001I'm going to call the meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible and justice for all. [Music] Agenda changes. changes. I have one uh items for board action. The addition of M approval for medical examination to New York State Education Law section 913. Any public comments? Okay. Communications. I have two communications. Uh we've received the 2020 year end report from the North Country Family Health Center along with a card thanking the district for their continued support. Uh in addition to that, I have a letter from a parent uh Francis Seymour in regards to the district professional development days. Board members have a copy have received a copy of this letter.
002The superintendent will address this further in her superintendent report. Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay, moving on to board and staff reports. Um, our first report comes to us from a community partnership. So, we have Laura Baitman, Jod Delaney, Mary Cla Panu, and Olivia Brochi. We're on a little bit of delay. Hi everyone. Thank you for having us this evening. Can everybody see my screen? Okay. Yes. Yep. Fantastic. We received an invitation for the meeting this evening from Mrs. Labar after she attended our issue analysis presentation for our educational leadership class at Sunni Swiggo. Our full presentation was an hour long, but don't worry, we have condensed that for you this evening. If you'd like the full presentation, Mr. Lbar has access to it and she can share that with you. We are thrilled to
003share our research this evening and recommendations for our topic, which is integrating community- based resources to support student growth. I am Laura Baitman and I'm representing the Asiggo City School District. Good evening. I'm Jodi Delaney representing the Carthage Central School District. Good evening. I'm Mary Clarapino and I'm representing the Auburn School District. Good evening. I'm Olivia Roi and I am representing the Watertown City School District. We would like to thank the Watertown City School District for their support and willingness to support our efforts with this issue analysis project. We would like to particularly acknowledge Mrs. Labar as she was an essential part of this project who devoted a lot of her time, energy, and insight into making this project a reality. As our team began the process of researching how to best integrate community-based resources
004into the district, we first reviewed your mission statement and related goals. Our team immediately connected our topic for the district issue analysis with the first strategic plan goal, which is to strengthen collaboration among schools, families, and community. We developed our essential question of determining how can we access and integrate community-based resources to support student growth in the district. The objectives that we intend to highlight for you this evening include a review of the existing community-based resources available to the students in your district, a review of the literature regarding best practices that exist within school and community- based partnerships, and ultimately we will share our recommendations based upon this work regarding what community partnerships may be best suited for Watertown. Next, Mary Claire will highlight some of the information regarding the district to provide a lens
005for which we approached our research. Based on the 2018 2019 New York State report card data, the Watertown City School District had a K12 total enrollment of 3,977 students. As you will notice here, 74% of students enrolled in the Watertown district are determined to be economically disadvantaged. This was a piece of data that we determined to be significant when considering what community-based resources would support student growth in your district. The following three slides were acquired from the Watertown School District Program Vision Report, which was created by the community advisory committee. This slide and the following two will focus on this data. This chart highlights chronic absenteeism in each of the eight Watertown buildings from the 2019 2020 school year. Our group wanted to include attendance data into our analysis in order to build our recommendations.
006As we know, education can be the great equalizer, allowing students to overcome differences and privilege, but only when students are present in school each day. A second focus identified by the community advisory committee was discipline referrals in the district's schools. Again, this information was taken into consideration when considering community-based supports that could assist the Watertown district and address discipline concerns. The community advisory committee reported a graduation rate of 67% for the 2018 2019 school year. When compared to data from the New York State Education Department, the state graduation average for the 2018 2019 school year was 83%. All three pieces of data informed our team that we needed to focus on community- based supports that could boost student performance. A few months ago, we had the opportunity to meet with Mrs. Labar, who was extremely
007insightful and gave us a springboard for our project. We were able to learn about her leadership within the district as well as her vision for the future. After our conversation, these four focal points became our areas of focus. School-based health services, passion for community relationships, benefits of a site coordinator, and optimizing partnerships. By communicating with Mrs. Lebar, we could see that there was a clear focus on incorporating community-based supports within the school district. We were also able to correspond with one of the district's homeschool coordinators who provided us with this following pamphlet. Our team was pleased to learn that the district currently obtains a great deal of community connections already. Throughout our presentation, we will discuss research as well as some recommendations that could be implemented to further promote and optimize these partnerships. Developing strong
008collaborative relationships between schools and community partners is quickly proving to be one of the most powerful positive impacts on the academic and wellness outcomes of students. Mental health, physical health, and overall wellness are integral components to overall academic success. The Institute of Educational Leadership, the Coalition for Community Schools, and the National Association of School Psychologists joined efforts to develop key elements of effective school community partnerships to address this need. We will speak to the specifics of these key elements later in our presentation. Over 50 years of research links the various roles that families play in a child's education. There is an increase in policies promoting family engagement in order to improve the educational experience of all children given that family engagement is one of the strongest predictors of a child's success in school. The Harvard
009Family Research Project studied the influence of family engagement on student achievement. And the results indicated that not only do children benefit from family engagement from early childhood years through high school, but also educational gaps are lessened for children across different racial groups and socioeconomic backgrounds. Despite the overwhelming evidence indicating the positive effects of family engagement, many districts across the country struggle to develop and maintain positive relationships with families. The US Department of Education has noted that family engagement was the weakest area of compliance by states. Feedback from principles and teachers has indicated family engagement is one of the most challenging parts of their job. Some families struggle to navigate the school system or they may face barriers of language, culture, or personal skills to be able to engage with school staff. Educators may encounter some
010of these same barriers when trying to work with families of various backgrounds and diverse cultures. So, in order to maximize family and community engagement, what was once described as a school of the future, community schools are quickly becoming more prevalent. Schools have historically focused on academic achievement. Yet increasingly, educators are finding that there are other needs that have to be met before academic goals can be attained, such as emotional, social, and physical health that can interfere with the focus on learning. Data supports the notion that instructional reforms are most successful when they are combined with a comprehensive and integrated approach of the community school strategy. According to the Coalition for Community Schools, which is the national alliance of more than 170 organ organizations, at least 5,000 US schools have been transformed into community schools. The
011community school approach can help counter several negative trends. The first is chronic early absence. Because community schools are designed to address the root causes of absenteeism, such as health problems and family instability, they consistently show higher attendance rates than peer or comparison schools, as well as lower rates of chronic absenteeism. The second concern area is summer learning loss. Community schools provide extended learning time and expanded learning opportunities in the form of before and after school, weekends, holidays, and summer programming. A third area of concern is the high school dropout rate. The community school strategy is designed to address the social justice issue of barriers that are more prevalent for students of lowincome families and minority children. Lastly, community schools provide on and off-site health, mental health, and social services to students living in lowincome communities
012where there is often a lack of resources. The inclusion of health care in the whole child approach that community schools provide is recommended. The National Center for Community Schools was established in 1994 and serves as a practice-based technical assistance organization that provides training, consultation, and other forms of support to nearly all of the country's major community school initiatives. They suggest partnerships can begin small and build over time. Community schools must assemble a team of leaders that embrace families, students, and other partners and includes them in the decision-making process. Within this team, a school-based site coordinator is designated and is responsible for managing the process of identifying needs, locating resources, implementing programs, and assessing their impact. Community schools around the nation have created positions such as a community school director to help bridge the gap between
013community, families, students, partnerships, teachers, and leaders. A school-based coordinator manages supports and services that go beyond the classroom. They conduct need assessments at the school and its students. Then they create a plan and provide support in collaboration with community partner organizations. The first step a community school coordinator must do is establish relationships with school leadership and teachers. Coordinators should be viewed as part of the school environment and school culture. A common acronym that many community school site coordinators follow is known as reform. This requires a community school director to review needs, engage partners, find focused support systems for individual students, offer opportunities for partners to meet together and share updates, reset partnerships that might not be working, and measure the effects and outcomes so the school can make appropriate adjustments. Data and research findings are
014utilized by site coordinators to determine effectiveness, inform their training, and develop better programs to meet the needs of students and schools. There are a range of strategies schools can utilize to establish such coordinators in their schools. Schools can invite existing staff to apply. They can hire new staff or they can even partner with social service agencies to dedicate staff to serve as site coordinators. Coordinators have a variety of backgrounds. However, many have master degrees, typically in counseling or social work. In addition, they often have experience working with community- based organizations and schools. According to our research, assigning a coordinator increases quality, efficiency, and alignment of school community partnerships. In addition, many of the most effective schools rely on coordinators who work full-time in a school district. A last part of our research research focused on
015partnerships between higher education institutions and school districts which are valuable and beneficial for both entities. These partnerships can strengthen a school system by providing services that would otherwise be difficult for school district to financially provide. Today, with student needs increasing and budgets decreasing, establishing strong connections between higher education institutions can provide additional student support, assist in student learning through data collection, and be mutually beneficial for both entities. Beyond the support that teacher candidates can provide, college student volunteers can be a valuable asset by serving as mentors for K12 students. In a report completed by the national mentoring program, studies show that mentoring is correlated with positive outcomes, including change in attitudes of youth, specifically higher self-esteem and stronger relationships with adults, better behavior patterns resulting in avoiding drugs and alcohol, bullying, and other risky behaviors.
016And higher academic performance due to lower truency rates, lower dropout rates, and higher overall achievement on standardized tests. Finally, the relationship between school districts and universities proves valuable when discussing the importance of afterchool programs. Afterchool programs bring a variety of benefits for students, families, and the community for which it serves. These programs have been found to increase academic performance, promote physical and mental health, and provide a safe environment for children while parents are working. Afterchool programs have been linked with positively impacting attendance, behavior, and coursework among students who regularly attend. Consistent participation in afterchool programs has also been found to lower dropout rates and help to close achievement gaps for low-income students. A mentorship program provides so much value to the students and to the district as a whole. Now, let's refer back to our
017essential question. How can we access and integrate community-based resources to support student growth in the Watertown City School District? After extensive research, we have crafted three recommendations that could be implemented in the district to target academic improvement, graduation rate, chronic absenteeism, and discipline. Our recommendations include three options. expanding on your university school connection, the coordinator position, community-based schools, and of course, option number three would be our home run recommendation as it would have the largest impact on the district and the community as a whole. Our first recommendation is through the existing liberty partnership program with Sunni Jefferson and Cornell Cooperative Extension 4, the Watertown District would incorporate post-secary education students into designated buildings to serve as mentors to Watertown students. This mentoring initiative would support the Watertown District's goal of strengthening collaboration among schools, families,
018and the community. As this slide shows, the program would target chronically absent students, students with discipline concerns, and the focus schools would be Watertown High School, Case Middle School, HT WY, Nickerbacher, and North Elementary. The Watertown District would utilize the existing partnership with Jefferson Community College, the Liberty Partnership Program, to incorporate college students into the schools by volunteering as youth mentors within the context of the school day. The focus schools for this recommendation would be Watertown High School, Case Middle School, and HT WY. Um, an option B would be that Watertown in collaboration with Sunni Jefferson will extend the afterchool program, the Liberty Partnership Program to include Nickerbacher Elementary School and North Elementary School. The program would run approximately two hours after the conclusion of the school day. And this would target these um students
019from these two elementary buildings who come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, who are considered chronically absent, and who need after school care or academic assistance. Our second recommendation is hiring a community school coordinator position. A site coordinator would serve as the hub for information exchange, outreach, and coordination. It's recommended that the district hires a site coordinator as a full-time employee as they would be an integral part of the school staff. The school site director would recruit and maintain community partnerships, facilitate communication among the leadership team, community partners, school personnel, and families and integrate partners into the culture of the school. In addition, the site coordinator would work closely with the school's homeschool coordinators that the district currently employs to gather data about student needs, monitor their performance, and create targeted interventions for students and the school.
020In order to create an equitable environment in which all students can succeed, a school coordinator would help assist students by providing them with appropriate support systems. As indicated in our research, site coordinators support schools by creating a better environment for learning. Assigning a coordinator also increases quality, efficiency, and alignment of school community partnerships. According to the research, this type of position would reflect the district's mission statement that highlights the importance of creating a caring culture for all students. Our third recommendation is for the district to consider transformation to a community school model. Watertown would work toward becoming a full-ervice school district as multiple community partnerships are forged to meet children's needs in the areas of health, social services, academics, sports, recreation, and culture. The schools will become the hub to benefit first and foremost the
021students enrolled, but also their families and the entire community. This in turn will lead to improved student learning, health and attendance, stronger family engagement, improved school climate, and safer neighborhoods. You are already well on the way toward this model with many pre-existing community partnerships supporting your students and families. This video is a quick overview of the community schools model. [Music] What makes a school a great school? Caring for the whole child. Expanding the horizons of learning. Building relationships with families, working together to realize a shared vision. This is a school every student needs. This is a community school. Community schools are public schools that partner with stakeholders to create the condition students need to thrive. Community schools can be found across the United States, and their numbers are growing fast. But what exactly makes a
022school a community school? They integrate student supports. Clinics, counselors, and other services ensure each and every student is ready to learn. They expand and enrich learning. Extended school days, summer programs, and real world experiences help students reach their full potential. They engage families and communities. Partnering with residents to identify and meet community needs makes everyone feel safe, welcome, and involved in school. They lead in collaboration. Inclusive decision making and peer learning builds trust among students, educators, families, and communities. When a school stands on these four pillars, it's a community school. Research supports this fourpillar approach, but there's no onesizefits-all model. Every community school is different because each community is different. Figuring out what it looks like in your community starts by getting actual community members involved. That's the full-time job of community school coordinators. They're
023the human bridge connecting all the partners and stakeholders that make community schools possible. So, that's what makes a school a community school. Now, how do you pay for it? Startup costs like hiring a full-time coordinator can be raised from foundations or state and local governments. Tapping into existing funding and partnering with local businesses can bring in service providers. Sharing resources and staff with partners can help everyone do more. And as a community school becomes more established, leaders can advocate for budgets that sustain their impact and new funding to expand it. Every community school is different. What will yours be like? Get started at community schools.foring.org. Community schools provide a wide range of learning opportunities. The underlying premise of a community school recognizes that the education of a child is not just academic in nature. Community
024schools bridge the inequalities in many students lives and create an equitable educational experience for all. Upon review of the district's strategic plan goals that we referred to earlier, it is clear that three out of the five goals would be directly targeted by the adoption of the community schools model. Watertown City School District could position itself as a leader in the area and incorporate the key elements of successful community schools that are indicated on the slide. It is recommended to begin implementation in the four buildings with established clinics. Transportation is in place for elementary students at the remaining elementary schools to utilize the supports while development at the remaining four buildings can be considered. In order for a community school to function most successfully, an assessment process completed in the early stages of development will allow
025for needs and assets of the community to be uncovered. Watertown fortunately has begun much of this work through the work of community advisory committee. In terms of financial projections, there are a multitude of resources available at the state and federal level that can be considered. A chart of funding options is detailed on the next slide. This is a resource of funding options that are available to pursue toward transition to a community school model. Some districts utilize a 501c3 nonprofit organization to aid in their community school initiatives. in our backyard. This is Rome, New York. They've implemented a community school and we just wanted to quickly share how the connected community school is serving students and their families during the pandemic. This is the community kids market that where families have access to food during the
026We would like to once again thank you all so much for inviting us this evening. Please let us know if you have any questions. Mrs. Lebar does have our full presentation if you'd like to look at the completed version. I'm sure she could share that with you or you could always reach out to any of us and we'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to our next staff report. Um, our director of facilities, Mr. Wilson. How we doing tonight? Good. Good. Talking about facilities for a minute. I uh let you know a little bit about what I've been doing and uh kind of where I want to go with our department. Um my whole goal uh here is uh with some
027of this stuff is increasing uh efficiency, trying to free up some resources by implementing some of these processes and procedures. Um and uh the the first thing I'm uh working on with doing that is uh a program called Qware facilities uh management. Uh we already have this tool. I'm just uh diving into it utilizing uh to its fullest I guess. Um, the first thing I'm doing, um, we already do this with the maintenance work orders. Um, whenever someone has a request, uh, they put in a work order. Currently, it goes to our, uh, computer and we go into the computer, assign it, print it off, hand it directly to the maintenance staff. They go out, they prioritize, go out, complete the work order, put in their time, any parts used. the next day, hopefully the
028next day, they hand the work order back in. We take that work order uh turn it into the uh assistant, our secretary. She goes in, inputs everything, and closes it out. Um down the road, I would like to see uh the maintenance staff having some sort of electronic device, a tablet. Uh the work orders go uh to us. We assign them appropriately to the maintenance mechanic. it goes immediately to their tablet. They can prioritize accordingly. Um everything is right there in front of them. The uh any information that they would need for that piece of equipment they're working on is in there, whether service manuals, warranty information. Um they can complete the work order right there. Um put in their time used, parts used. Um and then we can track the service history for everything
029that's that's worked on there. So, it's just uh a few things that we gained by that. One is turnaround time. Um lost work orders are should be non-existent at that point. Um accountability for our time. Um and just more accuracy with our time. Um we're filling it out as we go, not hours or days later. Um so that part of Q. The next part is uh the preventative maintenance part for our all of our HVAC uh equipment throughout our buildings, refrigeration, kitchen equipment. This is going to be a long process to get this completed, but once it is, it's going to be very uh beneficial for us. Currently, it's it's kind of left up to the people in the buildings now, the head custodians to go out and do the maintenance on their unit ventilators,
030their heating, air conditioning equipment. Um my vision for this, we've already started this is as we work on a piece of equipment, we're bringing back all the information that's we need for that piece of equipment, make, model, serial number, um what type of filters, it has belts, if anything. Um I have a support rep that uh is free of charge to us for Qear. I send this information off to her. Um she inputs all of this and it autogenerates a work order for every time a service is due on that piece of equipment. Um, and I'll give an example of the motor for the pool. It took almost two weeks to figure out if this motor was under warranty or not. I'll have this information as we update our equipment. Um, everything will be put
031in there. The warranty, uh, the parts breakdowns, you know, the order parts, it'll be a, you know, matter of minutes, not days or weeks, um, moving forward. So, um, if I'm 80% complete on that in 12 to 18 months, I'll be very happy. So, um, another big part of this, uh, is I what I call life safety. Um, our exit and emergency lighting, fire extinguishers, and our AEDs. Um, the AEDs are already in, uh, have already started. Uh, everything is inputed for that. Um, it's going to spit out a work order monthly that will, uh, that we have to go in and do the required checks. It just ensures that we're in compliance with everything. Um, it tracks the uh the batteries and the pads on there's certain intervals that they have to be replaced
032whether they're good or not. Um, it just keeps us in check with that. Um, the exit and emergency lighting. Um, that's going to be a bit of a process. We need to go through each building and label them, number them, and u, you know, check them monthly. Um, again with work orders from QAware that are autogenerated. Um, so when we have our fire inspection, it's not a mad dash to make sure all the stuff is working. It's being done monthly as it should be and documented accordingly. Um, the next step is fleet maintenance. Um, this is something that, um, this is kind of down the list on the priorities, but it still nonetheless needs to be completed. Uh right now it's kind of just left up to us that we're doing it kind of in
033our memory so to speak. Um this is all going to be I had guys start on it today going around and gathering all the information off of each piece of equipment that we have from our trucks to our tractors or mowers. Anything with a gas motor that needs service. Um we take the manufacturer's recommendations. I send all that stuff off to Brenda where she inputs everything and it will autogenerate when the service is due for each piece of equipment. It's going to show up. Somebody's going to have to go in and manually, you know, close that work order out. So, it's uh and then a few additional items that we're working on. Um calling it operation clean up and clean out. Uh we did this at North and Starbucks uh my first week. um Thanksgiving
034week, I think maybe my second week. Anyway, just trying to get rid of some of the uh clutter um you know, items that have been hanging around for a while. Um some of this stuff we're able to use in other buildings instead of buying new. It's not actually all old stuff that you know is is junk, more or less. Um and eventually we'll be using Auctions International to get rid of some of this stuff. Um, another uh item that uh has been presented with COVID is kind of crossraining our maintenance personnel with um some of their skill sets. For example, keys. Um I have one guy that can cut keys right now. When he goes off on vacation, either someone needs a key, it either gets outsourced or gets put off um until he gets
035back. So, just kind of cross training some of those special skill sets that each of the guys have. Um, probably the biggest thing on here is the central warehouse and inventory control. Um, and going through and doing some of the buildings inspections. When I first started, we found product dating back to 2013 that was expired that we had to throw out. We did a quick cost analysis on it. It was between5 and $8,000 at one building. So, we're taking all of the uh we've inventoried all of the schools. Um, some schools have an abundance of one product and other schools trying to order this from new from a vendor. So, we're, you know, filling those orders from other schools right now as we can. Uh, moving forward, we're going to, all the big orders are
036for supplies for my department are going to go to Massie. And I've got a guy that, uh, works for me now that is, uh, was doing inventory control and warehouse manage management in the Air Force. He's very skilled on this stuff. He's very comfortable with it. He's heading this up for me. So, um, all the big orders will go to Massie and it'll be filled to the schools, you know, on a regular basis. That's going to cut way down on waste and, uh, maintain our inventories. So, um, and then the the the next biggest thing is trying to standardize the cleaning and, you know, best practices across our building. One of the biggest complaints I get from our sub cleaners are they go to the high school and clean. Well, they don't want to go
037to case. Why don't you want to go to case school? They do things different over there. And what we're doing at one school is not the same as what we're doing in another school. So, I'm utilizing CCAP, which is a a free program that was already in place here. We just hadn't been utilizing it. So, um that's going to help me standardize the planning practices across the district. So, just a few things I'm working on. Um, any questions, comments, or concerns with any of that? Thank you. Staff report. Um, finanil. Yeah. Um we met prior to this meeting um and covered a few key topics. Um we discussed at the last board meeting the request for proposals for construction management services and tonight we got to uh take a first look at three solid proposals
038on that. So there are some questions that still need to be answered, a little research on that. Um but we're headed in the right direction um with that process. Um we're looking at finalizing the capital project. Um we've sorted things into the mustdo category and the if we can category. And so once we get that um construction management um group um going to see what the cost of those things are going to be, then we'll be able to come up with a more specific number that that we'll want to put forward for the project. We talked a little bit about some of the additional expenses that uh the COVID situation has um has added to uh what we're expending. Um there are a few things that will be ongoing. Um there are a few things
039that we may have on hand already. For example, um student PPE. Um so that um you know we'll keep that in mind when we're budgeting for the coming year not knowing exactly when we get to stop spending these extra uh things. And then um very first look at u budget discussion. We we do have a timeline for um what we have to look at um and when we have to make decisions. But um also being aware that um there are still a lot of questions about um what we're going to get or not get from state and federal governments. So I think that covers most of it. Josh will fill in the gaps um when he does his report. Thank you. All right. Moving on to items for consent agenda. Resolve that the consent agenda
040items A, B, C, D, E, and F are hereby approved. Can I get a motion, please? Michael. And a second. Excuse. Any discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Moving on into items for board action. Resolve that the totals listed below are they deleted from the 202021 city of Watertown school tax delinquent list as taxes plus 2% penalty were received at the board of education offices after December 1, 2020 deadline but were postmarked on before December 1, 2020. School taxes $40,5823. Library taxes $22.112. Total 2% penalty $6645. Um total of $41,316.80. New totals for the Watertown city controller to collect are school taxes 623,659.98. Library taxes of $3,41.13 penalties of $12,534.17 which gives us a total of $639,23528. Okay. Can I have a motion, please? Going and a second. Jason, any discussion? All in
041favor? Any opposed? Motion carries result that the totals listed below are to be deleted from the 202021 city of Watertown tax but list as the taxes plus 2% penalty were received at the board of education offices after December 1, 2020 deadline but were postmarked on or before December 1, 2020. School taxes $27,68169. Library tax is $129.32. A total 2% penalty $538.89. A total of $28,349.90. New totals for the Jefferson County Treasurer to collect our school taxes $311,000 $311,53957. Library taxes of $1,437 penalties of $6,25955. A total of $319,236.98. Can I have a motion, please? And a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Resolved that the IRS mileage reimbursement rate of January 1, 2021 will be 56 cents per mile for business miles driven. And it's hereby approved. Can I get
042a motion, please, Susie? And a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Any oppose? Motion carries. Resolved at the 20 21 calendar for the annual meeting, budget hearing, budget vote, and school board election vote is hereby approved. Can you get a motion, please? Jason and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Resolve that the consultation agreement with James. H C H C H C H C H C H C H C H C H C H Cooper is hereby approved. Can I get a motion, please? Nancy doesn't matter the order. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Resolved that a donation from Safe Schools Endeavor through Northern New York Community Foundation for $1,850 for the grant. is designated support of the totality program
043at Gates Middle School. This donation is great gratefully accepted and will be acknowledged in writing. Can I get a motion please? Excuse and a second. Thank you. Any discussion? What is the totally vocally program? It's something that Sarah Gleon applied for um through the North Country Community Foundation to assist with with her program at her school. An assembly program brought them um a virtual concert uh that had a bully anti-bullying message attached to it. Right. Because it it was part of safe schools. So that's broadly defined. Yeah. Yep. Any other comment? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Result that a donation from market for 20 mini food prize per month for the remainder of the school year approximately $223 for the HT principal program. This donation is gratefully accepted and approved and
044will be acknowledged in writing. Can I get a motion, please? Michael and a second Susie. Any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Resolved in a donation from the helpless fund to the Garden Community Foundation for $250. The donation is designated support of the Watertown City School District School for Families Program. This donation is gratefully accepted and approved and has been acknowledged in writing. I get a motion, please. And a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. resolved at the disposal recycle or donation of damaged, outdated and unused books and videotapes from the libraries at Neerbacher Elementary, the primary library office at North Elementary, Ohio Elementary, Sherman Elementary, and Starbucks Elementary is hereby approved. Can I get a motion, please? Susie, and a second. Any discussion? All in favor?
045Any opposed? Motion carries. Be it resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, Patricia B. Lubar, the board of education hereby approves the following resignations of absence appointment permanent instructional substitutes, noninstructional substitutes of coaching. Can I get a motion, please? Jason and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor. Any opposed? Motion carries. It resolved and upon the recommendation of Patricia B. Lavar, superintendent of schools. The following tenure appointment is hereby approved. Kristen Stino reading effective date January 6, 2021. I get a motion, please. And a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I any opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations to Miss Resolve that the approval of extracurricular activities clubs and adviserss at Watertown High School are hereby approved. Can I get a motion, please? Jason, sir, and a second. Susie, any discussion? All
046those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. So, at this time, I'd like a motion to go into an executive session for the purposes of discussing ongoing legal matters and a personnel issue. Jason, thank you. Can I get a second, please? All those in favor? Any opposed? our last. Whereas it is the duty of the board of education to employ only such individuals as are physically and mentally qualified to perform the duties associated with their positions. And whereas section 913 of the New York State Education Law provides in relevant part that the board of education or trustees of any school district shall be empowered to require any person employed by the board of education to submit a medical examination by a physician or other health care provider of his or her choice in order
047to determine the physical or mental capacity of each of such person. to perform his or her duties. And whereas pursuant to the section 913 of the New York State Education Law, in order to safeguard the health of children attending the public schools, the board has the authority to require district employee submit to submit a medical examination by a school medical director designated by the board in order to determine whether such employee possesses the physical or mental capacity to perform the duties associated with his or her position. And whereas superintendent of schools made a recommendation to the board of education in an executive session at the regularly scheduled board meeting this evening, Tuesday, January 5th, 2021, that a certain district employee who shall be identified here as employee be required to undergo an examination and evaluation
048pursuant to New York State Education Law Section 913. And whereas the board has determined that Dr. Benjamin Rudd, whose office is located at 1575 Washington Street, Watertown, New York, should act as school medical director for the purpose of New York State Education section 913. Now thereafter, it is resolved as follows. Dr. Rudd with an office located at 1375 Washington Street is hereby designated as school medical director for the purpose of New York State Education Law Section 913. The superintendent of schools is hereby authorized and directed to order employee to report to Dr. Run for examination and his office located at 1375 Washington Street on such date as Dr. red shop designate provided that the day and time for the examination is scheduled to take place during the employees regular workday. The superintendent of schools is
049further authorized to order employee to provide Dr. with properly completed and signed medical authorizations that comply with the requirements of the Health Insurance Proportability and accountability act of 1996 which is HIPPA in sufficient quantity to enable Dr. read to obtain all records of prior medical care treatment and evaluation of employee conditions and other medical care providers within the last 10 years. The superintendent of schools is further authorized to order employee to report to such other physicians or agencies as Dr. Rudd may direct the results of Dr. Dr. Rudd's examination and all further examinations required and requested by Dr. Rudd are to be forwarded to the board. The superintendent of schools is directed to forward a letter to the employee together with a certified copy of this resolution advising employee of the scheduled date of the
050examination directing employee to report to Dr. RD's office for the examination and evaluation and directing the employee to report to such other physicians or agencies as Dr. Rudd may direct. This resolution shall take effect immediately. Can I have a motion, please? And a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Superintendent of schools report. So, I have quite a few updates since our last meeting was on December 1st. First of all, I'd like to wish everybody a happy new year and and good health and happiness as we start 2021. Um, we've come a long way in the last year. Um, and even starting out in September, I wasn't really sure how long we'd be able to stay open. So, I'd like to extend, you know, sincere thanks to everyone in
051our district and our community for really working very hard to keep things going and moving forward. And I'm going to be talking tonight a lot about the current state of where we're at and the plans that are in place. So, giving you some updates. Um, before I do that though, I would like to thank John Wilson, our director of facilities, for sharing some updates with you tonight. um the live for leading team Olivia Roie, Laura Baitman, Jod Delaney and Mary Claire uh Pino for their presentation of their issue analysis. I really look forward to working with our districtwide team and coming back to the report um to the district um at the board meeting to all of you and just just reporting out. I think they had a lot of great ideas that we've all
052kind of tossed around for many years now and I think it's time that we take some of those ideas and really look at the community schools approach and look at uh community you know based coordinator I think and I'm looking because I see Beth and like saying when's that going to happen right um and I really like the way they framed their whole presentation looking at the strategic plan and the district's mission and kind of merging it all together and giving the district three options, which I think some of them are very easy to do. Um, but even so, there's a lot of good things that are already in place, but having somebody coordinate and really take a look at that, um, is something that I think we really should consider strongly as we start
053to approach the budget season and looking at, you know, where we're at next year with our budget. So, they I again commend them for what they have done. I'd also like to give you a final update. the wellness committee set out the December challenge to see, you know, which school could walk uh to the North Pole and actually the district office and all of you were part of that. We were actually leading the pack quite a bit and I finally said I think in my words in one of the emails because some of the schools were starting to feel like there was no hope in reaching the goal. I said we will step aside um and not be part of the award but we'll continue the challenge. It's just that we wanted to encourage the
054schools to keep moving forward. And right at the very end, it came down um overall as as a complete community, we um recorded 24,230.18 miles during the month of December and we surpassed our goal of getting to the North Pole and we almost tked around the world which would have been 24,900 miles. So that was pretty a pretty nice activity um for December and a lot of involvement. And at the very end, it came down very close between North and Starbucks. And Starbucks did win the trek to the North Pole. And they will be receiving a certificate and a trophy to keep in their building. And then we'll do it again next December and see where it goes from there. So, um, I thought that was pretty pretty amazing. It's pretty surprising. Um, the next
055challenge that's going on right now that just started yesterday is something that was put out by WPBS. Um, and they are starting story boards and snowmen. And the information was posted on Parent Square. And basically they're looking for families or even classrooms to create story um book pictures and post them in their windows around their house and maybe if we get enough snow or a little more snow to create a snowman that would go along with the story. And then they'll be posting them on their website. But they're also encouraging the community during COVID to either take walks in their neighborhood to see, you know, where things and they'll let you know which neighborhoods where people are. This is uh countywide and I think it actually extends into St. Lawrence County and aso county. So
056more updates at the next board meeting or I'll send you a littleformational update on you can find out um you know who's being involved with that. So, in the communications, we did have a parent letter about the early dismissals and some concerns. Um, we've only received one parent letter. We talked about this um back on November 17th when we made an adjustment for parent teacher conferences, but I just want to bring it up again because you know um the parent did communicate and asked me to share with the board. So, um you know, in respect of that letter, I just would like to share and ask your thoughts. Um, we have three more early dismissals on the calendar for the remainder of this school year. One coming up on January 29th. Uh, parent teacher conferences
057coming up on March 12th. And then, uh, May 21st is another professional development. Again, I went through and took a look at the number of Monday and Thursdays versus the number of Tuesdays and Fridays. And when we adjusted the parent teacher conferences that were on the schedule and added that to a Monday, it almost balanced when you look at the year- round schedule of 71 days in attendance plus an early dismissal for students that attend Monday Thursdays and for students that attend on Tuesday, Fridays, um it's at uh 70 and three early dismissals. So, they're they're, you know, plus or minus a half day to a day um overall. But I just wanted to bring that up again so that I could get back to Mrs. Seymour um with any input that the board may
058have. Um the letter suggested using Wednesdays instead, did it not? Primarily, yes. Is that an option? Part of the problem with using Wednesdays, and I I would kind of defer, and I have Stacy to um help me with this as well, is that first of all, on Wednesdays, any student who is in a special ed program, they are coming to school five days a week. So that would eliminate that staff from having the training that would be needed because they're already working with students all day on Wednesday. So any student that's in a special ed program self-contained, their staff would be working with them. That would eliminate them from the professional development. But and also in creating the Wednesday schedules, there's a lot of things that teachers do on that Wednesday to reach out to
059the remote only students. Um and I don't know if there's anything else that you want to add to what they are already doing on Wednesdays. So, you know, our ENL staff in addition to that are also um in order to meet the mandated minutes with students um that's when they are reaching out to those remote only students in particular um being able to service them. Um our staff is especially at the K6 level. Um I'm sorry, at the 712 level really spending time looking reaching out to remote only students who are not in person at all. So making sure they have those connection uh connections with staff. Case in particular has a very stringent schedule that teachers adhere to um and virtual students actually all students um they can zoom with their their teachers three
060times a day um during Wednesdays. Um there you know obviously there is some time built in for collaboration but we do face the the challenge as all districts do right now of condensing curriculum. um still keeping an eye on data and making sure that um we mitigate the learning loss as much as possible. So that's been a charge of teachers on Wednesdays and and then posting uh lessons for the week because that was something that our community had requested in the family survey that we did this summer to make sure that they had flexibility in completing some of those assignments if they weren't able to do so under normal school day hours. So, I guess that begs the question for me based on the school year that we currently have at hand. How necessary are
061professional development days this year? We really need to have them based on the fact that our kids do need to be in school right now. So, there's there's two thoughts to that. I I hear exactly what you're saying where the kids do need to be in school, but we've also charged our staff with so many things that they've had to do as a result of the current situation we're in. Whether it's uh class link coming up or go guardian, we've added a lot of technology aspects to their day. um training where right now our district will be getting a new phone system and teachers will have a phone in their classrooms that they're going to have to be trained to use. And I know that seems like that's a minor thing, but it has a
062lot of different capabilities than what they currently have. So there are other things that have that have developed as a result of being in a pandemic that we've put on all staff. So there is there's there's both sides to that. There's the need for the professional development, but there's also the need to have students here at school. So, we just have to weigh that out as as a group right now and discuss where we want to go. Again, we have three more such days planned for the rest of the year. Is that correct? Two. One of those is allocated to parent teacher conferences which is typically where if in a normal year we were discussing academic concerns, retention, summer school, those things would come up during those March conferences. So those are some things that
063we I would say that date is probably essential. Um the other date that I would say is absolutely essential is u the May 21st or 23rd date whatever it is um because we are beginning um our overall district work in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion. That was something that the committee had planned on um and we certainly don't want to lose sight of you know the progress that we're starting to make as a district in that area. The January date is devoted to condensing curriculum. Um it is something that the professional development committee felt was you know something that we should apply universally to our staff. Um but if if we were to ask us which of those three days is probably least necessary right now that topic would probably be the first
064one. And in addition to that, typically that date is because there's a change over um with the semester, first semester to the second semester. And there typically there's regent exams that happen prior to that. And so that's always been a standard practice, but the regent exams have also been cancelled for January. So that takes that pressure off of it still doesn't give you, you know, the difference of yeah, we're going from one semester to the next, but it takes the regent's exams out. Well, I wouldn't want to minimize the impact to any particular families, but it sounds like you've made an effort to make the distribution as equitable as possible. And so, not everyone is being impacted by every early dismissal. And with only a couple left, it sounds like the professional development is pretty
065important. And yet one day strictly the lesson in curriculum I'm not sure that's really necessary. I would think I don't know about you Maria but I have a handle at the moment how I'm reducing my curriculum. I'm not sure you can get this far in the year without having a firm grasp of how that will actually be done. Otherwise kind of flying by the seat of your pants and that's not advisable for anyone obviously. So, I don't suppose I would need necessarily a day devoted to that strictly without other things bleeding into it inevitably. Was that a full day? It's not. It really gives teachers about two hours and 20ish minutes of work time. Yeah. The issue in the parent letter though is that dismissal is, you know, after a couple of hours of being
066here. And so, that's that is the main issue. Yeah. So, it sounds like we have a couple things that we could consider. It sounds like October 29th um could be added back in as a day. And another thing that we could do to balance that schedule just a little bit better is we could take that March 12th date, which is a Friday, and to truly balance this and almost make it completely even, is to move parent teacher conferences that are scheduled for a Friday to either the Thursday before that to a Monday Thursday group to balance those numbers even even better. Now, we say that we still haven't had a snow day yet. So, once you take weather into consideration, that could throw these numbers off, too, right? So, we're we're trying to make something
067like as fair and as even as and and as good as we can, but we could have a major snowstorm or another major emergency that throws the numbers off too, right? So, or a spike of viruses that sends us into full remote mode, which is part of my next conversation. Yeah, it could all become mood. Obviously, we've had the holidays have thrown the cohorts off balance. Some just at least where I am at Indian River. I've had four less days with one cohort by now than I've had with the other. I'm not sure if that's been the case here with the holiday scheduling. Um it's just been difficult to keep them in balance generally speaking. So, I want as much time with my students for regular class sessions as I can get. And you know
068at times when things bleed in that can be a frustration I think especially in times like we're in it's just a really delicate kind of balance you have to really manage. So you're saying the option is to keep January 29th but to move one of the parent teacher conference days. No, I'm saying if if you think that we should we we could cancel January 29th if you if you feel that having the students here it's a compromise, right? So, we bring the kids into school on January 29th and the only other thing that we could do, we could make a calendar change at the next board meeting to have school in session on that day, not have the professional development. But at the same time, my other recommendation would be to move the March uh
069parent teacher conferences to a Monday or Thursday. My recommendation would be to probably just move it back to the Thursday. And now you have a balanced schedule. But then again, the caveat is I have no idea what the weather's going to do between now and the end of the, you know, the snow season or flooding or whatnot could happen. So, we could end up with another uh situation where it's even somewhat off now and we try to balance it and then we get weather that falls on, you know, Tuesday, Friday anyway. And so, school's canceled that day anyway. That's inevitable in some respect. I like the compromise. I have to agree. other thoughts about compromise. Compromise is fine. Um I bet the administration whatever you guys think that you should be doing for your staff
070could get presented as calendar change at the next meeting. You said so the calendar change then would be and we can take a closer look in case some weather event happens between now and then. But what what I think I'm hearing everyone say is to compromise that the kids would come to school on January 29th and that the um March 12th would move perhaps to March 11th, but that the May 21st day stays as is because we already have work planned uh for our diversity that that we need to get working on. And that that's something that we can't change. And that's a great time to point toward that topic anyway. your mind is better focused on kind of a a freshness and openness heading that direction that's a great time to put that all
071together. So I wouldn't change that whatsoever. So that way I just want to make it clear because if this is the direction that we're going in then Stacy and the professional development team will you know kind of stop their work for the 29th and we will need to notify our parents that school is in session that day and I don't want to wait until the next board meeting to do that because then it doesn't give parents it's actually going to be beneficial for parents because they're not going to have to worry in some cases about child care but it's still nice to have them know in case they've made other plans. Yeah. Why don't you do something else? So, that sounds like sounds like we're all in agreement on that. All right. So, moving on.
072Since the last board meeting at the beginning of December, the metrics have changed for the the cluster zones. And I just want to go over that again because things have changed in our community significantly since the last board meeting with the positivity rate. And so on December 10th, Governor Cuomo announced the new metrics for the microcluster zones. And I had talked about them before with the yellow, the orange, and the red zones and what that meant. But I want to go back over that because they've actually changed now. So, a red zone will be implemented when a region after the cancellation of elective procedures and a 50% increase in hospital capacity is 21 days away from reaching 90% hospital capacity on the 7-day growth rate. And I'm bringing this up because hospital capacity was not
073part of what we talked about back in early December, but it now is. And so then when you go into an orange zone, a geographic area will be eligible to be in an orange zone if it has a 4% positivity rate, a 7-day average over the last 10 days and it is located in a region that has reached 85% hospital capacity. And alternatively, a geographic area may also become an orange zone if the state department of health determines the region's rate of hospital admissions is unacceptably high and a zone designation is appropriate to control the rate of growth. And finally, a yellow zone. A geographic area will be eligible to enter a yellow zone if it has a 3% positivity rate, 7-day average, over the past 10 days and is in the top 10% in
074the state for hospital admissions per capita over the last week and is experiencing week-overweek growth in daily admissions. And I bring that up because there's also been some more changes. Um, there's no longer a requirement for schools located in the red or orange zones to close in-person instruction. Schools in these zones may remain open for in-person instruction subject to strict adherence to this guidance and any directives issued by the Department of Health. If you saw the report, I believe it was actually yesterday with a 7-day average. Um, in our area it was 9.19%. Which on the old way we looked at things that would put us in that red zone and that would have closed schools. But then the guidance changed and now schools can stay open in that. But even in the next set
075of guidance that came out in the red zone, you would be required to do testing. But now they're adding that other piece with a hospital capacity along with it. So that's why even though the numbers have spiked in our community, that is why we're not designated yet a yellow, orange, or a red zone. However, if things change, and they have been changing, you've seen the daily reports that that uh Tina as our CO 19 coordinator and I have been coordinating even throughout the holiday getting those positive cases. as they change, we keep an eye on things of what that impact is to the district. And that's why we've been able to keep the doors open because it hasn't had significant impact with, you know, our teaching staff um andor student population that we've been able
076to maintain coming in. And we also know that having kids in school is is better for them. And really, it's it's a it's better for the entire community if we can keep our kids in school. But we need to be thoughtful right now because the community rate has spiked and if we start to look at the hospital capacity and something happens there then the next thing that we need to think about is the testing if we get put into a zone. So a few weeks prior to the Christmas vacation we sent out a survey and within a few hours we had enough um we only had to put the survey out for parents staff. It's not a it's not a optional uh testing. If if we need to test in schools, then employees are expected,
077you know, to be tested a certain percentage. But with students, there's a little bit of flexibility because you do need the parents to volunteer to have their children um have the testing done. And there are a lot of different testing options that you can choose from. You can have students be tested at their own doctor's office. Um, we have also reached out to one of our partners that we already have in the school district at our schoolbased clinics, the North North Country Family Health, and they've offered to partner with us that if we do need to do testing, that would be another option for a parent. So, they could take their child to their own provider, they could take it to a state testing center. Uh, the child could go to a state testing center.
078Uh, same with employees, but then we also offer the option of an in-house testing with the North Country Family Health Center. and we've not only um got that ready to go, we have the permission slip should we need to activate that, that permission slip is ready to go. So that first survey or permission was to see if we actually had the number because back when we did that that we were at a point where if we got into a zone, we knew that we needed the testing to be done. And now with the hospital rate being tied to the cluster zones, it's actually, you know, just given us time to make sure that we have everything in place. If we need to activate it, we can. So, while we're working on on all of that,
079we've also been working on a proactive approach to take a look at those students who have been on remote only since September and taking a look at having them, if they're interested, coming back to school. And it's kind of awkward right now because we're talking about two totally different scenarios, but that's kind of the world we live in right now. And we have to be prepared for if this option happens, what does this look like? But if the positivity rate and things start to take a decline and and we can get our kids back into school, we told our parents and our community that we would take a look in January and then at the start of the second semester, we would bring our students back. So Stacy uh created a survey for our K6
080families um and put that out and we have very small numbers at each grade level that um have have wanted to have their kids come back to school. So, I think you extended the deadline until tomorrow um just because we didn't get the return and we want to make sure that we're very thoughtful about this because the numbers that we have right now would allow us to bring the students back of those parents that are interested and we would actually, you know, for example, I'll take North. There are four students per grade level. We could take those four students at each grade level and they would they would have a new teacher at the start of the second semester. Um, but that would still be the class numbers would be still very appropriate for the
081in school, the the hybrid kids and it would drop the remote numbers down. The remote numbers really are pretty high um and pretty close to to maxing out. So, it would still drop their numbers but it would keep the class sizes really comparable both with inperson and hybrid. So, and looking at that, I think you know that's a thought to consider. But as we consider that thought and Mr. Fairchild put one out for the high school tonight um to see how many of those students would be, you know, willing to come have their parents send them back to school. We're going to take a look at kind of two approaches right now. Here's what happens if we can have students come back to school and what this is going to look like and and work
082with families who are ready to have their kids come back to school. But then taking a look at the positivity rate in our community and and really thinking about the safety. You know, we we may have to go fully remote at some point and there's a plan for that. You know, Stacy worked with the instructional piece and we put that out um before the holidays even started. So, we worked through all of the scenarios and we'll continue to update you as we go through. But, do you have any questions? because the guidance changes so much and so often that it can be overwhelming. Any questions on that before I move on? Give you a few um updates. The pool it should be ready to go on Monday. So, as long as we're able to keep
083moving forward, um the the first sport that will return is the boys modified and varsity swimming. There's a video that the athletic director has created that that outlines how things will look and that again is contingent upon two things. That we still are able to move forward and two the pool has been through some minor leaks and each leak got into something a little bit differently over the vacation. So the pool should be up and ready to go by Monday. Um unless something and he's explained that as he puts the video out to his parents. But I would commend George Emeridge for the plan that he has created along with working with the swim coaches Tom Graven and Kathy Defoe. They have been so thoughtful in their approach to bringing this the sport back um
084if you will from what things will look like in the locker room to being out on the pool deck and how many students will be swimming in a lane. It's a maximum of two. And if you're not in the water, you're going to be expected to wear a mask. every student will be assigned a number um and and when we first start back they they're actually going to try to start with some drylands on Thursday and Friday. Um they'll be given a number and that's the that's their number space in the locker room and then there's a number out on the deck with their kickboard will have the same number. The the area where there's a chair where they'll be sitting has that same number. So, they're trying to keep kids in the same space
085um and really laying out the rules. They should have a schedule if things continue to go well by the end of this week. Again, subject to change because the North Country, we're all kind of in the state of not really being sure of what's going to happen. But if things go through, um their swim meetings will be virtual. So, you know, Copen or if they swim against Carthage, Carthage will swim in their pool, Watertown will swim in their pool. will have a paper what I call a paper me. They'll merge their times and then they'll they'll go from there. We are not asking um or not allowing or permitting spectators as we start this out um because we want this to be successful for our athletes, but we're going to stream everything virtually so that
086all all of our spectators will actually have probably better seats and a little bit cooler than they would if they had to come into the pool area. So, um, that seems that I I think he's laid out that plan really well. Finishing out the, uh, fall inter murals. He budgeted a little bit over, um, $8,500, and that's right about where it came in on budget. I know that a lot of kids got to participate in a lot of inter murals, and I heard great feedback on that. they'd like to start once swimming gets, you know, up and running, they'd like to start a spring inter murals because we're still in flux with all of the other spring sports at this point. And I just wanted a little bit of feedback to make sure that um
087you know, Josh, that we have money in the budget to be able to do that in the sporting budget because we've not had to spend it on a lot of other things and that we earmark another little clump of money for continuing on with the inter murals. I think we'd be able to do that and I just want to make sure that the board was in favor that we continue on with that as long as we are able to. I think it's a great idea. Works so well in the fall and the kids enjoyed it. If there's nothing available in spring, might as well do it. Okay. So, I'll let George know tomorrow. We'll move forward on that. And then um over between the last board meeting and today, the office of the attorney general
088approved all of the documents that were required and they've all been posted on our website. Um and so that was, you know, a good way to end 2020 and begin this year so we can start our work. Uh Stacy is probably going to give you an update. I see something here on our diversity, equity, and inclusion and our book study. So I'll I'll hold that for her so I don't steal her thunder. And other than that, um, the last thing I want to talk about is that, uh, Randy Richardson will be at our next board meeting to talk about the Hall of Achievement finalist, um, that he'll be announcing at that meeting. So, pretty exciting. Finally getting to that part, which is awesome. Thank you, assistant superintendent for instruction. Um, I gave you two documents.
089Um the first one uh is just this month's instructional update. Um and the reason I gave that to you is uh primarily for the first page. There's a lot of concern around COVID related learning loss. Um but doing some comparisons to where our students were last year. Um and and this data is from the fall. We'll update this again at the end of the month when we do our second I Ready diagnostic screener. Um but at the very top is some reading data for our K4 students. Um, and you can see, I know a small print. I apologize, but I wanted to include all of the levels for you. Um, it delineates the percentage of our students who in November, um, on November 23rd of 2019, um, if you go over to the right, the
090percentage and number of students who are emergency readers, um, which would be two levels below where they should be or more, at risk, um, which is one grade level below, and then either proficient or above level. Um and then the same data provided from our I Ready screener for math. Um the top bars being from 2019 2020 in the fall and then uh the bottom bar being from 2020 2021 in the fall. And so you can see that there's not a significant change, you know, across the board. Um a little bit of movement in math. Um but that was what research has suggested anyway based on past summer learning loss um studies. So things to kind of keep track of and and be on the watch for. But um overall I think our teachers should
091feel confident in the work that they've been doing that our students really haven't lost um huge amounts of instruction and and growth that we would normally anticipate them to see in a non-pandemic circumstance. So um great work by both parents and and staff to um keep students moving forward. Um, in the back of the instructional update is a reference to this book study. And I brought this um tonight to share with you in the event that any of you may be interested in participating. Um, the books are not yet here on campus. Um, but this is going to be an in-person uh study. were limited limited sorry limiting it to 10 persons um because of co 19 but we felt that the sensitivity of the topic warranted um in person meetings rather than trying to
092have these types of conversations over zoom um and we're going to be digging into the book blind spot hidden biases of good people um a lot of great resources out there around this so those are the dates for the meetings um and if you are interested just um send me an email and let me know and I'll make sure that you have a copy of the book. Right now I'm participating um for the next month or so in an asynchronous online course um on rights, respect and responsibility. Uh this is sponsored by Jennese Valley Boseies um on sexual health education for K12. This is um we did some work on this a couple of years ago with some elementary teachers during the summer really talking about um appropriate terminology when referencing body parts and how
093does this connect to um sexual abuse awareness um and things that we may have training on as teachers but things have changed a little bit over time in terms of you know how students reference things etc. So um really grasping um consent and how that contributes to rights, respect and responsibility for students um and how we as educators um can really look at our curriculum in depth. So provide some great resources. I'm hoping that that will springboard some conversations particularly for our K6 staff to maybe revamp um some of the health education curriculum that we have in place which really hasn't been updated in many many years. Um and a couple of our counselors actually brought that to our attention too. So um hoping that that will give us a good jump start on that.
094With the Empire State after school program, we did suspend movement on that grant and and all programming as of June 2020. Um as of this week, we are officially in claim submission status, which hopefully means that we'll see some um reimbursements come through um in the next couple of months. I want to thank Stephanie Eldridge, Peg Glazerchuk, Heather Keane, and Monica Saboro for contributing to a video uh that they were willing to be recorded for um share their classrooms, share their information. Uh these are teachers who have been fully remote since the beginning of the year. and to help um in the event that we all were going to go fully remote and if we have to um there's a 25minute video that they put together with the help of Mike Shaneley um who also
095I need to thank extensively for the work he did on this um on best practices for remote learning tips and tricks that they've learned in the first semester of this year because it's a little bit different than March through June. March through June, we were surviving. Um, but this was a year of intentionality with virtual learning. Um, so there were things that they had to set up and put in place to make sure um that we had um ready to go as of September. So they've learned a lot and they were willing to share. So I really appreciate them taking the time to do that. And the last um piece that I have for you, this will come to you um in a resolution um at the next meeting, but we've been working um and
096talking to departments at the high school over the past couple of years about flexibility and course structures and how to engage students um and look at how we define our courses a little bit differently. Um, and so the English department agreed to tackle this for the 2122 school year. And instead of all students taking English 10, which is typically a survey course, um, English 10 will be offered, as will English 10en enriched, but we will also be offering four semesterl long courses of study um that offers students um, an opportunity to go more in depth with things that might be of interest to them. So, the courses coming to the high school in the fall will be oral literature, coming of age, band books and exploration of censorship and masters of horror. um the English
097department conversation um the conversation that we've had. We're hopeful that we'll start with the 10th grade um next year and if it goes very well, we will move to 11th and 12th grade in 2223 and then tackle um the conceptualization of this in practice with the ninth graders for the following year. Nth grade being just a little bit more complex because we have the teaming aspect built into um the other high school. But we're really hopeful that this will offer some additional opportunities for engagement with students and getting them excited about the course opportunities that they have to take um with greater diversity among those and that's it. All right. Assistant superintendent for personnel and student services. So um of course I going to continue the conversation on co just to give uh the board
098some numbers some data. Um, we currently have uh 17 staff members under quarantine. Uh, my assistant, Lisa W, she keeps a spreadsheet. Stacy, Patty, and I uh tune into that often uh to see where we are. So, we have 17 right now. Uh the number of cases has grown uh have grown over over the the holiday break. Um we had seven cases over the holiday break and we culminated we put all those into one letter yesterday to keep everybody appraised of that information. Just to give a breakdown, we've had 40 cases in the district uh since the beginning of school. Uh we've had 17 on-site students, nine uh virtual students or online students, and 14 teachers and staff testing positive for a total of 40. Uh so our numbers, everybody continues to do a very
099good job of maintaining social distancing here, wearing the masks. Uh our administrators have been reminding staff to, you know, eat in separate areas, simple things that could really mitigate the spread. Uh right now though, we're dealing with that community spread. So as the holidays um ended, people are coming back, but we had three today, two staff members and one student. So we'll we'll continue to keep everybody updated. We do the report every day online report card. Uh so that's a robust way to to keep track of everything. And of course, Patty uh puts out a letter uh when when we do have a case or two or three or four. Uh so we we continue to to communicate very clearly. Um, I continue to commend the nurses on the job that they're doing and and
100the staff in general. Uh, we met with them uh in December. We also met with our school doctors. I did talk to one of our medical directors today just about that hospital piece and and our hospital uh uh Samaritan. Um, you know, the numbers are growing there in terms of capacity. So, we're going to keep a close eye on that, too. And we have a nice network of communication and resources that we use. So, uh, we're meeting with them coming up again. also meeting with PPS staff uh six K through six and seven through 12. Uh Stacy and I had the opportunity to meet with our tutoring coordinator yesterday. We're going to do something a little bit different with our tutors um who were originally previously at Massie. Uh they've gone virtual now. Uh they
101had a case load of students. Uh those students will be falling off the case load. So we're going to remarket our tutors and we're actually going to have two tutors at the high school uh who work with students, one in PLA, one in math. They'll be on site. Uh there's an auditorium study hall that occurs uh throughout the day. So those tours will be placed strategically there. They'll be housed there. And then we'll open up some opportunities for ELA sessions and math sessions for our K through six population. Actually, uh K through eight. So we're looking to to rethink that a little differently and maximize the use there. So we're giving trying to give our students lots of opportunities uh to get extra help uh in this different time. So uh that's a a brief
102overview. Uh we're also, you know, we have we have some openings. We have some people who have had to relocate. So, we're going to be doing interviews for that uh coming up here in the next week or two. And of course, you'll see that uh coming up in upcoming board reports school business manager. Yes. So Beth had mentioned that we received the construction manager RFPs and have a resolution for you with the tax meeting and recommendation there. And going along with that, I also narrowed down the proposed future capital project list, but that's still going to need to be reviewed and revised by the new construction manager um just because we need to make sure we have the costs accurate so we can have a solid number that we're shooting for. some of the craziness
103that CO has created, the resolutions that you guys approved earlier on the taxes that were postmarked prior to December 1st, some of those are from October 7. So, you could just see how the mail system and the holiday season and co and everything is just kind of playing together to wreak havoc all across the board. Luckily, may have any issues cashing the checks, but took two months to run, so it's kind of crazy. We're up over half a million dollars now as far as co expenses go since inception since the March time frame. A lot of that related to tech. The biggest thing right now is a 2122 budget focus. Everything we're seeing is pretty hopeful of state aid remaining flat. But that is still a reduction of sorts because you still see the CPI
104increasing 1.2% over the last two months or 12 months. So, you we're still losing purchasing power there. There's also no signs that there's going to be another pandemic adjustment. That's largely going to depend on how the legislation how we receive stimulus funds get those there's overlays on those the same way or state given or we would like the way it happened last time. and tax camp still has some tweaking, but it still it still looks so it's going to be very similar to last year. I guess some of the numbers still need to be adjusted, pilots, whatnot, but right now I think the max levy limits right around that 2.28%. A lower levy limit than what we had last year, but would still be achievable for the actual pending. Everything else? Yeah, that's that's okay.
105All right, so there are some upcoming dates. Our next policy meeting is on the 15th. Buildings closed on the 18th for Martin Luther King Jr. Our next meeting is the 19th at 6 PM. Um, and that's about it for that. Um, just as a reminder, we you do have in front of you a clean copy of the superintendent evaluation and Michelle has also uploaded a PDF that is fillable up on the board only site. So, please take some time before our next meeting on the 19th and we're just going to do a cursory six month review on Patty's work. So, if you could get her goals in front of you while you do the review, um please bring that with you and then we'll have a discussion at that time about her work for the
106last six months based on her goals that she provided to us. And if you misplace the copy of her goals, I'm sure she can provide them or put them off maybe put them up on the board site. We do that and then that way they're available if you don't have that paper copy. Um, anything else? Or rather, I'll start with you. I have nothing. Um, only in thinking of the change of calendar for March, would it make more sense to wait until we see what the snow season does rather than make that change next meeting? I mean wait at least through January if not part of February before we go ahead and make that switch because as we stated two snow days could so that just means an extra resolution that we're going to have
107to do in February or early March if everyone else is okay with that then that makes a lot of sense actually a little more time so we just do one calendar change now and if we go back through the history of the district we can tell you there have been a lot of calendar changes is over time. Can't be surprised by that. That's a great suggestion. Thank you. Well, so this is the nice part about going last is I get to do the little good news bit. So, you know, looking back at the the minutes, I know I had given you all a heads up about something that the wind ensemble was was working on. And um I I just have to give a shout out to Andrea Wish, Mike Shanley, and um Jeff Wood
108for making an amazing short video happen um that was played for the Rotary Club. And if you think about the logistics of band members being some of them there on Monday and Thursday and some on Tuesday and Friday, Mike worked his magic and there was this concert where they were all playing, but the visual I hope was really impactful to the members of the club because they were just on this the high school stage, you know, a chair here and a chair there and it was like this is what music looks like in the age of co but they managed to come out with three or four holiday songs and I had tears in my eyes. So um but but they just did an incredible job to make that happen. They did. And actually, I
109forgot to mention the National Honor Society uh went virtual at the last minute and I think Shanley did an incredible job along with high school administration and staff to pull that off for the kids. Um but that also was it it was very well done on very short notice. Mike is a videographer for us. What is what is his actual title? He's an AV tech at the high school B. Very cool. The new Mr. Town. Yep. Yeah, the new Mr. Town. Okay, cool. All right, I will take a motion to adjourn, Susie. And a second. All in favor? I first.