001it's pretty straightforward after we complete a third report we may shift that around because field standards may not be here yet you can ask is any questions you have on the agenda just to touch on some of the items to address the memorandum of agreement at the end relates to the union and the district agreed to not waive any objections or write with regards to conducting pre-k using scope and that's what the moa is about so [Applause] without that i don't see joe so i'm going to move to elizabeth if you wouldn't mind starting it yeah so elizabeth hein is going to give our district safety plan every year i'm alive good evening ladies and gentlemen thanks for coming starting with the update of the district safety plan annually this state requires that review the
002district plan post it on the website follow the input and then put it in front of the board and the board votes on it they approve it we send it to the state all of this started the show made everyone very aware of active shooting and how safety is number one in our schools so this goes back that far safe schools then requiring the district safety plan that plan is basically the umbrella to our three building safety plans which are updated every year by the principals and their staff obviously we can't share a building plan with the public or some people who might not want to see it we'll see what we do in emergencies what our drills are we can't have the district plan is not that specific but all three building plants go
003to the local fire department and the sixth precinct negative copies every year i don't go too much into detail in humans elizabeth's presentation so i'll let elizabeth take it away elizabeth all right thank you thank you mr ross thank you mr brosdale thank you for letting me be part of this when we first started writing the safety plan too it's the gift that keeps on giving every year we have to update it and every year we have to add more to it depending on what the state wants so tonight is really just an update on the changes that have been put into the plan since last year as mr brosdale mentioned we have to update it annually and the mission of the district safety plan is to protect life protect lives and property response emergencies
004in a quick efficient manner okay as building principles as the superintendent we are under the understanding that an emergency can happen at any time it can happen district-wide it can happen in our buildings and we are the first responders basically until our organizations come to assist us so the district plan coordinates with local emergency plans and uses community resources such as the fire department the police department the mental health you know services in our community and we aid in recovery after disasters as part of plan this came about as mr brosdale said after columbine all school districts were looking at safety and save legislate legislation education law 2801 commissioners regulations and the operational plan in event of a health emergency are all the reasons why every year we have to have a plan in place
005both at the district level and at the building levels but as mr brosdale said the district plan is public facing this 19-page document is posted on the website for the public to review building safety plans are confidential and private [Music] we have to develop a comprehensive plan that helps to reduce and prevent emergencies respond to emergencies and recover after emergencies the public review period is after we update it in the summer it's supposed to be posted on the website for at least 30 days the board approves it and then it gets sent to the state ed department and is approved for the year that's not to say that we can't make changes that come about even after it's approved but we have to go back for approval every district is supposed to have a district
006safety team and every building is supposed to have a building safety team to review and meet and revise things as situations develop this is the same legislation these are the specifics that outlines why we have to have a district safety plan [Music] some of the things on here you'll see teachers or anybody going for an education certification now has to have two hour violence prevention training for certification the last bullet talks about all the comprehensive pieces of our district-wide safety plan and what we need as a district we need to have a code of conduct we need to have a reporting of vader incidences every year we need to have school violence prevention training which we sometimes schedule during superintendent conference days for teachers any employee needs to be fingerprinted and cleared at the state
007clearinghouse for employees and we need to have you know abuse and assaults on teachers and teacher discipline all sorts of things it's very comprehensive the goals of the plan are to prevent emergencies and respond to them we need sure that our students and staff are safe that is our number one priority as mr brazdale mentioned and any visitors to the school we need to restore operations and continue the education of children after an emergency so the sooner we respond to emergency the sooner we get the after shots over and we hear buildings or done as far as mental health to the students and staff so we can continue our goal of educating children the district-wide safety team is made up of various people um mr brazdale pictures administrators all the principals sometimes social workers site-based
008organizations and other school personnel psychologists nurses facilities so this is really the only thing that is changing in our plan this year from what we had last year and board approved we are adding pieces of an operational plan that we had to write last year in response to the coven pandemic so there's protocols in place now if we were ever to have to go through that again as far as denoting who's essential who's non-essential staggering work schedules passing out ppe to the people who needed it like the custodians so now we have protocols in place that are mentioned in the district plan for dealing with a health emergency which we never had before when we first wrote the district-wide plan the social worker used to just push into the elementary school as needed this year
009kayla muglia is in all three buildings and she's pushing in according to a schedule and she's working on a curriculum for k-6 called everyone has mental health i actually witnessed her a presentation to fifth graders and it was really helpful to see these kids knew her from previous years in the elementary school and the curriculum she was teaching was really good for them to know and lastly the high school removed challenge day and they're part of the district plan and instead they now embed safety issues in the curriculum the mental health in the health and on pe curriculum so those are the only changes that are made to the plan from last year to this year and that's it so the full plan is on the website it's been up there since august so i
010think tonight if you have any questions if not it's going to be approved and then we submit it to the state ed department thank you okay um i see that challenge day was removed from the plan does that mean i know that uh that activity was currently over the past couple years because of the pandemic does that mean challenge dating not happen or it's just not part of the emergency response safety plan yeah i really um mr premitaris would know better the answer to that unless you know mr brosdale but it's been talking about but it's not part of our safety plan per se because in the safety plan we list different program initiatives that each building has and that was listed as a high school initiative but we removed that so it could still
011possibly be done [Music] would you join us before [Music] good evening to the board of education thank you for inviting me to your meeting to present the financial statement results i am the external auditor for the school district and every year the state education department mandates that the school district have an external audit performed and what we look at is we look at financial statement presentation and acceptance as far as practices with generally accepted accounting principles to make sure that the financial statements are fairly stated we completed our audit on september 22nd and our opinions for our next wide opening unit there's been a change in the report that's been issued each opinion unit is a fund there's a general fund a special aid fund a food service fund capital project fund and when the
012board of education had the chance to look at the draft financial statement you would have noted that there's an extra classroom activity fund and a scholarship fund these are new this is as a result of implementation of gatsby 84 we have worried certain fiduciary funds are now reported as governmental funds in the financial statement in conjunction with gaspi 84 we restated open imbalances and you would have noted when you looked at the financial statement disclosures on page 53 that we had opening balance restatements to bring in the extra classroom activity fund balances the scholarship balances and those in trust in agency excuse me in addition there's a new statement a statement of fiduciary net position and a change in the fiduciary deposition to the extent that the library is the school district is the collector
013with property taxes on behalf of the library they have a custodial business custodian position and that's required to be presented under gasp 84. with respect to the financial statements there was a budget revision because of the coveted expenditures so there were approximately two million dollars of expenditures that the school district had to deal with and the board of education did pass in budget division the district is scheduled to receive for the three rounds of cares act funding they've already received the first round they've been approved and have started to receive some of the funding for the second round and then the third round or they will receive funding for in a total amount of about 2.2 million dollars so it's almost what you had approved as far as a budget revision unfortunately the timing is
014such that the funding probably will not be received in its entirety until the end of september of 2023. the district is at four percent fund balance on the unbalanced so the state education department and real property tax law says that the district should have no more than four percent of next year's budget and that seems a little bit low that is what the compliance is for the state for the school educated school district and so the school district is compliant with respect to that part of what we look at as the audit is the internal control structure so those are the checks and balances over the financial transactions really good set of checks and balances in place so these are the controls over the various financial transactions purchasing cash receipts cash disbursements any kind of
015cash receipts in billing and as a result we have not had to issue a communication to the board of education under which there's any significant deficiencies so material weakness is reported we have issued in the previous year some best practices comments with regard to the internal control structure district did go ahead and implement additional procedures i want to thank linda jensen for that um so with respect to any previous year's management letter comments those have been cleared and there are no management letter comments for this year so overall there's a good internal control structure in place good checks and balances and the financial condition of the school district is good thank you [Music] okay the board of education hereby accepts the minutes of the september 21st 2021 regular meeting as submitted [Music] thank you [Music]
016any questions on the agenda itself [Music] okay [Music] personnel a resignations board of education hillary accepts the resignation of danielle lino school district a effective october 7th 2021. paul seconded all in favor [Music] two is school district 8 lc lindquist results upon the recommendation the superintendent of the board of education here accepts the resignation for retirement purposes of l.c lundqvist school district day effective december 21st 2021. [Music] school district number three school district aide sabrina resulted upon the recommendation of the superintendent of motor vacation education everybody accepts the resignation of sabrina zanetti with the bidet effective september 30th 2021 [Music] [Applause] [Music] hereby approve the following appointment jennifer pignatello starting october 4th 2021 physician office assistant compensation step two thank you lisa i have a second i'll second that thank you any time all in
017favor all right [Music] your office assistant part-time results upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board of education hereby approve the following appointment christine benedictine court starting october 20th 2021 physician office assistant point six position compensation step four [Music] the board of education here by approves the following appointments judy coogan october 4th 2021 start date position school district aid compensation step one and project patricia genovese start date october 12 2021 physician school district aid compensation step one murray now the second second any comments all in favor [Music] non-instructional substitutes resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board of education hereby approves the following appointments daniel shank october 14 2021 start date position as substitute custodian compensation 15.50 an hour jacqueline needs october 4th 2021 shortly substitute compensation 14 an hour and kathleen gilman start
018the october 20th 2021 [Music] all right coaches and clubs one winter coaches resolved upon the recommendation superintendent the board of education nearby approved the following total employment for the 2021-22 school year these coaching appointments are based on anticipated full season schedules they are as listed as a second second thank you any comments all right number [Music] the superintendent the board of education hereby authorizes the following code of clubs and appointments uh the person is listed below as advisors for the any comments [Music] karen action items [Music] [Applause] [Music] external audit report resolves upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board of education hereby accepts the independent audit report of the general purpose financial statements including the reports on compliance and internal control and the audit of extra classroom activity fund as submitted by the firm
019of cullen and danowski for the school year july 1st 2020 through june 30th 2021 [Music] number two obsolete equipment resolved upon the recommendation of superintendent the board of education hereby declares the following items as obsolete and further authorizes disposal as listed [Music] board of education hereby adopt the amended district-wide school safety plan that is posted on the district's website for public review and commerce i have a second place [Music] donations time clocks results upon the recommendation of the superintendent the board of education hereby accepts the donation of 14 news timeframes from the eastport the south madison district [Music] donations [Music] one comment thank you to mr dylan for his generous donation to our athletics program and i'll second that comment all in favor and six whole memorandum agreement mrn agreement teachers association result on the
020recommendation of the superintendent orbit of education hereby rules the member annual agreement uh [Music] do you agree with the national school board association letter of the president and the doj using the fbi and the patriot guide to investigate parents who are here band-aids and crt and dpi or do you welcome friendly feedback and concerns we welcomed the feedback and concerns last evening we had 15 parents at the dei committee working together and we think as a school district that is an excellent way of conducting this process we would welcome others who want to participate uh it was i understand this is the primo that was a very good and productive meeting so i think to answer your question that's what we're doing and that's what we should do bob if i may comment on that
021i was invited to the participating committee and i was in attendance last night and the the topics were broad ranging and the discussion was very civil i think that there was a lot of good clarification and communication among the 16 parents actually including myself and mr primo mrs farrell was also there among others and the whole point is to foster community particularly parental participation and support for the thank you mr portlando yeah should be should if he signs up around the track of the school residence that the track cannot be used during school hours but we don't have signs up for everything but as you notice hey mr [Music] secure foreign greater than the golden times and told that it was closed for a period of time but for secure reasons we don't invite guests
022onto the campus without permission and we don't have people on the property until after school hours thank you my name is i've been a resident of mount sinai for 28 years i think i moved into the district when this uh high school was built that's probably awesome yeah and uh i'm an avid jogger until about uh four years ago and i had to have uh six uh bypasses or the same day my surgeon told me that because i've been jogging for 40 years that's probably what saved my life i have a certain bond with this school district and especially the track i can't tell you how many hours i've spent on the track in the 28 years the school's been built but it's been a hell of a lot of hours believe me so um
023two weeks ago it was a thursday about 9 9 30 in the morning young man came over to me he had some kind of uh badge on he really didn't introduce himself he just asked me if i was a member of the staff the school district i said now at that time he said we have to leave the track and i said why i said in the 28 years i've been using the track this is the very first time somebody told me to leave the track so i quickly left the track i went home and i hooked up the policy handbook for the school district and didn't say anywhere in the handbook that residents couldn't use the track during school time so then i told scott gray your athletic director when i asked him if
024it was school district policy that president is not using the tractor school hours he said it wasn't a policy but it was a rule i said is this rule written down anywhere that i could see as i looked through the mount sinai fishing cable for policies it wasn't there and he indicated to me all the signs around the district so yeah i know that this is very well from having one you know in and out of the district and there has never been a sign up that stated that district residents did not use the chat and he said well there's a sign on the track right now so i said there is no sign there has never been a sign on the track that said district residents couldn't use the chat and my recommendation to
025the school board this evening is that if this is a policy or a rule uh it should be indicated to the resident i mean i'm stickler for following rules as men teach it i can't [Music] i always handed out rules the very first day of classes of my students and i found out that students admit to those rules a lot more when they're written down than just spoke it verbally so that's my recommendation thank you sir for your comments [Music] mr johnson scarlett johnson a graduate of our high school it's nice to see you [Applause] how are your parents thank you very much very nice high school my brother also graduated from this high school my mother was also my mother also went through this school as my aunt and my grandmother was actually this
026year clerk for a number of years my family for a very long time i i just wanted to take a moment to quickly discuss concepts of his dei and racism in school because that's something that's very important to me and i think there's unfortunately been a lot of confusion and false arrangement over the sector let me first start by saying that the phrase that is used the new buzzword is critical race theory let me say without any doubt critical race theory is not being public schools there is no one here that is qualified he fought for the glory theory and the reason that i'm saying that was that certainty because i am currently a senior in college and no one in that institution is qualified to teach spiritual racism i am taking a class title
027philosophy of race and that professor has unequivocally stated that he is not qualified to describe or race theory creative race theory is the intersection of racism and laws it is not something that is taught in mount sinai it's not something that is taught in any school district i do want to talk about the need for diversity tools and why it's so important a lot of times opponents of diversity and schools make the argument that if you don't teach racism people just won't be racist that's making the argument that racism is something that people are learning from the schools it's something that we're seeing in our life it's something that that's in our everyday practices still let me tell you a personal story about myself when i was a comparing here i was the only non-white
028kid in the class [Applause] i one day came home from school it was a hard time getting hurt i came from school and i said to my mom crying i wish i was white i was about 5 years we were as far as i know unless there's there was a really really weird curriculum back there my kindergarten teacher was not teaching critical risk theory i was five years old and i was already saying that i wish i was a different stakeholder than i was for the sole reason that i look different than everyone else what actually changed my mind was the fact that my kindergarten teacher who is no longer a teacher she retired a number of years ago pulled out a picture of her daughter who was adopted in his blood i look just
029like my teacher's daughter that's the impact that that has teaching diversity can change lives we live in a society right now where they've done studies and when they've taken black and ground little girls and boys and in them adults one way and one black the students will identify the black level of the background that is the society that we live right now i'm going to ask something on the board and this isn't this isn't this isn't to embarrass you or directly on the spot here but they wanted to point how many of you adequately know what the tulsa race riots are if you can raise your hands or just indicate the name johnson we've said this before this is an opportunity for you all to offer a comment my point here is that there are
030things that are also such as the destruction of seneca village such as obama in philadelphia that are not possible we are not how to quickly talk black history we are not going to be taught the history of slavery as it is in fact there were any of these issues in fact actually in my entire time in montgomery i did not have one non-bike educator it's not just that we're not being talked about race theory we're not being taught diversity enough and i know that there's a promise here i know that there's opponents across the country right now of that diversity but i'm going to pass the board to implement more diversity here because it changes and it saves lives and i'll give you a lot of credit too because when it comes to a lot
031of things about lgbtqia rights when i was in school any of my friends who felt that i category a lot of them felt very welcomed a lot of our trained students felt very firm they were allowed to use the bathrooms that they wanted to needed to so i do appreciate the work that you have done there because it is very important and i hope that you can continue and consider implementing diverse policies into our schools thank you thank you it's nice to see [Music] mr ryan [Music] hi resident of mount um um and i am also here in support of ddi but from a different perspective um as skylar mentioned there's a lot of fear being stoked around dei and so it's important to explain what it actually is the d stands for diversity in
032all the ways people can be different not just race but age religion socio-economic status gender ethnicity political beliefs and learning styles e for equity means providing the same opportunities for learning and achieving success to all the different kinds of people for example my son is autistic and he is able to excel academically because of his iep his individualized education plan and the supports that it guarantees to him he is brilliant but you wouldn't know it without those supports finally i is for inclusion and it's just that including all these different people and embracing acknowledging and accepting them these principles are the foundation of empathy compassion and understanding and there is no reason that any parent should hear them thank you we don't have any other submitted questions [Music] feels safe and i'm not scared of
033[Music] my children learning about different cultures on multicultural multi-racial um my family is so my issue with some of the dei framework not from what the school presented but from the new york state board of regents some of that does concern me because i don't feel like i'm being well represented with some of those issues um but i am on the committee because i want to make sure that um i'm aware and i'm there to be helpful i'm not going there to start total thank you for joining the committee we appreciate that i'm having a motion to adjourn to the executive session solo second second session all in favor aye thank you very much