001i 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 any agenda changes there [Music] we're going to start with the diversity equity inclusion committee report so we have a hard copy of that in our packet as well as in our board materials as well yes and for those of you that are watching virtually we'll have a copy of this posted to our website along with a glossary uh for the presentation so districts have a critical role in taking diversity equity and inclusion to the next level not just talking about it but making it part of the culture and not just talk about having it be part of the culture but having it be the culture as
002i start my 35th year as superintendent or as actually feels like 35 years as i start my 35th year in the district in my fifth year as superintendent i reflect back on my time here and what's next and so immediately i captured this picture that you can see in front of us on the screen and this roadmap captured not only my journey but all of yours at times it's straightforward sometimes it's a u-turn giving us a chance to reset refocus and possibly change directions sometimes the road splits and we take the road less traveled or sometimes we forge ahead this roadmap is also symbolic of the journey of our diversity equity and inclusion work and as we share the work from the diversity equity and inclusion work group this evening notice the word belonging is
003in the title starting my starting my 35th year in a place that i love and that i call home that sense of belonging that i have is what i want for all students staff and community i'm so proud of the work that the district is doing and it fits in perfectly with our mission statement you take a look at the mission statement we have committed to creating a caring culture that fosters lifelong learners and responsible citizens our mission will create an ecosystem of success that is built on the foundation of diversity equity inclusion and belonging it will provide access opportunity innovation confidence trust respect caring and relationship building all students families staff community must feel welcome all students family staff community must feel they belong and all students family staff community must feel that they
004are supported in school in order for us to truly make a difference everyone needs to make the commitment to diversity equity inclusion and belonging isn't it is an honor and a privilege to introduce president and ceo of gwen incorporated and her team kathy adams and judy dixon who have been supporting our district with dei implementation for the past two years wen and her team have worked with us to take a critical look at our work through the lens of equity giving every student the best possible experience to prepare them for academic success and prepare them for an ever-changing world great thank you patty it occurs to me that you have some new members on your forward since i was here so as a precursor to my remarks and i want to let you know that
005i'm a 1974 graduate of carthage central high school my parents and i moved to this area in 1968 following my father's tour of duty in vietnam it was camp trump then and he was the director of logistics and his primary responsibility was to begin the transition of camp drum to fort drum both my parents made political runs and were former county legislators they are charles and barbara webber my mom is a teacher retired teacher from great bend elementary and i'm also a suny potsdam graduate so i claim with pride that i'm a north country girl although people like where do you live i'm like you know where syracuse is in canada i live in between my mom actually continues to live in black river as we speak so i wanted to let those of you
006who hadn't met me before know that so it wasn't hard for me to decide to come and support your district in this important effort because this is where i grew up i was a student in a school district here and many of my colleagues and friends were graduates of watertown high so when patty called me we were talking i said yeah i got you i think i have something that i can help you with i'm so excited to be here this evening to share with you the results of this work that this amazing team of education leaders and community leaders are going to simply make some recommendations and suggestions to you tonight so i've already done that introducing introduction of myself and this is my team kathy adams she is the senior consultant for organization
007development and judy dixon and dixon is the chief operating officer of my business winning is a private sector leadership development corporation i live in auburn new york most of our clients are in new york state and we work nationally and one of the things we specialize in is helping organizations across industries who are really wanting to think about diversity equity and inclusion as a strategic resource and that's the way we'll be talking to you about it tonight so it was about one year ago that my company was engaged by your district to assist you all in thinking about this idea of focusing on the concepts of diversity equity and inclusion as a strategic education resource a resource that you can use to ensure your student population the population you serve that you already know and
008we know because we were talking to kat patty about your demographics already includes students of many diverse backgrounds and experiences and the goal when a board of educator education in a school district decide to focus on this area is to ensure that your district is making sure that there is consistent fair and equitable access and opportunity for every single student to achieve academic success so to do this work on your behalf we embarked on a journey in partnership with your district leadership and the dei strategy committee of which most of them are here some of our community members are not here with us this evening and our task was to identify specific strategies that could be added to your existing plan and aligned with your current strategic plan to achieve this outcome and this evening
009you will hear the results of this work whenever my company is approached by school districts to help them think about focusing on diversity equity includes them as an education resource to ensure student success the school board's always kind of looking at me like what's this got to do with me what they often want a compelling reason why should we invest in this work and in these projects so and i fully understand that concern because sort of the strategic leaders of the organization you are also representatives of very diverse communities and you not only need to understand why your district wouldn't be involved in this but you're also going to want to be communicating about why this is an education imperative an education imperative to engage in what we call dei work so i'm going to
010share with you the most common reasons our education clients share with us first of all board school boards will say to us after we talked to them for a while well it seems like it's the right thing to do and i would offer for your consideration that given your student population your school district desires like every single school district we work at work in to ensure that every single student succeeds regardless of their backgrounds and experiences it's about the bottom line and school districts often receive and or seek funding for students based on your student demographics and needs and these funds frequently support critical programs and services that ensure every single student regardless of their background or experience gets what they need to be academically successful another compelling reason once we talk with our clients
011because we're always asking i'm like why do you really want to do this right we want to know is that they come from this idea that none of us is smarter than all of us and this is a philosophy that really inspires and compels school districts to engage students parents faculty staff and the community at large and working together with you to ensure that every single student succeeds but i want to add one more compelling reason for your consideration trend data is indicating that in the next five to ten years up to 85 of new entrants into the workforce will be female millennials and the generations following them and people of color this emerging workforce who are the future leaders of this community are already in every single building and every single program every single
012class that this district has and i'm inviting you as a school board to keep that piece of data in front and center as you prepare through your academic efforts the next generation of leaders for our community state and country the strategies you'll hear this evening over time will help the watertown city school district continually prepare these new generations of successful students and with the goal of helping them continually succeed in the world students we home will be so proud to say that my success story began in the watertown city school district my carthage friends might think i'm fraternizing with the enemy tonight i was a cheerleader i remember those footballs i'll tell them we made peace right so it's my pleasure and i hope that one thing i said to you this evening inspires you
013to think about this as education leaders who are working in partnership with your superintendent to really educate make sure there's equitable fair access for every student regardless of their background to ensure that you can really push out of this district this new generation of leaders that will be so proud to say that my success story began in the watertown city school district it's with great pleasure that i introduce to you thailand datoni someone our team experiences a gifted devoted educator and a future education leader tyler is a member of the diversity equity and inclusion strategy committee and he is here to introduce the committee and share some brief remarks thank you so much good afternoon everybody margaret mead once said never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world indeed
014it is only the only thing that ever ever has and reflecting on our work as a diversity equity inclusion committee we worked with a wide group of stakeholders from individuals who are part of the district such as administration staff faculty uh teaching assistant aides we work with community members such as local pastors and we also work with guenko and her team it's it's been a really great process and we've worked very collaboratively to come up with ideas and strategies to share with you and it has been so great getting to know all of these individuals who are so invested in this and so committed sorry thank you tyler and thank you to all the committee members that are here this evening your work has been amazing so a round of applause for the committee [Applause]
015at this time i'd like to turn it over to stacy eager converse our assistant superintendent for instruction and stacy is also our chief diversity officer throughout our time as leaders of this district we have focused on ethical leadership having good intentions and remaining focused on what is good for kids the same applies to all of our work around diversity equity inclusion and belonging we are focused on educating each and every person in our school community our goal is education not indoctrination in trying to frame this in a clear manner for both our staff and our students and their families our goal for this approach is very similarly aligned to the work of urshad manji of moral courage ed diversity without division we must hear additional perspectives and we should not fear them we must be
016empathetic to the experiences of every child coming into our district and we must be willing to think about those perspectives and how they shape learning and social experiences for our students while at the same time rejecting the notion of any labeling or shaming by emphasizing these components we believe that we will find diversity without division and that we will create safe and meaningful learning experiences for our students this committee has helped us create guideposts for our work but the process of this committee's work is recursive and it won't end just with this committee our initial prompt was to pull people in inviting voices to the table to explore with us the work that needs to be done and make plans through the use of data both qualitative and quantitative we have and will continue to
017reflect and then we will continue this process focusing on the breadth of voices the depth of their insights and continuing to explore make plans and reflect you might notice as we go through tonight that some of the slides place an emphasis on all students the work that we will share has been aligned to our district's strategic plan which was developed in 2018-2019 all students is used in that framework to denote that each and every student has a right to these elements in their education we have learned a lot about the meaning of the word all in the last few years our district's belief in this work is that all means to be inclusive and representative to ensure that every child feels they belong at watertown city school district regardless of educational setting structure or any
018other force or characteristic our first strategic plan goal revolves around collaboration this is always a focus area of our district because it means that we are putting voices together the committee's work related to this goal developed the two suggestions listed on the slide and some of the considerations underneath those suggestions brought forward on how to address these aspects were to develop a value statement explicitly expressing the district's commitment to diversity equity and inclusion including updating the district's website to include a section or link to a statement that all people are welcome included and safe through all all areas of school community life to amend the district's strategic plan uh to include a goal focused entirely on diversity equity and inclusion although we believe that this is the underpinning of every single thing that we do
019as educators to adopt a resolution confirming the board's opposition to racism and bigotry in all of its forms additionally they suggest to seek out and recognize the contributions from across the school community including students faculty staff from all levels families and our external community partners to strengthen the relationship with fort drum and to invite the adults in our children's lives such as teachers teacher assistants caregivers and counselors to participate in educational programs focused on anti-racism and anti-bigotry we set our committee off to work somewhat blindly and we did this intentionally we did not want any in-progress work already happening in the district to obscure ideas or insights that the committee's voices might bring forth but you can see that there are things happening around the notion of collaboration in our district that are related to
020diversity equity and inclusion we are in particular very excited about what the my brother's keeper project will do for our students of color in the future and the partnerships that the work will develop and expand upon while we have only just been notified of that award more information will come on that program as we receive additional guidance from state ed on getting started of critical importance especially in light of the pandemic experiences our community both locally and worldwide have had our recommendations to support physical and mental well-being specifically within professional learning on those topics are suggestions to teach the five competencies of social emotional learning skills to both students and our staff with special attention to reducing the effects of trauma that stem from a variety of life experiences including racism bigotry poverty and other
021forms of abuse and oppression to teach adults how to be effective advocates for children to educate faculty and staff on how to create culturally responsive learning environments and a focus here is especially on being culturally responsive and helping staff to understand what that looks like how to create it in the big picture and how to create meaningful daily experiences for students that are culturally responsive we have some examples of a lot of the work that we are doing with regard to professional learning already but we know that we have only scratched the surface of what it means to be culturally competent and responsive you can see that there are several book studies and presentations and trainings that have been booked and or provided and more work will be done as we go forward into 2021
0222022 and beyond goal three within our strategic plan might seem as though it doesn't hit on diversity equity and inclusion directly but in actuality part of being culturally responsive is what goes into the surrounding environment all of our children need to see people who look like them but also who look differently from them this is their reality in the world we have an academic responsibility to be representative and inclusive in all of our work and that includes what the structure of our buildings look like one recommendation from the committee's work is to focus on this with regard to signage and to ensure that all groups are represented particularly those groups who are traditionally underrepresented and underserved the we are watertown initiative a signage initiative started with our pbis district-wide team and it focuses on inclusiveness
023and belonging for our students and staff something that we believe can be built upon to support the work on diversity equity and inclusion with regard to the physical appearances of our buildings this is one of those times where the strategic planning team really felt strongly about emphasizing all when this goal was developed while our journey has reframed the meaning of this for us as we mentioned it continues to signify each and every child and inclusiveness and belonging for every child suggestions that resulted from the committee's work here were to emphasize data when examining possible learning opportunities specifically to allow the data to show the district how to meet the unique needs of students and staff with attention to populations from historically underrepresented and underserved backgrounds to disaggregate the data to determine where disparities occur among
024groups to seek regular feedback from across the school community through district building and grade level based surveys formal and informal conversations and other means of collecting information to inform our short and long range decision making we have started a more transparent sharing of data within our district with all of our staff and you can see that on some of the bullet points on a slide and we have some work in progress that we are doing to expand some of the learning opportunities available to our students so that they have access to both representative elements as well as things that may be exposure to differences from the community goal five revolves around curriculum and instruction the committee's recommendations for this were to really focus on reviewing and updating both through the lens of diversity equity and
025inclusion and focusing on culturally responsive practices specific suggestions were to teach the five competencies of social emotional learning skills to students and staff and you can see that also relates back to strategic goal number two seek out and invite guest speakers from underrepresented and underserved populations teach the unique histories and contributions of historically underrepresented and oppressed groups to connect collaborate and share curriculum instructional strategies and resources across our community including districts towns and counties and to invite members from across the school community to discuss curriculum and instructional practices and resources some may wonder looking at this goal if our district is headed in the direction of teaching critical race theory first it is important to understand that the technical definition of critical race theory and the societal perception of what it is differ greatly critical
026race theory by its technical definition is a concept originating to explain race and racism in a structure of laws and tenants of law to second and third year law students thereby rendering it an abstract concept not easily understood by k-12 students secondly we must return to our initial statement that our focus is on diversity without division and to achieve this we strongly believe that we must focus on hearing multiple perspectives and voices to do so means to analyze our current curriculum and instruction through the lens of equity what voices are represented what voices are not represented and how can we include them in our academic program to better serve students and build skills of critical thinking collaboration and more these are the questions we should focus on well ahead of introducing any particular theory that
027might remain abstract to the bulk of our student population and we are in progress in some areas of our curriculum and instructional work we have moved in the direction of vendor-provided culturally responsive curricula for our ela programming k-8 students are reading books like the hate you give blood on the river thunder rolling in the mountains and specifically for our k-4 ela program american reading company and from their website itself american reading company has located more than four thousand kid-tested african-american titles and an addition an additional 5500 multicultural titles which form the centerpiece of the reading experience in our partner schools in addition because there were so few multicultural titles available for very beginning readers american reading company created its own publishing company and has produced more than 500 arc press titles for beginning readers the
028committee's hard work and dedication to establishing guideposts for our work has led us to think even more critically about what we are undertaking in the future and the impact it will have on our climate and culture within our district and buildings the environment in which our students are learning and the continued work we have to move forward these are just a few more experiences planned for 21 22 though we readily acknowledge that there is still so much more to be done that said we cannot emphasize enough our belief in diversity without division and the inclusion of multiple voices and perspectives in our students worlds our work must constantly reflect these intents and purposes both implicitly and explicitly the dei committee will be shifting into a work group to continue to guide our work as we
029press on revisiting that recursive process we mentioned earlier continuously pulling additional voices in to be representative of our community our student population and their needs i now turn it over to our assistant superintendent for personnel and student services tina lane our committee itself has embarked on the extraordinary journey buckling up taking pit stops u-turns on-ramps and off-ramps along the way the path that we've embarked upon several months ago is an ongoing and ever-evolving journey there are many programs involved in this work and it is ever-changing these are the guiding principles that will help us to stay on course as we continue on the path and work through challenges that allow our work to continue and these are commitment to the process understanding diversity equity and inclusion and that data analysis that miss eager converse talked
030about earlier and it's now my pleasure to introduce one of our dei committee members carlos claymore so after hearing our presentation we invite you to consider how your role as a board member and a member of this community how you will support the district's dei efforts so that was a lot right there's a lot to consider right when you're preparing a student population for the future so the committee was really kind of curious and posed that question or that concept to you for a reason but before we maybe get started i was wondering i always ask people this what was going on in your head your heart or your gut as education leaders co-responsible for making sure this population of students has equitable fare and quality access to a good education here in the district
031and when we are talking about using this idea as a strategic education resource i was wondering what you might have been thinking we're all smart enough to read that right haley what was going on in your head your heart or your gut as a leader thinking about that and then the committee was curious as to if any ideas bubbled up for you in terms of how u.s board members might see yourselves not only as elected officials but as members of this community that's increasingly diverse as well supporting your students through the academic experience in your district every answer is correct by the way you have magna audience on the facilitator thoughts um i guess i want to start by thanking the committee so thank you everybody for coming we appreciate it um on behalf of
032the board and um knowing that you have our support and all the work that you're doing so we appreciate that um i think speaking for us we just engaged in our first we're doing blind spot as a group which i think is a nice start for us to really start delving into this idea of biases and i think that's a great place to start um in bringing that with us i know as an educator myself looking at some things to help me in the classroom with children in different districts which i think is a great way to kind of look at things um i also think that as members of the board of ed we're going to be sitting on various district committees so if there isn't already dei committee members on those other committees
033we can certainly bring that lens if it's applicable so i think that's a great place to bring that in um and anyone else can jump in that's what i got i think for me one of the major components for this body is that this product that's been worked so hard on if we don't have an understanding and a buy-in to this clear very clear buy-in to this it's much harder to convey it to the stakeholders all of our stakeholders in our communities and i think as a board part of our responsibility whatever we do is to be united once the decision is made to be united to the community to explain to them why when you are approached and you're asked a question often it's friend of friend and that often is a much better
034delivered message than just hearing it by directive i think there was another term used but by mandate or by edict that's what we're going to do so i think part of our responsibility as educational leaders is to be that eyes and ears and translator to the community i'd also say that you know i really really like what patty said at the outset because while this is very focused on a specific way we deal with the human beings that are our district looking at human beings holistically and how we care for them how we treat them the culture we have in our buildings um you know i heard petty several times say welcoming caring supporting belonging we'll all be better off with that this forces us to be a little more um deliberate in our thought
035that way and i'm grateful for that you know there's information that indicates that the more students at every grade level feel like they belong they are better positioned to perform academically and that's why i'm really talking to you in a very specific way as education leaders first of all that's what i'm calling you and you're looking at me like am i really you are alright so i would like you think about it but to see yourselves as education leaders who have this incredible opportunity to continually work on a culture environment and an academic approach that enables every single one of your students to feel like they belong as a part of the watertown district with the understanding that the more they feel like they'll be here we were talking about absenteeism right that's an issue
036for us to take into consideration why don't kids want to come to school and so i think this will create an opportunity for all of you and i really could you say your name for me randy randy randy i think you're really on to something because as a body this also not only includes opportunities for you to educate but to engage in what i call respectful heat is debating about your own points of view we are presenting this to you with an assumption that you all understand this believe in it any of that what we what i where i do believe you are on common ground is that you do have shared agreement as a team of education leaders that you really want the best for every single student and if you can stay strategically
037focused on that at those points of respectful heated debate i promise you you will find common ground and figure out how to move forward and i love that the district's using the the those sort of operating principles that are really focused on doing things that don't cause division that you're looking at how do we call everybody into this and how do we make sure every single student and a couple of things just um philosophically i'd like to invite you to think about your district's already been doing a lot of stuff that i would call diversity equity inclusion work you haven't just been calling that so it's not like this is kind of new to you at the operational level the other thing that is that whether you decided to do anything at all you already
038have diversity here because all that is is just the differences that these little people some not so little right bring into these buildings every day where the board can really support the dei committee patty your team your faculty and staff is really thinking about that idea of inclusion which is the work you do to make sure that your students staff and faculty parents and the community experience the district as a place where they are valued respected and can belong and the equity work what are those things what are those mountains right we need to move out of these kids way to ensure that we really generate this next generation of new leaders who will deploy themselves i bought into watertonians everywhere i go across the country and be proud to say that they started their
039education experience those will be points of really great conversation for you and what i call respectful heated debate and we invite you to engage in all of that this committee has done an excellent job i felt like a proud mama when we practice they've done an excellent job at presenting some ideas for your consideration right that's their job to make some recommendations to you now we simply invite you as a board to work with patty the committee as they continue to work to identify where you want to begin this work and how you want to go about it and i can't express enough the importance of what randy's saying is to find a way to speak about this in one voice what is that thing you all have in common as it relates to every
040single student and i'm of the suspicion that one of it is is that in your hearts you really do want every single student to be successful and if that's the common ground i think you have a great springboard to begin your own journey with this so dei committee did you hear some stuff you wanted to hear are you picking up what they're putting down patty are we good i think so any other comments any other comments from everybody hard work a lot of hours and really what's truly commendable the hours that were spent a lot through zoom and so that's really sometimes quite challenging to have conversations um through zoom and really to get together in a small group and hash out all of these ideas so we really appreciate all of the feedback that
041you've given us throughout this journey and as we uh lean into it there's a lot more work to come so thank you we really appreciate it and thank all of you i really want to commend you on having the courage and will to think about this very very important education issue and to come up with your own strategies your own way of making sure that all of your students have an opportunity to be successful final thing i might say is you're not in this alone my company actually did a presentation for the jefferson county boces so there are other superintendent superintendents and school boards all around you that are churning on this idea in the same way that you are so my company tagline is because leadership is not a job to do alone don't
042do this alone right call in the troops i said patty you'll be about ready to do a ted talk in a little while on this subject but i really encourage you to do that talk to your colleagues invite patti to talk to your colleagues because everyone is grappling with this for the same reason we want every student to be successful and go out into the world carrying their respective school districts on their back being proud that they graduated from here and making you all proud great thank you for the opportunity thank you certainly everyone is welcome to stay but if you all leave that's okay too we won't take offense thank you take care great job steve thank you all right so you'll notice we've kind of um flipped things around we're going to do
043um included with our board and staff reports our superintendent reports and our assistant superintendent reports and our business manager up in front and then hopefully that'll sort of kind of set the stage for the rest of the things that we need to take action on in the agenda so a little switch-a-roo so we're gonna um get off of paddy and our superintendent schools report sure and just to add to that we've recently switched to something called board docs which we will officially do with all board members in september but in doing the training that we've gone through michelle and i a lot of school boards when they meet this is usually the order of agenda and it makes a lot of sense and with three new board members the timing was perfect for us to
044switch this around so that as we give our report sometimes later there are things that we'll be talking about that you'll have to vote on and you may have more questions that we can elaborate on but at this time let's give this a whirl so again kudos and thanks to the diversity equity and inclusion planning committee they did a tremendous job and and i'm looking forward to the continued work in that area we still have no guidance yet from the new york state department or the new york state department of health um on this fall in respects to you know what it's going to look like when the students return and you know hopefully that guidance will come out any day the goal is to have all students return that's the goal the guidance just
045needs to permit that we still have to work through once we receive that guidance really taking a look at classrooms transportation cafeteria time and tina and i will be working with our medical providers through samaritan that uh we have next week and we're hoping that we have the guidance initially we were scheduled to talk with them tomorrow but we've held off we postponed it for a week because we'd really like the guidance in place because you know if you saw the tv7 news it was you know what's the plan and the plan is to bring students back that's kind of plan a but one thing that we learned is that before the pandemic we could pretty much come up with a plan a and a plan b and we were good but during the pandemic
046we realize that sometimes you have a plan a and then you have to switch to plan b i said it's a good thing there's 26 letters in the alphabet because we may end up with multiple plans and it really is just dependent on what that guidance looks like so more to follow on that i have a draft copy of my goals for 2021-22 in front of you and so if you take a look they fit perfectly with the conversation that we just had the first standard i picked 1.4 which for those of you that weren't here that was also one of my goals in 2018-19 but i circled back to that because one of the things that i feel we need to do is really use data to inform all of the decisions that we're
047making so coming up soon at a board meeting stacy tina and i will be laying out some of the current data that we have with the district specifically we will be setting a goal for chronic absenteeism because we know that's an area of concern for us and we know that if we can get kids in school we can do a lot more with them when they're here and then we would be providing monthly progress reports with the board as we go along again sharing data with all the appropriate stakeholders and within all of the venues that are listed there and probably there will be several more under standard two operations resource and personnel management really just continuing to taking a look at facilitating those quarterly meetings with the district-wide safety committee one of the things
048that we talked about and you're going to be approving later tonight is the district comprehensive improvement plan and one of the things that came out of that group um was that we really need to do some work with the digital citizenship and internet safety and coming up with strategy so i kind of weave that into one of the goals because it's something that that committee felt very strongly about and it's a district pool that would be part of that plan so it made sense to put it here and finally under standard two i think it's time that we come up with a five-year facilities plan and we'll work with those of you that are on the finance audit and facilities committee i'll have our director of facilities our business manager and the assistant superintendents have
049been put into that as well and then we'll be sharing that with the full board under standard three i would love for you to maybe brainstorm over the course of the next two weeks before our next board meeting really an outline just coming up with some topics that you would like the board to dive into that will help really shape the district's vision mission and goals and if we can come up with some topics we can have little mini sessions at the second meeting of the month and stacy tina and i can leave that work but we'd like your ideas on topic so if you would consider coming up with some topics that you would like to pursue as a board we can brainstorm at our next meeting and then when we get together back
050in september we can provide a schedule of the topics that will be forthcoming for each month standard four is communication and community relations again that was one that i had also had in 2018-19 but i think we went from us having some communication in the district and then was parent square and facebook and our website we went to having sometimes too much information that was shared and i don't mean too much that we share too much information sometimes there would be five posts that would come out at any given night and that's overwhelming for families and if you look at families that have students in multiple buildings so we really need to streamline the district communication the building communication and then kind of keep going down into the classroom communication and coming up with a
051really good system so that everyone is getting information that's important to them but that it's not overwhelming at the same time in that it's also important i think that we come up with a district brand the pbs team came up with we are watertown and i thought that was maybe a direction that we can consider or what will be our brand and then again looking at not only the parent square on facebook because not every not all of our community members have access to that and although the district sends out a newsletter once a year right before the budget vote it would be nice to provide quarterly district newsletters as well as monthly monthly media blasts of upcoming events that really show the positive images of our district and being more proactive instead of reactive
052and then the ethical leadership is really on point with what we're doing as far as our sensitivity to the diversity of the school community and respecting divergent opinions so this is in draft form i'd just like you to take some time over the course of the next two weeks and if you have any feedback before the draft goes into the actual working copy any feedback that you have i'm open to as well and then the last two things that i have um i received a letter from our one of our attorneys for our inferenza and they are asking us if we would like to participate in the jewel labs lawsuit it's not at any cost of the district um but it is something that some of the districts are taking on to really you know
053we probably didn't see as many issues with dueling throughout the pandemic but also all of our discipline at the same time decreased so as we return students back to school and we're working with their social emotional needs and meeting them i don't know what that will look like as far as behavior and then including things like you know dueling things like that we do have board policy that prohibits that but i needed to know if this is something the board would like to pursue thoughts we've done this kind of thing before dovetailed on the litigation or not in my five year not in my starting my fifth year we've never really had the opportunity to do that or been asked to do that it's at no cost to us but we could benefit by some
054sort of settlement in theory the settlement would benefit us and if we were if we were to be part of that and there was a settlement it would provide us with opportunities to provide really instructions to our students which we are in some cases already doing that but we might be able to increase what we're doing currently okay do we know if uh has boces taking a position on that i don't i do not know that i just wonder what certainly be happy to reach out to see todd and i have a superintendent meeting on thursday morning i can see what the other schools are doing if anything i'd be curious to know if other schools are approached in accounting okay i'd have to find out who works with them because it's probably just whoever
055starts at work yep i'll do that and i'll have it ready for you for the next board meeting do you have a sorry let's drop that date and we have to buy in good and then the last thing was new york state school board associations i think maria you had already talked about different committees they're looking for someone to serve on the fxc liaison program and basically when i spoke i had a call from a representative from the new york state school board association a few weeks ago and they were looking for a representative from our board they don't currently have one and they couldn't find one in the records where watertown ever had a representative so basically the way it was explained to me is like through the new york state school board associations
056this is like an insider's club where you get to attend meetings um virtually and they basically probably go over a lot of the things that you see in the reports that newspaper uh puts out so i didn't know if you had somebody else i do i'll get to that at the end okay that's it for me all right um assistant superintendent for instruction so as patty mentioned both our district comprehensive improvement plan and our school comprehensive education plan for case they have been submitted to the state tom the sep was approved the dcip is not technically approved by state ed but they will provide us with feedback in a few weeks and so we can share that with you at that time our district-wide pbis team [Music] met with tracy largett from boces to sort
057of just reframe our focus for the fall and really think about covid and how that's going to impact what our pbis structures look like in each of our buildings and just to re-energize our teams which have taken a hit in membership but also participation because of covid and and just like life happenings um our as you know our k4 will switch to trimesters this year so we've had to make some adjustments to the report cards and along the way our kindergarten team also works to better align uh the report card standards listed for kindergarten to be more mindful of our curricular focuses as well so there are some some shifts coming in that area patty and i met with ann garno from north country prenatal perinatal council to discuss our continued partnership with with them
058i've got some very eye-opening statistics on um pregnancies in in the state as well as how our county ranks with that so that will be a continued focus of our partnership as we move forward the professional learning committee met to sculpt uh what our early release days will look like this year um considering some of our focus areas but really uh and initiatives in our district with the focus being on having our staff present to staff so really trying to build um confidence and competence among our staff to feel like leaders um to be sharing their knowledge and expertise that they've developed in a particular area with their colleagues so that will be a focus for this year we have had a committee meet um aaron's law as you know goes into effect and while
059we've had a child abuse prevention curriculum in our elementary buildings for many years it's outdated and needed sort of a rejuvenation so we took the impetus with aaron's law to just kind of beef everything up we've selected safer smarter kids and for sixth grade because that's really part of the middle school structure and the way a lot of those curricula are provided they'll be using safer smarter teens the really great piece of this product is that it embeds all of the components of aaron's law plus child abuse prevention sexual abuse prevention into one program and it also provides a specific focus on trafficking which we know has been of some concern in the north country so that will be addressed as well through that so more information to come as we enroll that to our
060k-6 buildings conducted interviews uh with pivot for our social emotional mindfulness facilitators in our k-6 buildings as well as our substance abuse prevention counselor position available shared between high school and case so more news on those to come as acceptances come in summer school and stem camp going really well qualitatively we've heard really positive feedback the students absolutely loved uh the planetarium that was blown up in here the other day but they also really loved the experiences in flying drones over in another atrium and just the hands-on component of both programs this year and lastly a few years ago for those of you who are new to the board we participated um with a professor out of hunter college she was at mercy but she did a school readiness study with our pre-k kindergarten programming
061so as part of a project that i'm doing through leading with racial equity i'm going to be revisiting that school readiness study and looking for data specific to how we have structured school readiness um with cultural awareness and cultural responsiveness so i'll share more with you as i dig into that capstone project but thought it might be a good foundation for some of our work in diversity equity and inclusion as well that's it thank you assistant superintendent for personnel and student so we've been services busy in the personnel office we've did a few cursory calculations here we've we've hired 32 staff members over the last couple of months we have vacancies left but we've done upwards of 50 interviews by us so thank goodness for zoom it's been great we actually uh have been able
062to cast our net a little wider a lot wider actually but we have openings left in ela we have eight openings food service rns tas so we're doing interviews for that for those positions coming up here in the next uh within a week week and a half so much appreciated the work of the interview committees people have taken time to work with us teachers administrators very thoughtful processes very patient very determined we're really excited about the new staff members that we have for our students for this upcoming fall as many of you may have been alerted at 4 p.m uh we had a colbit case today at our stem program and so we i i give kudos to the staff there lisa blank and her staff went over and did the contact tracing it's a
063little bit different now we're working through a state uh coordinator now so i talked to her twice today um got some guidance from her sent the information talked to many parents today uh so you know i think you know as patty said and that she mentioned in last night's interview we're so uncertain but the thing we are certain about is our safety protocols uh the process that we do undertake in that open line of communication that we continue to have with our parents and our students and our staff so we're hopeful uh hopefully we get some guidance soon uh dr rudd uh and his crew of samaritan certainly have been a great help our medical directors and we will meet with them next week as patty said next wednesday actually we're gonna meet and uh
064we're hopeful that uh you know we'll continue on and we'll be able to get all of our students back it's just a matter of knowing what the parameters are that as simple as that dovetailing on what stacy said about the stem camp i i was over there today quite a bit i can't i've never the students are skipping to get in they're skipping hopping they're so excited uh to be a part of that camp i i can't say enough about it so it was really really neat to see the enthusiasm from the from the students from from the parents as well also uh looking at uh we have a couple of openings um for for world languages and we're working to try to think outside of the box i know jess and mark at case
065um have come up with a plan for parents uh with with trying to help our students um to get their credits in french so we're working diligently to try to fill those positions and so stacey and i have been working together and we're trying to figure out some plans going forward in the future so we'll keep the board appraised of what we what we work on what we come up with there so thank you school business manager so the hours is getting close to the end hopefully um if when they had we're down to you know uh maybe every other day we're getting a request here and there their single audit stuff is going to be focused on cares and dodea this year hopefully osc is only a couple weeks more here but we'll see
066on that one i don't really have any time frame or updated time frame from them did get a huge list of stuff to give for them today cersei revised applications in thank you stacey and patty for uh signing off and getting that in our post due by the end of this month but it's probably 80 done at least we need to do an amendment for the cares act and i'm sitting down tomorrow to work on that that all stems from the parochials and kind of them switching some of their stuff from supplies over to contractual to cover some of their salaries so nothing major there working in the transparency report again this one's due right before labor day and working with legal on a number of things but i guess mostly right now is with
067legoland insurance regarding king and king and trying to get that contract hammered out i'm still waiting on when we're going to meet and finally some good news we've received our boces aid so we've been going back and forth it's a nice way to put it they had uh there was an erroneous invoice and the aid should have been received back on june 30th back in may we got the invoice 725 000 they tried to charge his personal computers with the windows 10 upgrade warrick charged them they paid it tried to charge us we said thanks but no thanks we'll pay for what we've received um nothing really happened with it until the end of the year and so then you know we held our position we verified with bowers that we were doing the right
068thing we verified with osc that we were doing the right thing so they still just decided to kind of hold our aid to try and prompt us to pay for some of that finally they issued a credit for 500 which is the stuff that we had not received so now we were able to get everything squared away and a little over a month later we received the aid from 1920 that we should have received that over a month ago but has that negatively impacted our budget in any way no it didn't really hurt us from a cash flow standpoint right now or in the future but it was just uh i don't know one of those rough things that it's gonna take a while to repair some of the relationship stuff that we were doing
069the right thing so well i appreciate you standing your ground all right moving on to items for consent agenda result at consent agenda items a b c d and e are hereby approved can i have a motion please susie in a second jason any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries moving on to items for board action where is watertown city school district board of education members cody goszier jason harrington mariam maceras and suzanne rentz's ballage were served with a notice of petition for an appeal to the commissioner of education on various states the earliest of which was july 2nd 2021 and whereas in the time since service of the appeal upon respondents the appeal has been assigned and whereas under new york education law section 3811 where a commissioner's appeal rises out of
070the exercise of a board member's powers or performance of their duties the school board district pays for their reasonable costs and expenses in defending the action as long as the board member notifies the board of education and writing of the actions commencement within five days after service of the process upon them and whereas upon a board of education being placed on notice of a commissioner's appeal or education law section 3811 provides that within the 10 days following the notice the board of education has a right to designate and appoint legal counsel to represent respondents and whereas the board met in executive session on or about july 6 2021 to discuss the defense of the appeal and whereas the commissioner of education has held that when a board is on a notice of an appeal to
071the commissioner the five-day period for provision a written notice may be waived and whereas the board seeks to waive the five-day written notification period under section 3811 and indicate it was on notice of the matter within five days of service of the respondents and whereas the board seeks to confer the benefits of section 3811 of the education law on respondents and whereas the board designates as legal counsel for our and foreign pc and respondents desire to consent to the same now third now therefore be it resolved as follows number one the board of education was on notice of the appeal as of july 6 2021 number two the requirement to notify the board and writing of the existence of the appeal is therefore weighed as a supremacist act number three the board expressly agrees to
072confer the benefits of section 3811 of the new york state education law and respondents can to be held liable for the costs incurred under its provision subject to the issuance of a certificate of good faith by the commissioner of education number four the board designates as legal counsel for our influenza number five respondents consent to the designation of legal counsel and number six this resolution shall take effect immediately have a motion please jersey and a second susie any discussion in favor any opposed any abstentions motion carries it resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools patricia barr the board of education thereby approves the following retirement resignations appointments permanent provisional probationary instructional term non-probationary instructional summer school substitutes non-instructional substitution instructional fall coaching boys fall coaching girls ball coaching co-ed kind of motion
073place going second laura any discussion i just have a question this is just from my board member perspective other board members may have this question but in regards to the coaching appointments i assume those are done annually um because that's such a very public piece that board members are inclined to hear about is there any way if it's there's a change in any given year or there could be a notation that that's a change i'm looking at this list i don't know if these people have been coaching one year or 10 years is that something that would be helpful to other board members to know or i mean it would be for me absolutely that's a great point any other discussion follow in favor any opposed any abstentions motion carries resolve that people referenced substitute
074tutor and summer school teacher rates of paid for the 21 22 school year effective september 121 is our hereby approved i have a motion please ambrose in a second randy any discussion how long have we had our current paid it's been a couple of years so i actually reached out it should have been included in that packet i asked all the other superintendents so the rates that you're approving tonight are going to put us at a level playing with carthage and because we have such a substitute shortage carthage in watertown will be the leaders in the north country with the rings of pain okay another discussion all in favor aye aye opposed motion cares whereas a resolution was passed by the board of education on july 6 2021 approving the appointment probationary instructional for tina
075extra item e line two and it further resolved that this amended resolution reflects a correction of the certification status as follows early childhood ed emergency code 19 resolved that the amended certification status is hereby approved have a motion please in a second jason any discussion all in favor opposed carries we did a donation from the office fund through northern new york community foundation for 250 the donation is designated support for the watertown city school district's food for families program this donation is gratefully accepted and approved and has been acknowledged thank you any opposed and please note randy's abstaining from that vote please motion carried resolve that the following educational student trips are here by approved las vegas educational center for these middle schools will be taken on each of the following dates september 14th to
076the 17th september 20th through the 23rd and september 28th and september 29th i have a motion please and a second worry any discussion what type of activities do they do ropes courses uh team building facilitation activities 4-h type camp a little bit yeah it is a nature-based camp so they have exploratory programs as well but they're there solely to do some of the team building aspects sounds like fun and if you haven't been to that place it's amazing great place is every student going it's part of their comprehensive improvement plan um as one of their goals is to improve the culture i'm probably not worried at right but to improve the culture of the building any other discussion all in favor opposed motion carries resolved at the disposal recycling donation or sale of outdoor outdated
077and unused phone system equipment is hereby approved add motion please jason and a second ambrose any discussion so this is just all the old phony system that they've just recently replaced correct that they can't find parts for anymore all in favor all right motion carries so that the disposal of outdated technology equipment is here have a motion please ambrose in a second any discussion i just just and again more members asking silly questions i noticed in the previous one there's options some are going to be thrown out some are sold somewhere this one's trash is that should be they should all be phrased the same really it should all be disposable recycle or sale if possible we always want to recoup any money that we can i guess that was my question because they're stated
078differently so i yeah it shouldn't pretty much any of those disposals should they should just be standard language right now to offend randy that you making a motion to amend it yes can i get a second on that amendment thank you all in favor of amending the emotion to re-disposal okay and we need to vote on the actual amendment or we need to vote on the actual resolution so we've already got ambrose and cully as a first and second okay so all in favor of the actual resolution the opposed that motion carries results of the case middle school's comprehensive education plan for the 2021-22 any discussion this was really well put together very informative stacy worked with mark and jess and their team they did a great job the only feedback from the um group
079was that it it's a lot they're taking on a lot next year yeah um but they're ambitious so we'll support him and how many more years do they have to do this well that's a tough thing to answer right now because the you're typically supposed to be on it for two until you have two years of quality proficiency scores on the state assessments in ela and math um we haven't taken the assessments in two years so plan on this year really being a reset of year one even though this is our third year through but it it's you know it's a lot of money for the district it's 200 000 for case in support of funding and it's 50 000 for the district to implement all the things like the field trip that you just
080approved etc so it is supplemental funding that supports some things that you know will help us improve okay any other discussion all in favor any opposed motion cares resolved at the waterfilm city school district comprehensive improvement plan for the 2021-22 school year is hereby approved kind of a motion please jason in a second randy any discussion all in favor any imposed motion groups um so just to kind of review patty gave us a draft of her um goals for this year this is what we're going to base her evaluation on when we do a six-month review december january and then finally final review at the end of may june so somewhere i don't know so anyway review those um thank you those goals and please provide her any feedback and then also at the next
081meeting we'll talk about um some of the data we would like to see from patty um regarding those goals and how often we would like that data provided to us so we can redo it okay um yes um has this board traditionally ever discussed how we can support patty and some of her if there's specific things where we can be helpful to you is or is that not something that's been done i know that's our overall job to do that but there may be specific things that we can be helpful for you has ever been asked before is that we've never had a actually formal conversation about that i think one-on-one we have our agenda meetings that those things have a tendency to come up but it's never ended up as a whole board of
082discussion it's a great idea it's great i love it that's why we're here and if we are going to evaluate you on these and we're not trying to help support you in this i know i want my work to help me achieve these objectives um just an idea it's a great one maybe when we talk about the topics if somebody's interested in a particular area and they're willing to support i'd be very receptive of that idea thanks so we can add that on to maybe next week's conversation when we discuss everything else i want to thank everybody who got back to me on my email about committees and interests so just correct me if i'm wrong steve you're going to be on the dei committee jason you're on safety and security uh ambrose you're taking
083technology um brandi you're taking professional development laurie you're going to be our advocacy liaison i'm guessing there's probably like an email or contact information to send in nisba so you'll be getting that information um you can decide or we can chat about how often you want to report out back to the board on okay i don't know how much information you're gonna get deluged with so okay we can kind of figure out like what do we need to know what's important okay um so kelly you're either gonna take wellness or pbis so we can either so the problem depends on how strict four o'clock is every month i threw out four o'clock because i figured it was the normal time that either stacey patty can correct me wellness is at 3 30 on thursdays once
084a month and i am happy to give the board a report or even copy you in on that email for anybody that's interested in that one and pbis is only meeting quarterly this year but it is it's typically 3 45 to 4 45 but again i can report out to the board include you in on the emails it doesn't matter yeah if it's just down to quarterly that'd be a lot easier for me to do okay so are you saying pbis because that's quarterly sure you want to shoot for pbis sure okay so i'll take wellness and i can email that to you as well all right and then finally we're looking for hard confirmation on our nisby conference because the registration is open and i know michelle's just chomping at the bat to get
085us all registered so suzanne are your definite yes i am not that's my weekend to work okay so that's when i checked all right so who is the definition i was or you're definite so lori because you're the alternate for the delegate that means you're gonna have to oh hang out at that meeting and vote for us okay um the easy part about that is usually they tell you kind of how to vote so you're just holding up a paddle yes or no but good news is that when i talk about the liaison advocacy the business meeting is going to be done virtually this year for the voting delegate so that is not and i believe that's not in person i think it's virtually so that's even that's even easier nancy henry didn't love it
086being virtual last year but for this year i think that's going to be virtual which might be a good thing okay all righty ambrose you said you're a hard no correct colleague i know you were looking into it yeah i think i'm in i'm good you're good okay jason okay randy i can't okay so it looks like we've got two documents josh is happy well then budget find other ways um and the other question i had for you stacy was what are our dates for the meet the new teachers for the upcoming school year and do you are we are we doing what you normally do do you want board representation like what is it the letters should have gone out in the mail yesterday um but the date would be august 17th um at
0878 30 in the morning we are doing the introductory fair in the atrium the way we normally do it um you we would welcome all of your presence there typically what happens um what used to happen is we used to have every group and department in the district stand and deliver information to the new staff for 10 12 minutes each and it the feedback that we received was after three hours of that we're we're done so we tried to change it up about two years ago and what we do now is sort of set it up like a scavenger hunt and they have to meet and greet and practice one of our professional skills as well for september which is greeting um and find people in the district who they might need to know um
088and who are connected with different departments and areas and so at each place they will collect something if you will so you could decide i sent you the statement in the invitation you can decide what you would like to change it to or if you'd like to keep it the same but for example at the i.t department they come the av person will take their photo for their id badge and they will get their chromebook and and log in to ensure that everything works appropriately at that time so just and then other groups you know will give them um you know fun little resources to help them get started in their journey at watertown city school district so it's a it's a bigger event but it makes it a little bit more interactive and enjoyable
089okay i can certainly send an email on what we've done in previous years so if anyone has other ideas i don't mind doing it but i know i'll definitely be there that morning so actually maria that letter might be in your box i'm not sure good because i'm having trouble getting mail at home okay that's good i didn't see an address on it from kira so okay that's it for me so i'm gonna go around the table ready i'm gonna start with you maybe you'd like to share add browser okay jason syracuse i love my basketball tournament they're in the finals finals is tonight at nine it's huge be sure to watch it anything else that's it okay ambrose i think the vision of the dei uh presentation today was amazing pretty awesome stuff who
090knows anybody that worked on that all right and you'll notice that we only have one upcoming date and that's our next board meeting also on the 17th that is at 4 00 pm um and then just also i guess if we have to group photo that night so you know where your best stop make sure your hair is done it would be really cool to have a group picture there and i think that would be awesome if you could do that so thank you and i have one more sure in my report i completely forgot to mention the smart schools project that is going on specifically at knickerbocker right now and north and sherman i've been working very closely to try to figure out what is going on because i'm really worried with the opening
091of school coming in such a short time at sherman i was there this morning and i'd appreciate it you know feel free to drive by no work was done yesterday or today and i do understand they work for 10 hour days but it is time to really move forward on this project and the work itself is concerning so i'd like you to take a look at that but know that that we are working on it on the back end a couple of concerns you'll just notice on this handicap ramp it looks more like a roller coaster in some areas than a ramp and that's concerning to me and then there's a flagpole in the middle of the main entrance where the students are going to walk where they're going to walk and although there's plenty
092of room to walk all i could vision was the christmas story for the kids the poll and i can tell you like we want to try to avoid that so um work in progress there north on the ramp there every because of the incline that it is every 10 inches they should have switched the grade about an inch and they only did three quarters of an inch so when they got to the end of it they were five inches off so they have a couple of options to do some remediation there and we're waiting to find out what their plans are to remain you know to kind of remedy that problem and then um knickerbocker is they were doing a lot of the electrical work today and that seems to be going pretty well through
093watson we think i'm pretty sure we're on target but the good news is that there was sheet rock there today although a store got around side wall and it's not in the upright position but where it needs to be hopefully progress will start to happen very quickly because they're at least with the inside work at least one to two weeks behind so josh and i will continue to work with brian and figure out next steps and where we need to go with all of the above but some some concerns that i should have noted in my report earlier so the north mistake the five inches are they eating the cost of that since they have to redo it they will eat the cost but there there's a plan a like there they've been given two
094choices by construction associates on how to fix the problem and they they are determining which way they choose to fix it if not then it's determined that they would have to tear it all out and that will be a twenty thousand dollar loss to them not to the district okay good eddie on the sherman piece what's the remedy to that or is that is that really what it was to be and we just didn't know it and that's not what it's going to be so what's the realm they haven't gotten back to us with an answer yet and the construction manager it was on vacation yesterday um today so hopefully tomorrow when he comes back we can get together and really you know figure it out josh and i were also went on an email
095today for i think it was knickerbocker specifically the inside of the cabinets were supposed to be gray um and they are going to be white they should worship white if we if we're insistent on the gray on the inside of these cabinets and it's probably what four to six weeks turn around josh so josh um had asked for you know will would be compensated for that difference you know we'll be getting some sort of a refund on that because the money with this project is very tight as you know with the way things have been with the pandemic so every dollar really is so important but hopefully within the next two weeks we'll have some some solid answers and hopefully we'll be in a better position because they were even that much closer to the
096start of school part of your concern with sherman to just completion and all these things as completion by the start of school is that what i'm hearing yes it's a little frightening when you drive by there yeah well you know and i took a lot of pictures of it last wednesday night when i sent them out on thursday morning what was concerning to me was that um in two of the emails that i received back it was about the two dark spots and i wasn't even questioning the dark spots because that's where the concrete probably hadn't cared yet but that wasn't the issue i said i'd appreciate it if you go look at the entire project and so then the architect that's in charge from bernie carr was here last thursday morning and brian arias
097our director of facilities came over and we were going over two other color samples for shades and for a little piece of a countertop for the entrance ways where the vestibules will be and so we brought that up about you know really making sure that you get to the site and somebody from bca was on site and did take a lot of pictures and did agree that there are some issues there so or to follow um also don't forget starting in september our committees are going to be starting so we're back to policy and finance audit and facilities so that will be once a month for either those committees too just as a headset okay can i have a motion to adjourn tell me okay second glory any discussion all in favor any opposed motion
098carries