001[Music] okay you're gonna leave somebody take that mic away okay mrs campesano i need a request for the motion to approve the minutes of the following meeting of august 17 2021 pete diane all those in favor that's everyone i need a motion to adjust the order of the agenda and to approve the consent agenda kathy all those in favor that's everyone okay i'd like to welcome you all to the meeting board of education requests encourages the participation of residents this is a board of education meeting as the board president i am the chairperson of this meeting and any statements should be addressed to me and no one else our current policy is a total of 15 minutes three minutes per resident statement time frame because so many residents are here tonight we're willing to combine
002both statements of residence sections of the agenda and extend the total time frame to 30 minutes still adhering to the three minutes per resident also as a courtesy we request if your statement has previously been made by someone else that you allow another resident to speak who may make a different statement i need a motion now to combine both statements of resident sections of the agenda and extend the total time frame to allow residents to give statements for a total of 30 minutes three minutes per resonance see diane all those in favor that's everyone thank you dr family all right thank you mrs campesano first i would like to start off by uh thanking mr fiore mr montemorano miss van loo mr mack ms hoffman mrs chaplin and all the other administrators teachers staff and
003faculty members who work together to develop and implement a wonderful summer school program the program ended about a week ago and we quickly shifted to reopening and getting our schools ready for the start of the school year we are truly so excited and so happy to welcome all of our students and our staff back later on this week last night our board of education conducted our required building walkthroughs our buildings look absolutely amazing a huge thank you to our buildings and grounds department for all of your hard work and dedication as a quick recap representatives tonight are um with us here from ecg um just a little recap for everyone we have gone through a process of interviewing energy performance companies uh mrs sorakis miss campesano mission may mr velazquez and i have conducted interviews
004along with obviously representatives from ecg of energy performance companies and as previously planned months ago tonight we have representatives from ecg and from our proposed finalist esg to present our proposed preliminary plans for an energy performance project for our school district at no additional cost to our residents in addition tonight as we do every year mr payne will provide an overview of our revised code of conduct and i of course will be highlighting the proposed reopening plans that have sent out to our families so this is all i have for this section of the agenda mrs campesano and then in a couple of minutes and we'll continue with all of our reports thank you dr family statements of school administrators association mr o'leary thank you i wasn't tall enough for you feel bad speaking song
005go ahead speaking with my back to you guys i'm sorry um i just want to thank all um board members central office administrators principals assistant principals directors teachers all staff members who uh participated on the reopening committees this year there was an awful lot of work done this summer um behind the scenes preparing for the opening of school and uh just a huge thank you we're looking forward to uh showcasing that work and welcoming kids back on thursday so again thank you to everybody who participated and um thank you mr o'leary there teaches association no statement cse no statement student association no statement pta counsel representatives no statements back to family okay so at this point let me just make sure that this i would like to invite we have mr mike ryan senior account
006executive from esg with us tonight and mr larry bertrez i may have destroyed your last name i apologize there chief operator a chief operations officer from ecg if you could please come over to the mic good evening everyone thank you for having us thank you dr charlie thank you miss capizano and the entire board of education and the community of west babylon high school district uh i represent the ecg group uh my organization is responsible for representing the school district in the process that dr charlie had explained here about energy performance contracts so we've assisted the school district with identifying and evaluating different opportunities in terms of performing an energy performance contract and this allows the school district to make millions of dollars of capital improvements at no cost to the community or to the
007school district all of the costs are paid through and by all of the futures energy savings that are performed so our role is really to help assist the school district in evaluating different opportunities and vetting out different energy savings companies or eskos that are going to be able to perform those services and perform that work over the course of a period of time next license so to date you know what we've done is we did a preliminary assessment um several months ago and actually then issued a request for proposal or an rfp to the various organizations that perform the services we went through a process of evaluating and vetting and interviewing them with the school board and the key players in the organization in order to determine what would be the best opportunity and provide
008the best value to the school district and to the community since then what we've done is we've selected the energy systems group as the preferred vendor that would be able to perform these services in our objective here today is to allow them to present their proposal and the details of that that project with that i'd like to turn it over to michael ryan with the energy systems thank you very much larry and thank you to the district for allowing us to present tonight so again as stated i'm michael ryan from energy systems group also you'll see us up there we're also psg for esg for sure okay so just a quick introduction of our company a company was formed about 26 years ago with the sole purpose of performing doing these type projects energy performance
009contracting a company has done 3.5 billion dollars to date of energy energy performance contracting projects like this one k-12 schools is our core business and that's really what we focus on our team works out of the wrong controller office you know here on the line so what what we do in our approach to these projects is to improve the learning environment of the school districts as larry said at no additional cost to the district it will be funded out of future energy savings so we look to incorporate our projects with any capital capital work that's going on we try to you know understand the school's goals and needs and you know and include all of that in our projects our projects are all done as a turnkey design build no rest of the district have
010crossed over runs that's all on us our risk we also like to include the community the staff students currently we in a lot of districts we utilize our project for as an educational component absolutely no that's a great question thank you dr family thank you very much thank you so much and we look forward to working with you so basically from here as was just described right we are um looking to you know proceed um with energy systems group right for them to do this whole comprehensive energy audit right because again this was very preliminary in terms of the overall review um and then based on that again the specific scope of work right um and all those other details and we would be coming back to the board and then reviewing those those details
011with the board right so it will be a process of multiple meetings right multiple updates um so based on in terms of today's meeting we would be authorizing you to to move forward in that direction again we look forward to working with you okay and as a district we're absolutely excited um to really move forward with the with energy energy performance contract right that includes the items that you described beforehand so thank you okay i'm going to ask mr payne okay um let me just uh check on the uh live feed piece while i pull this while i share this screen looks like i do have the screen here of the live feed joey could we just double check are we on we are back on okay great thank you all right so mr payne
012uh is our assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and as we do every year every school district is required to have an overall review of their code of conduct and make necessary adjustments every year so this is an overview of the proposed um minor adjustments to our code contact so mr payne take it away thank you dr farrelly board of education each year as dr farley mentioned we review our code of conduct we have a large group of teachers students administrators different representatives from the district and this year was no exception we had i think over 20 people on this committee we met at least i think three times so there are a lot of changes if the board uh i think in front of you you have a copy with an unusually large number
013of staples in the front that's because i can't work the copier you'll see that the code of conduct you have and the one entirely hopefully can put on the screen has uh many areas in red highlighted and those are the changes that we made and i'll go over those tonight if there's any strikethroughs or in blue that's where we omitted and i think we really didn't omit too much from this i'll go over them um but for the majority we added most of what we added deals with sel social emotional learning some restorative disciplinary practices and a few technology issues of course uh anything that the committee had mentioned and it was voted on by the committee we did add so there are some pieces in here that we just added based on what the
014committee had asked and anything that we went through here tonight of course all the building administrators have covered and talked about and made it to this final copy so wait i'm sorry that's okay how is that still up there give me one second so it looks like i'm sharing the code of contact with everyone at home but not here one second yes so for the board of education and we'll wait till it comes up on the screen we're going to start right at page three which is immediately after the table of contents and on that at the very top you'll see uh code code of conduct it's policy number 5300 and in the past it was called the code of conduct but one of the suggestions is making it called the code of conduct character
015and support as we go down you'll start to see uh and this is probably the largest change we made a lot of this is the sel tenets the social emotional learning tenants this is probably the biggest change uh all in red on page three four and five into definitions which i'll talk about in just a minute uh these basically talk about student support effective and engaged in instruction and the ability for students to learn from their mistakes understand what they could have done differently manage emotions set goals you'll see this several times throughout the code of conduct but these first two pages of the additions that are made really focus on those seo tenants the idea here is that efforts should be made to correct student behavior through interventions that are accountable and restorative as
016opposed to just disciplinary and that's you're going to hear that time and time again as i go through it so i can go through these slower and kind of read each page but i'm going to basically cover sections and then invite the board of education of course to ask questions mr payne as you're going through that and i think you already are doing that right just summarize in terms of each of the areas since we don't have it in terms of on the screen for the audience members thank you so on page five uh section two it's definitions and this was another large area of additions not so much changes but additions where we added just the definitions what you'll see in educational regulations or in other educational uh publications this is just literally like
017a glossary so if you see something like academic misconduct detention bus misconduct it just gives a definition of what you're going to see later on in the actual code of conduct we probably added at least i'd say 30 different um vocabulary terms that are in the code of content to make it easier for people to get an idea of what these definitions were so rather than read over them i just invite the board to cover uh from pages five through nine all of those are definitions by the way some of these definitions were current were in our current code of context so not all of these are new we did however arrange them alphabetically so it's easier to go through them in the past they were just added as they were added and they were
018not alphabetical so now i put them all in red because they're alphabetically ordered in obviously so people can reference them easier we then move on to page 10. keep going mr payne you got it i feel bad for doctor and here we see um student responsibility section b we added three parts to this it was uh it's one through fifteen you'll see 13 14 and 15 are additions and some of this is technology based right so uh some of the student responsibilities is the responsibility of students to attend school every day and have chromebooks charged and ready for instruction obviously uh we saw a lot of this with remote instruction and with hybrid instruction where it was important for students to come to school with chromebooks ready to go work to develop skills in or
019i see uh assistance to manage emotions that's an sel tenant and then a reflective piece be open to active participation resolving conflicts to restorative process so those are three editions on page 12 just two pages ahead we added under uh district employees their responsibilities is to assist students in coping with peer pressure and emerging personal social and emotional problems again a social emotional tenant that's just added to the list of things that employees are expected to do for our kids i'm going to take a big skip ahead to 16 and this was one that was added uh under much debate i might add under the dress code and the dress code is always iffy one to to talk about because everyone has different opinions as i mentioned we did have two high school students on
020the committee so one of the pieces of the dress code was not to include hats bandanas or hoods so those are against the dress code or other headgear in school of classroom except for medical religious or educational reasons uh that was a modification of what was on there before and we we went back and forth in this this is a tough one it's won that uh and haven't done this for five years we probably will address every single year i'm kate mr chain did you address anything in that particular group about um wearing of colors we did we did spend time talking about colors and particularly as it relates to bandanas and believe it or not not to change the subject we spent a lot of time talking about flip flops we made no changes
021to those sections but we did spend time talking on page 18 is another tech piece and i think we're all coming to the realization that with all of the changes we've seen because of covert and remote instruction there's some necessary components of technology that needed to be added so of course on page 18 the very top under uh engaging in conduct that is disruptive for students not to do uh logging on to another person's computer account obtaining unauthorized access to or interfering in any means with their user system network service or account essentially breaking into someone's account was formally added to the code of conduct which the committee agreed was a good choice you'll see on page 20 similarly under section g students should not engage in the following forms of academic misconduct which includes
022number seven the electronic theft of information which of course relates to technology and signing on to chromebooks and other computers uh google accounts things like that we're going to skip ahead to page 30. this is under uh students with disabilities alternative instruction um one section that was added under section 9 alternative instruction and this is something that comes right from special education tenants and laws is that if a student is suspended that the uh educational process that's that we're offering to them should be substantially equivalent to the student's regular classroom program also further down section 10 uh the addition of several uh topics under for the purposes of section of code of conduct the following definitions apply things like bips which are behavior intervention plans disciplinary change of placements uh manifestation review manifestation team uh
023school day and then substantial body bodily injury was added as definitions only not to suggest anything else other than the district's interpretation of what those are if you skip to page 33 the district's committee on special education shall we add an entire section here and a lot of this is sel as well as special education suggestions and some of them law um but essentially talking about um an interim um alternative educational setting if a student has to be removed from their current setting what are the criteria by which it's done and where shall they go um different disciplinary consequences that might um interfere with an iep or an individualized education plan and what the responsibilities of a committee for special education or csc would need to do in order to make sure that we meet
024the needs of the children uh it ends with the committee on special education may consider any unique set of circumstances on a case-by-case basis when determining whether to order a change in placement for a child with a disability who violates the code of conduct character and support i'm going to skip ahead to page 41 and this covers uh this is under section 14 public conduct on school property prohibited conduct this is one where uh the committee added about 18 different things uh so you can go on that uh it's probably more than 18. that's on 41 and it carries over to page 42. uh and this was really the opinions of the committee i can't tell you this is any one thing there's things of course that deal with cigarettes tobacco drugs acts of violence
025um animals on campus language that's profane uh engage in lewd behavior um obstructing other people's ability to carry on um with their day fight evidence of an illegal act or violation the fame another uh individual uh cell user distribute obscene material inappropriate use of share a prescription over the count of drugs initiate a warning or a fire or the catastrophe with litter on school a property and engage in misconduct while using technology so i do want to give you a few minutes to go over those and answer any questions there's nothing there i think that's controversial it's just uh there's no necessarily rhyme or reason each one was addressed as people brought them up and with that those are all of the changes suggested by the committee to the board of education in the 2122
026west avalon school district code of content and go over it again oh um asking the board of education to consider um allowing us an adjustment um a one-time adjustment to our selection classification policy specific to the fall dates so mr hanley can you please review the request certainly after discussing the athletic placement process with mr howard at our athletic director this school year through the covet 19 pandemic the typical timeline for screening our junior high students to determine their readiness to compete at the jv or varsity level before the 2021 fall season was disrupted as a result of the athletic schedule start of the season the junior high sports season etc what we would like the board to consider in policy is to extend the date uh uh permissible for students to request the athletic
027placement process typically in the policy it's 4 15 to 6 15. what we are requesting is if you can extend the deadline to provide those junior high students the opportunity for this fall season the rest of the policy the procedures the guidelines would still need to be adhered to and the student athlete will have the opportunity to be classified if meeting all the other requirements all the other dates for the rest of the seasons for the winter and the spring season would remain unchanged and say yes thank you very much obviously second time discussion i'm sorry did you have so sorry yes sorry about that okay all right so in terms of the last um reports a couple next piece is update um grant report update just to share with our board of education community
028that our state and federal grant applications have been completed and have been submitted for approval big thank you to mr payne and everyone else involved in that process so these are all the grant applications that um we have to file and these are the ones that we are going to utilize to fund all of the enhanced academic and social emotional programs that we have been describing in addition to our upk um program so those are again completed submitted um to the states and um of course now then we'll wait for formal approval next is i'd like to review the letter that i sent out to our families highlighting the following main aspects of our proposed school reopening plans so first and foremost of course that we want to ensure that there is little to no
029disruption to our in-person academic social emotional supports for our students and for our staff so our proposed reopening plans which we also talked about during the last board meeting highlighted pre-k through 12th grade in-person instruction for all of our students right so no more hybrid program um no more full remote all of our academic supports all of our social emotional supports in person our students would be seated three feet apart in classrooms which actually our board of education yesterday when we did our walkthroughs you saw our classroom setups pretty typical right to pre-coded worlds in terms of the setup in the classrooms and in terms of lunch music and pe approximately six feet apart in those areas at the elementary level we will transition our students will go from one class to another meaning to
030their special area classes to their lunch and recess if you were falling last year the special areas came to the classroom so our students will go back to how we were beforehand traveling over to their special areas at the junior high school and senior high school hallway lockers will be issued and utilized by our junior high school and senior high school students i did hear obviously we did have our orientation programs run so parents students don't worry you'll get the hang of it in a couple of days in terms of that opening up of the locker our tutorials and our clubs will be offered and they will be offered in person so we're very excited about that athletics is in full swing you've seen them practicing this summer those all of our athletic programs will
031be offered in accordance to section 11 schedule please stay tuned go on our website look at our schedule come and watch our students play we are very very excited um to have the fall season start soon parent and employee health questionnaire that we had in place beforehand is no longer required at this time we last year had daily temperature checks uh we will not have that in place anymore we will do periodic temperature checks throughout the week continued emphasis of course on hand washing and good health practices that will be the case you know throughout district wide continued enhanced building cleaning protocols by our buildings and grounds department that we established last year and worked really well we will continue our nurses office health protocols having a separate you know second room there and obviously
032constant communication with our health professionals and our parents we are enhancing our social emotional mental health supports we've talked about this beforehand we're hiring additional we have hired i should say additional um social workers and a sixth grade guidance counselor to provide additional in-person mental health supports we sent out parent surveys and we'll be reaching out to those students day one we are also very excited we're planning on extending the day at the elementary level providing opportunities for families who are interested for extended day academic supports that would be offered during the school year we'll be sending out information about that to families sometime during the month of september again that's for families that are interested and this would be funded through the grants the grant applications that i i just mentioned beforehand breakfast and
033lunch will continue to be provided to students at no cost to families we do have also our vending machines and those of course yes at cost you know to the families those are will be available this year for students to utilize if they would like to transportation will be running back to normal right in terms of capacity limits um with students and staff wearing masks while on the school bus covid reporting right just as we did and we transitioned to that towards the middle of the school year that will continue to be listed on our covet dashboard which is listed on our website wpschools.org and the last piece they are particularly in terms of as it relates to our reopening plan there are many other details and many variables that come into the picture is
034specifically in terms of masks i shared in this letter that new york state formally issued a mass mandate for all students staff and visitors and pre-k to 12th in terms of schools while indoors not required while outdoors earlier today and also in our q a i did include that mass breaks and we had you know very i had a great meeting today in terms of with all of our administration team and we talked about mass breaks for students in every period throughout the school day right and of course not during lunch and of course not while outdoors and you know in recess but incorporating mass breaks in every period during the day i'm going to ask mr morale if you could speak to the legal piece there in terms of masks and then that'll conclude
035my report on the reopening peace [Music] lieutenant governors who would become government announced the first thing that she would do if and when she became governor but she would require the commissioner to repeal the uh regulation that discussed on the state and that we will be required to require that school districts have enforced mandated yes that was adopted by the commissioner on the 27th of august and immediately upon her inauguration by the governor he adopted and published that regulation all school districts will be required to require that all children from the age of two years and you are prepared up in 12th grade you require to wear masks at all times when they are indoors or being transported in the school building or on the school bus that as i said was adopted by the
036commissioner and it was congregated and that's what we had at present time the uh regulation many people wonder what's the difference between a regulation and law there is no a regulation is the war and become law understandable please don't speak while the attorney is speaking thank you now if the law is violent and or the regulations of fire there are that's another in addition there are other provisions in the law for addition and additional for instance the education wall also made a part of this procedure the educational obey the war now of the school that's basically the wall tribulation of the commissioner of health finding on every public and private school in the state of new york this is the first time things have really fully applied to private schools as well as public so
037one piece thank you mr morale in terms of that um information is just to also share that um one aspect which was shared in terms of during last week's presentation and i did put out in terms of that the disruption in terms of to or the i should say yeah the disruption to the in-person instruction right as it relates specifically to closed contacts needing to or requiring to quarantine now we'll significantly just as an aside so that everyone is aware of this when we look at the number of students that quarantine last year versus students that would need to quarantine this year when there is a case that number will significantly um decrease again you know in reality with virtually little to no right you know in terms of need students needing to quarantine as
038a result of the universal use of masks piece because that exception is you know has been built in um to the close contact and quarantine information that students that school districts have to follow so with that being said for all of our families for all of our parents for all of our community members if you have any questions with regards to your child's you know the procedures that are in your school building with regards to your child's schedule you know anything that comes to mind progress um you know district offerings any of the safety procedures please please please do not hesitate to reach out i've shared in my email the chain of communication that does include all of our email addresses and all of our phone numbers i've also printed them out they are outside
039and they're also posted on our website so please again do not hesitate to reach out to one of our administrators if you have any questions with regards to your child's um school procedures or your child's program or anything really with regards to your child's overall school so with that being said mrs campus nana i'll turn it over back to you policy policy 86 35 e i need a motion to waive the discussion and move it to third prime adoption diane second he was in favor need a motion to approve to continue to follow this policy as revised policy 5300 code of conduct character and support chris second all those in favor that's everybody old business new business i would like to make a motion to amend the district policy to permit parental choice for the
040use of mascots creates paper pre-k through 12. thank you i need a second mr ebola all those in favor opposed opposed please be quiet while we do business opposed motion fails we'll now have statements of residence at this time anyone wishing to speak please get online you will be speaking for three minutes we will be timing you please give us your name and address so that we can allow everyone to speak we're going to hold you to the three minutes so please be as quick as possible if your statement is longer than that you can submit it to mr payne and they will distribute it to us thank you start on the right hi everyone my name is corey and troopy to jesus and this is my next door neighbor and we're here today because
041our youngest children got denied a bus to and from school we live on 13th street and our youngest go to sanford um we have older kids that are in seventh grade now who have gotten a bus all through the years when they went to santa pog um i actually went to santa pog myself in the same household and received a bus my mom went to santa pog and received a bus um my aunt lived in aaron's house and she received a bus um so we're just here making a friendly statement um we hope that maybe the transportation department can reconsider um we had both called them today and they had told us that last year you got a new software that said that our houses are not um five miles from santa fe um if
042you google map our houses if you do waze um if you her husband drove it with the car and from our houses to santa pog is exactly 0.5 um so we're just putting it out there hopefully you can discuss it could you could you please leave your names in address with mr payne sure go hi if you could um write a letter and share it with um actually did you leave it with mr payne or mrs burrell's right and then ultimately then that information is shared with the board and then individual situations are discussed in executive session by the board and then a response is provided back okay okay thank you first i would like to state that i'm oh sorry uh dan paletonia uh 230 through 15th street first i would like to state
043that i'm current resident taxpayer i'm not here to speak with a political agenda i'm not challenging any point of view and i am not speaking on one topic which concerns the schools or children directly i am up here to speak about what i had observed on the past meeting and actions or lack thereof taken by the board what i am here to discuss is our first amendment right to free speech i will be referencing youtube video titled doe 8 17 21. at time stamp one hour and three minutes the speaker stood up and began her contribution at 106 the boy told her she was out of time the crowd got aggressive in protest of the procedural rules set before the meeting procedures that should be respected and enforced the board offered the speaker to submit
044her paperwork for the record the crowd got more aggressive and disorderly until someone in the crowd relinquished their time and and allowed the board allowed her to finish her speaking at 1 25 the aggressive crowd attempted to silence a resident's right to free speech by yelling over them during their allotted three minutes the response by the void was not to eject the disorder but threaten closing the session in effect telling the crowd if you want to silence someone for an opposing view all you have to do is become aggressive this had now become condoned behavior within this public space and freedom of speech was no longer protected in this public square at 147 a speaker began making statements the crowd found controversial about a possible group who was organizing at the meeting within a minute
045the crowd became very aggressive seemingly a member of the board interrupted the speaker stating that she was off topic and shortly thereafter the meeting was adjourned the people who the person who was speaking was silenced freedom of speech was now stripped from the speaker and any additional speakers had been stripped of their right to speak as well what we witnessed here was the direct assault on our civil liberties free speech in west babylon you can disagree with someone you can you disagree with if someone you disagree with you can get loud aggressive and silence them in the halls of congress or supreme court someone speaks out of turn and disrupts proceedings they are ejected because the disruptors are not allowed to interrupt if the crowd or or a member of the board does not like
046what is being said is is it is against the law to silence them someone some someone during their a lot of time if a police presence is needed to secure these meetings then do so you should never silence our voices have these people removed if they are not orderly i am ashamed by your actions and as a matter as an american we deserve better from this board thank you name and address okay my name is sean farris i will not be providing my address because of my personal safety but i do live on 7th street somebody here knows my address so that's okay welcome to day 533 of 15 days to slow the spread we know because it's day 533 that the typical mask that you buy in a drugstore is not really effective in
047keeping out virus which is small enough to pass through the material those are not my words those are the words of dr anthony faucity the head of the nih and the man at the center of mass squaring has gone so far as to ask to wear two that science has not changed that science has not evolved the size of the virus has not changed and the composition of a cloth face mask or a surgical mask or an n95 mask has also not changed the virus will pass right through since it has from the beginning and we're on day 533 to 15 days to slow the spread it is clear that masks do not stop the spread of coronavirus we're still here having this conversation i think that's evidence in and of itself but i'm here
048to speak about how the representative system is supposed to work and it's failure and breakdown that we have seen here from the majority of this board of education the majority you are elected by west babylon you represent the best interests of west babylon and you answer to west babylon that is how representation is supposed to work i learned that here in west babylon now you are elected by wb you're elected by this community but recently it seems that you've been serving the best interests of albany the gentleman before the attorney spoke on behalf of the state not once not once not once did we hear anybody with the exception of two brave people on this board of education speak on behalf of the people in this room not once never did we hear about what
049the community wants never did we hear about what the children want only did we hear about what albany wants that is a failure you've heard from passionate parents you've even heard from children some of which have been moved to tears and not once have they been cited or recognized as being even a remote part of your decision-making process you've made up your minds without the community and with all due respect to the gentleman who talked about people being silenced you have essentially silenced the majority of the community by making those decisions without consulting with them no surveys no outreach just hearing us speak and doing everything that you've continued to do at the at the best wishes and intentions of albany that is a failure of the representative system now if i'm wrong and you
050haven't made a final decision although it just appears like you have then now is your chance to make me eat my words but if i'm right and you've made up your minds about this issue and so have we if we cannot change the minds of the people on the board of education then we will change the names of the people on the board of education and there may be people that are sitting in their seats here tonight who will be seating in your seats next year if that's you out there you come talk to me you got my word we will get it done you have a chance to make it right if you do congratulations if you don't you should be ashamed thank you have a good night thank you [Music] hey please hi
051how are you doing my name is vincent doherty uh i had a speech all rope but this is just this is nonsense i come in here right last time last time we had this board meeting you all had your masks off maybe one person had their mask on all of a sudden now oh your handlers tell you you have to wear a mask you put a mask on oh there you go okay take the mask off good good enjoy enjoy the fresh air enjoy the fresh air also to the attorney over here you sit here what's the matter you can't talk with your mask on but you want my kid you want my five six year old to come to school and learn with their mask on right you want them to participate with the
052mask on right you're having a hard time getting your point across with the mask but you want a five or six year old to try to learn and speak to their teachers to their friends what what is this this this is a joke this is a joke you people do not care about our kids you don't none of you with the mascot up there none of you care about our kids if you cared about our kids you would take your mask off and say look i breathe fresh air my the kids should bring fresh fresh air too this is ridiculous this is absolutely ridiculous the whole time we hear social emotional tenants social emotional programs right you guys don't care about kids the only thing you guys care about is money that's all it comes
053down to oh we're going to lose funding we're going to lose funding if we go against what they say you don't care about kids plain and simple none of you should be up there if you don't care about kids there's two guys up there who spoke up for the kids two where are the rest of you do you not have kids when you were in school did you wear a mask did you have to go through what our kids are going through right now does your kid did your kid come home with a headache daddy i got a headache i can't wear a mask dad what do you tell your kid i'm sorry honey you still have to go to school you still have to wear a mask but dad is hard to breathe oh
054the cdc says oh look there's no issue with their uh oxygen levels and stuff like that what about emotional stuff that's emotional scarring you're putting these kids on you're teaching them to be that they're dirty and you're teaching them that they don't matter you're making i don't even know what to say anymore you guys are just this is ridiculous and next year you will all be voted out every single one of you i promise you that okay thank you shame on you shame on this shame on all you thank you over here hello my name is michael fabrizio and i have a couple questions for you have any single one of you walked through these hallways in the school last year no one how many of you seen kids wear a mask all year exactly
055most kids don't like wearing masks but they're not here because they probably don't even know about it and their parents won't tell them and to be truthful have any one of you seen a teacher online schooling halfway through the year people went back we weren't wearing masks we're doing work like normal people do and guess what i went back full time i ain't wearing a mask most of the time either and it's probably going to be the same way again with most of the other kids here i haven't i gotten covered once and wasn't even from school because i went to an emergency room and i wore the mask so i would just like to say if you've seen how effective these masks are it prevents you from spreading out spreading out then coming in
056so i don't see the point most kids won't wear them this year neither will i and the thousand dollar fine i don't know where i'm getting the money from that so i don't know how the state is suing a child thank you i'm amanda ferguson um i just wanted to thank dr farrelly for the oak reopening plan i think it's wonderful masks are a done deal unfortunately the delta variant made it so that it's we can either go we can either go maskless if if you think that i should have removed people from the last meeting i'm perfectly willing to have someone who disrupts our meeting removed i've learned from last meeting so if you keep it up i will ask the security guards to remove you thank you let the woman speak the delta
057variant needed so that we can either go maskless or end up being remote a lot um i'm really sorry for everyone who feels their kids are emotionally inspired from the masks i really do feel for it my kid has sensory issues she hates wearing shoes you know she has to wear screws at school but all the emotional notices from covet are not just from the mask it's from everything and this reopening plan basically restores everything just with masks we have music we can go to the gym we can eat in the cafeteria virtually everything is restored with the maximum chances of us staying in person all year which i think everyone that one thing we can all agree on here is we want our kids to be in person if that's possible so i think
058that's wonderful um one thing that maybe we need to work on that's become apparent to me is diversity equity inclusion in school you know first my people would come home from school and say kids on her bus were saying racist or homophobic things and i said okay i think those kids maybe have some issues at home we can't fix all of that then i talked to some of my friends and they'd say they're afraid to put up a menorah or share their faith because they're just not comfortable with them they said that's not so good the last meeting i'm really glad i didn't bring my daughter with me because they were just two casually dropped apparently unnoticed transphobic comments made one by a child you know if i can choose my gender i can choose
059whether i wear a mask or not what the heck is that i should be able to bring my kid to a board of ed meeting without hearing disgusting things like that we talked about the code of conduct tonight we need to model for our kids by following that quote of conduct and meetings and it's not being professional because we're not here being paid but we need to be better better models for our kids um and if we're expecting our kids to follow that behavior we need to reinforce it in meetings so people shouldn't be talking like that good evening my name is jennifer um pete thank you john thank you um for the board i just have a couple of things that i would like to address um first and foremost as far as social
060and emotional learning yes it is the parents job i'm gonna be a little personal here i have a niece which nobody would know if you look at my niece blonde hair blonder than my hair blue eyes kid is paler than i am you ask her she happens to live in the mass piqua if you ask how a color is she is she will tell you i'm black because she is because her father is black she is one of the most well-adjusted children you would ever meet in your entire life she knows black history she knows white history my entire family background history is white do you know where she learned her black history from my family not from the school when she came home last year and started talking to my mother about martin luther
061king and started explaining how things happened my mother was beside herself she lived through that she's turned to my niece and said you're absolutely wrong my knee says but how this is what they're telling me in school my mother said because i lived through it everything that we are doing with our education now as far as teaching our children we should be teaching them the history that every parent has learned because that is the history my children they go into public when they walk past the police officers that are out there this evening they will say with respect no it doesn't matter what uniform you're wearing fire department army or otherwise thank you very much for your service thank you for protecting [Applause] as far as the mass mandate goes i i have a letter
062actually from my own attorney which i'm sure dr yearly has already uh and i'm sorry for slaughtering your last name i'm sure you've already received that or at least i hope you have if you haven't you should have it on your desk um when you're done if you would leave a copy of it with mr payne absolutely no problem at all i'm also going to leave something else with mr peen i just want to know are any of you on this a mask esper any of you has anybody researched masks and what qualified masks are to protect you from covered 19. not not one of you well osha who very similar to new york state's department of health actually has that information for you you want my child to wear a mask okay to protect
063them from covet 19 which by the way our immune systems are already protecting us because we had covered in our household and i was the one that had it the worst just saying everybody else had it for a couple of days and they were good me i was really sick and in bed but i got over it just like you do with the flu this is what you people need to read because the paper masks they don't protect you from nothing you can actually do a scientific test take that take that mask and stick it strong across your face and try and breathe you're not going to be able to it's going to restrict your breathing and also i'd like you all to know because i'm sure none of you have done the research either
064i have called i've called labs on long island asking them about the delta variant because i want to know for myself how can you tell they come out with all these variants how do you test for covid was the first question i asked a pcr test okay great well the cdc is removing that pcr test in december because it doesn't work properly you can't detect between the flu and the and covet they can't detect the difference okay so how do you detect when it's a delta variant then we don't have a test for that so thank you media for telling us about this delta variant that you can't even prove on a test i i again i i thank the two of you for standing up for my children you did and pete you did
065too what you should be doing for our children there are other school districts out there like locust valley that actually have the goal to stand up for their community for everybody else i'm sorry i won't be seeing you next year but you'll be seeing me plenty this year i've never attended board meetings before this but i will be at every single one thank you the 30 minutes has expired i need a motion to extend the time for another 15 minutes all those in favor i didn't see everything yeah that's everybody thank you decide hello hi i'm christina conrad and i am a west babylon alumni class of 2011. um and i will just say dr farley i think it is rather rude that while everyone is talking you're writing notes i don't know what's more
066important for you the only one not looking at people while they're speaking um okay it came to my attention that you guys want to put critical race theory into the curriculum and i think that is absolutely absurd when you are ignoring all of the gaping holes that our problems are full of problems in this district i went here from 2007 to 2011 and most of my friends will tell you the same experience there was no black and white issue there was no majority a minority issue there was however an issue with bullying and accountability in this school district i had to walk into this building for one week after a bully took pictures of me from a sweet 16 trash them inappropriately posted them on facebook and the principal at the time told me that
067it wasn't done on school property so there was nothing she could do about it for one week i walked in here absolutely humiliated okay other alumni boys scrawny couldn't play on the sports teams they were shoved into lockers they were made fun of for having a crush on the girls that wouldn't even look at them and they were told not to try out for sports teams but that's just high school right and that's just petty little girl drama and boy locker room talk it's not these problems are problems and if you don't fix them they last a lifetime as someone who advocates for mental health awareness and to end the stigma that goes along with it i will say that those sorts of situations are what cause mental health disorders they lead to anxiety suppression
068suicidal thoughts and self-harm and you should all be ashamed of yourselves that that is not curriculum that you want to add into the school year mental health is something that this district has had a problem with for a very long time who remembers jovan belcher former west babylon football star who made it to the kansas city chiefs granted that whole situation was a terrible terrible tragedy and i'm not excusing them however that was from a mental health disorder that was caused by nfl injuries to the head instead of having a conversation with the athletes with the students here that admired him that looked up to him as the eagle that made it you all stripped his jersey off of the wall and disassociated his name with this town but once an eagle always an eagle
069right now let's talk about mr egbert may he rest in peace he was a beloved teacher okay he was a safe space in high school his classroom taught me about life okay he taught us about life and that everyone was fighting their own battle unfortunately so was hate and what did you guys do you said nothing you closed the door to his classroom you did not help grieving students and you didn't use it as a talking point about mental health and why people should be nice to each other so you don't have a race problem here you have an accountability problem and let me tell you having walked down these hallways as the loner eaten by myself in junior high cafeteria and seeing other kids go through the same thing bullies of every color and
070nationality are bullying other kids of every color and nationality what these students need is to learn how to be kind critical race theory does not do that for those of you who think that it teaches kindness you didn't read it and for those that don't read it the only thing that you have to know are that the people that support critical race theory are the same ones that were at this meeting at the last board meeting calling my friends nazis for believing in something that's not who you want your child to grow up to be so i will leave you all with this west babylon does not need critical race theory needs a new superintendent and a board that's not full of sheep with the exception of pete thank you your time is over next
071please don't disparage any of us including let me finish i let you speak i let you speak i listen no don't interact in the audience please if you do that i'll bang this gavel i'll ask for a motion to adjourn and no one else will be heard and i don't want to do that i want everyone to have the opportunity but you don't have the right to come up here and disparage our superintendent or this board i'm a resident and my nephew that doesn't give you the right that doesn't no freedom you people i have to tell you something yes listen to me this is a board of education let me speak this is a board of education meeting we have to do business we allow statements of residents because we want to hear what
072you have to say we do not have to have statements of residence that is that is our policy to allow you to speak we do not have to ever let you speak but we've always done that let me finish in one minute i'll bang the gavel and it'll be over this is your last warning your last morning we allow you to speak because we want to hear what you have to say we want to hear it respectfully we respect you and i expect it back in return you can say what you want to say without disparaging us that being said that's your warning if you do it i'm banging the gavel and the meeting is over and in all due respect guys listen yandy dr farrelly is our superintendent understand something this is a board
073decision you want to come after people come after us it's not dr farrelly it's not all lawyer bill morale it's not our team in the corners michelle and scott it's the school board you want to come after the decision that was made tonight come after the school board not the superintendent not our lawyer gandhi does not make these decisions we do thank you pete go ahead my name is kelly and i live on 10th street um just for our attorney i don't know how you can sit there with your law degree and say that a mandate is a law i think you need to go re-read your book because a mandate is not a law so i think we need a new attorney here but and dr farrelly you say to reach out to you
074with any questions concerns well you know what i did email you yesterday but of course no response so let me um highlight some of the email and i did start by saying how extremely disappointed i am that i was with your decision to mandate before the board of education meeting um i also attached a statement from the department of justice and in there it says that the department of justice will vigorously enforce federal civil rights so even if you're saying that this mandate is a law there is no law that supersedes your civil rights and the department of justice will vigorously enforce federal civil rights civil rights protections and responsibilities still apply even during emergencies they cannot be waived recipients of federal financial assistance that is our school is an integral part of our shared
075effort to uphold civil rights it also attached the civil uh the civil rights protection it states that it was our right to not wear a mask and that we are protected by federal and state law it says that the school is a public place and you must abide by state and federal laws there is no governor order health order emergency or pandemic that supersedes your constitutionally protected right and anyone that goes against that can be held personally liable for this crime being held personally liable can make you be arrested and help personally liable that includes fail fines and jail time and that's regardless of what any manager any governor or any health official says i am extremely disappointed by the decision of the school board with the exception of pete and the exception of john
076which leaves seven board of education seats that will be available next year and i will be going for one of them thank you hi my name is lena um i'm living on 11th street i just have a question in reference to the changes that were made um for the high school schedules for lunch placement i believe it's due to social distancing is there anyone who can give information as to what the students uh the expectations of them eating lunch in this particular room is our tables being provided or sure we have tables um set up actually our board of education saw them uh during our during our walk-throughs so at the high school so basically they're set up so that we can have six feet of social distancing so obviously during that their lunch period
077right they wouldn't be wearing in terms of um their masks so that will be in kind of various cafeterias you know different places in terms of throughout the school definitely including the the the cafeterias and a couple of other rooms so the tables are already set up there now okay because the schedule change shows this performing arts center as a luncheon that's also that's what i mentioned in terms of other particular areas right that is also in uh in the mix as well so students will be sitting in the chairs with their lunch on their laps or no um actually the students and actually as an aside i do i would encourage we are mr o'leary is having a really nice uh student forum to answer questions in terms of their schedules and things on
078those lines so if your child has a question and that is specifically in terms of their schedule um that could also be addressed but no actually we're talking about in terms of i believe up here in terms of the stage but i would actually suggest that if you could reach out to mr o'leary send them a quick little email or your child could attend the student forum and specifically ask that question about their she did tonight okay awesome okay that was the answer she was given she's sitting at the chair okay all right so my concern ah all right so um again i don't have that the specifics in terms of that if you want to maybe give me a call tomorrow mr earlier a call tomorrow we can kind of talk through in terms
079of the plan um again the cafeterias are set up but we do have overflow areas because we're trying to maintain that six feet so that the quarantine police doesn't come into play at all you know when there is a close contact but please reach out to mr earlier tomorrow and then we can walk through that perfect thank you no problem thank you good evening president camposano and board of education i just gave my card to um mr payne i am a resident and a taxpayer uh i'm here to talk about diversity equity and inclusion but after all this talk about masking i just want to make a couple of comments on that if i may the first is i applaud the majority of the board for listening to the science and listening to the law
080i think some people need to go back to school for and take another course on constitutional law in the audience but i do applaud the law the word for thinking of those two things and making a practical decision also for protecting us as taxpayers because if the state should withhold funding for not obeying the law then we as taxpayers are going to have to make up the difference in our tax bills and my property taxes here on long island and west babylon are quite high enough i can tell you so thank you for that the second thing that i wanted to say is i don't understand many of these parents who claim that their children have difficulty wearing masks they can't deal with it they have anxiety i have a four-year-old grandson four years old
081and he when he leaves the house he has a bowl of different color masks and he says nana i want to wear the robot mask today nana i want to wear the the monkey mask today he'll choose whatever mask he wants to wear and he'll wear it that day and if you ask him why are you wearing the mask why do we need to wear masks he says because i want to protect the other children from germs i mean he's four that's as far as we get the tobin but he gets the concept i mean you have here across your state integrity and we have to look out for each other and that's what this is all about and that's why i applaud the board for making that decision okay so thank you for that
082and the second thing i wanted to talk about is diversity equity and inclusion at the last board meeting that i was at a gentleman got up and pointed to 17 words in the region's framework which said a confluence of events has brought us to this point of reckoning including these the seventeen words the senseless brutal killing of black and brown men and women at the hands of law enforcement we're not going to go over this school board excuse me i'm talking about opening the schools with or without messages it was the same thing last meeting we're not here for that we're not here for that crap white people do not kill black people okay i need a motion to adjourn [Music] please please calm down everyone was allowed to speak this is [Music] okay wait
083until they walk out and then you could finish your statement now you could finish your statement thank you president i'm sorry listen i can only hear one person at a time can i just finish my statement since i have the floor who are you asking me to remove okay then security i don't i cannot see it's dark so i don't see what you're seeing who is the person who was disrupting so remove him excuse me ma'am don't don't be talking to the residents okay are you a resident then then you are not speaking are you a resident yes i am are you a resident am i a resident yes are you a resident okay please sit down if you are not a resident be please sit down ma'am may i finish my statement yes you
084may finish your statement that gentleman at the last meeting please be quiet so i can hear her that that person at the last meeting who read that statement conflated that to mean that the whole region's framework was anti-police which it's not that is the only mention in the whole 16-page document that relates to the police at all the rest of the framework says things like we must tell the stories of all those who have contributed to the development of this country that including the great european migration of the 19th and 20th centuries those who traveled from asia and india the caribbean puerto rico mexico central and south america it also says empathy means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another's experience from their perspective how
085anybody can object to a framework that includes those words is beyond me so i just wanted to also applaud the board for accepting its dei initiative in the interest of all your time is up on if you have any documents you want to submit to mr payne please leave it with him your time is up no i'm finished and i respect that thank you thank you is is time up totally barbara okay ma'am okay you hi my name's cammy i graduated from west babylon high school in 2017. i do want to start off by thanking pete sparolatos and mr ebola for standing up for the children in terms of universal masking one size fits all does not work in public health so why are we forcing that type of agenda and that type of mindset
086on a child and their families we know one size fits all does not work because of the different medications that exist to treat different problems we know some people have different allergies to medications so why are we using that same mindset that everyone needs to do the same thing when that has been proven time and time again that that does not work you are teaching these children that they are perpetuating the pandemic and they need to keep the mask on to protect not only themselves but others what about their families i understand everyone's family is different if your child needs if your family needs your child to wear a mask you do that if you're so nervous about getting the virus yourself get vaccinated if you can't get vaccinated fine do whatever you need to
087do but do not force that mindset and those actions on every single person that is unfair that is so unfair on the children i was a college student i just graduated i lived off campus and the rhetoric that was put out by my college because of the fact that i lived off campus when you have children within a dorm room spreading the virus that's ridiculous to me they had no facts to back it up we know that children don't spread it we know they don't die from it so why are we punishing them and acting like they're the ones that are that are keeping this going and that they're the ones that are responsible that's what the mask is you've heard it from the children they don't want to wear it it gives them headaches
088there's been so many other adverse effects that other people at the meeting before this have spoken about but still let's do universal masking shame on all of you shame shame shame on the ones that have decided to keep universal masking thank you and this will be the last statement hi sherry mckittry hi um totally going off script if i'm allowed to talk about anything other than a mouse anything you want sherry actually the only thing i really do want to know is are the ptas going to be allowed back in the schools to hold their rematch yes if they wear masks yes thank you everyone for your statements i need a motion to adjourn happy chris all those in favor that's everyone that is out of line don't threaten us that's a threat i'm sorry
089oh you have to go to work tomorrow listen people go home go home everybody go home this meeting is over did anybody did anybody see who the man was who threatened us get give us his name oh my god [Music] yes you