001okay i'm gonna go ahead and start the meeting please stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty okay we're gonna move on to our recognition of our school leaders tonight starting off with valedictorian so whereas the board of education takes great pride in the area of academic achievement of its students and whereas kiera weber has excelled in academic excellence and has been declared the valedictorian of the class of 2022 at watertown high school for her outstanding academic achievement based on her overall average of 98.987 and therefore be it result that this board of education congratulates kiera on this significant accomplishment and hopes that this will be one of many such honors for her here are you are credit to your family school and teachers [Music] yes congratulations whereas the
002sport of education takes great pride in the area of academic achievement of its students and whereas ella arnott has excelled in academic excellence and has been declared the salutatorian of class of 2022 at watertown high school for her outstanding academic achievement based on an overall average of 98.98 six and therefore the resolve that this board of education congratulates ella on her significant accomplishment in hopes that this will be one of many such honors for her ella you are credit to your family school and teachers congratulations [Applause] yes [Music] congratulations and finally whereas this board of education takes great pride in the area of academic achievement of its students and whereas garrett hudan has excelled in academic excellence and has been declared the watertown high school class of 2022 outstanding vocational student for his outstanding academic
003achievement based on an overall average of 94. and therefore be it resolved that this board of education congratulates garrett on his significant accomplishment and hopes that this will be one of many such honors for him garrett you are a credit to your family school and teachers please can i get a picture of all three students like right up here before you leave i know you guys have an award ceremony in high school there's mr fairchild in the background too so guys we'll your families are welcome to come with you if they like that's perfect where am i looking [Music] look over here for a second there you go there you go who's your favorite child now smile again at the award ceremony um and could i have a um motion on that last one please
004excuse me thank you and a second jason all in favor kids so ladies and gentlemen we are about to convene our public comment period of our meeting although state law does not require us to hold the comment period we have chosen to do so because we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our community members about their concerns and issues having said that please note that the board is here to listen the public comment period is not designed to be a discussion accordingly please do not expect the board to respond onto your concerns and questions tonight this is because we take our concerns and questions seriously we want to have sufficient time to process and research issues if need be we will however respond to your questions and concerns at a future meeting
005or have the proper staff member get back to you an appropriate time i also want to point out that the our town city school district policy prevents us from entertaining any comments or questions about school personnel or students please know however that we take those personal concerns very seriously upon these matters we would ask you that you please go through the appropriate administrative channels which is contact the superintendent patricia barb we want our school board meetings to serve as an example to our students that members of our school board and members of our community can deal with controversial issues in a civil manner and demonstrate mutual respect for one another in that spirit we will insist that all speakers and members of the audience maintain civility and respect for any divergent views that others possess
006we ask that speakers please address their comments to the board directly rather than the audience finally i want to remind everyone that you may submit written comments to the board in lieu of speaking in a public comment period if you so choose we will entertain public comments for 30 minutes each individual speaker has about approximately three minutes to speak the individual time limits will be enforced so that as many members of the public who would like to speak can i currently have a list of people who have indicated they would like to speak i'm just going to start at the top of the list and go down and if your name isn't on my list and you would like to speak and there's still time left in the 30 minutes you may welcome to get
007up and speak as well um so sorry on my list i have miss millie smith i'm not gonna go right now i'll just there's i want there's other people here that i'll allow to speak before me okay moving down my list uh i have a mr george nugent make sure you guys hi i'm george nugent i live at 261 florida in the west and i'm the proud parent of 10 children 10 of whom have graduated from watertown high my wife marilyn is also a graduate i want to do two things i want to thank the belated thanks to the teachers who have so graciously and taught my 10 children so well there's five children with advanced degrees an associate degree two to two baccalaureates and uh two young men who are terrific tradesmen um the
008second thing i would like to discuss is the uh color-coded wii i uh i personally think it's uh divisive and ironically intolerant um my granddaughter came home and she was crying she was accused of a 12 year old of being a lesbian she wore the purple shirt sir can i just copy for for one second um i i understand that that your granddaughter may have had a problem with this week but we can't specifically talk about her issues if you could keep your comments to the the pride we really appreciate that please pride week yes okay um i think it opened up an alley for people to bully um i feel that she was bullied because uh she's only 12 and she didn't deserve that she simply wore the wrong color on the wrong day
009my suggestion is what if a student didn't want to participate in this pride week at all for any reason he didn't enjoy the the politics of the situation he simply wanted an education i think it was extraneous to the to the goal of an education to require people to adhere to something they may not believe the fact that she was felt that she was insulted doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that it means uh she didn't deserve it um so i feel it was a program started without a whole lot of thought and uh it didn't take into account of the diversity of the of everybody um i have uh i have a situation i have uh well never mind but uh i'm aware of uh pride week in my family and i feel it
010was just an occasion to divide people and to [Music] um well i think i'm i've prepared a whole lot of stuff and i'd like to furthermore thank the the council and the teachers because i also have 15 grandchildren in the system right now and i'm sure that they will they will gain the benefit of the education my first 10 kids received thank you very much thank you um next on my list is mr eric schwartz you're not speaking okay thank you sir um mr aaron nedo okay uh mr john goss i'm john gavison limit 26035 east gotham street i wanted to speak tonight to address my concerns about what happened in the last meeting and how it was conducted uh and i'm hoping that your minutes that you prove tonight accurately reflect what happened in
011the last meeting uh multiple parents got up bespoke got them to speak to express their concern about safety and violence in our schools and one of them was listened to another one speech was actively shut down and when miss smith got up to speak uh courageously and thank you for doing so your comments were very appropriate the board stood up and walked out on her uh i think that those people that spoke in the class meeting were trying to convey a message that is extremely important to our children in academic performance in our schools after that meeting i called 20 parents they've been 21 and they've been 18. there was 100 consensus including teachers who are parents teachers working in this school system they're also parents of children in the school system agreed that their
012children do not feel safe in our schools and i don't know what could be more important than that second to that only could be the academic performance of our schools new york state reports a school card a scorecard for schools this school is underperforming other schools in the state on many counts i've since started to read about new york state education law as well as the new york state school board association guidance for school boards one of the most important things the school board can do is establish strategic direction for the school write a set of goals and manage the superintendent to achieve those goals a cursory review of the goals is a little bit disappointing not one of them addresses these overarching issues of safety and violence in our schools or discipline our schools
013or academic performance of the new york city school or new york academic performance of the watertown district schools in new york state i would submit to you that the two are closely linked none of the goals address those two massive issues none of the goals are stated properly as goals and that they are not specific they're not actionable they're not measurable and they're not timed those are the attributes of any well-written goal and none of them are related to these problems of discipline violence or academic performance of the schools you can't imagine what could be more important than those two things i'm asking the board specifically to open up agenda items at future meetings so that those issues can be transparently discussed and addressed and that we can as a team pursue very specific actions
014to improve what is occurring in our schools with respect to those issues thank you next on my list is mr peter verga is there anyone um that's currently the end of my list is there anyone who would like to speak that is not friendly on the list that has something to say i didn't sign in i'm sorry no you're fine just give us our name in your sure kelly matutech i live at 19703 woodside drive prior to um this morning i would have had a lot a little a lot more to say um last week i did have a meeting for the first time ever with a vice principal and principal of case about my dismay with how the sexual orientation week which is still going on was down behind parents back was obviously planned
015there were resources there was time without any involvement from a school psychologist a caseworker parents you had a small club and a couple parents of um gay lesbian trans by i did speak with jessica blair and mark taylor again prior to that when i was going to speak i'm hoping and i asked the board i'm hoping that a situation like this will never occur again i feel very confident after my hour meeting about sexual orientation week and then i got a call today from patti labar um we touched on that and we also touched on the fact that you know sports in our schools are just not emphasized or celebrated again i would have had more to say but after talking with patty please don't just placate me please you know follow your word and
016and bored just make it happen because it's it's an issue and i trust that patty will relay what we spoke and i i trust you so let's hope that pride it wasn't pride week it was sexual orientation celebration attire sexual um preference that never happens again and then also that our sports there's an emphasis because math well academics music art and sports will get our children scholarships that they so so need even something small like a legion it's a recognition these these artists these musicians these athletes you know these students need to be recognized and celebrated thank you thank you and i know i'm short so i yield my three minutes to a millisecond i don't think that's right don't worry about it can i say something real quick i'm amy horton i live at
017180 ward street i also just want to express about this past week as a parent how i felt when i received that message at 8 30 at night that all of a sudden we were doing this was really hurtful i have spoken to you know the principal vice principal um but i want to tell you from a child's perspective what it was like in the hallways okay it created multiple children wearing pride flags around the school not maybe just one flag but maybe three flags that we have a dress code that would be a dress code violation i feel as a parent it should have been addressed it should have not been allowed it's still continuing to be allowed i asked my son today yes multiple kids wearing flags now if we wore other flags
018or if we did other things those would not be allowed so we have a dress code for a reason i would hope that that would be taken care of also lastly i realized that this did not come to the board or to patty for approval but here's where you feel frustrated that okay it didn't come to you for approval but now you know what's happening but yet is still con anyway it's okay for us to have one day to celebrate everybody be inclusive to everybody but to go to the extent that we have taken it out to it's way too much these children their teenage years imagine your teenage years it it's so strange you're trying to fit in everything's changing in your body but now here you are telling these children other things and
019it's not just the reading of the announcements of every single day it's the hallways of the mass it just they just want to get out of the hallway i could speak for multiple children that felt that this week was just terrible that just being in the hallway has caused such dismay to the education i would really would have wished that it would have been halted but it wasn't and tomorrow we will still celebrate again and i'm sure there will still be pride flags we are worn again so that's where the frustration lies if you didn't know about it why didn't we do something to stop and say it's okay to have one day but here we are and we'll still continue again i would just really would wish you that you would see it from
020a child's perspective because that's what these kids are in seventh and eighth grade they're children 12 13 14 years old that don't even know ask my son what's non-binary i don't know mom i'm really not sure so please i would hope that you would have major discussion on this and involve the community so we can be a part of it because i know as a parent i want to be involved in the schools and i know many other parents feel the same way thank you thank you um my name is millie smith 140 kai's avenue so i want to start the meeting by pointing out how terrible the setup is you have multiple people on the list today to want to talk you have a room you have to shut off this is a completely
021non-conducive environment to have a meeting and to have privilege of the floor this isn't a privilege this looks like a little jail cell this is some this you need this needs to be changed for my back to be to the people that are this is being live stream is rude should not happen we can have a better setup and i would suggest that the board look into that the second thing i want to talk about is communication i would like to know why members of the board members are not allowed to communicate with community member myself or anybody else who sends an email to a board member why are we not allowed to communicate via email i don't understand that i understand this is a rhetorical question because i already know the answer to that
022but you know we're all tax paying citizens in this room and if you sent a letter to the mayor and the city council and they didn't and the response was the directive has been that as a city taxpayer if you send a letter to the mayor only the mayor is allowed to respond no city council members allowed to respond to a letter from the community member how would that make you feel because that's exactly what's going on right here if i send you a letter i expect you to respond that's courteous but i have been told that the directive is that only one person gets to respond so i ask the board to revisit the notion is it logical for board members not to be able to communicate via email to community concerned community members
023that are reaching out to you your board policy 2002 states the board has full authority to carry out the will of the people of the district that it represents that means you represent me so if i want to talk to you jason i should be able to talk to you and you should be able to talk back to me via email personal phone text whatever way to communication there should be no boundaries on that so i would ask the board to please look at that it seems to me like there's role reversal going on here that it's the role is that the board is answering to administration as opposed to administration answering to the board and if you look at your board policies that's not the way it's supposed to be board policy two two
024five zero zero states that the board is to be kept informed about school operations and problems here we are patty you did a great job in sending out a chain of communications your chain of communications indicates that the word should be addressed last that's why we're all here because we've touched upon every other person and other every other level we're not getting any answers so that's why we're here and it would be nice if we can have a conversation a friendly one because i think we all are here for the same thing we want to make our school safe we want to make our children happy we want to have a better education system we want to all be on the same page and right now i feel like that's not really happening the last
025thing that i want to touch on is the watertown city school district received millions of dollars in coded relief funds where is that money we don't know what happened to that money i have researched and looked and maybe i looked in the wrong place i don't know couldn't find it i've asked other people to give me the numbers can't find it where is our spending plan what did we do with this culvert relief fund we couldn't even coordinate a sports banquet because we were told that we didn't have money to have someone cater the event i mean come on the turf was put in 2006. the 15-year warranty expired on it we're at a state aid of 92 to 96 if we would have replaced that turf about 96 percent of that turf would have
026been paid by the state now we're beyond that i don't know what happens there does it now fall back on the taxpayers i don't know how about new athletic uniforms how about in you know building on the infrastructure of the athletic field how about building the athletic the infrastructure of the athletic fields how about celebrating all of our students how about safety helmets for our lacrosse team we don't have money for that i think we can find money for that i'll close my argument by saying this okay not argument but my the safety of our schools is most important as mr gauss pointed out that was the last communication at the last meeting i would encourage the board members before school ends walk around the school talk to students find out how they're feeling talk
027to the resource officers talk to the hallway minors invite them to your board meeting find out from them not just the parents because we're here because our kids talk to us so i know there's a new slate of officers coming in july i think we need new blood we need new direction and we need new officers so that we can feel like we're being heard that is my message and i hope that come july 1st that we're going to enter a whole new scheme of things so that we make our schools better and safe because right now i'm sorry patty no offense to you but we are the laughing stock of jefferson county watertown is in the mouth of every school district and i don't think that's a secret we need to make that better
028we should be the example thank you we have about five minutes left is our public comment session is there anyone else who would like to make a comment this evening okay thank you we're gonna move on to our communications okay moving on to board and staff reports um our first report is from this is jessica brown on grading hi um my name is jessica brown i'm the instructional coach and teacher at case middle school i wanted to start off by saying how proud i am of this district i am proud to be a teacher in this district i am proud of our kids and i um i love being a teacher at case so um one of the things that we've really focused on this year on our grading committee is looking at um making
029sure our grades are accurate and also motivational to students this is a committee that's been going on for about two years now and um this is the book that most of the work has been done by um with joe feldman um specifically we looked at accuracy um if you'd like to i don't know if you want me to click it these are just some of our agendas for the year but we did look at um a lot about what makes a grade accurate um would you mind going to slide three please i'm sorry um and this was our our i guess our little elevator speech at the end of the committee and our goal is to move our grades to be more um accurate motivating for students and really making sure that we're communicating clearly
030with parents the skills that students have um and letting kids know where their skills are and where they can grow and where they are going so we are going to do this in two different ways oh thank you so as far as accuracy goes we took a lot about where we looked a lot about how a xero impacts a student how homework impacts a student um and kids kids um need to have the equal opportunities to be able to get the work done and so um what we looked at was um calculations and what makes a grade mathematically sound um so i just there we go and i mean when it comes down to it when we did do a focus group with kids and we talked to them a lot about their grades um
031about three weeks ago and if their grades are really showing what they're capable of and a lot of kids told us they weren't because they didn't understand the averages even though we've taught them explicitly to kids it's just such an abstract idea so we were looking at um scales and how scales can actually show kids where they're at and how that they can grow um and having that growth mindset is really important to us um and we really want to make sure that our grades are transparent that kids know where they're at um at any point in time and that parents will know where their kids are at um so that was a huge goal of ours um let's see here sorry we are planning on having a lot more focus groups groups next year
032with our seventh and eighth graders um it's important for us as teachers to hear how they feel [Music] about their assignments the importance and learning life skills so what we did this year is each department looked at prioritizing their standards so there are a lot of standards let's say for social studies for example they have over 40 standards and skills that they are responsible for teaching which if you're realistic about it you can't spend that much time on every single standard so by prioritizing those five criteria the department looked each department looked at where they wanted to spend most of their time and what where they wanted to consistently evaluate students performance um and then what we did after that is we would be moving on to looking at scales and how to incorporate those
033scales so for next year through our set plan for the middle school what we would like to do is to start having teachers kind of just play around with these skills and seeing how they motivate students if they do motivate students just so that so that the focus is back on the learning and less on the grade because that's what's really important for kids and um we're hoping that it can look maybe similar to an elementary report card um so those are the two books that we're going to look at and some of the departments have already started and i know some of the departments are planning on over the summer um some of the work on the scales that's it doesn't have any questions good question so are you i'm sorry did you say
034you're looking to do this next year um no we're not planning on the report card yet we're looking at just seeing um really how the teachers are feeling with the scales and having the kids give us some feedback on the scales and then wiley still uses percentages so i don't think we're not in korea but maybe down the road we might be um but you know it's good to have those conversations with kids so i guess thank you um okay this is rachel excuse me rachel marston for our test [Music] i'm rachel marston um i am the 12-31 teacher at the high school and i also run our formerly test program we are back to ged as of january of this year i know we keep jumping back and forth so um and i've been
035running the program now for four years um so just to give you a little overview of some of the staff that we have and kind of the schedule that we go by with the students and we try to narrow it down to specific subjects every um day so the kids are aware of what they're doing when they come in they come in and get their things out and they know what today's monday so it's an english day or history whatever the subject may be um and as you can see we take um and have different teachers each day based on the subjects that we're doing um really especially with the math this has helped a lot of our students become successful when passing because we really hammer out math for two hours sometimes three if
036they're 16 year olds and they get a chance to really sit down and learn the task at hand for the day our enrollment this year our overall numbers have been higher than the last few years um which i'm not sure if you guys remember last year i did anticipate that um coming off of covid and being virtual for a year and a half so i anticipated us being higher overall we're not crazy high but we're at a decent number actively as of today's attendance um i have eight students who are actively enrolled that iep i have four 16 year old students and 15 students in between the ages of 17 and 20. we can keep them until they're 21 before they have to go out to boces changes um as i stated at the beginning
037we have switched back switch from task back to ged as of january of 2022 um beauty one of the best changes that i think has come from this is i can go in and sign a student up i just did it today they could test on thursday they could test next monday any day that works in their schedule they have to work they have family commitments whatever it's no longer june 14th is the day of the test let's prepare it's whatever works for the kids i think that's fantastic um and testing does not operate during the summer so it's september to june um and it's all online now so they go to boces and they do it all on the computer and they also get the results right when they're done so they take the
038test and they go and here jason you pass congratulations have a nice day you know it's unofficial but it's they're excited to walk out and i had a kid's day who tested and he called me this is marston i passed awesome i'm so proud of you what do i do next wait for the diploma and call me back with it it's it's exciting for them to get the answers right away i remember having to wait it's not fun so i think that's an amazing change that they have done um the only downfall i have found in the new system is accommodation as a special ed teacher this really bothers me um they're i'm not against them how picky they're being with them but they're really really going through the accommodations with a fine tooth nail
039i did have a student that got denied an accommodation we're working on getting the proper paperwork that they need it's just i think it's just gonna be a learning curve for me to figure out what we need to send what we don't need to send we'll get there but that's my only downfall so far that i have found with it um and so sorry um so far this year we have had two students go and pass we've had two other students that have passed and have a couple tests coming up in this month and i have two students are getting ready to take their first test i signed one up today like i said and um i had the one student who passed today as well so we have a few students still texting me
040for june 30th um and hopefully they're successful looking ahead to next year um the change in the program is prompting myself and the staff that i have to look at the program as a whole and see what changes we need to make to it to make it successful for the students and how the test is run now because they can go and test and do one test today another test tomorrow we need to really look at it overall and i'm hoping this summer something that we're able to get some time to do and revamp our program to make it successful for the students we also would like to take a look at this high school's policies as well as the requirements for the ged program overall in new york state and come up with our
041own policies or rules in terms of behavior etc because we have had a couple issues um this year and we've you know just wonder what we do within that situation um i've talked to stacy a little bit about it and her and i have come up with some ideas that we're going to continue to run by so that's something that we want to look at and then we've talked about a possible edition of a social worker for the program not every day maybe a day or two a week the kids still have some mental health issues you know they don't just leave high school the regular day and come to us and they're gone we still have students that have those mental health issues so we want to be able to better serve them and
042help them so that's something that we're looking at hopefully maybe next year or at some point during the year we can get a social work in there for an hour two hours or a day or two a week i'm not sure how that will work yet but that's something that we're looking at for next year and last um we're looking at some enrichment opportunities that we'd like to bring back now that we're moving away from covet a little bit i know covet's still there but we want to try to bring some of these back since we're trying to get back to normal um volunteer work is a requirement of the program we used to do the food for families program and the kids loved it they it's just they just lit up when they would
043go do it we would go over to massey do it and then staying have our program for the day so if we're able to we'd like to get back to that we would help with pbis events in the high school if they had like big pbs that's happening they would help set up for them or various things we'd also like to look at you know going along volunteer maybe doing some field trips in the community within the walking distance of the high school just to explore and see what job opportunities are around the high school within walking distance to further show the kids because working is also a requirement um and getting a little bit of community involvement you know maybe walking to the zoo and seeing what they have to offer because they do
044have volunteer opportunities there as well we want to try to get the kids out a little more yes they need to pass the test but we also want to give them some life things to walk away with because life skills is something else that we do work on which goes into our hands-on activities or group work um before covid we would do some cooking activities i again i'm a twelve one-three-one teacher i have a kitchen in my classroom because i do like skills with my kids we would take them down there and make them do a math problem to figure out how much sugar they need to put in for the cookies and why are you going to use bakings over baking powder to involve science so we would take the different subjects and make
045it hands on for them and they really enjoyed it hopefully we can get back to some of those things um guest speakers we would have guidance counselors come in um army recruiters the job workspace out from caffeine straight any people come in and talk to the kids and show them their opportunities we had somebody from jcc come and tell them what they can do with their ged um so we want to get back to having some more people come in and talk to the kids just so they're aware of what's next what's out there for me after i gain this diploma um because a lot of kids don't realize what they can do with it that it's no different than a high school diploma um and that pencil is deeper i know um we got
046away from it but we'd like to get back we have found that not every kid does well on a computer some kids do better with a pen and a pencil or in the paper in front of them to do it which can also lead into more hands-on activities they all can work together so we would like to try to go back to that still have the computers in the event that something happens again be ready to go but also put the computers away for a little bit let's get the paper out let's do a little activity let's get them a little more involved because i found that sometimes that involvement and stepping away from the computer where you have temptations to search for whatever they actively learn more and they they understand it a little
047bit better so um thank you does anybody have any questions all right thank you very much for having me crystal orego for those of you with the board who don't know who i am i am crystal argo i'm a school psychologist for the district and i'm just finishing up my 25th year so i have been here for quite some time um so in addition to being a school psychologist i am one of the district cpi instructors for the district i've been a cpi instructor since august of 2015. so coming up on seven years now so throughout that time myself along with um two other certified instructors have trained a number of staff members in a program called non-violent crisis intervention um so the reason i'm kind of presenting tonight is last week when some parents
048had expressed some concerns about the safety of students at the high school safety of the students in general but i think most especially at the high school with some of the fights the term cpi was kind of put out there as a possible program that this district had in place that either should or could be intervening with these fights and even some questioning as to why staff members who may be trained in this were not actively intervening in in those fights and i had some concerns with that um because that's really not the intent of what the cpi program is or the reason we brought it into our district to begin with um and since that time i had multiple staff members even my own fellow trainers and other people who've gone through the program
049have come up to me and said no that it didn't sit well with us the way it was presented it just seemed to misrepresent really why we brought the program to the district to begin with who we've targeted for the trainings what's the in focus and the goal of that program um so i reached out to patty after that board meeting and said i really just felt i kind of needed to set the record straight a little bit because i'm very passionate about the program anyone who's ever wants to sit down and talk with me about the program it is a wonderful program and it provides wonderful tools and strategies for our teachers to work with kids that are in crisis and i wanted to make sure that it was presented in the light of
050how we really utilize it in our district and what staff have been trained in that um so i think you guys have little handouts in front of you that my team kind of put together when um i'd ask patty to come and speak um i think the biggest thing to understand is that cpi itself is not the actual name of the training cpi actually stands for the crisis prevention institute which is the name of the organization which is an international training organization that provides training to a number of different kind of work environments hospitals nursing homes criminal justice systems institutions schools all different kinds of organizations and under that giant umbrella they offer a number of trainings they offer the non-violent crisis intervention training they also have verbal intervention training dementia training for maybe nursing
051homes so different organizations kind of look under that giant umbrella and then they pick the training that best fits their work environment what would be the best training for their work environment so with that in mind what we have chosen the program that our staff some of our staff have been trained and myself and we have two other instructors we went through a rigorous training of four days in order to become certified instructors and every two years we are required to recertify our own certifications so we go back through the whole training that we have our staff go through as the participants and we get reversed on it we practice our skills we make sure that we're up to date in all the newest terms because they've changed terminology they've changed some philosophies behind it
052to make sure that we're up to speed with best current practices so the program we have chosen is called the non-violent crisis intervention program and right now the staff that we've targeted for that are administrators for the most part i believe all of our administrators have gone through the training and we've really targeted our special education staff that includes our aides our assistants all of our special education teachers um our related service providers like ot pt speech and our people personnel members say our school counselors school social workers homeschool coordinators people kind of on the front line that deal on a pretty consistent behavior a pretty consistent basis with kids who might present with some challenging behaviors in the classroom um so those are the theft that we've been training and um we keep them
053up and the initial training for our staff members is an eight-hour course that we break up over two nights because that's a long time and we do it after school and then every year once a year we ask them to take what's called a refresher which is about a three-hour course where we kind of just go through everything and make sure that everybody's up to best practices problem solve any things that they might be struggling with in the classroom and making sure that everybody is really up to speed and how to use it when to use it and when it's appropriate to be used so kind of on the left side on the first page and i kind of went over that with you who we've targeted and we chose this particular training because it
054really aligns with our school's philosophy and the care welfare safety and security of students in our care and it really is aligned with what looks like typical behaviors and risks that we might be presented to us within a school setting okay and then along the right side i'm not going to read it to you guys because you can all read it later i'm not going to be that person but it kind of those program objectives are really everything that we cover in the training program i would say about 80 to 85 percent of the program is really all about verbal de-escalation setting limits problem-solving behaviors and really recognizing when students are becoming anxious overwhelmed frustrated dysregulated and recognizing that at the early stages so that we can intervene with that student and de-escalate them and
055bring them back down to a baseline of behavior so a lot of it is really working on our communication skills our body language our non-verbal communication how we're talking to students being supportive setting limits that they're starting to escalate so we can do everything we can so that we don't have to be involved in some kind of a physical what they call safety interventions with our students so we're really looking at trying to keep those students regulated and safe by recognizing some of those triggers and looking for patterns and behavior so that we can intervene before students become at risk of engaging in unsafe behaviors there is obviously a portion that we do talk about with students if they do become unsafe how we can handle that safely but it really we stress with our
056really always a last resort it's always at least restricted i'm always looking to be able to opt out of that intervention as soon as it's safe for that child to be you know for us to opt out so really the primary goal whenever we present it to our staff is giving them as many tools in their toolbox as we can so that we don't have the on the at risk on safe behaviors okay so those are the staff that we've kind of targeted and and when we present it to our staff it really is presented as a behavior management strategies and strategies and tactics like that to help us just be better teachers um i might be a little off but i think if you talk to the people who've gone through my training they've
057come out of it really feeling that they have learned some really valuable lessons in working with kids um and really use those interventions consistently when they're working with kids and in their classrooms um one thing that it really is not meant to be a reactive approach to just like kids and conflicts that are engaging in high risk unsafe behaviors that's really not what is intended purpose that's not how we train our staff that's not how we present it to our staff so and there's a lot of things that we can do um when we come into those situations where we might opt to not engage in getting physically involved with students this just really unsafe um on the first page where i have the key theme where it says risk of doing something balanced with
058the risk of doing nothing but nothing i really want to make sure i don't mean that in the literal sense it's not that we'd never do nothing but we really assess the level of risk and we look at other strategies to say we might be calling for help we might be you know removing the audience they might be doing other things but if it's a really high risk behavior and us getting involved physically in that is actually creating more risk then that would be a decision very calculated that that's not a good decision for us to be involved in breaking up those kinds of interventions um and really the the bulk of our program is all about working with individuals in crisis individual students and classrooms in crisis so it's not meant to be a
059reactive approach to breaking up the fights um and i just wanted to make sure that you know we understood because it's such a valuable program and a lot of people who've been trained in it really have come to me in the last couple days and like they just didn't like the way it was presented they felt it was an inaccurate representation of our philosophy why we chose this program to begin with why we brought it to our district and what we use it for um we do hope to do some further trainings down the road in just some of the verbal intervention trainings for more staff um and that is something we are working on and large efforts to get that many staff members all trained in something new but it is something that we
060are looking at to try to do a different training under cpi which is just called that verbal intervention training which encompasses a lot of the non-violent crisis intervention training without the physical piece it's all the the strategies and the techniques to recognize when kids are becoming anxious or frustrated so that our teachers have as many tools in their toolbox to recognize that and be able to intervene prior to unsafe behaviors occurring so that we can keep kids safe without having to have it escalate to the point where we are looking at more physical or higher level of intervention questions for me with the hopes that someday we can expand so currently if a teacher wanted to participate they wouldn't be able to unless we're in the school well what we what we've been doing so
061far has mostly been our special ed staff and it's been um through the after school and we do them after school so right now that has been the group that's been targeted we are hoping to be able to expand that to all of our staff through staff development days and things like that we have a large district so it's really hard to touch on all of our staff and even the needs of elementary are very different than middle school and very different from high school um so we are trying to be able to do i think the verbal intervention training i think that would be a really nice intervention for all of our staff to have i don't think all of our staff need to have the safety piece um but the verbal intervention part
062we are trying to find ways to do that in smaller groups because i think for it to be most effective we need to be able to be in small groups that we can really they can participate in those so it's a large undertaking um we are working on trying to figure out how to do that um with the number of trainers that we have and the size of our district but that is our long-term goal is to get everybody more at least the verbal de-escalation those kind of strategies um so that they can recognize the behavior prior to it becoming the big you know the big blowout kind of behavior does that make sense okay i don't know how the protocol works if you want to talk to vince vargo maybe after the meeting or
063if she leaves you can certainly like that okay thank you okay thank you you're welcome thank you krista um moving on to superintendent of schools report thank you to mrs brown mrs marston and mrs borgo for being here tonight the reports this evening we have 15 resolutions for teacher and staff tenure and over the course of the past several months i have actually visited each and every one of those areas or classrooms and it is a true honor and pleasure to recommend to the board's name uh those 15 individuals as well as we did one last time was just a little bit ahead in the 10-year schedule so it has been uh really a true pleasure to be out in the classrooms again and visiting with our kids and our staff we had our first
064case concert in a really long time i'd like to congratulate our case music department for an outstanding concert and i'd also like to update the board that our kindergarten through sixth grade students have started singing in music classes one of our case teachers wrote an abstract that was recently published in the language association journal and i'd like to pass that around we'll start here to share with all of you that's a true honor when we have a staff member that has something published and we'd like to share it a few months ago we had a parent who had an article published and we shared that as well i attended the boys lacrosse sectional playoff game in liverpool and then the girls playoff game in syracuse and our student athletes did a tremendous job i have
065to be right up front and all of the lacrosse games that i've ever had the privilege of watching our girls lacrosse game against west genesee was by far the best game i've ever been to um when you get down to one minute and 11 seconds and the scoreboard is 11 to and both teams just play full on with heart the entire game it truly could have gone either way and though our team lost by one point it was really truly a privilege to be there and be in that excitement so kudos to all of the student athletes for that performance as well as we had a high school student make the playoffs at state championships for golf over the weekend one of our first female student offers to make it to the state round so
066that was kind of exciting and we have a male student who's on his way to track and field states later this week all of that information and i'm sure is posted out on our website for the specifics on each one of those students we also have a spring sports awards coming up on june 16th at 6 p.m it will be in person it will be at the high school and cafeteria v that's the large cafeteria in it and there won't be food this year but we haven't had food at really any of our events this year for the most part the traditional meals that have been served with cobit and with some of the issues that we've had with getting food just for the day-to-day operations although we love the award ceremonies and the activities
067we are going to hold off on food so again that's june 16th at 6 o'clock in the large cafeteria and then some updates i met with a k student and their parents and a high school student and his parent within the past couple of weeks and i always appreciate the opportunity to work with students and their parents on understanding their perspectives and help meeting their needs i would encourage parents and students to contact the person closest to the issue as suggested in the communication chain but if you work through something and you would like more assistance by all means i'm happy to listen you can contact me by calling 785-3705 or you can email me or all that information is on the website and i would be happy to set up an appointment and have
068done so in the past couple of weeks um and that seems to go really well staff development thank you stacy and all of your team great presentations great afternoon we did have lunch for all staff but unfortunately that day we had about 150 people call off and it was thoughtful thursday so we took some of the food to the watertown fire department on massey street and donated that to them they have been of course gracious to all of our students for the past probably seven or eight nine ten years in providing winter coats for all of our students so that was just a small thank you for their yearly winter coat donation and there was so much salad left over the rest of it went to the salvation army and they were very grateful because
069they had a luncheon the next day that they were going to be able to use the salad for student initiatives and school-wide activities should be approved by the superintendent's office i did receive a lot of feedback on case pride week and as a reminder all school-wide activities need pre-approval from the superintendent's office stacy and i met with the wiley students on the code of conduct you know in the past we've talked at other board meetings where we've met with several students from case multiple times and actually we met with a few students from the high school as well but in the past couple of weeks we met with wiley students and then in addition to that stacey tina and i met with the diversity equity and inclusion committee and we reviewed the conduct code of
070conduct we just did that review a couple years ago through the deib committee but we did it again took a second look at it that's also an opportunity for any uh community member or parent who wants to get involved there is one committee that you we're always looking for community support and if you're interested in joining that committee you would contact stacy eager converse and also looking at the code of conduct we have and the american heart association looked through that um they've really honed in on the tobacco and vaping and making sure that we have all the correct terminology for any one of those and they're also looking at students instead of suspending students for some of those violations looking and getting them involved and enrolled in some programs that would be better solutions
071for them for the long term uh all of those suggestions from all of the groups that i've just mentioned as well as there's also a group of teachers and administrators that have been working through behavior and other issues but we'll next take a look at the code of conduct all of that information will be brought forward to the policy committee for consideration and then there will be a public hearing that will take place over the summer tina and i had a virtual meeting last week with representatives from fort drum and we gave them some updates on the district and they gave us a few updates on uh student ambassador and youth sponsorship program and miss addison also talked a little bit about the starbase program that we'll be starting in the fall there'll be more
072information it's a study based program that some of our students at the wiley intermediate will have an opportunity to go up to fort drum and participate in so there will be more information forthcoming on that this week stacy tina and i are working on our three-on-one meetings as we close out this year and start to prepare for next year with all of the administrators in the district the city of watertown is still reviewing the school resource officer contract i give you an update on that at the last meeting and the contract does need to be included in the district safety plan as a reminder the district-wide safety plan public hearing will be at our next board meeting right at six o'clock on june 21st and again that's another area where we are encouraging parents to
073join many we do need to have parent representatives on the committee this is my fifth year as superintendent and we've had the same parent volunteer for the past five years so we would love we would welcome parents on the committee um just let me know if you're interested all of the information for the district wide safety plan is posted on our website when you first look at the website you won't see it so you scroll down a little bit and there's a public notice i actually printed it out before i came here that looks just like this so if you look for the notice of the public hearing it was also published in the watertown many times 30 days in advance of the june 7 june 21st meeting you're more than welcome to all the
074information that you need if you have questions or comments relating to the district safety plan feel free to call me or email me but again we're looking for parent representatives for this team as well a few more things here so tonight you will also be approving a retro proactive calendar change um as you know right at the very last minute the state changed in first history regions and so we then put out a parent square message actually mr fairchild did that for all students in grades 9 through 12 to come to school originally that day was scheduled through board approval as a day off but we're reversing that because the state again changed plans right at the last minute so that is it okay assistant superintendent for instruction also would like to thank the 30
075plus staff members who presented on may 26 their colleagues um we had 30 presentations that were replicated twice so really our staff had an opportunity to choose from 61 different presentations that day and that included our work with the child mind institute out of new york city in terms of supporting students with anxious behaviors and other behaviors that are really symbolic of some of their returns to different environments post cobit we are also looking to continue that work into next year um and we'll be pursuing uh conversations about that as the summer months come on josh and i worked together to get the esser required reporting complete in the state ed portal with regards to the last year and a half worth of funding hey let's see patty and i met with pivot regarding our
076contracts for next year with our social emotional facilitators at k6 our student assistance counselors at 712 and other supports that we have through their programming including second step etc we also met with boces on pivot programming which was interesting to share our experience with pivot because a lot of other districts are interested in pursuing some programming through that organization um this is the first time in my five years here that i've had the time at the end of the school year to attend a senior exit interview i was very impressed with the students digital portfolios that they put together i know that's been a shift for both our staff and our students to go from print-based portfolios to digital aspects so very impressed with the presentations that they've been putting together and sharing their skills
077that they've acquired what their future plans are and other you know insights that they've had along the way as high school students i have been working with k-6 principals on master scheduling one of the goals that we had this year was to look to next year to avoid sharing of our special area staff on partial days uh spending you know a couple of periods in a building in the morning taking travel time and then having uh to be in another building um towards the end of the day because really what that's done is we've created blocks in our instructional schedules where we haven't been able to uh utilize all of our time and maximize effectiveness so we were able to successfully do that so now it's just up to the principals to put together together
078their individualized master schedules for their buildings and share those with staff which will be coming at the end of the school year um the one district one book committee uh thanks to susie for serving on that as well um has been up and running we've had some parents join us on that and we're looking to be fully active and up and running uh plans are slated for um a staggered release of books so parents don't have to read three books at one time if they have multiple children in the district um over the course of the beginning of the winter season josh and i held a federal advisory meeting as required by regulations with our title funding as well as our cares act funding and this year any foundation aid increase that has been assigned
079to the district so we had parents students staff members and support staff there to review what we have spent funding on in the past year and historical data on that and then also um seek out requests and suggestions for funding for 2223. uh the title application has been released uh we'll be working on that over the course of this summer with the due date of august 31st and this year the cares act which is already published on our website but the foundation aid increase plan also has to be posted on the website by july 1st and those are if you scroll down from our home page down to the required documents section they're listed on there as they are posted and published we have stated here right now on completing a upk program audit two
080representatives from the office of early learning are here with us today they attended the upk directors meeting which i had the pleasure of being at and hearing some of the community-based organizations share their insights and advocacy efforts on behalf of our upk funding at the state level and we also had a p3 committee meeting where we discussed plans for 2223 and stated was here to hear that so far so good with the audit and they're doing classroom visits with our cbo's tomorrow uh we have end of year half days um june 21st 22nd and 23rd a schedule has been sent out to our administrators and they're developing in building schedules to work with their staff on grade level vertical alignment meetings which have you know for example our first grade teachers meet with our second
081grade teachers our sixth grade teachers meet with our seventh grade teachers and so on um really to discuss any particular curricular needs or instructional needs that teachers might need to be aware of as students come into the following year um especially post covent these have been really critical conversations because as you know getting through a full-year curriculum on a good year is difficult and in itself especially now with some of the needs academically and social emotionally that our students have coming off of a couple of years of really crazy experiences with schedules and routines um they'll also be doing master schedule reviews at that point class list development and additional time for any department or grade level meetings that they uh wish to have and then the last thing i have to share with you
082is just a handout this is some data that i have been collating and sharing with some different committees that are in our district particularly the ais and rti committee that is district-wide and working on some different initiatives related to the placement and selection of students both in supplemental instructional areas as well as our enriched in advancement placements um as and the other committee that this has been instrumental in having conversations with has been our portrait of a graduate committee which is working on a foundational document that really supports what are the attributes in addition to the academic requirements that say that has imported for our graduating students what are the other characteristic characteristics and attributes we want our students to possess as they depart our 912 experience in particular and you can see from the
083data looking back eight years or so that over the course of these last eight years our enrollment with our students as juniors and seniors in courses that are either ap or edge-based or even general courses that would surpass the credit bearing requirements that stata has in place has significantly decreased so that's been a point of conversation is how do we encourage both foundational skills grow both as well as pursuing our students interest and motivation to take advanced courses um so that's something that is a point of conversation from both of those ends with the committee and that's it all right thank you assistant superintendent for personnel and student services i'd like to thank christopher her presentation as always constant professional um and i'm your passion about the crisis of prevention institute training and the normal
084intervention training is certainly loaded we are planning on doing training with all of our teachers in the fall and i work with our pps teams k-12 monthly we're meeting again tomorrow this summer we'll work on planning some training for the fall christa's taking the lead on that she's done some research and really worked hard with that so we're excited and that'll infiltrate down to our students and our teachers in the weekly professional development for them moving forward as we prepare for the fall um i had the opportunity to attend an online training sponsored by unity national regarding title ix it was very very informative there were a couple of presenters there that was on may 19th also on may 19th we had our behavioral committee meeting and at that meeting we came up with some
085plans again i meet with our k-12 pps teams tomorrow and we're going to come up with a with a system k-12 system we commonly it's been called different things child study team pps team but we're going to streamline that k-12 so our team tomorrow will work on streamlining the forbes district wide so we're looking forward to that so we're all on the same page there we're doing a lot of hiring right now we continue to we started back in february and it continues we're interviewing in the next two weeks for math english special ed uh enl psychologists lead teachers so so we're very busy doing that and i do appreciate everyone's efforts we have many different people serving on those committees we do the first round online and then we do in-person lessons so again
086those are going very well and we hope to be successful in our search as we go forward and olas continues to be a very good system for us that's our online uh application job application system and that really casts our net far and wide to folks around the country in the world actually in some cases so we've been able to have some great success there and finally uh you'll all see um i met with the nurses a couple of weeks ago great meeting and i just have to give kudos to the nurses they're working very hard we're getting audited right now um on concussions and i had uh we needed some information i had two nurses come up yesterday they had it done in an hour and a half they worked with josh and his
087team and so i can't thank them all enough uh for their work and we talked a lot about uh postcode hopefully coming up in the fall and things easing up and us getting back to some kind of normalcy everybody has two coping tests uh on your in front of you also for our community members here uh there are there's many out and on the table out there and i have many many more in my office please uh help yourself to those thank you um assistant superintendent for finance so like tina just mentioned we've been working for the internal uh audit regarding concussion management all preliminary docs have now been sent over to western hoses which is our internal auditor they will be here june 21st and foreign yeah um also working with osc on the
088tax cap audit hopefully that's pretty much done and you know one more thing and that was on the billing reconciliation city side since the tech collection thing um so we sent stuff over there today and they didn't immediately respond which is usually usually that well um so hopefully they're going to be wrapping that up in their future ide a audit let's put together a formal corrective action plan with corrective action itself which is the federal funds manual and that covers any of the findings that is completed so once we get that tab that will be on board agenda for approval 2223 budgets now then imported into the software we are working with the label right now going back and forth i think we have like three or four i think we're on version four for
089um a contract regarding us being able to take online payments i think it's madison one night of both these users the same company i believe it's hamer enterprises or something like that um but very customizable and what we could do and how it the interface looks in the agenda tonight we have there's budget adjustments which we are just cleaning things up now with a former business office person over in buildings and grounds we can really drill down and make sure everything's coated correctly so you'll see over half of the ones that are on there are all in the within the maintenance code so it's taking things from say a distributed contractual code and then moving it over to okay well now we know that wiley has more in natural gas because we're actually tracking and
090allocating it correctly instead of just having it in a district there will be another one of those there'll be another um run of adjustments on the next meeting along with reserve planning allocations and that updated reserve plan guys and then the other thing for me i'm here it's gonna be your foods you'll have your food service um the bids i touched on them last time so a 60 ish just under 60 percent increase on milk and juice for this year and a 5 increase on paper products okay thank you moving on to items on the consent agenda resolve that consent agenda items a b okay thank you all in favor opposed susie in a second all right any discussion on that all in favor the opposed motion carriers where is that after public advertising for
091items for the school nutrition department bids have been received and are hereby awarded for the furnishing of the following products school year milk and juice frenzy food service watertown new york paper and supplies hills and markets amsterdam new york result that the assistant superintendent of finance is authorized to issue the orders accordingly i have a motion please right in a second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries this education law to the opt-in is executed and entered into as of the date of the execution specified below june 7 2022 by the watertown city school district the existing agreement with erie voter 1 boces in home learning fastcraft code.org desmos digital teaching tools everfi near pod fixton comics suntex international tools for schools wakelet khan academy staff quiz edu lastic goguardian hair deck will
092expire on june 30th by 24 whereas boom learning classcraft code.org does most digital teaching tools ever everfi near pod pixton comics suntex international tools almost khan academy snap quiz goguardian peridot corporations that provide certain free services to the district pursuant to the certain contractual arrangements and under terms of service entered into between district and vendor and whereas the state of new york has enacted new york state education law 2d and whereas erie 1 board of cooperative educational services and municipal corporation organized and existing under the education law of the state of new york having its principal offices at 355 farm road west seneca new york has entered into an education law 2d agreement with each vendor offering a free product in order to address and give binding effect to the terms of new york at
093state education law 2d and each of the agreements provides that school districts can become party to the agreements by executing a written opt-in to do so and whereas the district wishes to become party to the agreements now therefore district attests and agrees as follows number one the district has evaluated its needs with a respect to new york educational opportunity and wishes to become subject to the terms of the theory one ocs agreements for the products listed above number two the district hereby formally notifies you theory one boces and confirms that it is opting into the agreements in accordance with the agreement and number three by executing this opt in so these are instructional software tools that many of our staff use um state ed a couple of years ago when edla 2d went into effect
094created a system whereby these vendors who offer both free and paid versions of their product the free versions would be swept under an umbrella agreement that would allow schools to use them without repercussion of not having an edward 2d contract individualized by those vendors so we're protected if our staff uses those from any particular liability should a cyber security risk take place okay thank you any discussion on this all in favor any opposed motion carriers resolved at the wiretalk city school district board of education recto actively from men's the 21 22 school year as follows june 1 2022 changed back to a regularly scheduled day of instruction for grades 9 through 12 due to the cancellation of the united states history and government i have a motion please jason in a second any discussion all
095in favor all right motion carries we saw that the board of education hereby approves the interim municipal agreement by and between the city of watertown new york and the watertown city school district for the period july 1 2022 through june 30 2023 for the use of each other's facilities for the intermediate and interim municipal agreement i have a motion please in a second jason is any discussion in favor the proposed new courses contemporary american mythology and folklore a sense of madness murder mystery and mayhem and on the case true crime for the 20 22 23 school year at watertown high school time emotion please susie and the second any discussion sign me up you all sound fun all in favor any opposed motion carries whereas the resolution was passed by the board of education on
096june 10 2020 approving the appointment probationary instructional of thomas bedard physical education item d number three on the personnel report and be it further resolved that this amended resolution reflects a correction of the ending date of the probationary period as follows result that the amended ending date is uh february 21st 2023 and it's hereby approved have a motion please susie in a second any discussions all in favor any opposed any abstentions motion carries further resolve that upon the recommendation of patricia b labar superintendent of the schools the following 10-year appointment is hereby approved amy adams school counselor effective date june 8th 2022 kind of motion please and a second jerusalem any discussion on favor by any opposed any abstentions motion carries here for the result that upon the recommendation of patricia b labar superintendent of
097schools the following 10-year appointment is hereby approved richard brader elementary effective date june 8 2022 motion please sorry in a second susie any discussion all in favor all right any opposed any abstentions must be curious be it resolve that upon the recommendation with patricia beasley suspender and of schools club senator foreign is hereby approved ryan gosselin physical education effective date june 8 2022. conclusion please jason in a second discussion um favor thank you can you oppose the abstentions could you go back to amy adams for a second i want to just clarify how you read that yeah amy's not a school counselor she's a social worker so can we amend that now can we go back and amend that before we go on nope it's okay can i get a motion to amend that resolution
098for amy adams as a social worker and not a school counselor susie thank you susie in a second i heard ambrose all in favor um so we had jason and lori on ryan tender appointment did we vote on that one yes okay thank you i'm sorry no you're fine i'd just rather correct it now nope i get it it resolved that upon the recommendation of patricia peterbar superintendent of schools following 10 year appointments hereby approve tracy propeller special education effective discussion all in favor any posts any abstentions it resolved that upon the recommendation patricia b lavar superintendent of schools following 10-year appointments hereby approve ashley lone elementary effective date june 8 2022. motion carries we resolve that upon the recommendation of patricia b lavarx who by ken of schools the following 10-year appointment is hereby
099approved michael lennox k-12 principal effective date julie 2022. can i get a motion please and a second any discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions motion carries we resolve that upon the recommendation of patricia b labar superintendent of schools that violent 10-year appointment is hereby approved rihanna march school counselor effective date june 8th 2022. time of emotion please jason and a second all right thank you all in favor any opposed any extensions who cares he resolved that upon the recommendation a picture should be the higher superintendent of schools if only 10-year employment is hereby approved elizabeth maurer k-12 principal effective date june 8 2022. i have a motion please compared to ambrose and i heard holly thank you all in favor he opposed any abstentions we resolved that upon the recommendation of patricia b
100labar superintendent of schools of our 10-year appointments for life another minor reading effective date june 8th 2022 i have a motion please ambrose and susie thank you all in favor aye are you opposed to any abstentions be resolved that upon the recommendation of patricia lavar superintendent of schools the following 10-year appointment is hereby approved nathan madeline technology any abstentions motion carries here is all that are found in the recommendation of christmas should be lavar superintendent of schools following tenure appointments hereby approved lisa colter penn state elementary effective date june 8th 2022. superintendent of schools the federal 10-year appointment is hereby approved robin claude paplasky school psychologist effective date june 8th kind of emotional pleasure in a second upon the recommendation of patricia bieber superintendent of schools the final 10-year appointment is hereby approved jocelyn reading
101english effective date june 8th 2022 motion please ambrose in a second jason all in favor any opposed exemptions motion carries it resolved that upon the recommendation of patricia lavar superintendent of schools following 10-year appointments hereby approved hilly snell elementary elective date june 8th 2022 private motion please second all in favor all right the opposed to the abstentions and upon the recommendation of patricia of our superintendent of schools i'll attend your appointments here by approved christians congratulations to all our newly tenured staff resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools participator the board of education hereby approves the following resignations retirements leave of absence appointment part-time summer school food service substitute instructional substitutes non-instructional summer school private motion please upon the recommendation of patricia vilavar superintendent of schools the term appointment of rebecca wright is
102director of health physical education and athletics and the district is hereby approved kind of motion like to make a request a table the same kind of motion to table this item at this time is that your code second on tabling excuse me thank you all in favor all right are you opposed correct result is the disposal recycle sale or donation of outdated and unused an outdated unused large format printer at case middle school is hereby approved question please thank you any discussion all in favor any opposed emotional cares resolved at a 500 donation private youth alliance to the national junior honor society at case night school to be used to purchase needed items for their local spca is gratefully accepted and will be acknowledged and ready i have emotional questions and club tabletop board and
103games and strategy role-playing game club at watertown high school with tammy angel as the advisor is hereby approved kind of a motion chris ambrose and susie thank you all in favor post motion cares resolved at a 300 donation from jake's properties and a 300 donation from the watertown savings bank to be used to offset the cost of the 8th grade oak dance is great gratefully accepted and approved and will be acknowledged and both will be ignored in writing and can i have a motion jason in a second in the discussion all in favor aye opposed thank you to them as well so does the disposal recycle our donation of damaged outdated and unused books from the libraries at starbuck elementary in north elementary is hereby approved i have a motion please susie second any discussion
104to enter into memorandums of agreement with the unions for the observance of juneteenth as a paid holiday motion please and a second susie any discussion all in favor when you post motion we saw the board of education authorizes administration to enter into memorandums over agreement with the non-unionized staff for the observance of junior as a paid holiday okay i have a motion please second any discussion all in favor all right can we oppose your queries resolve that upon the recommendation of participating our superintendents instructional employee is in place effective may 20th 20 22. i have a motion please all right jason thank you any discussion all in favor all right any opposed question thank you um all right so just again some upcoming dates there is a watertown high school wind ensemble that is on
105june that's the thursday actually 6 30 at the trinity church long as we just approved juneteenth which is going to be observed on monday the 20th um all school buildings will post and policy committee meeting 5 o'clock 21st and our next board of education meeting is also on the 21st and then we've got um half days for is that correct half days for k through eight hours 21 seconds either and then graduation is the 24th parade starting at 6pm outdoor graduation pending weather okay all righty um a couple of announcements so as of um july 1st watertown city school district we are not going to stream our meetings anymore um due to the easing of coverage restrictions so we invite everyone who would like to come in person to meetings can truly do that and
106my other announcement is i'd like to congratulate piggy patty on your retirement thank you 35 years of the district and i say thank you for being a teacher a principal an assistant and a superintendent thank you welcome let's go ahead alright go there [Applause] i thanks i'll have more chances to say more but uh pleasure working with you on a variety levels [Music] going back i felt bad after the last meeting about not thanking michelle gravel for all she does for the election do a lot of work for the district and sometimes it gets forgotten and i know we all think about it but i just want to formally thank you for what you do um want to thank the public for being here we benefit from input from citizens taxpayers all of our stakeholders
107appreciate that and i want to thank the wea for inviting us to the event at starbuck last week i was fortunate enough to come there and uh that care program i guess it's not happened for a couple years it was nice to see all the various great levels recognized it was really a positive very positive i'd also like to thank ohio elementary's fourth grade classes they invited me to chaperone their trip to labasa today and uh it was fun but it was very interesting to see all the kids that had an experience camp life so to speak um so it was fun talking with them and uh did a good job hosting us thank you just congratulations probably something i would like to read about something i believe our school can do in light of
108all of the pride situations that have been going on to help with our lgbtqia plus students these are some suggestions i have moving forward create safe spaces such as counselor's offices designated classrooms or student organizations where members of the community and the youth can receive support from administrators teachers and other school staff research suggests that when teachers get involved to stop harassment and bullying students feel safer and that's all students not just healthy variety provide teachers with resources and ongoing professional development development on lgbtq plus issues that enhance the cultural competence of school staff professional development can focus on ways to discuss lgbtq plus topics and a developmentally appropriate ways during lessons to create safe supportive school environments professional development can build staff awareness of the language that lgbtq plus youth use to identify themselves
109these approaches can benefit these youth and yield positive school outcomes such as increased school attendance serve as a resource to parents and families by providing affirming information on sexual orientation and gender identity to them and working with them to reduce bias and be more supportive work with families and students to identify and connect them with affirming supports and community resources and ensure that the lgbtqia youth who need health services are connected with culturally competent community-based providers who have experience offering these services to the youth okay thank you and lori um first of all i want to congratulate our outstanding graduates that were here tonight that's wonderful that you're here and kudos to you and your parents um thank you for everyone that spoke tonight um i think it's important for us to hear all of
110your viewpoints and me as a parent i said this last week to a parent first and i hear um there is an eighth grade graduation again we didn't mention that that's been brought back after a couple years that's on thursday the 23rd at seven o'clock and then patty um congratulations i wish we had more time with you but congratulations and i appreciate the things that you've done in the last two months when i've been working with you always have addressed the concerns that we've had all right i will take a motion to adjourn in a second thank you all in favor