001question on this uh good evening everyone thanks for joining us for our April board meeting not April um I have a motion to return the regular board meeting to public session Miss Poland miss m Mana all in favor motion carries unanimously I call the regular board meeting to order all the board members are present Dr Spicer would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag I to the flag of United States of America and to rep stand indivisible with lice thank you please be advised that in the event of 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 everyone turn their cell phones and other electronic devices to silent thank you
002uh item three recognition Dr brownall absolutely thank you very much president Singh so tonight our first school Spotlight takes us to Country Parkway Elementary School as we highlight their fourth grade student council raising student voice and having students directly involved in the decision- making process is a key pillar in our diversity equity and inclusion plan I'd now like to welcome princip Andrew Bowen to share more on the impact the fourth grade student council is having at Country Parkway and I'll also invite board member blinger to say a few words also so pres president principal Bowen will pass it over to uh board member blinger when it's appropriate thank you thank you Dr Brown Hall and thank you good evening Board of Education two years ago and as mentioned our shared decision-making team implemented a fourth
003grade student council with the purpose of raising student voice what turned out to happen was far more impactful we created an opportunity where students were empowered this led to students taking ownership of their school increasing a sense of Pride and developing skills such as working with peers towards a common goal it's truly been a remarkable experience um our one of our co-founders of our uh student council is bethanne MC Phillips who unfortunately who was our PTA president and could not be here so she um sent some words with uh um board member blinger so I'll turn it over to her thank you I am sorry I cannot attend tonight's meeting and want to thank the board of board of education for acknowledging the work of our country Parkway fourth grade student council it is with
004profound gratitude that I would like to thank principal Bowen for his pivotal role in the establishment of the council his enthusiastic engagement with student members and for his steadfast support in ensuring the council success he has allowed our student council members to have a true voice and a meaningful purpose by which they can have a lasting impact on our school Community I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our fourth grade families for supporting their children's involvement in the council and to the country Parkway family as a whole for its unwavering and generous support of the council's many initiatives for its class gift to the school this year the council has chosen to replace country parkway's Marquee sign and has raised the funds for this much-needed replacement the council's achievements would have
005have been inspired by its members and set and exceed ambitious goals are Testament of the solid foundation provided by our CP families and Community once again thank you for spotlighting our fourth grade student council awesome our nine and 10 year olds are very motivated and again that was what we found out is empowering students provides motivation and uh I can't wait for you to see this video which gives you a little uh behind the scenes glimpse of our student council in action um in addition to thanking all of our parents and our volunteers and and uh Beth and MC Phillips as well I do want to thank our two fourth grade student council advisers uh Miss Mrs Angelica mat and Miss Carrie Noy please enjoy this video thank [Music] you fourth grade student council is
006an opportunity for students to plan and prepare their own activities so it's all student L these typically would have been activities that in Prior years the adults in the building whether it be parents or whether it be teachers just make the decisions for the children but in this case we've allowed the students to have ownership of what happens in their fourth grade year students choose everything from the cover of what their yearbook is what the movies will be at movie night what class gift that they are going to give to the school how they will fundraise for that we decided that we're going to fix it up we're going to make it better and it's going to be there for a very long time and we got it like almost all planned out and I
007think it's just going to be great students and student council are learning to manage their time they're learning to work cooperatively the students are working on creating t-shirts for our Fun Run they're putting together information for our campus cleanup I am always surprised by the things that they accomplish at these meetings they really feel a sense of Pride um and Community which is what country Parkway is so great at it's really fun and like you get to decide stuff for the um school and I feel like proud because if a lot of people like it then I'm like oh I I helped them that today we worked on getting all the prices finding what we're going to do in our menu the students are really the driving force behind those committees they will actually initiate
008that project and run it through to completion every time we raise the bar they take it even one step further the skills they're learning will stay with them for the rest of their lives they're learning budgeting for example say they were talking about price per item and how much money they're going to make in their fundraising goals they have more Buy in to the school community and what's going on around them and I think it makes them feel like they have more ownership in their final year here before moving on student council is where you help the building of the school and I feel good about it because I feel like like I'm helping other people and it's fun and you make new friends I'm so proud of what our students are able to accomplish
009student council is a great activity it's a great source of Pride here at Country Parkway uh we've seen tremendous things happen and tremendous growth when you give opportunities for students to show leadership and a little Independence great things happen that was awesome thank you very much principal wowen next throughout our district our arcs Department continues to shine from the art room to the music halls and the stage with the elaborate drama and musical Productions tonight we are learning more about a unique opportunity presented to students at Williamsville South a drama Master Class I'd like to welcome principal Keith bortman and Eleanor gainy and also some of our students to share more about this incredible opportunity [Applause] thank you uh thank you for having us I'm not going to spend much time I'm going to let
010them uh do a lot of the talking but uh I think I speak probably for all of the principles when I say you know one of the things we really enjoy about the school spotlights um is our ability to kind of highlight things that I don't think get seen a lot by a lot of people uh and let you know some of the opportunities that our kids have uh and as we were going through this year I was actually talking about it with Mr filipowski you know what we could do for South this year and uh one of the things that I we've seen a lot of some changes in what we've done with drama club in particular having these master classes which is something that I don't think a lot of places um have
011and there are opportunities for our students uh that are really neat uh and so I'm gonna turn it over to miss gainy who is the adviser for a drama club who is really the person who is brought this to South High School hi I'd like to thank you first for all your support um over the years for our drama programs one of the things is so wonderful is to be able to see people from the community people from the board people from um the administrative team being present at our events we are so very very um grateful um when I took over drama club when I came back to drama club I should say two years ago I decided that I thought so many of our students want to be professional performers professional artists in
012oneway shape or form and so I wanted them to be exposed to as many different things that they could be so I've had the privilege of having a Broadway performer come in wow I've had a marketing specialist for Broadway come in that was last year um this year we've had two master classes on a judication of monologues so the kids who are doing their college auditions can actually have that opportunity and our master class which we are spotlighting today which was from a performer who has this most amazing pedigree so I'm very I'm going to stop talking for a second I'm going to introduce to you the wonderful people who are behind me so Izzy does a four year a senior fouryear member awes of the drama club Kai Harrington president of the drama club
013and a four-year member of the musical and drama staff Jillian Sears a member of drama club as well as one of our Tech directors and stage crew people Marcus beum the historian of drama club and Bella Garcia who is a three-year senior performer awesome and I'm sorry I'm GNA turn it over for just a second for Kai Harrington to tell you a little bit about what we do awesome hello to all uh thank you for having us um as Miss gy said prior I am president of drama club and it is an honor to speak for you all today um drama club in a way is a way that um students find passion and find their community at South there are so many opportunities for us to delve into who we want to be and
014uh what we want to do and um no matter what part of drama club that uh you want to participate in there is some way for us to really um delve into our passion and expand on our knowledge of uh the musical arts in the uh theater um these master classes have truly transformed how uh we have viewed drama club and the way we can implement it into our performances and auditions and it is a way that it it will impact us for uh the rest of our lives we will be using these skills and I am eternally grateful for the amount of opportunities that this has brought us and I am hoping that it will stay with drama club as we do three major performances a year we are continuing these master classes and
015um I'm just hoping that this will be supported for um many years to come absolutely thank you very much thank you very much [Applause] hello we're going to start first finding breath and body we are putting on pretty much every emotion possible when you're acting on stage right you're putting on happiness sadness complex emotions putting on Happy and sadness at the same time and so the breath really is what connects those emotions together remember that as you're building your character as you're going is Amy hi my name is Amy and I'm really nice to meet you fill it up with a breath for me before breath was just what you did before you said your line it was not something that you really incorporated into your character but she really took us on a journey
016um to uh really discover our character and how we can fluctuate our breath in order to change what kind of character we're portraying you only think about it like oh make sure you breathe before a line but it's never in your actions but it's so important I think it was fun just seeing people kind of explain like what it was in character and also um when they were doing like the other person's actual walk I thought it was like really interesting to see because you never think about how you walk but then when you see someone else do it it's like it seems like a character because someone else is doing it I thought that was really cool take those breath breath bre I definitely learned what it's like from the perspective of an actor
017and the little things that they have to learn and state true has to learn things like how to call cues and how to rig all of the things in the ceiling but we don't have to learn anything as little and minuscule and important to the story as what we just did so that was really cool so this is what I'm going to do post high school so to have master classes like these are critical and so important to kids who are just like me who want to go into this because it gives them not only a professional aspect but a professional giving you tips on how to improve she was talking about auditions as well when you're auditioning for something which I've had to do for schools it's hard to take those breaths and sort
018of feel grounded and feel comfortable but you have to you have to put on a brave face you have to act um and use your body and movement you know also signing in this industry like on stage as well is amazing and I really want to get into that as well doing ASL work in theater so it was just really cool to see her that is absolutely awesome thank you very [Applause] much everyone knows how I am about theater and musicals and stuff oh I love them dearly Thursday is our celebration of South Talent One X and talented performers oh oh thanks for letting us know plug and it's a charity event oh great next what day Thursday Thursday Thursday for John um we're doing two Charities John Hopkins bile duck research and hospice um
019one of our students actually came to us and asked us if we would do some some promotion about bck he lost his grandmother this year and so that is what we're doing thank you very much thank you all awesome sing I turn it back over to you U are there any other board acknowledgements I just have a comment just to kudos to both these schools um for leading the way for our district and and doing these opportunities that are outside of the box for our students and I know the board last year had the opportunity to witness firsthand some of the board members of the um fourth grade student council and they were all dressed professionally and really shows great leadership skills and accountability and responsibility and a way to promote student voice so thank
020you for that had to piggy back off that watching the video I I thought to myself it's I mean being in the educational field as well I mean that's what's so great about Williamsville it's you know Maple West has a student council now country Parkway does and it there's so many opportunities for our students if they look um It's Not Just Sports it's not just you know the musicals it's there's so many things that the kids can get involved with and it's important because you know in the world we live in to give these students an opportunity to express themselves and join something that they feel attached to um you know that is what education is about that's what Public Schools about you know it's an Testament to to the administration at these schools that
021they allow this um and you know to to our district office administration to find the budget room you know and it's it's just it's wonderful you know knowing we have so many great things and my kids are going to be able to come through and do things like this it's it's it's awesome yeah yeah absolutely Mr I just wanted to wish the people who celebrate Passover a happy Passover which will commence Monday evening yeah this place um I just wanted to say kudos to those Crafters that participated in the mill craft show this past weekend and to the organizers I am sporting my newly crafted uh earrings um but I am wearing them too because I I love earrings but very impressive that a middle school student whose name I did not get I apologize
022um was very talented she had so many different things but so many of the kids did it was just such an impressive event so kudos to them awesome moving on to public expression do have anyone signed up okay moving on uh item next item is the staff feedback survey Dr bronold absolutely thank you very much president Singh so um what we pride ourselves on and the administration and the board is collaboration really hearing from our constituents our stakeholders our employees and we want to make sure that we're observing data to see if what we're doing is the right thing we have committees formed we ask for participation we want to see if that translate into our employees our constition on really feeling heard and that they have a voice in our district so board members
023asked last year that we do some sort of survey to make sure that we're hitting the nail on the head and as part of my evaluation it really speaks to those issues of collaboration and shared decision making so I contacted via evaluation who is just phenomenal in the work that they do of surveying and Carolyn tager we are lucky to have her this evening she worked with our district on the staff feedback survey and she'll go into the details on how it was crafted developed and some of the information we can gather from the survey Carolyn thank you very much for being here great thank you all right so I have a presentation my name is Caroline tagert I am a senior project evaluation manager at Via evaluation we're a small women-owned business located in
024downtown Buffalo and we work with a variety of entities and organizations including many school districts on evaluation related and data analysis services so I'm going to be talking tonight about the Williamsville staff feedback survey I want to acknowledge that I am going to move relatively quickly through this in honor of time and to not B everyone with details but please if you have specific questions or you feel I am moving too quickly feel free to stop me I'm okay being interrupted I am a former Middle School teacher so I know what that is like uh and I do have time at the end for questions and answers to get all everything satisfied if you do have questions so briefly a timeline I worked with Dr Brown Hall back in November to develop the survey I'm
025going to talk more about each of these components in a second then we did a randomization process in January to identify who would be surveyed and then we conducted the survey the last week of February and first week of March in terms of survey development I have a background in survey design and development and we knew this was going to be a customized survey specifically to meet the needs of Dr Brown Hall's questions uh about what was happening around three particular topic areas so we wanted to probe about District Communications basically how people feel how Staff feel about District Communications whether they being communicated with effectively we wanted to know about shared decision-making and staff engagement really are people feeling heard are they feeling engaged in the decision-making process and we wanted to ask about
026professional learning and advancement are people feeling like they're getting developed as they should be to continue excelling in their job then we had some basic demographics that we wanted to collect so we ended up with 21 lyer uh scale questions or items and then four open-ended questions we did want to give people an opportunity to provide comments and then we had some basic demographic questions there are almost 1,800 employees in the district and we knew we weren't going to be able to survey every single one of them so we wanted to aim to get a representative sample of staff in the district we wanted about 20% of staff to complete a survey so we did an oversampling process we identified where everybody fell in terms of their location and their role and then we looked
027to S um identify how many would be 30% within each of those categories we did a random number generator and we found 555 people that were going to receive the survey uh to be clear this is confidential no one other than me and my staff know who those 555 individuals were who ended up being surveyed so the district is not aware who those 555 individuals were we did the survey Administration through via evaluations hipa secure Survey Monkey platform so we we host that ourselves um Dr Brown Hall's office sent out a pre-notification email that helps us increase response rate it lets everyone know the purpose of the survey it went to all staff members in the district so people were notified you may or may not receive a survey Link in a week and a
028half if you do please complete the survey so we did use an email uh collector that's Anonymous so uh the names of the people who completed the survey are confidential they're only known to me but the survey responses are actually entirely Anonymous this means that we were able to email people and I know whether or not they answered the email like to go in and fill out the survey but I can't connect their survey responses to their email address or even their IP address it's fully Anonymous we did um because we used the email collector we were able to send reminder emails again our goal was to get as many people as possible to respond we end end up with 353 responses that works out to be 64% of all people who were invited or
02920% of the staff overall and we did have a representative sample the numbers on the screen not really important and these are the same numbers sorted in a different order all this is really saying is that we ended up getting a pretty representative sample we got proportionally exactly what we wanted and what we were looking for generally speaking we also collected uh demographics respondent based demographics survey was Anonymous so I don't know who they are but this this is what they reported and it looks again pretty representative so all that is to say that when we move into the results section we're pretty confident that it's representative of the general staff population so the summary of results uh we had as I mentioned those three topic areas the first topic area that we asked about
030was District communication we positively worded all of these items so agreement is what we're looking for agreement is good and we color code this so agreement is the blue the dark blue is the percent of people who strongly agree and the lighter blue is the agreement then we have the gray light gray disagree and dark gray strongly disagree these are not the order in which the items appeared on the survey they're sorted based on descending order of agreement percentage overall so at the top you'll see that um the very first item that we have here about whether the district has systems in place to effectively communicate almost 90% or just over 90% of Staff agreed with that that's a really high level of agreement in my world to do a lot of surveying it's pretty
031high level of agreement and as you go down from there you know Staff feel as though they're informed Med about safety procedures they understand what to do um they feel as though they're adequately informed about what's going on in the district and then the lowest level of percentage of among these five items you're still at 70% agreement so again really high District did very well in District Communications when we get to Shar decision-making and staff engagement we do see the level of agreement decline less blue on the screen uh you can see the top item where we had the strongest level of agreement was only at 64% so again on um District Communications your lowest level of agreement was 70% on this section the highest level of agreement was 64% so it is lower uh
032and you can see that um as we probed and asked questions about do you feel engaged do you feel you have opportunities do you feel as though the district is transparent in decision-making we did see the level of degree disagreement increase across there and these are the last four items all of these hover well the top one is 41% but all of them go below 40% on the level of agreement so this is where there's more more of a concern particularly in the increase in the strong disagreement category which you see in the dark gray along the side and I'll talk a little bit more about this at the end we then had the third section which was professional learning and advancement and as you can see we went back in the direction of blue
033there's a lot more blue on the screen um the top item is what we consider a global measure we ask these types of questions on almost every survey that we do it says are you happy working in Williamsville schools uh and you can see that almost 90% of Staff said yes and you had 30% strongly age it's a very high level of strong agreement so that's a really good Global indicator to have you can also see that generally speaking people feel as though they're getting the needs met in terms of supporting and developing their skills so what's going well as I just mentioned staff are really happy working in Williamsville schools 30% strong agree on that item is one of the highest levels of strong agreement that we saw across the 21 points that's a
034really high level of strong agreement people seem pretty enthusiastic about it again that's really good staff are well informed as I mentioned pretty much everything in the district communication section was blue we had a lot of blue over there that's really good staff are feeling as though they're getting communicated information additional learning and support are available again staff generally reported that they feel as though they have what they need in order to advance their skills and develop their skills but what should be worked on is that staff aren't necessarily feeling their voices are respected nearly 60% of Staff disagree and one of the highest levels of strong disagreement was around whether staff Fielder voices are being respected it's obviously an area of concern staff don't feel decision-making is transparent I do think that this probably
035plays into some of those other components and items that we asked about where staff had higher levels of disagreement that they really understood how to become engaged how to uh share their voice and whether they were um getting you know able to participate in decision- making but then we had this like interesting finding staff aren't engaged in decision- making but they might be okay with that because about two-thirds of respondents don't feel that they see staff in decision-making roles but then also 60 almost 60% said they're actually completely fine with the level of decision- making that they have so again you know you get this kind of mixed message maybe they're not necessarily seeing what their role is or how staff are being engaged in decision- making but also they don't necessarily want to be
036the ones tasked with doing that decision- making so that's a little bit of another area to be explored now questions I have question uh thank you it was a um well done survey and and excuse me demographically as far as the percentage of of employees based on the amount of years with the district was very well it's amazing how well spread out it was very even yes um so I guess as a two-part question you know you know top down communication very good bottom up needs work um have you done other surveys for schools and if you have how would you feel like our bottom up survey was compared to other schools if you can answer that so I can't necessarily answer specifically this because this was a customized survey it was really unique for
037us to be asked to develop a survey around District Communications and shared decision-making we do a lot of uh we do a lot of school surveying we typically survey instructional staff particularly around school climate and culture so I have a little bit of indication around how people feel about working in their schools those are usually measures like are you happy working in the schools um we also do have questions on other surveys around do you feel your voice is respected I would say Williamsville is above average in terms of the percent of Staff who feel that they really like working in the schools and then slightly below average on the shared decision-mak participation although the decision-making shared decision-making is often lower in many of the other schools that we work in well it's very important
038to you know get into the minds of of your our employees to really ask them what they think of us and for them to be honest and warts and all look at it so I think the challenge for the board and the superintendent is how do we increase staff participation to the point where they feel like their opinions are valid and I think that's I mean it's always part of our plan uh written strategic plan or our everyday plan and I mean it just shows that we know we have work to do and um and and we're starting with that work I know a lot of times even when speaking with teachers on the different committees realizing that when we have a committee we have teachers on the committee administrators on the committee you know
039um board members on the committee you're representing those constituents it's not just your voice so we are thinking and we ask that you go back and you get additional information from the teachers that's how teachers we can't have all 10,000 teachers on the committee right so the teachers we have on the committee that's how you funnel your input through the your representatives on the committee so that's taking some work also so that administrators also if there's two administrators on the committee these are your representatives talk to them that's you get your voice heard on whatever this committee is we have to do more work on that so individuals know who their representatives are on the Committees and they contact those individuals yeah I'm G do some method I don't want to get too heavily into
040methodology but I guess my first question would be why did you use a 4. liage scale versus a fivepoint liage scale it's a great question which is a a basic yeah ask yeah so we tried to frame all of the questions usually when there's a neutral option people will gravitate towards it we tried to frame all of the questions so that neutral isn't really what you could say we wanted to sort of push people into thinking clearly about whether they were on the more of the agreement side or the disagree in a general sense and we provided that information in the instructions but we do um we go back and forth there's lots of debate in the survey methodology world that some people love to talk about for a long time like me but um
041the decision to eliminate a neutral or provide a neutral option is always hotly debated but we do see when we offer it people will pick it then you'll end up like four 54% neutral and it's not that in you know it's not necessarily informative and so we try to we work really hard to structure our our items so that neutral is like not really you can't really feel neutral about whether you like working in the school you know like choose choose a side so yeah that's I was G to say it's a positive methodological strategy one question jumped out at me because you know teach some of this it's a graduate level uh under the district communication it says I am adequately informed about what is going on within the district yes I mean the
042question above it listed in one below it are perfectly very clear I read that and I wrote next I didn't know what you were really wanting to know if I was trying to read this and respond right I'm not sure what I I would say because I wouldn't know it yeah that word adequately can be interpreted differently for different people and so we wanted to be clear you know are you what do people Fe we want people to think about looking at that question and think like what am I do I feel like I'm getting the appropriate amount of communication um and we do have the open-ended question which is where we got a lot of feedback people provided responses that indicated sort of what they were thinking in relation to that yeah because yeah
043I was unclear on it and otherwise I thought you did a very good job the information is valuable it's presented well so I thank you thank you Carolyn Carolyn thank you very much and just to put an exclamation point behind what Mr Manor said we really are going to take this to heart and we we see we do have work to do because one of the key things there were employees knowing how to provide input right so that's really and we're a very collaborative I say district and people say well who's the district we all are right we want to be very collaborative make sure everyone knows that they do have a voice so we do have work to do to make sure our employees know how that voice can be heard so thank you
044very much for the survey results helping construct the survey all the work you did behind it thank you very much you so much just one followup Dr brownall is there a plan to follow up with this survey like on a yearly basis to see what progress we're making if any maybe not yearly maybe every other year just so that we it'll give us enough time to make progress I turn it back over to you president sing uh we moving on to reviewing the code of conduct Dr bronal you me again thank you very much president Singh so I would encourage all of our community members and our constituents and stakeholders to review our newly designed code of conduct I want to thank the wellness committee and our assistant superintendent Tony skano for the work that
045was done there was a lot of Ed reworking and you can see that when you review the code of conduct online we are very very proud of the document and I'll ask assistant superintendent skano to just talk about some of the highlights if you will thank you Dr Bron Hall um yeah we're very proud of this uh this document um I think that this is something that's been years in the making uh from the council's perspective U really kind of taking a lens of restorative practices and kind of melding what we currently had in a code of cont conduct and making it um what it is today and I think that we've done a really nice job um and I want to thank everybody who's on the committee over the last few years because even
046though this is a document that um you know we set forth this year for next year's 24 25 school year this is something that's been in the works for a few years now and um you know just kind of making the revisions to bring it up to the level of uh uh that we feel um characterizes where we're going as a district and um with restorative practices and really kind of highlighting um you know a lot of the and rewarding a lot of the um former information that was in our current code of conduct uh what the restorative practices lens even from the responsibilities of what the expectations are for students for families with regard to parents caregivers and Guardians what their expectations are with the restorative model in in mind along with our Educators
047our counselors our social workers uh psychologists our administrators um um District staff members superintendent Board of Education what their roles and responsibilities really look like when it comes to restorative lens when it comes to the code of conduct and um you know we're at a point now uh we wanted this to be like a fiveyear kind of plan and we're in about year three of of rolling out restorative practices we feel comfortable and confident that um some of the foundational work that's been done on behalf of of instruction with Linda rway and and Dr debate and what's being currently picked up by Dr steenbeck um with Community circles and and check-ins and those kinds of things that are happening on a on a daily and weekly basis really play an important role in developing the
048foundation for what a restorative practices District looks like and how we handle um you know situations where students either fall below what the expectation is for them um you know when they're faced those situations and it's really powerful and we're seeing it um we're seeing seeing with our athletic code of conduct um we're seeing it with long-term suspensions um and and it's quite powerful when we have uh a sit down where where students are actually taking ownership and accountability for their actions and really taking a a perspective look from really on the outside looking in on what they could have done should they were in a situation uh again and and really the impact of their decision on not only themselves but you know their family uh their peers uh school's community um and and
049the just the greater good of the building and and knowing that you know when when you leave and and you see how impactful and Powerful that is does really lend to a change in behavior and that's really what we're looking to fulfill and see when we have situations like that when it comes to um you know discipline consequences and students falling below the expectations that we set forth for them so this document is it's a great I mean we want it to be not only appealing for the eye it really is it's a great document um we kind of modeled this after the skac school district's code of conduct as we were doing some research over the last few years um we've got a lot of candid pictures of students and um as you said
050a lot of the information that's in red are areas that will be deleted and changed and those that are in green are those that are going to be added and um I hope that everybody takes the next 30 days to really review this document in detail and provide us with any feedback which uh will be open um you know with M as of tomorrow so looking forward to it and uh again this is by far not done as we will continue to Monitor and progress and make changes as we see fit that kind of follow the uh uh the pattern of society and how it affects our school district and what we want to see uh happening within our schools from an expectation standpoint thank you very much assistant superintendent skzo are there any questions
051or comments I just want to thank all of the there's a long list of people who are involved in all aspects of the district and the community and that's uh very valuable and want to thank you for the time and effort of all of you who put it together I think uh having seen it evolved through the years and things keep being added and added that again the school safety for our students and knowing what's expected of them I think is always valuable to promote so thank you you're welcome I'd just like to add that um you know part of the restorative practices is to help create a sense of community and that sense of community and belonging in our schools does impact academic performance we see in the research so there is also the
052academic tyeing to the way our district has been moving towards these restorative practices and um it was something that I had asked about when I first got on the board I'm I've seen wonderful progression since I've started here and I appreciate all the work thank you uh in terms of you know restorative practices we all know you know the Adolescent brain isn't fully developed till you know well over 21 and yeah that's was well over 21 uh and it's just important to understand that you know we as a district have an understanding that kids are going to make make mistakes in that's life and the most important thing is learning from that mistake and I think this sets us up very well for that so you know Kudos thank you I have a question or
053a comment um thank you for all all this work when I when I read the email the the the words in red it says are going to be removed right looking at like the definitions we have glossy in the back but you didn't move you just moved them you didn't remove you didn't we had we added we added quite a few yeah it's it's a much more involved glosser with a restorative context and frame to it um just to be clear so it's not removed it's just moved and then added to correct to a different pie that's the I want to make sure people know oh absolutely they see the red that we're removing all those were not it's been moved and you've you've added to that correct thank you for clarifying see that in
054the uh um the table of contents also is is kind of reshuffled and restructured and you can see the glossery of terms at the end so thank you absolutely you're welcome any other questions okay we will now have a public forum for the code of conduct only anyone wishing to address the board in regard to the code of conduct may go to the podium this time okay okay mov on close public expression we just move on [Music] okay Dr gral back to you oh Community update okay you we're going through each one that's awesome great night of presentations um so this is the community update for April 16th 2024 lot of great information as usual so we'll talk about the vote and the election so our annual budget vote and board of elections will take
055place on Tuesday May 21st from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Williamsville North High School if you click on the links that are in the community update there'll be information on the absentee ballot and early voting information and the board candidate information so nomination packets are due April 22nd by 5 o'clock pm to the district clerk Miss Len Cary candidates night is May 9th we do have a uh budget hearing that night night and then we have candidates ton night the meet the candidates night sponsored by the league of women's voters and partnership with the PTSA Council so the approximate start time is 7 o'clock pm and will be live streamed on the district's YouTube channel and if I'm not mistaken uh members of the public will be able to submit questions that night to
056the candidates correct okay the new website the new district and school websites are now live they're streamlined content and navigation we've gotten great responses from our community members and our parents we also have our district director directory and our specific site search option links to the new sites were shared through Wix and social media any feedback you have and we're asking please provide feedback if there's something you think is missing or something you feel is buried please provide us that feedback at contact at Williamsville k12.org we are very pleased with the way our website um design is the way it appears and the feedback we have received so I want to say a special thank you to our executive director of communications Mr Nick filipowski who led our Communications team and the website sub Communications
057team so now that we have this final product so thank you very much Nick this graphic did not appear well but what this is showing you online is that we are underway in spirit week so the superintendent inter High advisory Council decided to also add our middle schools this year to spirit week so it is a high school event our middle schools are now participating on Monday Thursday and Friday and then our board members will be the final judges of which schools had the most spirit and we have trophies for each so we're very excited about that also I believe yesterday was onesy P pajama day today is teachers dress like students students dress like Teachers Day um and I can't remember the rest of them off the top of my head Wednesday is anything
058but a backpack day Thursday is country vers Country Club day and Friday is the school spirit day you wear your school spirit that's the day I'm most excited about I want to let everyone know that April 22nd begins our districtwide art show uh the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library the Autobon BR Branch um at 350 John James Autobon Parkway we hosted it there last year too it's a phenomenal event our students um are so very talented so I encourage you to stop by and to see all the wonderful pieces of art it will be running from April 22nd until May 5th 2024 very exciting music education for the 16th straight year our district has been named a best community for music education by the National Association of Music Merchants foundation so we're very excited
059about that yet again our cak update so we had our cak meeting yesterday I want to uh thank again assistant superintendent skano and our director Kathy raxel for co-chairing that committee and um we're finalizing the special education mission and vision statements and that's through a subcommittee focused on the the special education strategic plan and they'll be reviewing short-term and long-term goals and AC steps to say what the district's Next Step should be and reviewing professional learning opportunities for the summer and the 2425 school year so if you go back and look at the review that the Western New York Education Service council did last year one of the items was to have more in-depth and more choice for our teachers um our special ed teachers for their professional learning and so we have done that
060and we will continue to do that we will have summer institutes and the additional PD days we have next year the um special education department our directors and assistant superintendent scano are really mapping that out so our teachers have a variety of selections for professional learning our Ela and math New York State Testing is underway actually so our grades three and four paper based testing for ELA occurred last week April 11th and 12th and for mathematics it will be May 7th and 8th our grades 5 through eight computer-based testing English language arts began today and will continue tomorrow science for grades five and8 only is on April 30th and the math portion of the New York State assessments are May 14th and 15th for our grades 5 to8 those will be computer-based also our summer
061school information we keep it here in the community update so it's easy access for our parents but the information will be available on the district website in early may we have our element middle taking place at Transit Middle School from July 9th through August 19th High School will take place at Williamsville East from July 8th through August 20th and our special education location is high middle school and that is July 8th through August 16th now when we have the information available on the website please pay close attention to the dates because some of the weeks are only Monday through Thursday and no Friday okay our speaker series we are in the process of developing topics for the 2425 speaker series for the upcoming year now many of you know we partner with the PTSA Council
062for our speaker series and during our community Forum on March 26 many families express interest in learning more about curriculum so we have our website where we have our curriculum overview and we're also coordinating with Dr bailing in the office of instruction regarding curriculum area highlights for the speaker series next year last but not least um I said it on the weekly update but I also want to share it here we want to send a special thank you to our planetarium director Mr Mark Percy for all that he did to really prepare our district for the eclipse although he can't plan the weather there was um a lot of planning over two years of planning that went into making sure we had our glasses we partnered with the PTSA Council for that making sure we
063had special presentations and special curriculum that students understood prior to the eclipse and the packets that went home with all of our students so Mr Percy was instrumental in all of that so we want to say thank you very much Mr Percy last but not least I do ask Nick to put up a special worksheet that our assistant superintendent our interim assistant superintendent of finance and Management Systems Mr Tom matki developed that may be beneficial and that our community members will find helpful so I'll ask Tom to take it from here and just explain a little bit about it and it will be available on our district website thank you Dr brownall as we all know uh the town of Amherst as well as the town of Clarence are changing their Equalization rates this year
064uh so we're going to just kind of run through this example uh that is for the town of Amherst now their Equalization rate on this top section uh you can see is 62% um this this worksheet is meant to do two things um there's only two input areas that are out there for our community residents to use and one is that they would put in the assessed value that's from their um 2023 uh statement and this is the assessed value not the equalized value and I want to be clear with that and then you would do the same the assess value in a section below um that's linked to the 2024 tax bill um what will happen is there's formulas in here that will show based upon the current estimate uh and I want to
065emphasize the current estimate is what we consider with no additional changes to growth and assessed values through the town's total assessed value not not the individual taxpayer so what it really does is it breaks down in the section whether or not the increase is attributed to the town uh and your assess value going up or it's attributed to uh the increase which is 2.97% of our Levy and as you go through and we're not going to go through the entire thing here but you can see that there's sections down that would say okay this is the amount that would be attributed to the levy in this particular example um it was worked out specifically to show that if there were no increase in the assessed value uh from the prior year to this year and
066and Nick if you could just scroll up to the very top I can highlight this um for the community you can see that uh the amount on top would have been a $250,000 uh assessed value which works out to an equalized value that's higher last year so that higher value we're assuming in this example is the exact same amount that happened this year at 100% and that's why if you look at this example down below there's no change on the Amer tax if you had another situation where your values are going up greater it's going to show an amount in there for the increase due to the town of Amherst assessed value growth so I'm just going to leave it at that certainly if there are more questions you can contact the business office and
067myself and I can I'm happy to go through anyone's um tax re uh tax statement their assess values and work them through this formula thank you very much Mr maturski we appreciate that I think that our community members will find that helpful I'm going to jump to item 6B our District's informational technology department update this document is available in board docs and I encourage everyone to look through it because you will get updates on all of our New York State strategic goals goal one devices in our school we have updates about that goal two instructional technology and our action steps goal three our infrastructure and security and our action steps on that and then our current technology initiatives followed by our current technology task so this is a very detailed document and you can see
068how our district is meeting our goals and how we're advancing many of our current technology initiatives in the district president Singh I turnning back over to you um any questions okay moving on to president report the onboarding committee will be meeting on April 18th the Board of Education Retreat will be held on April 24th I'm assuming all of us are coming okay the Sak student Forum with the Board of Education will be on Monday May 20th all events other events and building visits are listed in board doogs are there any board member comments or questions regarding any events meetings or building visits okay um vot candidate information is listed in boogs the annual vote voter information is also in board doogs policy review 8,000 committee will be meeting on May 22nd review of the draft
069board of education meeting calendar had any questions or comments regarding the dates the ECB and nisbah items are also in both dogs Mrs kasmar Bogner will be attending the nispa virtual workshop on May 8th uh any questions on any other ecas or nisp items under board leason assignments does anyone have anything to report under leason assignments there was no correspondence in the last uh month agenda under agenda items 9 through 13 minutes personal business and finance exceptional education special needs and Student Activities and instruction may have motion to approve agenda items 9 through 13 has presented Dr lman Dr Spicer any discussion all in favor motion carries unanimously at this time I would like to thank the following retirees for their service to our district Helen AGS teacher Aid Casey Middle School 23 years of
070service Kathleen Crawford teacher a Transit Middle School 18 years of service Micheline draw account clerk typist district office student service department 41 years of service wow Christa Hughes social studies teacher North High School 27 years of service Cynthia Langer teacher Aid Maple West 10 years of service lucil Miranda cler typus South High School and thank you all for your service [Applause] is there a motion to take policy 6191 from the table for second reading and adoption Mr Mano second blinger any discussion all in favor motion carries unanimously may have a motion for the second reading and adop of policy 6191 workplace violence prevention policy statement has presented Miss KAS M Dr Litman any discussion all in favor motion carries [Music] unanimously is there a motion to take policies 7313 7320 from the table for second
071reading and adoption Mr Mana Mr blacker all in in discussion all in favor motion carries unanimously may have a motion for second reading and Adoption of policy 733 and 7320 has presented M casra Bogner Mr Mana any discussion all in favor motion carries unanimously is there a motion for the first discussion first reading of the policies 1640 has presented Dr Spicer M black hinger any discussion all in favor motion carries unanimously may have a motion to table policy 1640 for second reading and adoption at the May board meeting uh miss blinger and miss Pand any discussion all in favor motion carries unanimously 81 bosi election would someone like to make a motion to resolve that upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools Williams Central School District of Education adopts the proposed A1 boss's administrative budget
072for 2425 in the amount of 4, 8,100 has presented so move span any discussion Dr lman no just that I served on that committee and you know we went through it and it seems to be fine ask for your [Music] support any other discussion comments all in favor motion carries unanimously at this time we'll take a vote on Erie ju BOS board member election Miss car will be taking the rooll call after board members cast their vote for candidates would someone like to make a motion to resolve to cast one vote in the annual election of two members for the Board of Education of the board of Cooperative Educational Services first supervisory District looking for nomination I resolved to cast one vote for Edward calan the incumbent located in the Sweet Home Central School District
073to serve as a trustee for the board of Cooperative Educational Services first supervisory District of Erie County and a term beginning July 1st 2024 through June 30th 2027 Mr Mana second I'll take roll call vote U please say yes or no when I call your name Dr Litman I abstained Dr Spicer yes Mr Balia yes M casmer Bogner yes Dr Sing yes Miss Binger yes Mr Mana I I believe this this Board needs to come up with an a policy about abstentions and when it is proper to abstain so I will be presenting something for review I think our job here is to vote so I am going to vote Yes Miss pulling yes Mr ban yes okay thank everyone Dr say turn it back to you for the next uh would uh anyone like
074to make a motion for the second I resolved to cast one vote for Renee Wilson the incumbent located in chaga Central School District to serve as a trustee for the board of Cooperative Educational Services first supervisory District of yri county in a term beginning July 1st 2024 through June 30th second Mr Mano any discussion yep I'll continue with the roll call vote please say yes or no Dr Litman stain Dr Spicer yes Mr Balia stain Miss KARK Bogner yes Dr Singh yes Miss blinger yes Mr Mana yes Miss pulin yes Mr belan yes okay thank you everyone thank you Lyn second public expression I don't think you have anyone uh moving on there are no matters to discuss under District facilities and legislative matters Committee of the whole are there any matters to discuss under
075Committee of the whole yeah again I'm just going I'm going to say that uh you know I I really think our job here is to vote on things not to abstain and I think that this Board needs to entertain a policy on when it is proper to abstain from something in my opinion should only be abstaining if you have a period interest a financial interest uh um in the vote um so I've been on other boards where we had a written policy on what qualifies for an exstension or Rec recusal and I again I'm going to submit to this board they can do with it as they please I actually looked to see what the nisba guidance was in terms of abstaining recently and according to nisba uh there was a little clip by um
076I forget who the head lawyer is there Jay Rana thank you um what he said was that if there's a conflict of interest is one reason to abstain and the other reason to abstain is if you feel like you have lack of information to make a vote at that time at the table so those were the two reasons that were proposed by nisba that would allow for exstension and and I just wanted to to add that information to this discussion yeah do we need to make a motion if we need to have a policy about sension is that the next step or do we not even need what is well I I would believe that it's part of our adopted as part of our board policy that would be part of the bylaws right so
077I'm saying should do we need a motion to further consider that well I'm going to write that or are you going to write something up and then yeah like we did with the second public expression okay first reading second reading all those things um and I I appreciate uh what you said um but you know I think if I asked every board member if they could have they knew every single thing that was on this agenda tonight every number that was presented to them and every sentence of every policy they could not recite what that policy or what those numbers were at some point you're not going to know every single thing that comes across our desk you leave it to the experts that we hire to give us guidance and at the end of
078the day we vote on it um again and and know I'm gonna say it again I think it sends a bad message to the constituents that are up here to do one thing and one thing only vote and we're abstaining from what I think are an important matters Dr lman can I comment about my extension is that appropriate sure um is it appropriate it is is that well I listen I didn't want to belabor this thing I was gonna come up with a policy I've already spoken way too many times and usually you know if you're gonna abstain you know you don't take part in the discussions on on a topic but you like I said I'm not here to you know beat this horse yet I have I have a 30 Second Blur up
079to you yeah no I just want to uh State what I've said before when we have these elections you know these people are longterm serving members of the Bose's board I feel is a courtesy to the board you know they're an elected official that they should come and speak to us and that they are more than just a letter and that's my personal Viewpoint so if they don't have the consideration to come and speak to the people who be voting for them uh just like we do when we run for office here when we have meet the candidates tonight then I feel that I can't vote Yes or No was that shared with them I'm I'm just being devil's advocate well was that shared with them or is this something you just you think should
080happen that way I've always said that through the years if I don't you know if they don't but do they know that I don't know my question uh I don't know um I would that that was my question yeah I would think okay if they represent the bo District they should that's my personal View and if I abstain I'm not discussing why I voted I was just commenting Mr Man I I understand where you're coming from and I agree with putting up a policy I just think it has to have some sort of when you write it up to think of uh conflict of interest and um financials like you did mention that that's that that would be the only two reasons I think in terms of abstaining that's all 100% that's all I agree
081it has to be you know a very specific reason spelled out so we all agree and and like I did with the uh uh when we sent the policy around for the second public expression several commented we came to a you know an agreement on what it should say you know I don't want it's not my policy it's just I mean it has to be our policy if we want to do it no I I and that was my comment I support what you're saying I just I think there's has to be you know some some stipulations in it that's all and just if we if the will of the board is to do it you know everyone here has an opinion how how to get it done we can we can get it done
082right but just to the two points that you just mentioned for member bcal Balia when you recuse because of those two issues that's when you give the reason why at the time of recusal oh I know that right that's what I'm saying because that can probably specify those two things in that cor right okay are there any other concerns next uh meeting is a special board meeting and budget hearing on May 9th with with the PTSA Council vot candidate night that will follow the annual District vote will be held on May 21st at North High School gymnasium from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and the next regular board meeting is on May 28th but we'll be meeting on April 24th is there a motion to adjourn the regular board meeting blinger Mr buan all in
083favor motion carries [Music] unanimously thank you