001okay all right i'd like to call the meetings i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice [Music] agenda changes i have a couple agenda changes this evening under board and staff reports we are deleting the roswell memorial library presentations [Music] any public comments okay communications tonight um the watertown district received a certificate from the national association of federally impacted schools and recognition and appreciation of the outstanding education to the education of federally protected children and the local educational agencies impacted by federal activity board of directors are the two of the authority granted to it by a charter in the city of watertown and the district of columbia hereby confers upon the watertown city school district this certificate
002of association membership for the 2020-21 school year with all the rights and privileges and finales of the national association of federally impacted schools in addition to that i have a save the date for jefferson lewis school boards association virtual annual meetings may 26th at 5 pm more information to follow i also have some communication from the glass of they were in the representative donation they had a couple of quotes that they wanted the board to be [Music] the times are changing by bob dylan which was their sound theme and number three you can do anything if you put your mind to it so just for clarification they just want to prove all three and they'll decide and the best communication i have is um regarding the library funding proposition it is a letter from the
003memorial library the board has resolved its long plumbing proposition it previously proposed to be placed on the ballot at the annual meeting with the school district to be held on may 18 2020 please contact me or for the president that's it for communications great thank you okay so we're gonna move to sandra kane north elementary thank you for joining us tonight hello thanks for having me and letting me zoom in with here with you virtually i am i'm going to share my screen you can all see that okay correct yes so this is a picture that is um done in the first grade hallway during uh between march and june we had a lot of um walls that needed repair and it was a good time to do some repairing so some older murals that
004were damaged and just unable to be kept up were painted over with the intent of putting some new murals back in their place and the first grade team worked on this particular mural and what they did was they had the first grade students pick these covers from david shannon's books and pick them picked the cover they wanted to put in their hallway for the mural and as you can see the one that they picked david goes to school was selected and they just added david goes to north which it's really nice walking through that hallway now and having that at the end it's it's it's a nice update we love that the children helped select it and it has been coming along beautifully so thank you to all those teachers who have been putting that
005together so awesome happy number two besides our mural we have several things going on and one is trying to just keep up our staff morale and we have flowers that are being planted in our staff room and as they start to bloom they will be placed around the building to just add some sunshine to our various places north participated in the trek to the north pole and all of the students the families the staff we absolutely loved that that was that was a lot of fun for everybody and north did mile wise we walked all the way to the north pole and we were very excited about that on wednesdays we have been promoting a wellness wednesday and just encouraging staff who are the only ones in the buildings to make sure their maybe walking
006during their lunch if they get 10 minutes just something to do active to just keep our brains and our minds happy and healthy because it's a very stressful time for everyone so having a wellness wednesday is a little way to help with that in addition we've had different staff who bought some pre-packaged storage bought treats and put those in the staff room so we do have some treats that on occasion are shared out to to just to just be a warm fuzzy uplifting thing that we do awesome happening number three in technology is the and i'm sure this has come out in all of the presentations from all of the different buildings is the amount of um knowledge we are all gaining in the virtual world has grown exponentially since a year ago that is
007definitely one huge positive we the teachers myself everyone is constantly the students the parents we have learned so much within the past year that going forward in the next years to come that that will benefit us and help us as well we've also had teachers participate in some different writing contests and a 3d project and i have a couple of pictures for that so the picture on the left is um fourth grade classroom was working on a 3d project and this is a virtual classroom so you can see we have children whose faces are covered now with some smiley emojis because just to keep things confidential um but they put together some 3d projects and then they ended up being printed i believe knickerbocker helped us out with that and you can see some of
008their projects on the right hand side for that we had a second grade student who took second place in the great thousand islands literacy writing contest out of 18 schools and she won that book that you see her picture of and her name is abigail patrick and this is the front cover of one of the books a different second grade student did because uh those just got submitted i think it was the end of last week and that's the pbs writing contest and we always have a couple of teachers here that submit some um submit some stories for the pbs contest so always love the stories for that and if you if you're ever over here at north you will be able to read some of them and they are very cute and very funny
009also no awesome happening number four library and pto support so first thing we had the the north pto helped fund a mural project and it was uh lisa fitzpatrick i believe she's a ta over at sherman and you're going to see that in a second and um let's just go let's just hop i went a little bit out of order this is um the pto also spent some several money through first book they bought a pallet of books for i don't know it was somewhere around 250 to 300 dollars but that palette of books allowed us at christmas time to give every student in the building two books that they went home with i believe one hardcover and one soft cover and we still have some additional books that we are using as prizes for
010our pbis and this is going to be a video of the mural that i started talking about um that lisa fitzpatrick is doing our walls were very bare and the wall that you can see here not done but this is going to be our next our next um section and here's another picture of that and what you don't know there you can't tell from looking at that is these characters are 3d they're three-dimensional they're they're they were done separately and placed on that mural it is absolutely beautiful um the reed at the top of this with is has been decorated by mrs stratton she has just decorated so much of our library i wish i could show you all of it but um there is too much to show all of that uh the picture
011to the left is our uh our morning distribution we have a morning book exchange and we have it on the first floor the second floor it happens at different times and it just gives children an opportunity to exchange their books more often and those books of course are then put into quarantine under the um the specified time they're supposed to be but it's a great way for them to have books more frequently and you can see mrs stratton in the picture on the right hand side that is the palette of books that we received it was just ginormous and amazing and awesome and we will probably do it again next year because it seemed like such a great deal for us student support services we have 27 families participating in food for families we have
012our pbis team is doing weekly prizes which last year we were only doing monthly prizes but in order to try to add some fun to our socially distanced interactive world we're doing weekly prizes to just try to amp that up a little bit we also have our crisis intervention is also connecting to community support services and we have been assisting families at holiday time unfortunately we had a couple of families who had a parent uh pass away this around christmas time and uh helping at christmas with that family get through that time was one of the things that we had worked together as a building for in regards to our growth attendance uh attendance is something i am sure all the other buildings have also spoken about or not they are definitely working towards it
013too whether our children are coming to school or whether they're learning from home getting them here or getting them engaged in virtual instruction or turning in work and working hard in school is something that we continue to try to encourage and to get a better increase in area of growth number two we are working very hard on implementing our new reading program and it's both the teachers and myself together are really trying to work hard in the conferencing area and not just increasing our conferencing but making sure that our time with students is a quality conferencing and that we're doing it within the parameters of the american reading companies program to do it the best that we can area of growth number three it's continuing to use data to drive our decisions whether we are
014using the ireti or arc data and teacher recommendation to find the best support services for our children or looking at how we can try to improve our attendance it's something that we continue to work at personally it's something that at the start of my time as a principal i felt weaker in but over time i am definitely improving in that each year and i think it's something that we always need to improve and there's always different data that we can look at to try to get a better understanding of the things that we need to improve in if i were to ask if there was one wish list item or request for support it would be for us to have more instructional coaches we are lucky because i think i don't know if we started
015with one i think we started with two back in the day and we do have three now but the the advantage of our coaches and the the one-to-one work they do with the teachers to help them understand the curriculum better or different instructional techniques is it's huge and it's it's always an ongoing thing so the more coaches that we have ultimately the uh better we would be with that so i guess that would be my one request for support but i did struggle with coming up with a request for support i mean honestly if i am ever stuck with anything um there's numerous people in the district i call and often someone helps me with whatever it is that i need so i guess this would be kind of a big item for me but
016that is all i have i will stop sharing do you have any questions i have one um with those murals that you're doing have you are you going to incorporate the diversity of your school in those murals that that is a great question we right now we only have the one mural but that is definitely a direction that we should go uh we it's been kind of at this point this year we haven't had too many people interested in doing a mural because it's um well they're overwhelmed with everything else to be honest so um this is our very first mural on the walls but that's something we should definitely be including so yep thank you thank you sandra for joining us tonight it's great to see the going bombs at north i love the
017barrels i think that's a great those are those are great yes i think it's so inviting for kids to be thank you you can certainly stay with us or if you have other things you need to do or family to be with you can certainly leave as well we don't take it personally okay moving on to the policy committee report from march 12th jason yeah so we met uh virtually although nancy did come to go above and beyond like always so she was in turkey we uh reviewed some policies and i'll go through them with you policy 3000 administration goals no changes there 3001 administrative operations management team still no changes 3003 administrative intern program on policy 3100 superintendent of schools we added a designee following superintendent as to who could carry things out in
018the event that patty wasn't right there uh 3101 evaluation of superintendent nothing buildings and ground management nothing and then finally uh 1008 shared decision making uh really nothing to talk about here we did change uh the word planning to advisory that was about it okay great thank you items for consent agenda resolve that consent agenda items a b and c can i get a motion please michael in a second items for board action resolved at the medicine online of oc's cooperative education services agreements for the 2021-22 school year are here by approval can i get a motion please yep and a second ansi any discussion is this pretty much the same as last year of what we've indicated we want from the right no big changes yeah there's there's a lot of increase in uh
019like stuff that we incurred this year with the pandemic for software that will carry forward into next year for a lot of stacey's instructionals but otherwise there's not a huge jump okay anybody else questions all in favor any opposed motion carries resolved at the following proposition where you found the ballot for approval by the voters of the watertown city school district on may 18 2021 shall they board of education undertake their construction of renovations upgrades and approvements to h.2 wiley intermediate school case middle school and marshall high school including for each site improvements furnishings fixtures and equipment required for such purposes architectural engineering fees and all other costs incidental to each work at a total estimated cost not to exceed 13 million or so much zero as may be necessary to obtain the necessary funds
020by using available state aid including excel aid and by the levy of a text which text which text shall be collected between annual installments in such years and in such a month has been determined by the board of education and anticipation of the collection of such tax bonds and notes of the district are hereby authorized to be issued at one time or from time to time and the principal amount not to exceed 13 million and a tax is hereby voted to pay the interest on set obligations when due and further resolve at the school district clerk is here hereby authorized and directed to publish the notice of the proposition and accordance with the applicable provisions of the education law can i get a motion please and a second susie any discussion could we just clarify
021tax showed up in that a lot and yet this is this is all supported by state aid so help us understand where the taxes sit if something were to fail the state aid and we didn't get state aid essentially is where they have to have it in theirs so we somehow still have to pay for it but excel's going you know 900 plus thousand of it i think our share is 1.3 million spread out over the life of of the project so i think that's just the fallback in the event excel fell through state aid it's required legal language yeah okay so this is really at no cost to the taxpayer capital property that no tax increase i know what taxing okay anybody else all in favor any opposed motion carries result at the annual
022public hearing of the annual meeting for qualified voters in the waterfront city school district be held at 5 30 p.m machine upon the budget and election be held on tuesday may 18 2021 between the hours of noon and 9 pm prevailing time will be held at florida high school and north elementary school resolved that the school district clerk is hereby authorized and directed to publish the notice of said hearing budget vote and election all of the matters in accordance with the applicable provision of education law and i get a motion please jason i hear you susie you did okay thank you any discussion all those in favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries results of the following persons are hereby appointed inspectors of election to serve in the respective school district school election district for
023these school budget and board of educational to be held on the 18th day of may 2021 and the clerk of the board shall give written notice of the appointment to each person below high school frank corey karen gorey katrina cox north elementary school janice henderson claire lafferty and kara williams for the resolve that in the event of the inability of any of the court one to serve the clerk before tearfully authorized to obtain an appointment or replacement can i get a motion please michael a second any discussion i was in favor have we gotten any updated guidance from state ed about this in terms of um what we have to get out to the public or what the provisions for absentee ballots are now right now we're going with making sure that we're meeting the
024guidelines that we that we have in place right now but if any changes come forward in the next week or two we could have to amend some of the things that we approve but we have to we have to start publishing the public notice so we had to move forward on the information that hasn't happened so this is more like 2019 than 2020. yeah i think you're making michelle nervous sorry i can be a little nervous too that was a long night counting those that are watching people you know tabulate the results from the absentee ballots we're hoping right josh we don't have to go back to that between josh and michelle and i happen to be sitting in the middle of them right now that is not good okay anybody else all those in
025favor aye opposed motion carries the board of education of this city school district from the state of watertown new york established a rate of attending non-public schools located within the city of watertown the following vendors are shown to justify the german determination of the involvement can i get motion please jason in a second colleen thank you any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries you saw that the revised corrective action plan for the annual risk assessment is prepared by the firm of crosstalk for the period any opposed middle school is not functioning properly cannot be repaired and needs immediate replacement and whereas the board of education has received and considered the report of its architects regarding the necessity for the immediate replacement of the domestic water heater at case middle school and whereas
026the emergency project work is required to preserve the health and safety of the students and staff and for protection of the district's property and where it this scope is work is a type 2 secret action now therefore get resolved as follows the board has determined that the replacement of the domestic water heater in case middle school and the type 2 action under the regulations of the state environmental quality review act required no further review the board of education hereby finds pursuant to the education model replacement of the domestic water heater at case middle school is an emergency project necessary to observe the health and safety of students and staff and for the protection of the school property and that the project is an ordinary contingent expense the maximum estimated cost of the emergency project as
027determined by community the school district architect is approximately 75 000 the funding source for the project will be the general fund balance and to maximize extent possible state aid state building aid the superintendent of schools and all officers and employees of the district authorize and directly take both steps reasonably necessary or appropriate to complete an emergency project into curiosity and technical revolution and to apply for any eligible state building aid and to recover any available insurance proceeds this resolution shall take effect immediately can i get a motion please michael in a second susie any discussion let's get it fixed what are they using now for hot water oh the one is still working okay it's hanging in there it's it's leaking but it's not the last story but yes it is it's in there but
028there's not going to be any insurance procedures so will that go out for bed is that a problem there's an emergency and we have there's what six week lead time is that what it was but yes um so we went with i think burns brothers has done a bunch of stuff here so as soon as we did it then we got another bid after we'd already issued videos okay but we needed to get it ordered as soon as possible and the state has already given us us the emergency project number and so we're it's already underway now okay now that you've approved it we can keep moving perfect any other questions concerns on that board of education policies are hereby approved and adopted one zero zero eight shared decision making process three administration goals 3001
029administrative operations 3002 management teams 3003 administrative intern program 3100 superintendent of schools 3101 evaluation of superintendent 3102 buildings and grounds and management can i get a motion please jason and any discussion all those in favor you can resolve that upon the recommendation of superintendents of schools which it should be labar the board of education by approves the following leads of absence resignation appointments probationary non-instructional instructional substitutes non-instructional substitutes fault to coaching girls and fault to commission boards can i get a motion please of participating the bar superintendent of schools the following 10-year appointment is a year by approve during special education effective date march 24th 2021 can i get a motion please corey and second michael any discussion all in favor high five any opposed motion carries congratulations to mrs greenough resolved and upon the
030recommendation of superintendent school patricia lavar brian perrius is has been approved effective april 12 2021 for a provisional appointment with a salary of 75 dollars in the competitive class title of foreign facilities three under the rules of the watertown city civil service pursuant to the requirements of civil service laws section 61. can i get a motion please jason in a second susie any discussion all in favor aye opposed carries we saw that this board of education upon the recommendation of patricia vilavar superintendent of schools grant all full-time employees up to two half days of need retroactively [Music] 19 vaccination in the 20 20 21 school year can i get a motion please excuse me and a second best any discussion all in favor all right all right any opposed motion carries we solved that an
031anonymous donation of masks hand sanitizer and wipes has been made to the district schools this donation is great gratefully accepted approved and will be acknowledged in writing can i get a punch please michael just second how much stuff was donated i am sure thank you to the anonymous donor all in favor any opposed granite bench will be made to the watertown high school from the watertown high graduating class of 1970 the bench will be engraved to include donated by the class of 1970. this donation is gratefully accepted and approved and will be acknowledged in writing i get a motion please susie and a second auntie any discussions do we know where it's going my question um i don't know where it's going yet but are you okay with if they picked or were you okay
032with those three quotes i was okay with the any other conversation on the bench school district board of education amends the 2020 21 school calendar so we have five days right now so if we continue to have more you know this would be the first one then at may 1st is the next checkpoint and if we have three or more on may 1st then it's the friday before memorial day weekend okay so potential another calendar change and then that would change the staff development that's on that day that we were doing with diversity that half day would probably move that thursday but again we'll balance out the numbers instructionally just to see where we're at at that point and make another adjustment okay sounds good anybody else all right all in favor aye are you
033opposed motion carries resolved at the disposal or recycle of updated and unused televisions did i hear you jason too you did okay any discussion all in favor any opposed motion queries we saw that a state disposal was for recycle of dated unused and core condition classroom and office furniture items from massey street and is hereby approved i get a motion please michael in a second and any discussion all in favor okay any opposed result of the disposal recycle or donation of damaged updated and unused books from the libraries can i get a motion please susie in a second best any discussion all in favor any opposed motion fairies whereas after public advertising for bids for the walk-in cooler and hd wiley copies of specifications were furnished to four vendors and two beds were received whereas
034the firm submitting the lowest possible has been meeting the specifications for the walk-in core and cooler and hd widely introduced in equipment incorporated therefore be it can i get a motion please any discussion sorry i was just gonna ask is the food service still kind of spending down is that why we're getting some hardware here these uh this one and the next two resolutions they're all actually grant funded so this is in addition to them okay that was actually kind of my question too thank you perfect anybody else all those in favor stay opposed motion carriers whereas at the public advertising for bids for the installation of the walk-in floor at hty copies of specifications were furnished to three vendors and two bids were received whereas the firm submitting have always been responsible been meeting
035the specifications for the installation of these two writings joseph therefore being resolved the installation of the walk-in cooler in the amount of thirteen thousand seven hundred fifty dollars as noted in the bid and it's hereby approved i got a bunch of this for purchase and installation of rational ovens at watertown high school half these specifications were furnished to both funders and three beds were received whereas the firm submitted the lowest the most responsible thing meeting the specifications for the rational evidence is 11 400 incorporated therefore he had resulted in the purchase of the installation of the professional ovens in the amount of thirty one thousand seven hundred and twenty five dollars as noted in the bid is hereby approved can i get a motion please bet susie was that a second susie yes thank you
036any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries result of the sale disposal for the cycle of updated and unused ovens from watertown high school can i get a motion please go ahead and a second answer any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries all right at this time um i need a motion to enter into executive session for the purposes of discussing the litigation of home versus the watertown city school district as well as the employment of a particular staff member jason second thank you motion carries resolved upon a recommendation with superintendent of schools patricia b labar that the board of education hereby authorizes the superintendent of schools to execute an agreement and resolution of certain claims brought by that the frank long-term mueller is hereby authorized to take any steps
037necessary to complete and passing a set agreement including authorization to execute the stipulation of discontinuance of can i get a motion please jason in a second michael any discussion all in favor aye opposed whereas the board of education of the watercolor city school district has visited some prime contractors for construction services in conjunction with this high school's project york state's department of new york state education department the project and whereas the biz where we see and open on march 17 and where is the project architect dc and contract bca architects and engineers review defense and bidders qualifications for the project discuss the project with the lowest responsible bidders and bias dated march 19 2021 subject to the options set forth therein has recommended an award of contracts to the following veterans as one option contract
038for general construction dielectric mechanical black river plumbing and heating electrical electric door access control upgrade day automation whereas the board accepts the recommendation of the project architect and determines that it is in the best interest of the school district to accept the bids and award the contracts and recommended by project architect now therefore the board of education hereby resolves to award the following contracts for the project general construction contract award of the contract to the lower bidder electric in the following amount mechanical contract award of the contract to the locator black river plumbing and heating and the following amount 197.000 electron electrical contract over to the contract to the better box and electric and the following round 96 156 door access control upgrade board a cost proposal to upgrade door access control systems under new
039york state office of general services contract number pt687832 today automation in the following amount twenty six thousand seven hundred dollars and sixty seven cents all of their beds received in connection with the project as described in the project architects recommendation letter dated march 19 2021 our hearing lies injected by the board of education the board hereby authorizes the superintendent of schools president of the board of education or their destiny to execute contracts for the project and compliance with this resolution and then bid solicitation and take all actions necessary or convenient by behalf of the rule to enter into the send contracts and complete the project this resolution should take effect immediately can i get a motion please fancy any discussion it's all in favor any opposed motion carries okay we almost made it to the
040alphabet hey superintendent of schools report i'd like to thank mrs kane in the north staff for all they do it was a great presentation tonight i love what they're doing in their library uh mrs nedo and mrs stratton are such a great team um but also just taking a look at what they're doing with the american reading program uh sandra copies tina and stacy and i in on her weekly emails and she's always looking at the data and trying to you know as do the other elementary principles just trying to figure out ways to make things better so um i appreciate all the work that they're all doing i'd also like to thank you know josh and jason benedict with king and king and kyle lee that construction associates for really um helping us get
041this emergency project for the hot water heated hot water heater stated very quickly on this and so thank you for approving that project tonight so that we can get that settled before it becomes an actual crisis um congratulations again to doreen dorino on her tenure appointment i observed her virtual lesson and i got there a little bit early so i was able to see virtually the end of one class and then pick up on the second class and so i also commend the students that were learning online they were doing an incredible job you could see that there was a well-established routine um in both cases the kids were working um with a program called wilson phonics and it was just incredible there was such a great flow to that um despite all the obstacles
042and sometimes what you hear how sometimes virtual learning doesn't go really well this is a case where it was going extremely well very fun to attend so we're starting to think about the cdc's guidance with the three foot versus six foot but really what we're waiting on is the new york state department of health to see where they fall in line with the cbc guidelines and so as we lay out those plans we're looking and really having some issues with because you know talking with the transportation supervisor from first student three feet on a bus really doesn't help us very much because when we had to lay out six feet we had a student in each seat sitting at the window to keep the six feet between each student this way and then the seats
043are so high that that was almost a barrier between that student and the seat behind and then there was you know no one behind the bus driver that had to be six feet which now with the three feet rule that will pick up one seat there and of course families can still sit together so we're not really picking up a lot as far as the bus goes we also have to consider we haven't heard changes for the music in pe where it was 12 feet what will that look like and then with the cafeteria or feeding kids in general because a lot of our students have been in classrooms six feet apart if we bring back more students i believe that even with the eating you still have to have the six feet the three
044feet rule doesn't apply but again let's wait for the new york state department of health to give us more guidelines to see you know what we can do we also uh tina and stacey and i went down to the high school this afternoon and met with high school lead teachers high school administration guidance counselors as well as the administration from case middle school to just start to have that conversation with all of them again not having the guidance so it was just a very generic conversation about end of the year testing you know waiting on things for end of year testing um little talk about um the potential to maybe bring some students back but the model that they have at seven through 12 is working it's not the best model you know there's no
045such thing as the best model when you want your kids to come back in session five days a week but what we're doing is working and when we look at the safety and well-being of our students and our staff we don't want to create a plan where we have students come back and then we have to close down and go remotely so we're being very thoughtful about that and we're waiting on the guidance to make those next steps there things do look a little bit different in the k-6 realm because we have staff that are designated as remote only now with the exception of special area teachers however students at the k-6 level when they have their special area time all of the students in that particular remote class that teacher then becomes a remote
046teacher so special area teachers are kind of both they have students that are in person and then they have students that are fully remote but they have a whole class at the same time or high school you have mixes of kids that are remote and hybrid within one classroom so the model when we come forward with it would be more of a k6 model and then we would do a different model for seven through 12. our diversity equity and inclusion uh strategic plan committee met last wednesday we've worked for an hour and you know we have some great community members and staff and beth serves us to represent the board on that committee and so one of the questions poses like you know what are we really trying to fix and to answer that question
047and i'm going to kind of give you a heads up sneak preview of our next meeting is we're trying to fix the student experience at watertown city school district and more specifically any marginalized students experience and so what about the experience might be an issue so we talk about all sorts of things we talk about race gender sexual orientation socioeconomic status different labeled all appear to show performance disparities in our data and then qualitative data may also add to these disparities so the question is for this committee to really explore is you know do our strategic plan goals respect and foster diversity equity and inclusion and so our work with this committee is to really answer that question and add context for diversity equity and inclusion to the strategic planning goals and that's the place
048to start because the strategic plan dictates all of the other decisions in the district from purchasing to you know things that are programmatic and just that's really where we need to start and i think what happened in that meeting was we started to think about all of the data and so stacy tina and i met with dr stone from jcc and megan stadler and we looked at our data that we have we have a lot of good information and a lot of data to explore and look at but with this committee that might be something for further exploration as we continue the work down the road because there are a lot of things that the district plans to do and that is you know addressing what we already know to be inequitable instructional practices create
049systems and using the data analysis that examine performance you know from the lenses of district-wide programmatic and individual staff and students it's really hard in a one-hour zoom meeting where we've had a few couple hours there together and we have three more hours planned it's not a lot of time in that virtual setting to really dig into all the data that we actually have a lot of access to so you know the other things that we know we're planning to do are to develop partnerships and relationships that offer support to students from traditionally underrepresented groups to utilize an equity audit structure to examine curriculum and revise and reframe where it's needed and then to train staff on implicit implicit bias and how to facilitate critical conversations in the classroom and some of that's already in
050progress with the blind spot book study that we're doing with a small group and then with conversations that stacy's having in the area of instruction to have some of those conversations again those are things that are in progress but as we get better and better at creating a positive student experience for every student that's that's the goal and i think as we return to the work um we meet again with gwen and her team on thursday to kind of go over what i just laid out with you to prepare for our meeting next week and gwen and her team said that there would be a homework assignment which we haven't seen yet but i i reminded them that if we're going to have homework this group of people are eager to do their homework so
051to get it out sooner rather than later on friday stacy pena and i spent about two hours on the phone with the new york state ed department and we had some revisions that we had to make on our appr submission we worked together with a nice gentleman from state ed and really there was nothing of substance that was changed we had to do a lot of little minor edits i think changing like the word standards to the word domain it just was very technical in the vocabulary and some of those changes that needed to be made so we worked on friday and then we had a task from friday to monday to work on and tina took the lead on that and we improved and added some details if you will tina can kind of
052elaborate on that a little bit more of the changes that we needed to make and then we will resubmit that we'll probably be ready by this evening or tomorrow morning depending on how late the meeting goes we might finish it right after it's ready to go stacy and jeff wood and i presented our journey to cyber security to that rtm business group that i've been um involved with i'm just going to pass this along it was a quick 45 minute meeting these virtual meetings um anyone that's involved in this um whether you're from the i.t department assistant superintendent superintendents principals people in leadership positions and schools are invited to attend um and they have been very meaningful for us so we took 45 minutes to share our journey and and kind of how important it
053is to get to the point where we did and again thank you for having uh you know jeff as part of the team because you can see everything that he's done in fact he's also in that group another meeting that i was in i learned a little bit about whaling attacks where principal it looks like the email's coming from a principal but it's not really coming from the principal and they may be asking their staff to do you know i need i need you to come to this i can't can't come to you right now because i'm in a meeting but i need you to do like you know i need a gift card from some place you know those little fishing attacks that take place because of that jess has actually set something up
054in our email system that takes care of some of that stuff for us but again just a great way to meet with people from around the country and get a little bit of professional development and the thing i think that you'll love most about it is that it's at no cost and everybody we're all learning and we're all giving back um to other people around the country and learning from each other and then stacy teen and i will be presenting to suny potsdam student teachers virtually this friday on social emotional learning supports for students and staff and then what to expect in your first year mentoring programs and then we'll end the session in breakout rooms and the three of us will each host a breakout room and give new teachers lots of opportunities to
055ask us really any and all questions that they would like to ask king and king public relations is working on a brochure and social media um post for our capital project and josh and i reviewed those this afternoon and josh did send those on to one of our legal teams to review to make sure that everything that's in the kind of included in the brochures from a legal perspective are good to go updates from food service so they have entered into the fifth week of the work share program they've been able to hold their staff for 20 reduction um staff is working four out of the five days very proud of the entire staff the food service staff are having a positive attitude and as they surpass the year mark of providing meals either from
056distribution or feeding and house they've been boots on the ground for well over a year and the entire staff has been there and you know i sing their praises whenever i get a chance because they're constantly keeping the mission of feeding hungry children at the forefront we will update you with numbers from food service and reward me then a couple of updates from sports so one of the updates from sports uh george emerich i'm just gonna pass around a couple of things he's laid out um a lot of things that are happening in the area sports and i can actually send this out to you posted a video he's really keeping the community updated on any changes that are being made he sends out a weekly um you know schedule of where people where the
057kids are whether they have practice or whether they have games but there's two things related to sports that i need to bring up one is that the jv football team didn't have enough students that were qualified to play so the students that were qualified some students moved to the varsity team i believe some of the ninth graders and then some of the other students uh moved to the modified team so one of the requests from the athletic department from george specifically is that they'd like to take the coaches who were assigned to jv and have one move up and work with the varsity kids and the other moved down and worked with the modified kids and one of the things that they would like to do is offer an after-school program before practice actually starts
058where it's an academic related activity to get the kids from like 2 30 to 3 15 when the practice can actually start to do some academic work with those kids because which brings me into the next concern we have policy work policy 7600 and it's about the extracurricular student code of conduct and i received a call from a parent last week who just was asking you know in our policy we have if students are failing two or more courses then they can't participate in sports and his concern was that sometimes there are other arrangements that are made you know maybe an executive order that comes out like last year what happened with teacher tenure or with new york state test scores and you know how sometimes we are giving you know grace to staff but
059can we give some grace to some of our students who are failing and i try to explain that we actually have students that are thriving in the situation and doing quite well um mr everage had also talked to this parent a little bit earlier we have um you know we had some students that weren't passing um they were not they were not passing three courses they knew the rule and they worked really hard and they were able to play basketball because they pushed really hard to get their grades up to be able to do that so um i did tell those dad that i would just present his concerns to the board um for consideration mr ambridge had asked me several weeks ago and i basically back several weeks ago said that we have some
060students who are working really hard and it wouldn't be in our best interest i don't believe to lower our standards i know that we're in a pandemic but a lot of kids have worked really hard to be able to make the team they put in that the additional above and beyond effort so i just don't know and it would take a policy change in order for kids if they're failing three or more subjects to be able to participate any thoughts from the board is this is this parent advocating for their own kids not necessarily no not necessarily i think that they were i was the independent how was the attendance of those kids who were failing um it wasn't necessarily about attendance it's the argument is in this virtual situation sometimes it was about not
061completing all assignments and because it's so hard it's a different a different way of learning for certain children um and taking his own children out he just said that you know this is a difficult situation all kids don't learn in a virtual format and so you know if they're even if they're hybrid if they're at home or if they're totally remote this whole thing is is overwhelming to some kids and could we think just that we consider that um you know as part of the topic i don't know i think you may have received a phone call it may have been the same parent i'm not sure um but do you have anything to add to that no i think he's summed it up very well i think to piggyback a little bit what nancy
062had just said um i think as far as homework and stuff i think effort is rewarded and i think a lot of times the effort is not there do we know about other school districts that they have changed or amended their policies for sports because of pandemic do we know if anyone in the superintendent groups that i attend weekly with jefferson and lewis counties i'm not aware of any um that have done that but i have a meeting on thursday and i'd be happy to ask that to the group it's it's not my understanding that i didn't have but i will ask that question well i think if the philosophy in normal times regular times is that if you're failing you shouldn't be playing sports because you need to focus on your education that that
063philosophy applies now as well you know if you're struggling virtually then you need to channel that energy to be able to do the academics it has have these kids reached out for help well and i offered um you know on our website we do we do offer virtual tutoring um as one option we of course offer a lot of other options as well if you're in person there are other options even if you're you know remote there are other options and first thing that you need to do is reach out to the i always start with the classroom teacher first right start with the classroom teacher to figure out what you can do if you don't feel like you're getting or resolved there then you go to the next level you go to the you
064know the principal or the counselor you know and the upper grades there's a lot of layers um people that will help you and guide you and lead you to extra supports that are available yeah i personally would not be in favor of changing a policy for something as specific as this because then we change it back in the fall when things go maybe back to how they work yeah we talked about that at length too that it's it's really hard because we don't know what the fall will look like yet and we're a little uncertain still if things will be back you know where students would be back 100 so again and then you know i always offer out to parents to make sure that they're getting they didn't know about say you know the
065virtual tutoring option that was available so then i my next question is do you have access to parent square do you have access to the website and yes they have access to access to both so those are other things where we push that information out that's it for me i think you've been through once you have any questions for me a lot of things going on with um and sherman also i didn't give you an update on that tonight but sherman um we have josh has been working with i believe kelly from is it watson from watson um to really take a look at sherman we have somebody coming up on on site to do a look at the electrical panel over there so that's also in progress right now but things seem to be
066going well at this moment so really thankful that you approved a new director of facilities that will help our whole team immensely thank you assistant superintendent for instruction um the food for families golf tournament committee has been meeting over the last few weeks tina and patty have bought those meetings for me because i haven't yet been able to make one but i do believe that it was shared with me today that they've settled on a tournament date it'll be saturday june 19 2021 and it'll be at thailand meadows club so if anybody's interested they are registering teams now and we think it's important uh this was discussed at the meeting but it's important for the community to know that we are still holding these golf tournaments as a way of creating sustainability for the program
067the city of watertown has been immensely generous to the food for families program this year and that money closed through the united way of northern new york to get to the cmy food bank where we purchased most of the items that are on our menu but there are some items that are exceptionally hard to obtain on this cny food bank bank's product line and so we've had to our volunteers have been phenomenal they go out to the community and we've aldi has been exceptionally helpful as well as a few other stores in the area in helping us obtain items that have been impossible to get on that food bank and the money that we generate from the golf tournament has been helpful in us moving up because we cannot use the monies that are tied
068to the food bank for those purchases so it really helps us balance out the menu um in what we're able to do and also gives us this long-term sustainability for the program i've spent a lot of my time over the last few weeks in our k4 buildings examining you know how our implementation is going for our ela curriculum i've seen some really awesome things happening in classrooms it's hard when you look at the data from a surface level sometimes you think maybe the implementation is going a little bit more slowly than you think but then when you're actually in classrooms you see some really good things happening with kids and i've seen a lot of work done on creating a culture of reading i mean that is something that we've been trying to promote for
069years here at the watertown community so we're very happy to see how far some of our teachers have gone um you know to create statistic walls um for how many books students are reading or how many pages they're reading and celebrating you know reading as a whole not just for one or two students but for all students and keeping that engagement piece alive with them we have uh 19 participants in the cyclone learning zone challenge that i mentioned to you last time so we're really excited those are spread out across the k-12 buildings and really not heavy in one particular area so we're excited to see what tools and ideas teachers have to put in play for 2122 on moving forward with students and i'll hopefully have more to share with you on what that
070panel will look like for scoring those um at our next meeting had some conversations um with beth maurer and dan mintzer over at wiley about the thief program and the continuation of that as you know this year we did not have a certified teacher in the gifted and talented realm but we had somebody take on the program to continue the process for this year knowing that we might be facing a transition um and that program um has been really well received mr adams has done a phenomenal job with that thank you that's right mr ackerman thank you mr man but in talking about beth and dan's vision for wiley in the future and really looking at the research and best practices around enrichment and defining gifted and talented education they really have a more of
071a school-wide and individualized student approach to the future so we will be discontinuing that program and it's funny those conversations are popping up all over the place now with you know this idea of differentiation and meeting students exactly where they're at so you may see that coming up again and again as we move forward with our 512 educational program but what we're going to do instead is really focus on our highest leverage points with some of john hattie's work where are we going to get the biggest bang for our buck with the work that we're doing with both teachers and students um and so focusing on um top practices and how to support teachers around putting those into play in their classroom and enhancing them where they're already present so more to come on the
072structure for that for next year i did share with you the summer professional learning catalog for this year you're more than welcome to stop into any of those meetings or workshops we'd love to have you just to see some of the work that teachers and staff are doing over the summer and just on everybody's radar right now is it's the five year the first period of the five year mark is ending for those of us who are professionally certified as teachers or teaching assistants and so we did a q a last night had about 25 or 30 staff members on there about maintaining their registration on the team site as well as how many ctle hours do they need to acquire and what can they do in terms of finding resources and making sure that
073everything is in line with their record keeping going forward because we don't yet know what that process is going to look like from the state outside when they have to re-register i imagine information will come out on that in the next few months as that period ends in august for the first group okay thank you assistant superintendent for personnel and student services thank you so as patty mentioned we've been working with the new york state education department on our appr plan and just a couple of the changes that we had to make it was verbiage nothing substantive at all there so we're pleased to have that process just about completed but a couple of the specific things that we had to note we had to really describe how our evaluators and leader lead evaluators are
074certified and re-certified every year so they wanted more specifically how principles are calibrated in terms of scoring teacher observations and then what the principal training uh looked like as well in terms of us evaluating principles also they wanted very specific information i took a look at several appr plans that were submitted previous to this year and there was a kind of a one sentence statement regarding how the scores are calculated using different rubrics well now the state wants us to be much more specific which is completely understandable so with our nicer rubric and our marshals rubric for our principles and what we had to do is explain in a little more detail how the scores are tabulated there and then a little thing like on our teacher tip form um we had to remove overall
075composite score we had to remove the word composite because it's no longer part of the process so just overall appr score so lots of uh little things that added up to some great time and conversation on the phone with state ad regarding our appr plan also as you approve tonight we have a new director of facilities which we're very excited about we're working with brian arias you know talking with him and he's very excited to get started he brings with him some great experience uh leadership both in the you know working in with different companies around the area and also uh with the us army as well so we're excited to have him start in april uh like to just give kudos to our principals um you know our number of cases really has really
076decreased patty has put out uh you know different announcements we've had a string of days where we've had no positive cases uh right now we've had 80 positive students and 37 positive staff for a total of 117 and i will say today we had another case and then doing the contact tracing there it's it's really nice to ask the adults well you've been vaccinated yes so they they don't have to quarantine so that that number is increasing and that's uh we're seeing a turn there so that's great and again kudos to our principals for helping out with that process one of them said today they're going to add it to their resume because certainly that's a skill that we've all acquired throughout this process and just just want to give a thanks to to our
077our nurses and our support staff in terms of our counselors social workers homeschool coordinators they're always working diligently we're constantly communicating and and to support our students um for their health and safety so i just want to again uh thank them for for all they do and again we're on the phone constantly texting and talking throughout the day problem solving with different different issues but i do see certainly that the number of cases have gone down i also just wanted to make a quick mention we met with carthage indian river and then leadership at fort drum a couple of days ago regarding new york state travel advisory so right now you know it's been indicated by governor cuomo that the trap there will be no travel restrictions after april first but that has not yet
078been written into law so right now if you have your vaccination um you're free to travel you don't have to quarantine but the rules still apply if there's no vaccination you do travel let's say for spring break you have to test out two hours before leaving the state where you're visiting and then again quarantine for three days on the fourth day back uh must quarantine as well i must have a negative test so those rules still apply uh but we're waiting for the governor to perhaps sign that into law and we'll we'll keep trying to keep everybody posted so things change a mile a minute they change moment on the dime so we'll certainly keep continue to keep people updated with that and certainly to keep our students and staff safe hey thank you school
079business managers report you know in addition to bloodshed just as you can see from the agenda tonight it's been pretty heavy on the bid side of things and clean up just throughout the district and so still hanging out there right now we have an auditor one and right before this meeting there was a definition of wildland north that should be finalized now we did receive insurance back and that was a little more favorable than we were anticipating right now it's at a seven percent increase hoping to get it down to six last year they came in at nine and we got them down to six so hopefully it's gonna be similar and we did just place a large order through the rig for computers to go along with our windows 10 and getting everything up
080to stuff here so yesterday to go over care spending and try and get that wrapped up quick hopefully by the end of this year just before the next one ends up hitting as we get more information they don't have an application or anything yet but we did get an email friday on connected new york some new funding from cuomo that would go towards hot spots and stuff like that so we're currently contracting through the rig and khajiit were a number of them and then once we used all those we now have some direct through verizon so it would be direct contract between the states and t to provide them to our students will get us out of dealing with that and then the world's digging into the reserve plan it was the one on our
081website was all so it wasn't the one that you guys approved last year so i updated the amounts the balances that we just uploaded that thing okay all right so just take a look at the upcoming dates that april 2nd all buildings are closed for good friday and then following that is spring break from the second to the ninth of april our meeting um is not the first week of april it's the second and third week so that's the 13th and the 21st a little bit of a change there faff is off the meeting on the 13th and then policy is going to be on the 16th of april could you clarify um if april 13th is a tuesday then april 21st is not a tuesday wednesday right because that's the boces we have to
082approve the boces so we had to go by there so it's wednesday april 21st not tuesday the 20th right okay so it's a little bit of time okay so it's a tuesday then it's a wednesday meeting yeah next week okay all right i'm going to just go around the room starting with the answer yeah i got a couple things that i just wanted to bring up so um michelle mentioned the save the date for the annual meeting for jeff lewis school boards um you really should get that on your calendar it's going to be different this year and there's going to be a speaker who has a really good reputation in the area of leadership and so it's something that we're looking at having available not just to board members but to other other folks
083in districts that might be interested in something like that so all our dues money that we've been paying over the years you know this is something that that more people can um get some benefit from and just um to to add my experience with um the work that we're doing with gwen inc i don't know that i won't have her quote exactly but it's i think i've got the gist she talks about his district leaders and his building leaders people will hear what you say but they'll remember what you do and um i think that's something that we can't over emphasize with all the folks in in the district that um you know we we need to be acting on these things that we're talking about and it you know again leadership she's talking about
084leadership all the time that you know whoever is whoever's in charge is the one who has to be setting the example that's a very good point thank you okay can i have a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting please before you say one thing i completely forgot and i meant to do this i just wanted to let the board know that we've had a crossing guard for over 27 years on the corner of eastward and mill street right near where schuler's restaurant was and he unexpectedly passed away yesterday and i just want to thank the watertown police for being that's one of our busiest crossing areas um and they've been there the past couple of mornings but there was a beautiful story in the watertown times back in december right around december 20th or 21st um
085about robert irvine and the service that he um has done in our community he at first he used to walk his wife she was a crossing guard at one point he worked worked in a different he had a career in another field and then he walked his wife to her crossing guard station and i know um i got an email from the crossing guard over by starbuck who was picking up mr irvine to take him each morning um and just how much he loved our kids and you know how much he loved that and he also worked at tops at 85 years old so i just wanted to send the condolences you know to the community and to the family because i had meant to do that earlier and i think it's it's amazing that
086somebody at 85 would would be a pro i mean in our weather in new york you know and we have we have fifth and sixth graders when i was on bus study as the principal complained about the weather and here we have you know so i just wanted to send my condolences to the family okay thank you okay i have a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting susie thank you a second thank you um