001i'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of for america it stands one nation under god indivisible [Music] so we need to do a public hearing on our district-wide safety plan our communicable disease with the pandemic can i have a motion to go into that public hearing please susie thank you in a second michael thank you all in favor aye aye opposed motion carried okay so back on october 6th we had our public hearing and you approved our safety plan and then if you turn to the next slide the state ed department sent out a memo on december 3rd basically stating that effective april first public employees needed to develop operational plans in the event of certain declared public health emergencies
002and the new law required public employers to prepare a plan for the continuation of operations in the event that the governor declared a public health emergency involving a communicable disease so it further went on in that memo to state that once you came up with your draft for that part of the plan it had to be shared with all union leaders in the district as well as our district safety team and that had to be done by february 4th we held that virtual meeting on january 27th the next steps were to post the revised district safety plan on our website for public review and asking anyone with comments to direct them to communications watertown csd.org website by february 26 and then to hold the public hearing this evening and six o'clock there were no public
003comments that were made so i would just like to walk you very quickly through the quick few changes that were made to the plan again these are still posted on our website but if you go to page 10 of the draft the paragraph that was on that slide that i just shared with you about effective april first tells the reason why we're adding the communicable disease pandemic plan and we added that as appendix 12. but when we were adding appendix 12 to the plan if you scroll down to appendix we notice that during our review one of the requirements is to post the sro contract and although we had it in the previous draft and posted somewhere when we reposted that was missing so we added that back in it's all right there as it
004should be and then when you get to appendix 12 it's right here tina and i worked together we had a template from boces through our safety supervisor who also sits on the safety committee that plan actually i think was a spin-off from one done by the nassau county boces so together we work through and when you look at this it adds in a prevention mitigation preparedness a response and recovery plan but then when you get to page six it asks you to compile a lot of information and similar to the building level safety plans that are held in the administrator's office at each building level this plan would have some sensitive information so all of the information is posted as to what's in that binder but the specifics of it are not posted for public
005consumption that binder would be held in the assistant superintendent for personnel and student services so tina will be housing that binder in her office and you know because we have just been working through the reopening plan there are a lot of similarities in fact if you keep scrolling down tina will be most familiar with a lot of the charts that we've included at the end but it talks about things like you know how much ppe you have per person you have to have a plan for that and it just drills down into so many details and so many weeds and you'll see some of the things came right from the cdc website and some of the things toward the end i believe came through from our own public health and we would need to update
006those as we receive updates as well but even the contract contact tracing form that tina uses is posted in there it's a template just to show you know that we have it and it's included but the details are not shared publicly so those are the updates do you have any questions all right we'll be asking for your approval of that plan when we get into the resolutions thank you okay thank you that's going to conclude our public hearing on our district wide safety plan could i have a motion to exit the public hearing so we can enter our regular meeting jason thanks jason in a second thank you all in favor aye all right any opposed motion carries okay moving on to agenda changes i have a couple attendant changes this evening under board and
007staff reports we are going to admit the roswell pete flower memorial library presentation and under the items for board action we are going to have the approval of the amended district flight safety plan also under items for board action d the personnel report add the verbiage fall two to the coaching appointment headings for co-ed and the girls and the boys and we're going to change some of the verbiage in the uh sport our section line one section line four okay thank you were there any public comments no no communications no communication okay moving on to board and staff reports um that's the fbi report yeah so we just met uh we got an update on uh the status of the building from grounds position which is um going through all the stuff that needs to
008go with civil service and posting and etc so more to come on that as we reach those milestones um josh has prepared a request for proposal for audit services um they'll be going out friday um it's uh you know something that periodically we need to just look at what all the options are for the services that we're contracting for and we'll get that back in april to look at we are looking pretty good budget wise um all things considered the um the federal aid in particular that that's coming through is going to help us out a lot with areas where we've experienced losses and between that and good money management and careful spending we aren't going to have to take anything out that we need so that's really good news um and then finally um
009king and king is going to be working with us on public relations for the capital project so we'll be seeing some things from them that we may want to provide some feedback on okay all right thank you and jason the policy committee report yeah so policy committee we're at friday the 26th over zoom at noon reviewed the following policies uh 2000 board operational goals 2001 school board legal status 2002 board of education authority 2003 number of board members terms of office 2004 qualifications of board members 2005 nomination and election of board of education members new board member orientation 2007 board member training 2008 oath of office 2009 reimbursement of expenses for board members 2010 resignation dismissal filling in vacancies evaluation of school board operational procedures 2012 conflict of interest 2100 school board powers and duties
0102101 annual organizational meeting 2102 duties of the school attorney 2103 litigation procedures 2104 consultants to the board 2200 legal qualifications of voters at school district meetings 2202 reporting expenditures 2203 absentee ballots when schools use personal registration 2300 regular board meetings 2301 agenda preparation and dissemination 2302 special meetings 2303 rules of order 2304 quorum of the board 2305 minutes public participation at board meetings 2307 board hearings 2308 executive sessions 2311 broadcasting and taping of board meetings 2500 board and superintendent relationships 2501 board and staff communications finally 2502 communication among individual board members a lot of policies pleased to announce that we only had some minor grammatical edits by our policy team we did add on policy which is dealing with gender neutral bathrooms okay all right it looks like we're going to be taking action on
011those policies tonight except for 2003 even though jason mentioned it 2203 the absentee ballot um is on hold by our policy people because we're waiting to see what's going to happen upcoming and see if that policy needs any revision so our policy team has held that and so more to come on that one okay i have a motion please yes dancing thank you any discussion on that all those in favor all right any opposed motion care items for board action results at the watertown city school district combined with immaculate heart central school for the 2012 school year to form a varsity boys space hockey team and be a further result the students from the water dallas league school district will become members of the ihc university boys hockey team the team will compete under iec
012can i get a motion please michael here in a second jason any discussion will this um operate the same way it has been the last few years yeah this is for next year george emerich just brought these to me this year i get things kind of to be proactive frontierly had asked us to get those taken care of now and it would run yeah those in favor any opposed motion carries result that the watertown city school district will combine with the alexandria central school district's varsity girls hockey team for the 2021-22 school year to form a varsity girls hockey team and be a further resolve that the students from the watertown city school district will be called members of the sangria central varsity girls hockey team the team will compete under alexandria central's colors should
013i get a motion please see you in a second any discussion on this one district for the 2021-22 school year to form a ski team and be a further resolve students from the watertown city school district under the watertown city school district holders can i get a motion please probably thank you in a second thank you do we know if we have um more than one student anticipated for the coming year i know we had one student that we'd approved for skiing first game this year we don't know if there's anybody else but if they come forward they're allowed to okay any other discussion legal absence appointments term non-probationary instructional temporary substitutes instructional substitutes non-instructional call to twitter co-ed any discussion all those in favor aye all right any opposed any abstentions that would be
014me thank you resolved at the proposed 20 21 22 school year calendar is hereby approved can i get a motion please susie a second michael any discussion um i did hear a question about uh the inclusion of juneteenth um is that a um boces-wide uh thing that's happening or is that a watertown initiative um that was suggested by boces but i know that not all districts are going to some districts are doing like professional development for example on that day but that was a boces-wide initiative the board of education hereby approves the general and labor council contract for services provided by garcia inertial llp for the period march 3rd 2021 through june 30th 2021. can i get a motion please jason a second yeah i heard colleen first thank you any discussion on this um
015have we used our services before no something that we were just adding to our you know toolbox so we have another group to turn to if we'd be okay else all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries resolved at the disposal recycle or donation of damaged updated and unused books and videotapes from the libraries at nicaragua elementary north elementary ohio elementary sherman military and starbucks elementary is hereby approved can i get a motion please susie in a second jason any discussion all those in favor all right any opposed motion carries so i'll that the following revised board of education policies is hereby approved and adopted 2000 foreign operational gold 2001 school board and legal status 2002 board of education authority 2003 number of board members in terms of office 2004 qualifications and board members
0162005 nomination and election of the board of education members 2006 new board member orientation 2007 training 2008 post of office 2009 reimbursement of expenses for board members resignation dismissal filming vacancies 2011 evaluation of school board operational procedures 2012 conflict of interest 2100 school board powers and duties 2101 annual organizational meeting 2102 duties of the school attorney 2103 litigation procedures 2104 consultants to the board 2200 legal qualifications of voters at school district meetings reporting expenditures 2300 regular board meetings 2301 agenda preparation and dissemination 2302 special meetings 2303 rules aboard 2304 quorum of the board 2305 minutes 2306 public participation at board meetings 2308 executive sessions 23 11 broadcasting and taping board meetings and superintendent relationship 2501 board and staff communications 2502 communication among individual board members zero zero one four general gender neutral single occupancy background
017facilities i get a motion please jason in a second and any discussion all in favor all right any opposed motion carries whereas a resolution was passed by the board of education on october 6 2020 approving the district-wide safety plan and via the result that this resolution reflects the addition of a communicable political disease pandemic plan to the district-wide safety plan resolved that the amended district point safety plan is here can i get a motion please susie and a second yes thank you nancy any discussion thank you favor all of your hard work on it i know that it was a lot of work and it's greatly appreciated okay all in favor any opposed motion carries okay moving on for items of discussion so josh you are up with our budget and your report are you
018moving all right let's go for the 21-22 budget all right so for 2122 budget we're looking at just under 81 million dollars total right now which is about a four million dollar increase um oh this is pretty familiar as last year so then we ended up winging it printed out the power button make sure so so this is a continuation on our 2021 budget of course pools safety initiatives including social emotional supports for students you see that we have an additional aids in budget this year which we had this past year but wanted to make sure we were going to run into issues budget-wise and everything so i think it will help with the transition back into in-person learning maintaining current academic and continuing to expand educational opportunities in our own awesome places improve a
019bunch of extra prices also looking at the possibility of drivers uh connecting with parents of course all of the additional software and means of communication recently a lot of this stuff we're going to continue it's going to carry forward and updating maintaining physical and i.t infrastructure you're going to see more of this with a lot of our chromebook replacements and the instructions side with some of the smart board replacements and a lot of hardware software stuff as we continue the windows 10 transition here is the 81 million dollars the biggest source is going to be from the state and we'll get into that kind of the next slide of the governor's run you see our appropriate fund balance is actually going down this year about 700 000 that's what the state wants to spoil they'd
020rather see it around four percent but we're just continuing to chip away little by little because remember we still have short-term financing on our current capital projects and the banks want to see us with a much higher amount of money in the bank um so you're you're stuck between iraq and a hard place the state wants you down extremely low and lean the banks want to see you higher so you can get a better interest rate the federal sources significant increase there from what was in two and a half last year this is the cares ii funding so you see that is just over seven million dollars as far as the sirsa is the new new bailout coming property taxes represents 17 billion that is a 1.8 percent increase for the others [Music] so here
021is our most recent budget proposal foundation 8 once again it's being held flat this is going to be the third year in a row um services in again trying to combine everything lumping into one which would be is going to be your transportation aid boces textbook hardware software they're trying to consolidate all of that and upholstery in addition to that there is a services aid adjustment which is not going to be allocated at least based on the everything that we know right now it's not going to be elevated based on need it's just going to be flat percentage-wise off the board and our side that amounts to 640 000. and then if you look down you'll see the pandemic adjustment for that's being taken away this year it's not going to be there but what
022they did was add star um which isn't really school aid i mean we get the money you know that's more property tax related but we get the direct check and then they took the star right back out through that local district funding adjustment that you see there on the bottom are the cares and the services that cover for the supplemental stimulus on the bottom so you see one is being removed the other one's coming in to take its place it does put us in a good position for next year but it's not sustainable with having to rely on the one-time balance from the federal government this is it doesn't show up as well from far away but this is kind of what how the star stuff is being is out there they start at the
023bottom left side is how the star exemption currently works unless you've purchased your house within the last couple of years i know they switched over and offered to start credit in my first year here so the state gives us in this example a nice round number so say your school tax bills a thousand dollars the state gives us three hundred dollars and then you get the bill for seven hundred people seven hundred dollars um start credit is what you have to so anyone who's bought a house within two years and or transferred their from the exemption over to the credit there is an incentive right now i believe it's about an additional two percent that you would get if you transfer over so the state sends you the money directly and then you pay the
024full thousand dollar bill that's kind of how that one works and the way that they're going about taking the star away is that they're going to cut the money that's coming to the school the taxpayer still sees the reduced bill and then we just kind of have to make it up so it's in our investor interest i know some of the smaller districts are going on pr campaigns to try and push everybody over to this start credit and a lot of people just like having it there they don't have to worry about it they don't have to worry about getting your check from the state and then cutting the whole check over it just like seeing the exemption right on the tax bill and paying the lower amount right off the bat that is a
025good way to take the state's hands out of our coffers from the star side of things so here's where you see the big changes our revenue variance here over here of course there's the that's from the so the 4.7 increase that you're seeing there federal sources property taxes that 300 000 is the equivalent of the 1.8 percent increase and then a couple other small decreases there and the same side and of course our appropriate fund balance consists of appropriation sign now it's kind of there 70 percent of our budget if it's an instructional piece of things you can just kind of digest that if you want to post these ten percent that has gone down it's actually gone up but it's going to look like it went down because the last two years we've had
026the capital project through boces for 1.5 and 1.8 million dollars the last two years if you want to go to the next one kind of gives a big on where our major changes are as you can see there one of the biggest ones is going to be on the employee benefits side our health insurance is going up one percent honestly don't think we've really felt the impact the full impact of covert quite yet because we know a lot of doctors offices were closed and stuff last year we've had a lot of the optional appointments or procedures that people might have had or at least non-major life-threatening ones have been pushed out and i just think a lot of people are still kind of scared so i don't think we felt the problem of our actual
027health insurance costs yet civil service uh ers is up about two percent our trs is going to be up about 0.3 to 0.5 and we're also budgeting in there for reserve trs contribution reserves as we started last year same thing with ers there is some reason to kind of contribution there in those medicare reimbursements we have to the retirees those are going up about three percent as well so then on the instruction side is the next biggest jump that you see and as we mentioned earlier continuing that technology the smartboard replacements chromebook you know we're we're now full one to one so we're going to start reaching the end of useful life on some of those items and we're going to start replacing those about 25 a year if we cut i mentioned the driver's
028possibility there as well i know we're going to be probably implementing school tutorial i think stacey's going to touch on that the additional aids and the additional uh bringing the sro i know we discussed it last year i have the kids you didn't really need it this year getting back to full full swing of things may need that one transportation is the next one you see going on again hopefully some return to normalcy see an increase in runs for summer school this year field trips sporting events etc and then the rest is pretty well flat except for the most you see that it's dropping half a million so in all reality that's an increase to boces spending of about a million dollars in there again there's going to be some hardware software items in there
029as well as hopefully some transitions purchasing a number of multi-function products this is just kind of how our the bunch of coast guard is going to likely appear unless there's any major changes down on the budget through the governor's budget and then trip around ours i can share that's pretty much all i have for the powerpoint similar to last year we're going to put the put it up on the web so people can look at it dig in and just drill down all the way into the account code level can i share it says sharing with that stuff not sure of course i just took it down let's try it again is that stuck in the presentation that's very similar to last year with the information that you'll see and if you click through this
030it gives you an overview of the budget the text let me increase as you switch over on a different tab there's a lot of visuals usually on these if you hover over them it'll pop up the amounts the different percentages and if you just right click and show data point as a table it'll spit everything out down to a line item budget for everybody to view if they really want to dig through the thousand plus account codes that we have it was through the tax levy historical data for at least the last three years this is the lowest uh most percentage we've had over the last three years which will also translate into the lowest dollar increase that we'll see over the next three or the last three years as the governor's budget broken down
031as well just you can kind of see where and why all of our cuts from the state are coming and why the federal it's great for this year but it's not a sustainable approach if you took away the seven million dollars and exactly how that goes and same thing here we have another all of the expenses just kind of spelled out you can right click on any one of those show data point is table and it'll get you the drill down as to why each number is there is that currently up on the website i i don't know if i can i'm still new to the publishing on the web part so i don't know if it's going to allow me to update it once i've made it a public link i could like i
032couldn't send it to tina right now because i would have to log into our video in order to get it we can try it and see if it'll go live and then i just saw recently that there's some push for a statewide incentive for retirement so should that go through what are some positive and negatives on the budget that you foresee it's usually not in our financial best interest short term a lot of times that's my biggest takeaway on that long term it's great short term it's not it takes us a while to actually realize the savings okay i guess we'll wait to see how that falls out okay any questions for josh on the budget okay thank you no i mean really and our shared work has this was the first uh first week
033that we as a district had to log in and certified for the prior weeks stuff and everything went smooth there so well all corrective action plans i need to submit by the end of this month so those are pretty much done they're actually going to be on next meetings okay all right thank you i just wanted to run down a couple of things um the post standard wrote an article last week about chronic absenteeism and discussed some particulars and i'm not going to get into any of the particulars but i just want to give the board an understanding of how hard the district is working to really address the issue of chronic absenteeism so one of the things that we feel is most important is making connections with our students and families because we know
034that's the key to the overall social emotional and academic achievement for our students so we put a protocol in place this is something that we worked on pre-pandemic but then when the pandemic hit we really had to hone in on you know our students from march really through june morning school and so we put protocols in place district-wide and i just wanted to give you just a little bit of an understanding of what actually happens so if we're not reaching a student or students not attending class remotely or even if they're not showing up in the hybrid model the teacher makes multiple attempts to reach the student and the parent and usually it's in three different modes parent square email and a phone call and if the teacher is unable to reach the primary contacts
035then they reach out to any emergency contacts that are part of our student management system and they document all of those notes right in school tool there's a little section called global notes and they put those in there then the teacher will email the school counselor if they're unable to reach all the contacts usually within a week's time frame and then the school counselor will follow those steps outlined that the teacher tried and if the counselor is unsuccessful they will email both the building principal and the home school coordinator and then the principal along with the assistant principal will attempt to make contact with the students contacts and coordinates with the pupil personnel teams that are in each building to determine the next steps at that point a home visit is done usually by the
036homeschool coordinator could be the principal possibly the school counselor possibly the teacher if the family is not home the home school coordinator will mail a letter out to the family and above and beyond this this also happens at incremental 10 days 20 days out of school and so on if all of these attempts are fatal and the next step is they bring that to my attention and then michelle will draft a letter for me and will remind parents of that school is a mandate the children need to be in school and here are some of the fallouts if you don't send your child to school it's a partnership right so the district has a lot of protocols and steps in place and they work very hard um from the the person who has the most
037contact being the teacher sometimes school nurses are involved but there's a whole group of people making the effort to make sure that our students are in school but on the flip side of that we have to have the support from the home as well it's a team effort it's a partnership it's a community effort it's really all of our responsibility to make sure that our kids are in school that's where they need to be so i just wanted to let you know all the protocols that we have in place because as we explore the next few phases of where we're at we would love to see our students come back to school um the guidelines have not lightened up or lessened up any for us you know we just met as a board and committee
038last week or at our meeting last week and i mentioned that we had heard rumors that guidance was coming out that the social distancing requirement of six feet would be changing to three feet it's been a week since our last meeting we haven't received further guidance but i also would like you to know that we are working on our current enrollment the spaces in our building and our goal is when those restrictions will permit us to to allow us the opportunity to have more students back in person because that's what we all want we're making some great strides in athletics during our finance meeting a little bit earlier i received notification that sports are now allowed to have two spectators per athlete um and that you can't have more than 50 capacity of the space
039that you're in so you know if you think about some of our larger areas like the gym at the high school or even case middle school that would allow us to have probably i would say you know most of our athletes to be allowed to have two parents or two people two spectators but with that said you know the guidance this morning was 50 total people at the event so when mr edwards was working this morning on an event that we're having with um indian river between the coaches and the athletes and the scorekeeper the referees we had 41 people so if the limit was 50 then you have a whole bunch of kids on two teams and you're only allowed nine spectators so this morning our thought process was you know on senior parents
040of the home team um but now that the guideline just came out this evening tomorrow morning mr hemorrhage and i will circle back and we'll take a look at the new guidelines that have been put upon us and we'll go from there and that's the same thing with you know having our students return in person we keep up to date on the guidelines as they come forward we work with our administrative team and we monitor and adjust as we're able to do so so um two other updates that i wanted to give you i talked about the hall of achievement randy richardson was here last week we had a really great meeting on thursday um jerry goger has drafted a virtual ceremony um the committee decided to keep it virtual because we'd like to do
041it in june and we were not confident by june that our inductees traveling from all over the country would be able to safely get here so we've decided uh for june to do a virtual ceremony but with the plans for the next event that the people who were inducted this june would be invited to come to the next in-person ceremony whenever we're able to do that so that's exciting and i will give you further updates as we go along but um jerry did a nice visual storyboard we met virtually and walked us through it and i'm just i was in awe of all of the work that she put into it the committee was very excited so i'm really looking forward to that event and as we get closer and we get more details um
042i will be sharing those with you and then tomorrow um we're starting our diversity equity and inclusion strategic plan and i just wanted to let you know that we've had some really great representation from across the district in our community so um we have that is going to be representing the board she was part of the strategic planning team we have a sixth grade teacher we have quite a few administrators we have a middle school teacher and then we have some teacher assistants we'll be working with glenn incorporated so glenn and kathy adams and judy dixon judy dixon from gwen incorporated will be with us as well as some of the community members and we have ty stone from suny jefferson we have pastor jeff smith we have catherine smith um sixth grade couple sixth
043grade teachers actually [Music] and i think i actually have a couple more people and that's the that's sometimes the harm of naming who's coming because i know i have a few other people um we have a parent from north um who will be joining our team reverend jj is his name and i believe we have one other community member and it's judy um so we have a really great group of people we'll have our first meeting tomorrow and then we will be meeting every other week for an hour for the first five meetings and this will be the strategic framework we'll take a look at our current strategic plan and we'll take a look at it through the lens of diversity equity and inclusion and i'm really excited to get this work started with this
044team so more updates to follow on that as well and my final thing was i haven't given you any updates on enrollment lately but we're at 3854 students so it's been pretty consistent throughout the last few months we'll keep an eye on that as we start to wind down and start to prepare for next school year with number of students going into each grade level in sections well thank you thank you assistant superintendent for instruction so you have two documents in front of you one is the march instructional updates that will go out to all staff tomorrow um i was waiting for the calendar was approved so that we could share that with that woman in there as well as some additional resources and one thing just to highlight out of that cycle learning zone
045which has in the past couple of years done a classroom design challenge to really keep up some of the student-centered environments that are within the district obviously we can't do that this year uh because of the coca-19 restrictions but we did want to do something to continue moving along that path to student-centered instruction um so we're going to be asking staff who are interested in participating in this challenge to put together a proposal that asks them to reflect on where they've been and what they've experienced and what they've learned and make a plan for something that will be beneficial to their students and have a direct impact on student learning going forward into 2122 and will be you know making small awards for either a tool or materials or a training or something that will
046have an immediate impact on meeting students where they are either in the categories of social emotional learning or academic content or even technology going into next year so that will be released to staff tomorrow we're really excited about it and keep you apprised of how many participants we have and then the other document to share with you is also going to go out to staff tomorrow this is information on our k-8 summer school programming recently did some digging into a report from the wallace institute and they did some studies one of which was with rochester city school district and just kind of taking a look at the marketing and structure of summer school programming and how to make it more enticing to students um so one of the things you know that's an easy switch
047because some of them are can't make it work in coven um but some of the one of the things was to change the name so rather than just call it k-8 summer school and we're going to call it snook and scoop um just kind of a take on summer and ice cream and maybe the celebrated ice cream on the last day of summer school so we're hoping that that will enhance some of our attendance and participation we will have it available to at k6 we'll be available to 36 students at every grade level um and then at 7 8 i will work with participation based on the number of teachers that we can accommodate for each subject area and go from there so that's really all i have um right now so um we were
048really concerned in the beginning of the year of how teachers were handling the remote learning and all the stresses of change so have we gone back and looked to see how those features are doing that did feel the stress in september october and where they are um are they still in the weeds are they would they take advantage of the cyclone learning center are they still kind of emotionally still back here catching up i would say that qualitatively we haven't really done a quantitative analysis of it but qualitatively and speaking with the building principles and having conversations with the tech integration specialists and the coaches people have settled in i don't think anybody who was incredibly stressed at the beginning of the year would say that they're 100 comfortable i don't know that any of
049us would say we're 100 comfortable in where we're sitting right now it's been a huge learning curve i think weighing up um educators minds right now at least in the district from the information that's been shared with me is not so much on the here and now but on what's going to happen next we know that our students are going to have some struggles coming back next year and they're already thinking ahead they're very proactive and trying to think about what can we do to best meet the needs of kids now so that we have less to worry about in the future but the reality is we don't really even know what they're lacking because we don't see them every day and so assessing them is that much harder right now in a way that
050isn't high stakes and when a child is coming to you twice a week we don't want to test them or spend time you know we're really spending time one-on-one i i feel very fortunate that our district adopted a k4 ela program that allows us to do so much one-on-one work with students and conferencing with them and i i know that a lot of our teachers have expressed interest in restructuring our math program to do that as well i think the smaller class sizes have really benefited us in some ways but then in other ways you know there's only so much math you can do with a first grader during the day you know so looking at that lens and and i think the high school students too i was just at the high school this
051morning they are very quiet the hallways are you know we kind of chuckled about it a little bit in the fact that you know students go right to class they're not hanging out in the hallways but at the same time while you can look at that as a positive discipline what does that really mean about the social situation for students and for our staff who you know don't have as many students to interact with on a daily basis as well so i guess i would say the answer to your question is kind of ambiguous right now but i don't know if you want to share what we met with um yeah we were two things we met with dr rudd and he was asking him stacy and i to consider being part of a study
052and talking about maybe how we've been throughout the pandemic and what changes we've had and so when we had that call with him last week we basically said for us we our routine has been very much the same in a lot of respects because we've been able to come to work every day even since back in march when people were not coming to work the three of us our routines are very similar to where they were they may be different in that we're doing virtual meetings versus in person but truly you know our schedules have been somewhat the same now i did say to dr hood for me um i have more free time at night than i did in the past three years because i was going between sporting events and concerts and and
053other activities that were going on in schools but i'd really like to have the teacher perspective and a group of teachers that you work with because their lives have changed significantly the way they deliver instruction and what impact it has had on them and i also thought stacy and i and tina when we were talking with them it would give us some good information on how we can best support our teachers going forward by getting that information and so that's kind of one of the things that we have as a work in progress and then when stacy had mentioned assessment and i know that's a word that a lot of people dread talking about but let's say you know the state right now has said that we are going to be giving at this point
054the assessments well they're not really tied to teachers right now they won't be they won't be tied to certain things but if we looked at it as an opportunity for us to try to get some good data on where our students are at it would help drive that instruction for our gaps and our weaknesses going forward so if we tried i mean i don't know stacy if you want to add on to that but but we tried to see that as because you know one more thing for kids right now is not what they need but if those kids that are tested would help us grab some data on where do our kids what are they lacking you know it's coming up on a full year now for some of our students that haven't been
055in person at all and even though students are coming in hybrid at only two days a week that hasn't been a lot yeah there are a lot of marketing um outreaches right now you know buy this regression assessment and do this with your students in the fall of 2021 and i think to the extent that we can avoid having to formalize the entry into the 2021 school year with an assessment i think we're better off we really are going to have to start off getting to know students again and helping them adjust to you know a full five-day routine hopefully um and informatively assess where they're at and you know and i i think if we can avoid that at all costs that would be beneficial to us we have diagnostic screeners that we are
056you know we do for all of our students a8 um and i think just making a point to emphasize that is going to be really critical and i also think it's important to acknowledge that we are concentrating on maybe what our students have lost but let's also take a look at what they've gained because there are so many areas that they gained as a result of the situation that we've been forced into that we've all learned how to do things that we weren't expecting or anticipating that we'd have to do so resiliency is something that i think everyone should get accolades for because certainly it's been a long challenging year for everyone and if i could add one thing in closing i think um just the idea that you know what it just flew out
057of my head so i'm gonna pass because you're thinking about these great ice cream cones that you put on here so yeah it'll come eventually all right thank you uh and finally our assistant superintendent for personnel and student services so kind of thinking back again what stacy and teddy were just talking about uh meeting with the k through 6 and 7 or 12 pps groups we had two focusing questions in our meetings last week and they focused around what we've learned throughout the pandemic it was very interesting we've learned a lot of course about everything from technology to making connections with families and going through what patty had talked about with the step progression of getting you know in touch with all of our families and students and then moving forward we're looking forward to
058the day the wonderful day when everybody you know all the kids are able to come back and um some things that we need to do proactively and then when students complain things simple things like retraining you know cafeteria leave your academic motivation and continuing those connections with families so really some great discussion we'll be meeting again next week secondly talking about what beth had mentioned at faf we are currently in the process of looking for director facilities three uh when jason campo was here we had a director of facilities three and then he was in that title uh and then we uh we advertise this position as a custodian three we're going to go back to director of facilities three so we've been working through winning mcintyre at civil service has been wonderful she canvassed
059the state last week now we have an advertisement out for two weeks personal service regulation so we're actively looking for someone there but in the interim tom navinger building administrator at watertown high school will be providing some oversight to the that department starting tomorrow so we're excited about that we think tom uh we think he has a subset of skills certainly to provide leadership there in the interim and we appreciate his cooperation and efforts in that and he's going to hit the ground running tomorrow morning so we're very pleased with that also last week we submitted our appr plan our administrative group and our teacher groups have both agreed uh that we're going to do a district-wide goal based on four regents exams number one living environment uh the ela and us the stream government
060um i certified that so we're waiting to hear back from the state on that so we will certainly keep the board informed there and finally just to give my usual colgate report we have since the beginning of the colburn era we've had 72 students test positive 35 staff members 107 total we've really i think we're on the downslope now which is very good we've had a couple of faces over the last couple of days but all in all we see a downward trend here and we're certainly keeping our safety protocols in place and everyone just give kudos to everyone for helping to ensure that our students and staff are safe thank you a couple of upcoming dates so on monday the virtual elementary art show is going to be live uh early dismissal next friday
061prepare teacher conferences uh policy committee next friday um the junior and uh senior high school art show is going to start on the 22nd also there's going to be a link provided for that and our next board of education meeting is the 23rd i'm going to miss the music in our schools this month i know always the best concert yes by far so go around if anyone has anything to share start with you nancy good bye excellent all right on that note i'll uh entertain a motion to it during the meeting susie thank you in a second jason all in favor