocacy is left to residents can you share why our district will continue to have that hot and to have
007budget issues if we continue to have New York state funding issues no question Brighton should continue to pressure Albany for appropriate funding relative to our neighboring communities it is a crime at Albany is doing what is the BOE doing to help secure more funding more of our foundation aid we are being shortened shorted by New York State the lack of a full foundation a payment has impacted our programming I couldn't agree more I'm glad that one african-american teacher was hired at frezz we need more studies show that kids learned better when there's a diverse teaching staff and that's an item I know luli asked about in the hot stove portion would love a change of mascot the bareness problem at and in accessible are we still expecting to have to have major cuts make major
008cuts in the next school budget what impact will that have for programming and teacher positions what can every community member do to advocate to New York State an additional aid to Brighton what is the fiscal picture of the district going forward into the next school year 2020 2021 there has been talk about cutting more programs and maximising class size what are the Bo ease priorities and then again several more the funding questions certainly came up quite a bit as did technology items many comments about start times etc also came up and so we'll go through a lot of those and cover them in these five minutes of fame and the hot stove portion as well I want to show you a couple other areas that we take a look at when we analyze this information
009and the way it's available to us we look at this particular tab in this dashboard which is really interesting and it shows differences in groups and takes people with similar ways of rating or ranking starring questions and/or comments or suggestions and shows us where their differences are where they have common ratings high or common ratings low and this was really interesting these two groups of people so Group A and Group B which we you know again they had similar starting patterns which is how it breaks down a lot of difference in the start time area almost a 50/50 split really interesting to us and we've seen this as a common thread when we've looked at these comments before so please move school start times to later for middle and high school the evidence speaks for
010itself so for example group a said site a twenty two people fell into this group they ranked that four point nine they absolutely agreed and agreed with that so I'd be the other side of the issue nineteen people gave that one point three so they see that very differently and when you go down through each of these really similar split high towards five low towards one in terms of this issue and then on the other side where side be rated certain things high the same group of people the same side be group rated some of these comments had there are much bigger issues to focus on and the start time for middle and high school students increased funding would take care of this issue so I'd be rated that comment high side a rated that
011low so the opposite perspective is the comments on the other side of the screen and then one comment I just that extended studies should be out because it doesn't reach all students lll speech ot PT services do not reach all students shall we cut those it is inequitable to say that advanced learners don't deserve services kudos to brain for addressing the needs of all sight a didn't like that comments I'd be supportive of that common essentially the interesting way that some of this is how you read it to write because the side a people can also be saying that they don't agree or that they it depends which half of the comment they might agree in which is why we have conversations like this to figure out a little bit more about what people are
012thinking and the common ratings hi district administration team what is the district team doing to increase funding Brighton should continue to pressure Albany again a lot of funding areas this seems to be clearly an area where people all agree which shouldn't be a big surprise to us that we ought to be doing more about funding and our common ratings low I think we should I have full-time assistant superintendent for equity and diversity both groups didn't see that as a high priority or as higher priority my children where I come from one involved in restorative circles they were unsure of the reason to connections cannot be forced was also a common rating low in terms of the Commons and what we sent out to the community are the reports that also include these themed areas so
013they can breakdown if you wanted to take specifically a look at the comments they came up the thoughts that came up around funding issues is specific to New York State also themed or specific comments are on budget cuts to the budget or program you can hover the on those you can click on them and see exactly what the comments were particularly to that area so that's where community members again all emailed out the link to that people can take a look at those if they want to dig into it further the beauty of it is the analysis is being done being done by everybody it's crowd-sourced analysis right so you get to really dig into the data yourself and see what you believe that it's telling you the bar function shows that the same way
014so without going further into those that's what helped drive the agenda tonight for us to think about the things that we wanted to share with you and talk a little bit more about and then you're gonna help drive the agenda in the second half of the night by answering more comments in the exchange that we've shared with you so I'm going to ask now that we jump into these five minutes of fame debbie is going to jump in to talk to us about technology the wonder one initiative we are in the fourth year of our one-to-one it's on yep that's for the auto for the broadcast anyway so as those of you who have been around for the last 40 years know we started with our eighth grade and then we have been building up
015and this year's juniors are also have the tablet devices and then next year we will complete the build-out each year I would say throughout this entire process it's changed it's changed as we're learning it's changed as we're acquiring tools and I'm going to talk a little bit about those in just a second as well as our teachers and our staff members and their abilities to kind of really estimator judge when the appropriate use of technology versus when you know too much when what we call the pencil and paper task is the task at hand and so we've shifted and changed every year and I really anticipate that we would be doing the same over the course of the next few years however that being said we have some observations that we have been making quite
016routinely and I've tried to list them up here both positives as well as things that we continue to look at so if you take a look we have noticed that you know by bringing on and providing our students with real-time access to devices that they have just-in-time access to information and they're using that information there's probably not a person in this room who doesn't rely on you know their smartphone or the computer on a daily basis to you know again to access that information to not only answer questions but to really make meaning of what you you know what you're thinking about and what you're learning and we want our students to be able to access those tools as well in just the same sort of fashion we've seen greater opportunities for alternative assessments we've
017seen students creating videos we've seen podcasts we have seen multiple types of apps being used story jumper comes to mind where students are being afforded opportunities that they weren't before to really express themselves and really share with their teachers with you know what they're learning and how you know and how they're making meaning of that obviously increased collaborative opportunities for students right now again if you're the parent of an eighth through through 11th grader you probably are familiar with the term Schoology or OneNote both are tools that we use pretty extensively to not only provide students with content through the teacher but also they provide forms for students to interact and so you know previously where we would put students in groups and we'd say you know you need to you need to collaborate on
018this one project it relied very heavily on just not on real-time access or real-time face-to-face interactions real-time face-to-face interactions are very very important and we get we provide kids with that but maybe you're the student who lives on the other side of town whose mom can't take you to Starbucks so that you can meet with your team on a Tuesday night to finish your project well the tools that we've been using provides students with that opportunity to continue that collaboration outside of the school day and then also increase organizational abilities again I mentioned the tools one note and Schoology primarily but there's other tools that our teachers are helping our students learn how to use and you know know more that the dog ate it or I forgot my homework because you're carrying it around
019with you all the time and we have seen especially for certain populations of students this to be an incredible boon with regards to their abilities to complete that work as far as ongoing focuses we know that we still need to start thinking about or continuing to think about the balance between pencil and paper activities you know there's not a week that goes by that we don't say with the teachers and we'd hear the teacher saying if a pencil on paper is that it works use it right if it's you know because there are certainly certain learning certain learning activities that that are afforded or take advantage of that and and are necessitated by that and then the impact of screen time we heard that loud and clear last year from her parents as well we
020turned that loud and clear from our parents so this year the the district's innovative teaching and learning team will be taking a look at screen time not just about what types of screen time makeup or constitute this kind of arching umbrella but also what does the amount and are some screen times more desirable and less desirable than others so you can probably look forward to the results of that particular study I think I said a little bit later on great thank you very much dr. Baker little mo I'm really gonna challenge the camera crew on this so I have the the technical part of the presentation tonight so one of the comments talked about revenue revenue sources and what we're doing to to fully fund our program so I thought it would be important to
021set the foundation with looking at the revenues and putting it in context our reliance on property taxes and our reliance on state aid so the chart on the left-hand side is our is our revenue chart so we are 65% reliant on taxes 21% state aid we have fund balance and reserves which is four percent of our total revenues and that's a big part when we talk about urine spending and margins and risk protections that is that's an important piece because if we reduce our reliance on that then we have to reduce our reliance on the spending side too so if someone says well your see we have somewhat money left over in year and a certain spending line item we can try to tighten that up but the first thing that has to come out
022is this is this revenue line item so that's four percent of it then we have County sales tax which is four percent with other tuitions that we charge back and other services for the private school so children that are attending the private schools in the areas that Brighton is providing services to we build that back to their home districts and all other revenue is 6% so what I thought I'd do then is disaggregate the state aid portion of it so this 21 percent I disaggregated here so about 50 percent of that is foundation Aid and that's where all the discussion is because that's where we're receiving about 50 percent of what is due to us in accordance with the formula so eight million dollars in relation to our property taxes it's about almost a 16
023percent representation of what we're short in the formula so when people say you know why you keep talking about that is a significant tax shift from state and local dollars to or from State dollars to local dollars and the rest are reimbursable aids so this is all money that we spend and then in the next year we get it back so there's transportation aid there's building aid and all related to capital projects and we have BOCES expenditures high-cost aids and things like that so all of that money is built into the budget and we can relatively predict what that revenue source is going to be going forward so again just to put it in the context here this is the the chart from the previous slide so what we did is we looked at what
024our projections are going forward and so trying to roll forward the new money that's going to be available to support our operating program in the 2021 budget so I looked at those major sources and we calculated so tax levy from operations so we expect new money to support incremental costs or new programs new initiatives is about 900 thousand dollars or 1.4 percent increase in that spending so that is available a hundred percent for operations then we're also going to receive new money through the text levy specifically for the capital project so we went out in 2017 we voted for a project the voters voted for project that reimbursement aid starts eighteen months after that project approval so that money is earmarked for the debt associated with the project so that's not money that we can
025account for from operations when we look at foundation aid based on recent trends and absent a major shift in in the funding well then honoring the formula or a change or overhaul I would expect that we would get similar money new money that we received next year which is about three hundred thousand dollars and represents as a percentage three point six five percent so that in itself sounds like oh that's a decent percentage of increase but three hundred thousand dollars in the context of an 80 million dollar budget doesn't go all that far so that's available for operations and we look at building aid again specific to the capital project one point four million dollars that's going to be new money and you know the state's response to say well look how much more brain
026is getting well that's based on the contract that we have from an expense based aid formula and then other expenses so money that we're spending this year the incremental cost of those expense based aides that is two hundred thousand dollars three point four percent and that would be available to support ongoing programs so when you look at the operating course I calculate a total of one point four million dollars that would be available in new spending and that would support about a one point eight percent increase in operations costs so that's the context of our projections going forward so I just went in to recap where we were last year and I'll go quick with this specific to the capital because if you remember that capital levy on the previous set and the previous slide
027it was one point four percent and there's the two percent tax levy right well we're actually not going to get that full two percent going into next year because of this scenario thanks dad so we've been in a fortunate position with our capital allocations of paying cash for projects that we've been getting more building aid than we have in debt service that is weaning off in the next couple of years so now we're going to have an incremental cost of that one point of that point six so typically it's two percent is what you think about for operations under the tax cap point six of that is earmarked to offset that capital so it's a shift from capital to operations so we have to build that money in over the next couple of years and
028that diverts away from operations a little bit lastly I need next night Thanks so this is where we were this is where we learned last year and this was the the executive budget proposal the first budget that went out we have our debt we have our building aid which is the orange and then we have the net levy and where we were budgeting so we've been planning for this capital project over the last couple of years so we were actually budgeting more than what we need and then the levy and our goal was to put a plan forth that stabilize the impact in the tax levy we weren't unable to do that last year so we had to take a little bit off of what we've been saving and now we have an ink I'll
029cost in the project budget and then we'll achieve stabilization so we got one more year of more money that's going to be need to be needed to be raised before we can stabilize the impact so that's something that we're contending with in this upcoming budget year tax cap wise I presented this the last meeting so I'll just go over quickly we were at two point three four percent this year last year eighteen nineteen twenty excuse me next year with the capital exclusion this big amount here that was for the capital project it would be at four point three two percent and then it stabilizes based on generally the the two percent formula plus and plus or minus the factors in the pilots last one so the last part was what's it look like and what
030do we talk about so what's included in this presentation is the list of contingent budget items that were developed last year in the post vote format some of which we took this year we deferred some of the costs which will be building back in and ramping back up over the next year or so some of the money that we've been setting aside for full-day K we reduce that off to save program but that's a commitment that we've made to implement that program so we'll have to build that back in over this next couple of budget years all the rest then were non mandated we identified all the non mandated programs and services and you know for consideration of what we need to be reduced if we need to save off the incremental costs and reduce
031to comply with with the tax gap sure if you want me to go in more detail with that but certainly we can answer more questions so what I've been with the last five minutes of fame so to speak and I'll make sure to turn the alarm off so since I was apparently incapable of silence I'm an eye one I want to make sure to the point is maybe the reason why we are trying to do these in five minutes is we can present you ad nauseam we can present you to boredom and Oblivion and have so much data available to us that the challenge for us is to try and condense that to a point where we're giving you kind of the main points here's the point that we want you to walk away from
032and some of the feedback that you're asking for through the exchange my job is to talk to you very quickly about advocacy and timeline lots of questions about what is happening in the district we haven't heard anything there have been a couple of news items out from the district about this and are on the website links are available to us if people want to go back and take a look at them we've had multiple meetings with our legislative representatives and talked through who do we need to talk to how do we make the point strategizing which legislators to go to so not just our own but legislators and other parts of the state whose districts might be similarly affected and had a lot of strategy discussions around what to do next and who to be
033talking to and that goes all the way back starting really right after the budget vote in May met in June had meetings over the summer as well we developed then the narrative and our advocacy package so to speak which is a set of documents that demonstrates very clearly the current state of the district in terms of state aid what went wrong where specifically in the formula we haven't been getting our fair share or our fair shake and being able to demonstrate that to legislators so basically what what our pitch is and updated that for current numbers provided that estimate of the New York State Education Committee round table on state aid in Buffalo had the opportunity to sit in that meeting and provide that package sent that out again that's a news item that was
034sent out and is available on the website if people want to take a look at that also presented that to the assembly committee so it should say the New York State Assembly committee not Senate Assembly their education community at their round table in Syracuse just about a week and a half ago as well will provide additional testimony on December 3rd at Senate hearings in New York City and then will be meeting with governor's office and key legislators over the next four months again to make that same case explain that we've also met with our fight for brighton partners in this provided feedback and the narrative to fight for brighton so they could be operating from that same message point with that same data set and we'll continue to do that as well that advocacy is
035also something extends to our board education attending legislative meetings work and a legislative committee from Mineral County school boards and being a part of that process and those meetings with legislators they know people have asked well what is the district doing there were questions around well what is the board doing we are a team that works on all of these things together develops the materials together and develop strategy together meets with groups of people together whether its fight for brighter legislators we're all working on that simultaneously and participating and that process and we'll continue to do that there are also some people that ask well what can we do as community members I would encourage you to work with fight for Brighton just been such a powerful advocacy group on behalf of the district certainly
036that's one way to go and and at the end of the day contacting your local legislators so that's the that's your representative group in Albany and those are the people you should talk to I think the governor's office plays a big big role in this conversation with their initial his initial proposal before the legislature weighs in and that's a place to go to is contacting the governor's office it should be pointed out you can get all those materials online in that package but if you take a look what's really interesting and lose just an absolute genius and in working through this and figuring this out the formula itself is I think genius in the sense that it is meant to account for exactly what your demographics are in the district in in real time so
037the kids that you are committed to educating and the ability for your community to pay and they're there I don't know 15 or so factors within that formula but it's every type of child in the district and it's the combined wealth ratio in the district and it's based on a series of indexes and there's a lot of debate within the formula and both of those sessions that I attended there was debate about within the formula are we measuring the right things I'd actually make the suggestion that if they just followed the formula that they currently have despite weaknesses old indexes old numbers old percentages being used random ways to apply the formula if they just followed the formula we'd be in a much better place than we are today and the quick point that I'd
038make to you is 10 years ago if you look at the way aid was distributed across the state it was distributed based on particulars shares regional shares which is a political solution so in other words Long Island got a certain percentage of the total amount of money in New York City got a total amount a percentage of the total amount Western New York Central New York etc you get a share of the total pot of money that has nothing to do with what the formula says you should get based on your current kids and your ability to pay it's just a share politically it's a political solution and my suggestion to both groups was that that's not a criticism that's a reality they should own that actually and have some way to account for that
039in their own dividing of the money but still be giving money to places that have done it's treated that they have a need for that and the demonstration is not a made-up demonstration it's based on your actual kids and your demographics in the district so if they just started there and then they were equitable in how they had to reduce that we'd be in a much better place the shares in this last year's budget and ten years ago exactly the same the same percentage is going to the same regions because again that's the political solution no legislature legislature wants to come home with less money than they did the year before and that's the political reality so we've made the point that if you look back when the first money was promised in 2000 78
040the total amount of money that should have come to the district and that year and they gave us that number they said this is what you should get if we could afford to pay the whole thing we still ten years later have not gotten that amount of money and then our growth over time the amount that our number should have grown over time just that amount we've gotten about half of our growth over time so our number for example ballpark should have gone on four million dollars it's only gone up two million dollars so there's a pretty dramatic difference between what our numbers tell us we should be getting and what we are getting and we're making that case and the reality is they have to find a way to navigate their political reality with
041what is for us on the ground the day-to-day working with kids and the funding that our taxpayers deserve in order to support that so that's the legislative advocacy part of it and then people have asked about a timeline timeline wise will react to the governor's proposal in January we we will advocate of course as I just indicated in the previous slide in all those ways but then we react to what the governor's proposal is whatever it says at that point is then where the advocacy switches gears and we are then approaching our legislators and the governor's office saying okay this is what you proposed that this is how it impacts us what people should know is within the formula being applied across the state districts are grouped into tiers based on certain demographic characteristics and
042that's how they manipulate the shares in the formula so you might look like another district somewhere else in the state in two areas that they decided to use because they needed to help those two districts so you get lumped into that tier but that particular administration of the formula doesn't really help you so we need to work on being in the right tier and working with our legislators to get us then into the right place which will drive aid more really than it is right now so react to the governor's proposal and then right now we're actively looking at the areas that were slated for reduction so Lu had two slides on those those were areas that in the previous budget we had explained after the last budget vote the the non the budget vote
043that didn't pass what we would have to look at long term and so now we're continuing to look at those items find ways to do those things differently wanting to support children and are there different ways to fund them are there different ways to support the program long term with a different cost amount and really having to dig in each of those so that's kind of the creative process right now I'm trying to figure out other still ways to do these things that we think are so important for kids and actively looking at that right now and then what we'll do earlier than we've ever done it before is provide a list of those potential reductions to the community in the January February timeframe probably later because we'll still be react in the governor's budget
044mid-january and ask for feedback on those items we're pretty clear in the fact that we had to borrow from places like our equipment spending or places where we had put money aside for staffing for full-day kindergarten out of those lines to hold off on reductions now the easiest answer actually would have been just to go ahead and make those reductions immediately and we didn't think that was the right thing for kids for staff for the community so we went to the other places where we had funding and we could afford to do that but those expenses they exists going for they are a reality they have to be paid for whether that's equipment that needs to be replaced or the staffing for full-day kindergarten which will start in September of 2021 so when that funding
045is needed the places that we said will have to be reduced will have to be reduced unless funding changes and that's that is the reality so there are a variety of those items and we've detailed those and we'll continue to go out and ask the community for feedback and for prioritizing of those as we move into the budget process so those are the five minute of Fame items we want to jump now into the hot stove and I'm going to ask so people are answer some of these questions and make a one minute or last quick comment or 30 second or less quick comment on these start times came up a lot Lou in the conversation in the exchange and several different comments about that as we saw the community in this exchange at least
046to a split on feedback on those when we looked at start times challenges do we encounter what's your overall perspective on where we're heading so the challenges that we were facing were transportation and logistics given that our schools have different lengths of lengths of day so our high school having a longer day than our elementary didn't allow for an easy flip with transportation being transportation neutral and then in the private schools that we service as well the second biggest challenge was the facility use and how to accommodate all the programs and services that we do after school youth programs district sponsored programs and the facilities that we have so what we're working on this year is we know we have to provide four buses for full-day kindergarten our director of transportation is looking at different
047scenarios whether it's increased walking distances whether it's different drop-off configurations you know starting after 8 o'clock maybe to try to what we do to limit the growth in transportation to that for buses and then with facilities so I think we know what we need to do the problem is that we're waiting for the state aid to reset from this the 2017 capital project it's a five-year aid reset to be able to invest in our facilities to get full reimbursement and minimize the cost on the local local taxpayer Thank You Carolyn rabidue our director of student support services can you tell us a little bit about mental health work being done in the district right now I would love to as you something to remember about four or five years ago we did a mental health
048evaluation of all of our support systems in Brighton and there were many recommendations that came out of that evaluation from the University of Buffalo in the past couple of years we have implemented many new initiatives because mental health has become our biggest umbrella everything comes under mental health and as looking at our kids and supporting them so we have cristinaw ha-hee who is our k-12 navigator who helps all families to look at services outside of the district whether the family needs some support and to provide some counseling for kids in our district we've implemented second steps we is a program to help students in all the classrooms kindergarten through fifth grade have lessons on social-emotional health friendships flexible thinking problem-solving so all of our kids are receiving those mental health supports from our mental health
049staff k5 we have I see us up there but we'll talk a little bit about restorative practice and culture building circles that will help support all of our kids k12 with mental health and making connections with adults and each other which will hopefully influence everything that happens for them at school and the Wellness Committee the overarching theme is building bridges of trust so how do we support families and students in promoting more personal interactions and having more meetings where people can talk to each other and we can have those personal connections we are looking at doing screen agers - for those of you remember screen agers one a couple of years ago is one of our best events we've ever had in Brighton and we had hundreds of people turnout for that we're the Wellness
050Committee is looking at that and what that might look like for the community and partnering with the technology pieces and what does screen time do for our kids and their social-emotional health and we will be offering a mental health first aid for parents students or excuse me parents and faculty how to talk to your kids about mental health issues like how to put the band-aid on before you can get to the hospital so we have a lot of things happening that come under the umbrella of mental health and I will tell you that is the first question and is a guiding principle for everything that we're working on thanks very much dr. David Baker can you tell us about implicit bias training culturally responsive curriculum efforts in the district parts of that training - our
051staff - three years ago now at this point we are embedding implicit bias training in all of our new teacher work that we're doing rolling into culturally responsive curriculum and specific to that we have taken our current framework that we use to design all of our curriculum and a year ago embedded the requirements if you will but the Usos and provided the associated professional development for staff so when they are writing curriculum they are doing so through a culturally responsive lens great thank you I'll address the win at t CMS cuz mr. Thomas is probably squirming is he thinking what is that up there for a couple different comments in the exchange about the wind period it stands for what I need this was the extra 30 minutes that's at the end of the day
052at the middle school similar the flex period the high school except the timing of that it's been enormously successful at the high school where it is in the day and it's been more of a challenge at the middle school perhaps that's developmental perhaps that structure perhaps its timing I'm really happy to tell you though that's being looked at it as a matter of fact immediately and we're not looking to wait all the way until next year to try something different we're expecting to make announcements to middle school staff students and parents pretty soon about the idea of moving that wind period at different times during the day through the course of this year to actually pilot that perhaps by quarter to try it in different places instead of being locked into something that's not working
053as well as we would like to for some kids it does work well for some staff it does for others it doesn't we're gonna try some different things move that two different times today and see if we get a different result and hats off to the staff of T CMS for thinking outside the box and kind of changing the structure on that the administrators we're trying to find a way to make that happen right now we're really excited about that another question or comment that came up was around instructional time in days and somebody just mentioned we have the shortest day and the least number of days so it's actually not entirely accurate we don't have the short stay we actually added 30 minutes in collaboration with Brighton teacher Association several years ago and that's
054what resulted in win time and flex time at the 612 level and more instructional time 30 additional minutes as a matter of fact at the k5 level and that came up over and over again with our colleagues around the county really being envious of the fact that we're ya able to add to that time we were likely middle of the pack or so but we're definitely not the shortest day and in terms of the number of days of the year we're not likely if it's shortest but we are probably close and part of that is because we take a different set of holidays off than everybody else to but I'd say you know I wouldn't tell my colleagues this but we maximize the time that we're here so we do our best to come up
055with the best schedule for kids and parents and on the days that are shorter for us in the district that might be different from other people the early release days there was a really powerful impactful days of staff development where our staff as continuous learners are engaged constantly in their own professional development or in an opportunity to meet with parents one-on-one and have parent conferences that we think actually is a pretty valuable part of instructional time might not be with the child ring from us but it's certainly with some group or in our own professional learning that's awfully awfully important somebody made a comment about teachers not being fully qualified I can say because I'm involved in the final interviews for all of our staff members all of our teaching staff members along with dr.
056Baker and mrs. Rabideau that actually they are all fully qualified our teachers absolutely are as a matter of fact they're not just fully qualified they're highly qualified we are really proud of the people that we're bringing on board so it just might be a misperception that somebody has and if anybody wants to follow up and that we're happy to talk about the qualifications of our teachers in fact Lulu gets anxious about the amount of experience we are hiring with because we go out and recruit we look for and then compensate for that experience we're very proud of that as a matter of fact getting people to come here from other districts from other places who've done really great great work so I would say they're not only fully qualified they are highly qualified and a
057great great group of people restored practices Carolyn already mentioned I do want to touch on the accelerated coursework extended studies and then I may ask Lou to finish up this portion with the air-quality comment on what we're doing around that Ron accelerate coursework and extended studies a couple different comments and they were interesting because they're kind of different take on things that normally come up we have expanded our offerings our AP offerings pretty significantly throughout the district and our extended studies in a couple of different ways we've looked at equity and access to those courses feeling as though every students should have the opportunity to be involved in rigorous accelerated coursework so we've already seen a change in the number of kids particularly the secondary level for accessing accelerated coursework by sub group the largest
058growth in the african-american community among our students who are taking more AP courses and graduating with AP credit more than ever before we're up over 70% total of our students leaving here with at least one AP course under their belt the importance of that is we know that studies will tell us kids are likely to be much more successful at the college level and in completion of college if they've had access to college coursework prior to going to college so we want to make sure that that's open everybody we've changed the entire way that students are recommended for those courses it's really wide open for students to tackle that coursework we've also though most importantly changed the way we support that work and making sure that we're providing kids with the necessary supports to all
059be able to access the coursework so across the spectrum really having an opportunity for all students and been very focused at the elementary level in making sure that we're looking for equity within our enrollment and looking to see the giftedness in every child and so trying to really be aware of our own implicit biases our own strategies and our systems for identifying accelerated students and make sure that it really truly is accessible to all students we are not looking actually to reduce extended studies so that that's had to be part of the conversation in the budget process we would actually say philosophically we'd love to be expanding extended study services and supporting everybody I know different we are in those other areas that were mentioned in the one comment about ot PT or English language
060learners those are services that are provided as a mandate for children who need those specific services so there wouldn't be a discussion around eliminating something that is absolutely needed by students either so a little bit of a different take on that we're glad people are interested in that tapping again happy to talk more about that if people like to discuss that further last but not least Lou can you tell us about air quality during construction so we have we've engaged in a construction manager to manage that in addition we have a third-party inspector Tara con that monitors and oversees project activities specific to any asbestos abatement none of that happens during the school school day that is strictly monitored by cold it's a code it's overseen by the Department of Labor OSHA passion which is
061the implica complied of it so it's it's strictly monitored and all the rules and code is is strictly adhere to great and I skipped one important item that you've been absolutely integral to Lou can you tell us a little bit about the diversity and hiring efforts in the district as well sure so last year we developed and we presented to the Board of Education a playbook if you will that's the analogy we've been using and we're approaching it from an aggressive recruitment a plan so both short term and long term recruitment strategies we've looked at environmental attributes in design State and this year we're working on a retention program assuming we're going to be successful in diversifying our staff we want to make sure that when they're on board we have best practices human resource
062practices and environmental attributes to ensure success long term great thank you very much so before I flip to the the exchange for tonight and we facilitate another conversation and open up the floor if anybody else wants to add if you could take a look have you have you gone to the QR code or clicked on the link to you need to me to keep it up on the screen for one more second and all are you all set okay no no problem I'll keep it up there I'm sorry now that I announced your name to everybody on Facebook by the way there's 417 people have engaged in the Facebook live at this point so thanks to the 417 in here count and we'll give you a minute to to load your questions your comments or
063suggestions in the exchange before I start to pull them up on the screen and keep starring other people's thoughts it'd be great if everybody is able to star at least ten of the thoughts that have been shared and if you're watching on Facebook live and you're able to go into the exchange or add comments there Dan's loading your comments in as well you just pointed at that QR code and then you tap on the link at the top of your screen you can also go to Safari that's the link right there - and I colored I think if you're on an angle that maybe that's tricky all right everybody in if you're not I have the link right here to I can pass this to you trying to take that it was right okay so
064these are the comments that are coming in live right now just take a couple more minutes and then we'll start to have a discussion about those very thorough conversation appreciate the gathering feedback together conversation tonight thanks to Mark's wife for putting that comment okay so now the ideas we'll just have a facilitated conversation here kind of summarizing these and asking some people to comment on each of them first the the positive comment being thank you for offering this forum the second one very thorough conversation I really appreciate that feedback again trying to do things differently we did this once during the budget process last year before the second budget vote not with this volume of people in the room it was just a different stab at it and really excited to try and look at
065different ways to engage people in these conversations so thanks for the feedback we'll certainly continue to try this and other innovative ways to engage with you it's all about the bottom line please update the the 2021 budget which is what we're able to do tonight as well the recording of this will be available on the website so if you want to go back through whose presentation it was very thorough very good and you certainly could take a look at that question here about lunchtime really interesting to little especially if they need to stand in line first to buy lunch healthy for students to be rushed to eat so this was part of the conversation with the middle school to around their schedule we don't have an assigned lunch period at the high school there's of
066course conversation at the k5 level this is good feedback I don't really have an answer other than to say to you that's I don't think that that's wrong I think that's something we ought to keep thinking about in terms of having kids having enough time to have a healthy time there I thought exchanges Pro Matic we want another feedback mechanism for many reasons including the ways in which it's moderated we're actually moderating only right now comments if they are rude hurtful name a particular individual etc but for the most part the comments that are in are put in are all showing up so unless they were flagged for those reasons which wouldn't be comments we'd ever in our environment necessarily support that's not the positive productive kind of conversation we're trying to sponsor we try
067and actually be as vulnerable as we possibly can I can tell you as somebody standing here and I know the conversations of my colleagues it's very vulnerable to not have necessarily a lot of prepared material and to be kind of on-the-fly answering these kind of questions so we're trying to always be very open with that and I would say to you you always have the feedback mechanism of coming to talk to us come to board meetings offer comments send us email we respond to everything come and meet with any individual administrator give us that feedback every way possible we're willing to engage with you certainly and always thinking about different ways to do that this has certainly been a tool that has given us a tremendous amount of feedback from so many community members to
068be able to enter it it's been very very valuable tool that we'll continue to use but it won't be the only tool face to face is often for us the most valuable kind of conversation this is just a way to engage with as many people and as deep and as inclusive away as we possibly can the anonymity of it is I think very helpful for people too as we talked about make space for the quiet ones allow people who maybe don't feel comfortable coming to a board meeting putting their hand up in the air or having their name on an email or a phone call to still provide their feedback it really does give everybody an opportunity to be a part of the circle restored practices do not seem to be open and consistent awful
069ways kids are confused so we're at the beginning of this and actually we did an observation the the board board members myself and went and joined a restorative circle at French Road that it was just enormous ly helpful and some of us have been a part of them in all different ways throughout the district whether they were in discipline situations community building situations peace circles etc really really valuable work but the implementation of anything requires a lot of training and a lot of buildup of capital in that area human capital and so that is something we're working on and making sure that we're consistent in that if you take a look at last the last board meeting before tonight two weeks ago and it's posted online betsy Bolling did a great job of presenting the
070plan for that and what the training will be and how we're rolling it out so we've had a huge number of staff members trained already but we're continuing to build in that way and actually using a lot of restorative practices with the staff as well so we hope that kids see that as a pretty evenly provided opportunity and that that continues to build i'm timeline from funding later school start times there isn't one and we continue to look at ways that that could happen long term but certainly with the budget change last year that maybe further off that's a significant investment for us and lou detailed some of the changes or the challenges tonight for that so there isn't a timeline we'll continue to look at that but as you can also see from the
071comments people are pretty split in that area so we'd want to make sure that the community is in favor of that before we move forward certainly a lot of comments on that and a lot of split in terms of how people feel about that and again the investment is a pretty significant one so there is a specific timeline so a couple different comments some of which I've already talked about it doesn't seem to be a plan or any district by communication about a plan for diversity equity and inclusion we need to think about then how we're communicating because again last board meaning each of those areas were reported out on and there was a follow-up email the next at the end of that week the district by dnews that went out that detail has been
072effective blueprint work that's being done on each of those three subcommittees the hiring the family engagement in the special education subcommittee certainly we heard more about that tonight as well more transparency in terms of how students are selected for extensions and AP classes it's definitely not up to any one person there's a system for that a process and parents can actually refer their children and ask for them to participate in that program and there's a process for reviewing that as well we're pretty wide open with parents about that so if that's something this person liked to talk more about we'd love to sit down with them and dig into that as well school start times we've talked quite a bit about there's a person here is looking for another child they have an opportunity for
073gymnastics that's not currently a team that we're looking to start and currently in the current budget situation we wouldn't be investing in a new team at this point to be very candid with the person asking that question certainly always looking for different opportunities for kids but we'd have to be reducing opportunities that are currently in place but certainly something we could explore further and a last comment that somebody is mentioned here about more political pressure garret our share of funding from all those involved so that's the comments that are in the exchange right now like to offer people here in the room the opportunity we just ask that you speak into the microphone we can pass that to you just so that it's picked up on the audit on Facebook live anybody here want to
074make a comment or have any suggestions anything they'd like to offer tonight as well while the microphone is going around I'd like to thank our board members who are in the audience tonight administers in the audience tonight is a great way for us to gather feedback Cavan you mentioned a lot of meetings over the last few months can you give us some feedback and what happened at these meetings what's going on what kind of feedback are we just talking to the same people over and over again I know you're probably expanding that out to new people but do we have next steps based on all these meetings that you had yeah I mean the next steps right now we're to prepare our package and start to provide that so we're at that stage of okay
075we put that narrative package together with the most real-time up-to-date data of how we're currently impacted by state aid so not just the argument from before but the most recent and that's the stage we're at at this point I'm thinking next steps for the community in other words how can we get more people involved right and call write letters to legislators but in an organized fashion is there any way in an organized fashion so I would direct you to fight for Brighton and Nelson and the reason why I would do that is because although we can be advocates as as administrators in the district or board members we can't necessarily lead an advocacy campaign ourselves I understand that that being said our colleagues in fight for Brighton have been an incredibly powerful and resourceful community
076group I would send you to their Facebook page the fight for Brighton how Facebook page and I'm familiar with the page that will go to the page I know they've done a good job but I think we got to expand it beyond that maybe involve other community organizations in other words we got to apply strong political pressure for change to take place right you can't do it it has to come from the residents and unless we get together it's not going to happen so I'm looking I'm looking for ways to make that happen Nelson the patent is available on Facebook he will take any of your volunteer errands but no I know so I appreciate that I am I am and you know the Brighton Chamber of Commerce is willing to help do that I
077Prix and there may be other organizations that would do the same I really think we got a weekend a flight harder we got a flight target I don't disagree with you that as much community pressure as can be place would be very very important and certainly I will tell you the legislators that that we work with are listening and they're open and they will meet and they will talk about it the difficulty is every community across the state of New York is coming to seeing not the same thing they are everybody has different arguments and it's the ability to illuminate that and then for people to say okay matter-of-fact for legislators who do not live here and do not represent us in this area to buy into that and be willing to either give up
078aid on their end of things or to take a political risk to provide that for us and so that's the trick and the challenge hi Judy Wegman I'm a teacher here in Brighton I'm also the president of the Brighton Teachers Association and I am also a taxpayer of Brighton so I wanted to connect with what was just mentioned I'm full support of that and I do want the community to know that the bright teachers association works and in great partnership with with the Board of Education with our administrators all around the increase of foundation aid and I have now reached out this year in probably a greater way than ever before to New York State United Teachers so that's our union for the entire state all my way of advocating in a very targeted way
079for Brighton and and the fact that it is truly a crime with the the lack of foundation aid that we're receiving so so there's a very large organisation that's going to be moving with us and as soon as I receive any type of action plan I'll be rolling it out with sharing it with of course our fight for Brighton group but anyone else who wants to know about it because I have a total agreement with you every single one of us who pays taxes in this town should be contacting our political representatives to well start doing their job for us thank you now it's not giving an interesting and judi an interesting statistic within the tier of schools that we were placed in last year's budget if you look at the pure per pupil increase
080to our aid one district in that group is Ossining housing we lumped into that category for whatever demographics we have put in there within the formula they received four hundred thirty-nine dollars more per student and ours was about thirty-nine dollars more per student so that gives you the disparity of how these things end up in the in the well the microphone makes its way around I'll make another comment there is a person asking after sharing that you have met with the legislative communities on New York State ed what is your gut feeling on another tax cap issue the spring will Albany provide funding is needed so I hate to commit us to just you know one particular number one particular theory however I am very willing to say to you that it is highly highly
081highly unlikely that we are going to come back to the community and ask to exceed the property tax cap I don't mind saying that I think our board members would agree the message was pretty loud and clear from people in the community that that's not something that is acceptable so he'd never say 100% because circuit some circumstance could change where the community says no you absolutely have to do this two factors that play low this year one is our cap numbers much higher so the cap number being much higher would mean your tax increase to go over the cap would be even higher than that and that's not something that we're ever interested in proposing to the community number two again it was very clear within the vote last year and with people in the
082community that that's not something people are interested in and we try and be very respectful of the messages that are sent to us and what the community wants us to do my gut is that we are going to face a significant challenge though again this year and my gut is that because the state of New York is not swimming in additional funding that we're still in the same situation if I'm being very candid with the community we will we have not given up we will absolutely work and work and work and work and work and beg and plead I would stop short of ever saying steal we will do everything we can right to make that happen but the reality is we are planning for there not being a big change in that this is
083we're not being unrealistic in that conversation do not mistake that though for any in any way shape or form acquiescing to that situation either but in our planning we're trying to also be realistic in there right I would just add that I'm thrilled to hear that the chamber of commerce and other people want to help support the efforts it's going to continue and I think what the community needs to just be ready for is that IDM kind of what Kevin's saying including the fact that the tax kept where we are what will happen we don't know what the governor's proposal will be we can anticipate what that is Liu does a beautiful job of anticipating that but I do think what I would ask for the community to think about is just preparing themselves to
084to be advocates to be able to speak whenever they are present with a legislator or with any person that's you know with within the education funding realm to make sure that you're mentioning it but also to be ready for the fact that there probably will be some advocacy requested of you in the near future and hopefully you'll recognize that this is going to become a routine practice as opposed to a one-off opportunity great thank you two other comments well if anybody else has anything in the room they'd like to say one I noticed your poor behavior from students shouldn't be tolerated by the school huge distraction disrespect to other students teachers absolutely couldn't agree more that I think you're absolutely right and we try and focus on any behavior that happens in our schools all
085the time I think our teachers our assistant principals our principals everybody involved in that conversation actually is very much on top of that and we're in agreement so we say thank you very much for that feedback that's something that we're focused on and really focused again on that conversation from both a mental health perspective but also a restorative perspective using restorative practices actually to rebuild relationships repair relationships and build community within these conversations so we are not also looking at behaviors transactional you know you do this this happens and we walk away from it we're saying how do we change that behavior in a positive way there's a comment here about the problem with the artificial intelligence AI algorithm that categorizes comments by topic changing school start times actually got 13 comments out seven the
086greatest number of any topic it should be on the agenda the reality is when we first set these for one we're looking at some of the highest-rated comments but among the 13 versus the seven I'm guessing this person is talking about the seven within the common ratings the common ratings high common ratings low and similar that means that those seven comments were the ones that those two groups had very disparate rankings on I don't know about the other six I'd have to look at those six and you can regrow regroup within those that artificial intelligence function as well so we could take a further look at that it could also be that some of those changing school start times fell into a different category for example under budget because people know also there's an expense
087to that so I'd have to take a further look that what the bottom line is you all need to know is we look at every single common we dig into every single common and we analyze every comment that's all part of the discussion so none of that is missed in this either we want to make sure we hit as many topics tight as we possibly could and some of the ones that were most pressing for people for example the budget which is why we certainly spent the most time on them any other comments questions suggestions we're just about out of time we went a little bit over appreciate people hanging in for that this exchange will remain open through the end of the week as well so if people want to dig further into that
088this is great feedback that the board and the administrative team the leadership team certainly uses in our discussions as well and we really appreciate the opportunity to gather this amount of information particular it's deep it's rich and it's very thoughtful so thank you for that no further ado have a great night thanks everyone this has been a special presentation from the Brighton Central School District Board of Education you [Music]