March 8, 2022 - Board of Education Meeting

001[Music] may i please have a motion to return regular board meetings a public session thank you dr singh you have a second please mcclary thank you very much all in favor thank you opposed or abstentions motion carries unanimously call the regular board meeting to order all board members are present except for mrs beaker vice president van slice would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic which stands one nation of the god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] please be advised that in the event of a fire emergency an evacuation should be necessary an alarm will sound please note all marked emergency exits and evacuate well away from the building this time we

002request that everyone turn their cell phones into love and other electronic devices to silent before we proceed with our meeting tonight yesterday our district lost two of our students as a school board we offer our condolences to the families of williams williamsville south seniors lauren and luke we send our love to their parents family members friends classmates and our staff in this time of grief there is comfort in the support of those who love and care for you we are one district one community every child belongs to all of us and we belong to one another let us join together and send love and compassion to those grieving tonight as we honor luke and lauren in a moment of silent reflection thank you is there a moment to a motion please to approve the agenda

003as presented thank you um forgetting i'm forgetting names i'm sorry i'm just emotional tonight um thank you vice president van sais and miss kasmir bogner thank you um any discussion on that motion all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously okay dr brown holly turn it over to you please for board recognition thank you board president leatherboro so tonight as many of you entered the boardroom you are greeted by the music of mrs keefer's fourth grade strings which features students from forest maple east and maple west march is music in our schools month as well as women's history month and i want to thank them for their incredible performance tonight great job let's all give them a round of applause [Applause] absolutely loved we will rock you for sure also tonight we continue our school

004spotlight highlighting the great work that goes on within our school buildings this month our school spotlight focuses on forest elementary school and their brand new book vending machine i'd now like to welcome principal keith wing to share more about how this awesome addition to this building is helping build lifelong learners and readers principal wing thank you dr brown hall thank you board of education for allowing us to uh showcase some of the things going on at forest elementary um in partnership with our incredible pta we've been able to purchase and supply a book vending machine and you'll get to see in a moment through a video that mr morales and mr filipowski put together what that looks like but it's a way where we can acknowledge and recognize and reward students for their effort behavior

005and citizenship while also promoting literacy at the same time as educators you know sometimes we might struggle with how to recognize kids as a sticker is it a piece of candy but this is uh the best way we could find to do is through a um a book and something you to keep you get to keep it forever and promote literacy at the same time so thank you [Music] we had seen that some other schools had gotten book vending machines across the country and we thought what a great idea to acknowledge the hard work and great character that our students show by rewarding them with books when a student earns a coin they come up to the machine they put in the coin and they can pick any book they want every single one of

006our students is getting a coin for participating in our fundraising it's just a really great thing to instill a love and passion for learning and this machine really does that it displays the books it really highlights the books and makes the students want to get the book in their hand and flip through the pages and enjoy the book and that's what really learning is all about that's amazing [Applause] to have something so unique in our school especially something that not only can the kids enjoy at school but it's something they can bring home and that lasts it's not just something that has that immediate gratification and then it's done it's something that they can keep and remember where they got it from oh my gosh i think it's so wonderful that we can reward our

007students in a way that's actually beneficial to really instill that love of reading and that passion i would especially like to thank our forest families our four students and specifically our forest pta because they're the ones who have always been so supportive of our students and ideas we have for the betterment of all of our kids everything we do here in this entire building is about kids and so this is one more way we can bring excitement to their day [Music] thank you very much boring i absolutely love that thank you very much i'll turn it back over to you president leatherboro thank you are there any board acknowledgements mr littman yes i'd like to take a moment to recognize coach ed greenway mr greenway is a sixth grade uh teacher at high middle and

008he taught my children he's also the women's released high school boston lacrosse coach from for many years i'm used to being down there but he was honored recently and was awarded the inaugural john fowler memorial award which is funded by the buffalo bandits our professional lacrosse team it was given to coach greenway for his contributions in to amateur lacrosse by being having a positive impact on all student athletes by treating all opponents and all uh parts of the game with honor and respect and inspiring athletes to do their best as i was adding my own personal commentary on knowing my knowing him through the years and his work with our students he exhibits all of those things he's a you know respectful honorable and inspires our young people like most um all of our teachers

009and ways we do shout out to uh coach greenway absolutely thank you dr lipman are there any other acknowledgements um vice president van sais i would just like to acknowledge all of the high school musicals that are actually moving forward so south had already had theirs east just had theirs this past weekend and north will be having theirs this weekend i'd still like to acknowledge it ahead of time because we won't be meeting again for another month just the immense time and tremendous effort that both our staff and students put in and the incredible talent that we see across all three high schools is just incredible both with the musical production that we're seeing and also the actors and actresses that we're seeing it's incredible so we just thank them for everything that they've provided

010the entertainment they've given us it's outstanding thank you very much um we're moving on to public expression unless there's any other board acknowledgements and we only have one individual signed up for public expression tonight and that is one of our school administrators so i will not need you to read the public expression statement and if you'd like to invite our friend up to the board you're welcome to do so it's full spillage hey how you doing actually i'm here today as the windsville administrative association president as well as the um dodge elementary principal dr brown hall the district negotiation team consists of dr mckenna dr bailin miss cooper and as well as the board of ed on behalf of the williams administrators association we thank you for an expedited and fair negotiation process negotiations could

011be very difficult however our process was thorough professional and transparent we greatly appreciate everyone's attention and focus in keeping our district moving ahead we additionally look forward to the work that does lie ahead which is extremely important thank you for everyone's amazing work that has focused on students becoming the absolute best version of themself and again thank you again uh dr brown hall uh for getting this done very quickly thank you so much sir thank you principal nation thank you principals and we will be voting on that [Applause] all right we have our consent agenda may i please have a motion to approve the consent agenda items six through eight please they include personnel business items special needs and student activities thank you dr littman thank you mrs is there any discussion all right i

012have a question are there any other questions from the board i have a question about summer school um dr roundhouse since the consent agenda for personnel includes administrators for summer school um and i know we did some of that approval at the february meeting when could parents expect to hear about the summer school offerings and receive information on summer school registration right a good part and a good portion of the summer school offerings and information will be available in may but we want to um aware and alert everyone that even after april recess that schools will be having conversations with parents about what summer school will look like and what students may need to attend summer school and so in may and leading into june we'll have more information about the programs that are being

013offered and the opportunities for students to be accelerated in some of the summer programming also okay thank you follow-up question so miss poland followed by dr lipman do we have the dates on the calendar for summer school so parents who might be wanting to think about that can have that as part of their plan we the dates aren't on the calendar but we do have the dates and we'll be sending out the information on that the secured dates for summer school we we've done that already and now that you've approved the elementary um and middle school administrators for summer school you did the high school ones last month they're able to begin the planning um for summer school but we do have the dates secured uh dr bellin uh dr skanzuzo they do a lot

014of work with that and along with the staffing from um dr mckenna in the hr department okay and then one other follow-up question about summer school and they have one other uh comment so i don't recall their a request for assistant principals in the past for summer school so could you tell us about the justification for that absolutely so our summer school our summer school programs have grown and i i do know that in the past there used to be a separate elementary summer school and a separate middle school summer school and we've combined them and the job is really a huge job the magnitude of it and so having additional support in the form of an assistant principal for summer school we felt would be necessary this year i had the pleasure of seeing

015the summer school programs last year when i first arrived and i can attest to the magnitude of the programs thank you any other questions from the consent agenda yeah mine's uh uh in number seven a business part of it a bid and you know it relates to the south high school gym door replacement um you know as a state employee we are required to have you know multiple bids to work with uh and i know that we sent out there were four bid notices sent it was one bid received uh for the doors at south uh gym i guess the question is um you know i have complete faith in you through the years but could you just clarify what you know why that bid is a reasonable bid to accept versus re-bidding it to

016see if anybody else has a view on it i can say that one of the reasons that you want to accept it is because of the lead times for those doors so uh everything with um clover the lead times are much longer than normal and and that was really why the reason this is a repair reserve item that is one of the reasons why we up the repair reserve meeting to january when normally it actually is in this meeting tonight so that is one thing and when we do that type of bid we also do a cost analysis to make sure it is reasonable yes but we're excessive and over our budget i would not be bringing that forward yeah that would have been my question is it within the range of what we should

017be expecting and um do we have the resources allocated thank you thank you thank you for your question and assistant superintendent matowski thank you very much for that answer and then one final comment before we vote i just want to acknowledge the to the community that we are receiving a donation from the buffalo bills they're offering a donation to the south football program for one thousand dollars we'll be accepting that in a moment right any other points of discussion on the consent agenda all right seeing none all in favor on consent agenda items six seven and eight thank you opposed to abstentions motion carries unanimously thank you the board of education extends best wishes and gratitude to the following retirees for their service the district and i want to preface this by saying that the

018deadline was march 1st so i have quite a list to read so i will read through these names and their school that they're affiliated with and their years of service and i need uh keep my eyes straight okay so we have mary bonnet at mill middle school for 30 years of service john burns at north high school 29 years of service susan buttonshoen heim elementary school 37 years of service holly cannon casey middle school 29 years deborah carlin country parkway 17 years of service jill dolan transit middle school 32 years of service laura ferguson dodge elementary 32 years of service diana grande casey middle school 33 years of service thomas harsh east high school 27 years beverly heinen heim elementary school 29 years of service patricia johnston maple east elementary 21 years of service andrea

019lavere mill middle school 19 years of service rachel lucas transit middle school 29 years of service maureen mcgloin heim elementary 35 years of service catherine meyer maple west 21 years of service patrick murray transit middle school 32 years of service marie nagowski mill middle school 31 years of service paul nagowski east high school 28 years of service basic quinlan mill middle school 30 years of service nancy reed's heim elementary 37 years of service karen reichert mill middle school 32 years of service karen ryan mill middle school 15 years of service samuel skodudo transit middle school 29 years of service mary scalzi casey middle school 29 years of service randall schreiber transit middle school 30 years of service sally trippy heim elementary school 33 years of service sharon glass south high school 25 years of service

020sharon hall heim elementary 28 years of service joseph lang from facilities 18 years of service betsy buttneck north high school 21 years of service and nurse rosa wuertle high middle school 29 years of service let's give a congratulations [Applause] all right at this time is there a motion please to approve the tenure recommendation as presented we are being asked to present tenure to miss danielle sunshine may i have a motion thank you vice president van zeist and board member miss poland any discussion on this being none all in favor opposed or abstentions motion carries unanimously thank you very much and we want to offer congratulations to daniel sunshine from maple east elementary on your tenure and you are welcome to come up and speak at the podium hi i'm danielle sunshine nice to meet all

021of you nice to see you again dr brown hall i just wanted to say thank you very much for this opportunity and it's been wonderful working in williamsville i went to all the williamsville schools so i feel like my career has come full circle so there's no place i'd rather be so thank you so much very welcome and we will be having a reception in june for all of those who are approved for tenure throughout the school year all right we're moving on to item 10 which is the approval of our minutes through a motion please to approve the february 8th board meeting minutes i think you're going to be our emotion girl tonight thank you thank you vice president fan sizes for a second miss casmerick bogner thank you any corrections or additions to

022the to the minutes tonight seeing none all in favor all hands up equals motion carries unanimously thank you very much we've reordered our agenda tonight so that we could um be you know try and get some more input on the budget at our last couple um hearings we did not have anyone come speak so during agenda planning we deliberately reordered the agenda to make sure we move these items up we're going to take care of a few finance items first and then we'll have our budget development discussion and our forum so looking at items 11 a b c and d may i please have a motion to resolve and approve property sorry nothing there the budget transfer is in 11a sorry about that property tax settlement 11b the erie 1 boces installment purchase agreement for

023phone equipment in 11c and the sale and disposal of district property in 11d thank you miss poland is there a second please okay dr littman i appreciate that is there any discussion on any of these items seeing none all in favor opposed or abstentions motion carries unanimously thank you that's right we will now move on to our budget development presentation so doctor our superintendent brown hall rather i turn it over to you and mr matursky absolutely so i'll ask uh our chief financial officer assistant superintendent tom maturski to give our williamson essential school district 2223 budget development presentation thank you dr brown hall uh so today we're going to um provide a the additional information on um where we are in the budget development process we have a preliminary budget to present tonight and that

024means it's completely balanced to what we would require as far as presenting to the community so to begin with um what i'd like to do is just to show this uh the the information which is our program increases this is the same document that you have seen over the last month in february there actually have not been any changes to it so the key items here show an increase of about 7.6 million dollars a working budget in this situation of 212 623 086 and that represents a 3.71 increase and as i have mentioned um in in the past meetings we show a second look what would it look like the next year and these are estimates based upon a lot of the history we have and again it just gives you an idea what's a

025forward for the next year and with some percentage increases being 3.48 so what's new uh what we have adjusted in this budget presentation is adding um two assistant principles one for transit uh middle and one for mill middle and so these are ten month positions and so um they're program support that's what the coding is and so that would be at a hundred and sixty thousand dollars so again just showing the small percentage increase what it would be that's uh the dollar amount that would be added to the budget that is different from what you have seen uh back in february the next uh slide that's important here is to show you what our reductions are and as you know you accepted some retirements and so this is showing a retirement or a budget adjustment

026uh decrease of 255 000 so when we look at everything together it results in an adjusted increase of 7 million 507 119 dollars and that creates a budget that we're presented tonight of 212 million 528 086 dollars and that's an increase of 3.66 percent so on the revenue side we have to balance our budget and and that is um what we have done again the revenues are pretty much the same as what you saw in february um the the information that was necessary to balance the budget here is that we were able to increase our sales tax by about six hundred thousand dollars we also had a slight increase in the medicaid amounts that we were seeing based upon collections that we've received through this point in the current school year and then you can

027see a couple very minor increases um down below in the other revenue categories to balance this out so the key item here as i mentioned in the past is that um if you look in the state aid piece that three million thirty six thousand one hundred sixty two dollars that we have in the current year budget which was federal aid that is no longer unnecessary in the uh next year's budget of 2223 because of the larger increase we get in state aid so that is a good thing and you'll see let me highlight that as we go to the next slides so again i'm just showing you the uh the totals here uh 212 million five hundred twenty eight thousand eighty six dollars no budget deficit it's a balanced budget with the revenue side i

028just um also discussed the tax levy increase three million four hundred ten thousand uh two point five five percent under the tax cap a budget increase is seven million five oh seven one nineteen three point six six percent um and again not to uh say this too much but it's important we are not relying on federal covet assistance aid for our general fund budget next year uh every year at this time we also want to present a look at what the um the tax rates would be and so this is looking at it from the perspective of our community and really there are three different areas here there's the tax credit which really is for more recent home owned buyers who get it on their income tax return that would be an increase of 45

029if you have basic star um that would be an increase of 37.55 and uh enhance would be 26.81 and again all these are applicable to a home assessed at a hundred fifty thousand dollar level um key factors here just so you understand what went into these calculations is that uh it was using last year's assessed values multiplied by what the new york state department of finance gave us as a growth factor that was used in our tax cap calculation the reality is that's last year we always usually receive more than that so it's very likely that all of these rates and these increases will go down not up and again we're using the same equalization rates from last year also so the positives on this budget no program cuts at all and actually we have

030a support increase we have no future budget shortfalls at this amount and what that is representing again is that we have not we're not using federal monies anymore to support the general fund budget we've got very good growth in two major tax revenue areas the payment in lieu of taxes and sales tax and we've got the two new support positions and uh again we're under the tax cap the only negative is it's not necessarily for next year but it might be for the years to come and that is will new york state be able to sustain the high foundation aid increases uh so with that the budget development process that we have um is really showing that we're doing the presentation tonight here we have a budget um email out there budget feedback at williamsville

031k-12 and before this meeting i double-checked and we do not have any um any emails at this point that have not been addressed um and again revenue continuation and support uh if we need to do any adjustments we will but at this point we have a sound balanced budget and so the next major meeting would be the budget work session on the 22nd and then that would follow with the adoption of this budget by the board and then of course the community bill thank you very much mr matursky does anyone from the board of any questions or comments i know this is our we've gone through this several times this is the first um month though that we heard of the proposed additions to the budget so thank you for sharing that yep does anyone

032have any questions or comments regarding any of that i'll start how about i start on the end i'll work my way down so we'll start with doc well yeah i'm always glad to start off we have two points uh one is i've done through the years is always to thank you and thank everyone for all the work that takes place to put this budget together but i i say the same thing through the years that the challenging part of all this budgeting is trying to balance the needs of the students with the balanced needs of the taxpayers and to make sure that we do everything not only with students but the taxpayer in mind and i think historically we've done pretty well with that uh one just one comment on this slide um my understanding

033is that says if your house is assessed at 150 000 is that correct correct okay and since uh the most recent houses in my neighborhood have sold for 100 000 over list i think maybe we should make that a more realistic figure [Music] because to me 150 000 assessed value isn't really much anymore so something to think about but everything else per usual is exceptional and you know we all appreciate that okay thank you dr lippmann uh miss poland i i just wanted to say i am glad that our budget allows us to have the enhanced support at mill and transit i think that's something that both of those schools have wanted and so thank you for finding that okay miss kathmariner have anything to share on my right anything from any of my board

034members on my right to share on the budget any questions or comments all right thank you and i will echo what you said miss poland about the um aps at transit in middle i've been on the board for six years and i can say for at least for all of that time i've heard for requests for transit specifically but i know that the enrollment at mail is is is also very high and you know especially when you compare it to high middle for example you know they're just different sized schools and so to be asked to do the same work with the same number of people but yet so many students it's we need to make it more equitable looking at the administrator to student ratio absolutely thank you that's the right wording okay um

035i appreciate this very much and thank you mr matursky for everything that you shared so with that we are going to be recessing into our budget work session and we'll hold our forum and then we'll come back and conclude with the remainder of the agenda so may i please have a motion to recess our regular board meeting so that we we may hold a budget work session at this time thank you dr singh and miss kasmir bogner is there any discussion seeing none all in favor okay motion carries unanimously so we have recessed and now we are we are in our budget work session so i called the budget work session to order all board members are present except for mrs beaker and at this time the board of education welcomes anyone in attendance who

036wishes to speak about the budget to the podium at this time if anyone speaks please give your name and your relationship to the district go right out the door i was just wondering what did i say okay um i can't see behind the po the pillar is there anyone there no right i was just i was just checking all right thank you very much um i think work work got done so may i have a motion to adjourn the budget work session and return to the regular board meeting thank you vice president van sayers and board member miss poland any discussion on that well in favor thank you i see no abstentions or no's so motion carries unanimously and we are now back at our regular board meeting all right let's go to our president's

037report i know our agenda's a little out of order tonight but we did that on purpose to you know be more accommodating to our community so taking a look at some of our events we do have a community forum scheduled for march 22nd it will be after the budget work session uh that begins at seven so the approximate start time of our community forum is going to be 8 pm so board members i need to get your input on the format for that this has been quite a year right with with our covet restrictions different every single month we really haven't known what to expect from one meeting to the next so i just need to know if you would like um the format to be um an in-person community forum similar to what we

038did in october where we can have back-and-forth conversations we're able to look each other in the eye and just really have more of a flow to our conversation or if you would prefer to have a hybrid format where we do allow people to call in um just know that that changes the the style of it because we can't have back and forth in the same way it just doesn't work and we lose some of the humanity because we don't have you know not everyone's camera's always on and um it's just a different experience so it's really up to whatever your preferences as a board so i'm here to listen to your feedback this is merrick bogner yes although i personally prefer the in-person option for the reasons that you stated because you can have that

039eye contact and the back and forth flow i would prefer the hybrid mainly because i think we may have greater participation and especially because it's in the evening those people with children who may have needs for child care may be able to come on for online and participate that way so for those reasons i would like to see us do hybrid and not having anything to do with covid and i would honestly when we're able to when we hold it in the boardroom where we could offer the hybrid i would like to see us do that going forward obviously when we're in another school it would be more difficult to do it that way and we may have to just have in person but when we're in the board room we have the technology available

040it seems we might as well utilize it so that we can be more inclusive our our community okay thank you very much for your feedback does anyone else wish to give feedback miss bullet i would just echo that you know what i um i definitely you know enjoy the personal back and forth but just if our goal is really to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible taking down some of the barriers that having an in-person event puts up for families i would like us to have that as an option if people shoot if people talk to us by not participating that way that will help us make those decisions going forward but i think i think it's worth a try okay i appreciate that feedback is anyone else from the

041board wish to give input vice president van says [Music] i am really for the in person because we've already done it that way um this past time i was originally thinking hybrid but we already held an in-person forum so then i was thinking we should continue on with in person this is my request i'm open to doing hybrid but i think we need to follow the same format then which is not the interaction so if a participant would like to speak we would have their names ahead of time they have to register ahead of time to let us know so we have the mediators on our side ready to go they're allowed to answer or ask one question their microphone is then turned off board members can respond we move on so that is the

042way we've done our hybrid in the past and we need to have specific guidelines so if we have that hybrid for those that aren't in person we would have to follow i would suggest we follow the exact same format which is even asking for cameras on when they speak to us asking the question and then we are able to respond but there's not the back and forth okay i appreciate that feedback as well anyone else from the board wish to weigh in i want to make sure i get everyone's input that would like to give it this is my comment i agree with what everybody has already stated uh but the bottom line goal really should be maximizing participation in a venue that will help people who can come in person and for people who

043have you know responsibilities and care about those responsibilities and being involved in a district so that's like anything we're trying to do open it up so that we do have that participation so just so i understand what you're saying because you said you agreed with everybody but do are you choosing hybrid then or in person is hybrid with guidelines no but i mean to me it's people it's like when we teach a hybrid means that you have some people here and some people so both modes would be up would be an option yeah we we would still definitely invite people to come in person we will be here we we definitely would invite people from the community to come out and talk to us because we i know i appreciate the face-to-face and the interaction

044um but we would then still include an option for individuals who have other circumstances which i get it if you're a parent and your children are at home most likely you're at home with your children so i i totally respect that okay all right so it sounds like we have i made a decision okay mr bescalia sorry it's just popped in my head um my only concern with the hybrid would be i understand i mean i young kids of my own does it deter people from wanting to come in then oh i can just sit at home and ask my question i did just throwing it out there for thinking purposes that would be my only worry yes he has an exponent it's interesting right because like you're a social studies teacher and so thinking

045about civic responsibility yeah i'm not saying that would happen but that would be a concern that just popped in my head right okay and to that point ms kasmir bognar um i thought about that too and actually if we format it the way vice president van sice says someone that's interested in having more of a and correct me if i'm wrong but i think what you were saying is we could have more of a back and forth if people were in person but the people that choose to be virtual it would just be ask a question and get a response so there's some incentive to come in person yet if someone is unable to come in person it gives them the choice of having the virtual option so i think that's my two cents on

046that anybody else all right so this doesn't require a vote of the board because we're not we're not using any additional funding or anything like that if anyone from the board wants us on the record and would like to make a motion they can it's not necessary right so we seem good with that um board retreat we have a board retreat scheduled for march 30th just want to remind everyone of that we set aside six to eight thirty and we have linda rui one of our instructional specialists who has agreed to come and facilitate and provide some training on dei shifts that are happening in the district and we will have some remaining time left over that we will be able to use to discuss our ideas for the future work of our board so

047we can talk a little bit about about board goals and board leadership and steps for moving forward i think that time is going to go pretty quick you know that 6 to 8 30 time um board member beaker has off also offered to do a little um like get to know you activity because that was one of the requests from a previous board meeting just not not get to know you it's not like we don't know each other but just to continue to build on our relationships because relationships are the foundation for all good educational decisions okay so i just want to bring that attention to you and is there anyone at this point who's unable to share i know once upon a time we cleared that date with every with everyone but are we

048all able to attend i guess was what i meant to say to wednesday march 30th is a wednesday i'm good okay all right thank you so much um moving on we have an after school with staff um our conversations with the board of education is scheduled for uh wednesday april 6 and then again on thursday may 5th so just be looking ahead to those um dates and i know mrs carey has done a nice job of of sending out reminders trying to see who's available to attend if you can't get there right at 3 please don't worry about it if you have to leave early please don't worry about that i think it's just a gesture that we're making yourself available for staff that wish to come and speak with us all right um past

049events there are some past events that are listed on in board docs does anyone wish to share about one of the past events included on the agenda there are a few different things that have taken place recently a harris speech seminar and an in-service that was done through the university of buffalo on critical race theory board member earth i'm sorry i'm losing my train of thought tonight what's your name lady vice president fan size so i know that we listed um the people that attended the general education session for harris beach i attended the special education section i think i was the only one that attended the special education we did receive full powerpoint presentations and notes on it i didn't share that out if you don't because i didn't want to bombard everyone but

050if you are interested i'm willing to share the presentation and the notes for the special education presentation from harris speech yeah i'd be interested in that can you can you attach that through email absolutely that would be great thank you so much we can do the same with the general ed right yeah i appreciate that it's um we do have school visits this week on thursday march 10th we are visiting haim elementary and high middle school currently registered to attend is myself miss poulin for heim elementary miss kasmir bogner and dr littman and i believe miss speaker said she was coming to haim elementary but i don't want to speak for her is there any changes to this okay thank you going on to the erie county association of school boards we do have a

051prospective school board member workshop which is listed in board docs the information has been shared out at a previous board meeting if you are interested in attending you can register through our district clerk or through miss summers at ecasb does anyone have anything else to share from erie county association of school boards okay thank you moving on to new york state school board association we did have a lobby day recently and dr mccleary and myself met with staff from senator ratz's office and assemblywoman mcmahon's office this took place over zoom and we were able to share our legislative issues that impact our students and our district finances i want to thank superintendent brown hall and mr matursky for providing us with that information so we had specific talking points i just want to share when

052we were talk when i was speaking to both of their staff members about um the difference in using the census data from 2000 to now i was able to pull up our our school district data just related to our number of english language learners that is the talking point just to show what a difference we are we we have right now as a community and then i spoke a little bit about our difference in um our students who receive free and reduced lunch and also the difficulty to track that information now that we're offering um free lunches so of course it's a good thing to be able to offer all of our students a meal it hurts us financially when we're not able to track that data and then submit it for reimbursement so i

053just wanted to share with the board that all of that was shared and um i know with with the aids for both offices they were very interested in those numbers specifically not realizing how much our community has changed and one of the aids was like why are we using 2000 data and it's like good question let's fix that so i think it was good to have specific examples of like you know we're always taught to have an ask for advocacy but then when you have a specific example of how this impacts you and you tell a story that creates a little aha moment for someone it becomes more real and i could see like once i did that they were sort of taking it a little more seriously and i want to thank you superintendent

054brownell because i know you also met with both offices um and shared we had this we had similar messaging so we you know consistency all right thank you for that and thank you um very much dr mcclary for joining me on that did you want to answer that just real absolutely just real quick i think it was very productive and yes there were the aides rather than the two um the senator and the assemblywoman but they had other things i will say i thought they took a lot of notes and really were quite interested in and did ask a number of detailed questions so it was very worthwhile and i hope that we continue um keeping in contact with our representatives i agree and i think it was really great that there were two of

055us from williamsville during those advocacy sessions so thank you for attending with me dr woodman has a question okay dr lipman no you brought up uh some idea that uh always is of interest to me which is uh school nutrition and school lunch programs you know this year it's been federally funded and all of our students have the ability to have a free lunch but do we know going forward into the next calendar or next academic year what the status is on do we know if that federal program has been extended is that the question yeah yeah is that that's my understanding i don't remember it's my understanding that it has i'll ask assistant superintendent matowski if he's heard anything different uh i'm not sure it has at this point um dr brown hall i

056can verify that but um i i think it's been talked about yeah i'm not sure there's been an actual um action action on it okay i will follow up thank you thank you thank you that's a good question the school board's role and curriculum adoption webinar um took place on february 10th um in attendance we're miss bogner miss pulin vice president van slice and dr singh does anyone from the board wish to speak on that event thank you for the reports that were submitted yes ma'am i just wanted to briefly state that one of the things that they talked about were the state learning standards and how state learning standards are developed with stakeholder involvement which includes parents and that these are the standards that must be incorporated into the district curriculum and then here

057at the district level we have a curriculum council which dr balen chairs and does consist of principals teachers parents from all levels as well as high school students and they review the curriculum improvement proposals that are developed by teachers in partnership with the instructional specialist and then the proposals are discussed and voted on the council are reviewed by the superintendent and then brought to the board for approval each december so we do have a very wonderful process already in place here in the district in terms of how we do the curriculum review so i just wanted to bring that forward thanks thank you very much for that does anyone have anything else to report under new york state school board association all right thank you we're going to move on to items d and e

058and i'm going to ask our district clerk lynn carey to share information on board candidate packets and our annual vote you president leatherbarrel uh just real brief candidate packets have been available on our website and also on board docs um i do like to meet briefly with potential candidates to just go over any questions they may have there's as president leather merrill mentioned a prospective board member workshop the erie county association of school boards on march 26th and absentee ballot application information is also in board docs and on our website and the annual vote is may 17th and it's at uh north high school in the gymnasium from seven to nine pm thank you very much mf this is our call for nominations for erie one bow seats at the annual erie one boces meeting

059they will be reviewing the nominations for the april elections for three board member seats which carry a three-year term section 1950 subdivision two of the new york state education law provides that nominations of candidates shall be made by board resolution by component districts at least 30 days before the date designated for voting unlike the actual vote there are no limitations to how many people can be nominated from each member's district or how many of those candidates come from within a given school district however when it comes to the decision only one individual can be voted on to the board of education from any given school district candidates should be qualified to serve on the board of education from within the district that they live presently we have four candidates two candidates who are seeking re-election

060and two from the williamsville school district that have come forward within the last month requesting the board nominate them we have been provided with their letters for review and i believe all of their information is in board docs so at this time i asked my fellow board mates would someone like to make a motion to nominate a candidate for the erie one boces board if so please do so now all right uh vice president van says i would like to nominate eric borenstein located in the williamsville central school district as a candidate for the election to be held on april 19 2022 to serve as a trustee for the board of cooperative educational services first supervisory district of erie county and a term beginning july 1st 2022 through july 30th 2025. thank you so eric

061borenstein has been nominated is there a second please a second oh okay miss pulling thank you all right and um just so i understand the process district clerk we vote on each one individually correct okay thank you so is there any discussion on this nominee seeing none all in favor opposed or abstentions eric borenstein was nominated in that motion carried unanimously are there any other nominees at this time dr mcclary [Music] thank you um i would like to nominate mark mecca located in the williamsville central school district as a candidate for the election to be held on april 19 2022 to serve as a trustee for the board of cooperative educational services first supervisory district of erie county in a term beginning july 1st 2022 through june 30th 2025. thank you so dr mcclary has

062nominated mark mecha is there a second please dr littman thank you is there any discussion on this nominee seeing none all in favor opposed or abstentions motion carries unanimously there are any other nominees at this time right seeing none the call for nominations closes we will now move on to item g erie one boces will present its tentative administrative capital and program budgets for 2022-2023 to the members of the boards of education of the 19 component school districts for their review all 19 component school districts are required to vote on the erie one boces budget and the erie one boces board candidates on the third tuesday in april which is april 19th we will be revisiting this information in april all right we are now on item 14 and superintendent brown hall i'm going to

063turn it over to you for your community updates all right thank you very much president olaboro um again this month we do have a little bit of a longer community update but all important information for our board and our community so first the mass mandate as you all know governor hoco issued a reversal or a lifting of the mass mandate effective mark second and the masking is now optional in all of our school and district buildings and individuals that choose to wear a mask may do so and we are supportive of every decision made by students or families in our district however there is a piece that's very important in accordance with new york state guidance if we have an individual that tests positive for covet 19 and returns to school under the reduced isolation

064guidelines so they've been at home isolated for five days total of five days when they return to school on day six they must wear a mask on day six to ten so that is what dr bassett and the governor sent out on march 1st and we have to adhere to that so anyone who tests positive once they return to school on day six they must wear a mask can i ask a question about that so this is the guidance that comes from new york state but my question as a former school teacher is who is responsible for tracking that well our schools still get the information from the parents and we still track it you'll see later we're still responsible also for reporting positive cases and we're still responsible for notifying parents when there is

065a case in the classroom so i'm sorry this looks a little squished on here and the bottom is cut off however additional new york state department of health guidance for exposure and notification so any individual who's in the same room or school setting i.e the bus or classroom as a colvin 19 positive individual is considered exposed and will be notified so there was a definition of exposed and potentially exposed we expanded the potentially exposed to include the entire classroom because now that we're in a mask optional environment the physical distancing requirement is actually um a greater distance of when we must notify so if we have a positive individual in the bus or the classroom everyone will be considered exposed and we will be notifying so regardless of vaccination status the new york state department

066of health school guidance states individuals who are exposed to a covet 19 positive individual are not automatically excluded from school and should wear a mask and test as recommended so that's a strong should and as recommended so notification of exposure will now be communicated through wix and sent directly to parents guardians and staff members who are impacted so that's how we're utilizing our wit system also families that are impacted students they will receive a wix mail are you referring to the home test or the rtpcr test that's a good question best as required it's recommended on the second bullet yeah right and that test is recommended i'm gonna get to that because we we speak about the home test that we're sending and those are acceptable and we're gonna talk about how families can actually

067get them and keep them at home so we're going to be doing another distribution of two test kicks and we encourage families to have them on hand at home with that our district is no longer offering a test to stay program because students are not automatically excluded if they are exposed now so if an individual is exposed and i know i apologize for reading from the screen i want to make sure i get each and every piece correct it's so important if an individual is exposed to a positive covet 19 individual a covet 19 at home test kit will be provided to families and or staff members upon requests through wix so there will be a feature in wix once you are notified of a classroom exposure if you need additional test kicks sent home

068you'll be able to notify us through wix and we will send them home with the student and remember each test kit contains two called the 19 at home test i do want to say we want to be i'm very thankful to the governor and erie county for supplying the test for the tufts to stay program the governor we we get con constant shipments of at-home test kicks we have a considerable amount and the county has also provided kn 95 mass that we've distributed to the school buildings so that if families would like their child to have one or our staff members we can definitely provide them at the school building at home test kit distribution so we've distributed more than 12 000 at home test kicks prior to the mid winter recess we're going to

069finalize another test kit distribution a wix survey it was very successful the last time we did it we'll be doing that again a wix survey will be available from march 14th to the 18th to request test kicks be sent home in backpacks so again if you already have a test kit at home that you haven't used we encourage you to please request another and we will send that home just so you have them at home and available so if your child is symptomatic you're able to do a test quickly you don't wait for another one to be sent home volunteering so this was a question that was asked at the ptsa council meeting we received several emails about it also and we are going to be changing our volunteering requirements so due to the low

070rate of transmission in our region we will no longer be requiring non-essential i'm sorry no longer restricting non-essential visitors to our buildings however we ask that you not volunteer or participate in events if you are experiencing signs and or symptoms of covid regardless of your vaccination status if you are symptomatic we ask that you not participate in any events or volunteer or if you've tested positive for covet 19 within the past 10 days or if you have a known exposure to a positive case regardless of vaccination status within the past 14 days when do school visits occur when you're invited by the principal or teacher for a specific purpose like volunteering in a classroom for an event being a guest reader or providing support as a cafeteria monitor if there's an evening or school day

071celebration such as an art show or a pta sponsored event so in the past we restricted it to only essential volunteers and we use that for the classroom or at dismissal but now we are expanding that for non-essential volunteering and we no longer have the restriction of the volunteers um being vaccinated so that restriction is lifted also and this is effective tomorrow march 9th and if you have any questions you can contact your building principles and building principles are able to send out communication in their weekly updates to their families too board of education elections i won't go over this i know uh president ledebarrel and our district clerk lynn carey they have gone over this but we'll include it in this presentation it'll be housed in board docs so if anyone has any questions

072they can refer to this about the board of education elections and we're going to find that information on our website community forum board members had a discussion about this we know it's march 22nd following the special board meeting and budget work session um individuals can attend the community forum in person um that was prior so i know you will make a final decision of that and we will that statement's still true they can attend in person they can't attend in person perfect um information was wix mail to families and staff and is available on the district website thank you thank you for that thank you sabres pork chicks now this was i thought this was so cute high middle school 6th graders created portraits of their favorite players and staff and featured by the sabers

073on kicks day all portraits are linked on the district's website look at the jeff skinner one it's so like identical right casey middlestack okay so this is very exciting kyle is up there yes i like greg so the virtual art show the virtual actual will be launched tomorrow we have more than 300 student pieces included in the digital exhibit and information on how to view the virtual art show will be shared with families through wix and will be available on the district website so it will be launched tomorrow at brown hall regarding the art show we know that um we've had to go virtual the past couple years due to covet is there plans to bring it back it's always in the past been a really wonderful event held at the buffalo um heritage museum

074right is that something that we're looking to to resume so i'm so glad you asked that question president leatherboro because what we want to understand with kovit is that there might be opportunities where hybrid is beneficial right so the virtual art show allows family members that reside all over the united states to actually view the virtual art show so looking into the future we want to look at a hybrid so we have it available virtually and also have it in person so that's something we can work towards for next year how about that that's awesome the whimsical education foundation the wall of fame nominations are being accepted nominations are due by april 15th the nomination applications are available on the uh district website and at wedf dot org they're offering 500 scholarships to one senior

075at each high school applications information are available on the district website and on the wedf.org so we have the wall of fame nominations and the scholarship information available and that's the community update thank you very much president leatherboro and board members yeah are there any questions i guess my my last question would be the scholarships provided from the education foundation yes we ensure that that information is linked to naviance so that okay um to access their scholarships simply just as simple as linking it yeah i really only other comment i have about that particular is that that isn't that date within spring break that their applications are due um you know i don't have spring break is it during spring break but it is you know that's a deadline and they have been advertising that

076for a number of months right right yep okay thank you for that any other questions or comments all right we're moving on to the student calendar item 14 b either last month we we reviewed it as in a draft form is there a motion to resolve to adopt and approve the 2022-2023 student calendar as presented thank you dr lipman is there a second please thank you dr singh is there any discussion on this seeing none all in favor opposed or abstentions was that i'm sorry with an opposed okay so we have and any abstentions no right so we have motion carries with one opposed that would be seven one zero right liaison reports you have any liaison reports please send mrs carey the list of meeting dates are in board docs there is a chart

077in there so you can check to make sure that it's up to date and accurate it's a it's a record of when we attend the meeting and also when we submit a report if you need any coverage please let your fellow board member know does anyone wish to speak about anything that's occurred at a recent liaison assignment all right thank you um i do not see any legislative matters unless anyone wishes to share one all right and now we're moving on to our student achievement outcomes presentation with dr brown hall i turn it over to you and dr baitland thank you very much so we know that one of the most important um roles that our leadership team our administrators our teachers and our board of education has is increasing the student outcomes in our

078district so this this presentation report is very very important and i want to thank dr baldwin for the amount of work and energy she put into this it's very detailed and i'm looking forward to the board to see the report so dr baldwin if you would please thank you very much good evening everyone thank you dr brown hall as dr braun hall said this is a very important presentation to all of us we have this year included many links for parents so you'll notice throughout the presentation in addition to the information on the slides i would draw attention to the various links that are there as well there's a whole host of information it can get pretty lengthy when we start to include things like graduation requirements how to obtain an advanced diploma but it's

079all important and we figured if we put the links in the presentation would be much easier for our parents to just click on the link and get some information that way um so if we could please uh bring up the slides thank you miss rattus it's going to be working so if i could ask you to forward for me that'd be wonderful thank you you can so we wanted to first start off and and really this is a continued conversation as this is an annual presentation that's made but we wanted to start off by establishing a number of principles when we're looking at assessments and data and for us really it's been most important that we know that multiple sources and looking at information that's both quantitative and qualitative is very important when we're looking

080at student performance and growth and achievement we also see assessment not as an event but rather a process so when we talk and we we talk at many intervals just being one large milestone along the way we do want to keep in mind that assessment really is ongoing and really the purpose of it is to gain as much information as we can to best meet the needs of our students so what we do throughout is really looking for checks for understanding that are aligned to the targets and standards the standards were mentioned earlier this evening and certainly baselines that's a word that we've also used quite a bit and what that does for us is help us to set targets meaningful targets for students and really target our instruction towards meeting those goals for every

081one of our learners each and every one of our students student learning than we know is also increased tremendously through giving meaningful feedback later in the presentation and we included some information on terminology because we know in our education world there's a lot of it so things like diagnostic informative assessments are included in the presentation and we've also included what that means and how we use them in the classroom what you'll notice too is we do use of course summative assessments and they do serve a role and and certainly you'll see some of the state information that we've included here but there's a lesser focus on summative assessments because by time you've gotten to a summative assessments the learning cycle for that school year has come to a close so what we do is also

082use that and as a jump start to the following year see what we can gain and we use every piece of information at our disposal again quantitative and qualitative um as much as we can to advance student learning so tonight you'll hear about several types of data the outcomes information and also a context for each and what we are also keeping in mind of course is what we can do to do anything in our power to maximize student achievement and learning in our district i must not be having great luck here but let's see there we go okay so beginning first with the three through eight assessments for new york state i just provided on the screen a frame from the new york state department of education with these statements directly taken from their website

083in this section it is called the utility and limitations of this year's data and i'll talk to you a little bit about why that is the case but in a recent press release commissioner betty rosa stated that this year this past year just four in 10 students took the test so the data does not reflect the majority of student learning she also commented that they are just one of multiple measures of student learning helping to shape individual learning plans so that students have the supports that they need and of course as we just heard this really reinforces our principles of multiple measures classroom and student level focus and support that advances student learning and their outcomes for all of our information it is to refresh our memory and we know that the testing and assessment

084landscape has been varied and certainly has been impacted tremendously by covid19 this past year there were many influences on the testing many of which are listed on the screen but as a result of our students school models for one we also have in place of course the parental right for our parents to determine if they wish for their children to take part in the assessment program as another and something that was unique during our covet time is students in remote settings who were exempted from our testing in new york state period through three through eight unless parents opted to have their children participate and in this case they had to come into the school building to do so there were no tests given in the home setting so just to provide a bit of a

085context there so as a result the state contrasted that this past year 40 percent of the students approximately were tested statewide and this is compared to in usual years of more than 80 percent in a typical year according to the department as a result the state itself did not release any statewide data of testing so if you were to go on to a number of the links in here it will take you right to the data.gov site you will not see any state level performance information for stated you will only see in this case district and school data and they do qualify that data by saying that this may not be representative of the school district's population and it's really primarily for the reasons on the screen so just to forward to looking at what

086our particular assessment participation look like here in the district we've provided two charts for you one on ela and one on math and we looked at both our wcsd as well as new york state participation numbers these are the only new york state numbers we have because outcome information was not available so on average the percentage of students tested across the district was 50 percent in grades three through eight ela and 47 percent in math if you're to average those together the highest being grade 3 ela you may recall and i did not put this on the chart but for science last year no performance test was given and as a result we only had about a 34 participation rate between grades four and eight um science so our lowest as you can see was

087in grade eight math and grade eight ela with eighteen percent and thirty percent respectively as you may recall we do not double test our students in grade eight students in these grade levels who are in advanced courses namely english nine or algebra one for example do not also take the grade ela and math test so that has been historical for quite some time but that is the reason why those um participation rates are also impacted so you may wonder just as a point of context how many students were in grade eight last year over 900 so that just gives you a bit of information to draw upon so on the next slide we thought it important again if you were to log right onto nysed.gov you would see this information portrayed a bit differently but

088on here you'll see all of the levels of proficiency again while they weren't available for the state we did just want to include them in the presentation here and have them as a reference point again anyone is welcome to go on the site you can actually build various reports and even look back to previous years but as a point of reference um from level two forward that's really the um levels you're aiming for level two uh being partially proficient so you're on your road on the road to getting there level three proficient and level four is more proficient so those are state level uh proficiency levels they are used and and you may have heard um things such as assad that is one of the large measures of district performance relative to state goals um

089the state has had to revisit a lot of this information this only being ver one small piece but a significant piece because they had actually applied for a waiver from the federal government and did not obtain it so they are doing a lot of work to redefine a lot of the measures and this is just one um one piece of that can i say one thing dr valen because i just want to make sure because a lot of people will want to go back and look and do comparative for previous years and i want to reference the third slide again where it said um this is not representative of the state student population and should not be compared to that of previous school years all right so it's important that we stress that i know

090people have a habit of doing that but it's important that you don't do that with this data and previous data and thank you so much for reinforcing that because that is a point and i will be repeating that throughout because that is one of the things and it's really a natural reaction when you see numbers is you want to go back and say well how does this look compared to last year or two years ago and you know did we grow or how how do we stand and you really cannot do that with these data and that's been a challenge really throughout the assessment system when you have changing conditions and we try to list a lot of those on the screen for all of our community to see you are really looking at conditions

091that change the nature of being able to make valid comparisons couple that with the additional nuances and challenges that cover 19 presented and the models and the remote component the comparisons cannot be made and the state education department does say that on their website so we do want to reinforce that as part of our our message here but we did want to include it because it is something that's publicly available and thought it would be very helpful so that when we're looking all in one place for what did the past year look like we had that here for our community and our families to reference so dr bailey at that point can i just ask a question because i know like in in previous years when we look at what is the value what can

092we learn from us a lot of what we could learn in the education world was when we did the standards-based analysis and we were able to say you know how did our students do on this particular learning standard what particular learning standard did i as a teacher teach well or what could i go back and and and review was that kind of analysis able to be done with this or not so much well i i will have to share i cannot say that it's able to be done that deeply from these data one of the primary reasons is the test constructs themselves were significantly altered as a result of the state's waiver for assessment being declined they had to move to putting in tests in a rather short duration and that was actually one of

093the reasons they applied for the second waiver saying that the challenge was there and and ultimately they felt that the data would not be representative so unfortunately when you're moving from two books to one book shortening um you know tests changing the format and in the case of math and some of the ela some of the test items had been previously tested and released you have unfortunately compromised the both reliability and validity of the assessment so we always try and again i can't stress enough anything we've received we really do try to make the most out of any piece of information but doing anything um to the extent we did prior it will not be as extensive as we were able to now i will share with you and all of us know we also

094have historically had students not participate in exams so we cannot rely upon and should not rely upon we know it's not best practice to rely upon one source of information so i can't stress enough that we try to use whatever we have at our disposal but not participating or having limited information should not hinder us from having a comprehensive program for students so we have to use other sources which are also included in the presentation as well thank you dr bill and i just have one question tonight eighth grade students who are in advanced courses can you give us a rough idea of what percentage of our eighth grade students that applies to you it's anywhere between thirty and fifty percent okay mm-hmm and now if you look at the results i would skew the

095results somewhat correct right yes yes it was if you look at this out of that context it doesn't look as promising but if you fact all of their grades yeah and you'll note not to make comparisons but in past years when you look at eighth grade it always seems to stand out in that manner and it is because we're not testing all of our students if we tested all of our students these numbers would look dramatically different plus you also have students whose families if they are in the 8th grade math program do not test so this is influenced by a number of factors including the one that dr whitman mentioned so moving on to the regents um you can see here we we listed again for the period of time over the last few

096years our regents exams several of which of the cycles have been canceled in their entirety um except for the one that's asterisked for june of 2021 particularly during that year four of the ten regents exams were administered i'll qualify that in a moment because because even with that came a few conditions and nuances but of the ones that were given we had algebra 1 earth science english and living environment the ones that were cancelled were algebra 2 geometry global history chemistry physics and u.s history so there were quite a few that did not occur of the ones that were given in june of in this case and again we we do not know moving forward to this june because the state education department has not released the conditions or really the entire entirety other than

097an exam schedule which we do not know if that's going to go forward or not they've promised more information and we are yet to receive that but um in june of 2021 parents were able to elect for their students to either participate or not in the regents program however what's important to note here is it was under a set of conditions so the state education department did offer exemptions as they called it for students in certain aspects and what those included is that the students were enrolled in the course of study that commenced in the regents exam but they were earning they were on the road to earning the course credit so students who were not passing had to sit for the exam so again you're already starting with not a full population and again

098from the students who were earning the credit parents could elect to have their children not take the exam and in this case an exemption would be given a third condition was also at play is that for test takers taking the exam if parents and students determined within a given period of time that they did not want to take um the score that was given they could also take an exemption so there were a lot of nuances and i hope i'm helping to paint a picture for our community there were lots of twists and turns on a very windy road when it came to assessments and over the last couple of years it was really not a standardized um way of doing things but we want to make sure we're up front and very transparent about

099what the landscape look like so again we are still waiting to hear um what june will look like and as you are aware january this past january was also cancelled so we will be looking forward to hearing what june and also august will look like they shared a date of when they're going to be notified i i wish they had um we are continually asking they probably know us me on a first name basis right now so june 10th is a good possibility so last year it was around the first week of march i mean it's varied it's been anywhere from march through may and it's unfortunate we really don't have um an exact date i know dr brown hall has also inquired he's been in superintendent's conversations dr mcginley's been at state and he

100has asked i'm not certain the decision-making involved but for all of our benefit namely our students it would be most helpful the earlier the that we know the better as you know it has a lot of impacts it impacts not just the testing but our schedule for the last weeks of school so we will certainly let you know as soon as we hear anything we will inform the board of that so this past june we also wanted to show you of the total number of students in the four areas that were tested how many students were in the course and how many students in both number and percentage were tested so that is all on that screen for you we also want to include for you from 2021 this year what did our passing and

101our mastery rates look like for all regions as well as just the mastery rate and you'll note that mastery is indicated by a an 85 or higher in this case and we also wanted to show you for your uh window and as you can see 2020 was canceled so that's also indicated on the screen so for 2021 and 93 passing and mastery rate for all regions and a 72 mastery which is subsumed within the 93 percent on this screen you'll see a three-year history of the graduation rates of you've seen this chart before so we try to keep with that format and it includes regents diplomas which are in the bold percent and also in the parentheses the advanced designation this is one of the notes we wanted to make sure our parents knew about

102and you'll notice the two links at the bottom of the screen when the second one is clicked that takes anyone who clicks on the link to the commissioner's regulations 100.5 those outline the courses pathways and exams that are used to earn or qualify for an advanced diploma there's a lot of text there so we did not want to put all of that on the screen but it's a quick click away and i think is very helpful information for our parents to know about and in this case we further broke uh the graduation rates down for 2021 in this case it's by sub group um and what you'll notice again if you go on the data nice dot gov site they break it down a few different ways so just a cautionary tale if you go

103on there because it can get pretty confusing they have a school report card version and they also have um another version which is by sub group and then they have yet another version that's by cohort so there's a lot of different numbers going around so depending on where you look and what report you're looking at there are some variations but in the case of the cohort grad rates which was the prior slide those are for students who entered grade nine four years prior to the reporting year so starting in 2017 however if you look at the accountability graduation rates and in some cases those vary some are higher and some are lower those are from the 2016 cohort and that accountability grade graduation rate is always behind a year so we we qualified that because

104we also wanted to make sure that when numbers are cited people can see different things and then you say well why does it look this way in one place and not another it's because they're using different cohorts so depending on what you look at that's what you will see so again these data are used by the state education department to determine a district's accountability status which for everybody's reference the state education department kept everybody's designation the same from last year to this year and we remain in good standing we also wanted to include for you because again as you may recall and this started many years ago i was having a conversation with dr brown how he's very familiar as a former ap coordinator coming to us now as superintendent one of the things that

105and i go back even 11 years ago when i first arrived there was a lot of fear and emphasis put on scores and not necessarily always encouraging students to take advanced courses so if you look back at presentations from years and years ago we had far fewer students engaging in that kind of coursework and i want to really give kudos and a lot of accolades to all of you for supporting the many courses we've added over the years and also our students and families because there is a great deal of risk taking involved when you're putting yourself out there people may think that the advanced courses are only for an elite few and that really is not the case we offer a lot of support for students so our goal is really to increase the

106number of students taking the exams it is not always the case that they will take the credit with them or ask for it on a college level because we offer so so much we have dual enrollment and so much else that isn't on this slide but we still want to keep this as an option for families and for students and they've really taken advantage of it so we will continue to do so we want to keep adding to this we'd like to actually at some point you may remember the ap capstone program was something we introduced some years ago we don't always have the enrollment to run it but that is something moving ahead as we're looking for a goal that we want to set for ourselves is maybe trying to get more students involved

107in that aspect as well so just um the last part of the presentation and again i won't uh read all of the content of the slides but the really the most important part of really what president leather barrel was speaking to earlier is really at the heart of what we do with anything that we gain as a result of our sources and structures and one of the biggest sources of information we have as far as student learning comes from our local sources and i've mentioned before and really will reiterate again the systems are based on cycles it's a model of teaching and learning that's based on gathering information and then being responsive to what we're gathering this is both qualitative and quantitative and we actually look at it as a system a system of assessments

108and again we're using the words assessments we're talking about conversations we're talking about using manipulatives we're talking about explaining one's thinking we're talking about diagnostic information we're talking about providing feedback and certainly and most importantly we're talking about responding to student needs and that is really the most important but this really is used so that teachers gather the information look at the strengths look at the areas of concern or growth monitor the progress and personalize the learning for students so i did want to draw attention to a couple of things for you and first and foremost just this is more of a helpful tool for those who are going to look at the presentation hopefully after it's posted but these are some of the terms that we use and in our education settings diagnostic formative

109slash interim and summative and we just wanted to list out some of the components of what those mean and how those terms are used but as you can see really for us and what we're looking at is using a system that includes all of these but as far as teaching and learning really looking at diagnostic information to tell us what skills a student has and has yet to learn what information we can have at our disposal to provide targeted instruction to best meet needs and then setting individual learning goals and targets for students that are meaningful and attaining and attainable and not holding up any one assessment or particular nuanced piece as the be-all and end-all of the picture because there's so much that goes into it and it's occurring ongoing it's occurring in a

110variety of ways and it's really a lot different than in the past because a lot of the measures we've often heard about or seen or talked about just as a not even just our school community but in general are always summative in nature and a lot of people like to term that as more autopsy data i don't really love that term but the idea behind it is is that you have it after the fact it's all important and again we use it all um so we've talked about the summative measures so i just want to share quickly some of the other types of measures so we've talked about fastbridge and this is one of our universal screeners it's used at the elementary level this is again just a couple of bullet points of information they're

111very short tests in duration purposefully so because again we don't want to spend a majority of the time we're in school teaching and test excuse me testing students that we want the teaching to take place these are reading measures that are used in uh grades k through four but they're also measures for kindergarten there are 25 total subtests and seven unique tests i mentioned in that bullet um some of the uh items that are tested which include the letter names letter sounds nonsense words which are not real words but they're used for phonetic and phonological reasons sight words sentence reading and reading measures and i'm happy to report and this was something it feels i can't believe a year has passed but last year i spoke to you about some of our k1 measures and

112really the ones that were more based in phonics and they have improved and actually and somewhat significantly in some cases and i'm very happy about that but we still have some work to do and we're going to keep those as areas of focus one of the things we of course know is our incoming kindergartners there was a great variability and in some cases non-exposure to any setting of any kind that was day care school or otherwise so there was a fair amount of work to do with students who had not experienced any type of environment other than being at home and that's something that's very different um not so much for culvert but was increased significantly due to code because a lot of places were closed so they could not um go to preschool so

113but we are working very closely with each building so that's the piece i really want to emphasize is that while i um speak to you more in a global fashion a lot of what we do is really drilling down from there it's building by building its classroom by classroom then it's also student by student so really the most important part is when you get into the classroom level really that's essentially what we're aiming for i also wanted to share across all of the subtests and we looked at every single one the baselines for this year's were stronger across every one of them so that is a huge huge accomplishment again it doesn't mean that there is no work to be done because we are still aiming for and again you may remember the rti model

114that we have in place whereas we're always looking to meet students needs so any students who appear on the screen or to have an element where they may be at risk warrants another look with additional instruction intervention remediation and targeted instruction to meet their needs and then you revisit the cycle all over again but you do have in some cases some false positives that come out of screener so you have to be careful not to use it in its entirety is the only source of information did want to introduce you to something that was new to us actually a couple of things on the next slide and as well as the slide after this is for math we introduced a couple of new tools this year and again i give our teachers and our students

115a lot of credit um and you know it's an interesting time to be able to do some new things but in this case the universal screener for number sense is something we introduced at k and one and this is interview based so the nice thing about this is the teacher and the student actually sat down and had a conversation and the student was asked some questions and was able to actually demonstrate using manipulatives and also their thinking but they had a conversation so besides the actual math part of it it was actually a wonderful way to connect with the students and really have an opportunity just to have a conversation so we had our math specialist at the elementary building where the individuals who primarily gave the assessment but they have a tremendous amount of

116valuable information at their disposal in fact on one of our visits dr brown hall and i had the opportunity to talk to a couple of the specialists at a particular building and they could not say enough about the valuable information that they received from this interaction and again it is all used to benefit kids and that's the most important part but i i know we enjoyed hearing about it and so what's important to note here and i just want to draw your attention to this is these are end of year goals so this screener is about 10 minutes long on average um gives you some information but what it's doing is it's projecting out where students should be by the end of the year so the areas of proficiency i listed here are the ones

117our students have already mastered which is wonderful you know when you're at this point in time and the school year is not over the ones at the bottom are ones we're still working on that by time the end of year happens those are to be mastered by that point in time but i'm very pleased to see that this level of progress has been made and again there's always with progress there's also work to come so we wanted to make sure that you knew about those two particular areas and then with aims web this is um the tool for grades two through four we piloted this this year and we're really looking at whether or not this will give us basically almost a companion we use fast bridge for literacy we did not have per se

118a universal screening tool as a loan tool we have a lot of curriculum-based measures and things we do as part of the curriculum but we wanted to really look at a tool for uh for math so this that's what we're looking at this is the pilot year for aims web and again i can't say enough about our elementary principals and teachers and really taking this journey with us dr chris mcginley and scott piotrowski both actually worked closely with all the teachers at all of our elementary schools and these are the areas again these are end of year goals that aims web projects out to the areas of proficiency as you can see are numerous and then we have some work that we're doing as our areas of focus as we're moving forward before the school

119year ends but in this case it's a whole class administration and this is computer based so it's a very different way of assessing students that's neither interview based nor is it in writing so um this may also help us moving forward because i know you know the state although it was not a primary focus as a covid unfolded is computer-based testing you know certainly comes up as a question and that's something we have not done so um in our school district at this time but this gives us some information about um how how that looks and last but not least this is just a point of reference and we're only including this so that our parents and community have it as part of the presentation but our systems are really predicated on having a tiered

120model of response first and foremost being the universal piece in the classroom so the triangle is red actually from the bottom up so your all of your students are receiving tier one and then as you go up to the point of the triangle it's getting more focused because that is indicating that you are through your screeners through your assessments through your formative tools through your summative tools that you're using all of that to ensure that you're targeting your intervention and supports along the way so next month i know that we will be sharing with you a lot of information about how we're expanding our covid funds and our grants but we are also including the support structures that we're providing for students and as a matter of fact dr brown hall and i have been

121working on something that's both a companion to this and that presentation which is a list of support structures that are available across our levels elementary middle and high those that are universal to available to all students and those that are targeted support um at each level of instruction we're going to post that to our our site and we're also going to have an explanation of what each of those supports is about so with that i will conclude and certainly take any questions or comments that you have thank you dr let's talk about and i'll start am i right this time and i'll work on the table okay dr singh and dr mcclary just a quick question which you may not have on hand which is okay um but i i'm just curious if you have

122um an idea of about how many of the at homers came in to do i can find that out for you i don't have it at my disposal but i can certainly we did offer it to all of our families if you recall back last year was the first year we used wits to reach out to families regarding participation and that worked extremely well but one of the nuances because of our model last year is we actually asked the families the unfortunate part is they had to come in to toss so but we can find that out and get that for you okay this is a shot in the dark i've asked this before different districts but i i guess i'm still curious and it baffles me and we might not have an answer and

123i know it's not district's uh calling why do we give the state assessments in third through eighth grade in the middle of march and april it still baffles me and even this quote and i guess that's what made me think about it again you know the value in student level data on a classroom and student level student state assessments are one tool that allows educators to better understand the needs of their students to provide individual supports and you know it goes on that's the quote that was picked and again you're looking at data as a way to drive instruction right first of all we don't get the um assessment back until when i mean the scores are going to come back till october right the following year maybe august in a good year for all

124districts i i i guess not a question it's a comment i wish we could advocate the state and i know it's mostly probably pushed from down state but why hasn't given at the end of the year and these kids an opportunity throughout the whole year to learn what and master the skills they need for that grade level for that exam and i i guess it's just a complaint yeah i like the answers huh maybe you have an answer for that but and it's never it's never the perfect answer right and i never want to be seen as if i'm trying to defend the entire system but what it is and we have to go back to the fact that it's a summative assessment remember they used to offer it in january and february like this

125is completely useless so they offer it usually in the spring because they needed the additional time to prepare the reports and you remember a few years ago they promised that the reports about how well students perform will be to school districts prior to the school year starting because they had to be included in the appr they plan on getting back to that because those results are supposed to move with the student so teachers can then individualize the instruction for the students that's the ideal now ideal and reality are always two different things but that's what the state is working towards yeah i understand it that makes sense i still just question it as an educator i know you do but yeah i guess because from april to june they could even grow more so when

126you're looking at the date of what was happening in april a teacher might be behind that it makes and the one thing i will say about williamsville which i think can set us apart is you know with my kids in these grade levels i know that they're not just you we're not just using the state exams right so i will say that for parents understand i mean these teachers are i mean running records and different things all year long so i do want to blog the teachers for that because it does help because like i said a lot of growth can happen from april too absolutely absolutely the exam won't show that so so i do believe throughout the year when students go to the next grade level in september we have a better grasp

127than some districts so yeah thank you i would concur with both comments mate let's i'll continue down the table vice president vance so i really just have a comment um thank you very much for this presentation i think it's very thorough it's excellent to see so i appreciate all the time and the effort with it because as educators as parents right families it is ingrained in us not by our district but by state level that new york state assessments in the third to eighth grade means everything as well as regents exams right we are we've been trained to think that way covid ended up hitting us right and we had a pause with all of that and so from that we have now been able to spotlight truly the other measures that we have in

128place for true assessment and achievement that our district previously was doing but now what we've incorporated as well which just quite frankly is a better assessment so that we can really have a good handle on our student growth and make sure that our are learning everything that we're doing is purposeful and meaningful so i love this presentation thank you i think it included all subgroups and it gives us as a board member a very clear picture um and i appreciate the work and i i just come you know i'm applaud all the teachers our staff as well as our students that have day in and day out been part of this have adjusted and had to continue to flip-flop but the one thing we never lost focus on in this district i truly believe this

129is the learning piece thank you right thank you so much thank you thank you very much on my left anybody don't you love it always fun for you you guys haven't you're the only one that took your head somewhere well you know again i'll uh echo vice president van cise on this one um again thank you get my head i keep looking at myself over there my head always looks like you say you want to always make sure your head's on straight but i can't figure out if my head's on straight or not so uh maybe i shouldn't look at the camera uh i guess the key thing is and thank you i know how much time and effort it takes to put this together especially with uh some of the available data is not

130there and the value that this has to all of us uh to use this data but i just uh want to make comment on some data that may not be included that might be included and i'll just start off by you know looking at aim graduates i know they're assigned to specific high schools but they also have their own graduation ceremony so uh i was trying to figure out where they might fit into that second you know we typically if you look at graduation rates as shown by each of our three high schools and that's not in this data and maybe that would be somewhat beneficial because there are differential graduation rates over time any other part of that would be the non-completers you know how much follow-up do we do uh of the students

131who don't graduate and what happens uh to them and what support are we providing as they leave the school but i i think your bottom line you know as we've observed is we're looking at data at one point in time to assess where our students are but i circled they still like that paper um the point that you you make and then what we are here for is we need this information to make decisions on resource allocation and that's the key value that you know you've provided for us so you know i thank you thank you dr lipman and i just want to thank all of you very much um without your support in the resources and really just the the comments alone just knowing that that support structures there means a lot to me

132our departments here and certainly the teachers staff and administrators at the school are very very fortunate in this district to have what we have so thank you so much for all of your help and assistance along the way thank you very much dr b thank you thank you that made me think of one other thing that kind of ties into like what other avenues of graduation um have we ever looked at or had data on like vocational studies or kids that have gone that route even though it might be a graduation rate but um you know vocational studies in the future maybe you can see something on the face i think that we have it on here yeah yeah yeah you're always on there and and to dr lemon's point too if you if you

133click on the two links that are at the bottom of the slide with the graduation data you can it takes you to the state website which then can break it down by schools yeah so it is there you know and i think we um have done a good job of trying to take try to de-emphasize comparing north to south south to east east north north you know we're we're all one we're all one and we offer amazing programming at all three schools yeah and it's not a competition it's a support for all of our students to succeed so thank you for everything that you've provided for us thank you thank you dr bill all right board members we are on item 18. so at this time i'm asking for a motion to resolve to approve

134the funding for the negotiated agreement between the superintendent in the williamsville supervisors and computer technicians association which is 18a and the negotiated agreement between the superintendent and the williamsville administrators association in 18b as presented thank you mr pascalia and miss poulin is there any discussion on either of these con either of the funding agreements okay thank you and after i just want to share that um if this motion passes the new new contracts when completed with the proper language will be uploaded we can upload them right into yeah absolutely we the ones in there for now right now our last year or the the most recent contracts so that we could have comparison language funding okay any other discussion all in favor any opposed or abstentions seeing non-motion carries unanimously all right we are now

135on district facilities and support services 19a may have a motion to approve the repair reserve bids as presented thank you dr mccleary may please have a second mr biscagelia any discussion seeing none all in favor opposed or abstentions motion carries unanimously elementary school air conditioning capital project there's information in the border system regarding the presentation and i want to thank um assistant superintendent mr maturski also for providing additional information in our weekly update it that was received to the board are there any questions regarding the elementary air conditioning project at this time all right thank you item 19c may please have a motion to resolve to approve the amended s-e-q-r-a resolution as presented thank you dr lipman may i please have a second and vice president van sice any discussion being done all in favor

136opposed abstentions motion carried unanimously and 20a may have a motion to resolve to hold the annual district vote on may 17 2022 from 7 a.m to 9pm in the north high school gymnasium which is located at 1595 hopkins road in williamsville new york 14221 adopt the following resolutions to be submitted to the qualified voters at the annual district meeting and election as presented and authorized the district clerk to publish public notices four times in the amherst b and the buffalo business first thank you um board member poland may i have a second and dr mccleary thank you is there any discussion on this i would just like to thank our district clerk mrs lincary for the outstanding job that you have done over the past few years of most of them all being through coveted

137with very difficult ever-changing guidance and guidelines and timelines and our elections have been pulled off without a hitch so thank you very much and kudos to all of your work with that any other discussion dr mcclary i'm sorry this is kind of going back to as we're talking about the election um is it determined or formalized that uh voting will only be in person there will be no um mail-in exactly ballots i mean absentee ballots but those are always but in other years of course we've had many you know the last two years there's been many many more mail in do you want to answer that mrs carriage okay yeah okay thank you for that question all in favor please any opposed or abstaining thank you motion carries unanimously moving on to item 24 unless

138anybody wishes to discuss anything under 21 through 23 this kills merrick bogner i just wanted to bring up something briefly under committee of the whole although i don't know that it fits there but i know we put a pause on the policy committees and we talked about making sure that we approved all the policies that we had worked on revising and i know that there's also been planning involved in our retreat but do we have a sense of when we are going to reconvene the policy committees thank you for that question because we actually talked about that during agenda planning and i apologize on my part for not sharing that out do you want to share the answer to that absolutely so i'm in the process of reviewing the 4 thousands to share with the

139board and we will then um figure out how that meeting will take place for the four thousands or will be appointed on that committee and then we will review them and what the recommendations are from staff so we figure if we go through them first have recommendations from staff and then as a board you can review but then also have the recommendations from staff there also great thank you so much we asked about that during agenda planning and the 4000 level is administration so for 4 000 through eight thousand since they're very specific and involve different levels of very of different areas of expertise um we agreed with superintendent brown hall that we would go level by level so the 4000 is administration and when we met for agenda planning vice president and vance and

140i asked if he was ready to share those recommendations with us and he indicated that you would like an additional month so our my our our hope is that we can come back in april and our april board meeting designate a policy committee to meet between then and our may board meeting and our may board meetings towards the end of the month of may so it gives us the time to do that thank you thanks for the update absolutely and thank you for reminding me all right so i just have a question oh yes go ahead i just wanted to know if you have any update on the dei committees yes so the dei committees myself dr bail and linda rui met to provide the guidance and develop the guidance for the schools and so

141at um the weekly update i'll let parents know that once we get the committees established at the buildings we'll be having the district-wide committee we'll do a very similar to how we solicited parents to be on the strategic planning committee they'll send a letter into the district offices if we have more parents interested than we need we will hold a lottery if not very similar to the strategic planning committee every um parent that wanted to be on strategic planning was allowed and so we're going to do it that way and that will happen in the month of april thank you for that i'm sorry you know what and i meant to include in the community update but i said i'll take care of it in the weekly update okay no that'll be good because we

142did approve that we approved um our strategic plan and so i think some parents are starting to wait for that invitation and would like to be invited to join their building level team and we wanted to and i'm sorry to cut you off but we wanted to make sure we provided the guidance for the building so we have a lot of level of consistency um because that's what the board has requested level consistency um and what the committees may look like and some depending on what committees the schools already have in place they may utilize those already set committees to work on areas of the strategic plan and develop those action plans so every school doesn't need to need to create new committees for it but the dei committee is one that they do and

143so we want to provide that guidance to send out to the schools talk to them at the level meetings or the k-12 principal meetings so everyone has the same information right thank you very much any other comments from the board regarding committee the whole or correspondence this is a follow-up to that and it doesn't jump out in my mind how large are those like the strategic planning committee how many people are typically on that committee and that's a good question and the reason i remember very clearly is because we included that in the guidance for the schools also because you don't want a committee that's so large that you get no work done because everyone doesn't get hurt right so the ideal size of these committee at the school buildings are 10 to 15 people

144sounds good and then um of of course president leatherboro will decide what board members will be on the district ydei committee also i know many of you are looking for volunteers for sure okay thank you everybody um any other questions or comments before we close out all right may i have a motion to adjourn into executive session discuss current litigation and employment matters related to particular persons to finish up our executive session agenda thank you miss poland may i please have a second dr singh thank you all in favor thank you very much emotion carries unanimously and we are now into executive session [Music] you