001evening i call the budget work session to order all members of the board are present mrs bieger would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag i pledge allegiance to the plan of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be advised in the event of a fire emergency and an evacuation should be necessary an alarm will sound please note all marked emergency exits and evacuate well away from the building at this time we request that everyone please turn their cell phones and other electronic devices silent thank you item 2a is our budget planning presentation so superintendent brown hall i turn it over to you and mr maturski to review both the 2022-23 budget
002progress and the air conditioning project thank you very much president leatherboro at this time i will ask that our chief financial officer our assistant superintendent of finance uh present the balanced 212 million 528 thousand 86 dollar budget for the 22-23 school year mr maturski thank you dr brown hall so at this time um we'll go into the budget uh this is uh i believe about the fourth presentation that we've had in budget process and um at this time at this meeting um i just want to start out by saying uh the information is is stable and has remained the same from what we've seen earlier this month so i do want to go over the the report that you're seeing on the screen and again this is also available on our website so you can
003look at it at more detail at that point in time just to highlight this report is set up in two sides of the spreadsheet here one being on the left side is the upcoming school year the 2022-23 year and we always want to be looking forward to the next year to understand what these expenses may carry over and you are seeing that all of these are our typical expenses so there are some projections for the next year i'm not going to be talking about them tonight we're going to concentrate on the expenses for the 2022-23 school year the the items here i'm not going to go over the individual dollar amounts but i just want to say that the number at the top is our starting number of the current year budget of 205 million
00420 967 dollars and then we have what we consider um our major program um support items which are the uh the salary increases that we have which is contractual that results in increases in our social security payments to the federal government the fica that's about 475 000 again health insurance is going up as we've received information from our carrier and our consultants we also have retirement system increases which are required to be paid um to new york state for our certified as well as our support staff we have our boces increase in boces for those of you who may not be familiar as board of occupational education services and that supports our students it supports our administration it's many different items in that budget and there's increases there as well as pupil transportation our fuel
005costs and contractor increases and then we have some instructional support items at the very bottom of about 338 000 so what does that total um 7 million 600 2 and that provided a working expense budget of just over 212.16 million dollars so that was at 3.71 percent as we went forward in this budget development process we have the need for two additional assistant principals at the middle school level one being at transit middle one being at mill middle and i think we all know those student populations have increased in those schools so we're going from one assistant to two and that's an increase of a hundred sixty thousand dollars uh we also have at this point in time retirements we also consider retirements as a budget reduction and that provides that reduction amount of 255
006000 and so as we look at the totals here all of those numbers result in a budget increase of 7 million hundred seven thousand one hundred nineteen dollars and a working budget of 212 million five hundred twenty eight thousand eighty six dollars that's a three point six six percent increase going at the revenue side again for those of you looking at this on screen it's probably very small but you can again go to our website but this is the detailed revenue budget i just want to highlight a couple major items here first of all state aid the net change is 1.9 million plus 1.9 million that's a good number but actually there's a bigger story here if you looked at this current budget year you see we have almost three million dollars federal aid that
007was put in there that aid is no longer in next year's budget and so as a result really our state aid has increased five million dollars that is a very very good thing for the district not just for next year's budget but for the future because there no longer is a cliff that we would see when that federal aid goes away which will go away in the following school year additionally um we have um increases that we're seeing in our payment of lieu of taxes that's essentially information that the school district doesn't truly control it's from the ida or industrial development agencies whether it be erie county or amherst so those provide us the changes in those and we have an increase occurring in those agreements over the next year and we also have of
008course i think we all know this we've seen it in the counties sales tax receipts 1.6 million dollar increase all of those things result in in a very good revenue situation for us a balanced revenue budget to what i presented on the expense side we have a tax levy increase that is under the tax cap which is essentially at three million four hundred ten thousand dollars so again tax levy increase here is going to be at two point five five percent the budget increase is at three point six six percent and you see that the um the budget is balanced at 212 million 528 086 dollars and again i can't emphasize enough there is not going to be any reliance on federal aid in next year's budget um or the future budgets at this point
009in time when we look at what this means to our tax bills uh looking at a house assessed at 250 000 there's three scenarios here based upon really where you are in your um uh in the purchase of your home if you recently purchased it you're not going to get a star credit anymore you're going to be able to take a credit on your tax income tax bill new york state income tax and that results in about a 77 dollar increase if you have basic star it's sixty eight dollars and thirty five cents and enhanced star is fifty seven dollars and sixty one cents the rate is estimated at eighteen dollars and fourteen cents thirty one cent increase one point seven three but the important thing i need to share is that the information is
010based upon assessed values as well as equalization rates we don't receive this information um until it's normally july and so that's why these rates will normally go down uh rather than go up so i wanted to share that right now with everyone so just a summary on where we are there's a lot of positives with this budget no program cuts is number one no future budget shortfalls as i mentioned due to the reduction of federal revenue we've got some very very good growth in our payment of blue and taxes and sales tax those are some of our major other revenue categories and again some additional support positions and definitely we're under the tax cap so it's just a simple majority vote on the negative side not a lot but i always want to make everyone
011aware of the future and the future here is will new york state be able to sustain the state aid increases a couple years down the road not next year but a couple years down the road when their federal revenue starts to be reduced so again this is just a summary of where we've done where we are on our budget timeline and so forth and what we're we have a budget feedback uh item on our website you can see it here you can send any questions in and we will certainly get back to anyone who has questions on that so with that this short presentation is complete thank you very much mr matursky for all your hard work on this and for your updates every month along the way i will start on my left and
012continue on the table to see if there's any questions we'll just add for our audience we as a board have been asking questions each month throughout this process so i don't know if there's any questions left but i will open the floor if there are any i think i invented questions but um first of all i wanted to uh take away your thunder fremont but i'll thank mr matursky and his team for presenting and all this information uh first i want to thank you i had asked last time about uh we've always for years used a tax rate or the tax is 150 000. it's the property value but as we all know there's not much you can buy in this williamsville for that amount so it was nice to raise it to 250. you
013know as i always ask we always try to balance the needs of our students with the tax payers and and their expenses you've allocated or shown very well the increases in the budget you've only really mentioned one reduction in expenses which was a teacher retirement i know there have been others and now it's a good time to just say maybe you could comment a bit on some other expenses we've reduced uh in this budget so that you know we have clarity on that uh very good question dr lipman and what we do as we really initiate the budget development process is uh there's a review of every single budget code and every budget code is looked at from a couple different perspectives it's looked at historically especially pre-covered because covet has had some ramifications on
014how the dollars have been um expended and how the budget has performed so we look at pre-covet we look at it what happened in the last year we look at what's going trending in the current year and then we we kind of forecast for the future so what that has really transitioned in is what we what we call reallocating budget dollars so in some ways that's a savings and i'll give you some really prime examples that in this current budget there is probably about a 750 000 increase within the changing the budget codes within the special education department it doesn't mean that their budget has changed substantially it's just that we know that we had some dollars and some codes that we needed to reallocate to other codes especially in private agency placements and some
015of the contractual areas so that has taken place in this budget additionally if you look at some of the uh there is a 338 000 increase in the supplies but there are some other adjustments that were made as we went through the budget to um to make uh the budget balance better and what i'll share is another example is we've been uh required to pay boces approximately a million dollars each year for their our our share of their capital project building so that is now no longer necessary so those dollars which were in our debt service were up in a different cold they are now back in our debt service so those are the items and that's going to be kind of uh integrated into the next presentation when you talk when i talk about
016debt service in the next capital project that's how we're we're making sure things work through in that manner as far as efficiencies we're always looking for efficiencies we're always looking for you know doing more with the money we have you all see the purchasing that we do and the bids that we do constantly we're always looking to try and take advantage of that whether it be through a bid process or whether it be through items such as going through a co-op pricing the last example i'll give you i think that's really relevant here is um the new york power authority project that we are just at the end of completing here which is replacing all of our district lighting with led that is reducing our usage substantially and and again that is kind of integrated
017into what might be a higher usage in the future with the potential air conditioning project coming on so again it's balancing off our expenses in a manner where we don't have to increase the budget thank you thank you any other questions from the board glad thank you mr maturski just a question um just to go over i know you said that we are looking at a budget that's maintaining what we currently have and then the addition of two assistant principals at the middle school so with that are you including maintaining the positions that we did receive some of that american rescue funding cares act whatever it was but for our social emotional learning the learning labs the specialists and teachers that we hired are they looking at continuation as well those uh the way those
018dollars are accounted for at this point in time is that they are still in those grants those those there are arp american recovery plan which is now also termed sr3 we have sr2 and gear2 those are the two those are really the three grants that are accounting for those dollars they continue into the next fiscal year and actually the a portion of the year after so those are not in this budget there that will be something that will need to be reviewed as we go forward um into the next budget cycle to determine what we can do on reallocations so i i do think though knowing what those dollar amounts are in those budgets they're not what i would call excessive for those programs so i do believe there will be ability to do a
019review of what our current budget is and how it's performing do some reallocations and and absorb them into that next year's budget development process without any reduction in those programs great thank you thank you for that any other final questions on the budget okay i think we are ready to move to the capitol project okay grab this all right thank you again uh so this is a presentation on what would be a a new capital project it's the elementary school air conditioning capital project again we've had some discussions on this over the last several months and we have made a decision to phase this project and with the elementary schools being the very first uh phase of it so again some of the background here uh there's a lot of positive factors of course to
020be doing this project and there's a lot of reasons why this makes a lot of sense especially at this point in time i'm not going to go over all the details here in addition to this presentation there also is a detailed executive summary that is on our website that is available for everyone to review but i just want to indicate that i think we all have experienced the higher temperatures in the fall in the spring and as well in the summer and a few years ago again prior to covid we actually had some very high temperatures in our buildings in september and at that point in time we we actually had some very concerns about whether we should be holding school on those days this is a report that was done and reviewing the temperatures
021from uh noaa erisa team from 1951 to 2012. it was the latest report available at the time again you look at 10 years from 2012 and we've seen even more increases but this just showed the actual documentation of the review that just said our temperatures are rising when we look at the heat days and and what the impact was again we had temperatures in september that were 90 plus back in september 2018 at the same time there were the new york state united teachers had contacted legislation in new york state and wanted to ask them to approve something called extreme heat days and and this would impact our calendar certainly we plan for snow days but this would uh possibly have an impact on 180 day schedule and it might be a problematic for us
022because in addition to the fact that you would be off on a day our buildings are our masonry construction and they just do not cool down if you've got heat in them they do retain that heat and that was one of the things we actually learned in 2018 so this is more than just looking at air conditioning when we looked at this especially coming off colvid we wanted to make sure we were going to improve the air filtration systems in our building and we were going to go with at minimum of mirv 13. there's going to be a lot of new ductwork which these buildings are more no more most of the elementaries will build in the in basically the 60s so we're looking at 70 year old buildings here and we're going to be
023able to do a lot to improve the mechanical systems the delivery of the of air filtration in the buildings as well as do some other items that are kind of tangent to this such as some cabinetry adjustments and improvements in the classrooms so it's it's a lot more than just doing the air conditioning although that's the focus there's some other tangible items that this will be improving in the pond the one area that's not elementary school associated but must be done is the electrical service for east high school as part of this program we had to look at what the capacities were for each of these schools as we were looking at it district-wide initially and determine if that had to be adjusted and when we did that we found that the uh the original
02470 uh so electrical service at east high school was um at the extended period of its life and that we really needed to make sure we adjusted that so that's about a 1.4 million dollar number in this project and it does need to be done so that we can maintain a constant electrical service in that school so again looking at what we're looking for as far as this project there are some factors here that impact how we came up with our cost estimates and what i want to emphasize is when you're doing an estimated cost you do not want to have a project budget that can't provide for the building of the project that's the most important thing so we did a thorough analysis we had our professionals on board to do this we had
025district integration in that process from day one we have reviewed the plans gone back and forth probably over 50 to 100 times and as a result we've come up with a list of items which we wanted to make sure we're integrated again i'm not going to go over all these items but you can know that we did a thorough analysis to make sure that this budget which you're seeing here is going to support the program so as you can see the budget is essentially 62.7 million dollars for the elementary piece alone adding that 1.4 million for the east high school electrical service creates a proposition budget of 64 million 119 318 dollars so one of the most important factors then is how are we going to pay for this and and and this is i
026think the piece where we did a lot of of review of our finances and we did a lot of analysis of how we could make that budget work and making sure again that we could support the construction so the very top item is thirty seven million three hundred one thousand one hundred fifty nine dollars of debt service bond funding those are the dollars that we have to borrow to support this project and and i'm going to go over that in a lot more detail on a future slide here but what i can say is that we're able to use about 24 million dollars in those next three capital reserves that's essentially our savings account um to lower that um that amount that we would have to borrow to the 37.3 million and then we are
027able to add about three million dollars in budgetary appropriations in those two out years which creates a balanced budget the 64 million 119 318 dollars so the key here is that we looked at our our general fund budget and we looked at how much is in it and it's similar to a household budget if you have a car payment and you get to the end of the payment now you have whatever that payment amount was available that's essentially what we've done here but there's one other very important item that is not like your car payment and that is when your debt is ex is paid off with the school district you also are not receiving the state aid for that debt and when that happens your general fund revenue will go down so when a
028school district such as us has that happen really the key item is you want to make sure that you can sustain that because since it's already in our budget we would actually have a budget cut in the future because if our state aid goes down and we don't have dollars to replace it you've got to go back and cut the expense budget that's why this project also is very important because it keeps that instructional cut or wherever general fund cut from happening so again uh this talks about uh the fact that there's zero impact on a tax levy in the tax rate um i i've already kind of gone over the fact that debt service is budgeted annually old debt is paid off and so that that allows us to take on this due debt
029there's no additional debt budget needed in the general fund and so that means no no budget increase in the general fund in the future no budget increase for the tax levy because again nothing's impacted here and there's no tax rate impact either so this is what i want to just be transparent with everybody to see what i'm talking about when when we're talking here about our debt service what does it really amount to so this is showing you that we have a level debt service of about 4.8 million dollars this is a second column is really showing you the the amount of our debt and how it's paid off and then you're seeing what we need as far as what's available and then lastly uh in that fourth column you're seeing for 37 million 301
030thousand 159 what's the amount that we would have to pay annually and the most important thing is in that last column where you're seeing there actually is still a little surplus that surplus is important because this is at a four percent interest rate borrowing we have a um a double a two rating which is one of the best in probably is best in this area number one but is one of the best in the state and that allows us to get lower interest rates we also are selling our our thing on the open market and it's a tax exempt which is very attractive to um to the community and you know we get a lot of major banks and and other type investment bank us that bid on our product and so as a result
031this is this is really a conservative number but if it were to go up the point i want to show is there actually is still some some ability there to fund an increase if it had to go up and that was done on purpose uh lastly i talked a lot about state aid at the very beginning i want to share that this is what the state aid would look like so again this is getting into some of the specifics and this is really based upon new york state education department and how they tell us they're going they want us to report the information so there's a construction budget and there's an incidental budgets typically are your um your architect your construction manager and believe it or not any site work goes into that category um
032so as a result of that you come up with your your total budget and then you see how i've put it down below and broken those out and there's a part that's not going to be aidable so is that because we've done something wrong no it's because the new york state education department reviews your items and sometimes they'll say this is something that we're not going to aid and there's different reasons for that and so as a result there's a deduction here made in that category in the very bottom you'll see that of that 64 million it's approximately 60.9 million dollars will be um available for aid our aid percentage is 62.7 percent for construction projects which is much higher than what it is in our general fund by the way and that results in
03338 million 192 672 dollars as an estimated state aid amount for the entire project now the state pays this over 15 years so that will result in an increase in an annual increase of two million five hundred forty six thousand one hundred seventy eight dollars and that's the piece that will actually come back and help us in those future budgets so again just kind of reviewing um you know what this is about um you know the aid will go on for 15 years there's no general fund debt increase as a result of this and so as a result you're not increasing the debt budget is what i'm talking about there this means that the revenue side supports programs and you're not losing anything and uh and again this is what will keep the the general
034fund budget stable in the future so with that you know the next question might be okay if this is approved when when will this all happen and and this is the timeline so uh this is all really um structured by new york state because we will then start the actual construction document design in june this june it will likely go right through the end of the year with plans being submitted to the new york state education department in january 2023 and then the state education department they take several months to do a review and so we're expecting um approval to come in sometime around september 2023 and then uh the bid process occurs these are publicly bid projects that would be october november and you would start construction likely in april 2024 and it would
035go on for two years uh be completed thereabouts in august 2026 and uh with a final project completion likely to be december 2026. one other item i want to note here is this is going to be the first time that a project will be having construction going on during the school year that's that's an important thing because we've never really done that in past projects it's always been summer construction but the way this project is required to be done there's no other way that we could do it but to do it during the school year so this is just our project timeline and we're here in march uh for again another uh presentation and review and discussion with the vote being in uh may 17 2022 thank you very much mr majersky and back to
036the board for any questions on the ac project vice president seis so there's already been some discussion um happening in the community regarding why elementary schools so just two questions that maybe you can share was first the rationale for choosing to do the elementary schools first and is there going to be a phase two in a phase three or other phases that will include middle school and high school uh excellent questions of course and the answer is that as we went through this and we know how um the younger students are impacted more severely by the heat and and especially we've seen it during the school year you know we've seen it in summer school especially um and and in fact um as you may know our summer schools now over the last few years
037we have act moved them from elementaries because they're too hot in the summer and we've moved them to middle school and that's not necessarily the right location for those programs um it it there's a lot we we do the best we can we do a lot of moving of furniture and everything to make it work and we would continue to do that but it's not the best so going back to this project it made the most sense to start there and make sure that we get those buildings um rectified and air conditioned as far as the next phase i i really think the next phase is one more phase i don't think it's two if you think about what the total cost will be it'll probably be similar to this for the next two middle
038and high together so my my assumption would be when you're into about 2025 in this construction timeline that's when we're going to start to think about okay how did it go where are we in construction and start to think about a new proposition for the balance of the school district and remember we do have east high school completely air-conditioned transit middle completely air-conditioned and the kc edition completely air conditioned so it's not really those other buildings it's a smaller scope and and that's why i think you're going to see one more proposition happening in thank you so much thank you for that mr viscalia um after hearing that it will be construction during the school year have we thought or developed any plans moving forward so that doesn't disrupt disrupt uh student learning especially at
039the elementary level um including any construction issues that may occur that you know might not be safe for students when they're in the school definitely um the the current budget actually includes the usage of portable classrooms so uh we definitely want to keep students safe we we know that um the way it's it's somewhat planned at this point is you would probably be taking a few classrooms um out of service at a time um construction would be happening and you might close down a wing but it it will definitely be something that will consider the safety of students and staff as the utmost concern over anything and yet the portable classroom model actually is being used in north carolina right now so there's actually school districts that are using it now and so we've actually
040looked at that and we know that that would work here we know it's a proven method for safety as well as as learning and these classrooms are not like what you would have seen in the you know um what if anyone's familiar with what was at high middle for example that was a little tin building that was there that was these are no longer like that these are really almost like customized buildings so that's one way we're also talking about ways that we could possibly maybe not even need portable classrooms by um changing the way we're going to do the work on second shift and allowing the work to still happen clean everything up and and the teachers would not even realize um you know to a great extent that the construction has been occurring
041at night in their in their area so that's portable classrooms is in the budget in this budget and that's how we proceed right now but we're we're not going to just stop there we're going to be asking other questions if this is improved on what the best way is for instruction as well as construction thank you final thoughts or questions mrs baker yeah i appreciate what you shared about um the ability to fund an increase if the prices are to go up one of my initial concerns was you know we've seen over the last couple of years some prices skyrocketing different things and and who knows what's to come in the future so i really appreciate that that is built in there to give us a little bit of wiggle room um i'm just wondering
042if you can share you went through um at length and it's much appreciated how we plan to fund this for people uh who are here at our community forum tonight or watching can you just clarify for them again when they go to the polls that they see this as a capital project if they vote to approve this will there be any increase in their tax bill as a result of this project or does this have no um increa um any effect or impact on their tax bill yes uh there will be no impact on their tax bill not just in this year but throughout the entire project and and again um it's all based upon you know the financial model and the strategic planning that we've done over the years here and and one of
043the other items that allows us to do that just so that you know we know is that we're able to sometimes pay down debt also and those debt pay downs has allowed this model that you saw on the debt service to work the way it does but yes there's not going to be an increase in in the budget for this and if there's no budget increase it doesn't impact the levy which is their tax bills in the end excellent thank you for all your work so that um that's a possibility for us in our community appreciate it thank you mr speaker anyone else from the board wish to speak before we open it up to our community all right we're so happy to see so many people here tonight at this time the boat of
044education welcomes anyone in attendance who wishes to speak about the budget to the podium at this time so this is the piece just related to the budget and then we'll be moving into our community forum in just a few minutes anyone here tonight want to come to the podium and ask a question or raise a concern give give a comment about the budget process or the air conditioning project you can come right up podium yep come right up please that way everyone at home can hear you too because we're live hello hi hi um my name is angela mecker i'm a parent of a daughter at heim and the question i have is in regards to doing construction in homes that are built prior to 1978 and the concern that they may contain lead paint
045especially if construction is happening actually during you know active school hours uh how are we going to make sure that that's not something that's exposed because once it is um you know if there's drilling and duct work being put in how's that going to be um done in a way that is safe for our children are we also and also are we are we testing the homes for the i'm not the homes but the uh the properties for lead absolutely so as uh mr matursky stated that's our ultimate concern right making sure it's safe for not only our students but our faculty and staff so a great deal of testing takes place air quality testing samples testing to make sure that whatever we do is safe for our students while the construction is going on
046before and after absolutely and i know um environmentalists can be really pricey so is this already in the budget for the testing is this already estimated yeah yes okay yeah and it can be pricey but you know for the safety of our students it's you know no cost too much so thank you very much okay thank you thank you for that question anyone else okay so at this time may i please have a motion to adjourn the budget work session we will take a five minute recess and then begin our community forum dr mccleary thank you and dr lipman second all in favor oppose your abstentions seeing none motion carries unanimously thank you we're just gonna take a five minute break and then we'll be right back all right welcome to those joining us in
047person and through the universe on zoom tonight my board mates and i are here in the capacity of public servants and elected officials at the local level to listen to your ideas for the continuous improvement of our school district that's in line with the mission and vision of our district as board members we have no individual authority the state grants us legal authority over the school district only when we act together as a governing body in compliance with state education laws and laws pertaining to open government as such we ask that you direct your comments to the entire board and refrain from addressing individual board members due to privacy laws and labor relations rules we also ask that you do not speak about specific students or staff by name instead we invite you to schedule
048a meeting with the appropriate administrator if you have a specific concern related to a specific student or staff member board members pascalia and dr mcclary have agreed to facili facilitate tonight's community forum mr pascalia and dr mccleary will alternate between questions from the audience pre-submitted questions and questions from those participating tonight on zoom we will do our best to listen and respond to as many people as possible and plan to conclude around 9 00 pm we do ask for your patience this is the first time we're running a forum where we are addressing people in person and on zoom and entertaining pre-submitted questions at the same time we try to be as accessible and accommodating as possible so thank you for your patience as we do our best to get through this please be considerate
049of your neighbors who may be waiting to speak and limit your comments to three minutes and as always we are a community rooted in love kindness and respect we teach these behaviors to our children and we lead with example we will show this to you and we ask that you do the same so dr mcclary and mr bescalia i turn it over to you to facilitate tonight's community forum thank you thank you mrs leatherbury um let's begin this evening with jenna block and lena gallante who are students of south hi my name is jenna block and i'm lena galante and we are the co-presidents of the deca chapter at williamsville south deca stands for distributive education clubs of america and it's a business club that is offered all over the nation for high school students
050and even into the collegiate levels we are here on behalf of limsville south and north daka national participants and we are asking for the removal of the parent chaperone component of the internal procedure for the national competitions in our district if this could not be removed we are proposing for the option for a parent to sign a waiver as deca presidents we are eager to embark on this important and potentially life-changing opportunity as upstanding senior students in the community we can showcase our responsibility and maturity during our trip to atlanta georgia in late april we are not only a part of dhaka but also members of the student congress students against destructive decisions national honor society link crew the nabba campaign and amongst many other groups our involvement in our community is our utmost priority
051and we have stellar academic and behavioral records with that being said we are the only district in the state that has this parent chaperone rule in place this is not a deca rule or a deca state rule all other chapters throughout the nation are able to travel to the convention with just their school advisor all current students from williamsville yearning to attend this national convention this year have agreed to sign a waiver protecting the district the waiver would state that the williamsville central school district is not liable for anything that occurs on the trip and anything else that you did appropriate that you would want on the waiver due to the fact that many other traveling groups including clubs sports and music groups do not have this restriction we urge you to look into this
052matter after immense research we have found this procedure is only internally written and is not a formal board policy all rules that must be followed at the state level competition of deca without a parent chaperone will be followed at the national level curfew as well as attendance at events will be mandatory and all deca etiquette will be brought with us to the competition there are high standards that daca students live up to especially those that make it to the national level and we value competence innovation integrity and teamwork we have won the state level competition for a reason and we want a chance to prove ourselves at the national level we want to represent williamson central school district and shine as top competitors and young leaders of america the presence of a parent chaperone does
053not change our behavior or guarantee our safety instead it puts an undue burden on a family member to cover another large conference and hotel stay fee an additional airfare meals and any incidental expenses that happen while on the trip and take multiple days off from their jobs and leave their families for five days we are the only school district within the state of new york that requires a parent chaperone for this event the new york state deca attendance criteria states that there must be a minimum of one adult advisor for every eight high school division student delegates with that being said the north institute south students that qualified for nationals are a small group just our two deca advisors are more than enough for the seven students between the north and south high schools if
054we are able to attend the competition seven young motivated and academically capable students will have a fighting chance at being a national deca champion represent representing the williamsville school district with your help we will have an opportunity that we have been looking forward to for many years the williamsville central school district should be supporting and not holding back our excellent students due to an internal policy affecting a few as a district we should pride ourselves and encourage our students to expand their education in any way possible we should not be hindered by a procedure that isn't even considered a district policy because of a previous incident we want to pave the way for future deca members who are also given this outstanding opportunity as seniors we have endured countless disappointments and cancellations related to covet
05519. we have also experienced the tragic loss of art of two classmates the past few years have not only been filled with stress and uncertainty but have also been emotionally challenging after finally you're earning the opportunity we feel that we deserve a chance to experience this once in a lifetime event we urge you to please consider altering this policy thank you for your time and consideration and we are looking out for ourselves and the future of daca and anything will help when we understand that if this policy can't be put in place this year that it be changed for the years to come for daca students following us thank you ladies before before you leave the podium any member of the board want to make a comment or ask a question well you know what
056we'll do our procedure that we do we'll start here move down and then the next question will go this way can i change my seat please i just want to comment because again i have experience i was a deca advisor when i was a high school teacher four of the six years where um i ran a deca chapter i had students who attended the national conference the last national conference i went to was in 1984 in new orleans with students so that's a very long time ago but i'll tell you one thing from my experience you know going students are well supervised you know students who attend these conferences among the best and the brightest business and marketing students in the country it's a great opportunity uh we're talking about i worked in the state
057of georgia at that time and i'm thinking in the 1980s in georgia we did not have parent chaperones this is the year 2022 in williamsville i don't um believe that that policy or you know that idea uh is a 2022 issue so again i'm supportive of your success and i would believe going with your deck or advisor under their supervision and the supervision of all these uh decca leadership that you will be successful and you will be safe thank you thank you um i saw mrs leatherbury is there anyone else before mrs leatherbarrel first of all i want to say congratulations that's a huge accomplishment and everyone here clap for you we share in that congratulations we're very proud of you for that are you the same girls that wrote us because we did receive
058a lot about us okay so when we received your letter we did immediately reach out to superintendent brown hall which is the protocol when a board receives a concern or complaint we always go through our superintendent um so dr ronald if it's okay for me to speak about exchange um one of the questions that i had and we spoke on the phone about this as well is you know how does this differ from an athletic event or a school club i've had three children go through the schools they've traveled for athletics they've traveled for clubs you know why would this be different and how does the liability for our district change and so that was something that we were asking our superintendent to look into with our attorney are you prepared to speak on that
059at all yet or do you want to wait or right well the attorneys are still looking into it but you can i just talk about the one point you brought up about the liability and signing of waivers and and that becomes tricky right because when you sign waivers they sometimes mean something they sometimes don't because if there's a nexus between you attending the event and you being a representative of the district that supersedes it right you are a representative of the district so no matter what you sign we're still responsible for you right and we we will be responsible for you when you go you know and so that's why we met with the attorneys today even further so we can get a position on that because my understanding this internal memo in the rules
060governing it is from 2017 when legal advice was sought about another um event another national event and that's where these rules came up and the attorneys helped craft these so we're taking a fresh look at it five years later to see if that really needs to remain in place but i believe in the internal rules also there was a bullet in there that said if parents have another parent um act as a liaison as a supervising parent that is allowed and i believe that is ultimately what occurred in your situation which will be allowing you all to go correct yes and that was what was communicated to us just like that you're aware we were told that in this situation because when we got your email it's my understanding you needed to know by like
061the next morning it was very time constructive so you know we asked to bring down to brown hall can you please see what can be done he informed the board that dr bailen and himself had worked many hours on this to really try and make it happen because whenever possible we want to we want things to be a yes for our students we don't want there to be barriers so going forward for the future when we talk about inclusion include that word inclusion involves breaking down barriers right and so that is the piece that we still don't have an answer for yet because we have to consider the advice from our attorneys we do have to consider liability and safety not all seniors are 18 you know so we have to take that into consideration
062as well but we will look into the claim i you mentioned that williamsville's the only district with this rule can you let me know where you got that information from so we travel to the state level competition and all other chapters is what they're called basically just school like deca chapters are able to go with just advisors and a lot more than two or seven students usually make to nationals because when you go to like long island and places like that the schools are much bigger so they go with like five or six deca advisors and no parental chaperone whatsoever all right and that makes sense to me right because we see that happen with our student athletes all the time right in fact the same day that you sent your email i was watching
063a video about the north track team where they had two students go to nationals in one place like fourth in an event and so we can't expect the parents to be able to you know bear the cost of it as you shared and take the time off from work so if it's possible we're going to work for it to become a yes i want to thank you for coming to advocate for that thank you guys and i also want to thank uh the administrators at north and health who worked with us to make sure that this was able to happen so thank you ladies very much for that email awesome thank you good luck anyone else on the board want to comment mr pascalia i i was a deca south uh no that's okay it
064takes a lot of courage what you guys did today um or tonight but i wasn't in deca it was an awesome experience it helped me when i went to college and i do agree with dr libman and i'm glad we're looking into this because you know first and foremost we need to be looking out for you guys the students and um going to nationals is something wonderful to put on your college applications or whatever it may be that you're doing after school and i think it's um it's nice that you said even if it doesn't change today what caught me is even it doesn't change today we want to help our future students and that's something that true leaders that i know deca teaches you um it was excellent it was it was music to
065my ears to hear you guys say that because i think even if it's not changing for these uh two wonderful ladies that we really need to look at it for the future we can't forget and just say hey sports sports sports and forget about our wonderful clubs so good job girls thank you okay yes all right thank you ladies we appreciate you coming and certainly good luck next month yes thank you yes i just want to make one again besides wishing you all the greatest of success there but um you know one of the things that we say is there there are activities that are co-curricular that tie and align to the cricut curriculum like deca those types of clubs and then we have the extracurricular you know the athletics and those types of things
066and um and again if we don't need chaperones and extracurricular activities like athletes uh it would seem logical in a co-curricular activity that you would extend that so we'll wait for the answer parental chaperones you mean chaperones aren't necessary but you're speaking of specifically parental chaperones yes right now sending them off on their own not until they're 18 and they graduate then they're on their own thank you i think now thank you ladies thank you thank you um as we continue with our in-person part of the forum let me ask if there are any other students who are here that had planned on speaking tonight students nope all right we're going to transition for a moment into mr viscalia who's going to do some um pre-submitted questions yeah i'd like to go through the pre-submitted
067questions first um we'll go back and forth between people who came and pre-submitted questions and then once the questions are done i'll move on to the zoom uh people that are at zoom um some people i just want to let you know uh submitted you know multiple questions but i'm going to read one from each person who submitted it because we'll be able to email answers back to the other questions and i think it's fair for the people that came out tonight to get their questions answered i know everyone's busy and you took the time to come out tonight so we'll start with the first question who uh this person want to remain anonymous sorry um is the district would would they be willing to modify their stance to service english language learners based on
068their educational needs rather than only providing the bare minimum requirements would you like me to repeat that board yeah would the district be willing to modify their stance to service english language learners based on their educational needs rather than providing the bare minimum requirement so this person is saying that we're only requiring the minimal things that are needed for english language learners um we need to take you know what we take into multiple services to help them in the future and i'll start down here with dr lemon you know uh as i said i should change my seat but uh you know if you think about it our responsibility as a board and the community is to meet the needs of students where they are and then move them to where they need to go
069i don't know the specifics of that whole area although you know i've worked in school districts where we've had large numbers of english language learners but i don't uh know specifically on this one i would just say you know i also don't know the full scope of what we do or offer for our english language learners and not knowing the specific situation it's really a hard question to to address so i would really encourage that person not to be anonymous but to follow through with the administrator in their building if they're feeling that their student isn't getting the support that they need to be successful not only in english language learning but in in their academics um i just have a real hard time trying to put a scope around that because there's too many
070open variables for me personally at this point so yeah and i think if we go down the table well i don't want to be redundant and say the same thing it's a i don't know exactly what the question is i know in the last um six years that i've been on the board we've seen our english language learner population increase exponentially and i know that we've seen our teachers increase in that need as well to support those kids if there's a need or you know a concern that we don't have the right staffing or we don't have the right services for those kids i would encourage whoever the anonymous person is that put this in or anyone with a concern or question to talk to their child's teacher to talk to the administrator to share
071exactly what you feel it is that the child is lacking um you know we want to make sure that we're supporting all our kids and giving them the support they need but i um it's hard to say there's just specifics in this question that are hard to really i just wanted to mention that um when dr valen gave a presentation in january on the academic intervention services there was also discussion of that that including english language learners and having additional supports for them so i i'll just say that in addition to what has already been said and just quickly i do know a little bit about it so when a child is considered an english language learner they're tested they go through a series and they they end up at a level there's expanding transitioning
072and with that comes the number of minutes and services so if a parent feels that their child would need more services which sounds like it might be needs the best thing to do is to seek out the guidance counselor and the principal because just like any student we do have different intervention services to help children learning labs the academic intervention services before school during school after school so we can meet their needs beyond just the ell component absolutely and we all know that commissioners regulations part 154 are very um prescriptive on what we must provide for students but um the board and the district realize the need and we realize the increased level of services we have to provide to our english language learners so much so that we decided to hire for a director
073of multilingual education so that position has been posted and we'll be conducting interviews very shortly because we know there's an increased need in our district and that uh the population is growing in our district and we realize that so we are addressing that also i just wanted to add to that we do have a board policy around this issue because board policy is really what our focus is as board members and then the superintendent carries that out so 8280 is our board policy related to english language learners it outlines the philosophy of our programming the screening procedures the programming itself it also provides professional learning opportunities for teachers and assistants in the schools and not just the tesol teachers themselves but for for all teachers there's professional learning strategies available because um i know as
074a former teacher that what benefits my l students benefits every child in my classroom um and and i also remember dr bailyn sharing when she did her program with us at the board meeting was that we offer a summer school program specific for english language learners so that in an of itself is not a requirement of the state which shows you know we do in some ways exceed what the state requirements are i'm not sure if the person that sent this was a parent or a staff member but regardless i think you know future conversations would be beneficial anyone else i mean i just have one comment some of our english learners come from diverse backgrounds and having the new diversity policy in place would actually help them better integrate into the class probably give
075them more opportunity to interact with their friends and hopefully they'll break down the barrier that's preventing them from i mean learning at a much faster rate good thing but you know we had this historical data on our desks and on page 10 it says we have 505 uh english language learners as such uh and of that group 65 about 65 percent have been in our school of less than three years uh and then we have a next group that's been here uh between receiving services from four to six years and that's about 28 and then we have about seven percent who've been here uh for longer than six years receiving services and it says uh these students were born in 34 different countries and speak 39 languages and i know through my historic times on
076the board how many more students who are english language learners we are getting and yeah that's that's significant because when i met with um assemblywoman mcmahon in senator rath's office that was something i spoke about because it had to do with our state aid being based on the 2000 census data and back in 2000 which is quite a ways away right we only had 111 ell students i was able to pull that from the archive data from nice said but what was the number that you just gave for this year 505. that's right that's significant and we know from the board perspective when we approve the consent agenda items we've we've improved or approved quite a few t-cell teachers over the years you know every every year we're adding to that um so i i
077appreciate the question um i'm satisfied with what i've that we're definitely meeting state requirements i would love to you know have a conversation with the individual to find out you know what the deeper concern is if i make quick plug what dr lipman is referencing is our new historical statistical highlights brochure that's available electronically on our district website it's just a quick and easy place for anyone needing historical and statistical information about the district to access so that's where dr littman was reading it from and you can download it on our district website if you go to about us and click on the very top you'll be able nick is going to show you at district profile scroll down historical and statistical highlights it's available there all right we will now um ask any one
078individual who would like to be next please come to the podium and introduce yourself [Music] honor to be here um i won't remain anonymous my name is richard anderson dr mcleary it's been a while it's good to see you serving in this capacity um it was interesting because so far we've had two speakers it's been 25 minutes so i hope everybody gets the chance to be heard um i could make a recommendation you know one one person from the board can speak if they miss it you know another person can chime in but that that was almost 11 minutes for uh answering anonymous question so and i know there's a lot of people here and probably online or whatever so i'll make mine as quick as possible um i had a thought about the construction
079uh projects uh 68 million dollars it's to maintain state funding and to you know deal with the debt and and now there's uh other funds available you know for the future but i have also been made aware from my child that there's water fountains he can't use in transit middle because they have lead uh high levels of lead um so if you're you know looking to have summer school programs in elementary schools where the air conditioning is required that's great but i think you guys should all be aware that drinking water kids are being banned from using water fountains because of high lead levels in in the water testing so with that um the budget presentation it's a very macro level thing and and it's an interesting thing and it's great what you guys have
080presented and uh i forget tom's last name but um i really liked everything that he's been able to do for the district um but it does it doesn't get into the macro level so what i'm i've thought about was 15 million dollars in cares act funding apparently that was just one year um i did the math on that that means every student should have spent per capita about thirteen hundred dollars twenty percent of that you guys know is mandated for learning loss so if if i'm a parent and i look at a child i i don't know about you know how you move six million dollars here and five million dollars there and we're planning to absorb these costs in year three i'm thinking the federal government wants at least thirteen hundred dollars invested in
081one child so so you do the macro budget presentation but where is where is any money i mean you know i know my my um child didn't arrive at school with the mask a couple times well there's there's 10 to 15 bucks worth of mass you guys bought you know well where's the hundred other eighty five dollars you know in in twenty to thirty percent of that spent on learning loss so if there's one new person at the school are they providing three hundred dollars worth of services to my son i don't think that anybody up here i don't know if you can answer it and please don't everybody try to answer it um because i'd like everybody else to have an opportunity to speak thank you very much thank you [Music] um is there
082anyone i do uh mr anderson that 15 million figure where did you get that from um the one when it's mentioned that the city of buffalo got a hundred million dollars in karazhak funding maybe it was only nine for williamsville but it could i had also heard it was as high as 15. oh for for the um yeah the federal dollars that came in addition uh through the covet belts right no no i know exactly what money you're talking about i wonder where you got that figure from because that figure because i want the public to realize that figure is not correct but if you go on our website because what we did do being transparent we want to make sure that all of the funds that were spent from karzak from sr2 were actually
083listed the fs10s are listed online so you can see how the money was spent how you can see how any money that was geared to unfinished learning was also directed right enhancing the summer program the learning labs that are put in place into the school the stem activities that are put in place into the school so all of that money is accounted for and if you like if we have your information i can email it to you but we can also make it very prevalent it's on our website all that information is there how every single dollar was spent and we have to send in reports to the federal government and to nice at new york state education department detailing how that money is spent and then what the return on that money is so
084that's how that that money was spent it is very detailed on there i'm wondering if nick can pull that up really quickly because it's under it's under departments business american rescue plan and the 20 for learning loss we can we know was spent on academic intervention service supports as well as learning lab teachers um we also yep there it is right there so when you kind of plan itself it does have a breakdown i just want to bring this attention to the community as far as the um claim about the drinking water at transit i want you to want to thank you for bringing that to our attention i can share that as a board we do receive regular facility updates and that mr tom tercy our assistant superintendent for business and finance is also
085the individual that oversees our facilities he has presented multiple times to the board um because keeping the records on drinking on the lead in the drinking water is a requirement of local school districts so that's been shared with us frequently it's we've been told at the board table that the cleanest water to drink from in the district is the water from the from the water fountains that have been renovated that are now water bottle filling stations which which is what i do i come in with an empty bottle and fill it up right here so if there is a station a water filling station a transit middle that isn't functioning thank you for bringing that to our attention so we can look into that right as we continue um back to mr bascalia this should
086be fast so it should make mr anderson happy uh whether or not they will be accepted we will be accepting foreign exchange students in 2022-2023 from ryan hensey we'll be accepting foreign exchanges yes we will okay we met about that earlier and yes we will back to in person next individual who would like to come to the podium and speak [Music] date your name please my name is molly armbruster um i have a child at high middle and maple wasp first off i do want to thank you dr brown hall i've had a couple random questions just to clarify some things on facebook that were kind of floating around and you've gotten back to me really quickly before it started spiraling anytime i can do that i think i appreciate it and it says a
087lot and thank you my question for the board is what is your protocol if a parent question something they see displayed in a school and in turn the teacher retaliates against the parent do you have in place an anti-retaliation or anti-harassment policy in place for teachers that do this do it would be part of our quote of conduct have you read our code of conduct it's online yes i have okay and how do you address it with the parents well as a parent if you're being if there is retaliation i would suggest that you go to the principal of the school where this i did hurry and then at that level you would you would move up i did okay so where are you my response was we have received your email and who did
088you last speak with miss leather barrel dr brown hall and also the principal at the middle school that it took place at this was back in july i have it on my phone i can send 20 21. okay i would encourage you that it's if this happens again and it probably will that you would contact the parent personally this will not be tolerated another thing i encourage parents there's no reason you cannot be into your school anymore the vaccinations have been lifted get in your school look at the walls go in the classroom look at the walls ask the teacher questions there may be some things you may not agree with and there may be some things you do but this needs if you have a question you should be able to ask a teacher
089a superintendent the president or any other teacher without fear of retaliation or harassment because this is ridiculous and it was handled completely and appropriately and if you have any questions any further i'd be happy to answer them for you thank you back to mr viscalia you know and in terms of that good can i just yeah i know i just okay in terms of that if you have evidence or things like that with a teacher there's a pro policy state policy called the 3020a where teachers are could be disciplined unfortunately i don't because my work didn't want to get involved so so i'm just stating that there's things that can be done from a parent standpoint that if if you research that and look into it there are policies that if a teacher is in
090the wrong there can be discipline you know brought up okay against that teacher just so you know it's it's i understand that but i know how much you all make and this is also your job as well okay we we don't make anything right but what i'm saying is that it's ridiculous the way that it was handled and it needs to be going forward needs to be handled differently there needs to be a phone call to the parent you can sit there and smile mrs leather barrel so may i respond to that right yeah i'm going to make a comment yes so um i don't recall what your email if it was from july um normally in terms of investigat investigating some sort of harassment that would not be the responsibility of the board of
091education that is that would be the responsibility of district administration so i just wanted to clarify that so in terms of i'm sure you did get some sort of response from the board of education but that isn't you know we do not do investigations so that would not fall on our plate so um again you would work up the train of command and maybe dr brownhall can pipe in here yeah i and i i'm i am recollecting the entire situation and i don't know that this is the appropriate form to even go into detail but i will follow up with mrs armbruster and um it did happen in july and a lot of it happened outside of the school as she did indicate up there her work did not want to get involved so there's
092a lot of other details that we don't want to get into right here i hope you all will appreciate that all right uh next question was uh how will the district examine and correct the disparity in class size between college credit courses and the rigorous ap courses is there a way we you know examine class sizes with those two dr brown hall can you repeat that question yep is can we how does the district examine and correct the disparity in class sizes between college credit courses and ap courses so how do we i guess i mean the only thing i can think to say to that one is that we do receive at the request of the board enrollment report for different classes and we've had it broken down to be very specific so that
093we can see the number of students attending each class um you know there's different reasons for that that that data can be used for staffing projections for the next year but it can also be used to you know to take a deeper dive if we get into a situation in the future where we might need to do budget reductions we might look at some of those courses and say you know which classes could we perhaps offer every other year um you know that would be that that's something that colleges and universities do frequently where they don't always offer every single course every semester um so i don't know if that is in line with what the individual is was asking but that is what i can offer any other comments i you know as far
094as disparities between one class and another it's hard to hard to say is it an enrollment who's choosing to attend a class versus the other and we do have the guidelines of class size so some of there may be some variability there just based purely on um choice [Music] great back to a next in-person speaker hello just state your name please sir hi i'm deb rogers um i have a question um in the fall there was a policy that came out and it didn't no longer allowed parents who were unvaccinated to come in and volunteer in the school and i'm just wondering i did try to find out if that was a erie county department of health policy or district policy and correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that was a district policy
095yes okay so um unfortunately you know new york state has done a one size fits all over the last two years with everything from vaccination to masking in the schools and i guess i'm more just encouraging all of you when this happens again and make no doubt that it will and i think that we've gone past signs to political science so i have no doubt that probably you know right after the election is over in november that we'll see some of these protocols being instituted again in our schools and i would encourage you then as boards to not go above and beyond what has been strangulated upon all the parents and students from new york state department of health and by doing that said policy you have excluded many parents who would otherwise be in
096the school volunteering and being with their children and and if we're really talking equity and inclusion as a district that policy is just one of the worst policies to support equity and include inclusion if you are a parent in the district which i am i have volunteered since my children have been there with pta stories lunch volunteering and i was basically shut out of all of that while other parents were allowed to come in all because of a vaccination status and i just don't think it's inclusive and i don't think it's fair and i would hope that now that is no longer a thing is that correct that is correct okay and um let me ask perhaps this it when in fact those policies are in a gun which i have no doubt that they
097will be probably late fall december um i do i i know that uh the village williamsville received ten thousand masks and we have those sitting at our fire department right now so um i'm not sure unless i'm supposed to be handing those out for home improvement projects why i would be deliver those as a municipal government entity so i'm assuming that there is something in the pipeline um you know short of having like a crystal ball in front of me i i'm just you know i have 10 000 mass sitting at the fire department so you know what am i to conclude that perhaps this isn't over for us and our children and um and i would just encourage all of you and i know this is like the most thankless jobs at times you're
098you're on page you're sitting here as volunteers and i really get that but i would encourage you to think about what is right for the for the children and for the parents and um you know don't go above and beyond what is already being instituted upon our children and allow for those parents who are such a strong support system for the teachers and everyone in the building and for their children please don't shut us out thank you mayor rogers does anyone else have a comment for mayor rogers [Applause] all right thank you thank you um next questions about athletics school policies state that seventh and eighth graders can uh participate in jv and varsity level sports um their concern um is that at what point are we gonna kind of stop letting these athletes take
099positions away from you know 10th 11th and 12th graders in those certain sports is there going to be a fair opportunity for them to be in that sport um i don't know if anyone has comments on that there's already policies involved in this i know that that that there's you know letters sent home from you know our athletic director um i don't know if anyone has comments on that i just have one i i really don't feel that the board should really um respond or get involved in this because there are different things that take place within the school and that we're abiding by with the state a some of the eighth grader is not allowed to be on a jv varsity sport unless they take and pass the selective classification test so there's certain
100criteria and requirement for them to even be eligible and then you're getting into a trial process so that is something that if a parent is concerned i would direct them to our athletic director and the coach right and that and just to piggyback that's the the best point because these seventh and eighth graders are allowed to participate in the jv and the varsity if they pass the certain requirements and so we don't want to limit our students from that and that's why it is allowed in new york state so thank you and i'm just referring to our policy that would be policy 7420 for sports and athletic programs thank you all right and back to the next in-person person date your name please that i'll be that person okay uh kim rice weber thank you
101guys for allowing us the ability to actually have feedback from you that's very nice thank you uh so today i have questions um regarding the implementation of crs or culturally responsive sustaining education in the district these are actually questions that i pose to you dr brown hall in an email i sent on october 29th on november 2nd you responded that you couldn't answer my questions through email and that quote when we move forward and begin to examine curriculum and any changes that we will move toward in williamsville there will be greater opportunity for question and answer almost five months later that opportunity has not come to fruition in fact in your community update during the january 11th board of education meeting two months after our email exchange you stated and your presentation shows that crs
102has already been introduced to all schools additionally seed training was already given to all principals and assistant principals for anyone who is unaware seed stands for seeking education equity and diversity and was founded by miss peggy macintosh author of the pivotal paper white privilege unpacking the invisible knapsack my specific questions are focused on one of the four principles of crs titled inclusive curriculum and assessment the framework defines the principle in this way quote the inclu inclusive curriculum and assessment elevate historically marginalized voices it includes opportunities to learn about power and privilege in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of positive social change it provides the opportunity to learn about perspectives beyond one one's own scope it works towards dismantling systems of biases and inadequate in inequities and decentering dominant ideology
103ideologies and education to understand the implemented changes to the curriculum i'm interested in your reading of that principle so my question is really can you help me please understand what that specific principle means in practice with our children and our students i understand that this could be a long conversation and i don't mean to take up all the time and so i appreciate that i might get not get these answers today however i would appreciate a deeper discussion as previously promised yeah and you know it won't take long but i do want to go back to your email into what i share with you so in my update in january if you recall what i said is that the crs curriculum was introduced to our administrators so it's our responsibility to introduce and make them
104familiar with the crs curriculum what it entails and things of that nature we have not begun a deep dive as a district into the culturally responsive and sustaining education framework as far as training teachers yet reviewing our curriculum and looking at that that will be a part of our district-wide dei plan so those all go together what i don't want to do is piecemeal anything related to cr s or dei in the district because my goal is to make sure we take it slowly develop a plan for williamsville by williamsville so that's why for the past two weeks i've also asked for parental and community input to be part of the dei team so that we can move that work forward we're going to take it slow we're going to make sure it's developed for
105our district just so that it's sustainable in the future you bring up very good questions and what we have to do as a district is to make sure that we're all on the same page and so that's why i didn't want to piecemeal the answer also because what you want to understand our specifics and i can't give those to you right now when we unpack crs as a district and really examine our curriculum and what it means to have students and cultures that have been marginalized represented in our curriculum then we can have a deeper discussion what i will tell you we have done is when we look at our libraries and our classrooms that is one of the things we've done is to make sure that everyone when selecting a book to read during
106their you know independent reading time can pick a book that represents them and so we use the windows and mirrors right so any book that you choose can be a window or it can be a mirror so that's the first step now as far as the curriculum will be teaching that's something that will take additional training additional steps we don't want to piecemeal it and we don't want to have teachers teaching something that they number one aren't very solid in and so so you're saying in regards to the library you're saying that pieces of this crs framework have been implemented in in our schools no that's not what i said okay i said in our libraries what we've done is make sure we have a diversified library so that students are able to pick a
107book and see themselves in that book okay that's what i was saying for that okay so then to answer my question do you well i suppose maybe you're you won't the framework you're not going to define or under or help us to understand in this community forum where we're allowed to get your feedback and i just what you feel about what you oh you understand that principle that inclusive curriculum and assessment principle to state if i if i could jump in i think what you're asking if i'm understanding correctly sort of relates to our policy which was the one we approved in october so that's the dei policy it's 3431 for anyone here in attendance so a portion of that after it goes through like the definitions of diversity equity and inclusion if you scroll
108down it talks about teaching and learning and there's six components and it says that culture to implement a culturally responsive sustaining education framework that embeds the ideas of diversity equity and inclusion we want to create a student-centered learning environment that number one affirms cultural identities two fosters positive academic outcomes three develop students abilities to connect across lines of difference four elevate historically marginalized voices five empower students as agents of social change and six contribute to individual student engagement learning growth and achievement through the cultivation of critical thinking correct i've read all of the policies front to back my question is how can we have a conversation if you cannot clearly define your terms so i think that what dr ron hall was saying was that we're forming we're taking this slowly right we approve the
109underlining policy the board is also going to be receiving some some learning opportunities in our future retreat we're having one of our instructional specialists from the district come in and share with the board what's been shared with school administrators it just doesn't seem like a very difficult question can you define historically marginalized voices oh absolutely oh yeah i didn't we can definitely i'm asking for definitions of these words that we're talking about actually that wasn't your first question can you help me understand what it means in practice with our students absolutely so when you say marginally marginally defined voices what that is are that are cultures or groups of people that have been underrepresented when we're teaching about history okay thank you um and if i could if i could just do around robin it's
110one word answer i promise i won't take one of your time if you could all answer this question do you think that parents should be involved in the curriculum being taught to their children dr lipman yes parents are going to be involved in these committees so yeah so do you think they should be involved what we have state guidelines so within the scope of the state guidelines that we have to follow of course parents will be involved parents are involved in all of our curriculum committees currently okay yes we have um vehicles said that so parents can give input great yes it's already happening with curriculum council and then the additional committees that we are putting in her face yes yes yes yes they already are involved yes yes great to hear thank you thank
111you back to mr pascalia kind of ties into what we were just talking about this question uh what is literal center school district's position on crt and are there any plans on incorporating crt into the curriculum can students opt out of these programs yeah i can just start i think i believe buffalo is the only school that is and i might even be wrong about that uh implemented crt and i hope people know there are two you you you are you are wrong i want to stop you right now yeah because most people don't even know what crt there's right right two definitions absolutely yeah no no no nc crt now there's a difference between critical race theory and examining examining the role of race and history critically right two different things so crt is
112taught at a college level it's a law course it's not something that we're teaching here in williamsville will we be examining the curriculum to make sure that those marginalized voices as kim stated are um represented in the curriculum yes we will be doing that however it's not crt that's that's what i was going to say yeah race theory and then there's critical responsive teachings right and um the board of regents made it very clear that crt is not part of the new york state curriculum uh that's what i wanted to share because i we had we saw this question a lot of time so i was able to look it up it was actually chancellor dr lester young who spoke on this um and they pulled up his article in education weekly um i know
113as an educator that cr that crt is not taught in k-12 schools right um but dr young who was one of our regent chancellors he said specifically our policy new york state board of regents policy on dei is not an attempt to teach critical race theory critical race theory is not our theory for action our theory for action is cultural responsiveness crt is not taught in k-12 schools in new york state and so that was directly from the board of regents um with chancellor chancellor dr uh lester young he also went on to talk about how you know the role of critical thinking is important and that when we have these higher level conversations we consider the age of the students so the um exploration of higher education theories is confined to higher education graduate
114schools as well as professional schools so these are the places where you would be taking these types of courses and having these more higher level thinking discussions and dialogue so you know so when we get a question like why is this being taught we got to back up the train because it's not and i think that's really important and when we form the dei committees i think that's where those you asked a really great great question about how can we have these dialogues right we don't want to be like this with each other we want to just be able to share freely what our concerns is what our what our fears are what our beliefs are for our kids we all want our kids to feel welcomed and loved and safe and we want to
115have a little bit of control as parents right i get that and um i think when we get these committees going in the buildings i think we're going to start to see that shift and i'm really hopeful hopeful for that and i'm hopeful that you'll you'll join up as well i would just say you know you use initials to um you know his abbreviations or whatever and when you have ones you know that is similar you know uh people can misinterpret them you know you think if you had a you know an idea that might be looked at negatively like a product like facebook to change this name or any product to change this name that maybe it would have used different different letters so people don't kind of look at things negatively when you
116think of crt these days when i worked in public schools and i would say this was like 10 years ago we had professional development in crt at the time was critically responsive teaching yes yes now they've yes they've changed the acronym we know education's a lot of alphabet the other crt is getting that was fantastic publicity me especially as a white female working in an urban setting it was really beneficial for me to learn to be more culturally responsive and to to know like how to go about that yeah so thank you for that all right next person from the audience identify yourself please sure uh i'm tim terrell a parent of three williamsville students um so i had no idea that the uh topic of my conversation was going to be in almost every
117single uh speaker's thing and the two words diversity and inclusion um so i think this kind of ties together a bunch of things so um so i i was taking the the bend that the diversity and equity or diversity and inclusion principles can and should be used in communication and some of the things that were just said here there are many of us who felt marginalized as voices throughout this year especially during the pandemic with all kinds of things relating to mandates that some were out of your control somewhere within your control some you went above and beyond and did certain things um and you know i think that there's some room for improvement um so all right so here i just went out of order a little bit so i believe that the principles
118can be reflected in how we handle the community collaboration between the district and parents and specifically in regards to curriculum and education and i understand that this forum here the community forum is an attempt aimed at that to sort of have a dialogue but it is complicated as the first guy stated it takes 10 minutes to have a dialogue so i understand there's complexities involved in what i'm suggesting that we try to do more of these kinds of things and it sounds like you have lots of boards going on with lots of parents involved um but uh i don't know hopefully there's room to do more of this um but i do have some examples that i'd like to point out um so one of the early board of education meetings the board decided that
119it was okay to read a letter from a parent and 20 other supposedly medical professionals that were strongly in favor of masking and the closing remarks of the letter it stated um for the board not to listen to the vocal minority against masking personally i think that is an extremely anti-inclusive message that the board adopted when it read that letter aloud so that's that's one problem um so let's see here also the fact of like vocal minority is kind of a statement thrown around because the board specifically stated that you did not do a survey which is just one basic form of where is the spectrum of parents where are they on these issues so to state that vocal minority that's unfactual second example is i submitted a letter of my own about something regarding
120the vaccination information on the company or the district website we had short dialogue by email and then it just silence you know nothing got read at the board of ed meeting i thought it was important but apparently it didn't make a certain level so i'm urging the board to really think about and you guys are scrutinized a lot and as we said before it's thankless job in a lot of regards but i really strongly urge you to think about these basic principles that we talk about all the time but a lot of us don't see it that way i feel marginalized i feel like the things that i come up here and speak about i get a thank you letter and that's it nothing like wow was thoughtful we've felt we've been thinking about this
121or been thinking about that i don't know how other family members are feeling our parents but i feel as though we don't have a great dialogue here especially around the hot topics and they get hotter and hotter when we don't have a dialogue i don't have the answer but this is in your guys realm it's what you do so i'm suggesting and urging you to come up with some solution that has more of these types of things may be focused around masking because like november december gonna come around it's gonna happen again and then we're going to have these mandates and people are going to be upset and i feel like that's just a bad way to lead so um again i don't i'm not on the board so i can only imagine how hard
122it is i thank you for the time you put into everything i just hope that we can try to find a way to have better communication and everyone involved i will ask one question mr terrell oh sorry my glasses are on yeah um you know you're making certainly very valid uh discussions about we should do more of these kinds of things are you able to give us some specifics of what you would like to see done sure um yeah so um so masking so the beginning of the school year lots of districts did send out a survey but it was surveillance yeah survey on what's your opinion as a parent do you feel your children should be masked or not masked you know something along those lines okay and we specifically stated that we williamsville
123did not do that because we're not going to run things this way i.e we don't care what you think or whatever it means but we're just left to be like okay so there's no communication there at all that's just one example another example would can i can i say something yeah sure go ahead mr tim because i don't want it ever to be thought of that we don't care right the masking survey was a moot point so i i understand you know if people want data that we can do something with right there's nothing we could have done with that masking data because whether parents wanted it or not right it was something we had to follow so that's the reason why it wasn't to be dismissive of you or the parents in the district
124so i don't want you to take it that way so that wasn't the intent okay that's fair however the vocal minority as stated in the letter that was endorsed by the board when the letter was read aloud to state that the vocal minority against masking the survey would have been important to identify that likely it wasn't going to be a vocal minority it was probably not of the parents saying yeah no thanks but we don't know we will never know how many were for and how many were against and that very topic was a huge hot topic all pandemic long because that information was just never gotten because you felt your hands were tied and we're told that we have to do this therefore we're not going to ask what you think so again maybe
125i'm wrong maybe you're right maybe because there's nothing to be done you didn't want to send out the survey but i don't know it's just there's too many hot topics unfortunately right that we all there will always be you're absolutely there yes um and one other thing actually sorry and i know others probably want to go if there's a way and i think today was the first time i've seen through text about like the board meetings and stuff if there are um hopefully you guys are going to use that all the time more for all board um use what you we do alerts every yeah maybe i'm just starting to get them now because i must have signed up more recently um but i i found that i had to go through the website to
126figure out when things were happening as opposed to a wits email or a text um stating that community expression was coming up okay so can i ask a follow-up question are you saying that you feel like you're getting too many communications no about other things but maybe not about how to participate in you know a crs e parent committee meeting a parent committee or a community discussion about other important topics that have come up i don't know where to look for those and i don't see them coming through i see weekly updates i see other things coming through the text updates but other things that are important to the community i don't see coming through those channels i don't know what channels they come through but i don't see them yeah the community update the
127weekly community updates are where a lot of that information is dr brown health does a really good job and he's been in the last i think it's been at least three times that he's mentioned the um diversity equity and inclusion committees and trying to get people to okay you know so go go back to one of those and check it out because the email's in there if you're interested in participating who to send the email to to say sign me up i want to be there so okay great and they come multiple ways they come to your wits box they'll come to your email and they'll come also through your text if you sign up for that we we do those different modalities because we figure you know hopefully the parent will see it from
128one of those angles um if you have another idea as to how to push out information we're always looking for ways to be able to get that information to you i can tell you that like my husband will say my phone will go off and his his phone will go off and he'll go it's the district you know and so he doesn't read it because he knows that i'm going to tell him what it says right um but then it then it'll be on wix and it'll be on the website and then before you know it it's coming through my email and my phone and so and nick tweets it out too yeah oh i saw it right yeah yeah so you know my wife says the same thing and then she in a way
129it just brought up what she said so she'll maybe just want me to say it but oh well i'll just get yelled at home um uh sometimes she does say it's like almost overwhelming that what she gets like it's this this this and this and then she forgets where something she might find is important um which kind of what you're saying and then and then it goes by the wayside like oh man i wanted to be on that committee but i forgot because i got a b c and d set so maybe there is a better way we can streamline that or what our community members feel is important maybe a list on the email this is what we'll be i'm just trying to think off time and i don't know if we could do
130this but i think maybe it's something we could all discuss or maybe we can encourage parents to join the communication subcommittee so that we can get all those wonderful ideas about communication between the district and parents break down because it's a strategic plan goal and an action item so maybe we could do that sure i think that's smart because i know when we had the strategic plan we were able to get seven additional parents added eight additional parents added but if we look at the size of our district i would have expected we would have had a lot more i would have hoped that we would have had a lot more right um i do understand that they meet during the school day and that can be a barrier at some times but i feel
131like as a board as a board member sometimes i'm racking my brain thinking what else could we do so if you have specific ideas please share them at any time it doesn't have to be here in this format you can email the board at any time with an idea sure yeah i think the information overload is a factor because i don't always read the updates if they're little videos i know they're short but it's always like i don't have necessarily time that's on me yeah telling me to have done it so um but yeah what was the the board that you said uh the subcommittee is that communication it's one of the strategic strategic plan goals and they have separate committees so every school school many schools already have like a communication committee and they'll
132be filling out those action plans but you can even look at the strategic plan online and see what the goals are for the communication team and i know that um mr filipowski will be incorporating a lot of that into the communication plan for the district you know so absolutely we want to make sure we get everyone's ideas on that okay great thank you thank you very much thank you just one last thing you know in terms of board of education information you go to the board of education page on the district website and those dates are up at the very beginning of the year for the entire year so you can just add them to your calendar right away and you'll always know when the next board meeting is going to be so okay great
133thank you thank you um before we continue i'm looking at the clock and it's nine o'clock and we had started out saying that that would be the end of our forum so i guess i would ask for a poll of the board if you feel we should continue dr mclaren can we maybe ask um if it's okay for a show of hands from the audience how many people would still like to speak let's start with that if you'd still like to speak can you just raise your hands so i see one two two hands i think we can definitely do that right hiding behind there i will note we have not done any any zoom okay oh come on okay well why don't we take our two people in person okay here and then we
134can maybe do a couple zooms would it make sense to do zoom first since we haven't done them at all and they've been waiting all this time just a suggestion here all right bill of the board okay yeah but i like to get to the two people who raise their hands um so if we're zooming if you could please at home uh put up your virtual hand so that um mr filipowsky can see who's who has a question i think that's a good idea to see who is out there who has a question yeah not then we can just get back to i propose we definitely say to get the two individuals in the audience we need to vote we need to vote on that and i think i think we're all in the district
135while raising our hands it's an informal thing [Music] get somebody from the audience one hand is up brenda i don't know how to do that last name doesn't say brenda beltstein [Music] you can hear us [Music] brenda you have to unmute i'm wondering if perhaps she walked away yeah um so we go on and come back yep let's stick she raises her hand i think we can go to the okay um we will continue with one of the two individuals who raise their hands and then when that's finished we'll go back to brenda online so either of the two individuals who raised their hand okay hi everyone uh my name is jonathan rich i'm a father in the district um you know real quick uh just for clarification i know that we had some other
136questions asked and i just did want to point out i know we are still developing our dei plan in the district but we did bring a group into the district that is publishing materials on white privilege and male privilege so just to be clear we did we did pay that group to come into the district that's that's true correct can you give specifics okay seed project yes they came into the district or people went to have training with them all all i'm aware of is that we we gave them funds to train our staff not to train our staff there were two people that got trained by seat it was part of a summer project fair enough okay um so a completely different topic uh sweet home high school has a very big parking lot
137and uh when the board of ed vote happens they get 900 voters north high school has a much smaller parking lot and when the board of bed vote happens we get four five or hopefully this year we'll get six thousand voters maybe more um so i know that last year uh you know if you went by the school at about 4 30 you were four five six blocks out for 10 minutes trying to get to the school um i don't know if there's something we could do maybe not this year but next year to have multiple voting locations or move voting to casey you know i know that we have events happening at north on the same day but if we moved voting to casey maybe we can relieve some of the congestion but you
138know just to do some math if everyone who's voting is carpooling uh we're looking at about four cars a minute entering and leaving that parking lot over the course of the you know early morning and afternoon voting hours um [Music] second thing is um you know absentee ballot forms so we do have universal absentee balloting uh this year again through the school board elections so uh if we if the district puts out a form we'll share it i know last year we put a form together and then the district put one of their own together but either way that's you know something we can address and then the last one is when you say we who are you referring to uh students first so we we put a as we make sure you're clear because
139yeah yeah um and then the last thing is so we can collect signatures as a community to get um a student representative on the school board we can collect 500 signatures and and i think that's a great initiative that we could do but the board could also just choose to put that proposition up for vote i think that would be a good thing for the district to do it it is kind of a complicated thing you know most school districts only have one high school uh obviously buffalo is an outlier but williamsville has three and the the state laws don't have any provisions on having multiple students to sit on the board but i think it'd be something worth investigating so again we appreciate if you guys would look into it thank you very much
140thank you anyone have any comments for mr rich well i can't just make one comment about um students i know uh we have a variety of groups the enter high council and a number of ways that we gather information from students i think you know school districts have used that uh having a student you know being a exposed facto member sometimes you know when you're sitting here it's nice to get feedback from a student who might have insight that we wouldn't have i know many of you have young people in the schools now that helps as far as older people it's just reminiscing about what it might be like so i will just make too so i will say that we have worked extremely hard as i am a very active ptsa member and we
141have worked very very hard on all of our ptsa groups both at the middle school and high school level as well as ptsa council to invite students to participate we've even gone so far as doing a qr code where they can walk up and just scan it and just fill out a three question to participate to really make sure that we receive their voice so hopefully we'll see more participation but i will share for the ptsa north we have no one for ptsa council we have one potentially two in the entire district so i will say it's not lack of trying but students are very busy also so we can look at their feedback but this is a very big commitment also and it would be difficult to have one student sitting for the entire
142student body so i would love to see more students participate at the ptsa subunits we have wonderful things sayak committee that is all three schools 12 to 15 students coming together with dr brown hall so there are incredible ways that we are receiving student voice and we are continuously trying to increase their involvement as well i just wanted to point out that dr mccleary serves as the liaison for scihack sayak is our our student inter high advisory council and it's an alternative to having a student on the school board because it actually maximizes the student voice because there's several students from each high school that participate superintendent brown hall attends along with dr mcclary they i mean you can speak to better than i can about what they do during the sessions but we get
143to read the report as board members absolutely and they're doing a lot right now we actually met this morning at 8 am at north also so they have individual projects they're working on they're they're they're sponsoring actually a try high spirit week that will begin april 4th one of the groups is sponsoring a senior junior share in relation to college and college applications so they're working on a lot of things and so we gather them together today we'll be meeting again on april 5th at 8 a.m in this very room to discuss um stress relievers especially for those seniors who are preparing to go to college just prioritization and relieving stress and making sure you're mentally and well balanced awesome great just another opportunity for students because i'm involved with this chair decision making committees
144there's those committees at each building and then we have a district shared decision making committee um and students take part in that as well so and um which is starting to weave into strategic plan as it should um absolutely that's just another place for for student voice also just to um comment on what mr rich said about the voting location um it is also an evening of the district vote there is a band concert at north that night and so i know we've already approved the location and everything but in looking at my calendar i thought that's important for us to know because that will um take up a good piece of the parking lot as well okay unless um my calendar is incorrect but that's that's right so if i'm incorrect i apologize that's
145what i have in my calendar from the district calendar so something to just to look ahead and plan right yeah that's good eric bogner look at how you organize the park just one other quick thing my understanding with the legislation of having a student on the board of education that would have to be a senior and it would have to be someone from the inner high advisory council if one of if an inner high advisory council exists in the district it would need to be a member of that council that would be appointed as the student board representative so really they would have to be wanting willing and able to do that when they already devote a whole lot of time to the inner high advisory council i i appreciate you sharing that i'm wondering
146if at the next enter high advisory council if that question could go back to the students is there even an interest from the students to have a student voice on the on the board of ed very nice i mean i know so some school districts do have student on their uh board and i mean i think it's valuable to have student input in what even if they don't vote on issues and i know students are there in a lot of committees even the code of conduct committee and other committees and their input is really valuable and it will be good to get students perspective on things and i'm sure we can work out a way in which students can rotate on the council not limited to one student coming to all the meetings maybe work
147through science believe the way that the legislation is yeah it's in the legislation and i believe that the way that it's written is it's one senior per year and it would have to come from the inner high advisory council i think that's my understanding of the legislation i mean we can always get back to other schools that have already done this and see how they're doing it well in buffalo so in buffalo we have a intra-high advisory council where you have students from every high school are part of enter high enter high hopes their elections and they have president vice president um but the president of enter high every year is a student rep on the board of education but it has to be the same person has to be that one person yeah it
148certainly is a topic that i think um a few years ago we kind of talked a little bit about and then it kind of faded away in terms of what was legally possible and so forth but i think because we've been hearing it again then can certainly at least talk about it perhaps further all right and there was one more absolutely please let's have in [Music] st lydia ramos how are you um yeah when it got to nine o'clock i i was like well it's okay but so thank you for staying um and having been able to have the opportunity i was going to ask a question about achievement gaps and learning loss and if we had metrics for this year to kind of know where children are prior to um any type of state
149assessments like if that was something that was going on but after hearing from the rest of the community and and you know absorbing their perspective and things that are on their mind i just you know i think it's really important that when we have these community forums that there are like more voices there's more this community is what it is and there are diverse perspectives there are all types of cultures and languages i think you all said 505 english language learners 39 languages in the district yes i've heard about enrollment data that the the largest you know population of new enrollment are going to be students who were not born here so there's we need to have people who can come here and share and feel like it's a safe space and i would i
150was wondering what the board what their feelings are on how that is fostered i look around um sometimes you're the only person in the room you know the only of just your kind of onlys or you know your group or how you identify how do we make it where there's some psychological safety because the conversations that need to happen around something that is very it's important and it's necessary to understand um that children all students have to be met where they they're at they all have their own individual needs and they all have lived experiences that may have them show up in the classroom in all different ways so how do we make the site this you know how do we make these safe spaces conversations so that these types of forms can be beneficial
151and valuable and things happen she's curious i would make a quick comment that perhaps one of the first or maybe continuing step is the various committees that we've been talking about and the ptas and the boards and they're all made up of volunteers and if individuals in the community if they don't have time in their schedule to be involved to go to neighbors and friends and say you know look i i went to a community forum and we talked about this and and i hope that you would be willing to volunteer so i think the communication piece again is talk to your neighbors talk to your friends and encourage them because we are looking for individuals to participate and hopefully it's a welcoming environment and if we all can work that would be wonderful yeah
152i i would like to comment too that um thank you for being here you know thank you for thank you for being with us tonight and and it's very important to us as a board that we do look around and we see a variety and we see a diversity and we are inclusive and that's why we pass that policy in the fall and that's why we're moving forward with those things and so i'm i'm really hopeful i have a great passion about it and i'm really hopeful that when we get those committees of it at individual school buildings first that are going to connect with a larger building larger district committee those are the kinds of things that are going to come out of that so it's going to start small it's going to be
153slow as dr brown hall said but you know we're just going to build that community bigger and bigger as we go so thanks for being here today thank you i just wanted to share too that you know to answer your question i i have to think about well it starts with intention at least for me it starts with intention and so i i know what my intentions are when i when i get up in the morning and when i come here in service as a board president and we we start we're starting slow right we we have a policy uh regarding development dei we had we established a board goal this year regarding dei but we don't want it to just be lip service we want it to be something that we are really listening
154to each other so that intention goes along with the listening piece and i know that when dr brown hall came on board he started with listening he started by holding listening tours we here tonight and are trying to do more listening and speaking right because if my lips are flapping all the time i'm not hearing anything so i want to make sure that i'm doing my part to listen and be open and so i thank you for sharing and we just have to keep moving forward right we just got to put one foot in front of the other and keep doing what we do and and working as hard as we can to try and get as many voices as possible okay thank you all thank you you know your initial point was about academic
155achievement and you know last board meeting it was a very strong presentation about where the district was and that type of information so i'm sure it's available in board docs i won't repeat it but some of the concepts that we've mentioned about safety acceptance inclusion mental health all impact academic achievement you can't learn if you're not comfortable in that environment if you feel you are an outsider or if you're uncomfortable in your situation uh having i've been in a district more than most of you um you know i would say that one of the positive things that i've always observed uh and my children having gone through the district is that uh it's been a very welcoming uh situation uh and if it hasn't been then you know really the teachers or the administrators uh
156aren't really doing what they're supposed to be doing so i would hope again when you look at that big piece of academic achievement which is what our board uh is responsible for as well as a budget that our children would feel whatever their background wherever they've come from that this is their home and they would feel comfortable here and we would treat our students as we would our own children because that's what's that young and you make a great point about having those uncomfortable conversations and being a safe space but we have to realize also there's going to be many times we're going to have to have uncomfortable conversations in spaces that we don't deem to be safe because that's how we advance the conversation right but we have to realize when those times are
157because sometimes it's appropriate to do it and sometimes it's not and so just being mindful of that too as i had to be tonight so thank you very much olivia thank you thank you thank you um mr biscaya did we find um there any other no no was it brenda no her hands down okay okay all right um i would say their last last call was there anyone in the audience who felt that they would like to speak and didn't have the opportunity one two three all done i just want to say thank you to everyone who joined us tonight and participated in our conversation thank you dr mccleary and mr basquilio for facilitating thank you our next board meeting is april 19th please be well and have a good night