001stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states all right i should have asked if we were ready to go i'm gonna assume we're ready to go okay any agenda changes you know what they're in their hands any public comments no public all right thank you all right moving on to board president comments so we're going to start with recognizing our valedictorian our salutatorian and our outstanding vocational student for the class of 2021. so whereas this board of education takes great pride in the area of academic achievement of its students and whereas annalee landfield has excelled in academic excellence and has been declared the valedictorian of the class of 2021 at watertown high school for her outstanding academic achievement based on an overall average of 99.43 and therefore be it
002resolved that this board of education congratulates anna lee on her significant accomplishment and hopes that this will be one of many such honors for her annaleigh you are a credit to your family school and teachers congratulations [Applause] can i get a motion please probably in a second michael any discussion all in favor aye motion carries thank you whereas this board of education takes great pride in the area of academic achievement of its students and whereas susannah rainbow has excelled in academic excellence and has been declared the salutatorian of the class of 2021 at watertown high school for her outstanding academic achievement based on an overall average of 99.3 and therefore be it resolved that this board of education congratulate susanna on a significant accomplishment and hopes that this will be one of many such honors
003for her susanna you are a credit to your family school and teachers congratulations [Applause] can i get a motion please susie thank you all in favor aye all right any nays motion carries whereas this board of education takes great pride in the area of academic achievement of its students and whereas marcus boone has excelled in academic excellence and has been declared the watertown high school class of 2021 outstanding vocational student for his outstanding academic achievement based on an overall average of 97 and therefore be it resolved that this board of education congratulates marcus on this significant accomplishment and hopes that this will be one of many such honors for him marcus you are also a credit to your family your school and your teachers congratulations congratulations [Music] can i get a motion please jason jason
004and nancy thank you all in favor aye opposed motion carries congratulations to our valedictorian our salutatorian and our outstanding vocational student you of course are welcome to stay for everything but if you like [Music] thank you hi moving on to board and staff reports i'd like to acknowledge our incoming board members that were just recently elected so with us tonight we have ambrose souza and we have lori converse who are here for the meeting tonight as well as randy richardson who cannot be here three have been elected this year and we're looking forward to working with you so thank you for joining us tonight and moving on to mr jim cooper we're going to be doing our special education audit report thank you very much did you all receive the email copy of the bullet
005points okay thanks for having me so i'd like to thank uh superintendent barr and latina lane and stacey edgar also for uh working with me through this process i think i started the process in january and uh just finished up a few weeks ago i reviewed a 182 student records from the special education department that's approximately of their records if you exclude the preschool it's uh close to 40 so it was it was certainly a task we had two phases in the process and through the phases there were several patterns that emerged that were accommodation for the special education department but also some recommendations for your consideration and makes sense to start with the positives as many of you know maybe all you know special education has many many many timelines 30 days for this
00660 days for that five days for this and the watertown special education department does a nice job with those timelines for instance when a student is referred to for special education programming there's a certain timeline to get evaluations done it's called initial eligibility evaluations in almost all cases they were completed in the appropriate compliant fashion and that's not an easy task especially with the number of transition students um similarly every three years once the students specialize there's triennial evaluations that need to occur sometimes this involves formal evaluations sometimes it's more about summary in written form again the watertown special education department has done a nice job ensuring that those get done in a timely fashion so psychologists here are definitely on top of the top of their game um annual reviews should be done annually
007sounds pretty simple but with snow days and things like that cancellations sometimes they push beyond one year and watertown does a nice job getting those done in a year as well prior written notice parents are required to receive private notice for cse at least five days in advance and once again the watertown city school district special education department in almost all cases provided prior written notice weeks in advance in many cases so good job there when people are attending the csc meeting virtually or in person there's an accounting done on the signature page watertown once again was should be dependent for those efforts they're cumulative folders those are the folders that house really all the special education documentation on a student for someone who was kind of colorblind they were really easy to follow for
008instance there's an entire folder you open up the first one and it's a yellow folder and that has all the csc ieps behind that is a green folder and that has all the evaluations then there's an orange folder for medicaid documentation then there's a red folder that has the summary pages for the iep behind that if the student wants to preschool there's a blue folder how do i know that off the top of my head i've seen 182 folders after cumulative folders or files it was very evident that there was great organization documents were overall where they needed to be and uh again there's a lot of paperwork flying in the special office so that's not an easy task nice job there going through the ieps in phase one there's a part of the iep
009called the present levels educational performance and the idea there is to be able to pick up the iep and read the students strengths and needs you should get a picture of that student without even knowing the student that was a strong area for the special education department as well you could pick up an iep and get a good idea what that kid was all about flipping into an iep there's goals and or objectives sometimes there's objectives uh goals are supposed to be written in a measurable manner whereas once you read it how do you know if the goal has been met well um special education department from the ieps i read which were 182 of them had 100 goals measurability that's a pretty good amount again some accommodation goes there the number of goals written
010per student was appropriate as well over my almost 40 years in special education you would hear different regional associates talk about iep goals and objectives how many are appropriate and uh in the last probably five or six years the the idea is to write less goals but quality goals so about five per student and the average number of goals was 5.98 but certainly within where the regional associates were the special education people who do the oversight would look and say yep okay they're hitting the mark there record keeping particular to the watertown special education department they have their own form that they created for the school psychologist for the student is referred for special ed it's called the pre-csc responsibilities checklist haven't seen that in many places doesn't mean that procedure doesn't occur it's just
011that it's a nice form that was created internally again accommodations there um and i've worked in several school districts much of my career was at school county boces we certainly had our chair transfer students for different reasons of devotees and so do you and following the bounce and ball from watertown to indian river to carthage seems to be like a triangle there plus other school districts not easy it's coming and going and the general overview there was a nice job tracking those students on a easy task on to uh recommendations i also noticed some things that are worth consideration uh cumulative folders i spoke about that were so colorful and so nice and so organized one of the things in the in the yellow folder that houses the ieps some of the the folders have
012held a signature sheet so anyone reviewing the records should be put in their name the date and the purpose before looking at those records that was evidenced in some of the folders but not most of them i would recommend that that practice be done for in all cases not a huge thing but technically a good um procedure to follow when you're crossing your teeth there were enough ieps to note that this was become a recommendation students who are in preschool or are age taking alternative assessments should have goals and objectives in their iep that is a requirement for the school-age students there were a good handful i have my book over there i could actually get you a number but there were there were a good handful of students that goals but no objectives that
013is an easy fix but it should occur um behavior intervention plans so if a student had is behaviorally challenging for one reason or the other sometimes a functional behavioral assessment gets parental consent and is conducted typically a behavior convention plan is born out of that behavior intervention plans are living documents that are part of the iep and should be attached to the iep in many cases the 182 records i saw and none of the students had behavior intervention plans with maybe just a couple in those cases the bips as they call them were not attached to the iep there was note that said they were held in the document repository of front line which used to be ip direct the issue there is if i'm an aide and i'm responsible for collecting data on the
014student knowing what the behaviors are progress monitoring i how do i get access to the front line the document repository so if hard copies were available they weren't in the cumulative folder one of my bonuses iep should be individualized to the special education student what i meant by that was there were some ieps especially at the high school level that appeared what i call cookie cutter and you read the goals and then you went to the next iep the goals looked almost exactly the same they went to the next activity that was almost exactly the same in talking with stacey the goals also reflected the learning standards which are generally goals so i'll make mention to some staff development towards the end of this presentation but you should be writing goals not you personally but
015special education staff should be writing goals that are individual to the students obviously i mentioned earlier the cumulative folder has a red folder within it and that houses the summary page of the iap what's nice about that because it documents many of the things that occur during a cst meeting there's a comment section you could list who was there you could list who said what you could list if there was consensus if there was disagreement should there be an evaluation needs following up on any of those things a great a great place to house that information because it's right on one page towards the bottom about 50 of the time that was used about 50 percent of time it wasn't it's not a requirement but i know through all my years if you talk to
016attorneys about special ed they have three words for you document document document so it's a good place to put that information onto personnel what one of the things that came to mind was when students were going from uh the elementary school to to wiley or to wiley to the next school in mexico high school whatever it is um it seemed like that's always a hard time for students one particular case from fourth grade to fifth programs or services were diminished and that was a point of contention that i uh will talk about a little more further but there are cluster aids that are more generally than special ed uh i'm thinking that maybe it makes sense for these students to transition from one school to the other if they do have some aid support that
017might be a good time to think about how to best utilize your aides and to do so maybe call them transition aids and have them moved through with students might not even need it for the full year as i said before i was at school county voters for probably 22 years as a director and one of the programs we had was the deaf ed program with audiologists and teachers of the deaf what i saw in many of the folders where students had hearing needs watertown audiology typically was the clinical audiologist that indicated that a student was hearing a page or death mostly hearing here mild to moderate and they recommended a sound field system the issue with that is clinical audiologists are not educational audiologists so what an educational audiologist could do for watertown is
018take that clinical information and apply it to the students needs in an educational setting i'm not so sure that the hearing assistant technology each student needs is always a sound field system so that's something i think that could use further exploration and water similarly interpreters there were a few students through 182 records that indicated on the iep that they had an interpreter need sign language interpreter i didn't see where sign language interpreters were assigned to them so they may you may have aids who have who have sign language skills i know in one case there was a person who is a teacher of deaf background and that is more than what you need for that particular student but my recommendation there would be for watertown to look at their aids maybe promote them in a
019certain way to possibly a stipend or pay for some coursework get your own homegrown interpreters going you don't need 30 of them you need more than maybe one and they're a hot commodity it's a low instance disability i know but it's one of those things i think that i would recommend watertown to look at and pursue teachers of the deaf students who have hearing needs often have some type of teacher depth support i i shared a rubric with with tina on how you would figure out if the student needs teach for the deaf and how many sessions per week that they look at there are there are states around the country that have developed rubrics and uh what it does is objectify some of the recommendations you may hear from people who are very passionate
020about their work that may be the best way to put that so if a student has an interpreter that's typically not enough at soil county boces our interpreters were teaching assistants who had family members or parents who were deaf or hard of hearing had a yearning to learn and we're kind of we called it homegrown you know if you do the same that's great but they're not professionals who teaches them sign language skills who works with the classroom teacher to ensure that a student with hearing needs has is getting their heat set means that that would be a teacher of the deaf okay um so two trends that were pretty noticeable number one in the phase one i was looking at students who almost eighty percent of the students who were declassified from pre-k going
021into kindergarten and now come back to special ed at a later time sometimes just months into the kindergarten career sometimes you know a year later but you see it was it was actually about 77 percent that's that's something i think learns further investigation uh my feeling on that as a special educator we give the services early on in the long run you may not need as intense services as i mentioned earlier i saw the same thing for students going from fourth grade to fifth many of the students who had resource room and consultant teacher services and possibly some related services saw a decrease entering wiley of either the resource room or the consultant teacher services why did i notice that because if you look later on when they're in sixth seventh eighth grade even sometimes
022that connect in the fifth grade you would see that those services were put put back in place so you know it's just a student's transitioning from one school to the next it's a big jump i i personally would say that's not the best time to reduce services uh but it's not about me on the other hand i saw it in the records as well and it requires some more investigation on that extended school year i did not look at records of the students here that are three 12-1-3-1 the most intense students but i did look at fifteen to one students i looked at a lot of resources and consulted teacher service students of the 182 records only one student was recommended for a special education summer school esy that seemed pretty low there were some
023students who transitioned into the district that were recommended in a previous district to have bsy when they came in that was uh discontinued i'm not saying all students should get esy i do think it probably should be more than one now of that group i saw um with the students that are coming and going here in the school district i can understand wholeheartedly when you start the school year you're making your line up and putting your best players in each classroom you're putting your best staff with those kids you want to make the playoffs you might not go undefeated but you're going to have a good record then kids move in and out so you're the coach of a baseball team like okay what do i do here and there are times where kids will
024come in in january or february and a 1501 may have 15 kids but if that's what they need what do you do you could give them the next best solution or you can write a variance on the superintendent the bar would sign it we'll go to state ed you put a 16th student in there many of those classrooms have aids anyway so it's not like there's just one teacher that's a that's i think something should be explored further any reviews occurred like in january february or march or even april there were students who were in resource room programs and the recommendation was for more restricted placement like a 1501 that 15-1 though started on september got me thinking well if a committee a professional speaks and said the student needs something more i i don't
025know why there was several months of waiting maybe they put some stop gaps into place maybe it wasn't that bad but they were predicting it was going to get worse they don't i don't know but variances may help that cause um and again i do get kids coming and going so something that to just be aware of when it comes to staff development many of the documents for students with one-to-one aides and by the way the school district does a nice job of providing the justification for them for the one to ones in almost all cases i saw that that's that's important you want to justify it you also want to explain what the role is and you also want to have a plan for weaning that away so in many cases i saw aids
026should be trained in cpi cpi stands for crisis prevention institute it's been around since about 1980 so it's got a good 40 years of life in it it's it's a training for staff work with students who are anxious or hostile or because of the challenge and behaviors it's a great training for really all staff in special education you know when your placement may change or your homogeneous group and becomes a little more heterogeneous so with the crisis prevention and cpi training i saw i don't know what how much that's being tracked or how that's working in the district but something to be followed up on maybe perfect thing for staff development day there's refresher trainings as part of the training you can always use that and lastly staff development for the high school resource room
027and consultant teachers again the ieps were quite a cookie cutter i think refresher training and iep goal writing might help their cause so i went through a lot there's a short period of time are there any questions i have um comments and a question um i i'm really glad that you spoke about the declassifying the students entering kindergarten because that's something that we have heard a lot about over over the last several years and this really validates the concern of the parents who have spoken to us about that so i think that's a really important thing for us to look at and then um in terms of the aid redistribution and transition aids do you have an opinion or is there a standard way of looking at keeping the same one-to-one aid with a student
028over time i do that would come from my experience at boces when we had interpreters working with students and it's important to note that that's similar but it's also different because of the sign language needs interpreters form their own pigeon sign language with students in other words typically with students for sign language they will start to learn signed exact english that's something that they that's where your finger spelling your you're using sign that aligns with actual english as as students develop that's not enough you can't sign quick enough when people are reading that fast reviews inside exact english so what you do is you develop pigeon english and to do that let's say we're learning about dinosaurs and that's a tea and i went like that like t-rex that that would be our pigeon sign
029if i try to spell out tyrannosaurus rex in fingerspelling you by the time i spell that out you'd be on to the fifth dinosaur in class so you work on the pigeon english and again that would be a report that you and i would have let's say as you as you continue to develop your skills and your cognitive abilities you will go into more of american sign language where you're using more phrases phraseology instead of individual words so take that to a one-to-one teaching assistant interpreter for a student when do you cut that off does that should that person go from k-12 how long should be that there's no good answer for that i would say that two to three years tops is probably good you want to foster independence for students you want to
030foster the ability to generalize so if school ended tomorrow you don't want that student that attached to that one individual it's good to get some new experiences in um in the hard of hearing world you never know which interpreter is going to show up to perform sign language for you similarly if a student has a one-to-one aid need you you never know if that person i always use that analogy if i get hit by a bus tomorrow so if that one-to-one egg gets hit by a bus tomorrow who knows that kid it's good to rotate them it's good to have a rotation two to three years is probably a good number and i know that because i also taught resource in central square junior high and middle school for 10 years and i did loop
031with kids as a teacher i did it for the seventh and eighth grade and then when we moved to the middle school i did it for sixth seventh and eighth and sixth and seventh wasn't so bad i mean i'm sorry seventh eighth wasn't so bad when you get six seventh and eighth you definitely know the difference between a sixth grader and an eighth grader they act differently the 6th grader feels like they just came out of elementary school 8th graders pretty much ready for high school very different kids so even being with those kids for 3 years the relationship changed and i could see where some dependence could occur it is nice to know the student well and the pair as well but and my recommendation be two or three years thanks i know it
032was really long but um do you recommend that we employ a teacher of the deaf do you for district our size do you have a recommendation of number of how many we should have on staff i'd have to start i'd have to dig to find out how many hearing needs students you have and with only between 20 and 40 depending on the preschoolers um i don't know what the rest would happen i i hate to give you a number for that you may not need your own teacher the deaf i would recommend you definitely get your own interpreters uh as a teacher of the deck though that might be a boces thing okay i mean boces those low incense disabilities teach the visually impaired orientation mobility audiology teacher that those are often services that boces
033excels but if you but it would be fair today and if you have enough on a consistent basis year after year after year it's good to have your own too get somebody dually certified if they can teach asl you can also have a foreign language credit any other questions for mr huber thank you i thank you i thank you for the opportunity and maybe i'll see you again i never say good luck although i must have right now i think it goes back to diversity and inclusion and making sure that our creative students have access to interpreters thank you absolutely thank you so much have a good night okay that's the uh facilities audit and finance committee report yeah so we met this evening and we were kind of tying up loose ends for for
034the school year um looking at next steps for the capitol project and meetings that the administration will have with with the folks that are involved in the planning and the construction of those items um and um that was oh and and audits coming up so that's the nuts and bolts not a lot to report okay thank you all right so at this time um we need to enter into an executive session for the purposes of discussing um a wea member's grievance and for the purposes of discussing the employment history of a district employee can i have a motion please jason thank you in a second michael all in favor the opposed motion carries okay can i have a motion to open our meeting back up again please beth and jason thank you all in favor
035[Music] i have a motion please michael in a second go ahead any discussion all in favor of the opposed motion carries items for board action results that the watertown city school district board of education commends the 20 20 21 school calendar as follows the last day of school for students in grades 9 and 12 will be tuesday june 15th 2021 students will report for regents exams on june 17th 22nd 23rd and 24th as required the last day for school for students in grades k-28 will be monday june 21st 20-21 kind of a motion please in a second jason any discussion all in favor aye opposed motion carries we saw that a 3.5 salary increase for patricia b lavar superintendent of schools for the 2021 22 school year is hereby approved i have a motion please
036and the second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries resolved at a 3.5 salary increase for tina lane assistant superintendent for personnel and student services for the 2021-2012 school year it's hereby approved i have a motion please jason jason and susie thank you any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries resolved that a 3.5 salary increase for josh joshua hartford school business manager for the 2021-22 school year is hereby approved can i get a motion please in a second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carriers you resolve that upon the recommendation of superintendent of schools patriarchy lavar the board of education hereby approves the following retirements resignation leave of absence appointments probationary instructional summer school summer stem camp summer school food service summer camps and clinics substitutes instructional substitute non-instructional
037can i get a motion please answer in a second colleague thank you any discussion all in favor opposed motion cares that upon the recommendation of patricia b labara superintendent of schools the following 10-year appointment is hereby approved cody calhoun special education effective date june 2nd 2021 kanye motion please we saw that the approval to abolish one 10-month typist position jason in a second thank you any discussion can we get a little background on this scenario so we had a ton in our moves last year we moved to 10 months tightness out here to the front desk and it used to be that person replaced a person finally who was in a 12-month typist position so we'd like to restore that to a 12-month position out here so we have coverage for the year so it
038just makes everything equitable okay so more sense we'll have that from you know the front desk staffs throughout the year okay thank you all in favor any opposed motion carries resolve that the approval will abolish one per position okay i have a motion please michael and a second susie any discussion can we get background on that one too yes i can give you the background on that one so uh case middle school and high school both have cook managers and they'd like a second cook manager at the high school and they'll abolish the cook position and make that book manager so that there's somebody that's in charge instead of the assistant food service director always having to do that okay thank you uh all in favor any opposed motion carries we saw that a creation
039of one cooked manager position as recommended by patricia bilabar superintendent of schools can i get a motion please jessica jason and beth thank you any discussion all in favor aye opposed motion carries result of the creation of one full-time senior texas position is recommended by patricia b lebar superintendent of schools is hereby approved can i get a motion please yes thank you second susie thank you any discussion all in favor all right any opposed motion carries resolve that upon the recommendation of patricia biobar superintendent of schools the paid administrative leave of a non-instructional employee is in place effective may 26 2021 and will be until further notice can i get a motion please okay in a second thank you philly any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries resolved at the sale disposal or
040recycle of outdated unused and generally in poor condition capture cafeteria tables from north elementary and h t wildly intermediate school is here can i get a motion please susie and the second yes any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries result that the watertown city school district combined with immaculate heart central school for the school year to form a wrestling team and further resolve that the students from vernacular heart central will become members of the watertown city school district's wrestling team the team will compete under watertown colors can i get a motion please michael in a second jason any discussion all in favor motion cares resolved at the following clinics and camps are hereby approved as following boys basketball camp for players entering grades 5 through 12 will be held july 6-8 july
04112-15 july 19-22 july 26 through the 29th in august 2nd to the 5th from 9am to 1pm in the case middle school gymnasium 7th on 12th football passing clinic for players enjoying 9th grade 9-12 will be held on wednesdays only starting july 7th and running until august 18th from 3 pm until 6 pm on the turf field no cost students boys and girls swimming and diving camp for students entering from k to 12 will be held july 19th to july 23rd for the diving july 26th to the 30th for the swimming in august 2nd through 6th for swimming from 4 30 pm to 6 30 pm at the watertown high school pool 75 hour cost volleyball volleyball camp for students entering grades four through six will be held july 6 from 6 to the 8th
042from 9am to 11 30 a.m in the watertown high school training gymnasium 30 costs can i get a motion please and a second any discussion all in favor any opposed motion periods result of the following educational student tricks are hereby approved boys golf sectionals seven oaks golf course hamilton york june 6th and 7th girls golf sectionals canyon battery golf course in oneida new york girls track sectionals chittenden english central school in chattanooga new york june 9th boys tennis sectionals in utica new york june 10th boys track sectional csm high school east syracuse if i get a motion please i didn't get that could you try again [Laughter] thanks thank you any discussion so these are have we qualified or these are if we qualify these are in anticipation that we will qualify okay because it's
043been a long time since the board has had to approve that out of county uh sporting events okay all in favor aye any opposed motion carries where is the watertown educational association on behalf of instructional employee and similarly situated association members filed the state issue agreements on or about march 11 2021 regarding alleged violations of collective bargaining unit agreement relative to placement on the salary schedule and associated salary payments and whereas the superintendent of schools after conducting a hearing timely denied the stage two grievance and writing and whereas on about april 5th 2021 the association filed the stage 3 agreements and whereas the board conducted a stage 3 hearing on april 13 2021 and whereas for the purpose of discussing a possible settlement the party is entered into a memorandum of agreement dated april 15
044temporarily waiving the timeline set forth in the collective bargaining unit agreement relative to a poor decision on stage three agreements and whereas after review of the record for the stage three grievance in the presentation by the association at stage three and upon due deliberation the board resolves the following the board of education of the watertown city school district will hold the decision of the superintendent patricia lavar at stage 2 and denies agreements for the same reasons stated by the superintendent the district reserves the right to assert additional defenses so the association appeal the grievance further the superintendent or her designee is directed to provide the association with a certified copy of this resolution which shall serve as written notice association of the board's decision it shall also serve as written notice to the association that
045the board rescinds the time waiver set forth in the april 15 2021 memorandum of agreement the board directs the superintendent or her designate to continue discussions with the association relative to a potential settlement agreement of this grievance this directive shall not be deemed a waiver of any defenses raised by the district in response to grievance can i get a motion please and a second nancy my vote is i michael hi susie hi colley nancy hi beth hi jason there being no nays the motion carries all right thank you moving on to uh superintendent of schools report i'd like to start off by welcoming ray converse and ambrose here tonight thank you for being with us um we look forward to your start with us on july 6th that's the new year and we also look
046forward to having randy richardson as well but he couldn't be here with us this evening so um our extending our congratulations to him as well we'd like to thank jim huber for his feedback and we have already started working on the recommendations that he set forth our team met with him last week and then we had a brief meeting with shannon whitney and matt burdick we assume jim's time was very limited and when we could get together so we gave matt and shannon a very quick probably 20 minute overview of what he shared with you this evening and we are to be you know it's nice to hear that you're doing things well we appreciate that but we have some work to do on those recommendations and we will get started on those uh stacy
047and and i met with matt burke earlier today for um one of the meetings that we do at this time of year with all of our administrative leadership and matt has already and his goals set forth some of the feedback that he received from jim and started working on for example doing professional development with the staff the special ed staff at the high school on those iep goals and making them you know really specific so he's going to do some professional development in that area as an example i'd also like to congratulate five of our high school students on receiving their seal of bi-literacy their presentations were via zoom last week three students presented in spanish and although i had no clue what they were saying it was very well put together we had a
048student um who's with us it was one of our english language learners from puerto rico and she got her sealed by literacy in english which is the one presentation that i really wanted to see because i knew i probably would understand that better than the rest and we had our diversity equity and inclusion committee meeting at the same time so i heard she did a great job and then the last one that i attended was one of our students took it in french and again great presentation but unfortunately i took german in high school so it really didn't help me but it's really great to have five students receive that honor and they've all worked really hard one of the students in particular had such a struggle not had any fault of her own but
049the technology just was not cooperating whatsoever and i really appreciated her persistence and perseverance to get through again it had nothing to do with anything that she was doing but she pushed through and did a fabulous job the facilities requests are starting to come in for next year which is new because you know we haven't done really had uh visitors and facilities in the past year so with that said um brian george and i are going to meet with the city manager and uh with the director of parks and recreation this friday morning try to work out some issues with you know they had a summer program a few years ago behind north where they use the playground and then we use the fields behind north for sporting events so we're going to try to
050work with a city to see what we can do to be really good community partners i think that it's the timing of that is good as we start to reopen up our facilities stacey tina and i are in the process of conducting our one to three quarterly meetings with our leaders throughout the district we completed 16 of those interviews and meetings last week and as we finish out this year we've asked each leader to submit a moving forward plan including items that they've learned over the past year plus with the pandemic on things that they would like to sustain things that they feel can transform the district and things that maybe we should collapse so when we get together for administrative leadership meeting all together on june we'll take a look at all the feedback
051that each individual leader has given us and then stacey tina and i will work together to develop some things as a district on things that need to sustain transform or collapse and with that we also worked on having each one come up with communication goals leadership goals and instructional and or departmental goals for next year one example is when we talked about communication stacey tina and i are going to put out a call to pay pay attention memo um once a month to each one of our building leaders with maybe different data points maybe suggestions for professional development and in turn we've asked the building leader or department leader to put forth some of that information out not a necessarily a copy and paste but what's permit to their their department and or building to
052share those ideas out with their team some of our building leaders put out weekly notices to their staff others don't so we're trying to make sure that all staff in the district are having those same opportunities for weekly communication from the building and or department leaders our diversity equity inclusion committee met last week and each small group shared out their ideas they took a look at our strategic goals and they tried to frame them through their small committee group through the lens of an equity lens and so we have another meeting coming up on june 9th to close out this work and then we'll have a report for you hopefully at the next board meeting to share what's happened thus far i continue to attend multiple virtual pd sessions again thursday mornings are really incredible
053they're moving forward in new york community where we meet with leaders from across the state jcpenney and i get to join in on that and if we all can't be there at least one or two if we're lucky all three of us get to it then but we've learned some really great things um in those meetings they've been great and then i know i think um maria and beth did you both attend the jefferson lewis awards virtual meeting last week i didn't know if either one of you wanted to share out i don't know if you planned to share out and you know that was pretty interesting sagar um we had an uh presentation from from an excellent speaker on on leadership and um her work is not specifically on leadership and education but she
054tailored it to you know to our group and so that was very helpful and you know the one thing that i wrote down is behind every complaint is a need i mean you know if i heard nothing else from from that whole presentation that's like okay that that makes a lot of sense um and then in terms of the jeff lewis school boards association um maria is the new vice president and um i am leaving that position so thank you yeah i thought that was a very nice presentation i thought she did a great job and i think i wrote down the same thing about that as you did um we continue to still have weekly meetings with the superintendents from across jefferson county and louis county as well we're all waiting anxiously for some
055guidance to come out and hopefully that will be rather soon for what school could potentially look like next year but either way we're moving forward with multiple plans as we have in the past year and a half to be prepared for whatever it is that we can do i'm really looking forward to to hopefully having everyone back here in september hall of achievement committee is making great progress we sent out letters this morning to the recipients or their families and we're hoping to re do some recordings in the upcoming weeks i'm answering some questions um so that it's all formatting for the virtual stream that we'll do hopefully later this month but the reality of this project at this point is as time moves on depending on if we can get you know reach out
056to all the recipients and put everything together this is an incredibly busy time of year for mike chanely with graduation so we are going to and all the other end of the year activities that are going to be virtually strained from you know national honor society to senior day that they're so they're having but we will give you um hopefully a final update at the next meeting as to where that stands i know jerry gozzier and mike shanley have been working endlessly to get this up and going and that is it for me other than enrollment and that hasn't changed much so no updates really there okay thank you assistant superintendent for instruction um so as patty mentioned we've been involved in the one on three administrative meetings um goal setting um hey draco and
057i have also been meeting with each upk agency and discussing the number of student spots that we are able to allocate them next year it looks like our funding will remain the same as it was this year so that that's a positive um and you know we're just learning through this process how to be part of the competitive grant piece so some of those meetings we're sharing feedback from our independent evaluator um and working through just some of the you know something blocks that come with having sometimes more requests for student slots than you can get and so we're working through that with each of the agencies um i also participated last monday um in the second session we're leading with racial equity it's from you know office of early childhood one of their agencies
058we have a psychotherapist who's on hand a lot of her work is in diversity spent last monday doing work on fears and resources investigations and it's interesting about one of your takeaways from the school boards association dinner was behind every complaint as a need because that really had us looking deep into what fears um people have around conversations around diversity and i think it kind of comes from some of those needs and and everybody feels uncomfortable everybody feels scared so how do we work through that so she just does a really nice job in getting people to thank him it's very cognitively stimulating but as well as making you think about different issues around diversity equity and inclusion we follow the um shouldn't say we followed it up prior to that on may 21st we
059had our staff development with dr george theoharis um each department met afterwards and debriefed so we have a lot of feedback going into next year thinking about our work with diversity equity inclusion what our staff needs are um in terms of further professional learning experiences um discussions there was a lot of requests for data we've heard that a ton lately um so that will lead us into the end of this year where we're going to be meeting with each grade level at the elementary levels and then also each department at 7 12. we did that two years ago just in you know trying to get some conversations going and this year it's ever more important because obviously we've had a year of change and upheaval and so looking you know as patti mentioned with the
060moving forward plans with the administrators talking to our grade levels and our departments about data points specific to diversity equity and inclusion but also specific to their points of curriculum and instruction and just discussing you know needs wants and plans for moving forward in 21 22. um we are in the final stages of a brilliant pathways opportunity for case middle school patty signed off on a form this morning that will hopefully garner us a partnership we should have a formal announcement tomorrow as to whether we're one of ten schools to be awarded this opportunity which will provide our students with additional career and college readiness support um we're also going to be included in a federal grant application for a gear up start grant that would afford us even more support under the same umbrella
061of focus but through the brilliant pathways program and that would be for the next three years but also extend with those cohorts of students all the way through one year post graduation so they would have transitional support leading their senior year as well whether they're entering the workforce or into higher education um and then the last thing just some data points to share with you tonight um i will have some reports in greater detail to share with you next time but the essa climate survey we administered this year the window just closed on thursday um excuse me friday so just some comparison points it is much easier to administer a survey when it's not an emergency closure period because our results were much better for example last year we had a return rate of 13
062surveys from parents and this year we have 67 our staff surveys remained about the same about a third of our staff responded but our student survey responses almost tripled um we had almost a thousand student surveys um in terms of responses so again i'll share some reports in greater detail with you next time but i thought that was a positive experience for us to have some feedback that's it thank you assistant superintendent for personnel and student services continues to be a busy time we're doing a lot of interviewing uh we did interviews i actually interviewed some candidates today um math we're doing special ed coaching positions instructional coaching positions we're doing elementary we have a full slate there so it's a busy time also as stacy and patty said enjoy spending time with the administrators
063of the district on the 1-3 meetings and one of the things that i wanted to bring up and patty talked about it was the moving forward meetings that we have every thursday and i think the pandemic when we talk about blessings throughout the dynamic it's been a tough time but i think one of the things that's done is it opens it's opened us all to professional development opportunities where we can sit at our desk and open the window to the state and the country in the world really and that's everywhere from interviewing teaching candidates for to personal professional development so we've taken many of the ideas and then used them at our administrative cabinet meetings and other venues so it's been a nice opportunity working with the pps groups they've had opportunities as well as
064long as that along with our nurses and he gets emails from the state they have weekly meetings on thursdays our nurses often attend those just to get updates on the coronavirus so the lines of communication have really increased i think and i think hopefully that'll go forward that'll be one of the things that we keep as we transcend beyond the pandemic also with the opportunity today to network i've worked with stacy and the folks at panorama to plan some professional development for our high school teachers this summer and then all as well so we're looking forward to looking at student data as stacy just talked about and having our principals and teachers and our pps groups look at student data to help students um there's an intervention piece there as well so we're looking forward
065to our increased work with that group as the school year ends and then begins into next year thank you and school business manager yes i mentioned still working on kind of refining that base capital project scope in the internal quality started today that's going to be focused on title ix on the equity in the athletics for our district cersei and our app prep i know i've met with stacy to discuss some of the learning law stuff and some good news is that based on some of those webinars that i've sat through so far we should be able to last meeting i had mentioned some of the transportation costs would not be aidable but it looks like we can move that into the grant application so that's good we also met with the city to discuss
066effects collection helping us and it would kind of help out you know one thing we've had a number of people ask for is the ability to pay online which we can't really do here or the charges would be you know passed a lot of good stuff so i know that the city can do that it would really help with some of the transitional stuff if anything has to get turned over to them and streamline some of that process so right now it's just kind of that both sides reviewing that can they trace that our treasure is going to be out so just expecting all right so some upcoming dates uh june 15th is our last board game for this school year so six o'clock here we reviewed um and passed some of the new ending
067dates for students in the region's exams and then june 25th again is graduation so anyone that can attend the parade at 5 30 that would be great and then the ceremony is to follow and then we'll go around the room nancy starting with you anything you'd like to share uh well thank you my son completed his third escape room i think that's pretty impressive that um you know i'm always pleased to see the students who are graduating who are getting those honors that we shared tonight and um although i didn't know them well it's always really cool when i can say oh she presented at rotary or she was a student guest or he's in my son's scout troop you know it's it's nice to have that connection okay can i have a motion to
068adjourn please excuse me in a second michael any discussion all in favor have a good night