Board of Education Meeting 6-16-2021

001okay thank you everyone thanks for being here tonight we are fortunate to have um it looks like five of our individuals who received tenure last year we weren't able to do this um the last school years of bringing others so we're really excited to have the opportunity to do it tonight um what i want to start by saying is this um last meeting we were able to honor our retirees and our retirees have given great service to our district and the opportunity to honor those who are receiving tenure in our district it's our future it's the people who will continue to shape the hearts and minds of our future generations and you know i look at it this way when we hire a teacher we're not hiring them for a year we're hiring them for

00230. and the number of minds that they are able to help shape and and work with over those years is incredibly significant and it's so important for our community and it's important it's important not only for our um own school community but for our entire nation so um it's always very exciting when we have this opportunity so if i could i'm actually going to start um and i want to talk about for a minute about our athletic director i know i actually had an opportunity to meeting last year to talk a little bit about mr mckenna uh what i would say first and foremost is this mr mckenna from the day he walked in this place immediately became a falcon everything that he talked about was being an nw falcon and that to me was

003incredibly positive for our school for our school district for our athletic department he's been instrumental in resurrecting our modified program he's he's brought us the unified sports program [Music] he was he helped guide us uh with the layout for our turf complex um which certainly we enjoy celebrating now and can't look and look forward to celebrating more in the future and he's actually um been the athletic director for our district's first ever ever is it called the primacy award mr mckenna supremacy award excuse me and possibly this is a supremacy award means that we um compared to all the other districts who are part of the nfl uh were considered number one it was our first ever uh honor winning that award a couple years ago so um you know he's he's certainly um someone

004who loves athletics loves physical education and i think we made a great choice in selecting them and or i look forward to him being part of our administrative team for years to come so mr mckenna next i'd like to turn it over to mr schmidt for a minute who's going to talk about a couple of his teachers teaches spanish at the middle school and one of the things that stands out with kelly as you can see is her positivity and her flexibility with the students not only is it a unique position to teach in middle school but also teach more so thank you so very much congratulations well so noah failing she is uh one of our 15 1-1 teacher self-contained teachers at the middle school um thank you for everything you do and thank

005you so much for how much you have had to adopt and adapt your instructions to um ever changing into the student's path not only that with the intricacies of curriculum so thank you so very much thank you for your telling voices on youtube that is always great and entertaining if anybody wants to check those out she found a very creative way during the pandemic to keep her kids um interested and engaged in education as well so congratulations next the high school and mr white neither of the teachers who saving tenure are here tonight but i can speak a little bit about that um first is mr greg roscott he is a teacher he's an advisor he's a mentor he's a coach he coaches hockey uh he is the advisor for our business marketing honors club

006and also deca i did stop this classroom this afternoon just to say hi there were 16 students in the room and i did share with the students in the room that he was receiving tenure tonight the incident i set it the class erupted into applause and that's my debt to me said a whole lot about christopher he's well liked people seek him students seek him uh he's an asset to the high school we were very happy thank you very much into the best intentions to check everything they're supposed to do to be a good teacher are they engaged do they develop report relationships with students you know do they structure their lessons in a certain way are students learning are they assessing students they look for all those things but at some point when you

007observe a music teacher or an art teacher you become a student and you get lost in becoming a student because the talents and skills they have overwhelmed that observation needs and i'm amazed at the skill that kelly has as an artist and her ability to instruct students in the art classroom thank you and when i see okay um i have the opportunity uh to talk a little bit about carly dunlap because mr mr mom could not make it this evening okay um mr mong says carly is one of the hardest working teachers i have and i've had a pleasure working with her she works tirelessly to improve to improve her craft currently has always always put students first and is so deserving of tenure and i can just speak to a little bit being in

008west street and housed in west street whenever i walk into the into the elementary wing the first classroom that i can see straight ahead to my right is um is her class and i always see kids engaged they're always having fun she just brings fun and engagement to her classroom and it's kind of neat that i get to see that myself in your classroom so congratulations on your tenure i am now going to just read off the list of the other um individuals who did receive tenure who are not here tonight uh kristen williams she's a cb counselor uh kylie smith a special education teacher at cb ed shiffert who is an elementary teacher at tuscarora katelyn steger who is a tuscaloo elementary teacher trisha mannarino who is a west street elementary teacher ruth evans

009who was a west street elementary education teacher and ashley gleason who was a special education teacher at etms so i'd like to congratulate all those people as well all right at this time we will have about a ten minute little break uh we have some cookies and water back there and also back's buying up the cookies back there already so good job mr bax um so we will uh reconvene at about five after okay so yeah make your way back to your seats please at this point i'll call the regular meeting to order please stand for saying a pledge allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right this time

010we'll have our equity and education steering committee presentation if i could before we start that i just wanted to recognize mr roskoff he is here in the back mr white did talk about him a little bit earlier for tenure [Applause] thank you okay thank you can anybody hear me okay can you hear me back um tonight we're gonna talk a little bit about our steering committee our equity and education steering committee and um you're gonna hear from a number of people including myself um the committee members that you're here tonight there were many committee members the community members you hear from tonight were the co-chairs for the two separate uh committees that we had some communities we had in the within the larger committee okay um you know some people asked where this came from

011for me for the district and it was really born out of um kind of their early part of the pandemic uh from a couple different things one it became really obvious um as a district um the impact that poverty had within within our district for families when the pandemic had whether it was food scarcity lack of access to technology lack of access to wi-fi it was again really clear to us it's not that as a district we didn't understand that those challenges existed within our school community but the pandemic really shined a light on them okay um so that was number one and the second really had to do with the social justice movement which happened and and what that said to me was that we have a very diverse school community and we want

012to make sure that everyone in our school community feels welcome feels like they're respected but they're valued and we believed that i believe that that was a really important thing so you know it it really was born on that and it was interesting while that was while that movement started one of the things that i recalled i remembered back to prior to teaching i was in something called the upward bound program the upward bound program was a program where we taught uh students from five different districts i went to fredonia and over the summer i was in a summer program where i was teaching students in the summer school program that came from five different districts and um one of the other people who was there teaching with me was a college student as well

013fredonia he was from west africa his parents had migrated to the united states and we were walking home one day and we were passing a convenience store and i said i'm going to get a drink and he said you're going into that store and i said yeah and he said well he said you know they don't treat me really well whenever i go in there for people of my color and i said it was really well so we walked in and he um he goes just watch what happens and i went in and got my drink and he walked to the back of the store and then walked all the way down the aisle on the back of the store and this is one of the old wilson farm convenience stores uh if you remember

014they always had that that collat that mirror in the back of the store where you could see them right so i could see him go as he was going down the aisles and immediately as he started walking to the back of the store each aisle that he walked to the owner manager employee whoever it was was at the front of the store and they had a long aisle on their end of the counter and they just started walking with that person all the way down the store and um i was standing right there at the cash register actually walked right out with my soda nobody was that a thing and i realized at that time that one of the things that i never experienced was what it was like to be him and he then

015the real sad part about that story right is that he knew that was going to happen before he walked in there and he knew that other people who were like him walked into that store and experienced that same thing so um you know it was interesting that that kind of took me back to that to that place um so we um i put out a request for people who might be interested in joining this committee uh mr asked if you could jump to the next slide there uh the the need dude oh no this is good the the need no you had it right i think the the need really came from we have seat up goals those are our comprehensive district educational planning goals and that first goal hasn't changed much in a number

016of years and it says the district will continue to cultivate a safe healthy and supportive environment right the goal is to provide supports for student success uh empathy acceptance valuing all people all the time and that in the end the ultimate goal for all of our students is that they succeed that they can achieve excellence okay next so whenever i wrote out what the kind of the overarching goals were for the committee it was to identify the equity gaps where they exist and then make recommendations on how do we fill those gaps quite simply uh we wanted to review it it became clear two different um arenas if you will one was poverty and education and the impact of poverty and education and the second one was well what are the inequities that we have

017within our school district right so those were really the two things that we that we elected to focus on so you know we talked a little about what equity is and defined equity this was a slide that we used at one of the meetings you know what is your definition of equity does fair mean equal in education and if you go to the next slide this is a pretty uh famous often used picture here you can see the the one on the left would be equal in other words you have three people who are all trying to see the same sporting event if you can't see that before i apologize if you gave them all the same same size thing to stand on one person gets to see one's up on their tiptoes you can't

018really see that so they can barely see and the third one can't see at all or in the other picture you provide some equity now what i think most people understand is that in schools we've been doing this for years and years and years all the time right our students all come to us in very different places and we don't say well we're only going to teach you at the bar where we think you should be we're not going to start you we're we're going to start you all right here even though we know some of you are back here we don't do that right we make sure that we go to where the needs of the students are and then help them along with the ultimate goal of getting all students at the end

019to graduation right that's our that's our ultimate goal so um here you can see you know attempt to level the playing field so that each child can achieve excellence and then i'm not going to read the definition to you but this is how it was defined equity was defined in the new york states every student succeeds act okay next slide so i said we broke up into two different subgroups the first subgroup focused on poverty and education and you can see the names of the members of the committee we had students we had parents in our community we had teachers we had members of our sop unit represented administrators that right there is this group and you can see the role that they played and how they came into the district remember completely voluntary for

020people to be part of this they didn't have to so in that group uh we had two people who stepped up and said that they would be co-chairs and i thank them for all their work this year uh the first one is marissa boyce who is our principal at columbia village and the second is vincenza viola who works at um former village as well okay um so i'm going to give them up and talk to you a little bit about our education and what we found this year okay good evening everybody i'm marissa i'm vincenza for those of you who don't know us um as a subcommittee we reviewed and looked at the impact of poverty in education on a global level in an effort to address the obstacles that poverty places in the way

021of those students and families that it impacts we identify three very broad goals can you hear me for this okay thank you would you like me to start again very good you're good okay um so the three jury broad goals that we um drilled down to were a systemic goal focusing on awareness empathy and an acknowledgement of what poverty does to our students in education a social goal focusing on providing supports to address and balance inequity for our community and an academic goal focused on identifying and addressing inequities directly impacting our students learning in order to get a handle on what we wanted to do first we did develop and disseminate a survey to all of our students faculty and families in late february it was the obstacles to education survey we sent that out

022to try to understand and get a better handle on what the specific impacts were for our families in every field so we did do that we collected the data um and spent the next three months four months really drilling down and trying to identify how we could make the biggest impact for our school community with that information and anytime so we'll share that information with you right now okay so um the first question that we posed and found the most helpful responses to or what services provided by the school were found most helpful by our families the top answer was co-curricular activities which yes is very important and we will continue to emphasize um but again we're looking for most important or impactful needs of our families so i think it's important to really look

023at you know the food pickup on drop-off services the anti-bullying programs and social emotional learning those were the next two most popular responses for from our community on the next slide then we wanted to know what is impacting you now or at least in the last five years um and you can see the the two most popular responses were computers and tablets and digital literacy which i think just given the pandemic is not really much of a surprise to to anyone here um i think the pandemic really emphasized the need for digital literacy and and assistance in our community with helping to understand how to use technology then the other areas again were transportation missing children missing the bus and what to do after that as well as transportation for parents and families to and

024from um school events then after that you can see we had access to wi-fi and food so it really kind of just emphasized some of the really immediate areas that we wanted to focus on so trying to pick one goal to really emphasize and hone in on we decided that goal number two was definitely the place we wanted to start first and that was again identifying and addressing the immediate implications that poverty has for our school community and you can see below that those are really a lot of the responses of the more popular areas of need thank you so just give you a little bit more information of what our next steps will be and what we would like to do moving forward in the immediate future we we did come back together after

025we had time to digest the information that were that we were able to receive in the data and um we did pull together all of our district point persons that support many of the initiatives that are bulleted up there and that were identified through that survey um in doing so we were able to take an inventory of what we currently are doing because obviously we're already doing so many wonderful things here and have so many services to offer our families but take an inventory of it and find out how we could maximize on what we already had access to and then what we would like to expand expand on sorry so with respect to food insecurity um you know dominic really does an amazing job um he's going to be providing food to our students

026this summer we also partnered with the niagara county youth bureau and they're all we partnered with them last year as well but they're willing to continue their relationship with us which is fantastic for our kids we're also looking to potentially partner with feedmore western new york to bring a mobile food pantry to district for our families and for the community in general here in whitfield as far as counseling and resources obviously we have a plethora of counseling opportunities for our students in-house but we also partner with gateway longview we're looking to expand those services and we're also looking to continue to expand with the um center for health of greater niagara we currently well we have it in a bit but we were in the process of partnering with them to bring dental and medical

027support to our students they also offer free counseling so um that's something that might be really beneficial for our entire school community vincenzo referenced the digital divide as i know dan and tom did from multiple occasions to all of you over the course of the past year but um you know yes there was the physical digital divide those who had access to wi-fi and to um devices but there's also another digital divide and that is digital literacy so we spoke with jeff hazel and jessica smith um and talked about how we can better support our entire school community our students our families and our staff in order to make sure that they have the tools they need to receive the benefits of the digital world um it was interesting this year like yes we couldn't

028be all together in person but um having a digital option for meetings and for getting together was something really beneficial in a lot of instances you know child care is difficult many of our families struggle with transportation um having that option to bring everybody together and engage the community that way was great and the instances that it worked i think that we can do a lot to maximize on that and we're going to definitely explore those options um up there is also i'm sorry i can't see um oh clothing closets so our um in many of our buildings we have resources for our students we have backpacks we have clothes um socks shoes we collect them throughout the year we get many many donations um i think that you know what we found in our

029conversations with the rest of the impact on poverty subcommittee was that you know it's great that we have them in-house at many of our schools but it also makes a lot of sense to streamline a lot of what we're doing so yes make sure that we put those resources in the buildings and in the places where they're needed the most but also give our school community a way to access all of this information so a major recommendation in conversations that we've had with district is you know to build a family support center for a family support center network and make sure that there is a person who can support those families in getting the resources whether they're ones that we already have available to us or ones that we're partnering with and there's so much

030out there and we offer so much we'd love to continue to offer as much as we possibly can but really being able to hold people's hands when they need us to and to point them in the right directions that's huge and it will do nothing but benefit our kids so we're all really really excited about the work that we've done and we know that it will help us to achieve you know providing an opportunity for success for all of our students so thank you thank you okay next thank you oh just just kind of a little repeat of what you saw in picture form earlier okay next we ended up um as i said we had two subcommittees and one of them was inequity for subgroups education subcommittee and you can see our members there

031we had two people step up in this group to take the lead as co-chairs uh one of them was angela porter and one nicholas azarella they are two of our secondary teachers um i'm gonna ask them to join me up here i am going to uh there's a couple slides here that i'll jump in on in a minute so i'll be off the side hi i'm nicholas my pronouns are he him hi my name is angela porter and my pronouns are she her so when we uh when we received the email from dan i know that as a secondary teacher we see a lot of the results of students who don't feel welcomed manifest themselves in very negative situations and so because i would love to advocate for my students as much as possible i

032jumped at the chance sure i joined um as a marginalized impact member i'm a gay man um and i work with the gsa here i teach special education to students in the life skills program um i kind of am just that person that's in the building in with the kids that need support so when the invite came i said i have to do this it's for them and i knew and should be in it too so we jumped at the chance um this quote right here is reflect is one of um the answers that was given by a student we we sent out an anonymous survey probably in march i think um and we opened it to the entire um high school community it was on google classrooms it was on the website um and

033so we had about 300 people participate and so this was one of the quotes and i'll just read it um for those who can't read it in the back i want people to read what i wrote in the survey because rather than just teaching students about a group of people showing them the perspective of one of their peers could have a greater impact on them a lot of people are scared to share their story so giving them a choice to do so to do it anonymously would benefit kids like me thank you for caring sorry for my glasses um can you knock stan okay so our committee and she is here as well mr white is here as well we are home she's from eric road um we had students on the committee like really

034awesome um participants and so we came up with goals and we um classified them in long term and short term so our long term goals would be that the district will further promote a culture that fosters a more inclusive environment for all students faculty and staff yep that the district will continue to recruit staff from all impact groups in an effort to have the staff reflective of its diverse community and the district will review curriculum at all levels to ensure it is inclusive of all learners for the short term goals we chose uh the following three the district will continue to include professional development that focuses on cultural competency within our impact groups and that the district will establish a student-led group that represents members of the impact groups and then also the district will

035include a group of stakeholders to assess the need of a restorative justice plan district data will be used in the decision making and for those who don't know a very very like small synopsis of restorative justice is simply if a student breaks a school rule there will be rather than you know no conversation just you did this you're punished this is your punishment um restorative justice looks at perhaps why that that particular behavior happened and looking at a way in which to remedy the situation in addition to um the punishment that's given them all these goals developed um out of information came from the survey and the conversations within the group so um they were organically developed from what students and staff provided us to see as the what they wanted okay also we had

036goals of the district will complete an inventory of resources and classrooms and libraries for material that inform and represent members of impact groups by curating relevant articles and research the district will have a library to be better informed about the issues that confront us this was um this came out quite often the next short-term goal we thought it was a very easy one to accomplish that the district will use signage displays and flags to reflect and celebrate in celebration of the impact group's achievements and also that the history months will be acknowledged within all the impact groups okay so this we this pie chart was one of the answers to the multiple questions that we asked and as you can see it's just um it reflects our diverse community the impact groups that are listed

037are black indigenous people of color lgbtqia plus women um religion and that went to anybody that feels strongly about their faith um i can't read that yep differently abled um that i can't identify as a member of the impact group and then the last was religion because through the survey when we first put it out and conversation we had immediately we got information back um and someone said can you include atheism in with religion since it is a non-religion but yet it falls in kind of that broader category we said yes so it kind of immediately reflected on a deepening of our knowledge of the impact and this is just one of the responses that we had so every single impact group had basically the two questions such as i you know have i had

038a negative experience at niagara wheat field due to me being a member of that particular group and then the other one question was do i feel like i have to act a certain way because i'm a member of this group and i'm very sorry but i can't read those answers but as you can see and i'm sure it's available online those are quotations directly taken from the answers of the survey and as you can see unfortunately there are a lot of students at the high school who feel as though they need to act a certain way because they're a member of black indigenous people of color next this reflex um even a larger um component the the same feelings that were reflected in the bypass section when we asked the queer community how they were

039feeling and their experiences in wheat field the majority about 75 of the members felt that yes they had been um oppressed or um insulted or harmed in some way for their of being themselves and we didn't include um the slides just because it was difficult to visually capture but this is relevant to an academic sense because because of the way that people feel unwelcome in the school it leads to staff members missing work and that it was reflective in the survey students skipping school students avoiding certain places students not signing up for extracurricular activities or sporting um because of the fear of being insulted or assaulted yes these are a little clearer i'm not going to read all of them i'll pick kind of a couple of them um [Music] the the second vote says

040i've been made fun of because i'm a girl who likes girls i've been called horrible names which i won't put on here but it's not easy and that's a sediment that comes up a lot through um the responses that were shared at the the third from the bottom there says hearing students and sometimes staff make bad remarks or name call lgbt and black people as a whole then name called directly and bullied to the point of skipping school so the responses came back and we heard the voices of our students at the high school um we heard the voices of our staff as as a whole this went up to all district staff and it it's telling it's impactful it's knowledgeable that there are students there are staff in our district that don't feel comfortable

041or accepted and we have to reach them because our goal is the public education institution is to teach all and to benefit all so this is where this is where work comes to okay um a little video here uh this was um shared actually this was on the recent newscast and i just i want you to watch this and then we'll talk a little bit about it um our rich native american culture it's a culture celebrated back in 1975 by one of the biggest names in music history a visit that is now once again in the spotlight as we find in this week's edition of the unknown stories of western new york martin review is a documentary about bob dylan's 1975 tour of the same name the idea behind the tour dylan said was to

042play for the people the people who never got good seats to his larger concerts because of a higher ticket costs and inconvenient locations this is where everybody walked in bob dylan joan baez um tony mitchell for the people of the tuscarora nation it was more than that dylan came through here and some woman grabbed me and kissed him after his november 15th show at the niagara falls convention center he jodie mitchell joe baez and several other big names made a visit to the territory for a potluck dinner but i got a call to come to the old gym and cook because we were going to put on feast so bring whatever you can so all i had was a huge squash must have been that big i threw it in the oven and turned it

043up to 500 and 45 minutes later it blew up so i'm straight scraping it off the edge of the oven because now we've got a hurry so i threw it in that squash and brought it up here all kinds of people and everybody just had a wonderful and enjoyable day great experience dylan even performed a rendition of the ballot of ira hayes a song about a native american marine who is one of the group that breaks the flag in iwo jima bob dylan and 11 16 75 many of the people in this circle shared stories and pictures of the day what do you remember most about today um jones is holding my daughter my daughter was about 15 months old it was a day of celebration to be sure and as chief leo henry points

044out a day of respect let's say an honor for a nation that somebody of that class would come and perform partly for nothing it showed the world that there are people out there who care and well-known people who understand a little bit more than most of the united states and their support of our culture and more people adding a musical chapter to the unknown stories of western new york so when i watched that um i remember we're talking 46 years ago right um chief henry who um i will tell you uh one of the the future the volume down just a little bit um chief henry who i feel like um very fortunate to have gotten to know over the last uh six years uh we meet regularly with the tuscarora council his words there

045are so powerful but so simple that they were honored the tuscaloosa nation was honored because they came to them that they they felt like they were respected in a way right um i can tell you this um six years ago uh in coming into the district there was work that needed to be done with regard to the relationship with the district and the tuscarora nation and we've spent a lot of time cultivating that relationship and a lot of you probably heard this quote so and i don't know who it is so i apologize to whoever said it first but um it's used in education all the time they people don't care what you know until they know that you care and anybody who's ever been in a classroom it doesn't take much to think back

046to the teacher who reached out to them and actually reached them and how they performed in that class or those classes because those teachers reached out to them and then they cared here you see a nation saying thank you for caring enough to respect us to honor us and i just think you know as you may guess now if you didn't know before my background social studies and that's what i taught before you know going into educational administration um so so getting back to the the subgroup here um speaking specifically if you could the next slide the tuscara nation we've we've invested uh time and energy appropriately um with the nation with the tuscarora council uh we made sure that the curriculum at the elementary levels was was all the same um so communication relationship

047building all those things that are incredibly important what's the translation then um academically you can see if you you're using business first their their rankings here in western new york tuscarora school was 214 out of 250 schools in 2016 in 2020 they were 144 out of 252. they jumped 70 spots it's not from any one thing it's from many many different things of course um my feeling and the idea with their subgroups is imagine making the time and energy commitment with each and every one of those groups what will we see on the academic end for each of those groups so you know that that kind of targeted improvement i think we can get with all of our groups with everyone who if they know that we care um they'll care a lot more about

048what we know and so um that's tuscar elementary if you go in the next leg um our community is very diverse um we have a history of farming so when we were talking about okay how are we gonna best present what we're doing why we're doing it what are our hopes and dreams um i immediately thought of the zucari family and i was very blessed 16 years ago when i became a part of falcon that katie ducary and i became friends and it turned out my uncle and her dad were good friends you know back in high school um and i was really interested in learning about what her life was like living on a farm um and in it you know when our friendship has grown and blossomed and it was wonderful and i

049kept going back to this idea that neither wheat field was a farming community and one of there's many beautiful um facets of people who embrace farming is that farmers help each other out and historically if a farmer was in need other farmers it wouldn't even be a question they would just jump in and help out and you know we think that we hear about like barn raisings or there were like these pound parties where people would bring a pound of their you know their go whatever they grazed or they um canned or whatever and so um dominic zuccari is a seventh grader i think i'm do i have to sign in for that i'm sorry okay um could you actually could you sign in mr lawrence i think you have permission um he's in seventh

050grade and he has been like a youtube sensational bit because he's chronicling the life of farming and here at the ducary dairy um and we're very fortunate that his father anthony and bob zuccari katie's dad um they sat down for a little interview just kind of talking about um how long they've been farming and what you know and just from primary sources what happens if a community one of their farming community members um needs help because ultimately that's what we're trying to do with this committee is that we are trying to make sure that every single student and their family in this community is helped out when they need it or is supported and feels welcome to come to school every day we should be awesome there we go how long have you been coming

051i am [Music] do you support one another in your communities wow in our community if another farmer has to bring doctor a problem help each other unfortunately the wind was a little rough that day so the audio um it wouldn't work but um kerry talked when katie talked to her father you know why we made this video and she said well it's just because we want all the students um in the district to feel welcome to go to school and feel supportive okay next our last example here a couple of years ago our board of education um heard a presentation actually from mr mckenna and some a couple of representatives from the special olympics who came in to present actually one was from special olympics one was from unified sports they came and they gave

052a presentation on unified sports here at the board meeting and before the board meeting was over uh the board of education decided to take action that evening and create a unified sports program for our school because we the board understood the inclusiveness of that unified sports program and and what the possibilities were for for that particular program so um as a quick fast forward uh to to where we are today this year we have the program up and running we have a unified basketball program you're going to hear from a couple students and then you're going to see one more piece right at the end so we can play in succession if you would please my name is brandon brandon what do you like about unified basketball i like talking with my teammates and what

053have you learned from this experience get the ball very good buddy hi i'm cooper and i'm a coach in unified basketball hi wyatt why did you decide to join the unified basketball team um because i play basketball for the school and i love the sport and i feel like it would be a great opportunity to help coach awesome uh what have you been your highlights of the season um definitely working with the students and the dance guy that's been really fun awesome thank you just pause for one minute you know a couple of the things that i've heard reported from the unified basketball program has nothing to do with the basketball itself i'll give you just a couple quick examples one of them was a student saying i never thought i they could never imagine

054being on a bus going to a school to represent their school playing a sport and i just thought how incredible for for students for as someone who was a former student you know probably took that for granted getting on a bus to go participate and represent the high school that i've played at for for students to recognize that that was just such an incredible thing and they couldn't believe that they would have an opportunity to do that i thought was really cool the other one was this you're gonna see this video in a minute but uh my father posted this on the the community page i ended up tracking him down and said could you send the video he um in my phone conversation his comment was this is what sports should be that you

055know he has um he's had children who played at all different levels of sports and this to him represented what sports were to begin with and how fun and and inclusive and uh so it was a it's a pretty neat video just to set this up this is at halftime and i believe it started as an impromptu dance off which is my understanding that this is continued yeah i i coached the unified team um to kind of jump on what dan says it's it's been amazing my students who their world um is my classroom my counterpart nicole's classroom and that's that's really it within the high school um they have difficulty accessing all the other components that high school has we offer supports we leave but it's scary it's overwhelming so this became this amazing

056safe haven where now they branch out and have all these friends and within four weeks they have fruit texts they have messengers they are making tick tocks together and my class turned from oh to boisterous out of control kids in and out of my door constantly i gotta see brandon he's gonna come up we gotta do it okay um it it's working it is the intent of inclusion it is the the purpose of what we're doing here it's bringing students together to build something bigger so we went to a game out in new fame and they said oh we do the cha-cha slide do you mind at halftime i was like no we'll dance let's do it and then as we were doing it our athletes said well that just can't be all let's let's

057do something else let's challenge them to a dance battle so dance battles have become a part of the nw falcon way now at unified basketball games and this is them just being their truest authentic self having the time of their life um inviting the other team to be a part of it and it's it's it is the most amazing thing to watch so enjoy [Music] [Applause] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] water one of the one of the really neat things about watching the the game in action was um i think one of the only sports i've been at where regardless of what team scores people are cheering and uh you know there's no boos um it's uh it's a pretty neat thing so um you know that that's i think a really

058great example of how we've uh created something inclusivity here in our district and um kudos to the the the student coaches and the faculty coaches who have have really taken this on and led the way here it's a it's a pretty neat thing a really nice tradition i think that we've started very cool that's it right questions let me just touch on unified sports i have a friend that played basketball through school and after he graduated went to work and he left all through western new york as far as high school and college basketball and i run into him the other day unfortunately at a fiddle car and we're asking what he was doing and he's referring refereeing in unified sports and he says rick that is the most rewarding thing i have ever done

059in my life because i i'm upset it wasn't earlier it's the most rewarding thing he's ever done hey what else i just have several questions on fairness work that a lot of this is uh appreciate it anytime you can open up communication dialogue with people and uh have a place where they they can raise concerns that they have it's always good um can you just talk a little bit more about what district plan is i know there's a couple bullet points on the slides about looking at curriculum um recommendations that would come up is this is this still on okay um good question uh you know one of the ideas is to really i think the first step would be this but let's see what we have you know what's what's in our current curriculum

060let's take it let's do a review what um what books what selections do we have for our different impact groups and then we would go from there we do have starting next year a um a curriculum council that you know like new texts and that sort of thing would go through and proceed through um so there you go one of the things that um they mentioned uh what some people were being whatever group they were in now what they're finding is true you know they requested where do you think it from the parents and from the kitchen dessert do we know what we can do to stop something like that or is this or is it too early to make that decision well great question and there's clearly right there's not one answer to that

061there's so many and you know what but let me start by saying this school districts and anybody who's anywhere near my age we'll know this right and you know just you can guess guess hi um knows that years ago you know things like bullying and mistreatment in schools um happened and very often it was depending on who you talked to it might have been suck it up it might have been you know just deal with it um today you know we have something called the dignity for all students act even before that act was in place you know school districts investigate everything that comes their way so we're bless you we're more involved on the after side than we ever have been all schools have character education programs um you know to go by different

062names in different schools um you know giving example middle school it's called lab right where everybody belongs the goal is there to early on inculcate all students into a place where it's going to be a welcome culture that doesn't mean for a second that some kids aren't going to be mean sometimes right the the key i think is giving kids earlier the better a better understanding of how we need to treat people all people right and so you know in elementary schools that looks a lot different than it does in middle schools and then it does in high school but there's not one if there was a magic wand we wave it right and i don't think that's what you're asking um so there's many steps we could take and i think you know that

063one slide could you go back please to the slide that started with the subgroup slide it keep going a little bit further there was the one student quote keep going the whole slide is a black and dark blue and color there thank you the last line of that to me says everything thank you for caring making sure that all of our kids know that they're respected by their school and by the environment so when which they feel first confident coming so that staying home isn't the option you know it's empowering them to know that when they when they go and they talk to a teacher and administrator that something's going to be done that they have a caring compassionate ear you know i think that's a big big part of this and again i think

064we do a lot of this really well but i think we can do better yeah i mean it's been going on for a long time okay so i guess the question is or the opportunity from when i hear from other parents who reach out to different board members because can we correct a number of these problems especially with the poor and you know things marissa and consensus was talking about without infringing or making other people who aren't in these problems uncomfortable i think that's of course i don't know if anyone has the answer but we don't want to help someone here and make other people uncomfortable at the same time sure good good question i think it's a it's a common question right yeah and and it comes i think often um we can complicate

065it i think it's simple we treat everyone with respect show them that they're valued all the time everyone yeah so you know any group that and and you know any group that would feel bad about other groups being respected i i don't know how to fix that right but what i would say is all groups are respected and valued yep yeah i just had some people who have reached out to me and their concerns particularly with the language of where this could potentially have based on things that happened nationally um things even coming out of state ed as far as like credible race you just have similar language of equity social justice inclusion diversity um and if you want to speak anything to that like what how no i mean what it seems like there's

066there's certainly agendas coming from uh new york state and you can read them online about the framework for i mean it reads effectively like a call to action of progressive ideals that kind of presuppositions that there's systemic racism that it's infiltrated like every aspect of life i know i certainly certainly don't feel like that's the case um sure are there times when people are nasty or inappropriate to people together systemically is that something like do you feel that is the case here no it doesn't matter i don't feel like we i feel like we have a lot of really great kids and a lot of really great people here yeah i do as well yeah absolutely um and just kind of touching on rick's point you know not forgetting about you know as we kind

067of give attention to uh the first impact groups um you know to think also about you know how that plays in with the greater whole um and during this uh there's a gallup poll that said 77 of conservatives are afraid to share their beliefs publicly they're worried about getting mobbed on social media fire from their jobs are worse and they often remain quiet um so i know this area tends to be you know fairly conservative you know compared to the rest of the country um i don't know how that plays out in school here if people feel like any of their traditional conservative uh understandings of things are under assault um and if there's sensitivity in the district to be aware of that he said i think it gets back to all people right our

068our it's again i know that i understand the political world fairly well okay as well i i think there's been this culture created that tries to muddy everything and to me in school it's simple every single parent expects that when their child steps off the bus or gets out of their car thank you so many parents for driving this year um that they walk into our school and they're respected and that they're valued simple no matter where they come from no matter who they're every single one of them and i think you know people can get caught up in everything that's politic here public education we have a responsibility to take care of all of them the same and treat them all really well and make sure that they all feel the same way when

069they're here and we don't get that right 100 of the time of course not do i think we get it right a lot of the time absolutely for all people in our district so that's my answer i'm sorry i i just wanted to thank the group the the whole everybody that has put in all the time and effort on this um you've only broken the ice right now i mean there's a long way to go there's i don't know if there's a ceiling but you're you're working towards it um i've spent 32 years in that public education so i i know what you walk through i know who comes in the door every day um to counter mr meyer's point here about conservativism and people are afraid to announce this is kind of where some

070of these students are at where they're afraid to say who they are for being censored to be in social media bully and such and they do they need a safe outlet to you know find that person to talk to to help them to get them to the next hurdle it's our job to educate kids as a whole and it's not just about the classroom and the academics here we have to teach to the test we have to we want to succeed that academically athletically through the district but it's part of the whole child to get them where they're supposed to be so again just to recap just like to thank the group for i say in my opinion just breaking the ice and just gotta move forward from here and thank you for mentioning that

071because i know we have some of the other members of the committee that are in the audience could you oh i'm sorry we had a few other committee members who were in the audience tonight thank you very much for being here okay thank you thanks what i was going to ask the mobile dental and i how is that working uh sounds like a good idea and i agree with you danny these students need to come in here not worry about nothing but math or rhythm and take english and whatever they're also but how is that mobile clinics uh working come on i i give a ton of credit to uh mrs witch uh columbia village who really looked at this particularly for her building to start and now it looks like it's going to grow

072a little bit so so to answer your question it was going fantastic and then there was a worldwide pandemic oh sorry okay um it was going really really well and then there was worldwide pandemic and everything kind of stopped so we were two weeks away from bringing the mobile dental unit to our school on a monthly basis um we are looking to do that starting again in september so they have agreed once we have our site up and running that they'd be willing to look at a centralized location to offer those services to anybody in the district that would like to participate in that um the mobile medic unit we were it was we were right there we were right there so we were right about to start all of these amazing well see our

073work you know come to fruition i should say and um we're looking at the same timeline for them um and as soon as we have a timeline in place for colonial village because all of the initial paperwork and documentation was already submitted to our school we can then look towards the other schools and of course that's completely voluntary um the benefit of that is for a lot of families that um struggle with insurance there are multiple grants paid for those services for students if families are unable to access insurance another major benefit of bringing that to the schools and to the district is that a lot of families as we referenced earlier struggle with transportation so it's just taking down some barriers for families one less thing for them to worry about well thank you

074marcia it was a great idea and uh looking forward to starting a bank up in september and i want to thank everyone all the committees and everyone involved for the work that's been done for the last 12 months other questions all right at this point then i will uh still move on to the roadmap return presentation then so i'm gonna apologize to everybody because you're gonna have to just hear me this time okay yeah well it won't be very long but let me just set this up very quickly so um since the pandemic started um really almost since the very beginning the superintendents in orleans niagara boces had the meeting weekly and we've been doing that through zoom to stay on top of his all you know the the changes that have come our way

075through throughout the pandemic and we put together what we're calling in essence our path reopening because in the end what we believe is that come september all students should be in school five days a week we do not want to offer virtual programming we know that the students who are struggling the most are the students who are part of the virtual program okay so our goal is to get every kid here five days a week and here's what's really great we know we can do it as a district we've had our elementary students here every day almost since the very beginning we know that in our elementaries or high schools throughout the pandemic that we believe maybe there was one case in which um covey was passed from one person to another and that was

076in a lunch room setting with adults okay so all of the things that we've done to to mitigate this have worked in schools uh you you've probably heard many health directors but you know we live in niagara county so mr dan stapleton talked numerous times that the schools they're not the places where the spreading is occurring remember they've done all the contact racing and it's not where you know one student's giving it to the next it's not happening that way in schools and hasn't been so to go next slide um i mentioned this already the goal is to be here in person why we believe clearly that's the most effective way to learn one of the things that i just am amazed at is the work that our kindergarten first second grade teachers have had

077to do and have done with students who are virtual i can't imagine trying to teach somebody how to read over a computer especially when they're struggling with all the technology right so um clearly we want them all back the good news is this the numbers are incredibly low in our county they're nowhere near the 100 per 100 000 that would put us back out again um as of right now the the requirement is at least three feet of social distancing right um we know we can do that as a matter of fact that's about how far apart our desks are normally next uh as far as vaccines you know this was one of the the hurdles that we heard about and in the state um we're now you just heard it's 70 right there's amp

078ample supply um if there's a need to re-administer if there's a booster shot schools in the community would reopen and make sure that we have spots for people to get those again number one goal five days a week all of our kids are here next uh if necessary we don't know where we'll be in september i don't want to pretend to know but we know that we can follow got the guidelines and make it work with all of our kids here um we'll continue to clean sanitize as much as we need to temperature screenings it's a simple thing for us if we have to continue to do it we will we can continue to screen all of our guests they can answer questions they can be temperature scanned we can do it we want all

079of our kids here if we have to use isolation rooms we'll do that i mean these are all things that were hurdles for us as this happened we can do all of it and well um we'll comply with the ventilation requirements uh for those who don't know we worked with our you know architects and our uh the the some of our different um you know consultants subcontractors to make sure that our ventilation was what was adequate um you know we've made sure that we have the the appropriate uh internet access uh for families we provided ppe where it was needed we gave out mass to being of the year most i mean obviously masks exploded as a business so everybody kind of came in with their own this is a pretty nice one right i

080have to wear um we will continue to monitor community group use so if for any reason there's an uptick we'll just pull back on community groups being in our buildings but we don't want to pull back on our kids being in our buildings because we know we can have them all here can uh continue with regular communication with the local health department i i failed to mention this whenever i said the orleans niagara superintendents all meet once a week um it's tuesday uh every tuesday at 1 45 that meeting always starts with a representative and almost always the director of health for niagara county on that call at 145. if in the rare instances he couldn't be there he had somebody else as a representative so we were always in constant contact uh without department

081um all of us have those members on speed dial so again if there's an uptick we have people to communicate with right away to work with to make sure that we can keep going um by the way i said the on superintendent supported this these are all things that we've talked about with our health director as well uh it we've done it before we provided covert 19 testing if for some reason there was nothing we could do that again again these are things we don't want to do but we're saying we can do a week in livestream athletic contests and special events if for some reason we had to pull back on those things again the goal making sure that everybody here is here five days a week and being educated effectively transmission to remote

082learning we now never wanted to be able to do it but now if we know that in two days we need to be out our teachers have done an incredible job of being ready for that and we've had schools that at all levels who've had to go in and out maybe it was for a 10-day quarantine right maybe it was just one class at the elementary level but we can do it um and then the last thing you know we follow all restrictions and warranty guides as required if we need to good starting out with if necessary so again goal every child in school five days per week next year is our goal and i think that's it right questions is there any equine whatsoever that the governor will be using the continuing school mass

083mandate as a partisan chip to ever mandate vaccine which would be the greatest fear of many people i don't know that but you know that would be trying me to try to read into the mind of someone right yeah yeah no i haven't heard anything but what i would say i mean i think the par part of that let me create this question you know what do i what do i believe is going to happen with masks right um i i would be very surprised at this point with the numbers if in september and still mandate um i know that the state pushed the cdc as i think everybody heard a couple weeks ago to give an answer about it and they were no longer required outside at school and during school you know events

084stuff still required inside i think the bigger question is will it change at all for summer school will that mandate change i heard that there might be another press conference coming up i don't want to assume that that's what it's going to be about but you know people tend to do a lot of guessing i'd prefer not to what else let's say if we could read the governor's mind we would not have uh be waiting for a budget every single year to try to figure out funding um if anything and i'll say this i don't think mascara his partnership is it's going to be financial financial districts when it comes down to anything in the vaccine if you look in the past whenever there's been um a backseat issue and that was religious exemption it

085always came down to financial bargaining chips so i don't think um i don't think masks will fall into that category because his upcoming um i don't know if you have fireworks display every night but um you know any other decision you can make other questions what do you mean steve he when it comes to budget time i mean you know they're going to say if you consume it i wouldn't put it past and say if you have x number population computers you may have this much more in bullet aid or some other kind of financial info i mean we just saw it with him doing that with the uh um the lottery for college scholarships we have a big decision to make and him not us you know you know it's not it's the albany

086soap opera you're going to watch when they reconvene their next session you know and if i could just have one thing i think one of them for our state with regard to looking at it in that lens right is that 70 was a number early on that the cdc had put out that if you got to 70 that you you know where it hurt immunity and so you know i think reaching that number is why all of a sudden you saw a lot of the different things lifted the question is how much more when for schools well one of the really interesting things for schools that i would mention just with masks and i don't know i don't want to pretend to know the the thinking of the governor or the health department um who

087don't often seem to be necessarily on the same page right so um but don't forget in our district what we did is we gave every family the opportunity each quarter to choose whether or not they wanted to be here and we told them that here here are the guidelines that we're living by and that will continue to live by the guidelines of the state i certainly know that there are families out there who said okay i'm sending them back because the numbers have gone down they're still wearing masks they're so so that's why i'm sending them we know we have pockets in our community who don't want masks now at all someone never did right and someone will feel more comfortable now all along and i think this is so important um and i think

088a lot of people are in this place but not all and that's okay too everyone's been in a different place with this we know that we know that there have been people from the beginning who felt like oh my goodness i need to i need to go into lockdown mode and in many cases probably for really good reasons okay and on the other end there were people who said i'm really healthy i don't think this is going to apply to me and i think i i'll be okay and then you have a lot of people in the middle who were saying okay this is really bad now but it's better and now look good let's start you know shedding the mass and some would say we're doing it at the perfect pace and some would

089say it's not not quick enough but those are all our people right and from the beginning i decided really early on it wasn't my job to judge any of them right our job was to make sure that we could bring kids here safely the best that we could to make sure that they get the best education that they could and that that um so so it is interesting a little bit with the masterpiece tonight and i don't know we will continue to follow the guidance of the cdc okay and of the and of our state and i do that because i'm not a mental uh excuse me i'm not a health professional or a mental health professional right um i don't work for the cdc i know way more about infectious disease today than i

090knew a year ago right 15 months ago like all of us um but i'm not an infectious disease specialist so i'll listen to those people who are um so you know whatever they do we'll do but i do understand that there's certainly segments in our population who have said i sent him back fourth quarter thinking hey we're going to finish with this now that said nobody thought the bottom was going to drop out i don't think as quickly as it did which was great um so those are kind of some of my favorites with the virtual and in person i thought the school district panel was the best week i really thought your team did an excellent job but you also we all learned from the last year and what some of the things are

091concerning me with the masks yes it's like even in your presentation we realize virtual is definitely not as good as in person did you see the numbers for the test so there are some kids who need to get in here who want to get in here but for health reasons and there's many uncomfortable they can't wear a mask it's hard to breathe so it's like a double-edged sword what do we do uh let's hope como makes the right decision and eliminates the discussion but if it don't come september or come summer school uh i know it's in the files though so i don't know what jurisdiction we have over there but um what do we do with with a child who needs to be in and we have the statistics to show he needs to

092be he or she needs to be in but can't breathe in a mask and the breaks but i mean i know we allow breaks which is a good thing but when you have asthma or you have other health issues membranes are just too far apart can we do something if so yeah so good good good question um you know we have if there's a medical need you know assuming i think we're hitting to the you know fall i think is what you're talking about i don't know what they'll do if he's gonna do anything in the summer um but for a student who doesn't the accommodation this year has been online instruction right um we also have uh and this is really the more typical because every year we have students who can't come for

093different medical reasons right to school so they end up in like what's called home hospital instruction and that there's boces tutor who works with those students and helps educate them and they're certified teachers so that will be the answer to that if we get there i hope it will yeah actually just to kind of take it back and i know we went back and forth a little bit and you mentioned that you are the one who you know wants to follow the rules and the guidance um and the piece of guidance straight from stated recommendations um in the context of in-person it stimulates students who are unable to medically tolerate a mask including students where such masks would impair their physical health or mental health are not subject to required use of the mask and

094i feel like we haven't been upholding that the language there is that we need to accommodate okay and our accommodation um was the virtual program and um i'll tell you when when this all this language came out you know back in in august it was very clear from our health director okay that we should not allow students in school unmasked that and what's interesting is at that time we were allowed to give mass breaks and he supported that right now the new guys that came out didn't have the net mass breaks that were in there we left it in there but but to answer your question the accommodation that we needed to accommodate those students the accommodation was the virtual program well i mean that's not even the language this is the document from june

0957th right after they did the little things what sure i did so fully updated and that's i mean almost what you're saying is like antithetical to yeah yeah it's it's it's combined it's a pretty long document right so i mean this one's not too long it's like this one's funny some pages um but it breaks up in sections and i mean yeah i don't know how you would actually interpret it because i didn't read just the one part that you read it's there's a part and i share with you that talks about the accommodations and that's the piece that i mean this one i mean to me as clear as they yeah and you see it implemented other places you go you know it's changed now it you go walk into walmart unmasked and say

096hey would you like a mask and you could say no i have a better condition have a nice day sure and i feel like that's the sentiment of that stipulation and i don't know why we're and i don't know and i don't know if you know this or not but the schools are expected to live under a separate set up well it's like this is the rules straight to the school from department of health sure i read the whole thing many times well i guess i don't see the logic so did you read the whole thing i did so i'm interpreting it differently and that's why i'm asking because it seems nonsensical so our director of health's interpretation of it is that we should be yep i mean if you take the language i mean

097i don't know how to hear all of it i don't think i'm an idiot um so i and i know you're not calling me one by saying that i feel differently it may sound like that but i'm guessing that's not what you meant i mean you just look for the clear interpretation of what it is i mean lancaster had two kids pass out and they're being sued now you know they're and you know that there's two different documents right well i'm just reading this yeah there's one from knight contradictory i don't i don't feel that way but there's two different documents one is the nicer document and the other one is that one that was prepped by the new york state department of health so there's two different i think you need to rebuild because

098we have to live by both and so there's there's some sort of language in there that would say the complete opposite so if a student is being physically mentally no it doesn't doesn't say that at all because as i would imagine would be worded that way i mean i encourage you to look it over i i don't understand how i guess we could have that liability of somebody saying i can't physically or mentally tolerate this thing and and we don't have an answer for them other than sorry like you still have to wear a mask um i know you mentioned virtual but i mean they've been in school the whole time and now it's a hot day and the asphalt kicks in like what's the recourse well i i don't know you mentioned another school

099i don't know what what they did in that school i know that our teachers have given you know extra mass breaks when they need it and you know i mean language is not required all right so i just want to go i want to say i think our district has done a phenomenal job accommodating everybody i know we had to kind of draw some lines in the sand to you know keep clarity for things if you as a parent i have two children in this district if i felt that it was too hot or they weren't gonna do well i have the choice to keep them home and i think again we've made accommodations for this complete virtual program so if you were totally anti-mask that that was your choice and like dancing we all

100kind of fell in different areas throughout the last 15 months some of us were really scared some of us didn't believe it some of us fell in the gray area and i can't imagine the work that has gone into trying to figure out a way to accommodate every single person in this district we all have our beliefs but the numbers show that masks work in school our kids have not been getting open in this industry well i'm telling you mine so i've listened to you say yours about multiple things tonight i'm telling you how i feel my kids have gone we've had no issues they've felt safe they don't even complain about the mask they don't even care about the mask i feel like it's parents that care about the mask they just want to

101be at school they want to be like with their people learning and and being kids like i i just i respect everybody's position i want you all to understand it i'm truly 100 but i think we have to do what's best and what we're being directed like other board members say what an excellent job you and his team have done where decisions are changing weekly and monthly so as we hope we're winding down the question is the question and you can't answer it as how if we eliminate the virtual but still wear a mask if como says that people with health problems should be able to get some type of uh okay i'm not you know you can't change or the district cuomo is saying you're wearing mash that's a statement we can't change it

102and you you we change a bunch of stuff for yourself but if he says you have to wear masks but we don't have the opportunity for virtual based on what you said earlier virtual is not uh not as good as in class and two the health department says it's not spreading through the schools based on your presentation uh would there be an it's a fair unfair question uh would there be an outlet for someone with medical problems as my consumer and i shared right that we we we've had a history a long history yeah yeah and every district does yeah because that's something you'd approach on an individual basis absolutely yeah yeah basically again i'm with julie this district has done a phenomenal job this year with everything that that we know we've had uh

103can um a great school all year long i mean we've done things that other districts don't even think of okay so i know there's people that are want certain things for themselves i get it i mean everybody wants what they need for their own kids or whatever but you gotta look at the whole picture the whole picture is this district has done a phenomenal job over this past year and going forward yeah there's still uncertainties that's something that's going to have to be addressed as we go along the answers are in here today and they probably won't be here tomorrow but down the road there's some decisions we'll be have to make where we go in that direction and to me i mean we can sit here and talk about this and that but the

104bottom line comes down to our kids giving the best education we can give them with what we have at our hands at hand so heads up to this administration and parents and teachers teachers and everybody that helped make it this uh pretty successful year of my eyes anyways but like i say going forward yeah we can nip that but the bottom line is we're doing this for our kids and it's a whole picture individuals will need to be addressed i get it we gotta address them but going forward it has to be the whole picture yeah and then raising my mind not to take anything away uh we've been added a delta cards this year that were very tough to play and i think he did he did very well um i just see this

105issue um you know the language here i mean if there is a way to be while abiding rule following and still accommodate people who are very very much um you know the other health is in general even mental health physical health um that if the language is there like let's take it i don't know if you want to consider or if if you have other material that i am not privileged that would contradict what the language you if you have is otherwise i would very much encourage you to reconsider i hear you and dad no one's putting no heat on of course um you know it's here's what's really interesting right i mean we we sat in a particular place for a pretty long time with very little change um and very little change in

106the numbers and the numbers bottomed out very quickly and i think we've seen a lot of changes matter of fact even with like you know graduation celebrations over the last three days three different documents have come out that affect different types of celebrations right so that's how quick the change is coming at this point um so when is there going to be you know an action on on masks inside schools i think that's that's probably the next big one right it's it's clear for those who listen to the press conference the other day from the governor that talked about a lot of things and it covered schools in about half a second right schools will continue to follow cdc so that was it even though there were some things interestingly enough that were already happening

107with regard to the year celebrations that were being sent out by the new york state department of health the new york state council for school superintendents who got the information from the governor's office the new york state school board's association who got information from the governor's house but none of that stuff was addressed so i guess my point is you know that the change is i think pretty rampant right now so we'll see we'll see what the next changes i think there's a couple other people that signed up on one of these sign up sheets back there for pillage of the floor and we will move on to the privilege of the report this time after residence comments remember that this portion of the agenda provides for an opportunity for the residents universal central school

108district to be heard any person who wishes to address time please state your name and address complaints or criticisms about individual school personnel are not appropriate this form will not be allowed or may not respond they should be referred to the superintendent of schools at another time in three minutes i'm going to go in the order that people just put on here so i may have mixed these two sheets up so um michael marin and mary crooks if thank you my name is michael and i'm in third grade when i go to the store i'm only there for less than 20 minutes my mask is uncomfortable and it stinks the thought of my friends in school wearing them makes me sad i i think about the teachers not being able to hear the students and

109i find it's getting hot in their masks and having a hard time breathing so i wanted to come and speak up for them masks are doing no good because they are destruction nests are supposed to protect us but the virus is so small there is no way masks can't stop it i did virtual school this year which i was excited at first because i thought no bus riding later bedtime but then i realized i wouldn't be able to see my friends or my teachers in person the screen time for school year sometimes gives me a headache the school year was different and not good it was bad i want to take masks off kids for school oh my name is marin and i am in first grade i was excited to go to first grade

110but i wanted to be in prison but we had to do online school because of us my family did not want me to wear a mask because we don't believe they keep us healthy you can still get stick wearing a mask max masks make it hard to play i like doing school online and getting to take wigs but i have like to be in school where i got more learning time i missed out on time in school with my teachers and my learning time i missed out oh i think i could have i think we should take off the mask the mask soft case i'm their mother mary um so we are at 7611 sunnydale drive and we are the crooks and i just wanted to read something before i read what i've actually written

111this is really my sentiment and why my kids stayed home the kids did great wearing masks all day say kids started running into each other in the hallways and getting injured so we had students walk backwards through the hallways even though it wasn't comfortable and now it's best for kids but they walk slower when backwards to avoid injury of others and the teachers will have them hold a rope to guide the students everyone says the kids are doing great and not complaining about walking backwards but does that mean we should just get used to walking backwards or do we do everything we can to find solutions to get the kids walking forward again to do what's natural comfortable and best for them i know i don't want my kids walking backwards through school or through

112life and then i just wanted to read um what i actually emailed to each of you um this week and i wanted to start with a quote from brene brown courage is contagious every time we choose courage we make everyone around us a little better and the world a little braver my name is mary crooks and i'm a mother of four and i'm here to ask you that each of you do everything within your power to remove the mask mandates in our school for the 2021-2022 school year i'm asking you to question the niagara county department of health the new york department of health and governor cuomo's office on the science behind masking our least vulnerable population we've known for some time that our students face a near zero statistical risk from sars cov2 and

113that they are not the primary source of transmission again i urge you to ask for the science regarding this how many student super spreaders have there been if such a super spreader event has not occurred then what science are we following in regard to masking our children we've failed our students by not questioning sooner the unrestrained executive orders given by governor cuomo with the support of the new york state education department and the american federation of teachers in regard to our children receiving or utilizing any medical intervention should be a personal choice and not a mandate these imprudent mitigation strategies have hurt our children by covering their faces by keeping them apart and by instilling in them fear that they could be to blame for killing someone if they do not conform to the arbitrary

114rules regarding mass we have told them every day of this school year that they are the problem i implore each of you to consider the social emotional damage done to our students in such a short period of time we have robbed them of seeing the facial expressions of their teachers and peers these facial cues play a crucial role in social emotional development in understanding the feelings of others and recognizing when a topic is serious or silly we have also crippled teachers and their ability to read the non-verbal cues of a child that is sad scared excited or confused i solicit you to appraise the burden of a year delay in speech developments for students who have been unable to see how the mouth of their teacher or peers form letter sounds how many speech concerns

115that could have been identified by classroom teachers were missed this year our youngest students are missing critical signals for language development due to mask wearing for safety safe we must unmask our kids please take a moment to think about the chemicals in or on the mask as well as the process used to sanitize them for reuse these chemicals should not be drawn into the lungs of any adult or child with every breath they take for the duration of a school day it is time to stop pretending that science supports a mass as a safe filtration system for our lungs on the topic of safety how is it that wearing a costume mask on halloween is unsafe because it can hide one's identity but we've demonstrated to children for a year that masked adults are safe

116and should be trusted this should make every one of you shudder to realize that you have demonstrated to children regarding how they make safe choices to those taking note it's clear that this year and the many mandates and recommendations we have been have been a successful employee to reimagine our social culture i hold every school administrator board member department of health both local and state member fta member and state legislator accountable for being complicit in our children being used as pawns in this reimagining i do not not doubt the well intentions of any of you but the evidence is clear that our students are being hurt by our submission to mass mandates and the science and support of masks simply doesn't exist therefore i beseech you to stand up for our students be leaders join

117us in teaching our students another lesson that we can learn from our mistakes and that it's never too late to make the right choice this week my daughter received the falcons pride award pride stands for pride responsibility integrity determination and enthusiasm i ask each of you tonight to do what we ask our students and hope that our students will do every day and exhibit falcon pride next we have uh james thank you and monica fuji hello hello members of the board my name is james fuji and i am a second grade student at west street school this year i am virtual am a virtual student because of masks why do we have to wear masks in school when we don't have to wear them at other places i go to stores like walmart and target

118and see lots of people not wearing nests in school kids are still wearing masks why my school year has been sad at lunch at school i could see my friends and now i just eat watch at home with my family it's hard to see some of my friends since i'm not at school and when i do it's hard to talk or play because masks and having to stay apart i'm just seeing my teachers in person i miss being able to do centers in my classroom and other fun activities i liked riding the bus with my friends but this year i'm doing virtual because i don't want to wear a mask wearing a mask for hours makes me sweaty and it hurts my ears wearing a mask all day would be uncomfortable and make it hard

119to learn we've had viruses before and never wore masks so why do we need them now i have a voice give me a choice 7741 third avenue regardless of the current social trends and what is accepted we as parents need to be willing to fight with fierceness for what is right giving parents and students the choice to mask or not it's the only fair solution i'm tired of hearing phrases like the kids have adjusted well when i know better masking children has caused them anxiety as well as a number of social emotional issues children are being taught that there's something wrong with them when there isn't you can't be around so and so because you could get them sick perfectly healthy children being made to feel like they're the problem let's talk about young children

120in their critical years of development who are missing out on important cues from their teachers simply because they can't see their faces and not just things like how to form letter sounds but things like emotions something as simple as smiling when two people smile at each other it releases chemicals in their bodies they make them both feel happy and safe why aren't these things the topic of discussion now is the time to stand up and advocate for the students in our district our children have been ignored because they are the easiest group to ignore and i am not okay with that taylor uh taylor grady 6901 wow road um my two kids have been in school since day one bear with me this is a little difficult for me we done with the masks but

121lately they'd been coming home and they're very upset and i'm very thankful your kids have adjusted well but my kids have not hey my daughter is in fifth grade my son's in first grade thankfully we have a phenomenal principle understands where we come from but my biggest thing is i had to put my daughter in counseling this year because it was such a difficult year for her with the whole mess and trying to learn i didn't have luxury to virtual do virtual with my suit or my kids i work full-time my husband works full-time my biggest issue is now if listening to you guys tonight say about you know what we do right with niagara county and whatnot my question is how did pioneer stand up for their students and do what they did but

122our district has not i've been supportive from day one with our district i took my kids and got them tested when we needed students to get tested and yes mr shank actually called me because my two were two positive cases in our school which was i because they perfectly felt fine but my thing is you know you're saying we have to follow these rules and do all this but you see other districts such pioneers stand up and take the mass off these kids and everything my kids just want to go and be with their friends and not have to worry about you know put your mask up your mask isn't over your nose things like that i did not like getting a zillion emails from my daughter's teacher saying you know she needs a new

123mask her mask isn't up her nose i was more worried about her being kind and reading than the mask and i feel like that was neglected with what she's doing in school it was all focused on the mask so my thing is as a district and listening to you guys all talk is we need to stand up and show now your county that wheat field is the best school around and is willing to stand up for our kids and drop the mass now thank you varsity hi my name is marcy richtner 3601 crestfueling i couldn't hear a thing i'm hoping you put the whole thing online with the survey also the questions and the answers so we'll be online then yeah all the stuff that you see like anyway okay when will that be online

124okay the first slice of equity and education what does that mean that the speakers are talking about equity and education anyway explain what they're talking about i couldn't read the slides so you know first i think it's important to note that um during the public comment period uh we don't respond back but i was certain but that and i get it that you didn't you didn't hear stuff so two things one thing that i'll do you'll give me a call okay if you watch the video and you don't hear it give me a call and i'll have you to walk you through it okay okay i like the idea that dental van but it's not gonna raise our taxes i guess you can't answer when we talk i'll be happy to and we can actually

125bring that up to the next meeting okay thank you patricia lavon my name is patricia lacombe i live at sunnydale and those are my kids and grandkids over in that corner and i want to mention that um at least two of the women that stood up to speak are teachers by education so um they have a pretty good insight from both sides okay and i didn't prepare something in advance but i was here for the whole meeting so i just took notes and i just have a few things i just want to share like bullet points okay i do want to thank and let you know that i appreciate all the teachers and the staff in niagara week field that did work really hard this year as a district i just want to say let's

126please be discussing these issues before a concern arises so that we know what we will do in the future to protect our kids which is pretty much you know been said um so that we know that if left to the district that we know our district is going to respond appropriately the way that the is going to take care of all of our students in terms of accommodations um i heard an answer or you responded or said something about accommodations being virtual which you just told us was not the best solution so if that's the option that's a poor option so i don't think that can be the answer for the students that can't wear a mask or shouldn't wear a mask for whatever the reason is um and i think some some people mentioned

127that well that kids adjusted they did okay well kids adjust because they're expected to this is what they do their whole life is adjust it just to the expectations that adults place on them so they're good at doing that they're not gonna all you know fall down on the floor and cry and whine but that doesn't mean that they they don't have a voice if they could if they knew how to use it so let's just be mindful of that um and what about the kids where school is their safe place so they don't have a choice of staying home school is the only place they're safe for some kids so school has to be an option for every child whether they can wear a mask whether they have emotional problems no matter what their

128situation is there has to at least be an option to be at school if they need it um i do want to thank jason i think it was not only for some really insightful questions and information but also because he's the only person that asked about the liability to the district when another parent from this district decides to sue us niagara wheatfield because i'm part of this community too so we need to be aware of that the last thing that i want to say is that i have six grandchildren in the niagara wheatfield school district four of them may be moving out of new york state because their needs are not being met here in the niagara week school district thank you [Applause] parents need 76 parents need center six seventy-three st joseph rowe um

129let's start off by about the mass and what the policy says as far as um reasonable accommodation i know for a fact um the adults with disabilities act basically we discussed this because i'm on the council for independent living of niagara county and as long as you're given reasonable accommodations right it is it is not um i say against any policy or regulation if you give them a reasonable so i know some of these families over here was talking about um it's not reasonable it's not up to par so that's two different things one is reasonable and one is if it's um i'll say um reasonable for the individual right but we gotta think about the whole right to me i know nobody on this board is a medical profession i could be wrong nobody

130got a medical degree anything like that but we fighting against the county health department the state health department and then the federal health department and then me darren smigg gonna say none of that's work though guys is wrong i don't know how i can actually say that with a smile on my face or anything like that but we got to take what the medical experts say at these different levels we got to take that into consideration as far as work i'll say pioneer all these other school districts we're not in those other school districts right now and i think this superintendent and school board here they're doing everything we can for the benefit of the whole university school district that's all to say about that as far as the faculty and education goes and one

131of the board members said something about we might feel uncomfortable talk about certain subjects i think that what you was probably getting at i think you mentioned it was talking about what's it uh race theory is that critical race theory right of course that's gonna make people feel uncomfortable right because it really doesn't affect the majority of americans right now i can speak for a fact right there's systemic racism it might not be an argument right but it is a such state of systemic racism in the united states and it starts a long time ago and it's still going on today is it getting better yes it is but it is racism i'm a good example where i work at i deal with law enforcement every day we detain people get people arrested got to

132go testify in court one day i went i had to speak to the district attorney got another daring need your dis attorney's officer says tom i go on to there my suit my briefcase all my files dealing with this one case i said i'm here to see the district attorney now she didn't say why you don't say what she said was um who is your lawyer who's my lawyer i'm here to help you out now people say what does that got to do somewhere in the back of her mind thought darren sneed that broke some kind of law that i got to speak to this return that's the type of systemic racism we're talking about right we talked about um equity right we talked about um the gay population talk of the other disabled population

133right and then some people say well do we have to talk about that because it makes the rest of us feel uncomfortable sometimes you got to have the uncomfortable conversation so everybody understand what's going on right we talk about curriculum race theory might be a little something different right but we talk about the independence you know i'm saying 4th of july right and then they expect everybody to be happy on the fourth of july but in all reality all races went free on the fourth of july that's where juneteenth comes teach people about juneteenth teach people about tulsa things you know what i'm saying teach people about whole history right now we got history it talks about one side of history but we do talk about slavery we do talk about the civil rights we

134do talk about different things right but when it comes to holistic type thing we hear abraham lincoln free the slaves okay what happens how did it come from right civil rights uh or slavery get over it right how can i get over and we just signed the civil rights act in the 60s right it's only been 50 some years you want somebody to forget things that happened for for over 400 years right we're supposed to get forget about it in 50 years you can't right now my family is the most you in everybody look different i think i'm still the only black person in my family right now my wife's korean my daughter's half my son's half and my son's my daughter's married caucasian people right so you see my family focus on the woman

135looking like me that's okay right but don't say things like synthetic racism doesn't exist don't say things like we can't really discuss this because everybody's gonna feel uncomfortable because i've been feeling uncomfortable in a whole lot of places i've been for 50 some years now that we feel different i'll select the school board and somebody said you know what then you'll never win the school board in 95 so why not you'll see so i went back to him after i was saying well why they said i was wrong right this school district does a lot of good things right getting back to this to the uh equity i go to different school different people and talk to different people about school districts and what they do i tell them what we do they say y'all

136do that really y'all have these y'all talk about that y'all try to do this so keep doing the things that we're doing right kind of encompass everybody and i think we're gonna be all right one more thing with uh the gentleman he's gone now so we saw well i think we might say we're trying to hire different people you know saying to reflect the population of your school right now that doesn't mean go out there and hire five black people two gay people three chinese people you know say it doesn't mean that you know i'm saying but we should you know say try everybody say i put the application in we can't make nobody apply for it with this advertising so if we keep doing those things i think we're going to be all right

137and i'm proud to have my grandkids in this school district i'm proud my kids graduated and become better because we're not going for school business thanks for giving me time to talk sorry for the three minutes all right we'll move on with the consensus agenda items then at this time i call for a motion to approve the consensus agenda has submitted so it's been moving seconded any item to separate or to discuss oh is it on there um we do have to separate one uh item one we have to vote on before we vote on the remainder of them all those in favor of accepting are to um appoint jan ball as acting district clerk for tonight's meeting please say hi told you about standing motion carries all right for items two through ten anything

138to discuss or to vote on separately if not then all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstaining motion carries a personal report i have to call for a motion to accept the personnel report as submitted um it's been moved in second i'll separate number one is there any other items of separator to discuss right all those in favor then accepting items 2 through 18 please say aye aye opposed abstaining wishing carries item 1 to the superintendent thank you so tonight you had an opportunity to um hear from mrs who is our principal at colonial village um it is my great joy to recommend mrs lewich for tenure she is uh kind she is compassionate um she has worked diligently to create and you heard some of them today wrap around services for our

139students and their families she is a can-do leader in other words if there's something that needs to be done she'll raise her hand uh and then i think she tries to beat everybody else in the room puts her hand up and says yep i'm in i'll do it um she is involved on our cdep team she's also as you saw tonight a member of our equity and education team and when she joins those teams she doesn't just join the team she often takes on co-chair roles on those teams she's an integral part of our instructional leadership team she is an important piece of our district leadership team and last and most importantly and anybody who's had a chance to work with her knows that the thing that most that she cares most about his kids

140and that's where we always want to start with hiring i think we ended up knocking it out of the park uh with bringing mrs for john as a principal in our district and so i'm very proud to be recommending her for tenure thank you i didn't vote on it yet okay um all those in favor accepting the tenure appointment uh please say aye hi apportioned motion carries congratulations you should have held it to the end of the meeting clapping um extending committee report uh capital project uh yeah so um monday we had our meeting um kind of went over what uh we're working at the present um currently eric road roofing is about twenty percent uh they replace the hardware in the doors and they're about seventy percent completed west street uh roofing uh is

141about 60 percent completed and the pa system which i understand was held together by clips is now at 80 percent complete colonial village uh door hardware replacement uh is at 95 percent and the water meters uh replacement uh which you see outside they're digging outside in front here the high school they're about 75 complete um big thing they have to do there is they have to make it winterize because they brought things about the ground and to finish that project up going forward next year or this year coming up uh eric road boiler room replacement um airplane classroom the unit vents and the shelving that you see along the windows those will be replaced colonial village roofing will be replaced uh colonial village classroom the same thing with the events and shelvings they're going to

142be replaced um along with a fire alarm system upgrade the colonial village eric road west street and kelowna village generators will be replaced and last uh high school and edwardtown middle school parking lot which is out here in front there's going to be a major renovation done on that this summer things are looking good there we are going to go over some of the other items later after yeah so probably late you know we're probably looking at late fall to start talking about what's left on the building conditions survey and start talking about the next project okay any questions for on a capital project right um we have an internal claims audit report there as an informational item please make sure you review that ex official student members report marissa so yeah i guess a

143couple things but i feel like everything's kind of like calming down in the classroom but the cool thing is that it's outside the classroom it's just not like there's still so many sports going on which is so exciting i know like there was some uh girls across the game on monday i think and it was a good senior night and there are so many people like in the stands watching which is super cool to see um and it was like hawaiian nights everyone's dressed up in there on hawaiian stuff and that's awesome especially with the new field and then there's all these events going on um like last week there was this field by literacy thing that was put together by the language teachers and that was a really nice way to like um celebrate

144all the students who got their heal by literacy their senior awards and then of course last friday was the prom and that was an awesome awesome night it was great at class and um everyone just had a really fun time and really enjoy themselves coming together as a class and yeah everyone i talked to they're just like yep it was just so fun um which is great um so yeah we always just want to thank like mrs mayo our class advisor all the administrators the chaperones everyone who i'll put it together because it was a really nice night so that was awesome and then um yeah the last thing i guess is um about like graduation going on next week there's been all these new guidelines that are kind of promising um for a lot

145of people with like on vaccines and coca testing so that's a positive thing and i guess my last thing is i just wanted to thank everyone on the board um for this past year um it's been a really awesome experience getting to know you all um but i've definitely learned a lot and grown a lot in the process you know it was intimidating coming into a room full of adults i was a little scared but i definitely think it's helped me and i feel more confident um we've had a lot of good laughs and good memories and i'm just really grateful for the experience um i don't really know what i'm gonna do with my wednesday nights now i'm gonna have to figure that out i mean i'm sure i'll find something but it won't

146be as fun thank you everyone i know i think i'm safe in speaking for the rest of the board that's been an honor and a privilege to have you serve on the board with us this year and uh it's i know you have some i say every year you uh the incoming person has some big shoes to fill for the the previous year so um and yes i know it's it was scary because we put you next to mike which is can be really intimidating and scary so you know but again as the board president and as a member of the sport for many years we like to thank you for your time serving with us and we look forward to seeing you grow in the future with your future endeavors it's amazing thank you

147everyone that's all julie she she is our fashion and you know gift consultant here the rest of us have no rick wanted to give you a deer head i mean you know [Laughter] excellent all right um we'll go over to super intense report having to follow her all year has not been easy of course because you always put her out of me but um the two things you touched on one was graduation that just just inform everyone we did send something out to all of our senior parents um what the the what was lifted was this because of because we're staying within the 33 of the 2500 we're able and we're having three guests per senior as long as we've stayed within that 33 now our families do not have to be tested or show

148proof of vaccination the only requirement that's really in place is this that family members who come who are unvaccinated are expected to wear mask until they get to their seats and then no one and then everyone can be unmasked so that was a a big change for us certainly i'll tell you my worst um fear for graduation until that changed was that we were going to have a senior um you know would have been bad enough who was a parent but if we have a senior who came in and got tested that morning and was negative or was positive excuse me and couldn't go so um you know when that was lifted i mean i just and i think a lot of people were just absolutely thrilled so thank you for touching on that and

149then thank you for introducing anna rick pronounced correct okay to everyone here tonight uh hannah will be our next ex officio student board member so welcome just have a couple more things um one we need to pick a date for our board retreat so i don't know if you have some ideas if you want to throw them around if you want to send something out maybe what i'd like us to decide tonight is do you want it to be a weekday or a week end i sort of think i can guess what that's going to fall under but i do want to start with that um it's usually it usually is like a full day uh workshop um the last time we had one we started about nine in the morning and ended around four

150um you can do evenings you know just crunch for time and time wise and everything like that um depending on people's work schedule we you know we've done one on a saturday before but we've also done it where we did it on a wednesday preceding a board meeting and did like a marathon day so that was the first year we did that it was interesting um so what i'd like to do is pick set weekender weekday and then i'm going to ask you to email me three dates that would work for you and we'll see if that we can coordinate everything if you're looking schedule wise um i'd like to do it on a wednesday if it's a weekday um i will do it opposite of a board meeting week so it's not you know

151a 12-hour day of of going through everything what time period uh uh probably july yeah so do we have one or two meetings um i believe we have two this year we have two it looks like and you have to reorganize we'll have two in july and one in august so we would do it a week in between probably if we would do it or the week after the last one for the 21st board yes so we could go the 14th or the 28th 28th and that's the 20th for you i mean we have to do it on wednesday we could do it on one but as long as it's a week between the meetings so why don't you just send me some dates of the week the two weeks that we're off around those

152meetings and we'll go with whatever most people have picked then for that that's the other thing like what would work best you guys you know everyone it might make it easier if people send their schedules as to when they can't when are they going to be gone like if somebody's out of town or you know if they're going to be away for a week and then let's see what days are left all right did you see what the august meeting was the 7th 21st that's july we didn't yeah august i was trying to stay away from august with the amount of stuff that actually is going on in there do you want us to what we can do is we can send out a couple of schedules like what we do like for like our

153dlt retreat yeah we'll do that but we can do that okay and we'll we'll send something out to everybody we'll we'll narrow some but is the day schedule okay with everyone then with work-wise that we do it i i know you know i think most of us can get after in a week here okay yeah i know you can yeah you're funny yeah all right so we'll do it we'll do it as a day schedule then what's better than is if we do you know have any speakers come in or we have nismo come in during the day works better for a lot of those people than having an evening one so we have a wider range of of uh ideas um the uh the second part is the rete retreat topics if there's a

154topic that you wish to include in there to discuss or learn more about um please also submit it to the superintendent and i so that we can start forming an agenda around there and seeing what we can narrow down to and can we get all that by next week wednesday yeah it's going to be apa style double space it would be better to just do it on the table because well i mean that's just kind of already i mean we did so what we did that time was we did it during the day like that and we did you know we ordered dinner and yeah you know and we had stuff like that so i mean if you want to do it that way we could do it on the 7th or 21st we're already

155planning on being here i would recommend the 21st in that situation because the 7th is the rework meeting and that's already a couple hours you have an appointment yeah well here's our other problem is that technically rick and i can't do it until after the seven after the night of the seventh because that's when we sworn in right all right well yeah we'll send dates okay all right back to your report just uh two quick things one um nelson could you just talk a little bit about um some really good news when it comes to interest an interest rate yes so as we're going through our capital project and expanding the funds we uh fit out bands to borrow those funds and then it's bonded at the end of the project this last bid that

156went out which was this week um i was told was the lowest interest rate they've ever had ever and we got the prize they sent so it was 0.19 and and understand that that you know your the financial position of the district impacts what that interest rate is and i think that's just really important to understand and you know we've seen like you know the positive moody's ratings and you know their fiscal stress level where it's dropped and you know all those things and when someone came knocked on my door and said i have great news i knew it was financial um but but then whenever i heard you know that interest rate i mean it's just it's it's fantastic and it's a place that we certainly wouldn't have been able to live you know

157a few years ago so a nice work to the business office into the board for some of that work that got us to a point where we could have an interest rate like that um just jumping back to my uh report for real quick all right you didn't do the last one grab and go yeah last thing um when it comes to i don't know if you were going to speak on that food service i say at every meeting of the food until next june 30th so june 30th 2022 will be free breakfast and lunch in the district so we want to just make sure everybody knows that and takes advantage thank you uh just a couple of things from my report um first i have some great work again on that obviously um financially

158we have come a long way in the past uh 10 years uh from when when us old timers rick and i were first on the board um but it's it's a testament for all your hard work and everything so thank you um the other item was i just i want to give great credit to um the production staff the teachers and advisors uh who put together the virtual musical i'm hoping all of you got a chance to look at watch it and if you haven't make sure you watch it is is phenomenal the kids did a great job with it on there uh make sure you watch the one hour one minute mark um there's a there's a great dance um solo by our superintendent so i highly recommend that wait are you serious you

159never [Laughter] i just didn't get a chance to look at it yet yeah i highly recommend i i think dan's under a penalty of death over there if he puts it up on the screen right now so um yeah so i do make it make a recommendation all of you make it take your time out watch your kids the kids were phenomenal in it it was absolutely great and i i mean i had the pleasure of working with them on it um and they just blow me away every time i'm in there and listening to them so and those that don't know there's a part in there too where um the board president sounds really great has a great voice it's not as good as the dancing no no because my faculty somehow got the

160video too of me singing and now they want me to sing the national anthem every morning at school so yeah it was either one of you two i mean i know that that got that sent over so yeah oh yeah all right um item after board discussion um anything brought up for our previous meeting stuff old business and stuff for discussion oh my goodness you know because it's like really tiny all right allison finance finances and in the end the scores came out that the two banks that we currently deal with were the best choice so my recommendation for the next year's yeah all right any old business this time then any new business this time then yeah actually okay first i want to thank you guys for coming out and having a great kids

161and your kids speaking up um i think it's good and important for us to hear from you from them um i don't know board's thoughts there any further ways we can advocate for the kids um i was looking at the statistics earlier and for 17 and under it's something like 600 times less risk that they're at from mortality than the russian population 18 and up it seems like the kids are being put in a position where they aren't being treated differently than the rest of the populace and i don't know how you guys feel um if there's letters to write um if there's any important directives to to do anything differently than what we're doing i want to open it up anyone has any thoughts i know a lot of senator warren is calling on

162the governor to lift the things i don't know if anything we can do as a board if we're in consensus to send letters to advocate um for this and then anything else down the road if it seems like we're being unfairly positioned and kids are you know bearing the credit i know in talking to the other board presidents uh we're gonna wait and see for the next like week and a half because of the same message that the superintendent said is that that other announcement that is her to be coming cause basically what has happened is senator orr along with the um other legislators have pressured the governor's office to contact the cdc and say this is what our state's doing could you please revise your statement for our state so i know with as

163a board presence group we said well let's see what comes of that and you can either go with a week and a half that's the end of the school year um give them to the end of the school year basically to make an adjustment for next year and then we're gonna we're gonna be meeting again to discuss what's going to happen with next year i can tell you that the from talking to many of the board presence the feeling of wearing masks from last year we met at this time to this year has greatly changed in that um you know the the the the general consensus is time's up for him in schools you know it's time to move on from that phase and to really end all the um truly end all the restrictions

164from the pandemic um but again we don't want to go and just not talking about you know any districts in particular we don't want to go to the to that level where we have a retaliation from state ed for making any actions for any of our districts right now as we know that are probably going to happen with a certain district and um you know in the state so that is where we lie um we as a board i would wait until the scene also to the end of the school year to you know we'll get back into july and see what's what's transpired because you know things as a superintendent said you know graduation stuff changes like daily right now you know twice of that one day you know we have two different things

165once in the morning once in the afternoon so um i want to wait and see in that regards and given to the end of the school year and see what happens at that point i don't know if you can give me any other documentation that you would intend to refute the medical full exemption um locally while they're in school um i'd like to see that but before that i mean like i said before i would encourage you to re-evaluate and look at the language and see if there isn't someone the school district pioneer which one of the best speakers mentioned or is it no it's i'm not going to go into detail but that is it's it's in i'll say it's it's the only district in western new york that's that's something so you can

166put two and two together that there's you know an intention on and they're bored too with it so yeah you know we always wait to see how certain things play out before we jump into other things because you know we uh we need to see what happens with them first so yeah i mean that's i i would not right now you know move against anything for next year because one um as we haven't heard exactly everything that is going to be happening next year i'd like to see that whole package of what is what the whole reopening of school is going to look like next year right now and i know state ed will probably be putting something out very shortly with that you know into the into july you know um because you know

167let's let's face it you know there could be something else that pops up all sudden for reopening next year that we're gonna be sitting here the same way and say what in the hell are they thinking you know and it could be even a higher priority than masks you know for people so i i just i just waiting till july a couple weeks into july and getting through this end of the school year i think would be prudent on our part to see what changes come down from from stayed out in the governor's office so again that's my opinion you know the rest of the board you guys may have other opinions and stuff i just say yeah 10 days or so 14 days whatever for the more answers it goes but i see i

168commend the families that were involved in the grassroots uh campaigns foreign um i think that's definitely where things change is from grassroots organizations that continue to impress upon the legislators i mean the governor's executive power is not being taken by the legislators that's who you need to reach out to all right um and we'll have public public comments then at this time there's another new business anyone wants to speak of anything that's been discussed or on the agenda for tonight mr bax i'm surprised no i'll be quiet today there's a first for everything impressive sorry he'll probably stop by my house and talk about your house um any board member comments i have something i just want to um say to marissa how fun it's been to have you on the board with us this

169year your energy is contagious and you are so fun and always have a wonderful report that we just love to hear and you definitely will be missed but um so excited all of us are to see like where you go what you do and just live your life and have fun and make memories and you know do all the things that you know you're supposed to do at your age so we'll definitely miss you and on to better things and then yeah i know you're so cute i mean half the year you have to do zoom meetings with us which is like the worst so if you could survive you could survive anything and then welcome anna we're so happy to have you and we'll show you the ropes you know and i want to

170echo what you just said but i like what you said about learning it and kind of you never use the word mature but seem to bring it to a different level going into college being around us old people hey yeah and you know what i mean you can really kind of inspire this group of us this year with your outgoing enthusiasm it's really this time we needed something like that so i really like to thank you for coming on board nana i would like to congratulate you and welcome aboard yeah i'm just going to take you back and everybody personal it's great to have you on the board this year and the position that you're in really gives us a flavor of what's going on in the school you know we can hear things but

171your reports are honest sincere and i got a good vibe of what this school felt like without being there because we get the sporting events limited capacity but no i just wish you well everything you do and uh welcome anna and i'm sure she'll pass off the baton to you and you'll be in good hands and look forward to next year yeah likewise what they said where are you going to school again [Laughter] so you have your speech written for uh for graduation rick is a rick's expert speech writer so if you ever need any advice feel free to reach out to him so with that being said i like to entertain a motion to adjourn let's move in a second all those in favor please say aye aye opposed you're standing motion carries