001I call the regular board meeting to order. All members of the board are present except Miss Fletch and ex official student board members Kakaris, Maurice, and Perva. Mr. Bulan, will you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag? [Music] Pledge 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 recess into executive session to discuss employment matters relating to particular persons? Dr. Singh, Mr. Mana, all in favor motion carried unanimously. [Music] of gum. May I have a motion to return the regular board meeting to public session? Miss Bulan, Mr. Bulan. All in favor? Motion carries unanimously. I call the regular board meeting to order. All board members are
002present except Ms. Fletch. During the immediately preceding executive session, our board discussed the resignation of a particular person. May I have a motion on this resignation? Mr. Mana, I move the adoption of the following resolution. Resolve that the board of education of the William Williamsville Central School District upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools hereby approves the resignation of Michael Kelly, assistant superintendent of finance and management to become effective as of August 15, 2025. So mo motion by Mr. Men. May I have a second? Mr. Bulan. All in favor? Motion carries unanimously. 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
003their cell phones and other electronic devices to silent. Thank you. We are on item 3A. Are there any board acknowledgements this evening? Okay, seeing none, we will move on to item number four, public expression. And I am told there is no one signed up, so we actually will be moving right along to item 5A. Dr. Brown Hall, I turn it over to you for the review of the district safety plan. Thank you very much, board president. So, last month we presented the district safety plan. Assistant Superintendent Skangzuzu presented it and then we open to a 30-day comment period. So, district safety plans in our district and all districts statewide are crucial crucial for schools to prepare and respond to emergencies, ensuring the safety of students and staff. Our plan outlines procedures for various scenarios including
004um natural disasters, medical emergencies, and they facilitate coordination with local resources. Now, the district-wide safety plan is directly linked to the individual building level emergency response plans for each school building. Protocols reflected in the district-wide school safety plan guide the development and implementation of individual building level emergency plans. In the event of an emergency or violent incident, the initial response to all emergencies at an individual school will be the school emergency response team. Shorten response times and creating a safer learning environment are of utmost importance for the board of education, the leadership team, all staff and administrators in the district. While this is linked the district-wide safety plan and the building level response plans, the building level response plans are confidential and will not be subject to disclosure because of education law section 2801. Our
005plan is very detailed. It is inboard docs for all community members to view and we use it as a resource for our district to guide our safety plan. Turn it back over to you, board president. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from the board regarding the safety plan? Okay. We did have a 30-day public comment period on the safety plan. We received I'm sorry. Go ahead. And we've received four comments. Um, and most of them were actually building related questions, not related to our district-wide plan. So, we are now on item 5B. At this time, we will hold the public hearing for the district safety plan only. Since no one signed up for the public hearing, would anyone present in the audience like to speak regarding the district safety plan? If so, you
006may step up to the podium. I don't see anyone moving. So we will move on to you again Dr. Brown Hall for the community update, discipline report and attendance report. Thank you very much. So I will start with the community update then I'll go right into the discipline report and the attendance report. But I do have a note for item 6B if anyone is following along with the discipline report. There was an error in the discipline report. We did correct it. However, the discipline report that we uploaded as a correction is the incorrect discipline report. So, we will get that re-uploaded and have the correct discipline report uploaded by tomorrow morning. You discipline somebody for no. So, we'll go right to the community update right now, please. So, there is a lot of information in
007this month's community update. We're going to start with the first day of school. So, the first day of school this year is actually the earliest it can ever be. It's the day after Labor Day. Labor Day is Monday, um, September 1st. So, the first day of school will be welcoming all of our students back on Tuesday, September 2nd. Back to school newsletters from the buildings will be shared the weeks of August 18th and the 25th. So, that's next week and the last week of school. Two weeks from today, we're very fortunate our teachers come back to begin their professional development. So, we're very excited about that. For open house and event updates, please check the Wix event calendar. All parents have access to that. School supply list. School supply lists are available. And in the
008community update, you're able to click on the school to research the school supply list. Now, what you don't see here are high school supply list. And that's because our high school teachers will let the students know what supplies are needed for their classes when the first day of schools begin. All right? So, you will not see them here, but the high school teachers will let the students know what's needed for their classes. Distractionfree school zones. As you all know, we adopted our policy at the board meeting and this will be in place when we start our school year. It is part of the governor's budget and legislative agenda. Our distractionfree school zonesformational page is here. It's very detailed on our website. Our policy and procedures are available and an FAQ document. Also, one thing I
009will say about the distraction free and the reason I'm going to talk about it because it came up at a conference today. What we are asking is that everyone have patience right when we start knowing that it will not be perfect the first day of school right we have educators who are on our board we have parents who are watching we are going to provide grace and we ask for the same thing grace and patience everything will not be perfect we will be working with our students and our families and we ask that our families work with us also as we implement this mandatory regulation thank you very much for temperature in schools. So we had our first reading of policy 5685 in July and then we will have our board adoption this evening. So
010the district is required to take action to relieve heat related discomfort when the occupiable educational and support services space temperatures reach 82 degrees Fahrenheit. The district will remove students and staff from educational and support services spaces when the room temperature reaches 88 degrees Fahrenheit where practicable. So that's 88 degrees Fahrenheit measured from the middle of the room 3 feet above the floor in a shaded area. So we are developing our process and procedures to make sure that we are in line with this required policy 5685 because we know that in September we do have heat days also as we experienced in June transportation. Many of you have already received the transportation newsletter and the information that already came out regarding the new myide app. So, we'll be utilizing a new routing system and app, Myride
011K to2 mobile app. You can click on here to download from the Apple and the Google stores. Busing information will be available around August 21st towards the end of next week. If your child rides a bus, please ensure they know where their pickup and drop off locations are. And if you could please review policy 5710. If you have questions re regarding arrival and dismissal procedures at your school, please contact your building administrators and our building administrators have been working on all their arrival dismissal, making sure everything is in place for the start of school child nutrition. So this coming school year, all students are eligible for a free breakfast and lunch. That is part of the governor's legislative agenda. But it's also still important that our families fill out the free and reduced meals application.
012The information on those applications really go to support any title one funding our district gets. And students that are eligible for free or reduced meals also get discount or their AP exams paid for. It's also important when they are taking the SAT because that comes into play. Also, applications for the free and reduced meals should be returned to the school's main office. Now, with providing so many breakfast and lunch um for our students, we have to reduce some places and at the start of the school year, we will have reduced options in our cafeterias of what will be available for students to select, but that will be increasing as the school year goes on. Once we get a proper flow of how many students are getting breakfast and lunch, we'll be able to add more
013meal options back and more variety back to our um to our lunch menus. Our safety plan we just spoke about photo video opt out. So, new for the 2526 school year in alignment with best practice of practices from New York State Education Department. If you do not want your child to be featured in photos and videos, please complete the photo video opt out that will be available in Wix. In addition, art optin. So, new for the 2526 school year in alignment with policy 3170, the district must receive written permission from both the parent and the student. prior to publishing students original work on the district school or classroom websites. So the artworked optin form will be available on Wix. Also student artwork is used in a variety of handbooks, flyers and booklets throughout the school
014year and are uploaded to the district and school websites. So it is board policy that we get the student and the parent permission to do that communication. And I just want to always let you all know that we're always let all of our community members, our stakeholders know we're always looking at ways to better communication to let everyone know the great and exciting things that are taking place in our district. We have a phenomenal communications team and a great working communications committee. The district and schools will continue to share bi-weekly newsletters with students, families, and staff. More than 122,000 views throughout the course of last year. more than 1,700 minutes of read time. So on Mondays the district newsletter will be released every other week. These are Wednesday the high school newsletters, Thursday the middle
015school newsletters and Friday the elementary school newsletters. Our communications committee received feedback that they wanted to make sure that the newsletter distribution was structured so that if there are families that have students in elementary and high school, they're not receiving the district newsletter, the high school newsletter, and the elementary newsletter all on one day. So we do have a structure to when communication will be disseminated to our families. Eerts test. So, the district will conduct an e alert test, text, email at push alert on Monday, August 18th at 11:00 a.m. If you do not receive a text, email or app push alert, please contact the parent help desk by calling 716626858. If you are ch if you've changed carriers, example, Verizon or T-Mobile throughout the school year and do not receive a text message, please
016notify the help desk. Also, e alerts are an automated mass notification system to inform parents, staff, and students of a school emergency, school closure, or other important announcements affecting our schools. This really comes in place when the students are waiting for those December days to see if there's a snow day. So, make sure you have your e alerts active. And that is a community update for August 12th, 2025. Board President, I want to move right into the uh discipline review and the attendance review. So if you look at items 6B and 6 C in board docs, what we've done this year, instead of just presenting the information and having it there for you, we've also done an analysis. When we look at the discipline report and the analysis that is in there, we're very happy
017that we see our discipline referrals are decreasing. Our number of suspensions are also decreasing. We do have some areas where they are increasing and we're taking a steady look at that to see what is the underlying reason why. We want to make sure we get to the why so that we can support our students and making sure that we don't have discipline issues in school stopping instruction from taking place. So that analysis is in board docs in item 6B and then we move forward to look at 6C. What I will say about item 6B that's different from 6 C, the attendance report has historical information there. We want to make sure we provide the same historical information for the discipline report. So that's something we'll be working on for the 2526 school year. Now our
018attendance report is very important because we're always looking at chronic absenteeism. And chronic absenteeism is when students have absenteeism of 10% or more in a school year having 180 days of student attendance. If a student has more than 18 days absent, they are considered chronically absent. And so we know that students have to be in school to learn. So that's why that's a key indicator that we want to see decreasing. Unfortunately, we do have areas where we see it increasing, especially at the high school level. So, we're working, our high school administrators will be working with their teams to really find out what the root cause is. And we've seen we've seen over the years, the analysis is in board docs, but we've seen over the years that the high school 12th graders are the
019ones where the chronic absenteeism is increasing and it is now over 30%. So those are things that we'll be targeting this year and really looking at and then working with our students through SCAK or our student board members to see what are some of the root causes of that. But all the data is in board docs with an analysis. Are there any questions from any board members? Mr. Bascalia just on the uh community update. Yes sir. Links are not working just so Okay. We'll we will get those to work. just want, you know, because people go there to get the information. They absolutely do. We'll we'll make sure by tomorrow morning they are working. Thank you for that. Distractionfree school zones just just to just further you know your comments. Um you know it's a
020great idea. You know what the governor has has put into law and you know it's not going to be perfect on day one or even day two and we don't want to make you know the perfect the enemy of the good. This is a good thing. It's a good idea. uh we're going to do the best we can. This board is going to support it. You know, the biggest support that we really need or the teachers need are the parents and the students. You know, the parents have to buy in like any kind of change. Um you know, it's very difficult for the teachers to, you know, be telling the students about the ban, but the parents emailing us saying, you know, my child's going to have their phone just in case of emergency. So,
021I ask all the parents to please be on board with this. Um it give us the grace as Dr. Brown Hall said. We're going to give the grace and we're going to need some grace, but it it's a it's a great idea. It's a great program. Other schools have done it. It's not new. Uh we I was a part of the distraction-free school zone um um community event and heard from the principles of Lacawana and and their comment was we wish we did it years ago. Um so that shows that it's not new. It's not a new idea and it can work and does work. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Singh. Dr. Gro, I just had a question regarding your the discipline and the attendance report. Have you found any correlations between what we seeing
022and the DA activities that we've been doing for the past few years? Absolutely. So that's one of the one of the reasons we are um really looking and to enhance our restorative practices because we do believe that is having a positive impact on our discipline and suspension rates. Um I know in talking with many of our principles they also say you know the more they implement it the the the less they have to use punitive measures for discipline and it is making a difference. Dr. Spicer may I call Dr. spicer than you to that I just wanted to comment that I appreciate um the examination of tardies and absenteeism but through a different lens a less punitive lens and I as a parent have noticed the difference between one year to two years in that
023approach um because it it has been punitive in the recent past so it's nice to look at it through that that restorative um perspective I also think just another comment it's just really interesting to see the number of tardies going from mostly zeros to significant when we get to the high school level. And against the backdrop of school the school start time discussion, I do think there's there's some valid data there as well. Absolutely. And one of the reasons why and I we've had this discussion before, Dr. Spicer, and I know you and I um I think we've talked about tardies and we know at the high school level, the more students are able to get to school on their own via car, we we see the tardies increase, right? when students have to ride
024a school bus, there's, you know, almost no tardies, but the minute they get access to a car, um, and I'm living it because my son wants a car now, and I know he'd have many tardies, right? So, I I know that that is one of the things we have to look at also. What member Scalia? Um, with the tendance, I assume in the numbers you take into account like late arrival, like those don't count as absentee, correct? Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Any other board member questions? Okay, thank you very much, Dr. Brown Hall. Thank you. We are now on item 7A, student board members. Um, as some background, the student board members received a handbook in June with basic information on their role and responsibilities. And one of those expectations was attending
025a virtual pre-board meeting with the superintendent, board president, and vice president. So before every regular board meeting, um we are expecting that and we did have one yesterday and at that meeting we reviewed ideas for additional support between meetings. So in addition to having the pre-board meetings, was there additional support that the student board members feel need to be provided? Um, I discussed committee of the whole procedure as outlined in policy 1510 as a way for them to bring up topics of concern that they would like to see on the agenda. And obviously we use that for all board members. And then we also discussed having student uh reports at our regular board meetings. So having a standing agenda item where the student board members could discuss things that were happening within their respective schools.
026So, um, I guess I'll start with our student board members. Do you have any comments about any of those topics that you'd like to share this evening? [Music] No. This is your chance to provide your student. I guess I have a question. Okay. Now, would the mentor be a teacher at my school or a board member? So, that was one of the things that I thought we could discuss. So, I didn't know if and and this is up for full board discussion here this evening. We do have those meetings that are going to be happening monthly and um if we were able to set up also the email which were exploring as an option so that you could communicate with all board members if you had questions or concerns in between meetings. Do you feel
027like there would still be a need to have a mentor? And if so, it would likely be a board member is my understanding. So I guess what are what are our student board members thoughts on that? I would say yeah, you would still like to have a mentor and what would you hope to uh to benefit by having a mentor? What do you see the role? I think just asking questions in between board meetings and like whether that's procedure- wise or if something can or cannot happen. Sure. Okay. Thoughts from other student board members? Um just my perspective I do agree that uh the meetings that we are had like the pre-board meetings I tell you been helpful the one we had yesterday was uh pretty helpful with just preparing for uh our like roles
028throughout the meetings. So, at least my perspective, I don't really think the mentor role will be as necessary, at least for myself, just because I feel like with the email, if you're able to reach out to you with questions and concerns and also with the fact that at least for me, uh, district office is just a few steps away from North, I do think that's pretty much helpful with the email and our pre-board meetings. So, I would oblige from the uh mentorship. Okay. Oh, just to get um my like topic on this. So, I think the mentor would still be helpful just to like clarify information like regarding the meeting. I know that the email would always be there, but it would also be helpful to just know what exactly our role is and how
029far exactly we can have an impact. And I think it would just be helpful to have someone on the board who's had experience with this stuff, so they could just guide us a bit more through questions like before meetings or after if we if anything ever happens. Sure. Okay. So, we have two yays for that. Do uh do the rest of the board want to chime in on this discussion? Any Mr. Bulan? Do we not have a policy, excuse me, that new board members get a mentor for us? We I think we should we should extend that and I I just wanted the students to be able to have a voice in that decision just like we had the voice in in our decision to have a mentor. So, how would it be a bad
030thing to have a mentor? I guess that's my point. Thank you, Mr. revealing other comments. Just one more thing. I also I kind of see like the benefit in like us living in a district that we do live in. The fact that we have three board members all from different high schools uh when we went to the uh meeting with uh I'm sorry with uh training with Luke Lipet seeing that other students in other districts only have one uh student board representative. I also think that since we have so many of us here that kind of like as I guess we can lean on each other. So I that's why also I don't believe the mentorship is as necessary but I would not be completely against it. If if you are assigned a mentor, you
031can use it as you choose to see fit. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Dr. Spicer. Yeah. I just I I think there's there's no negative if you want it. I will just always say what Dr. Singh always told me is that meetings are meetings. And so as the year picks up to President um Kasmar Bogner said, you know, you just think about how much time you can commit and be real just be realistic about it is all. Um but always ask us questions of course. Okay. So it any other comments about that? It sounds like we need to assign a mentor. Um I know that uh Dr. Brown Hall and I had a brief discussion about that and thought the best course of action would be to identify one board member to mentor all three of you
032so that everyone's getting a consistent message. Um, are there any board members that are willing to volunteer to mentor our three board members? I see Miss Puland, I see Mr. Bulan, and I see Ms. Blackinger. So, I'm not sure um how we will make that decision. Is it okay if we get back to you about that? Perfect. And we'll make sure though that you are assigned a mentor. Were there any other comments on this topic from anyone? Okay, perfect. So, we will move on then to item 7B, which is events. We are hoping to hold our fall community forum on Saturday, November 1st at 9:00 a.m. I believe all board members are able to attend. Is that correct? Okay. So, it looks like we can move forward with that. Mrs. Carrie and it's open to
033the student board members too. Curry. And yes, and the student board members are welcome to participate in that as well as members of the board. So if you want to mark your calendars for uh Saturday, November 1st, 9:00 a.m. and we will determine a location. Uh we are also looking at Wednesday, December 3rd for our fall board retreat. And I know I believe Miss Puland, you said you weren't able to do the original proposed time, but you would be able to do a later start time. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So, I think we if we did a 6:30 start time, would that work for all on Wednesday, December 3rd? If not, you can let me know after the meeting, but we will tentatively plan that for our fall board retreat. Uh board members Puland
034Spicer and I attended the August 6 Western New York Educational Law Conference. Uh Dr. Spicer or Miss Puland, do either of you have any comments or feedbacks to share? Dr. Spicer? Um so thanks to our amazing president, we have a wonderful report for the conference. Um, but I have gone for the last three years and um, and for my fellow board members, I think I say this every year, it is incredibly beneficial. Um, and and thank you for uploading all of the slides. um you it's very easy to just go into the presentations and catch the highlights. But I would say if you um are lacking in time looking at what's coming on what's coming up in the on the governor's desk or what she's ready to vote on, some of which we've folded into
035this agenda tonight. Um it's really helpful just to anticipate some of the things that we all need to consider. Um but it really is, you know, it's the cutting edge of legality in in K through 12 and sometimes even in higher ed. So, um, if just take a peek because it's just really beneficial and I appreciate being able to attend. Thank you, Dr. Spicer. Miss Pulling, did you have anything you wanted to comment on? No, I Okay, your your report did a great job and I appreciate Dr. Spicer's comments as well. So, okay. I did have I just wanted to point out and I did put this in my report, but there was one session on board government, board governance, and I know that was a topic that we cover in our retreats. Uh this
036was a particular um session with two attorneys who talked about some scenarios sort of to avoid and I just thought it was a good reminder that board members should refrain from making evaluative comments about staff in public and refrain from having conversations with staff about any contractual items and to ensure that any personal social media pages and posts do not mention your school board role as it may be perceived as an official page if you do So, so I just wanted to bring those to the table to reiterate those. I know we have talked about them at retreats in the past. Um, moving on to ECSB and NISBA items. Um, ECSB hosted a student exeicio workshop in July and uh, you had referred to that, Miss Maurice. Do other board member student board members have
037any comments or feedbacks to share about that? Miss Mor? Yeah, I had written out a few takeway takeaways I had from the evening or from the whole day. Uh my first one was uh looking at different perspectives. One of the attendees was a superintendent, I believe, from the Starpoint district, but I could be wrong. And he had brought to our attention the fact that parents often complain in the first month of school, how uh their children complain about going to school when it's so hot, yet he kind of looks at a different way and that's how we should look look into our different situations. how instead of looking at the fact that children are in school sweating that if he sends children home like while they're already at at school who's going to be the
038topping pick up the almighty children from from the buses or who's going to be feeding them lunch and stuff like that some people are dependent on the school so I think it's interesting kind of see like different situations that you brought up as a superintendent like in different light takeaway was meeting people where they're at um something that I really like resonated with was attending club meetings and the fact that if people are going to different club meetings whether it's uh GSA or Dungeons and dragons. If they're going to be there, meet them where they're at. So, if they're not going to come to board meetings, at least I could be there and kind of gauge their perspective so that I can bring the student voice to board meetings. Also, quick surveys and potentially like
039through social media, kind of sharing different perspectives. And the last one is just overall being a voice through student reports and committee of the whole. And I know we mentioned uh us as students uh giving reports uh at every regular meeting. So, um, bring the student, uh, opinion, but also sharing community info, such as our, uh, boys hockey teddy bear toss is an annual support for crisis services. Uh, the StuCo annual food drive, which supports Williams food pantry and little portion prairie, our connect life blood drive, taste of north, and the better together unified plant sale, and other things I'm able to do such through my simple role as just being on this board that I can uh, share with our communities to better things around us. So, that's awesome. Thank you so much. We
040appreciate that. Of course. Any other comments? Oh, I just wanted to say that was excellent like report by Jazelle and yeah, basically the training it was just talking a lot about how you have to just meet students where they are and you're not representing yourself but the whole school. So, it's important to understand that there's a lot of people with different perspectives and different backgrounds. So, you talked a lot about how using social media to connect with people and talking to other people who aren't necessarily your friends and people you wouldn't normally interact with, but just talking to them to get to know what other people think about decisions. And it's your job just every day to just look out for people. And I'd say it was more important to just connect with others, not
041just attend board meetings and just give report. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. Anything else? Yeah, other than what both of them mentioned, I feel like at the conference, it was just meeting like-minded other other students. I think that was really great. Yeah, that's awesome. So, you got to make some connections, it sounds like. Yeah, it's wonderful. Well, thank all thanks to all three of you for attending that workshop and then for reporting on it here tonight. We appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, moving on. Um, Miss Puland attended the NISBA's leadership in education event in Albany. Did you have any comments you wanted to share? Um, I will kind of echo what um, board member Dr. Spicer had said about attending the law conference. This is my third year attending the leadership event at
042in Albany. Um, and it it's one of the highlights for me of the training opportunities available because it is the opportunity to actually interact with the people from the state department of education and their panel that they do every year is always very um informative. Um, I would really like to this year challenge everybody on the board to attend at least one training opportunity. Um, I have a background in education, but that's my 31 years of education background is I can't just sit on those laurels. I have to continue to grow and expand in my understanding of the role of a board. And this was one of the best ways that I've found to do that. Some of the topics um this summer were um one of them was something that was very much on
043the top of my mind and I know it's on the top of a lot of famil family's minds right now as we hear about the um change in graduation procedures and diplomas and so forth. I think Dr. Brown Hall um attended also and we agreed that we didn't get all the information that we wanted, but we did get a good chunk of information and I did include all of the links in the board report that I sent to you and id highly encourage you to get out there and look at those. Um it is going to impact our students over a period of time. It's something that's going to happen over a period of time, but there are going to be in some short times some changes made to that all of our current middle
044school and high school students will inter be interacting with. So, please take a look at that information. Thank you so much for sharing. Moving on, um, Miss Puland, Dr. Singh and I will be attending the NISSBA convention in person. Approval of attendings will be of the attendees will be under agenda item 10B. Uh there is also a virtual option. Are any other board members interested in the virtual option at this time? Miss Blackinger is interested in the virtual off option. Miss Carrie. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Other events are listed in board docs. Does anyone have any other comments related to ECSB or NISBA? Okay. Item 7E. May I have a motion to approve and adopt the 2025 2026 board of education guidelines for school visits as presented? Miss Buckinger, Mr. Bulan, is there any discussion?
045All in favor? Motion carried unanimously for correspondence. We received correspondence regarding air conditioning and special ed services. Now, may I have a motion to approve the agenda items nine minutes, 10 liaison assignments and NISSBA convention, 11 personnel, 12, business and finance, 13 exceptional education, special needs and student activities, and 14 instruction curriculum as presented. Mr. Biscalia, Dr. Singh, is there any discussion? All in favor? Motion carries unanimously. We approved several new appointments this evening. Congratulations to the newly appointed principal at Heheim Elementary School, Claire Lacata Michael. Assistant principal at Heim Elementary School, Natalie Galis Davis, and assistant d uh director of professional learning, Caitlyn Bodet. You are all welcome to say a few words at this time. Congratulations. [Applause] Thank you. It is such an honor and a privilege to be the new principal of
046Heim Elementary School. I am so lucky and thankful for the support that I have to help me get to this um position. Working at him the last week has been incredible. The teachers, the families, the students are just wonderful and I am so excited for all that we are going to accomplish together. I am also excited to have my teammate here, Natalie Davis. Um, we are going to be a great team and I am so excited to have an incredible partner. Thank you everyone so much for the warm welcome. I'm so excited for my first day tomorrow and just to get to know all the students and teachers. I've heard amazing things about everyone in the community in the district. So, I'm just looking forward to this new chapter. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank
047you, [Applause] Claire and Natalie, if if you want to just hang out because we're going to take pictures also. All right, Caitlyn. Hi, everyone. Hello. Thank you to the board of education, Dr. Brown Hall, and the leadership team uh for the opportunity to serve as the assistant director for professional learning. I'm so honored to join the office of instruction and be a part of the incred incredible work that is deeply connected and committed to excellence in education and meaningful professional growth. In this role, I look forward to supporting transformational teacher development and directly enhancing instructional practices. Ultimately, our work will help create an engaging and equitable learning environment for all of our students here in Williamsville. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. You step up, take a picture. or pictures. depend these ones open for everyone.
048Back to the Thank you everyone for your patience. We took some great photos. Uh we also approved many tenure appointments this evening. Please note that all tenure recipients will be invited to the tenure reception at our June 9th board meeting. And if any tenure appointments are in attendance today, you may stand to be recognized. I don't know that there are, but I thought I would ask. Okay, moving on. Thank you to the following retirees for their service to the district. Lisa Zelasny, Transit Middle School English teacher with 19 years of service. Michael Coffee, Casey Middle School Laborer with 25 years of service. Kathleen Lanic, Country Parkway Elementary School senior clerk typist with 18 years of service. We wish you all well in your retirement. [Applause] May I now have a motion for the second reading
049and adoption of policy 5685, maximum temperature for school buildings and indoor facilities and the updated policy number for current Williamsville policy 5685 changing to 5684 as presented. Dr. Mr. Spicer, Miss Puland, is there any discussion? All in favor? Motion carried unanimously? There are no matters to discuss under 16 facilities or 17 legislative matters. Does anyone have a topic to discuss under committee of the whole? Okay, we are now at may I have a motion to recess the regular board meeting to conduct the goal setting workshop. Mr. Mana second, Mr. Bulan. All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. Item 20. I call the goal setting work session to order. Dr. Brown Hall, I turn it over to you for the review of the 2526 district goals and superintendent goals. Thank you very much, board president. Similar to
050our last few years, our district goals really are our strategic planning goals. So, communication, teaching, learning, and leadership, community wellness, and our DEI. So, those goals will continue. Our strategic plan is in place until the year 2027. What we've done twice a year in January and June is to provide highlights to our community and our stakeholders on the progress we've made in reaching our goals in the strategic plan. What we've also done effective last year was essentially rate each of our goals to see where we are at on our way to meeting the goal. Right now we are at the proficient level. We still have this school year 2526 and 2627 to reach our goals in the strategic plan. What's unique about this year is that in March or April, we need to begin forming
051our strategic planning team to begin our 2027 strategic plan. The reason we have to do it so early is when we begin to backwards map, we know that any good strategic plan takes nine months to a year to develop. With that being said, when we present the strategic plan to our school community, we also allow for another 30-day comment period. After that, the committee will meet again, review any comments we have before a final version is presented to the board for adoption. With that being said, we need to set our strategic planning committee for 2027 by March or April so that the team can then begin working so that by March or April 2027, we have a plan to present to the board so that we have timely adoption July 1, 2027. So that work
052will begin this school year with identifying members of the strategic planning team. However, with the communications, teaching, learning, and leadership, DEI, and wellness initiatives in our strategic plan, we will definitely move forward with meeting those goals by the end date of 2027 for these district goals for this school year. In addition, the superintendent goals this year. The superintendent goals are in board docs. We do have one addition to the superintendent goals. The first goal is successful negotiation of the Williamsville Administrators Association, Williamsville Directors Association, and the Williamsville Supervisors and Computer Technicians Association's collective bargaining agreements. Those three agreements expire at the end of this school year. So, we will need to successfully negotiate those three agreements this year. Our grading and homework committee will continue working and building upon phase one and two as they
053enter phase three. We also will be forming a distance learning committee committee in partnership with the Williamsville teachers association. One thing the board of education members heard when they were on their visits with SIAK um actually structured visits for schoolboard members to meet with students at each of the three high schools. One thing they heard were trying to have distant learning opportunities. So if there's a course that's available at East High School but not available at South, is there an opportunity for a South student to actually take the course at East via distance learning? So we are forming a committee. That committee will be working throughout the 2526 school year to see what that may look like. We're partnering with the WTA to make that happen. Another thing we heard last year from our our
054surveys with VA evaluation was that many of our stakeholders and community members know that we have a strategic plan and a diversity, equity, and inclusion plan, but they don't know really what's in the plan. So, they feel that a way to better educate our community members is to develop videos of those plans. So, we will be taking those plans part by part and developing videos that will be housed on our website. That is another goal. One thing that myself and board member Puland heard at the NISSBA leadership and education event was a lot of work that's going on regarding portrait of a graduate all the recommendations from the blue ribbon commit commission and the graduation members. But for our school community, our students, our families, what does it mean? What is the timeline for implementation?
055And what does it look like for our students? So for the superintendent speaker series this year, that's exactly what it will focus on. And what we will do is we will have videos available on our district website so that we will chunk all of that information so when parents, students, community members want to know exactly what we're talking about. They can click on one of those videos and find out more information. We'll be partnering with our communications committee, um, our director of professional learning, Danielle Ontario, our instruction department under the direction of Dr. Bell, and also to make sure that this all happens this school year. Last but not least, there is continued work that we've been working on for the past number of years. our special education strategic plan implementation, our distraction-free school zone
056as we spoke about um earlier this evening and gifted programming documentation. Those will be con continued items we'll be working on this school year as superintendent goals. Any questions from board members about the district goals or the superintendent goals? I mean, I must have missed this, but when do we expect to see the results of the transportation survey? Oh, very good question. I was sharing with some of my uh board members close to me. I'll be sending out um information tomorrow about the transportation survey to the board members. Um we do not have a huge reduction in the number of routes, right? So just looking at the information that we received, we had a high success rate of completion. We don't have a high reduction of roots. We actually have an increase of bus routes
057next year because of some of the agency placements we have for our students and the agencies changing their times and the transportation that we may we must provide for students that are classified as McKenna Vento and so that number has increased also. So we actually have an increase of bus routes. I will be sending a detailed explanation to the board members. I I think that it was a success then because it showed that you know what we were doing we were it was fitting the needs serving the purpose of of of of the students and um you know we weren't uh having too many empty buses correct weren't having a real shortage of transportation where I think we're in in the sweet spot where we have to be. Um we've said many times before bus
058transportation is the biggest challenge I think every district is is facing um and we want to talk about providing uh transportation for modified sports. I don't know how possible that's going to be in this environment but um I think getting the results we did from the transportation survey even if nothing really changed is why we do the survey to figure out if we need to change something. It turns out we you know a few minor modifications is all that's needed. And one thing Mr. mana said previously is that it's something that we can look at periodically. So we don't have to wait an entire year to look at it. We'll look at bus ridership and we can also adjust that throughout the school year when necessary. All right. And so we may look at other
059efficiencies also with wrership throughout the school year. Any other questions board members? Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you Dr. Brown Hall. The uh board of education goals are in board docs. They are the same goals that we had in the previous year. Is there any discussion or edit for these goals? And again, these goals are aligned with our strategic plan goals and we had the additional board governance goal. Any comments or edits from board members? Okay. So these board goals will be approved in agenda item 21B tonight and then the implementation plans will be reviewed at our September meeting. May I have a motion to adjourn the goal setting work session? Dr. Spicer and Dr. Singh. All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. May I have a motion to return to public session? Mr. Bulan,
060Miss Bleer, all in favor? Motion carried unanimously. We are now on item 21B. May I have a motion to approve and adopt the board of education goals as presented in 20D? Mr. Mana, Dr. Singh, is there any discussion? All in favor? Motion carried unanimously. We are now on item 22A which is our second public expression. If anyone in the audience would like to speak at this time, please step up to the podium. Okay, I'm getting sh nos from the office. So, we will move on. This concludes our regular board meeting. Our next scheduled regular board meeting is September 9th. On behalf of the board, we hope that everyone enjoys the remainder of summer and has a wonderful start to this new school year. Is there a motion to adjourn the regular board meeting? Mr. Bulan,
061Miss Puland, all in favor? Motion carries unanimously. Good night, everyone.