001the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] i'm going to start i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of district clerk the watertown city school district of the city of watertown to the best of my ability uh board members along with the superintendent and older half-year-old like to stand and recite that at this time [Music] constitution of the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of board of education members school district of the city of watertown [Music]
002i will now accept nominations for the position of president i nominate president [Music] is there a second i second that are there any other nominations if not nominations are closed and the vote will be taken all those in favor of the series for president maria is elected president for the coming year thank accept you for the position of vice president i'd like to nominate mr harrington are there any other nominations if not nominations are closed and a vote will be taken all those in favor of jason harrington for vice president any opposed jason harrington is elected vice president for the coming year thank you very much ready yes okay the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and i faithfully discharged the duties of the officers [Music] oh and
003if any agenda changes um that's not the agenda change which is the personnel report had um an update i do have a copy in your folder um under these appointments probationary instructional um okay thank you public comments thank you for joining us communications um we received a letter from colonel jeffrey lucas the u.s army garrison commander um who i did you just retire or does he vote i'm not sure either anyway he wanted to send a letter to the district to basically thank us and in particular thank patti for um working closely with port drum over this past year with colbit and just having to rely on good communication and for patty being at all the meetings and having clear and consistent communication with them um for all everything that they did so i'll just
004pass that around any board and staff reports okay before we get into the consent agenda items i need a moment to go into executive session to discuss uh legal issues associated with the inter-municipality agreement can i have a motion please smoothie thanks susan thank you any discussion all in favor on any opposed question carries so we're going to move on to items for consent agenda motion carries see it resolves that the board of education approves the following consent agenda items number one appointment of officers number two other appointments number three designations number four authorization or five official undertaking bonds and number six other can i get a motion please jason in a second any discussion all in favor all right any opposed any abstentions motion carries okay other items for board action resolved at the
005watertown city school district hereby approve state participation in the st lawrence lewis fosus cooperative purchasing programs in accordance with the guidelines set forth in the cooperative purchasing agreement for the 2021. i had a motion randy in a second see some any discussion pretty similar to what we did last year yeah this is mostly your health supplies and products the paper okay result that the board of education certified approves the as7 contract for services provided by jefferson lewis boces for the 20-21-22 school year i have a motion please jason second lauren any discussion same question as before save that you can recall just i mean a lot of the code related like the software that type of stuff would be on there it would include really any of the educational services that are over there or
006um envision agreement so it's all fairly standard but i don't think we would attack on anything additional above and beyond really what we had last year we did plan for additional uh chromebook computers and stuff in there so that's part of it that's the obsolescence okay thank you all in favor thank you are you closed motion carries results of the payment of jesus for the 2021-22 school year to the jeff lewis school boards association is hereby approved i have a motion please [Music] in a second randy any discussion all fair any opposed motion carries we saw that the payment of dues for the 2021-22 school year for the national association of federally impacted schools is hereby approved i have a motion please second jason any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries result that
007the superintendent of schools is authorized to make application under pl 874 impact aid for the 2021-22 school year the association dues for from july 1 20 21 through july are here by april have a motion please action plan for the 2019 2020 annual financial audit as prepared by bowers and company cpa's pllc for the period ending june 30 2020 and the corrective action plan associated there with is hereby accepted and approved i got motion please all right thank you a second ready thank you any discussion friends the board of education has approved for piggy packing on federal new york state county and local municipality contracts at the annual reorganization meeting whereas thomas trash services was awarded the bid 0-0-4 for jefferson county therefore be it result the district will contract with thomas trash services for
008the 2021-20 school year but the price now to exceed sixty thousand dollars is here by a permit five emotion please jason in a second any discussion fair any opposed motion carries please don't that is part of new york state disaster evacuation plan the watertown city school district schools covenant and agree to secondary temporary holding areas between the schools and the following knickerbocker elementary school and a new way assembly of god north elementary school and starbuck elementary school and sacred heart school north elementary school and starbuck elementary school and the watertown industrial center sherman elementary school and stolen presbyterian church h.t widely intermediate school and the ihc senior high school ace middle school and ihc high school haste middle school and first presbyterian church watertown high school and trinity escaping church samaritan summit village assisted living
009in watertown high school ohio elementary and benchmarks family services be it resolved that the above reference agreements are hereby approved can i get a motion please susie in a second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries result that the board of education hereby approves the intermediate intercivil agreement buying between the city of watertown new york and the watertown city school district for the period july 1 2021 through june 30 2022 for the use of each other's facilities for the municipal agreement okay get a motion please in a second sorry any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries resolved at an addendum to the agreement by in between the city of watertown and the watertown city school district for a school resource officer for the period of august 1 2019 to july 31
0102022 i approved thank you any discussion is this your current school resource officer nope for the second one okay so we'll have two here on forward correct so the ones the contract the july of 2019 through 2022 so the addendum is to add the extra person and so then there were some minor tweaks in that addendum so that the person that is at the high school will primarily stay at the high school but will also serve as the elementary schools if needed the second sro will be stationed between case and wiley and they will uh that person will also service the elementary schools as needed okay any other questions all in favor any opposed motion carries resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the board approves of a separation agreement and general release
011between the district and a non-instructional employee can i get a motion please jason ii rory any discussion all in favor all right any opposed motion carries whereas the watertown education association on behalf of an instructional employee and similar situated association members filed a stage two agreements on or about march 11 2021 regarding alleged violations of the collective bargaining agreement relative to placement on the salary schedule and associated salary payments and whereas the grievance has been denied through stage three board of education and whereas the district and the association have engaged in discussions resulting in a mutual agreeable resolution to the issues raised in the grievance and whereas the district and the association have memorialized the terms of the mutually agreeable resolution in a settlement agreement which not only issues raised on behalf of named grievance
012but also modifies and clarifies the applicable language collective bargaining agreement going forward and whereas the association has approved of the settlement agreement whereas the board has reviewed the terms of the proposed settlement agreement and agrees that resolution of the agreements upon the terms set forth in the settlement agreement is appropriate now therefore it is resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools and the assistant superintendent that the board approves of the settlement agreement between the district and the watertown teachers association resolving the treatments filed on behalf of the instructional employee and the grievance filed on behalf of similarly situated teachers relative to the column placement on the salary schedule can i have a motion please thank you and a second randy any discussion all in favor the board of education hereby approves the following resignations
013of absence appointments permanent part-time lead teacher probationary instructional summer school extended school year special education staff summer stem camp substitutes non-instructional i have a motion please jason a second thank you any discussion all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions all that a 3.5 salary increase for noreen donahue student information system specialist for the 2021-20 school year is hereby approved i have a motion please susie in a second any discussion all in favor any opposed name motion carries result of the sale of unserviceable unused and generally in poor condition 2003 ford f-350 state crack from massey's free as per the attached video is here by approved any discussion how is that generally done is it an option is it auction is it yeah actually i have auctions international coming in they'll put it up on
014the website thanks anybody else all in favor motion carries resolve that the disposable recycle or donation of damaged outdated and unused books from the libraries at north knickerbocker ohio starbucks and sherman elementary schools is hereby approved i have a motion please jason jason suzy did i hear you education educational trip is here by a pro approved back river of their education program kayaking for the swim team team bonding trip one day during the week of august 26 20 21. five emotions and a second any discussion is this both teams or one or the other it's the girls team because the boys don't go until like the winner sport awesome cool any other discussion um favor all right any opposed motion cares resolve that upon the recommendation of patricia b labar superintendent of schools the probationary
015appointment of a part-time food service worker is hereby discontinued effective june 30 2021 i have a motion please jason and a second ambrose any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carriers resolve that upon the recommendation of patricia v lavar superintendent of schools the termination of a part-time new monitor effective june 30 2021 is hereby approved i have a motion please lord and a second i'll second that any discussion all in favor any is hereby appointed as interim treasurer during the current treasurer's medical center and it's scheduled august 19 through october 18 2021 and he's here by approved i have a motion please in a second susie any discussion all in favor the next thing on the agenda is to ask for the election of a an official delegate and an home alternate to attend
016a new york state school board's association meeting in october and the board package and it's all in person this year so do we know what days of the week that is it usually over a weekend or then it's usually a weekend it starts during the week so october 24th is is a sunday and it goes through tuesday yeah tuesday interesting all right so susie's going to be our delegate laurie's going to be an alternate thank you that was super easy that does not mean that anyone else who wants to go is can't go either so if anyone else would like to attend the um school boards association meeting i would highly encourage it um and everyone is welcome to go and the district does pay for you to go so if you could let michelle
017know by michelle what's a good date you need to know it registration starts like the second week in august i would like to the sooner you know the better though because remember the last time i was in new york city we couldn't find any place so yeah so earlier to let her know that it needs better facilities to sleep in okay do we need to do a resolution on that accepting no i believe i can just um noted in the minutes that who got that we've done it before and then next is the election of a member and an alternate for the board of education to serve on the executive committee committee for the jeff lewis school board association so they have meetings once every two to three months usually and they just it's really
018short if you decide to be the executive committee it's super short nobody wants to all do it alternate and again this doesn't mean you can't go to these meetings when they have them um so they'll pop they'll usually send us a schedule yes i i'm vice president you think i know this um no idea usually send a schedule and then they have different topics that they talk about and so they're usually they call them dessert meetings or about an hour give or take um and then they do like one big annual meeting here where they have a speaker come in it's usually at a restaurant that's what it was pre-covered so hopefully i think they're moving to get back to that more in-person meeting that is the end of the resolution okay thank you so
019items for discussion and information um district credit cards i don't know who's leaving that discussion i think it was on from last year because we needed the board's approval to increase some of the monies that were on some of the cards um and i think that that's why it was on there but it was also in your package number three and i i don't think that there's any major changes that need to be done at this time but i don't think it hurts us to review that on an annual basis to look that over if josh you have any recommendations i think that some of them needed to be upgraded last year and we did that yeah i think that has to be on there every year right as well as those cell phone reimbursements
020are on there the biggest thing on the credit card is we just we cleaned up stands and we get rid of a bunch of people that haven't um make it to the people government cars so there's fewer people that can actually go charge that's just to help any questions on that okay superintendent of schools report well first of all i'd like to welcome our new school with school board members and i'd also like to thank our returning school board members um for their service to the district it is one of the toughest volunteer roles of all and so we can't thank you enough uh for being part of our day and part of our experience with our students and our staff tina stacy josh and i look forward to our work together and as we
021transition into this new school year you know when we go over things we'll try to review or just ask questions along the way because a lot of the work is in progress but you might need a back story or some background information don't hesitate to just let us know in our board reports when you'd like further information we'll be happy to share that the last board meeting in june was the third tuesday of the month so we ended out the school year i think really well i commend the entire staff for getting through a really tough year graduation was the highlight of the just the perfect way to end the school year i think the parade went really well and then the red carpet roll out when the kids got out of the they were
022just it was just so fun to see our kids being celebrated and then the graduate graduation ceremony itself i thought went really well it could have been you know the rain on the radar tina and stacey let me know like the rain was right around us but never hit us so it was like the perfect ending to a really long school year um but that went i thought extremely well and i really want to thank chad fairchild and brian arias and their teams for putting everything together from chad's uh leadership and what you know just the graduation ceremony and all the details that went into that and then brian as director of facilities i know dell setting up all of those chairs with the tennis you know little balls on all four legs just the
023whole details uh the level of details that went into the evening was just really a perfect way to end the school year josh and brian and i met earlier today with king and king and construction associates and he started um the taxpayers approved the 13 million capital project in may and so we have close contact and communication with them but we met in person for the first time in a long time and we just went over the the project itself and looking forward to getting that off the ground and so they will be joining our fnf committee on october 5th to kind of hash out what the capital project looks like to give our new board members part of the fnf team you know what the project actually entails and the steps that we'll be
024taking along the way also coming up the diversity equity and inclusion committee has met and will be meeting a couple times before the august 3rd board meeting but they will be here to present to you on august 3rd basically we've been working with a company gwen incorporated with gwen and her team and we've really taken a deep dive into diversity equity and inclusion we took a look at our current strategic plan and looked at that through an equity lens and so this committee has made some recommendations that they're going to bring forward to the board on august 3rd and i look forward to that meeting but also we're doing some some work with that over this summer prior to that meeting and then finally we still don't have any guidance from the new york state
025education department for the fall reopening especially in regards to mask wearing and social distancing so as soon as we get that information into full action on what september will look like and we're really hopeful we want to bring all of our students back in person we're hopeful that the guidance will allow us to do that okay assistant superintendent for instruction uh so the first document that you have in front of you entitled the blind spot book study you all have copies of the book um this is something that maria asked me to share with you um on july 20th part of the board retreat will encompass um the start of this whole study we're going to condense it into three sessions um so if you can just take a look at the sheet when you
026get time um one of the things that we've done is divide the chapters up i promise it's not too much reading for those of you who don't enjoy that necessarily um but we're going to be reading the preface and then chapters one two and three um this book study we started as part of our dei initiative to start getting our staff to think about um just different perceptions and experiences that we all bring to the table and how that might shape our perceptions of the environment around us as well as people um so something that we put together in the first round of the book study is at the top of the sheet and if you don't agree with any of the norms of participation we can definitely discuss them and adjust them but one
027of the things that i did ask all participants is please don't read ahead um if you can only read to the stopping point of where we're going to discuss for that meeting and just use the discussion because then you have a lens and conclusions that you've made that no one else has yet made we really spent some time talking about this notion that everybody listens but you'll see that i put everybody talks and with a question mark at the end i know that's not grammatically correct but it also alludes to the point that there will be times where it might be an uncomfortable silence uh people may not feel like talking and that's okay um but we're there to listen and learn from one another um you know while patty tina and i will be
028there to facilitate conversation we really took the approach that there's not a leader in this journey it's more of us being able to have conversations with one another about this topic because we're all on different paths and in different places in that journey and the last piece one of the most important pieces is um through the book study that we went through with staff and we will be offering this um in multiple rounds again and one is starting up this summer but a lot of times people share personal experiences um that have you know changed their perception or given them a perception around diversity equity and inclusion and so one of the things that we put forth was that what we share that's personal to us in the room stays in the room but we
029take what we've learned in terms of concepts and application out into the world to share so um i'll let maria ultimately make decisions with all of you on extra dates uh after july 20th but that's what we're where we will start um and for the first meeting you don't mind bringing your chromebook that would be awesome but you are welcome to mark up those books however you see fit and annotating as you read the second document that i have for you um is a very condensed version of the results from our spring climate survey um we doubled our participation rate in a lesser of an emergency closure year last year we had 600 surveys completed this year we had 1 352 so a substantial increase in the participation from staff students and family the student
030survey goes uh from grades three through twelve our largest participation group was in grades five through twelve where we had almost 900 students complete the survey and one of the things that we added to the middle and high school survey this year again referencing grades 5 through 12 even though it says middle school is in the identifier components which we don't actually see we only get aggregate results but we ask the question about whether students identified it as part of the lgbtq plus community um and so we were able to disaggregate results this year we can do it by grade level we can do it by gender we can do it by whether they participate in extracurricular activities or not but we also get to segregate results based on ethnicity groups as well as that
031status question about whether they participate in the lgbtq plus community and so i pulled two questions where i just thought that the results might spark some conversation at some point students in my school respect each other's differences for example gender race culture disability sexual orientation learning differences etc and then you can see the number of responses that skewed towards the positive realm that were neutral or those that were negative and then the second question that i pulled was there are groups of students in my school who exclude others and make them feel bad for not being part of the group and again divided up on the spectrum of positive neutral or negative responses there is a plethora of information available through this survey and i'm trying to find a way to disaggregate it in a
032in a way that's user friendly so that we could publish it to our community i haven't yet gotten there yet but that is my work plan over the next couple of weeks to figure that out the last two weeks of school were spent meeting with every grade level and or department in our district and really getting a sense of where they are at as we prepare to go into yet another transition um into 2122. so we asked we spent some time looking at the work of john hattie who has performed a meta analysis on factors that significantly impact student learning and performance i've had some conversations around that uh we did a debrief on the professional development that we provided to all staff on may 21st with regards to dimensions of diversity and we then
033asked them you know as you're going into the 2122 school year what's on your mind josh won't like it when i use this frame but what's your wish list for if you could have a bmw model of your grade level or department so while still being frugally minded so we did talk through a lot of things not all of which incurred costs that would be helpful to the district and those departments are grade levels as we move forward um another thing matt burdick the cse coordinator for grades 5 through 12 and i have been working on is the implementation of cdos credentials across the board matt and his team at the high school have done an awesome job of getting ready to roll this out slowly so that it's manageable but also in a way
034that continues to expand growth a cdos credential can be used as either a special education diploma of sorts a completion program or it can also be used as a seal for any graduating student so our goal is to get to that point where it can also be used as a seal but we'll be moving forward with a way to expand that to our 12-1-2 program next year it currently resides only in our 15-1 program um so we'll have two programs there moving forward with resource hopefully in 2223 and to the general education population in 23-24 but with that we'll be looking at finding a way to make the program uh formal you can have an informal program or a formal program so i'll hopefully have matt share some more information on that in the future
035and i think that is it great thank you assistant superintendent for personnel and student services [Music] so lisa ward and my assistant and myself we attended a job fair uh june 29 2021 at the watertown fairgrounds it was sponsored by community broadcasters and actually it was very very uh i think beneficial there was it wasn't a lot of traffic there there were about upwards of 60 different businesses a few school districts there but we were able to get some interest in food service maintenance or i'm sorry careers we had a couple of teachers so it was it was very very well worth going we had an opportunity to talk to many different people who are interested in employment in a few different areas so we were very glad that we were able to attend that
036and we're following up with applicants as we speak actually we're also doing several interviews you approved several teachers and staff members tonight we continue to do interviews tomorrow we're doing counselors and then thursday we're doing social studies and then monday music we have a few elementary spots also to fill so we're busy doing that we really appreciate the administrators and teachers and staff participating on those interview committees on june 30th i had the opportunity to meet with dr rudd from samaritan we have a team of medical directors for our board members and worked very closely with america medical center they've been wonderful partners especially during colbit and they have uh residents who work with them four of them visited on june 30th they were greatly arranged from down south one was from michigan londoners from
037buffalo will be spending the next three years here in watertown so dr ruhn had contacted me about uh and patti about doing something and talking about poverty in our area so the residents and dr rudd did a little tour of the city then they visited us and mary hughes and craig orvis from the food service department we met with them and talked about our food service numbers and how we feed our students and of course one of the first priorities when the pandemic hit was feeding our students and we talked a lot about that we had some great discussion we just met in a classroom so hopefully we were able to provide them with some great information that the residents actually want to know how they could help our districts and they wanted to what
038are some things that they could do to volunteer so it was a nice discussion and we look forward to our continued work with them and on june 22nd backing up before the last week of school um patty and i had the opportunity to meet with all the aides in the district at case middle school that was wonderful we had a nice um meeting with eminent dialogue and then we administered an interest inventory to all of our aides and we asked them you know what their what their strengths are um where what would they like to do do they like to be one to one aged they'd like to be class roommates they'd like to be cluster aids and um we gave them a bit of a voice it all went into a spreadsheet so we're
039working on placements for the follow there and one of the things that in this board you some board members we did a special ed audit this spring and one of the things that we really looked at was the transition of our students we want to make sure if a student has a one-to-one aid that if the student's transferring transitioning from let's say wiley to case but the aid goes with them so that's one constant so we're really um you know paying attention to that audit and trying to meet the needs of our special ed population uh so that they can achieve and you know great heights so uh there's lots that's been going on in the personnel office and we'll have a busy summer but a good one thank you and school business manager so
040we just had the executive session that's kind of consumed the beginning of my year with an insurance side of things luckily because at first we also had to have the claim up on the website for american rescue plan locally stacey had the vast majority of that already completed so thank you uh we had dr patty mentioned we had the kickoff meeting this morning for the capitol project still working with the attorneys on hammering out some of those details of the contract and along the same line they're on anticipation notes closed as of last one day so that's all set working with state comptroller's office to get them what they need seems to be going decent so far and then also working on closing out the year and prepping stuff for bowers to come in they
041officially start monday i think the 12th and actually they'll be here tomorrow doing inventory for food service and picking up some of the prep work that we have completed so far okay thank you all right so we've got some upcoming dates um the next meeting is a board retreat we're gonna start that at four o'clock so the first half of it is going to be the book um we charged patti in her evaluation this year to look this year through the lens of diversity equity and inclusion so i thought as a board we should also read the book blind spot so in addition to the district leadership the board leadership also was on board with what was going on so hence the book study you're welcome i hope everybody likes to read and then the
042second half of our board retreat is we're going to delve a little bit more deeply into how saversky's work we had that meeting with him back in the late early early spring march i think um so we're going to be coming back around to his suggestions that he looked at and lori and we're relying on you since i believe you sat on that committee with paul um so we're gonna be looking at his suggestions and kicking off discussion of that um i'll resend out his um official thing that he came up with to everybody in case those who can't find it and new people have it and i'll direct it to the pages in particular to really focus on but it is quite a lengthy document um to kind of peruse and take a look
043at so that's going to be our board retreat um august 3rd august 17th our other board of education meetings um you know the time is 4 p.m and then starting in september we go back to 6 p.m for our board meetings and one other thing i wanted to point out too many meetings are also going to start in september and we actually approved those that was letter a q and r so q fina audit and facilities susie you're going to be chair um and then kali and ambrose you guys are also on that finance audit in the facilities committee and then policy committee jason your chair of that and randy and lori you're going to be on that committee okay and michelle are you going to send out a notification of the date and times
044for community meetings yeah we want to make sure that those times work because in the past policy was always on friday at noon and it didn't work well for everyone so this year we took a look at the first tuesday of the board meeting was always f an hour before at five o'clock so we thought maybe the third tuesday the second board meeting it starts at six that the policy could be right at five o'clock because the meetings are both still an hour and we just kind of talked about that rather than a friday at noon because that disrupts everybody's work schedule and we thought that may be easier so that something like it would be doable the difference is on the second the third i keep calling it it's the second board meeting of
045the month but it's the third tuesday those meetings are always out of school so we would meet at five o'clock and we would find a classroom and we i would tell you ahead of time where we would be meeting usually very close to wherever the board meeting would be held and then we would just have our policy meeting there and good to go for the board meetings and if you guys want dinner for the board retreat please okay so we'll get that squared away and i'll also be sending around a um a survey of sorts so we can really get the next two days handled for our blind spot as well so we all have that on a calendar oh there's conflict of interest statement in your folder so please make sure you sign those
046and get those back to the shell as well and colleen going to you um i don't think i have anything good i have a question sure um mark taylor had asked me to be on the facility committee at case is that a conflict of interest i don't think so because i just want to make sure ambrose randy i just wanted to thank you maria for your leadership and transitioning us in that's a welcome change from the past my past experience so thank you for that you're welcome jason looking forward to a good year okay all right on that note i have a motion to adjourn so maybe a second any discussion all in favor thank you