April 21, 2026 - Board of Education Meeting

001[music] I call the regular board meeting to order. All members of the board are present except board member Fletch and ex-officio student board members Carkonus, Maurice, and Purva. Dr. Spicer, would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag 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. May I have a motion to approve the following resolution? Resolved that the Board of Education of the Williamsville Central School District hereby votes to enter into executive session on April 21st, 2026 pursuant to Education Law Section 3020A to discuss matters leading to the potential discipline of a particular person. And be it further resolved that the Board of Education of the Williamsville Central

002School District hereby authorizes the production of a particular person's personnel file to be presented in executive session on April 21st, 2026. Additionally, the board will discuss employment matters relating to other particular persons, medical history related to a particular person, current litigation, and collective negotiations. Motion, Mr. Mana, second, Mr. Bulin, all in favor. Motion carried unanimously. Mhm. May I have a motion to return the regular board meeting to public session? Ms. Blackinger? Mr. Mana? All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. I call the regular board meeting to order. All board members are present except for board member Vascalia. The Board of Education considered an appeal of the Williamsville Central School District's denial of the parents' request for homebound instruction for a student in the district during the immediately preceding executive session. May I have a motion to

003either deny or approve this appeal? Motion to deny. Mr. Mana is making a motion to deny. Is there a second? Ms. Pullen. All in favor to deny the appeal. Motion carried unanimously. Good evening and welcome to all in attendance. Please be advised that 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 turn their cell phones and other electronic devices to silent. Thank you. We are on item 3A. Dr. Brown-Hall, I turn it over to you for school spotlights. Thank you very much, Board President. As you all know, our board meetings are exciting and we have a great time, but this is actually the best part of the

004board meeting when we do our recognitions. Tonight's [snorts] spotlight focuses on Challenge to Change and elevating student voice. This year's summit featured more than 160 students not only from our three high schools, but surrounding school districts as well. Challenge to Change provides a unique platform where students work together, share insights and perspectives, and empower each other to be agents of change. The summit emphasizes intergroup dialogue allowing participants to share lived experiences and develop the tools necessary to foster inclusive environments within their respective schools. This year's event, very similar to last year's event, what they were organized by Williamsville East Assistant Principal Courtney Charleston Smith and English Teacher Lisa Azzarrelli Brown, who will now share more on this incredible event. I ask you both to the podium. Welcome. Welcome. Hi. Thanks for having us. Um I

005want to start out by telling you working? I don't know. Okay. Here we go. Hi. [laughter] Um [clears throat] I just want to tell you that we are honored that you trusted us with such a huge endeavor. Um, it's not easy that we can pull off something that involves our high school alone at such a large magnitude, but that also included the three other uh the two other high schools in our district plus three others. Um, we made sure that we included staff, students, and administration at Will East, North, and South, Sweet Home, Cleveland, and Amherst um, to plan a full day of collaboration and um sharing information with them. We took into account all the students' [clears throat] needs, wants, and also what we felt was important DEI related with our strategic plan. And

006our goal was to have our students learn in a creative environment to collaborate and become effective leaders and allow everyone to be heard. Um, by working together, we feel that this experience was um made it possible for every single student in the room to feel that they not only deserve a seat at the table, whatever table that may be from the point of view in that room, and taking those skills and transferring them to everyday life, to also having the power to shape the conversation. And that was the key for us that we wanted them to walk away being able to shape the conversation um, and be respectful and be heard regardless of who they are and what they believe in. Um, the the day truly encompassed our uh our district, Williamsville district's belief in

007um commitment to DEI and our strategic planning. Um, we like to specifically thank each and every one of you for trusting us and um the superintendents for um believing in us and um doing what is best for our kids. Thank you. I'm off the cuff [laughter] ad-libbing than I am, so I have something I'm going to read. Um, I just want to say thank you as well. The Challenge to Change Multi-District Conference is grounded in a framework that aims to nurture leadership in all students. The conference focuses on 21st century college and career skills such as taking initiative, communicating effectively, and setting goals. And it supports both Williamsville district strategic goals as well as New York State social emotional learning and academic standards for by providing students with opportunities to develop this to develop as

008whole people. [laughter] There is an energy that is palpable when students see that we, their trusted adults, put our words into actions by creating these beyond the walls of school opportunities for them to practice their leadership skills, challenge, pun intended, themselves in new ways, and to collaborate with students from neighboring high schools. This conference truly builds bridges among students and communities. And I am very proud to have been a part of this initiative in Williamsville, which is both my home district as a professional, I student taught in the district in '94, '95, I'm not sure. Um, and so as both an educator and as a parent. It speaks volumes about our district's commitment to both Williamsville's and New York State standards, not just in writing or in words, but most importantly in action. On behalf

009of the students whose enthusiasm still resonates in our discussions with them, as well as in the feedback that we received from the colleagues we worked with in other districts, um, and in the ideas that they've already suggested for next year, we want to say a sincere thank you. And on on a more personal and professional note, thank you for allowing me to be part of such an inspiring, exciting initiative, and I want to thank Courtney because as she mentioned, it is a huge endeavor, and um, we're so far we're making a pretty good team. So, thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. [clears throat] [music] Good morning and welcome to the second annual Challenge to Change conference. Challenge to Change is an annual conference for student leaders from high schools all over the area where we get

010to take workshops and learn from people in a bunch of different fields about what leadership looks like to them and how we can have a positive impact on our schools. Expand your leadership capacity. Expand what you think you want to do and make that thing bigger. generations the next leaders of the nation and as a whole students are the ones who need to make the changes and so I think everyone should be kind of encompassed in decisions and processes that are done in the future. My name is Rowan Class. I'm from Will Lee. You mentioned that the goal of school is to make you more human. What's your number one piece of advice on how to do that? One of the things you want to do in your schools is you basically want to get

011your seniors together or your juniors together or your sophomores together or your freshmen together and just say, "Okay, so here's the deal. Like we are going to take care of everyone." Students, especially at the time of our age, are going to enter the adult world and I believe that collaboration is pretty important. Of course, chance to change, being exposed to strangers and your friends gives us that opportunity to well, collab with people you know or you don't know but with a subordinate goal in a in achieving a positive thing. I think it just helped us know that we're not alone, that we're not the only people who want to make change, we're not the only people who want to lead and just understanding that there are other people like you and also understanding that it

012is possible to make big changes. I feel like I have a much larger voice um as as a student in improving other people's, I guess, day. Like the the conference was like fundamentally built to build more compassionate and kinder students and I think that it definitely did that. [music] Awesome. Thank you very much again for your work. [laughter] I'm so sorry. I'm going to be rude. I I did I would be remiss if I did not thank Nick Filipowski and David for um putting together this wonderful video for us because he made us look great. So, thank you. [applause] Thank you very much. Next, we have a truly special recognition. In early April, the district was notified that Stacey Corio, an engineering and technology teacher at Williamsville North High School, has been named the New

013York State Engineering and Technology Teachers Association Teacher of the Year. This is a well-deserved honor and we are fortunate to have Mrs. Corio as a teacher in our district. She sparks curiosity in the classroom and truly helps students unlock their potential. Let's take a look. That's great, right? Awesome. I'm super grateful to be awarded [clears throat] the New York State Technology Educators Association Award. I think if you ask anyone in the region, there are so many teachers that could be easily recognized as the recipients of this award. So, I'm very grateful that my colleagues that I work with and the people in the area that chose me for this award, I'm very grateful. I'm like the Slender Man. Super caring, a leader, responsible. She just really puts her heart and soul and she's very passionate

014about what she does and it shows. So, I can't think of anyone more deserving. I would describe Mrs. Corio as very optimistic [clears throat] and positive. She tries to be very upbeat for her students and accepting and patient. She's very patient. describe this Corio as a really kind person who genuinely cares about her students and their interests. Last year I made a full model, like a 1/4 size model of a house, and I want to go into architecture. So that was very impactful for me. She's an awesome teacher and it's so nice to have someone who's able to push me to be better. But those kids that have the light bulb moments, that really means a lot because you know that they're finally understanding what the concepts are and they're unlocking their potential. And I

015just love being able to share my knowledge with other kids and hope that, you know, someday they'll be able to go on and do something related to technology. I can't think of anyone more deserving of this award than Stacy Corio. She's absolutely fantastic teacher. She's one of the best of the best. She encourages, nurtures, and inspires our students. And it is a privilege and an honor to work with her. [music] Please join me in welcoming and congratulating Mrs. Corio, recipient of the New York State Engineering and Technology Teachers Association of the Year Teacher of the Year Award. [laughter] Also like to welcome or you applaud cuz Stacy's going to come on up. I'd also like to welcome Andrew Bowen, principal at Williamsville North High School, and Kevin Lasky, director of science, technology, engineering, and STEAM

016programs for the district. Good evening. Thank you for taking the time to honor one of our elite teachers at Williamsville North High School. Stacy's approach to instruction is that of of like a skilled coach. She guides, she challenges, and she allows her students to think critically and push beyond their limits. In her classroom, students are fully engaged in the problem-solving process, learning from one another, and growing in confidence. Stacy motivates with purpose and displays passion in everything she does. We are so proud of her, and we are proud to celebrate this wonderful accomplishment. Definitely want to share the podium with our director of science and technology, Kevin Lasky. Thank you, Mr. Bowen. I also wanted to extend my sincere congratulations to Stacy for this well-deserved recognition. I wanted to point out that Stacy's passion and

017influence extends well beyond the walls of North High School. Just this past Saturday, Williamsville hosted the New York State TSA competition, an event where teams from all over the state came to compete at Williamsville North High School. This event was organized and facilitated by Stacy. Wow. culmination of about a calendar's years worth of work. Her leadership at the event was admired appreciated by all, as is her non-stop commitment to her students and the advancement of technology education as a whole. We are so thankful and lucky to have her here in our district. Congratulations, Stacy. [clears throat] Awesome. Thank you. I just want to say that I have been Excuse me, working [clears throat] in the district for 21 years. Wow. And all of my time has been at North, and I have truly enjoyed all

018of my years here. I feel I have been really well supported by the district. And I think myself and my colleagues appreciate the tools and the resources that everyone in the district, the board, principals, the directors, like everyone that has given us those resources to teach the kids. Um, really appreciate that uh been able to do my job and uh it's been fun and exciting. Uh so I I just want to say thank you for that. And also Nick Filipowski like magic. [laughter] Magic with your hands. So, thank you. I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Congratulations. All right, continuing on. Oh. I turn it back over to you, Board President. That all go ahead. I I misstepped. No, no, no. No such thing. Are there any board acknowledgements this evening? After Spicer. Yes. My

019microphone feels far away. Um I I just wanted to acknowledge the organizers and the participants of the Mill Craft Show this past weekend. The the gym was full, just rows and rows and rows of really talented students and their family members. There were parents, grandparents, but there was also teachers everywhere, administrators, and it was just such a great showing of support for the community. And because I enjoy a theme and earrings, I am wearing a pair of earrings that were made by a seventh grader at Mill. Um and so, you know, kudos to to that person and to their their counterpart who was a fierce saleswoman. So, I I purchased more than I intended. Um but really great job. I know what a what a lift a big event is and it was just really

020very impressive. So, good for them. Thank you. Any other board acknowledgements this evening? Ms. Pullen. I will acknowledge um Forest Elementary's 5K that they had on Saturday, also, which was in competition with the um craft fair. [laughter] But, um Forest Elementary this year had 290 participants cuz the weather was exceptionally good. Raised $2,500 for the Punt Pediatric Cancer Foundation, so. It's a um It I learned that it is a sanctioned 5K that people from the community participate in in preparation for the Boston Marathon. So, it's it's class It's a certifying race, so lots of community members that participate for that reason. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Any other board acknowledgements this evening? Okay, we're moving on now to item number four, which is public expression. Um I believe two folks signed up, but I do

021not believe either of them are here. So, before we um read the format, are either Paul or Crystal here this evening? Okay. So, we will we have no public expression then. We'll move on to item five. The 2026-2027 code of conduct is available for review and a 30-day public comment period. Any feedback may be submitted to the district through email at [email protected]. Are there any questions or comments from board members regarding the code of conduct? Is Block Kuncher Um we I'm part of a wellness committee and during that committee we reviewed the code of conduct and specifically the past several months included review of the dress code policy. I'd like to make a motion to uh Before I do that, let me just back up. So, our last meeting was held in April. We were

022not able to complete our review of the dress code policy. So, I'd like to make a motion to have the opportunity to do that in the month of May and have our committee members reconvene. I'd also like to add two teacher represent representations that we did not have. And um I don't know how we would choose which teachers, but I would like to make a motion to include that option. So, we have a motion to reconvene the meeting and to also add teachers to the youth wellness council that reviews the code of conduct specifically to complete the work of the dress code. Is there a second? Ms. Fletch, is there any discussion? If I may. I just I I really want to understand the reason why at this late stage, as you stated board member

023Blackinger, that you've been reviewing for the past several months the dress code specifically, why now would we look to add additional teachers who haven't been involved in the process all this time? I would recommend that you reconvene the committee that has been working on the dress code policy and next year if the board has certain parameters that they would like to see individuals on the wellness committee to specifically look at individual aspects of it, they do it at that time. I don't think it would be beneficial to add someone this late in the game to be on the committee to review the dress code policy when we already do have teachers sitting on the dress code policy. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Okay. Who is that? I I And uh we don't have them listed in

024there. They were all administrators. No. So, I'm going to I'm sorry. And I'm not trying to be argumentative with you at all by any means. When you pull up the uh code of con uh when you pull up the code of conduct, they're listed on page four. I'm sorry, this is taking a minute to load. Oh, no. Please, cuz I didn't realize we They must have never participated. Well, I was actually at the April meeting at the beginning and I had discussion with one of the teachers. Well, I think if I can jump in, I think the issue was they weren't involved in specifically the dress code. They had things to say and then the challenges that teachers faced regarding the dress code. I don't know if the delegation We We do not have teacher

025representation that have been present at any of the meetings this this year nor last year while I was on the committee. Well, I'm not saying that they Timothy Pinkowski is a is a staff member. And he's listed on page four. I know that Philip Miller is a teacher also. He works as a parent representative in this capacity, but there was teacher representation on there. And he was at the meeting. I had spoke to him at the April meeting. Did not realize that. I still would like to have a motion to have another meeting in May to complete the work of the dress code policy. And I And I would support that if there wasn't enough time to review the additional dress code policy. I just ask that the board hold off with adding additional people

026until we can have a thorough discussion of who the board thinks is suitable to have on the wellness committee moving forward. Okay. So, if I as parliamentarian if I can may We have a motion. Is there a second for the first motion which was to have We had the first and the second I second it. Yes, it was it was it was Miss Blackman and then Miss Fletcher was the second. So, now we are looking to amend the motion to strike having additional members, but to continue to have another meeting in May. So, the motion is just to have the wellness council meet again in May to continue the work on the dress code. That's correct. So, Who There are You made the motion as amended. Is there a second for the motion as amended?

027I just wanted to ask a question really quick. Okay, doc First we need a second. Dr. Singh is a second. Discussion, Ms. Fletcher. Oh, no. I mean are you you're good with not adding anybody, right? Yes. Okay. That was it. Okay. So we have a first, a second on that motion. Is there any discussion on the motion, Mr. Biscaldi? It's not really discussion. I missed who who did you say were the teachers? Dr. Brownell. It's uh Mr. Uh let me take my glasses off. Dr. Singh is the second. The person that's listed as wellness facilitator on the code of conduct, who is also a teacher apparently. And there is a parent representative that listed as a parent representative but is also a teacher. Which is why that there was some confusion because they're not listed

028as teachers on the on the document. So the wellness facilitator that is listed as a school counselor is a teacher? Yeah, they're covered by the WTA. Yes. Okay. Mhm. My only concern with that is there's school counselor, not a teacher. It's different parameters when you're at work, but I do understand it's hard to implement new people when you're that late in the game. I'm not going to say that, but in the future for committees, I I wouldn't count that as I mean yes, they're in the same union, but I look at that as different, you know, jobs and what they do and interact with students. Not that it matters in this case. I'm just saying in general. Right. Cuz I still think the the information and feedback they give to the committee is is beneficial

029in the in the in the aspect that they even have a greater influence. They they all have a great influence on students. They also can have because they see so many more students from different levels also. Right. I meant in the parameters of um trust code and things like that. That's what I meant. No, I get what you're saying. Not Because they're not in the classroom. Correct. Not that they're not good feedback. I didn't want it to come that way. We love our counselors. [laughter] Any other discussion on the current motion? Okay, all in favor then for the Youth Wellness Council to reconvene in May. Motion carried unanimously. We are now moving on. Uh was there any other discussion regarding the code of conduct before we move on? Not related to that motion. Okay. The

030code of conduct public forum is open to community members in attendance. Anyone wishing to address the board regarding the code of conduct only may go to the podium at this time. I do not see anyone approaching the podium, so we will move on. We are now um on the superintendent report, Dr. Brown-Hall. I turn it over to you for items 6A, 6B, and 6C. Board President, thank you very much. As I said before, our board meetings are great. This is another exciting part of the board meeting, the community update. And then when our students give their updates about everything happening in the schools is another exciting part. So, first and foremost, portrait of a graduate. I know the board and our community has heard about portrait of a graduate all school year long, and we

031appreciate the partnership with the PTSA Council for the Superintendent Speaker Series, and it debuted last week on the portrait of a graduate. Each video segment is available on the district's website. There are 29 interviews conducted and 26 different video projects used to highlight the portrait proficiencies. The detailed phase-in information is available on the portrait of a graduate informational page. Comments and feedback can be submitted online. And as we get more information, we'll share it with our entire school community and all of our stakeholders. But if you go to the portrait of a graduate informational page, there's a lot of information. It's very robust, so I encourage you all to do that. June Regents exams are scheduled for June 9th through June 25th. Students are only in school if they have an exam. We have linked

032the state education Regents exam schedule to the community update. It will also be available online. Most of our schools included in their school newsletter, and it is readily available for our students. Please keep in mind there are no exams scheduled for June 19th and observance of June 10th or June 22nd, which is a rating day. CogAT screener. So, many of our parents have already received information about this, but this assessment gives information on how students learn. The results will be shared with families in late June, and they'll also be used to identify needs within the classroom and as one of the measures when considering students for gifted programming and services. The opt-in for students in grades K-5 is available on the Wix Parent Portal homepage, and it closes this Friday. Parents and guardians need to

033opt-in via Wix to have their child or children participate in the CogAT screener. Additional information is available on the GPS informational page. The board vote, I'm sorry, the budget vote and board elections will be held on Tuesday, May 19th from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Williamsville North. The 2026 proposed budget is $248,168,844. The detailed budget report is actually item 6B in the board packet. We won't be presenting it this evening. We presented it over the last board meetings, and there will be a budget hearing, which is scheduled on May 7th, which where it will be presented once again. The budget to budget increase is 2.24% and the tax cap is 3.14%. Our board candidates are Laura Schollinger, board member Mike Mascalia, Dr. Carrie Spicer, and Mr. Phil Danielson. We thank Lynn Carey. She actually

034did the uh ballot draw at 5:30 today, and that information will be coming out, and that is available on our YouTube page. Meet the candidates night is Thursday, May 7th, following the annual budget hearing that I just spoke about. Meet the candidates night will begin approximately at 7:00 p.m. and be held in this very room. Stakeholders can attend in person or watch virtually on the district's YouTube channel. Stakeholders can also submit questions through the Google form that is linked to the community update. Very exciting. Our AC project update. So, work continues with the elementary school air conditioning project. On Sunday, May 3rd, construction crews will be using a helicopter at Country Parkway and Maple West to place the AC units on the roof. This work has been approved by the FAA, coordinating with the local

035law enforcement also, cuz we want to make sure that the area around the schools is a point that Dr. Spicer wants to make sure, and we understand that all board members, of course. I was excited about the helicopter. So, All our students will be also. They will. We'll be coordinating with local law enforcement to make sure that there's a safe distance between viewing and the actual helicopter dropping the AC units on the roof. A formal letter explaining the scope of the work and safety precautions will be going to those school communities this week. We're hiring. So, we are in the hiring process, and we are looking for an assistant principal at Maple West Elementary School. So, So, you know of anyone of high quality that would be a benefit to our school community and the

036students that we serve, please encourage them to apply to the assistant principal posting for Maple West Elementary. As was just discussed, our draft 2026-2027 code of conduct is being presented tonight. Items in the code that are underlined indicate changes that are being made. Items that are crossed out with that strike through indicate those that will be removed. The code of conduct conduct comment period is open through Friday, May 22nd. Comments and feedback can be sent to [email protected]. But, I do want to say this though, you can still send comments on areas in the code of conduct. Once the wellness committee meets, if there are additional changes, we will need to then present it to the board and open up another 30-day comment period. So, there may be then another opportunity for our community to comment

037again. Okay? Our monthly themes, April is Arab American Heritage Month, May is both Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage Month, and Jewish American Heritage Month. Our strategic plan, the planning for our strategic plan is currently underway. So, we've been canvassing for parents and we are currently canvassing for community members, and then we will be working and contacting all of our collective bargaining associations, our unions, to provide representation on the strategic planning committee, also. We will begin those meetings in September. I know we were looking at dates, but some of the dates will be full days. We'll begin those meetings in September. We plan to have a plan submitted to the board at the April 2027 board meeting, so there will be another 30-day comment period. Those comments will then be taken back to the strategic

038planning committee in May to then submit a final plan to the board in June for adoption for July 1, 2027 implementation. And as always, there will be board members selected to be on the committee. So, once the board has a reorganization meeting, that process will then follow. The interest form for community members will be on the district website and you'll be able to click the link in the community update if you are interested as a community member to be on the strategic planning team. The interest form closes on May 13th. Water testing report. So, there was a letter that went out to our school community and um we had a question from one of our student board members also about the water testing report. The results are on our district website. So, on December 6th,

039the district conducted lead testing of drinking water outlets in accordance with the New York State Department of Health lead testing regulations. Since the state's last compliance report, the lead action level for school drinking water outlets has been lowered from 15 parts per billion ppb to five parts per billion. Any faucet or fixture that resulted in sample readings at or above five parts per billion was marked as non-potable. Letter to families and staff was sent on Monday, April 20th and the results are available on the water testing informational page on the district website. Our district art show. Always a phenomenal time. The artwork that our students are able to develop is absolutely phenomenal. It will take place at the Honorable Shirley Chisholm Audubon Library from April 27th through May 10th. The opening receptions are as listed.

040The elementary reception is Monday, April 27th from 5:30 to 7:00 and then the middle high school reception is next Tuesday, April 28th from 5:30 to 7:00. Western New York Education Service Council has their annual awards dinner, which will be held tomorrow evening. So, we're very, very excited. The Western New York Education Service Council Awards of Excellence recognizes individuals for making the difference for kids, their leadership, their dedication in going above and beyond, and their personal characteristics. This year, we have three members of our Williamsville community who will be receiving awards of excellence. Our very own president of our Board of Education, Ms. Crystal Kaczmarek Bogner, our administrators, Dr. Marie Balan, who was our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction and serves as our chief academic officer, and our Williamsville South High School Principal, Mr. Keith

041Bortman. So, we're very proud of all of them. Round of applause. For all they do for our school community and our students. Our summer school dates are set and the locations are set also. Elementary middle will be at Casey Middle School from July 8th to the 18th. Our high school will be at East High School again from July 7th to August 19th. And our summer school high school principal is in the audience, Ms. Courtney Charleston Smith. Our special education summer school program will be at Transit Middle School from July 6th to August 14th. Our community Ed Wild program will be at Mill Middle School. Just for Kids will be at High Middle School. And our music programs will be at North Middle School. Thank you, Principal Bowen, for that. Our alumni associations have been up

042and running and have been meeting. We want to encourage anyone, if you signed up for your high school alumni association, to please look out for the meeting notifications. And if you have any questions, please contact the individuals who are our faculty uh advisors for our alumni associations. At East, we have have Ms. Deb Mehaney and Michelle Weber. At North, we have Mr. Mark Percy. And at South, we have Ms. Eleanor Gainey. So, our alumni interest forms can still be filled out if you're interested, and the meetings are underway. They are in the process of developing bylaws for the alumni associations right now. Then, they will be electing individuals to serve in executive capacity for the alumni boards. And that's the community update for April 21st, 2026. Are there any questions from board members? I'm sorry,

043I know you usually ask that to the president. Not a question, just a comment of appreciation, Dr. Brown-Hall. I appreciate that you always link the Regents exam schedule in your community update in our effort just to be great at communicating. Um we get a lot of emails with a lot of different schedules, and so it's just another place for myself as a parent to find that information. So, thank you for that. Thank you. Oh, I appreciate that feedback. If there aren't any other questions, I'll move on. I just want to discuss item 6B, which is the budget presentation. That has been presented several times, and there are no changes. The state is on their fourth budget extender, so we do not know if there will be additional funding from the state, additional foundation aid funding.

044So, our budget has remained the same and will remain the same until the budget vote. There will not be any additional changes, and so the budget hearing is scheduled for Thursday, May 7th, where there will be another budget presentation. And if anyone has questions, you're able to ask at that time, also. I am now going to turn it over to Dr. Marie Bellen. So, Dr. Bellen, as I said, is our assistant superintendent of curriculum, assessment, and instruction, and serves as our chief academic officer. Dr. Bellen and her team, Mr. Lee Farrants and Dr. Bill Bowen, will be presenting on our use of artificial intelligence in the district. So, we know that this is a hot topic for schools, colleges, universities across the United States. So, we passed AI policy earlier this school year or late

045last school year. And so, right now we're going to see how is AI being used in our district and where that will go in the future. So, I welcome Dr. Bowen and her team. Thank you very much. Perfect. Well, thank you board. Thank you Dr. Brown-Hall for the opportunity to share tonight. We'd like to start off with who has used AI today? We got one teacher. Okay. [clears throat] So, if you think about it, AI is what we use as a general term of artificial intelligence, not new. Okay. What is new for the public school sector is generative AI. All right. What that means is that it will generate something that typically a human would have generated, but now it's taking the place of that. Prompt through a prompt, it's creating something. And that's what

046is new. And what's newer is the availability to the general public and to public schools. All right. So, that's really where that shift has started with generative AI. All right. So, our focus today as we go through will be on the awareness framework that we have, our implementation efforts both past, present, and future, and then we'll leave you with some next level steps. So, at this time, I would like to introduce Dr. William Bowen, the principal of Maple East to continue this presentation. Good evening to Dr. Brown-Hall and our distinguished Williamsville school board members. It's an honor to be here with you tonight to share with you information about a topic that is very relevant, very important for our students, for our staff, and something that we're really excited about moving forward with with a

047number of initiatives here in the Williamsville schools. So, I would like to share with you some information about generative AI, AI's ability to create new content based on data that is inputted into the system, and the relevance for our students and for our staff and for our school system. So, four different things that we've um really been focusing on here in the Williamsville schools, that our staff has been working with, our students have been working with. First is the instructional efficiency piece. So, AI, generative AI is a very powerful tool for our staff to work on routine administrative tasks that allow them to spend more time with their students. Some of these tasks could include lesson planning development, like generating lessons and units, inclu- cluding learning objectives and state standards, in a very short period

048of time that might have taken a extenuating amount of time for teachers in the past. Um also creating instructional resources, like video, audio, different uh modalities for student learning based on input that's entered into AI systems, uh drafting and refining communications, uh class newsletters, parent emails, based on goals or objectives or bullet points that teachers enter into the system. Just really a major time time saver for our staff, and also professional development for our staff, where they can learn about topics, instructional strategies, at their own pace, in their own um uh in their own interest level, and incorporate those topics into the classroom. So, really the goal of these tools is not to replace the teacher, it is to give the teachers tools to save them time, save them energy, and really devote more time

049to their students on the relational elements of teaching, building trust, working with kids one-on-one, working with kids in small groups, building social-emotional skills. Uh the second area is person- personalized learning. So, all of our teachers have differentiated their instruction for many years. AI allows teachers to do this in a very short period of time. So, entering a lesson plan into the system and differentiating it for student need, for student ability levels, um creating a a differentiated lesson plan that accounts for uh diverse learners in the classroom, for ELL learners in the classroom, also um providing for enrichment for students who need enrichment in the classroom. It's a powerful tool for reading instruction as well. So, you can enter an article into an AI system. It could level the article for different abilities. It could be

050create decodable text for students based on an individual's phonics needs. It could create a text based on student interest level or hobbies for students to really help with comprehension. So, there's a world of possibilities when it comes to reading instruction and presenting content in multiple modalities. So, you can enter a an academic content or topic into an AI tool and it will create video, audio. It will create simplified text for students if necessary. So, there are lots of possibilities when it comes to personalized learning and differentiation. Future readiness is really important. This is really has to do with the student use of AI. So, AI used by students could be a very powerful tool in certain situations, in certain instructional settings. Kids can use it for brainstorming, for research, for drafting, for revising their work

051in certain situations, in certain settings. And that's where the digital literacy piece is so important. So, we've al- always had a strong digital literacy component here in the district and it's going to be more important than ever for us to incorporate AI into our existing digital literacy programs to really educate our kids when it's appropriate, when it's not, what's ethical and what is not ethical, in what settings can they use different features of AI. Lots of opportunities when it comes to AI in our schools, but also there are challenges that we have to consider that we've had a lot of conversations as a district about. First is access and equity, so making sure that all of our students regardless of their school or their classroom teacher are exposed to AI school AI tools, receive instruction

052in AI tools, receive digital literacy instruction, and also we educate them on the ethics of AI. Ethics is a big piece. When it's appropriate, when it's not appropriate for our staff and also for our students. Bias is something that we should consider as well. So it's essential that humans are involved in review of anything that's created by AI because AI could create content that has bias, that that excludes certain perspectives and the output that is produced by AI. So bias is definitely a consideration that we've been having conversations about as a district. And also assessment. So we have to be very mindful that any assessments or instructional resources that are created by AI that humans review them, our professional staff are essential in reviewing any output that is produced by AI. So tonight's presentation, just

053a brief overview about generative AI, our district's implementation, professional learning that we've provided to our staff, and next steps in future vision here in the Williamsville schools. So first to distinguish what what AI is and what it is not. So what it is is a computer system or systems that perform tasks usually requiring human thinking. It is also a tool that can help with research, writing, translation, and planning. What it is not is not a thinking, reasoning, or conscious being. It does not exercise judgment and it's not a replacement for our teachers, our professional staff, or the counselor, or for the school leader. And it's not always accurate. That's why our staff are essential in reviewing anything that is produced by AI. AI can produce errors, made-up information, and as I mentioned before, biased output.

054So, it's essential to think about what it is and what it is not. Generative AI creates new content based on data that is entered into the system. And it is essential, as I mentioned, for professional staff to review that new content. And I'd like to hand it back to Mr. Ferris. So, building off of what it is, where did we start? So, before we get into the timeline, just to give you some exposure of where teachers were and how they got started. So, our instructional technology software that we have is EdLaw 2 protected, which means it's data protected, security cleared, which means we're allowed to use that um in an educational environment. So, where did we start? That's where we started. So, we didn't have to have another login or another interface for teachers. So,

055we started with district tools that had AI embedded into it or commonly referred to as baked into the software. All right, so that allowed us to see things on the side like Canva, Padlet, where students or teachers can create images inside there. They start to predict text. All right, they start to add the ability to generate an image saying, "Hey, I'm making the presentation for the board. Create me an image that represents this." Hence, some of the images you see in this presentation were created by AI through Canva. All right, so those same tools that I'm using, teachers use. It's built within a familiar gallery D section, all right, that they're already used to. So, that's where that a first awareness or exposure to generative AI started, all right, for our teachers. A couple other

056things on there, we are a Google district, so within our Google workspace, all of those subscriptions like Google Docs, Slides, they're all starting to have more and more AI built in. You log in to create a form, it's going to ask what kind of Google form do you want to create? And how many questions do you want? You start typing that in, and then next thing you know, that's all created for you already. So, that's that generative AI um that we're talking about. So, as I move forward to the next slide, what was the aha moment, all right, when it came to generative AI? So, when we were a while ago, 2 years ago, looking at, all right, what was built into our subscription, what happened is with an our district, we have the ability

057to to enable Gemini and notebook. All right, so for most of us, we've probably read the headlines and familiar with chat GPT, okay? So, that's a public version, like Claude. Gemini is Google's version of that. And before I go any farther, I'd be remiss to say that our products for Google and for notebook are enterprise-grade applications. Completely different than if you subscribe to Google One or you use a personal Google account. Okay, ours are protected closed-in loops, which means the data never leaves. It's not used to train AI, okay? And no human see that. So, we say that stays within our walled garden. That's how we refer to it in IT is that that walled garden that it stays in. So, it stays all within. All history is saved and preserved. Okay, way different than

058the consumer application part. All right, so what you see on side would be Gemini, which is in just a screenshot of what it looks like you start off with entering in a prompt. Okay, and the more descriptive you are with your prompt, the better output it's going to take. We joke around that you could put prompt engineering on your LinkedIn profile if you could use Gemini, but that's kind of where it's at. It will output text for you and usually export to a text-based system. Just recently Gemini is giving us the ability to create audio and to create images within. All right. The other superstar of the Google Workspace product is Notebook LM. And this has skyrocketed use among teachers because it takes very complex synthesis of information. Things that would take us hours and

059hours and hours to read and to create. Now you can take a 250-page document and it will synthesize and create an infographic for you. All right, and that's in a matter of I don't know, 15 minutes by the time I hit go on the computer, get some water, go to the bathroom and come back, it's done. So, it's very, very powerful tools. Create slide decks, audio, podcasts, a lot of things it can create out of there and that's what that second screenshot looks like off to the side. Okay, but that's more of your multimedia creation as well. Me and this mic got a hot relationship here. It keeps popping on me. All right, so as I advance on to a little bit more understanding cuz it would if I showed you the timeline, you wouldn't

060know what I was talking about. All right, so now if we kind of look at that timeline of where we've been, we're looking at that past, present, and future. All right, so if we go all the way back to the admin retreat of summer of 2024, that is where our AI awareness started. All right, with our leadership um under Dr. Brownell's guidance at the admin retreat that where we started. Okay, and then in the fall of 2024, that's where we started working with those district subscriptions that I just showcased. And then in the spring of 2025, we have an instructional coach. I am the team leader of them. We have an instructional technology coach in every single building. We started working on the research of Gemini and notebook. All right, and then as we look

061into fall of 2025 through staff development days when we started off the school year, that's when we started showcasing those materials. And then as we move forward into the spring of 2026, now that those tools are enabled and being used by teachers, okay, we're starting to see that implementation and the output and the usage and the high usage of them in the classroom. And then as we move forward to summer 2026, we're going to repeat at the admin retreat, and we're also going to be looking forward to staff development days coming up, which I can now say still August, not September. So, I would say September as we move forward. So, how did we get here? All right, so before we did anything and before we decided anything, professional learning. All right. So, I don't

062know if many of us attend a lot of conferences, badges, we select all those things that we go to, we curate the sessions that we attend. Not only did our leadership attend those, our building administrators have attended those, the instructional technology coaches have attended those, and so have I. Both international conferences to get that world perspective, statewide conferences to get that, our local BOCES symposiums, the work with UB, their National Institute for exceptional education. And then in addition to that, their ethics symposium that they have and the center for early literacy and responsible AI usage through UB. All All so with all that curation and all that knowledge that we gained as a district, what we consumed and what we took in helped us develop and move forth that timeline. All right, which led us

063to what did we provide? And now I stand in front of you showing these beautiful examples over the last 2 and 1/2 years. There we go. There we go. Thank you. Uh so, what kind of professional learning have we provided for our teachers? So, I'd be remiss to say that I did not provide all of these. Okay, these are hand in hand with our instructional technology coaches. They provided a lot of these examples and work with the building administrators setting up not only building-based professional learning using time on their building staff development days to earmark time to have this be inescapable training for our teachers as we've gone through over the last 2 and 1/2 years uh working through. Some of the names off the side through the leadership of the instructional technology coaches, you

064can see some of those titles that are on the slide. There's so many more that we can get into by working with the office of professional learning. Like I said before, dedicating time on staff development days is something we have regularly done to commit to this generative AI and to move us forward over the last 2 and 1/2 years. And we look forward to, once again, summer institutes that we offer and then also staff development days. So, what does this look like in the buildings? Okay, so all that professional learning we took turnkey it to the teachers. So, what did they do with it? Okay, so some examples and this is just a very very There we go. Battery must be low. Uh so, what did it look like in the uh elementary? Once again,

065just some of previous to some small examples of what that would look like. Okay, this doesn't encompass everything. All right, so looking to kind of spark those visual creativity images that we utilize, all right, in elementary. We use it to create Gemini. It can create storybooks, coloring pages. It can create audio and video to support both student reading, okay, or student research. All right. I see some visual storytelling in there, image reading for characters. So just think about students describing a character and then the teacher pushing those information into something that can generate the image. So talking about your character, writing it, and now you can see it come to life on the computer just by typing a few words or sentence into that prompt and it will create that image. So both we have

066teacher-led exercises that they will use to create content for the students. And there are sometimes where students with those district embedded resources are able to engage into some generative AI, but we do not have Gemini or notebook turned on, all right, for them. It's only for teachers. So if I fast-forward to the middle school, just some higher-level examples, okay? So if you take a Gemini and you share it, it's also with something called a gem, and then that can be like a public document that you could share. So other people without the service being turned on can engage with that gem. So the coaches have created ones that are based in instruction, based in teaching, based in assessment, and then other teachers have been able to click on those and use them without having to

067go through and draft the whole prompt themselves. So sharing of best practices, sharing of knowledge. Okay, that's pretty much what we've done. That's what that example shows on the left-hand side. That is actually a differentiated lesson planner designed by one of the middle school instructional coaches. Teacher clicks on it, it takes them through all the questions and all the steps to help them create that differentiated lesson. Coding projects um are done with Canva, commonly called vibe coding. If you haven't heard that yet, that's the new term for um online coding using generative AI. Um podcast with Notebook LM. So, instead of taking really complex content again and putting it into a banter back and forth in a podcast, okay? So, giving that a different modality, a different voice, a different accent to something different than

068the teacher always delivering that content, all right? And then, if we go on to high school integration, this is really where Notebook LM has taken off because [laughter] they have the most complex content, all right? That they're trying to deliver uh to their Thank you. I don't know why. I did it. Oh, I'm looking at that one, okay. I got you. That one is lagging. [clears throat] I keep looking at that one, not this one. Thank you. Uh so, for that AI-assisted slide development uh and taking complex content from the high school, uh and just making it into a more appealing visual, simpler format for students to discern that information, that help them improve their demonstration of understanding. All right? And now I know, I will turn this over to Dr. Balint to continue the

069presentation. Thank you so much. Um good evening. As we consider the integration of generative AI in a K-12 district, we understand how essential it is to thoughtfully examine both the opportunities as well as the complexities that this introduces. [clears throat] We've spoken a little bit about the privacy and security, but we must ensure that at all times students and staff data are protected. This is paramount. AI tools often require input data, and districts must carefully evaluate how information is collected, stored, and used in compliance with laws and district policies. As As you've heard, compliance with EdLaw 2D is at the forefront. As Lee shared with you though, schools are in confined environments and with that there are specific rules and regulations that must govern how we interact with data and security. As far as the

070environmental impact, we are aware that the computational power required to run AI systems comes with some cost. As we adopt the tools, it's important to remain mindful of sustainability and responsible use. Certainly balance and selective use of the tool in particular as well with any technological tool is extremely important. Dr. Bowen spoke about equity and access. It's important that ensuring all students have equitable access to AI tools and digital literacy skills to use them effectively. This is critical to avoid widening opportunity gaps. And as far as transparency and understanding, students and educators must understand the multiple uses of AI including their limitations in effort to use the tools responsibly and critically. Understanding must be be developed of AI as an educational tool as well as as we've clearly seen in society as a whole. Lee's

071opening question was purposeful. We were actually brainstorming just when we sat down to plan the presentation how many times we interacted with AI. Some of it was deliberate and some of it is just by what you're engaging with as we talked about things that are baked into our systems. For us, if you're shopping online or doing things on your phone, uh chances are you've interacted with it even if it wasn't intentional. Uh key challenges include several things. Ethics was Ethics is certainly a part of it. AI raises important um ethical questions around authorship, ownership of ideas and appropriate uses in academic settings as well as certainly the world at large. Dr. Bowen talked about biases. AI systems can reflect and amplify biases present in training data which impact accuracy and fairness of outputs. Our policy,

072and we're very fortunate to have a very robust AI policy. Thank you to the Board of Education. Also reminds us that AI can generate inaccurate information. These are all lessons for adults as well as our students. As far as assessment and integrity, the use of AI when completing assignments is really focused many times. The dialogue becomes one of academic integrity. Uh certainly challenges a may arise in evaluating authentic student learning and maintaining academic integrity. Our code of conduct, our academic integrity policy, as well as our BOE policy do reiterate uh academic misconduct uh characterized often as plagiarism or copying. We have had similar um you know dialogue and conversation around when you may copy something off the internet or you borrow something from a source and it's not cited properly. So, AI has just made

073this a more profound and larger conversation to be had. Uh certainly lessons on information research and the proper citation of sources also continues to be very important with the onset of AI. And from an educational and instructional perspective, educators must reframe our thought process around instructional design as well as our assessment practices. We've heard a lot of course with the project uh based learning conversation that we have for many years, but also with the portrait of a graduate when we are looking at things like higher order thinking, creativity, and process over product. AI will certainly be part of this conversation as well. So, in alignment with the district's AI board policy, we affirm and recognize that teachers remain the architects of teaching and learning. They are responsible for for planning rigorous lessons, engaging students meaningfully,

074focused on what students should know, understand, and be able to do, and determining the appropriate pathways and tools to get them there. This includes an individual analysis of all tasks that we put in front of students. When we consider the standards, the lesson, and assessment purposes, and how the students will demonstrate their learning and understanding, it's also very inclusive of the careful and intentional selection of the resources, those tools that we're using. Something that I can tell you, and you know, educators have successfully navigated with many past technological innovations. This remains the same with AI. Teachers, by policy, must also communicate expectations and responsible AI to their students. As a district, we are taking a number of next steps to assist educators, and I would like to share some of those with you this evening.

075So, first and foremost, uh you may remember that we have a uh mandatory training landing page. So, again, putting the human at the forefront is really where we're going here. Our mandated training and our district AI landing page will be updated to include required professional learning on AI, and it will offer a centralized repository of resources for our staff on AI. These will be linked to each school's landing page. Additional district support will include superintendent and conference day sessions, as Lee mentioned. PD will include AI as a topic, including days that are already being planned as part of next year's calendar for September 2026. There will be topics included in our induction sessions for new teachers, as well as our regular building leader professional development sessions, and our administrative conference that you heard about is

076just one example. At the school level, learning will also be extended through team meetings and building-based opportunities, similar to previous district initiatives. These will complement the information that the staff has already received on technology, data privacy, and regulations such as EdLaw 2D. In addition, our building-based PD will include faculty meetings or building in-services, as well as opportunities to attend conferences. And we've been very lucky that that has been supported here in our district. Um and also with our new steps plan, many teachers are uh dovetailing this initiative with some of the areas of study. So, some professional learning plans may also include AI. And of course, last but not least, Lee mentioned the technology team that we are very fortunate to have here. Expanded collaboration with our tech coaches is also part of the plan.

077Lee and our coaching team has been work They've been working diligently and very closely with our office of professional learning, as well as our building principals and the school-based teams to design and deliver AI-focused PD sessions that are tailored to staff needs. Additionally, Dr. Brown-Hall and I uh in the recent months have attended a joint session with superintendents and district-level administrators focused on AI education. We are really hopeful that, given that information, we are really exploring uh how insights from that experience may translate into expanded opportunities that benefit both the staff and students across the district. We understand and I'll recognize student engagement with AI will continue to grow. Lee focused on that as part of his delivery this evening. Students will have increased opportunities to interact with the approved tools introduced earlier in the

078presentation, such as Gemini and Notebook LM in ways that support critical thinking and responsible use. So, in closing, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my colleagues here for their work in preparing and delivering the presentation tonight. I also want to recognize the outstanding efforts of our instructional technology team, uh Lee, our building principals, directors, and teachers, and acknowledge the strong partnerships that exist across the district. And we still have much more to accomplish here. This is an expansive conversation. It's evolving at lightning speed. As with any emerging and impactful topic, we certainly remain committed to continuous learning, thoughtful implementation, and ensuring that we provide the very best opportunities for our students and our staff. So, we're pleased to uh conclude the presentation and answer any questions that anyone may have. Thank you

079very much. Thank you. BUT, I SEE HANDS AND ALL STUDENTS. [cough] [clears throat] I'll start uh Giselle and I'll and we'll move down. Um mine's more of a comment than a question. But, first I wanted to say thank you for um education on this topic cuz it's better to I guess educate than avoid it cuz um as technology grows it's impossible to avoid. And I guess like one of my pet peeves is people saying um well, it's always been that way, so we should keep it that way. So, um I appreciate your education. Um my original question was about the environment cuz um big data centers like uh Gemini used um in 2024 reported 2.7 million gallons of water per day. So, I just wanted to say that I appreciate that you um mentioned in

080site 13 um your uh consideration about the environment and how you want to be very selective with our use of AI and not kind of um use it our day-to-day and kind of uh let it replace human thought. So, thank you for that. Thank you for the comments. We appreciate it. Thank you. ESP? one of the things I was going to say is I you guys mentioned instructional design and from a student's perspective teachers try to now like make AI or try to make assignments like AI proof to where they know students do use AI and they try to make it so that students are forced to think. So. Yeah, thank you very much for saying that. I just thought like this was really informative and like really brought to light because students have so

081many questions about like AI, what's acceptable, what's not. I just want to know I know there was a lot of like days for like teachers to really learn, to get trained on AI like conference days, but um, what about like students specifically? Because as you said like teachers they'll have a lot of like learning opportunities. Like take ethics for instance, a teacher might like have in mind that oh, this isn't ethical to use AI for this assignment, but I can see like a freshman not entirely they might know how to use AI, but not know the ethics of whether they should do it or not. Are there any plans to like update the students on that? Absolutely, and I think that's a great point and thank you for bringing that up as well because we

082can see clearly there's a twofold discussion on holding when it concerns AI. One is the use of the tool, and the other part are the considerations and challenges and perhaps insight with tool use. So, it really does have to be both. So, the instructional program will have to include both of those aspects. So, part of what we're hoping to accomplish with some of our next steps is ensuring that both of those get attended to both for staff [clears throat] and for students. So, thank you for mentioning that. Uh Dr. Singh? I'm just going off the question now. Yeah, is any plan to add AI programming in high school? Is it part of computer science? Like you said, you can do white coding or you can develop tools for AI or tools with AI, agentic AI,

083any of the things like that? Yes, actually I'll have Lee address that. We spoke a little bit about the high school. Let me have Lee come to the podium and he can talk about it. Um so, with regards to computer science and then part of that curriculum in using AI too for students to help them generate uh code, I would have to relate that back to onto the computer science teachers why it's available to teachers. It's currently not available to students in that platform. There are some platforms that the students are using that have that built into it. Uh but part of the structure of learning the code first is learning the structure uh first and seeing how that language works before you're using a tool to create it for you. Uh if not, you

084won't be able to catch the errors that are in there. So, in the higher level, advanced level computer programming, I can see that's where it's going to go. Uh but there's still the foundational part of teaching what it is and how to get there. So, no direct plan. What I would say too, and I did not um include this, but I'll include it in the answer here, are teachers. If there are ever any questions and if it's tool specific, what we do is we work very closely with the subject area directors and our tech team. So, all of that is we have processes for that review. So, the question you're actually talking about, that will be a regular point of conversation when we're evaluating tool use. So, we have a whole arm of our district

085and our processes that speak to how we onboard technology. So, that's going to be part of it. So, thank you, Dr. Sen. Mr. Biscalia. I appreciated this um hearing all the information. Uh it sounds like Williamsville's trying to be at the forefront of this. Um you know, just looking at this like notebook um LLM, I've used that even at home with my son to study for things. I mean, luckily I've been training on it and and and seeing it, but like I love you know, that platform [clears throat] and and using Gemini. We just, you know, have to make sure we're using it the right way and like you were saying, you have to kind of sometimes read over it and make sure you take out the mistakes if you're putting it into a lesson.

086Um but even parents like listening, if you're listening to this at home, I mean, those are tools you could take if you don't know a math assignment or something to help your kids and you're you're also showing your your your family at home that it's not used cheat, but you're using it as a guide or a lesson or, you know, I've done you know, you with notebook LLM, you can make uh it into a video where they're explaining things. So, um it's interesting how you can use it and you know, it sounds like we're you know, that would be something to be proud of. Mr. Mana. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and I'm glad that and I've heard it several times. It's just as important to teach what it is not as as

087what it is cuz you know, I deal with people at work and I'm sure we all do is a universe of of adults out there who, you know, discovered AI after they were out of school and didn't have the benefit of learning what it isn't. They just learned it's the newest thing, it's the hottest thing, it cuts my work time and I'm going to cheat and use AI. So, I'm glad and I've heard it from each of you really what it is and that because it can really lead somebody down a wrong path and I tell these, you know, 20 and 30-year-olds that I work with that really are too reliant on AI. I have to remind them that sometimes, you know, that the artificial intelligence turns out to be intelligence that's artificial. At the

088end of the day, you're responsible for for your work product and how you're representing or presenting yourself and just don't rely rely on AI and thank you. I think it was a great great presentation. Ms. Bockenstedt. I just want to say thank you. That was a great presentation. I'm excited to learn all the district. I didn't know that all the district was doing for education for the teachers and staff, administrators, professional development. I think there's there's a lot more in our future concerning AI. So, I know this will be a living document that will probably change pretty frequently. So, I appreciate all your work. Thank you. Dr. Spicer. Um this is something I I get to be on an AI tiger team at my institution. So, [laughter] this is something that I will always ask

089without necessarily needing an answer in this moment, but that we look at what these platforms are saying or their safety mechanisms when it comes to protecting our students And I said this to my team on my campus, you know, as we're vetting these products, asking the question and challenging the tech companies to answer, how are we keeping people safe in using these products? And obviously, we see certain headlines. So, that's always at the forefront of my mind. Thank you so much for bringing that up. And actually, that adds to why this work is so uh thoughtful and time-intensive. So, thank you very much, Dr. Spicer. Mhm. Um Okay. Ms. Pullen, I was trying to catch everyone that hasn't gone yet. Ms. Pullen? I was just going to say, I was happy to hear about the

090garden walls. You know, those um I had had the opportunity to go to a number of AI workshops for school board members. And um that's a really powerful tool that when we can keep when we can keep it safe, we we can maintain control over the safety of it. So, I'm glad that we're utilizing that. Okay, I saw Salia. I think it's um pretty good like AI's really being encouraged more in the district. I think it's going to be part of our future, so it's great. How strongly really will like AI be So, for example, I know teachers like within my own school, even two teachers who teach the same class. Like one teacher might absolutely not allow students to use AI, but another might be more, you know, lax with it. Will there be

091some sort of like standard like outline per course or I think I can address that. So, just like any lesson design, we have to really rely upon the teachers to design the appropriate engagement with the tools. Um certainly, we do not want a a whole let's say a course to go by necessarily where it's never interacted with, but in large part, we really have to rely on the teachers to design the lesson. We do encourage uh teachers who are teaching the same subject or course to work with each other cuz you're lucky to have a thought partner, so they may be able be able to share ideas. But because it's very task specific, we really have to um [clears throat] allow the teacher that latitude to be able to determine what the appropriate engagement is.

092But what I would also offer is that's where professional learning comes in. That's why we are working as departments. I mentioned the directors earlier, our instructional technology team, our principals. So when we have our staff development days, these are some of the things we're sharing. How are you using it? What have you done? Oh, I didn't know. I This was not something I engaged with. So you start to share best practices with each other and that's really what some of the professional learning is. So it isn't just like "Hey, there's this new tool or you may not have heard of it." It's how have you used it and how might it help you or your students accomplish your goals and your objectives. So I would say that with more learning is going to come more,

093you know, consideration for how it can fit into the curriculum, how it can fit into the instructional program, and those are the things we really want to generate more conversation about. Anything else, DSP? Yes. I noticed that you mentioned a robust AI policy. What is that What exactly does that mean? So our board adopted really what I would consider Usually when you have a policy, it's not super prescriptive. This doesn't tell you the how-to, but board policy 5840 was adopted in 2025. Um, that provides a great landing place for us. Again, it's not procedural in nature necessarily, but all of the things that we highlighted during tonight's presentation are found here in the policy. So when we do our training, we go back to starting here and then going from there. So anything that needs

094further dialogue or how do we operationalize this, we try to use this as a foundation. So we're very fortunate again to have a policy structure in our district and this provides a great place for a lot of these conversations to start. So the first order of business is making sure that everybody in our school community knows about the policy, what the intent of the policy is, and then how do we put the policy into practice. Thanks for answering that. I have a follow-up question, I would say. I would say. On slide 14, it's mentioned that AI student AI framework {parentheses} traffic lights light concept, and I was really encouraged to hear that cuz I think that's I Let me go off a bit. I um gather gathered feedback from students and teachers, and one of

095the biggest, I guess, problem was that they think clarity is a big issue. And I think this would this would definitely help. That's certainly a next step. What we hope to not do, going back to the do's and don'ts and what it is and isn't is be overly prescriptive. Like you must do this in an all cases it looks like acts because it won't, but a stoplight, something like that is just providing a structural element to be able to go through a thought process or some reflection when you're deciding if it's appropriate or not and then how do you convey that to the students? Because again, we're going back to what tools are appropriate and then how do you engage with them? So, that's just one of the thought processes as we've been working with

096our teams is how to have teachers engage in that kind of framework, and we're actually working on something that we can present some opportunities for teachers to engage in that dialogue so that that that gets passed on to the students so it's very clear given a specific task, is it allowed? Is it not? What is allowed? What isn't? And going back to the guardrails, how does it work? So, that's putting this that's matching the policy intent down to operationalizing the system to make it happen. Uh I have another question if I may ask. absolutely. Um framework is important and clarity is important, and how will how exactly will that be communicated to students? we have a lot of layers of conversation in the district. So, what we often start with again, we have to engage

097our adults first, um and certainly with student feedback it helps to know what questions students are asking. So, we want to get to the heart of both the teacher voice as well as the student voice in in the process. Uh we have had hosted um many opportunities where people can not only learn about the tools, but also what questions you have, how do we navigate it, but we always start first with recognizing what questions are we trying to answer and then putting a system in place. So, right now as actually as recently as this morning, our office of professional learning was meeting with Lee to talk about what some of that dialogue will look like and where will we host some of the conversations and get further um details. Our principals at our principals meetings,

098we have monthly meetings with principals by level where we engage in a lot of this dialogue. So, we're starting to build the framework and we already know like the stoplight is just one uh visual model for this, but there may be other ways to convey it. So, we also don't want to be again overly prescribing what you know what it'll look like, but the key is how do you communicate it and then ultimately through the training, then we also decide how is this going to be disseminated to students, what systems are we using, when be done. We also often times develop talking points together so that we're all giving the same messages. So, that's really the system we use and that has worked really really well. I can point to as you all know many

099initiatives, but that is really how we approach the um building of this model, if you will. Thanks. I asked that because communication is just as important as creating framework. is. In fact, a lot of what we talked about tonight, it was somewhat about the tools and a lot about the structures, right? So, thank you for saying that. Dr. Bale and I'm sorry. That's no. I was going to say Dr. Bale and Lee Ferrings, Dr. Bill Bohner, thank you very much for this presentation and all the information you shared. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you very [clears throat] much. Thanks everyone. And thank you to everyone for your thoughts and questions regarding that. We're moving on to Where are we in right now? Member updates. We Item 7A. Would any student board members like to provide

100a report regarding their high school activities and events? Salil? Bring the mic closer to you, Salil, if you could. Oh, [laughter] okay, there we go. Okay. Good Good evening, everyone. So, I just First of all, I wanted to start off by showing a lot of pictures from our East Olympics competition. This was a first-year initiative by StuGo because So, in the for homecoming, we have homecoming pep rallies, and that's where we really like celebrate our fall athletes. Where we we yell out like, "Oh, this is boys um boys football, boys soccer, girls soccer, girls foot like flag football." And then they all run out, like it's all the seniors. So, the students felt like the winter and like the spring athletes, they also, you know, should be like celebrated. And And originally, we'd planned like

101a sort of like school like assembly for it. And in order to like spice it up, as you know, the homecoming pep rally games, it really it's fun because the students get to watch their classmates play in it. So, we came up with the East Olympics. And it was pretty successful. We had 19 countries participate. Um it was at the end of the day. It was on Friday, March 27th. And so, students would come in in teams of four four to five. There would be three rounds in the beginning. It would be musical chairs, uh trivia, as well as head, shoulders, knees, and cups. And then it would go down to the final four teams, where they'd play like a couple of playoff games, as you could call cart racing, um javelin throw, although it

102was more of pool noodle throw. And then this was the final round, it's supposed to be sort of like a gladiator-style like race chariot racing, and they decided to use inflatable costumes. And they encouraged the whole stance to get loud. And then, this is the conclusion. But in the middle, in between when they were tallying up the scores, they, you know, they announced like the winter and like the spring athletes to come out, and that was really good moment, you know, because in the past they haven't been able to be, you know, honored for their accomplishments, so this is great. And then, a feedback survey was conducted on this, and StuGo definitely plans on running it again next year, but there'll probably be a lot more changes considering it was pretty chaotic this year. Uh

103speaking of sports, girls basketball had one of its best seasons in a while, and they were, you know, honored for their accomplishments. Uh girls basketball coach, Mrs. Megan Johnson, was named All-Bee Girls Coach of the Year. Julie Cruise was named to first team All-Western New York, All-ECIC Player of the Year, and ECIC II Player of the Year. So, congrats to her. Porsche Gooldy was named to second team ECIC II. So, congrats. And now, our spring sports have started. So, you know, but uh good luck to anyone playing in that. Um as for other East events, on Friday, March 20th, ECMEA All-County was held at UB Slee Hall. On Friday, March 20th and Saturday, March 20th, Science Olympiad states was at Le Moyne College. East traveled with North, so that was great opportunity for students to

104compete. On Tuesday, March 24th, was the NHS induction ceremony. So, the current residing officers, they made the incoming nominees, you know, pledge an oath, and it was really good moment to see, you know, students all their hard work be paid off as they got to be recognized and walk across the stage. Um Tuesday, March 31st, was the Connect Life Blood Drive. Um Saturday, April 25th this week will be Students will be auditioning for NYSSMA. So, another music opportunity. Uh we had our in-school volleyball tournament. Uh East loves their sports. There was a recreational and competitive division. This has been going on for quite some years, but this is just sort of like a way to you know like lighten up the mood just sort of So, whenever kids are free, they can like go down

105to the common and go to like the PE area and watch their friends, you know, play and compete. So, that was a great opportunity. Um FBLA, which I'll show next, which is our biggest club by far. I believe this year we had 170 members go to Rochester for our state leadership conference. And there were also multiple members running for state office. So, we had Moksh Gupta be elected as District 12 Vice President of FBLA. Naman Kapoor, all the way on the left, was elected state parliamentarian, and Aarav Sapra was elected state president for FBLA New York State. Wow. So, congrats to all all of them. And then anyone who placed top four in their event qualified for nationals, which will be held in San Antonio, Texas this year. It will be after school, but it's

106quite chaotic. And this is the photo with everyone. As you can see, it's a lot of people. You can barely see the people in the back. [laughter] And as for some more upcoming events, uh as we get closer to the end of the year, we have our junior dinner dance, JDD, on Friday, May 15th from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. at the Grapevine Banquets. Music prom will be held Friday, June 5th, 6:00 to 9:00. Newspaper Club this Friday is having its open mic night, where basically Newspaper Club members, they just kind of bring in food and sort of like host like open mic session, and students are free to come perform, you know, any act or show that they want. It's a really like chill Friday night type of event for students to come to. And

107then next week French Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, and Latin Honor Society will have their induction ceremony on Thursday, April 30th. Yep. Ooh, amazing. Yes. Thank you as always, Sully. I love hearing about all the things going on at East. And we'll now move on to DSP and representing South. Thank you. Good eve Oh, good evening, everyone. It's great to be back after spring break, but looking back at the end of March, it was a very busy time for us at South. The week before the break was shorter, but the week leading up to that was packed. For example, our gym classes held a series of tournaments for pickleball, badminton, and table tennis. That saw a lot of student participation. And then the pickleball club and the badminton club were filled in the morning. Then

108on March 26th, we hosted one of our biggest collaborative events of the year, the Taste of South and South Celebration of Talent. It was basically a dinner and a show. This was a joint effort between Student Congress and the Culture and Diversity Club. We had various food from different cultures as you can see. And it was followed up by performances in the auditorium. And All right. All the proceedings from that night were donated to donated to Sleep Sleep in Heavenly Peace, an organization that builds beds for students. Then leading up to that, we had a day where students dressed in a attire representing their culture. And we also sold henna designs throughout the week. Here's the some of the henna designs and students representing their culture. All right. Then our new club, Meals Matter, and

109teamed up with Sayoc for their food drive. And in total, they collected 11 lb of food for the community. Then we wrapped up our pre-break festivities with our annual extra eggs Oh, extravaganza. Which is basically where students um fill these plastic eggs with candy and we hide them around outside of the school, but this time we decided to do it in the library due to the weather. [snorts] Then since returning returning from break, our band students have been busy after their performance trip to Universal Studios. I also wanted to make sure everybody knows about uh Oh, wait. Moving on. There's a lot of pictures. Oh, Max. Yeah. Moving on. We have a big event coming up tomorrow, the staff volleyball game. This is presented by the Sad Club to benefit Kids Escaping Drugs. And I'm

110insisting that everybody here comes out and watches. It's going to be a lot of fun and it's for a great cause, too. Also, you can When you buy a ticket, you get a raffle and you can put that raffle in for a teacher that chose to participate in the game and they can Teacher that gets the most tickets get gets pied. Also, something I found out recently was orchestra's having a trip this Thurs It's happening this Thursday and they're going to Boston and I heard they're going to have a trip to the Science Museum and a dinner boat cruise. That would wrap up my report. Thank you. Thank you so much DSP for letting us know what's going on at South. And now Giselle, if you'd tell us what's going on at North, please. Um

111upcoming Saturday, May 2nd, our drama club is having their spring medley. I apologize, my mic was off. Um this upcoming Saturday, May 2nd, drama club is having their spring medley. And at North, we have a very robust uh theater program. And uh our drama club was previously recognized for their park performance. So, I'd recommend that everyone comes and support on Saturday. They have two shows. Also, Williamsville is very um involved in unified sports. And North has a gold team and a green team. And every year we have our annual unified basketball game / pep rally in school. So, that is in school this Friday against the green and the gold team. Um so, I'd recommend I'm pretty sure we're allowed to have people come um outside the building come in and watch. So, I'd recommend

112also coming to that this Friday. And also, we can we encourage pursuing higher education after high school, but college isn't a plan for everyone. So, this Thursday we're hosting our second annual career and skilled trades fair, where over 30 businesses, skilled trades, uh technical trainers, and careers after high school will be there to talk to students. Um I believe also uh a few branches of the military will also be there for some students that are pursuing things um other than college after high school. Uh further, uh before spring break, Brett Shirtliff from the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra came to North. Um he visited and gave a master class to our symphonic orchestra and uh gave like a presentation about music to um our concert orchestra. So, that was a very amazing presentation, very um educational, learned

113a lot about uh the Philharmonic Orchestra I had not learned prior. Um the government class has also had their second day of service. Uh students are sorted to various locations where they serve for 6 hours and volunteer different sites. And I heard that a very popular one was actually Dodge Elementary volunteering in the gym playing uh dodgeball. And I heard that uh the high schoolers did have to pretend to uh not be as good at dodgeball for the elementary school. And as you heard earlier um with Ms. Corio being here, uh we had at our New York TSA conference had held at North and we have an amazing technology program as you guys have heard earlier. Um and it was amazing to seeing all the students share their different technological inventions and finds and it's

114really amazing to see how technology is evolving in North. Um finally we also had our Fusion Fest right before break and I'm going to say very limited because Mr. Filpowski actually made a video surrounding the event. North Fusion Fest is an event held by the Cultural Awareness Club. People from North participate as well as community members come out and showcase parts of their cultures like dance and music. Being my senior year I really wanted to be ambitious and try to revive what was long lost and I think it was a pretty pretty good success. Through these shows and these assemblies you expose yourself to more cultures which helps you become a better person too. [music] It honestly meant so much to me because I generally like to sing songs in my native language like in

115Indian events and stuff but showcasing my culture to the school was such a different experience and I really loved it so much. It means a lot to me. It meant a lot. It was like a great honor. I was kind of skeptical at first but after seeing all the people support me, all the people clap I was like woah this was a great opportunity." I loved sharing my culture and like some people don't know about Indian culture, so it was like a unique type of way to show who am I. I'm very proud of seeing all of my classmates and um people in my community participate in the Fusion Fest and just seeing everything happen like that. I'm really, really proud of everyone that performed today. [music] We hope that this will continue to be

116a thing and that people will see how great of a success this was and hopefully in the next years and new years to come we'll still have an assembly like this. Just quickly, as seen as in the video, we had a few individuals perform their individual talents as well as some clubs um performed. I know we had uh Asian American uh student associ- association uh share about origami. Um we also had guests from UB uh perform and as well as Master Tong's Martial Arts Center on Transit uh came to perform. So, it was a definitely community-filled event and very cultural and very educational. So, thank you, Mr. Filposki, for the video. That's all for my presentation. Oh, okay. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Giselle, for so Giselle, for sharing what's going on at North and

117thanks to all of you. Appreciate the reports. We are now moving on to item 7B, events. Board members visited Heim Elementary School, Heim Middle School, and East High School school to view the facilities and observe instruction on March 18th. Our remaining visits will be on June 12th. I want to thank all the community members who joined us for our spring community forum on March 24th. Our policy committee met on March 31st. Our after-school with staff event was held prior to this meeting tonight. And our board compensation advisory committee's March meeting was postponed, but will be meeting in May. Our onboarding committee is scheduled to meet uh at a determined date in April and May, and our board retreat will be held in June. And as part of that, I was wondering if there's any interest

118in forming an ad hoc committee to plan the retreat um with no more than four board members. Any discussion or interest in that? Ms. Poolin? I'd be interested. I I would be, too. Mr. Dr. Singh? DSP? Okay. Looks like we have four. I think Don had her hand Oh, I'm sorry. Did you as well? No, that's okay. You said four, that's fine. Okay. It could be four board members. Yeah, plus plus plus plus our student, so you can be added if you'd like to. All right. Perfect. Although 1 2 3, I should probably be part of that committee. Then I [laughter] Sorry. I should have I should have made that clear at the beginning. Um okay, wonderful. So, we have our committee. We will move on now to item 7C, which is a review of

119the draft Board of Education meeting calendar. Due to changes in the law and recent policy 1620 updates, the July organizational meeting is tentatively tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, July 7th, but that may occur on or before Monday, July 20th. Are there any board member comments related to the our reor- or our organizational meeting and our calendar? Yes. Mr. Mana? Yes, thank you. Um yeah, I'd like to talk about a couple of things. First is when I review the draft uh the the the the one of the lines right before we announce the dates, is regular board meetings may be preceded by an executive session beginning at 6:00 or 6:30. Maybe you want to take out the time, 6:00 or 6:30, cuz we don't know when we schedule them. Today was 5:45. I've seen 6:15. So, maybe

120just leave it as maybe preceded by an executive session. And then, uh I'd like to talk about the July 7th meeting and see if the board and the superintendent would be amenable to uh changing that date. Um I know for me, those those first two Tuesdays in July, I I think I have work uh commitments. So, I want to see if the board is uh looking to make it maybe a Wednesday or maybe that a different Tuesday or maybe even July 1st. Just kind of throwing it out for discussion. Now that we're not so tied by the state laws when it has to be. We have a lot more discretion. Any Any other comments about that? Yes, Mr. Beelen. Not that this matters at all, but I think I'm going to be out of town

121on July 7th. Okay. So, it sounds like [laughter] It It sounds like maybe we want to look at changing it to a different day. I know that um our district clerk, Ms. Clary, often uh floats dates for us. Should we maybe go about doing it that way and see if we can find a date that would work for everyone? Yeah, I I would just say that I would prefer that we stay on a Tuesday just for consistency state sake. Most all of our board meetings are on a Tuesday. And it just seems to make sense that it would be on a Tuesday. Um for our community to That will And actually, I want to say that will be hard for the month of July if it's not on July 7th because the following Tuesday um

122will be a conflict. I will not be in town. Then the previous Tuesday is not in July at all. Then the the Tuesday after that is after the date of the 20th. So if it has to be on the on July 7th, I think that might be impossible this time. Okay. So, um Mrs. Carey, would you be willing to float some dates? Perfect. Okay. Thank you all for your comments. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um now we are on 7D and 7E board candidates and district annual vote information. That includes details on application for absentee and early vote ballots. Um all of that information is in board docs. Are there any comments or questions on those items? Okay. 7F and 7G is ECASB and Nisba items and 7H liaison assignments are all listed in board docs.

123Are there any board member comments on those? Ms. Pullen. I would just like to comment on the um ECASB twist on tech um that I went to last Thursday at the um Bocees Potter Potter Hill yeah. Um I last year was able to go to Harkness um at as well and I think that those are really invaluable opportunities and would really like to strongly encourage board members to attend next year because where wherever it is, it's a really good learning experience for us regarding the offerings that are available to our students who I don't think necessarily take as much advantage of some of those things or have enough awareness of them. There are so many programs that students come out of those with um certificates that actually put them into the workforce that some of

124them they come out with some um college credits from there and so I think we really need to um do everything that we can to raise the level of respect that there is for the BOCES programs um beyond what we might have had as a mental idea of what BOCES programs are. Absolutely. Um you know, there's a CNA program. Students come out with a CNA certificate and that's a very marketable skill particularly right now in our world. Um the exercise science program that I went to, the students that come out of there come out of there with a certificate to be a personal trainer. So they some many of them are are going to go on to college, but they can go to work right away as personal trainers sometimes at the exercise facility of

125their school or university. So there lots of there just lots of opportunities there that are being missed by many of our students. Thank you for that report. Are there any other board member comments on Dr. Spicer? I just wanted to highlight that SEPTA has their not only their membership meeting this week Thursday, but also the parent network is coming out and presenting on autism and neurodiversity. So just given that SEPTA doesn't meet every month, but they always have an educational component. I wanted to highlight that it's this week Thursday. Thank you so much Dr. Spicer. Any other comments on this? Okay, we will move on. We are on 7i which is correspondence. All of the topics that we received as a board are listed in board docs. Based on our previous student calendar discussion, I

126was wondering if there's board support to send correspondence from our board to the Erie 1 BOCES board regarding the BOCES calendar planning considerations such as potentially starting before Labor Day or coordinating of staff development dates or if feasible approving their calendar earlier. So Yes, Dr. Spicer. Yes, please. [laughter] Okay, is there is there any opposition to me drafting a letter on behalf of the board regarding those things and are there any other topics that I didn't just mention that you would want included? Mr. Buscaglia. Two weeks in April. I don't know if we have full board support on that. Then I'll write it myself. Okay. [laughter] Oh, because it's it's Not on behalf of the board though. No, but well, then I'll consider it now. Who who would want to do that because it's it's

127I've had multiple multiple families over the years complain about February break, the fact that it's winter, kids are stuck inside. It it's it's I mean, Niagara County schools do it and they don't care what BOCES does. They do it and BOCES has two one week and one week. I mean, at this point it's very frustrating when you hear it from multiple multiple families over multiple multiple years. I agree. I I I think the February break is too quick after the Christmas break or the the the the winter break. And to have that to to add the time either to the uh um spring break or to get out of school a week or a few days earlier is something to to explore, but you know, I I agree with Mr. Buscaglia. May I interject? So,

128the seven of the districts in Niagara County do it. They bifurcate it, not the whole county. Seven of the districts do it and I know this discussion came up before and just to provide background, not you know, anything else, but the agreement was in the BOCES 19 component districts that make up Erie 1, if there wasn't agreement from every district to do it, there would not be full support of it. And then we would have a bifurcation system and it would be such that our students would not be in session with BOCES is and vice versa for a total of five days. Yeah, but that's how Niagara like Starpoint does two weeks and Niagara BOCES doesn't have two weeks. They do February and and and April. Yep. I'm just explaining I mean it just why

129that didn't move forward. Dr. Brown-Hall, do you have a sense of what how many you know what the break up there was in terms of the component districts? I I do not. Okay. No. Okay. ESP. Mr. Biscaldi, what was your original comment? Like something about August maybe. Two two having a two-week break um in the spring break instead of having a February break. Got it. Back when old people were in school, [laughter] they used to have two weeks in April. There was no February or they'd have a week and a half in April and there was no February. Whenever spring break was, whenever Easter was. Like next year Right. Yeah, whenever. Yeah. Got it. I had one day off for the February break. All right. Thank you. We're even having it You're right. I mean,

130New York Presidents' Day in February. Right. Presidents' Day. Okay. Are there any other comments on this before we move on? Okay. We are now making a motion to approve agenda items nine, minutes, 10, personnel, 11, business and finance, and 12, exceptional education, special needs, and student activities as presented. Is there a motion? Dr. Spicer, second is Ms. Blackenshire. Is there any discussion? All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. Thank you to the following retirees for their service to the district. Lynn Clark, HR Department, with 18 years of service. Michael Connec- Connieco, head custodian, Transit Middle School, with 31 years of students not of cert students, 31 of service. Amy Snyder, teacher aide, South High School, with 7 years of service. And Donna Schatowski, cleaner, Heim Middle School with 13 years of service. Congratulations and thank you.

131We are now on item 13. May I have a motion for the first reading and review of policy update 7560, notification of sex offenders as presented. Ms. Blachowicz, Dr. Spicer, is there any discussion? All in favor. Motion carried unanimously. May I have a motion for the second reading and review and adoption at the May 26th meeting. Dr. Spicer, Mr. Mana, is there any discussion? All in favor. Motion carried unanimously. Item 14A. May I have a motion to resolve that upon the recommendation of the Superintendent of Schools, the Williamsville Central School District Board of Education adopts the proposed Erie 1 BOCES administrative budget for 2026-2027 in the amount of $4,255,646 as presented. Ms. Pullen, Dr. Singh, is there any discussion? All in favor. Motion carried unanimously. Item 14B. At this time we will conduct the Erie

1321 BOCES board member election. Would someone like to make a motion to cast one vote for an Erie 1 BOCES board candidate? Ms. Pullen. I would like to resolve to cast one vote for Janet McGregor Plarr, the incumbent located in the Frontier Central School District to serve as a trustee for the board of cooperative educational services first supervisory district of Erie County in a term beginning July 1st, 2026 through July 30th, 2029. It was through June 30th just to clarify 2020 2029 and is there a second? Miss Fletch. Is there any discussion? All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. May I have a motion to cast another vote for an Erie 1 BOCES board candidate? Miss Blekencher. I'd like to resolve to cast one vote for John Sherman, the incumbent located in the Tonawanda City School

133District to serve as a trustee for the board of cooperative educational services first supervise supervisory district of Erie County in a term beginning July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2029. Thank you, Miss Blekencher. Is there a second? Dr. Singh. Is there any discussion? All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. There are no matters to discuss under 15 district facilities, 16 instruction, and 17 legislative matters. We are now on 18. Does anyone have a topic to discuss under committee of the whole? Mr. Mana. Thank you. Um we received a correspondence uh regarding that that if the district is interested in selling a parcel of land that we own. We own several parcels throughout the town. And you know, when uh um I know Dr. Brown also sent information out maybe last year about the the parcels that

134we own. And I think it's time that we start looking at selling our excess property or surplus property. We own several properties. It's a little less than 100 acres total. I think it's prime developable property. Uh we did sell a parcel of land in 2017 for $220,000. I know a few years ago we had a um an appraisal done on another piece of property. So, I think there is interest out there. I think you know in conversations with Dr. Brown-Hall he mentioned that one of the properties [clears throat] was maybe envisioned as the home of future Williamsville West. There's not going to be a Williamsville West. There's not going to Williamsville North by Northwest. Um I think the cost of building a school and the infrastructure from the ground up is is just out of

135the realm of of possibility. If if we had to expand, we'd probably expand in our current footprint. So, um you know, it'd be a legal process. We can probably engage our our our legal team on it to sell the land uh um with public notice of course. So, I guess what I'm looking for is there interest in this endeavor. Can I just make one clarification? The reason the district held the property or received it or got it in many years ago because the vision was for Williamsville West. At this point, Dr. Brown-Hall is not proposing a Williamsville West, nor did we think about that. Just want to clarify. Right. [laughter] I don't want people saying he's trying to build another No. No. Yes, thank you. Okay. Any discussion on this matter? Ms. Blackinger. Dr. Brown-Hall,

136are there any future plans for that land? Not necessarily a school, but um something When when this came up, I think it came up maybe 2 years ago and I provided the board members with all the parcels of land and there was there was not There was interest in actually having uh a solar farm there with solar panels and that was in partnership with the town, but that never materialized. If I If I may uh um we had a presentation for SIAC on um solar energy and looking at that and that was brought up at that time and the um engineer who was with with us was saying that that really wasn't a sustainable way to have solar energy. You really needed it much closer to the source. So, the um cables and everything that

137you would need to get it from that property to our facilities would negate anything that we would gain. Got it. Because of that. So, um that would not be a good use of that. And I will just add, I know that one of the reasons that we have hung on to some of that property in discussions that we had previously was that um yes, it is developable land, but that developable land will then be more students in our district that we may not be able to house. So, it's going to be a trade-off um Mhm. the cost of expanding those schools and so forth. So, Well, according to our population report, population does decrease. [laughter] I like your I like your building. True. But, it might even out eventually. Any other discussion on this topic?

138I guess is there support then to at least explore this as a possibility, which is I believe what you're Yes. asking, correct? Yes. I would support that. Okay. So, um Mr. Manos proposing that we look at the land that we have in exploring whether we should sell it. Ms. Buckinger will we'll do an informal motion as a second. Um is there any other discussion before we take an informal vote? Ms. Or I'm sorry, Dr. Singh. Is this only this piece of land or all pieces of land? Well, we own three. All right, some are larger and I I I would propose that that that we look at you know, selling all of them or part of. I mean, one of the land that we some of the land that we own, one parcel is like

139directly behind Maple East goes to Bassett Road. You know, right next to there's a nursing home there. Um uh Millard Suburban Hospital is there. So, I mean, some land can be worth more than others. Maybe you want to keep some of the land maybe for a future solar farm or for future expansion. Uh again, in our current footprint, we might need some acreage behind that parcel in particular. But, I think that there is a way to divest the district of a lot of our land. So, I don't have an answer. I guess it's really whatever we can hold on to that's reasonable and bring some income back. So, I don't I don't have an answer. I really don't. it could be leasing or selling, right? I think if someone's going to develop it, they want

140to buy it. You know, and I'm sure I don't know. I think they're all zoned. They might Maybe Maple East is zoned commercial facility. I don't know. The other ones might be zoned residential. But, whoever buys it is going to have coming on them to then get any resale they want from it. development, and then it's out of our hands. We sold it, and they got to go to the town and go through the rezoning. But, I think it's I just think again, I think it's something that it's money that's out there that the district could use. It's land we're never going to use. All that land, I don't think we're ever going to use. Um so, why not? Okay. So, and just go ahead, Mr. Buscaglia. And the land behind Maple East sometimes used

141for soccer and lacrosse games and things like that? Well, it it it it's it's called vacant property or surplus property. So, I think it's behind whatever property that that that that is that Maple West uses in their footprint. And then Maple East? Maple East. Maple East. It's It really the discussion is focused on whether or not we should move forward with exploring this. So, all these questions are great questions, but these are questions that we'd want to ask in in trying to make a determination. The The question tonight is whether we want to move forward in the exploration. Okay. So, is there any opposition to moving forward with an exploration? A neutral exploration. Yes. A neutral exploration. Absolutely. Um and Mr. Man, did you foresee this as then um going to legal to look at

142the next steps or a committee to look at next steps or do Do you have any thoughts about that? Well, I I guess we we would have to have somebody who who would understand what like like parcel specific. You know, at Maple East, is there a parcel portion of that we want to keep? You know, we don't have to sell all of that, but the other parcels seem to be vacant land. Um really not attached to any any school district use. So, I think it'd be again parcel specific. I'm not the expert on you know, what we would need at that parcel behind Maple East. Maybe some of our facilities people are and they can make a recommendation and then we could go to legal and say here's what we want to sell and and

143advise us on the process and and begin it. Mr. Rosenthal, do you have a suggestion? I do and so that's a good point. I believe the last time we did this and we got an appraisal for some of the property and some of how it was zoned, what it could be used for. Tom Meturski hired a firm to give us all that information. information. I think it was one parcel we saw right right on Shell Road. I think yes. Shell Road. But if we did that with all the parcels, it would give the board better understanding of what's available, what it can be used for and then if the committee or the board decides to move forward to put a a piece of property up for sale, then we can work with our attorneys to

144figure out what we would do that cuz we would need to hire a some sort of firm to actually represent us. Right, cuz we have to have it appraised before we could sell it. So, we're going to make sure we're selling it at market value. Absolutely. So, Dr. Bernholz, what your suggestion is the first step would be with a a consultant. Correct. Okay, so are we all in agreement with moving forward having a consultant look into this? Okay. So, Leo, did you have something? I'm sorry. I was just curious, is there like a buyer in mind already for like the certain piece of land? No, and that's that's important question because if we're going to sell any property, it has to be put out to public bid. So, anybody could bid on it. We would

145not say, "Okay, you asked to buy the land, we're going to sell it to you." Legally, it has to be made publicly available and we want to do that. We want to drive the price up. Because we're a municipality. Yes. Are you planning or like do you think like the board had plan on selling it just to the highest price or is there like a minimum price that if no one's willing to pay, you wouldn't sell the land? What if they explore it? Oh, I mean, I'm just speculating. I'm certainly not answering for the board, but I would say it has to be worth it. We're not going to sell it for a dollar. You know, we're going to have it appraised, right? Now, when you buy land, it's like anything else. You're speculating on

146its on its future value. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. I don't know what what lands, if there are any on that property, which would if it's 50 acres now, it might be only 20, 30 acres that can be developed because of wetlands. Um I don't know the condition of the property. Um that all factors into um not only just what it appraises at, but what somebody's willing to pay for it based on whether or not they can um get a return on the investment. So, it's really it's a it's a big question. I I don't know. I think right now what we've decided is we're going to move forward with having a consultant gets gather some information from for us regarding it and then we'll come back to the board before we

147make any further decisions. So, anything else before we move on? Okay, thank you. We are now on item 19A, second public expression. If anyone in the audience would like to speak at this time, please step up to the podium. Ms. Bogner. Yes, I'm sorry. I I didn't know we were moving on from committee of the whole. I wanted to say something. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you had something under committee of the whole. Go ahead, D.S. Okay. I did want to briefly touch on the calendar. Um I looked up the survey that the that the district did and about the start time and what it should be. And the vote was split and some and no matter what, you know, what day it was chosen, it it it would mean like some families would

148be happy and some families wouldn't be happy. And that's the nature of it. Recently, I talked with an attorney and what struck me after or and it was a attorney that would graduated from Millburn South 30 years ago. Something that struck me that when speaking to him was is how much has it how much has changed. He mentioned that back then students had to miss school days for religious holidays and as they weren't widely recognized on the calendar. But today our calendars reflect the diversity of our community and students who don't personally celebrate certain holidays still get to have time off and I think that's something worth acknowledging and it shows how far Millburn school has come in making sure all students feel seen. And I think that's something that we can all appreciate, no

149matter what start time day it is. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Yeah, that was uh that happened a few years ago when we uh recognized those holidays and added them to the school calendar. So, thank you for that positive feedback. All right, I'm sorry. Was there anything else under your of the whole before we move on. Okay, thank you. And night and I don't believe anyone was stepping up to the podium for a public expression, so I will move on. This concludes our regular board meeting. Our special meeting budget public hearing is on May 7th at 6:00 p.m. with the PTSA Council School Board Candidates Night to follow at 7:00 p.m. The budget vote and school board member election is on May 19th. And our next regular board meeting is May 26th. Is

150there a motion to adjourn the regular board meeting? Dr. Spicer, Ms. Blackshire, all in favor? Let's go Sabres. [laughter] Unanimously, let's go Buffalo. No.