February 8, 2022 - Board of Education Meeting

001all right thank you good evening everyone motion to return the regular board meeting to public session please thank you dr lintman miss kasmir bochner allen favor varies unanimously i call the regular board meeting to order all board members are present dr singh would you please lead us in the pledge of [Music] allegiance to the plan of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice be advised that in the event of a fire emergency and an evacuation should be necessary an alarm will sound please note all marked emergency exits and evacuate well away from the building at this time we request that everyone turn their cell phones and other electronic devices to silent and face coverings must be worn at all times

002when in the building thank you before we move forward with our agenda i would like to ask that we hold a moment of silence for one of our staff members do you know kaveli was a technology teacher most recently assigned at high middle school who passed away on january 31st as a board we offer our condolences to mr covelli's family friends students and colleagues and we will honor gino covelli with a moment of silence at this time [Music] thank you is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented thank you dr sang mrs beaver ii any discussion please all in favor all hands up equals unanimous thank you we are now moving on to acknowledgements and dr brown hall i turn it over to you for our school spotlight thank you very much president

003leatherboro so tonight we continue our school spotlight highlighting the great work that goes on within our buildings this month our school spotlight focuses on country parkway elementary school and two of their universal pre-kindergarten classrooms i'd now like to welcome principal andrew bowen to share the importance of having the upk program now on site within the district principal bowen thank you dr brown hall and board of education good evening good evening it's my honor to be here to showcase country parkway this evening we highlight a pilot program that is held in our building as dr brown hall mentioned universal pre-kindergarten this year we did add two up click k classrooms with 40 students having the opportunity to welcome these students and provide them with a solid foundation in literacy math and social growth has been remarkable

004special thanks to upk teachers mrs tracy kosis and mrs danielle bickert for spearheading the program making it thrive and most importantly providing an environment where our students are encouraged nurtured and challenged we are going to have a upk presentation for the board later on in the evening but before we do that we have our communications team put together a video that gives us a sneak peek into upk at cp thank you so much [Music] country parkway has been a school where we have really taken pride in early intervention and meeting students needs and for us to start that even a year sooner has always been a goal of this building to be able to impact our learners before they even start kindergarten our upk teachers are absolutely phenomenal we are completely blessed to have two

005incredible teachers and four aides that have created a program and started it and it is absolutely flourishing due to all of their hard work [Music] the best part of my day is seeing all my kids every morning come into the classroom they're excited they're ready to play they're eager to learn our students have opportunities every day to interact with their peers to grow socially to grow emotionally to engage in lots of hands-on activities and we've seen a huge amount of growth from each child which is really great to see our program is crucial to laying the foundation for preparing our kids to enter kindergarten with all the skills they need to be successful and to have a great start to their school career she has just like leaped forward since she started this program who

006she was when she started compared to now it's uh it's pretty amazing how much she's learned in those you know five or six months she's done really really well you know we obviously we reinforce things at home we read at home we review stuff at home but knowing that she's getting those couple hours at school where she really is learning it's been just really great for us it was just the idea of being in like a williamsville district elementary school you knew that that quality was going to be there and that you would be you know more than prepared for kindergarten really i love to come to school every day i love to be the one that's like giving them new knowledge and helping them learn things that they don't know it's so amazing it

007gives you as a teacher the motivation to continue to come back every day when you start a child on a learning path and you start them understanding that they can learn and that you know they're competent it gives them an advantage when they come into school so i think it's incredibly important that we start them at the cpk age we're developing in them the capacity to understand that they can learn they can be successful and school is a safe place for that to happen we were so excited when we found out that charlotte was going to be in a upk program that was in an elementary building in the district because greek schools the purpose is to prepare you for kindergarten right but if you're at universal preschool in the district where you're going to

008be going to kindergarten then those teachers already know what is going to be expected for kindergarten so i feel like she definitely knows more letters than numbers i think than either of my older kids going into kindergarten she clearly loves it she's clearly learning a lot and i have no doubt that she's going to be prepared for kindergarten upk at cp has been an absolute success and that is due to all the efforts of the people who are involved and that would be all the way from our superintendent right down to our teachers and to our to our aides they really have everyone has come together to create something pretty special and we're really proud of it [Music] thank you very much principal bowling we appreciate it thank you thank you principal bowen are there

009any board acknowledgement is ken yes in january with the support of their gifted programming specialists all four middle schools sent teams to the western new york future city regional competition this year's theme involved using principles of a circular economy to design a futuristic waste-free city this intensive steam project requires a project plan city essay presentation video city model and slideshow and i'm happy to announce the first place winner was transit middle school's team moranis builders who will now advance to the national competition the second place winner was mill middle school team nova soul and in fourth place team casey cougars plus teams from all four schools were honored with special awards so i want to congratulate them all for their hard work and achievement awesome awesome other board acknowledgements dr singh i mean i have

010a couple actually this weekend we had different kind of olympics we had the science olympics and the 400 students from local schools took part in the lake erie niagara division c regionals on saturday and the four of our school teams came in the top ten and uh two schools williamsville east and williamsville north they came second and third and they will be moving on to the state tournament in syracuse in a month [Applause] already mentioned there was great performances in williamsville east for the unity and diversity programs on two days on thursday and monday and the students put in a lot of effort and though i didn't get a chance to see the whole program i saw the highlights on youtube yes it was phenomenal thank you dr slang anyone else just um piggybacking on

011the diversity piece of it on sunday um i saw dr singh at ub and i understand that superintendent brown hall was there as well and i just wanted to thank um june wang tiedman and the chinese club of western new york and they hosted the all heritage and lunar new year celebration it took place sunday at university of buffalo and this year they invited all members of the board which i thought was very kind of them and they opened it up to other heritage groups as well so there was a hispanic group that performed and there was an indian group that performed and i thought that that was really special because here it is you know their special day their their chinese lunar new year celebration and they really took that dei and focused on

012the inclusion piece of it not just not just celebrating their own but making sure that others were able to come in and celebrate as well so i really appreciated that event and several of our students and even some of our parents performed during that um presentation all right if there's no more board acknowledgements i'm sorry doctor okay thank you um uh on behalf of my former board of education colleague gene cavelli and his wife sandra he would like to thank gino's fellow district technology teachers the administration students in the windsor community for their support compassion caring and love shown on the passing of their son geno a longtime technology teacher at heim middle and at mill the impact of his character professionalism and caring will be missed thank you very much dr levin all right

013i will now call on miss kasmir bogner to review our public expression format thank you president leatherbarrow welcome to all who have come to observe this regular board meeting for policy 1510 the board allows up to 30 minutes of public comment a time when we invite members of our school community to share ideas opinions and concerns with us while we are here to listen carefully and we take your concerns seriously public comment is not designed to be a discussion therefore please do not expect us to respond tonight instead you will receive a response by email after our meeting because we want to maintain mutual respect and civility please ensure that comments are delivered in a respectful manner to the board directly also under state and federal privacy laws we are unable to entertain any comments

014related to employee personnel information or any topic that may disclose information about a particular student on these matters we ask that you go through the appropriate administrative channels please note that individuals are required to sign up prior to our meeting each speaker is allotted three minutes for comments and will be signaled at two and a half minutes to conclude remarks and at this time i will begin public comments after i call on you please step up to the podium and state your name our first speaker this evening is elena poppe good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak tonight my name is elena pope i am the parent of two meal medals from school students and um i would like to bring up something that i consider very important in regards to the

015controversial spanish assignment given to um sixth graders in male middle as we all know the information could quickly spread all over the news and the social media and the rumors also also started with the middle schoolers at even higher speed uh my children came home every day with a new opinion new rumor uh they heard from her from someone else and they ask numerous questions including what is a union was the teacher fired um well as a parent as parents we try to explain the situation uh to the best of our ability i strongly believe that it's also important to be addressed in school and to communicate to the students with the extent possible real facts and what measures are being taken this is um equally important to us stop the spread of misinformation and

016also use this as an educational opportunity uh children are offered great education in our schools but i think we we failed them by not being open with something so important that happened in our own backyard and by not making them involved in the thought process of what we do as individuals and as a community to prevent future situations of this kind and also how to react when they happen thank you very much thank you thank you miss pop for your comments our next speaker this evening is jack rafferty good evening everyone and uh i'm sorry to hear about the recent loss and uh congratulations to principal bowen on this new position um my name is jack rafferty i am here to address my concerns about masking young children since you're all concerned about following the

017science here are some facts i've gathered a cohort study on 184 children in italy from ages 6 to 18 revealed adverse data in the post-pandemic numbers compared to that of the pre-pandemic numbers on social media use and addiction concerns the survey revealed that due to social distancing measures it led to significant increase in overuse and addiction also leading to many clinical sleep ocular and musculoskeletal disorders psychological distraction and modification loss of interest and social superficial approach to learning isolation unfavorable outcomes coming from the cdc directly in 2015 a study was conducted to compare the efficacy of cloth masks and medical masks among health care workers in vietnam rates of infection were consistently higher among those in cloth masks group than the medical mask and control groups i'm just saying if you're telling children to cover

018their faces all day without the scientific evidence to back it up then it's clear that it's never about public health masks are now symbolic and that it keeps everyone's identity hidden and that there's absolutely no evidence to back up why little children should be wearing masks why do i bring these studies up i'm not here to compare uh what type of masks children should wear or should not wear uh for eight hours a day i'm talking about what is the likelihood for children to actually spread covet 19 the likelihood is very low i'm sure you know that what i'm saying more importantly is the masks are not necessary for children and they're beginning to learn how to communicate and read facial expressions with their with their teachers and their parents these children are not living

019in a normal childhood because of these measures and frankly you bear the responsibility of all the suicides the overall destruction of adolescent mental health and the inability for children to properly communicate with what they need to their parents and to their teachers additionally parents are absolutely the primary decision makers of their children's education uh we pay your salaries so i expect you guys to do your jobs the parents make the decisions here do you think it's right to teach children to never question authority and always obey what they're told no matter how ridiculous the rules may be children know that something is wrong here and there are students all over the country that are recognizing this issue i suggest you start putting your constituents first and your students first quite frankly if you want to

020help those if you want to keep the board seats to every student who may watch this i encourage you all to say no to these ridiculous mandates put in place by leaders making blind decisions just because the authority says so i encourage you to stand up for yourselves and to protest the authorities and to stand up for what is right thank you thank you mr referee for your comments our next speaker this evening is tim terrell it doesn't appear that mr terrell is here our next speaker is amber i believe it's shasti hi my name is amber sastry um i'm the parent of three children within the district and just so um i recognize that the school district has many important priorities including excellent academics arts extracurriculars and wellness i'm here to raise um something

021that advances all of these yet is often de-prioritized which is recess active outdoor free play has incredible benefits exercise fresh air building friendships blowing off steam and coming back to the classroom ready to work i applaud the district for having a recess policy at the elementary level but i'm concerned that our students are not getting the full benefit often recess takes place in the classroom so this does not enable children to move and interact freely they need an opportunity to run and yell and climb and invent new games to play together our older children should have this opportunity too you know our fifth graders are at the middle school but they're still little kids they should have recess um all of our students should have free time to decompress during the day it could be

022combined with lunch but i'm afraid that's not happening now i'm not sure what happens at each individual school this is just general um i'm just speaking generally in the winter our children spend almost all of their daylight hours at school and i know that the snow and cold can be difficult for teachers but if we plan and prepare even they could enjoy getting outside for a contest of who can throw a snowball the farthest or snowman building teachers are concerned that they can't get all the kids dressed in time during the 20 minutes they're allotted but it disappoints me that we only have 20 minutes to begin with and that we can't make space for our kids to enjoy some fresh air together so i think we would all be healthier happier and even more

023academically prepared um if we got outside most days so i understand that the schedule is very difficult to manage i just wish that we could um see this as a priority and make the space and work together you know if kids need to bring in boots or mittens you know gloves snow pants you know could the could the parents get together and organize that for the class keep an extra pair at school something like that so i would also just like to express my gratitude for all of our teachers staff administrators and board members the school district has continued to give its all through all of this and i'm proud to be a part of our community together thank you thank you mr sg uh the next speaker is tony and i'm sorry sir but

024i'm unable to read your last name i was designated the mystery speaker no tony badami it's good to see you and my question really is i mean i watch tv i've been watching this going on for a long time and it's like i say to myself what the hell is going on i mean it's i feel like i'm in alice in wonderland or something you know you hear and then i'm listening to you know your weekly update and i'm hearing diversity equity inclusion that's all you hear everywhere right and then i'm watching tv and you got a boy and he's swimming against women because he says he's a girl so i guess that makes him a girl but the problem is they say that's inclusion and then i hear coming out of our our district's

025mouth right inclusion okay you got 12 girls and you got one boy who's being excluded okay you know what it might not be happening here but look at what's happening that's not good okay it's not good think about it youth people are running the show you got to do something you know a lot of people know about this right now it's going to turn on you too you better turn this train around that's what i see okay so you got diversity right so diversity you've got to make sure that you have a black you know i'm not pulling no punches that i'm not politically incorrect and i'm not trying to offend anybody but you got to have a black you got to have an 80 whatever can you imagine if we did that with the

026buffalo bills he said well you gotta have one black you gotta have six whites you got we lose every game that's not how you run an efficient organization or a government that's not how you do it okay that's diversity right if there's diversity you really better look at it you better get that crap out of diversity because it's not helping anybody it really isn't it really isn't our future's at stake our way of life's this thing you people pay a role in it really you really do you know it's out of my hands okay but i see it going on then you got equity what what's equity what is equity it used to be equality it turned into equity what's equity equity is well you get the same thing as he gets the same thing

027and he gets the same thing he gets the same thing right sounds like communism to me but anyways listen you you could work as hard as you want and everybody gets the same thing now listen i'm not saying it's happening here but what i'm saying is i'm watching this stuff on tv i don't think these people are lying and if all of this goes into that i think we better really look at what we're doing because our futures our way of life could be at stake you know what i'm saying these are our children and i think a lot of the parents feel as though that their ability to raise their children are being stolen from the government what does that sound like does that sound like america does it you people make the decisions

028people like us we're an outstanding okay district and whether or not you could say we're going to do it or not maybe we should make a statement maybe we should say we think this is the bad part of everything you know what i'm saying i'll leave you with this okay tomorrow morning when you get up and look in the mirror think about what i said because it's on you thank you that's all i get to say thank you and that will conclude our public expression thank you great thank you to all of our speakers we certainly support everyone's first amendment right we're going to move on to our consent agenda may i have a motion please to approve the consent in general items six seven and eight please speaker thank you dr singh second any

029discussion please seeing none all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously um the board of education extends its best wishes and gratitude to the following retiree for their service in the district barbara walsh south high school for 20 years of service moving on to item nine is their emotions they used to approve the january 11th board meeting minutes thank you dr singh thank you miss kasmerick bothner are there any corrections or additions to the minutes seeing none all in favor for approval thank you opposed or abstentions of one abstaining thank you all right motion does carry with one abstention president's report the new york state education department held a review of graduation measures in new york state virtual event and that took place on january 27th dr mcclary dr singh ms pulin and vice president

030van slice all attended does anyone who attended wish to comment on the event go ahead i'll just make a short comment it was very interesting as new york state is really looking at gaining feedback from all stakeholders about the potential redesign of what our graduation measures should look like you know with the question what do we want our students to walk away from high school with what achievements or you know what skill set are we really looking at more than i think they're exploring more than assessments which what we know with the regions looking beyond that truly some civic readiness as well as career readiness so they're really trying to explore it as we've heard that our state is one of the only ones that offers so many different graduation pathways trying to hone in

031on what do we want our students to show and exemplify when they leave high school so that we know that they can be productive members of the community more than just assessments is my takeaway thank you very much for sharing that and other events coming up um harris beach is holding a seminar webinar on general education and special education related topics that's going to be happening on thursday march 3rd and so far we've got dr mcclary dr singh dr lipman and miss poland signed up to attend that event we did postpone our conversations with staff event last month it was scheduled for south high school and the south feeder schools um i was just in email communication with superintendent brown hall earlier today and we'll send out a date from for march um and we

032will be keeping the east event that remains on april 6. so we'll do we'll try and get the the other one in between um i believe dr brown hall sent out a couple suggestions and when he replied all to all of our questions and we can check to see which one of those dates works for all of us okay i liked your suggestion that you gave about keeping it on one date i think so yeah that makes more sense too but we'll confirm that we are going to be holding a community forum and that's going to happen on march 22nd 2022 after the budget work session meeting which begins at 7 pm so um we never know for sure how long the budget work session portion of the meeting will take we we estimate about

033an hour so we can have an approximate start time for that community forum of 8 p.m all right we also have some school visits coming up tomorrow actually the board members of the board will be will be visiting maple east and maple west and um i will be attending along with miss poland miss casper zach vogner and mr biscagelia dr lemon can you join us all right great thank you very much all right so item b under the president's report is the erie county association of school boards ecasd they are holding a prospective school board member workshop which will be for anyone in the community who is interested in possibly running for a seat on the school board that event is going to happen on march 26th from 8 to 10 30 a.m at erie

034one boces in west seneca you must register by march 22nd and you can call our district clerk district collect ms lynn carey for more information or you can call erin boces and ask for the ecasb office directly and register there also dr singh and i both attended the budget and finance training this was a virtual training that took place on thursday february 3rd rick tims was the facilitator for this event the topic was on long range financial considerations advocacy topics and strategies for school boards i did submit a report on that and when we get to our budget and finance portion of our meeting i do have a few comments that and questions for mr maturski related to that training moving on to our new york state school board association upcoming events is uh also

035tomorrow is lobby day this is this will be happening in the afternoon for us we have school visits in the morning and lobbying in the afternoon the new york state school board association is hosting lobby day in the partnership with the erie county association of school boards so tomorrow afternoon dr mcclary vice president van sais and myself will be meeting on zoom with senator rath the meeting is at one o'clock and assemblywoman mcmahon at 3 30 and we will be sharing legislative issues that impact our students and our district finances and i also understand that you will be having similar conversations next week i will on on the 18th of february with both um senator rath and assembly mcmahon excellent thank you and even though tomorrow is an actual event advocacy is not meant to

036be an event advocacy is meant to be a process it is always ongoing and anyone can be an advocate is there anyone from the board that has anything they want to share about ecasp or new york state school board association that i skipped over okay um one other thing i can mention is there is a webinar coming up um this thursday it's called the school board's role in curriculum adoption and that's a free webinar for all school board members that are interested so far attending is ms kasmir bogner miss poulin vice president van slice and dr singh so thank you for those to those board members for making time for that event there are other dates from nisba that are available in board docs all right item d under the president's report we just hit

037groundhog day however the ground dog has no authority on our school board and spring is on the way in march and with spring comes our annual district vote so with that may i please have a motion to approve and adopt the 2022 procedure and timeline for the election of school board members as presented in board docs thank you vice president van zeis mr viscalia second is there any discussion on that seeing none all all in favor all hands up equals motion carries unanimously so now that we have approved the timeline and procedures i'm going to ask our district clerk lynn carey to share some information about board candidate packets and our annual vote thank you miss carrie yes you're welcome just a couple highlights on the candidate packets they are available i like to meet

038with the candidate potential candidates just to go over the packet with them and very briefly and to answer any questions if they have any this year it's 84 valid signatures we need for the petitions and once those are turned in and verified um that is when the candidate becomes an official candidate uh in regard to the annual vote uh it is may 17th and it will be at north high school nine a.m until 7 a.m till 9 pm uh we'll be over there and on the day of the vote the poll inspectors who are from erie county board of elections facilitate that vote and we're going to have you present photo id and the process is real quick hopefully again this this year it ran pretty smooth last year to be a qualified voter in

039the district you have to be a us citizen 18 years of age or older and a resident of the school district for a period of 30 days prior to the vote and voters must be all all of those all the above and then the application for absentee ballots may be requested april 1st and then military is also um at that time to request a bailout for military absentee ballot um and then the budget vote that's all set absentee ballot will be available for pickup or mailed out after april 21st that way we have all the candidates on the ballot and the ballots need to be printed so if you have any questions about being a registered voter in erie county it's on their website just type in voters and that'll come up for you to

040type your name in to see if you're a registered voter don't have to be registered voter though to vote in our district um that's it thank you thank you very much i look forward to seeing everyone at the vote awesome thank you miss carrie item g erie one boces call for nominations so three board members shall be elected to serve on the board of cooperative educational services first supervisory district of erie county at the meeting designated by the boces board president which will be held on april 19 2022 to be held in each of the component districts there's information board docs about the incumbents and those seeking re-election and i actually received a letter today in the mail from i believe a new a new candidate mrs carey i'll get that to you so you

041can put that in board docs or send that out for our school or members to be able to see the williamsville central school district board will make their nominations at the march 8th regular board meeting so there's no action on this for tonight just know that um at next month's meeting we will be charged with the duty of nominating someone for the erie one boces board okay any questions on that yes dr littman amen you know for years uh judy katz represented our school district uh on the board uh when she retired and i was leaving the board last time i put my name and nomination i spoke to many school districts i got a large amount of support to keep a person from williamsville on the boces board but for some reason this board

042in williamsville did not support me and i think it's an issue that since we are one of the largest components and contributors to boces that we should try to have a representative uh on the boces board so that's my suggestion i know some of these i i know these you know the people who are up for reelection some of them serve on boards now um and you know i just want to bring that to your attention it's something we as a board should look to the future to find a candidate who could represent williamsville uh in that capacity thank you for your your comments on that i to my knowledge i don't know of a williamsville um resident that's running for the boces board this year yeah so i'm just saying that we should be

043you know as we look at people who are uh looking for our school board we should be also looking for people who might be willing to serve or one of us to uh try to get on the boces board many of you have wonderful experiences um maybe it's it's time for us to make a return all right well thank you very much all right that's all i have for my president's report so dr mount hall i'm going to turn it to you and i'm going to ask you to address items 11 a b and c absolutely and thank you very much president leatherboro and we're going to in the community update we're about to have the powerpoint show up we are going to talk about many issues in the district and the strategic plan is

044one of them and at the end of the community update i will give some highlights about the 2223 uh proposed student calendar awesome so the first thing we're going to talk about is test to stay as you know we launched our test to stay program in the district on monday january 31st and parents were asked to fill out the consent so that if their child is unvaccinated and needs to participate and test to stay that consent would be on file so we have more than 570 consents on file for the program and to date we've had 44 coded 19 tests administered with one positive test result now the beauty of it is that we have 43 students that participated in test estate and were able to continue in school without being quarantined so they're able

045to continue with their instructions so that is something that's one of our goals right to preserve our in-person classroom instruction and that's what test to stay is doing now we are asking parents if your child is fully vaccinated to please share that information with your school nurse because if your child is fully vaccinated and they are a potential contact to someone who is covered positive they do not have to quarantine nor do they have to participate and test to stay so it's really important that we get that updated information at home test kit distribution so we've done a couple of these a couple of these already we had one distribution prior to returning from uh the winter recess and then we had another one a couple of weeks ago out of the middle schools we've

046gotten enough test kicks this time to actually give every student two test kicks to take home so i'm going to go through the particulars of this so the district is planning a covet 19 at home test kit distribution for students prior to the midwinter recess in february allocating two test kicks per student now we're going to try something different this time where parents and guardians can request a call that 19 at home test test kit be sent home in backpacks on february 16th so parents will have to sign up ahead of time on wix and so that will be available february 9th through the 14th to request a kit is sent home with your child so you will know that it's coming home the 16th so you're able to look out for it if parents

047or guardians do not request an at-home test kit be sent home in the backpacks they will they will have the option to pick up the test kicks from the district offices here on february 16th 17th or 18th so if you don't want it to come home with your child you can definitely pick up the test kicks here february 16th 17th or 18th and we encourage you again this is not mandatory but we encourage you to pick the test kicks up and make sure you use them prior to students returning from the mid-winter recess please ask a question on that absolutely let me go back to it um if if your student is in high school and this this is going to sound silly but it's honest if your student is in high school and they

048already bring two full backpacks to school and they're probably not going to be willing to take home a test um are you just recommending the high school parents just come pick them up yes okay please absolutely and we wanted to be very flexible with the 16th 17th and 18th the 18th being the friday right before um middle winter recess they have the option to do both they can they you know if you it might work well if you have younger children you just request to go in the backpack correct you want to be sure you have older kids you want to be sure you actually see the test cat absolutely pick it up you can come pick it up yourself absolutely president leatherboro thank you for sure strategic planning so um many uh of you

049have already seen the strategic plan is in board docs for board adoption on this evening now the next steps everyone said what are the next steps now that we have a strategic plan well that's half of it right the strategic plan um the outline of it so now schools will develop strategic planning committees to develop their action plans during the spring and remainder of the school year now what's important here is that when the schools develop their planning committees they will develop a committee for each of the areas of the strategic plan right so we have teaching learning and leadership we have a wellness section of the strategic plan a communication section of the of the strategic plan and the last bullet here the dei committees will be formed at schools as part of their

050strategic planning committees and it's really important when we say dei i know there was uh talk of it this evening i i want to refer individuals back to the october 15th presentation that was done at the board meeting by dr bellen assistant superintendent skanzuso where we actually defined what diversity means what equity means and what inclusion means i encourage everyone to revisit that so we have the same baseline so there's no confusion about what we mean when we talk about dei in the district and to further that so this is the template that will be available for every committee at every school so this is an example goal statement 2a under the wellness community and sustainability district strategic planning goal and the goal activity listed on the left so now the teams at the school

051are able to fill in what their action steps are the timeline the persons or groups responsible the resources or the fiscal impact and the measurable evidence of success so this will be individual for each school each school committee will own their areas of the strategic plan with the action steps that are specific to their schools so when everyone asks what are the next steps these are the next steps for each school in each of the committees they just have a question please um so when you're talking about each school we'll have several committees for each one of these who will the committees be comprised of and how will that be determined right on cue great question vice president van sais so the committees will be made up of stakeholders right so we will have parents

052that will be part of some of the committees teachers will be part of every committee administrators will be part of every committee just so that we have everyone's voice and input in the strategic plan that is specific to that school the action steps thank you very much for that question okay sorry diversity equity and inclusion so with the dei committees being formed at each school this is very important because representatives from the dei committees will be members of the district-y dei team not not every person on the dei committee but individuals from each school's dei committee will be part of the dei district-wide team that dei district-wide team will receive specialized training and we will be working with an external facilitator to assist with dei planning we want to develop a dei plan for williamsville

053by williamsville we do not want a plan that is already made up and given to our district it's very important that we are involved in the plan making for our school district but we are going to have an external facilitator that is a specialist that will help us along guiding that plan development now i do want to say also this is not going to be a rushed process it will be slow meaningful so that is it is sustainable that's what's really important not just something that we check off because it's done but it needs to become part of our district part of williamsville board member singh dr bronner i just want to clarify that the dea committee is going to be different from the strategic planning committee though there is an overlap in some of

054the activities that they would do perfect you that that word overlap is very important right because there will be some individuals that are on the committees at their schools that will be part of the district-wide dei district-wide dei team but then there will also be stakeholders that will be part of that dei team also that will not be on the individual school committees so very good point um in terms of building principals sending out invitations to join the committees is that all going to be happening at the same time i'm concerned that like we're going to hear from one school to say oh we're being asked to join the committee over here you know the school right so what we um have that's really unique about our district is that we have a solid group

055of principles that work together at each level and they've been working together at each level so we will have coordination along those levels and should parents expect to see that invitation before the february break or would that be after the february break well probably after the february break yes because again we we want to make sure that it's not rushed it's very you know methodic and thoughtful okay dr littman yeah i had a question is it is it notes um each school is forming your own committee made up of stakeholders as such uh what what two things what oversight do we provide is a board of education and second um could we be involved at specifics i mean yeah could we be involved is individual board members working with a specific school you know similarly

056to how we serve as liaison to the pta um has that been thought about you know what that's a good question that had not been thought about what had been thought about is how the the district the board had representation on the district-wide strategic planning team and that will continue because the work of the action plans at the school building are so school specific it's really important that they have a school specific lens right so if the board will like regular updates we can definitely do that but being involved at that micro level for each school i don't know that that would be productive however having representatives from the board on the district-wide dei team is something that would be very advantageous yeah you know it comes to my mind because i've served on a

057number of committees and groups at buffalo state eei and i'm saying okay well you know i have background and i have an interest and you know if i could be helpful you know i would be there absolutely many board members do you know in discussion with many board members we've all different levels of training of dei expertise in dei have run dei workbook groups as you know board member pooling has and things of that nature so it's really important that we look at the expertise on the board and then work with president leatherboro to decide who will be on that dei district y team representing the board of education please i think it's a really nice suggestion my my concern is um we have liaisons at each school but a number of board members do

058work during the day and so i don't want to create a situation where one school has a liaison and the other one doesn't just because someone has a day job and i think with a few board members already serving on the district level team i feel like that's really good oversight that we already do have i don't think oversight's the right word right um we're not managing it engagement right engagement involvement thank you for that good work yeah thank you and thank you for those comments so we experienced an email incident in our in our district back in december so i do want to take a moment to talk about this because we did send notification to our families yesterday about the email incident so in december in december the district learned of an incident

059where our email servers were used to deliver potentially malicious links through reply emails so all families were notified yesterday about the incident now questions came up of if this happened in december why are we just hearing about it now so the third bullet is very important an external forensic team just completed the analysis of the event and concluded these things number one it's unlikely any unauthorized person actually reviewed or downloaded the contents of the emails that were sent so that's very important secondly secondly approximately 160 emails contain student related information but no pii no personal identifiable information we're taking steps to reduce the likelihood of an incident like this will occur again in consultation with our attorneys and the forensic team from the third party company that we hired so that last bullet is important

060because i don't want people to think that just now is when we started taking these stops when the incident occurred we notified the state education department the district privacy officer connection like we were supposed to and we took steps then to make sure we mitigate any type of incident like this happening again once the external external forensic team completed their analysis that's when we were able to notify our school community okay now anyone that is individually impacted will receive a separate notification regarding that board of education elections so i want to thank our district kirk clerk lynn carey she went through this already i know the board has adopted the procedures but we wanted to have this in the community update for reference so the board candidate information and applications are available on the district's

061website those interested in being a board candidate should contact the district clerk lynn carey and her information is there the budget vote and school board elections are may 17 2022 and i will say i feel like every time i talk about and give the community update it gets longer and longer there's so much great information we do a lot of it on the weekly update but we know that parents like a one-stop shop so we want to make sure we do a lot of recapping so they're able to download this and board docs also universal pre-k information will be sent to eligible families on friday february 11th five day full day upk programming within the district and with off-site providers we saw a great presentation from principal bowen this evening about the upk program at

062country parkway for additional information on the district upk program please call the office of student services the number is listed there or visit the universal pre-k website our williamsville.org backwork slash apply for slash universal pre-k and that is the community update thank you very much are there any questions i'm sorry i should have asked that so i do want to ask uh our communication director mr phillipowski to please pull up the calendar the proposed calendar for the 22-23 school year thank you very much mr filipowski so you can see from this calendar we're going to do a little quiz so this calendar has 182 student days there are three superintendent conference days scheduled for august 31st 30th and september 1st so for 22 23 how many snow days does williamsville have absolutely five snow days

063thank you very much for that so you will see from this calendar that this calendar um many of you will know that it mirrors the adopted boces calendar so we have the days almost identical to boces including the wednesday before thanksgiving and the 182 days with three superintendent conference days scheduled for the beginning of the school year for teacher professional learning okay and this is item 11c on our agenda so anyone at home that wants to take a look at our draft calendar can hold up that way um is there any questions from the board on the calendar as it stands right now in draft form mr biscagelia and i know it's a draft and i know this my thoughts on this is it doesn't change this draft you know coming up next year in

064my eyes because you know it's important to center it around both these days you know their schedule i mean because they provide services to our students um you know but i suggest as a board in the future if we discuss and possibly come up with um a letter or something you know writing toward to boces to ask um spring break to be relatively the same each year where it would be the week after the easter holiday um i know there's been years that it has been before um but i think it's just with traveling and many families that go away um it might might be better for our community that way you know just for future years to to advocate for that from boces i know they might not listen but you know at least

065as a single board member i would feel better advocating for that to possibly have that spring break be after that week in the future you know and and we can discuss that later and if if that's something we decided to vote on and do down the line that would be great but like i said i know it doesn't quite change next year's because mostly's already um i believe voted on their calendar so they they vote on it yeah and i don't want to hurt the service they're sold yeah yep board member kashmir no no it i'm just saying boces votes on it tomorrow i believe which won't change tonight it's pretty hot does anyone else from the board want to comment on that point so i just like to ask a question so i know

066it was discussed so there it it what is the purpose so i think everyone understands for the shift that might happen there is some thought put into it what what is really the determining factor sometimes when he's when that spring recess is scheduled absolutely and that's a great question uh vice president van sais and just for full transparency for the erie one boces myself and the superintendent of kinton mr sabatino samado are the jmt representatives developing the calendar and boces does put thought into it and the reason sometimes that easter break may shift is because the idea of having students return from easter break and go right into a new york state assessment is not something many districts want or look for so in april of 2023 the new york state ela assessments begin on

067wednesday april 19th so if the week of easter was given with students returning the 17th two days later they began the new york state ela assessments and a lot of districts you know you want to ease students into assessments you don't want them returning to you know any sort of anxiety or testing so that's why a lot of times it will shift or it will move about yeah that's no it's a yeah i knew that prior and that's a good for the pub that's very good the public to know i i i believe that's why uh vice president vance asked because she knew also right and then thinking of that i just think you know sometimes it's better and we actually kind of heard about the recess thing after is kids come back from vacations

068with their mind clear and sometimes that's a better thing for state exams um or any type of exam um just thoughts you know as as we discuss this in the future for advocating to do that absolutely dr singh i mean when we develop the calendar here i'm sure like um maybe in the future you can think about this like through a dei lens where uh how the holidays fall and when they fall it's i know it's not practical to have every holiday on every diverse occasion right but at least we can make sure that when that say for example in the indian calendar of like diwali at least we cannot recruit when possible make a request that we don't have exam on that day so kids will have a chance to celebrate their holiday at

069home you should have them study for exam throughout the day kind of thing i think that's a good point i think that works to our advantage if you if you remain on that committee because with all of the work that will be done in our district you'll be able to hear from stakeholders and then take it back to that committee at that year boces level and i agree with you about looking at it through a dei lens because what i might value as a day i feel deserves a recess might be different to my neighbor and i need to respect that yes any other questions or comments on the calendar so just for clarity this is a draft calendar we are not being asked to vote on this tonight great all right thank you so

070we are now on item 11d which is our policies i'm gonna pull that up excuse me one moment look in our poor oh i'm picked on the wrong one in board docs under 11d you will see all the clean edited and current policies that we are approving tonight um there were three different policy committees that worked on the 1 000 level 2000 level and 3 000 level policy so that's why you see so many up for approval and i just want to thank the members of the board that served on any one of those policy committees because it was an additional assignment that that each of you took on so thank you for that so at this time first we're going to take them from the table and then we'll vote on them is there

071a motion to take from the table the following policies for the second reading and adoption 1338 duties of the school physician nurse practitioner internal audit function 2310 membership in associations shared decision making school based planning 3140 flag display parent teacher association public access to records 6160 professional growth in student development character education and the removal of the following policies 30 to 40 student participation and 3430 uniform violent and disruptive incident systems it's a motion place to take them from the table at this time thank you mrs beager and second board member pullin all in favor of removing them from the table opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously thank you and now at this time is there a motion for the second reading and adoption of the above policies thank you dr mcclary and vice president van

072cise is there any discussion on these policies this is our second reading we did review them at last month's meeting as well seeing none all in favor opposed pensions motion carries unanimously and i just want to again recognize that a number of these policies had not been updated since 2000 what was it like 2009 right so um there was a tremendous amount of work and it took multiple meetings for all of this to get done and when we come back to our march board meeting we'll start we'll set up uh our next set of meetings absolutely for policies that's correct all right we are going on to the budget and finance portion of our meeting 12a and so superintendent brown highlight turn it over to you for our budget development thank you very much i'm

073going to ask our chief financial officer our assistant superintendent of finance mr tom maturski to come up and give that presentation thank you dr brown hall uh good evening everyone uh this is going to be the second presentation um that we have had on the budget first one being in january uh if we can put that up okay so getting right into it uh i'm starting back with another review of the program increases uh there has not been much change in this from the information that everyone received in january i think just again go over the highlight here first of all the items are all maintenance items to keep what we have in our current budget moving forward and they're coded as either contract inflation or program so you can see from the information that

074the majority of these are human resource related uh 4.6 million is our human resource increases in salaries and then the other three items underneath it are about two million dollars on the benefit side uh we have a couple other items that have been added toward the bottom our boces services which is again student centered uh 375 thousand and then our transportation we have a contract with our contractor and this not only includes the required sed increase per our contract but at the same time fuel increases as we know fuel costs are go up going up and the district provides the fuel to our transportation operation and then lastly we have some supply increases strictly for the instructional side a couple examples here are athletics music arts um and uh and math so with that it

075results in an increase of seven million six hundred two thousand one hundred nineteen dollars and provides a working budget on the expenditure side of two hundred twelve million six hundred twenty three thousand eighty six dollars which is three 3.71 uh just to kind of go over to the right side of the budget uh we always use a two-year look and this is really to see how our expenses may line up for the next year you'll see that a lot of the expenses are very close the only difference is in health insurance and we are expecting that to increase not just next year but the following years due to the impact covet has on our health insurance and health industry so again that's just an informational item on what may be in store in the following

076year so next uh we had some a very good news received from our state governor and we received information and the key item i want to share here tonight is this is a little bit different than other governor of budget presentations this is a very good presentation as far as what it does for school districts and as a result the information we're receiving from all different sources is there's not going to be a lot of changes as we have seen in the past where the legislature adds a lot of money to the budgets so what i wanted to do is to explain and show uh so that's full transparency here how these budget numbers are arrived on the state aid side if you were to look at the governor's proposal and what it came in

077for our district there would be a aid amount of about 58 or 54.8 million dollars and if you look at that same report at the bottom side it compares it to this year that's the actual amount that we're receiving that's about 48.7 so it's a 6.1 million dollar increase however we have to understand of how that was calculated by the state and one of the first items that has to be reduced from that is our upk number and the reason for that is that's not a general fund budget or expense that is budgeted and accounted for in the special aid fund so we can include that in our general fund budget so that is removed we then move down to the first three items i list there as aid reductions and the reason for that

078is when we prepare our september information to the state we give them our 2021-22 budget and they use that full budget as and a way to calculate the following year's aid we know we're not going to expend the full budget and we know historically why and where what areas we don't expend so these are the adjustments that go with that so essentially foundation aid transportation aid excess cost aid they're all reduced to a to properly budget those dollar amounts uh boces is a different item this year because the board knows about two years ago you all approved a capital project for boces every erie county school district that participates in erie one was required to do so we've made two payments already uh to them and the payments have been about one million dollars each

079and as a result we get boces eight on it the problem is that's going to be short-lived we have one more payment to go this year and that's it and then this large amount of aid falls off you don't want to budget it and then have a shortfall in a couple years because then you have a deficit situation and then we had some same situation where they look at our total budget and we know we'll be a little bit under on the expense the last item i just want to note here is building aid our music projects are completed from our perspective they're being used but the final reports have not been submitted because the contracts are still being closed out the fact is that the state doesn't aid you to they approve your final

080cost reports and it's likely that that timing will not meet the aid reports for next year so as a result we can't count on those dollars at this point the result is uh 5.2 million dollars of reductions which results in a state aid budgeted amount of 49 million six twenty eight seven hundred twelve thousand that's a increase of almost two million dollars one million nine thirty two five fifty one so now going to the uh tax cap calculation and here again pretty straightforward um same calculation you've seen in the past our uh we start with our current year tax levy 133 790 000 the growth factors provided by the new york state department of finance that is used to multiply down we then add our current year budgeted pilot amount and then that's multiplied by

081two percent which is the maximum again 6.58 is the cpi rate for the northeast consumer uh sector and so you can see the difference here between what we're allowed to actually increase and what the actual inflation rate was for our area you then add the increase in pilots or that's subtracted back out here and then that provides us a tax levy limit of 137 million 239 thousand three hundred twenty dollars when you go down a bit you're seeing that we had a little bit of a carryover and that that percent levy increase at the cap would be 2.58 the recommendation is to provide a proposed levy under the cap at 137 million two hundred thousand dollars that's a three million four hundred ten thousand dollar increase two point five five percent increase of the levy

082and it would be uh forty six thousand eight hundred ninety two dollars under the cap so looking at what our revenue budget is for uh projected at this time for the next year um i wanna go back to the state amount that 1.9 million dollars and say this is really something that we need to understand that it's great news if you look at the prior year the current year our our 21 22 budget that 47.6 million dollars included three million dollars of federal aid the increase that we now have with the foundation aid and the state we are not relying on federal aid in the next year's budget so we have eliminated that potential deficit in the future so that is a good thing we then go down and we see a couple other major

083changes our pilots you saw that that was adjusted in the tax cap calculation so you're seeing an increase here of 517 and uh and you're also seeing a million dollar increase in sales tax so all that said and done uh you go to the bottom you're seeing that our actual revenue budget is 211 million 980 160 and then just to kind of go back and show you this in a little better summary you're seeing that we have 212 three eighty eighty six dollars of expense estimate we have a deficit so far of 742.026 which at this point in time is very very good so with that all said you're looking at a tax levy increase of 2.55 and a budget increase of 3.71 in a year again where the consumer price index is 6.58 so

084a couple things here of note which makes this even i think better uh we have not included any retirement adjustments in this at this point so those are forthcoming and we will be including that when we do the preliminary budget presentation in march so again uh just highlighting some of the positive as well the negatives on the positive side you know this is a maintenance expenditure budget with no program cuts the state increases we've removed that federal aid that we had in the current year so that's great so we have somewhat no budget shortfalls we also have some growth in our revenue areas which is great the payment in lieu of taxes and the sales tax which is good and uh all signs are indicating that we might possibly be exiting covet which should be

085good news for the economy on the negatives again we have to be concerned about inflation will that continue to go up and how that will affect not so much this current budget but future budgets uh uncertainty on the long-term revenue stream to new york state and essentially our budget's no longer relying on federal aid but their budget is so what happens when that federal revenue goes away from new york state will it impact our state aid will they be able to continue to support the higher foundation aid amounts that is a question for a couple years down the road and then lastly um you know again how the economy will be reacting if the economy continues to improve that also affects other parts of our revenue budget that will a be able to be increased

086so again uh at this meeting uh what we're just doing is we're presenting the information we'll receive feedback we have a budget um forum a little bit later we have the budget feedback email that is now active we'll be updating our program continuation and our revenue budget um between now and the next meeting in march we'll definitely balance the budget no doubt about that and then again we'll be presenting that information at the march meeting thank you mr richterski and we do have our budget work session with the public forum a little bit later but i want to use this time to answer any board member questions or comments any questions or comments from the board related to the budget presentation thus far dr lipman i'll start on the left and i'll go this way

087yeah well it's not here um i mean as usual uh mr matowski does an excellent job with all the data laying it out making it easy to follow and explain um i have a few micro questions and we'll save the giant questions for another day but you know you talked about a larger increase in pilot payments and proposed sales tax increases and i know you know pilots tend to go to the board and we see them uh so i don't know if i missed something or i was just trying to get clarity on uh where that was coming from you know that large increase sure um the the payment in lieu of taxes is the actual um amount of of pay up actual their tax there's not tax certiorary they're actually payment and little tax

088agreements that we receive um from the town of amherst essentially that is for boundaries within our district of locations within our district and we have actually had a growth in that this year some of that is new some of that is uh agreements that have been uh changed and so that is actually reflective of this year's revenue so that's why that goes up and what what's done in the tax cap calculation is it's required that you really do that um that changing on an annual basis so that it's reflective if you're audited and they do audit the tax cap formula the office of the state controller every year they take a look at it and they want to make sure that your numbers are truly reflective what's going on and that's really why the payment

089in lieu of taxes is going up thank you you have any other questions no i mean it's what i always say it's a challenging job of miss matursky and the board to try to balance the revenue and the expenses and as i asked about information about efficiencies i know that the district has worked very hard to save money over time to uh find efficiencies and that's always positive but you know as you always say taxes always go up but how high do they need to go on would be my idea and you know someone is a continuing project so we'll wait and see how it all goes thank you doctor anyone else on my left with questions about the budget anyone on my right mr biskelia thanks for the presentation this might not be a

090question you could answer you know um but just to ask you mentioned with the negatives uncertainty on new york's long-term revenue stream you know we don't rely on the federal aid obviously the state does i understood that but you said in a couple years you mentioned in a couple years is what the state would have to worry about where it could affect school districts so you're not seeing next year it might be like three or four years or what's your estimate of where it might possibly i'm not saying it would but right well all that i would say is i'm tying it more to the um sr2 the gear 2 and the arp funding and that expires in september 23. okay so again i'm assuming the state's on the same timeline as what school districts

091are so i'm thinking that 23 24 24 25 years when you'll probably see it most likely 24 25. i answered it thank you dr singh i mean this is just a hypothetical question we had the presentation by dr rick rick earlier he mentioned that this being an election year we're getting more money and this might continue between for next year and but going down the road three four years down the road we may not get so much money in foundation in right and if that does happen would that be this is hypothetical of course would there be like we do have to cut programs at that point or i i would say that every budget year is unique there always are items within our budget that we have prioritized and although we don't want to

092make reductions i think last year was a great example we we had uh dire consequences that i had presented really going back to december in the long range plan and then with january where at that point i shared i think there were four and a half pages of items that were non-mandatory those were the non-mandatory items and i didn't even try to do it i did add it up but i didn't share it with the board but none of those items would have been easy reduction so the the thing that you would probably do as has happened many years in the past is you cut items such as supplies you cut items you know those items far from as far away from the classroom as you can the only problem with that is as you

093all know from the the december long range plan presentation about 70 percent of our budget salary and benefits so those other items don't account for much um i think i shared at the um the meeting before that our athletic budget is only about 1.8 million dollars for a district our size a 205 million dollar budget that's nothing so even if you were to eliminate that whole program you may not have any true impact on a major deficit so the answer is it's it's complicated not because of making the cuts it's because they're hard cuts to make thank you for that and and i was a part of the um budget training event with uh erie one boces with rick thames as well and what struck me is throughout his presentation first of all i thought

094that um that would be a great job for you in the future of doing something along that line we don't want you to leave but you would be excellent at that but my other thought was that every tip he gave because he speaks in very clear language you don't have to have a business background to understand what how he's explaining things much in the same way that you do which i fully appreciate but every suggestion he made i was able to reflect and say we're doing that we're doing that so we talked about the importance of having that long range planning and he gave exactly what dr singh just mentioned that yes this year looks great with how much aid we're getting but if we don't fix the foundation formula and like for example it's

095being funded off the to 2020 or 2000 census right so it's over 20 years old the data that's being used to make those decisions not to mention the the the details in how those different things are aided is way off so you know when we lobby tomorrow afternoon we have a series of questions that we can ask um assembly woman mcmahon and under wrath we'll be doing that next week as well because we're in really good shape for this year but we want to make sure that we're really being proactive about the future another piece that um was shared in the training yesterday the training was last week thursday was so timely with relations to our budget season and our lobbying efforts tomorrow is grant funding and so when we look at american the american

096rescue plan for example as one form of funding the the recommendation that was made was don't don't allocate that money for something that you can't fund later on down the road and so it was recommended that you you use it for materials and programs and supports a big bang for your buck is is staff professional development if you are going to use it to staff positions they need to be positions that you are that you're considering for the short term and i was so appreciative of that thinking about the the forethought the the mindful decision making that took place with dr baylen's office in terms of how that money would be used with our learning labs because that's helping with learning recovery as a result of the pandemic if we're able to sustain it in

097the future wonderful but if we're not it's not going to be a detriment if we can't so um i was just really happy to be able to attend that presentation and feel so confident i always feel confident with you mr matarsky but just i you know just to have everything aligned everything that he was saying i was thinking we're doing that and that's a very comfortable position to be in as a board member so thank you for that um i think we're good awesome we will revisit budget and finance in just a few minutes so um now that mr maturski has done his presentation just want to make sure this yep we are still on the rest of the items in 12. so i'm asking for a motion to resolve and approve the property tax

098settlements in 12b 12c and 12d as presented thank you mr viscalia and vice president van sice any discussion on the prop property tax supplements all in favor all right all hands up equals motion carries unanimously thank you item 13 is our liaisons does anyone from the board wish to report on a meeting or event that they attended related to their liaison assignment this is merrick boatner thank you president leatherboro yeah i just wanted to mention that i attended a sepsa event recently which was an informative special education presentation and i would like to thank katsy ruth kathy ratzel cheryl lazaro don jan goodness i'm tongue-tied john d'angelo from the office of exceptional education for presenting and for mr scanzuzzo's attendance and helping to answer the participant questions i really appreciated having that presence of our

099wonderful office of exceptional education there and it was a great informative presentation so thank you thank you miss kiss merrick spoke here i popped on the end of that meeting and i was like blown away with how many district staff were on there because it was a zoom call i was practically in my pajamas and i'm like wow look at all these people and here they are you know giving of their time in the evening like that so it was it was really very well done and there was some great questions by the parents too so i think they really appreciated sometimes you see a name but now it will be able to connect connect a name with a face and give the parents that time that screen time um was just really well done

100and kudos to sepsa for putting that together anybody else on a liaison assignment that they want to share okay thank you item 14. as mentioned in the president's report tomorrow is lobby day and our community can be proud that there are three board members lobbying tomorrow with our local legislators and our superintendent who will also be lobbying next week with on similar issues because we're all united front lobby for the same issues all right um no items under 15 or 16 item 17 there is information in board docs regarding the district air conditioning capital project i want to be clear that this is not a done deal this is something that would need to go through the community for a vote but is there any questions from the board i should say what questions do

101you have at this time regarding the air conditioning project i did submit a question just noticing the the priority of um elementary middle school high school and um i was just trying to understand aside from the children being younger was there any was there any rationale given to like the age of the building or the something not student related that helps to make the decision to pursue the elementary implementation first i i would say that one of the guiding reasons why we also chose elementary was our our use of the building for summer school and and actually it's non-use in the last few years when we've had warmer summer weather we've actually made decisions to try and not use elementaries and instead to use a middle school and that's not really the best for students

102of that age they really need to be in their building it's fit for them this furniture is better we do move furniture but it's not the comfortable feeling that they normally would have so when we thought about that we thought the elementary we should concentrate on those buildings first and and that's why um they are the number one priority and so i appreciate that rationale that actually makes a lot of sense was i understanding it correctly then that you would do all elementary schools at the same time that that would be what is um presented there um the recommendation at this point is that um initially we were thinking we're going to do the entire district as you all know we've been working on this really since september and um when we got the first

103cost estimates in um they really of course were much higher than anyone could have projected and so uh when we broke it down uh it made sense to go with the elementary schools as a phase one and then uh you have two other phases or at least plan now you could have one phase one more phase and but that 60 million dollar number would just be for all the elementaries and then again the rationale that is provided in there is you know due to uh really four major things being that first of all you know if you do that you're going to move forward you're going to be putting it in those schools at a point in time where they need it and then you know you're not buying the rest of this which is

104really kind of cold inflated pricing it gives us time to do a little more research on some of the other systems some of them may benefit some of the other buildings more than the elementary those elementary buildings the system we selected is really perfect for it and uh and then you know lastly um i think we also can create some additional reserve funding which is very important and that reduces the project expense in the future okay that makes sense all right thank you very much for that doctor i had the same thoughts uh that president leatherberg had but you know you're talking about uh doing all of the six elementary schools at the same time and just my view on you know looking at all the supply chain issues and getting you know the employees

105necessary to do all of that that would seem feasible to do i mean i'm thinking from our school visits a number of the elementary schools are laid out and designed in the same way so you know some of those uh timeliness and cost factors i mean would kind of carry over if you have one building with others similar that makes it a much more a fluid but my concern again would be you know in the time and with the materials and all those things it they could all be done at one time leave it up to the professionals vice president just a question a clarifying question so for the capital project would we be voting would the community be voting on just the elementary project or the fate just we're breaking it up into phases

106so it's still a vote for the air conditioning project but we are going to look at doing it in a phased out process the way i would recommend it initially and that's up to the board's decision would be only to vote on 60 million dollars for phase one that's all that's all okay thank you for that okay so one last question dr singh so uh how much time do you think you take for the phase one to get complete great question so the timeline um would probably be like this uh if you had approval this coming may 22 it's going to take about seven months to do the physical design because they haven't done that yet so that takes us to january 23 and at that point they submitted to the new york state education

107department and so we'll say that takes them six months for approval that's what it took our most recent security project so that really takes us out to about july august for approval we would then do a bid in september 23 and then we would do bid awards in november 23. uh construction would begin in april 24 and it's the way this is going to work it's going to be a lot different than what prior projects have occurred prior projects we've done only in summer for the most part this is going to be a full year-round project so you are actually going to need portable classrooms and they're going to stage this by wing so they're going to take one wing out at a school they're going to do two schools at the same time so

108maybe three depending on what they can do it's a two-year project essentially with uh the need to do two years of actual um commissioning and what i mean by that is you need another cooling year so if you end in september you have to have that next summer to make sure that the systems are commissioned and operating correctly that doesn't affect the usage but it affects the project end date which will affect the aid the aid will be a little bit longer than a normal project so having said all of that your answer to your question is if you're starting at 24 you'll probably be done somewhere around 26 for this first space so by your schedule it will be starting the second word even before the first one is completed we would probably uh

109go out and that's why i think i put in there 25 or so because you want to get the paperwork done first and get that so you're actually going right behind it and that will also benefit the cost piece because if you've got contractors who are still in the district they're going to be more inclined to give you good bid pricing to stay in the district and and that's how past projects have worked here if we had multiple projects you get a contractor who's working here they know it they like working here they get paid on time so they want to re-bid here and they give us good pricing thank you thank you very much and i appreciate those the questions and the explanation because it really is we're looking at a very long range

110process yes um but we're looking to start with our elementary schools and the lotus grows in the mud right so it might get a little messy but it's gonna it's going to come out to a beautiful result so thank you all right our next item is item 18 which is our universal kindergarten presentation dr brown holly turn it over to you thank you very much and um to piggyback on that phenomenal presentation that was given earlier by principal bowen we're going to ask dr bellin and assistant superintendent king zuzo to come up and present about upk thank you dr brown hall board of education uh i know that there's been much conversation about upk so i hope that this presentation gives you a little more information um detailing um you know what goes into uh

111the universal pre-k program but before we get started um i just want to say that for most families uh this is the first experience with the williamsville central school district and we strive to make it a pleasant and harmonious relationship i think as we've seen from evidence of the few families that talked about country parkway's experience that's exactly how we'd like to have our upk experiences at all seven locations where we are hosting upk programming throughout the district within our buildings and with our cbo's our community-based organizations we want to recognize the amount of work that goes into planning preparing notifying families the organization systematic procedures put in place by cheryl lazaro and carried out by mary bengart our secretary very much appreciated because there is a tremendous amount of work and detail that goes

112into gathering information uh for for families to to ensure that they they're part of a a process can we start the presentation oops there we go so the new york state department of education states that the purpose of the pre-kindergarten standards is to ensure that all children have rich and varied learning experiences that prepare them for success in school and establish a sound foundation for college and career readiness so some information some facts regarding upk who's eligible children will be four years old by december 1st for the upcoming school year they have to be willingsville central school district registered students and students must they must meet the new york state immunization and health mandated requirements that all students are obliged to where are our classes for the 2021 school year there are five community-based organizations

113our cbo's that we refer to with 12 classes and they're at launch pad pixie village child time edu kids at cross point and edu kids in williamsville in addition to our two classes each at country parkway and forest elementary schools students are expected to attend five days a week it's a 180 day school year parents are responsible for transportation of their children to and from the upk program so how many children can participate so this past year we had based on our census approximately 600 students that were eligible for upk programming next year based on our census information we have about 538 approximately students who are eligible we have 222 students this year in our full day upk programming 142 of those students are at the community based organizations and 80 are in our four

114district classes we have 62 kids that are attending half day upk program at our cbo's for a total of 284 students who are benefiting from the upk programming preparing them for kindergarten families apply children are placed through a lottery process based on the fact that we have more we have more families eligible for the spots that we have available bullionville provides upk uh by contracting with i said that the five cbo's in those locations and we have a upk consultant who provides additional oversight of the cpos and that person's uh is funded through the grant we have a maximize our class sizes of 20 students in a class and with that we have one upk teacher we have two para professionals um two aides that help and uh for um classes with 18 students we

115have one teacher and one aide and those are the basic requirements established for the guidance of the upk program we also have links to our williamsville central school district website which illustrates a lot of the information regarding our upk programming and what is needed as far as detailed information that mrs lazar will be uh providing you shortly along with the new york state education department guidance on upk and what that entails regarding curriculum and areas of areas that need to be covered for instructional purposes so on and so forth and at this time i'd like to bring up cheryl lazaro and she'll talk about the student selection notification process thank you thanks mr scanzuzzo um dr brownhall on board thank you for having me um to share some of the information to expand on what

116mr skanzuzo was talking about it is a lengthy process we have actually started the process to get ready for next year um as you know you know things take some time we go from january until actually september through the process of inviting our families if they're interested making sure they get all the information and and get to the point that we actually have them placed so i just wanted to explain a little bit um what that looks like for you and if you have questions obviously i'd be happy to answer that so as i said january we we develop the interest letters that we want to send to the families the information changes every year a little bit depending on the community based organizations we have and this year it was wonderful we had four

117classes inside our in-house in our own district which was really exciting february now actually as you saw on a slide that dr brown hall had up earlier that um this friday actually those letters now will be going out to our families um they've been um envelopes have been stuffed and they're ready to go out into the mail we then have to give the families time to look at that information really determine they might have a child that's eligible but really determine do they really want to access the upk and there can be very varied reasons why they may or may not so we give them time to send back those um interest forms we give them all kinds of information they we receive a lot of phone calls asking for information to make sure they

118have clarity um and we get those those pieces back generally in march um and we have them the parents that are interested we then have them make sure all the documentation for actually registering their their child as a williamsville student immunization information all those things that are required we make sure that we help them through that process come april once we have all of our families we have all the information in we do run a random lottery this is something that's required because of the grant funding that we have that if as mr skanzuzo said we have more families than we do spots and so we do run a random lottery i do that i only see numbers i see no names i purposely make sure i don't see names and don't know who anybody

119is so that i can do that completely blind once we get the the numbers in we compare that to when the student the families submitted their interest forms and we assign every child a lottery number and all that is ranked it's um very complicated and kind of a long process to be honest with you because when the parents say yes my child i'm interested in having my child in the upk process for the lottery process we also asked them because we have five cbo's and we have four classes in-house what their preference may be for a placement we do share though that we can't guarantee that we can't even guarantee that they obviously will get a placement but we can't also guarantee that we will be able to give them their preference we ask for

120their first second and third choice um so that if they don't get their first choice you know we go from there so we really try to accommodate our families as best we can through the process and in a lot of them a lot of families they already have maybe some other children already at one of the cbo sites and you know they really want that site but again we can't promise that we can do that based on their lottery ranking and and where they fell and that process goes from the middle of april until through um may and into june that we work and it takes that many weeks to really take all the information and literally place all the students in all the slots at all the cbo's in our for um in-house classes

121so we continue all that and we notify the families the the letters go out of the families that um their child did get in through the lottery process but at the same time we also send notification to the families that if that their child did not get in but they go on a wait list and you know and believe it or not we go through quite a few always over a hundred families where children come off the wait list and they do get placed as the school year progresses for all kinds of reasons that families may move they'd have their children you know taken out of the program so that does happen so we confirm all the schedules we we set up um working with ub we set up screenings we put together all the

122information we get the class list together all of that we get everything ready for all the screenings and assessments make sure we have all the materials ordered for the school year for everything and that's all done by the end of august and then come september i always hold a parent orientation at every site this past year whether it was virtual or in person or however that was work but i always give a parent orientation to make sure the parents have a good understanding of how things will look um the transparency of all the information for the screenings that happen and there's many of those so that we'll go over um but also give the parents opportunity face-to-face so to speak to be able to ask questions and be reassured about how things work and what

123it's going to look like what their child's day is going to look like what the curriculum is all about all of that so that happens in september and we go through all of that we talk about parent conferences the progress reporting for report cards and try to give the parents as much information as we can and of course we make our office available at any time that they have questions or concerns so that's most of the information that i have that i wanted to share for the board so obviously once we're done if you have questions please let me know so thank you thank you thank you cheryl [Music] good evening everyone we also wanted to share with you upk from an instructional program perspective and as cheryl mentioned our program has been running actually

124for quite some time at our community-based organizations we're most fortunate this year to include now as you know country parkway and forest elementary with that we had to do quite a bit of planning around what the program would look like here in the district so based upon new york state education department considerations for planning and implementing upk programs as well as state guidance and regulations we had to first ensure that our program was in alignment with our k-12 program and our learning standards so that strong instructional content aligned to our standards and k-12 was a focus as we set out to plan our program part of what the state also requires is that students experience learning in a center model and what this really calls for is a blend of teacher initiated as well as

125student initiated activities which i think you got to see some of that as we saw the video this evening from a reading and literacy perspective we must provide early literacy and emergent reading instruction with that we did review several programs and a way to really bring that piece to our early learners what we were seeking is authentic experiences with reading thinking talking writing and reflecting and what we came across is actually a wonderful program that aligns in a very nice way with our philosophy and our instructional program and we are using fountains and pinellas classroom for pre-k this year with our teachers and our students and have gotten quite a bit of very positive feedback from both our professionals as well as our parents from a math perspective really we're looking at routines and what

126students encounter in their everyday lives and their environments practice counting items describing attributes identifying shapes making and recognizing patterns and sorting and comparing groups of objects are just some of the items that they focus on from a math perspective from science again the idea here is that students are not only reading about and talking about but also living science what does this look like obviously dealing with the weather their senses plants and animals uh doing some experiments as well around liquids and solids and sounds within their environment are some of the areas of focus as you can imagine a tremendous amount of focus is also placed not just from an academic perspective but also on social emotional development items such as asking for help working with peers following directions working in groups completing tasks and

127taking turns are emphasized during the program daily living language fine motor and gross motor skills round out a very comprehensive program in this regard students are doing a variety of things including self-care as well as holding pens and crayons using scissors and they've done an excellent job i've seen this with my own eyes it's quite impressive what the students are doing drawing running jumping hopping and throwing and kicking a ball no they're not running whatsoever that's a good clarification so we wanted to share with you too and thank you to mr bowen this is an example of the upk daily schedule at country parkway so you can see many of the items we just talked about are embedded within the schedule what was really a great planning component before the school year even started is

128convening the four teachers and they've been wonderful very involved in building the program but really having a consistent schedule with all of the elements described across the four classrooms and also cheryl has done a tremendous job because everything we've talked about here is not exclusive just to our williamsville classrooms this is also the program that's been delivered at the cbo's so that took again a tremendous amount of cohesion and co collective uh you know thought and processing but cheryl was did a wonderful job making sure what we were planning on delivering here is also something that we were delivering to our children who are in our community-based organization classrooms she also added in for us which i do think is a nice graphic is how all of this comes together again with a nice emphasis

129on curriculum instruction and assessment again much like what you hear about in our k-12 program there is assessment that happens monitoring designing appropriate instruction and lesson planning communication with parents and within the team itself any needs for referrals based on any particular observations that are made during the program if the student does have an area of focus that needs to be emphasized a bit more that is also something that comes out in this process again a very targeted instructional approach and very much a collaborative problem-solving effort both with the professionals involved in the program as well as parents we did want all of you and our public to see that screening and assessment is also a mainstay of the program part of the commissioner's regulations for the program include that many of this actually is

130reflected there but also in our commissioner's regulations part 117 as students enter a school district for the first time things like speech and language and hearing and vision screens must also be provided to students assessment must also be used from an academic standpoint and a social standpoint to extend to establish children's developmental baselines and evaluate progress as required on an ongoing basis so we have just outlined some of that for you we also did want you to know cheryl mentioned the progress report again this is something that was worked on internally and collaboratively with teachers involved or instructional specialists in our district administrators to ensure that the progress report that was developed not only aligned with or reflected all the elements i just spoke of but also gave valuable information to parents some of whom

131you heard in the video describe that they are able to then work at with their children at home emphasizing some of the areas and they are very clear knowing in the progress report the areas that the students have already met with success so we believe it to be a very useful tool in that regard as well which is very important we did want to thank think in conclusion along with cheryl lazzaro danielle bicker and tracy kosis are the two teachers at country parkway karen losey and maria chandler at forest andrew bowen is here with us tonight we also wanted to thank mr wang over at forest along with gail milotello chris mcginley and tom bird who were very much part of this planning team so thank you for the opportunity to hear from us tonight

132and share this wonderful success story of upk and we look forward again to much more to come in the future that the students are doing a tremendous job we're very proud of them thank you and we're happy to answer any questions you may have thank you very much i'm going to start on my right and then go down the table all right um dr singh any questions okay dr mcclary yes i just have a few um very small questions about the cbo places or placement are they those buildings we'll call them are they also roughly within the district boundaries or are they lots of different places they are in the district boundaries yes um and at those facilities is it only williamsville students correct in our upk program yes so that is our program even

133though it's physically housed some in other buildings correct it's it's an extension of the williamsville schools program yes so they would have the you know the examples you gave from country parkway if i went to whatever it was little little child whatever um i would see those same kinds of things yes perfect thank you mr biscuit um sounds like a wonderful program but i did have a question what the thought base or discussion was to end at a 1 30 slash 145 time when many in other private schools but around williamsville for example saint gregs or st peter and paul and at 2 33. so that's uh that's country parkway start time and they basically uh because the parents are dropping providing transportation we wanted to have them start earlier to prevent any backlog or

134bottleneck of buses coming in and families coming and dropping those kids off no the end time not not the beginning time so it says like i'm just going through a daily schedule that ends in one you know afternoon circle on goodbye song is 130 dismissal is 145. is that one dismissal is it andrew is the right time there's a certain number of time i'm making you get up i can interject in there too it's it's a it's a five-hour program and with lunch it's five and a half hour program so if they're starting earlier obviously they're ending earlier and even for our cbo's the times vary a little bit because we have even students at country parkway and forest they might have actually had other children attending other schools like highmelementary or you know casey

135middle or whatever so there is the opportunity to make sure parents there isn't a bottleneck and that parents can drop their kids off and things move smoothly so to speak but go ahead andrew yeah absolutely it is a five and a half hour day but that the students receive in addition we did some planning in terms of if our arrival is at 8 15 for our students we altered that time that our students our country parkway students can come into the building and be supervised although classes don't start right away so parents don't have uh an issue or difficulty dropping their upk student and then their their school-aged child and make two different drops so we've tried to be as accommodating as possible if is it possible not in a dire need could we get

136like the email of like each ceo and like the start and end times if you don't mind sure i can provide you the start and end times yeah it varies across the sites that's why i want to take your time i would understand that yeah oh absolutely we have that and and it may vary for next year you know each year it varies a little bit but usually the start time is within a 45 minute to maybe 75 minute time frame that there might be a shift because obviously they have other commitments and requirements that they have to follow as well but i can definitely send that um so that the board has that access and if you don't mind thank you very much check you back on that could that be attached to this

137item in board dogs when you get that information doctor dr van gaal that way if a parent is looking at it and they're viewing the whole presentation they'll see that there it's absolutely okay thank you i appreciate that thank you okay um vice president vince any questions yeah just a quick question so i we've already touched on a couple times so truly the upk is inclusive well we really have different placements but it's the same universal program that is now with cheryl you said you were heading up to make sure that they're all delivering the same instructional um you know presentation to all of our children right the basis is new york state education curriculum the the pre-k curriculum you know first and foremost they're delivering the required curriculum which is excellent that even our

138cbo's are doing this because as we know we don't want just our williamsville schools having the upk delivering one set of instructional materials and then the cbo so i love that that's very exciting uh mr bowen and i were talking how important it is so this presentation thank you so much for it i think it's wonderful i'm thrilled that we have a upk program that is this comprehensive now for our students because providing these experiences and truly having our children come in as kindergarteners with management you know addressing functioning and management needs already they are truly ready to learn um and we'll we'll be able to help them even more so i think it's outstanding i thank you so much for this presentation we're very deliberate in ensuring that our cbo's and our in-district classes

139are going to be mirroring each other to the point where our cbo instructors are getting the same professional development with the new instructional model and curriculum that we do this year as our teachers did so very deliberate making sure that you know whatever wherever the location is the instruction the programming is going to be the setting great yeah thank you on my left miss kathmanduck i don't have a question but i did want to make a comment when we did our school visits recently we went to country parkway and were able to see one of the upk classrooms i was just impressed at how engaged those students who are in the classroom i think they were doing letters and sounds e for elephant if i believe i'm correct um and they were just so engaged

140in the lessons in even in their separate centers with that many kids in a classroom being able to really focus on the task at hand i was just so impressed so thank you all for what you're doing i appreciate it it's a credit to families i mean yes it is because i think we had less separation anxiety and issues with our pre-k kids than we did with our own kindergarten that's true it's the magic of upk and the and the ubk teachers have just done a phenomenal job they're very intentional in in planning their day so to to hit uh all of those skills um in a fun manner uh and the student engagement is very high they're adorable and we're learning and growing all together so it's great thank you mrs bieker yeah thank

141you this was a really wonderful presentation and it's exciting for me the video in the beginning was wonderful i was unable to go to that school visit so your video really brought to life what the classroom looks like i love that coupled with how you shared the schedule for the pre-k day um and i i'm sure that that's shared with families as well so they can see what their little ones are doing when they're first leaving for a school experience like this i love seeing the play built in there too so it doesn't feel like a scary academic experience more learning um through that play and how wonderful to hear the lucy calkins curriculum through rooting workshops so that transition when they come to school doesn't feel um so different it's something that they've already

142practiced my question actually uh has to do with that transition when our upk students do move to kindergarten you mentioned the assessment that we have the programs that we have the kids take and i understand that that screening is part of a mandate we need to do with the upk how are those results or that information shared when these children move into our williamsville schools for kindergarten i know there's a separate kindergarten screening um process is this information shared with teams to help with um you know classroom distribution or any of that matter or is it just stay a pre-k so the information is actually shared follow the students to their elementary building in kindergarten but the kindergarten screening is done separate of everything that they've had regarding pre-k so the pre-k information that we

143do with assessments is really part of the grant funding that needs to needs to be sent to the state to ensure that the progress is being made with our delivery of our instruction and showing them like factual evidence on how our students are progressing with the program uh to ensure that our grant funding is continued from year to year that makes sense is that data compared like the the end of the year upk would that be compared with what's tested over the summer for kindergarten i'm just curious because i'm thinking of a child that might have have an established relationship with their upk teacher feel really comfortable as opposed to them being a little scared for their kindergarten screening yeah so uh we typically do kindergarten screenings in the spring so around may uh at

144that point we don't always we don't have the upk final results yet we typically get those over the summer we do cross-reference just to see if there was something that we've missed it's really important that we still continue our kindergarten screening to get a sense of the child so our teachers can work with them so we can make great placements to match uh children with teachers and and uh and we use the data of course that we do learn from how their school year went uh in order to further our instruction to to make sure that we're grouping students appropriately that we know where the what the students come in with what knowledge they they have and what we need to work on next so it's all useful and it's all used but data is

145an ongoing process it's not just we've screened now we move on you're always rescreening children we're always analyzing data and we're always making great decisions uh to support our kids i'm so thrilled to hear that because um and that was the reason i asked that question when we give an assessment out of compliance you know we're following the rules but when we're actually using that um for meaningful reasons you know especially looking towards the next year it's wonderful to hear lastly i just want to say as a parent whose child has gone through upk and william spell we were so happy with the program um for our son and uh i would just appreciate the timeline the transparency uh our first school experience especially when a child is that young can be scary or daunting

146for a parent so thank you for all your work and your organization with us thank you thank you anybody else on my left with questions miss poland yeah um mr scans who i might have misheard but i thought i heard you say something about um having upk in all of our buildings is that a goal that you have moving beyond forest and country parkway or did i miss understand uh there'd be a wonderful goal uh the issue has to do with space um i mean country parkway and forest are the two buildings that were uh selected because they have classroom space uh it'd be very difficult to have upk classes at each one of our elementary buildings because of that and not to say that it's it's something that's not in our it can't won't

147be in the future but i mean space is really a consideration that we're looking at on expanding any program in districts that'd be wonderful and the funding piece i mean it's it's obviously you know it's what we're paying our instructors uh as opposed to the cbos having you know their you know their people who who they're hiring to who do a wonderful job and they're just as dedicated as our staff members uh so you know again i can't reiterate the fact that um the programs are consistent across the board at all seven locations yes uh and i want to thank my board colleagues for answering or asking all the good questions i say myself one and i want to thank all of you for your presentation and information uh so not to be redundant i

148just asked one one question um what's the uh how will you evaluate how successful this program has been for individual students and is a group is a transition into kindergarten you may not have that answer but that's something that i would want to know a bit more about yeah we are required uh because it's grant funded we are required to do a final report to the state so for the last dozen years or so i've done that at the end of the school year where we need to look at the screening data the initial brigance inventory what the student's progress was when we re you know and provided the the screening and the inventory again at the end of the year to look to see what was the growth and the progress of the students

149um not only by student but by classroom and each of the the cbo's so we've done that for many years it is a requirement but also you know the state wants to know are you running a good program and are the students making progress um but we we also work very closely with the cbo's these many years where we hold monthly staff development for them and we we've talked to them about how to use the data how to use it for instructional strategies and moving students forward and and all of that um so they're very well aware of how important the data is right along um so they can even see when they re-administer the screenings and the brigance inventory again they they can look and say wow because they actually know what the data

150means with the percentiles and and things like that for the growth but we do look at that because we do have to file a report at the end of the year to the state to say has there been no growth minimal growth substantial growth we we have to um provide that in a rating scale that the the state requires so we do look at that and i just have one question um you did mention there was no sibling preference for families but if they if they have multiples so if they have twins or triplets is there a sibling preference in that situation we've had many families with twins and triplets over the years absolutely um we need to treat each child as an individual child so there can't be a preference for families only because

151we are so limited in this placements we have so if you have over 500 uh children eligible but you only have 284 placements and you're doing a lottery it wouldn't be fair if we didn't try to be consistent across that every child is their own individual person within the lottery process we've been pretty lucky for the most part out of probably i don't know 20 or 30 twins or triplets we've had in the last five years sets of twins and triplets that almost i would say 85 to 90 percent that children have gotten in all the siblings have gotten in so we've been very lucky that way but we truly run it as a random lottery so um you know and parents know that right up front if we see that there's twins or triplets

152we we make sure we reach out to those families and we do have it in the initial letter that the families receive that each child is an individual okay thank you for that clarification and thank you so much for this presentation i just have one more it pops up after i'm making you guys up there forever i'm sorry i just enjoy hearing these things this is what we're on the board to hear about the achievements of programs like this that help our students so if i mr skins you kind of answered what popped into my head so at cbo's they're employees of that um place establishment yes okay business um and in the district they're part of losers correct yeah i believe i knew that um so you did mention in terms of uh professional

153development making sure that the teachers at the cbo's are aligned with what's going on at uh country parkway and forest is there ever like checking in throughout the day or i don't want to say um yes yeah i don't want to say you're like no absolutely um are you people consultant that mr scanzoozle referred to early on through the grant that that person is our our conduit to make sure that things are going she she is in the the cbo's she's there at least once a week and every everyone we email constantly we're always we're always back and forth with information if we need to meet with parents her and i go to the site um we spot check so to speak um you know we when i can go and i have a few

154minutes or on the way into work or on the way home whatever i will just stop in and they all know that um they're all welcoming they don't have a problem with it they've been wonderful our our cbo's have just been outstanding are there sometimes the issues come up yes but they work with us to to address any issues that we have um but yeah absolutely yeah i wanted to ask that not very very involved yeah yep not for the professionals more or less i think it's important for our community and our family members who are thinking about this to hear that it's you guys seem to be running uh yeah that is the sole purpose of our upk consultant um to to be our conduit to make sure that there's continuous transparency and understanding

155of expectations and performance and that consultant is a former school psychologist so she's very in tune with um you know what kids need seeing progress and using your professional background to make a lot of inferences and determinations and forecasting you know what students needs are and how to support them they like the boots on the ground for all of our sites thank you very much for all of your dedication and for all this information tonight thank you thank you members of the board i'm going on to committee of the whole are there any matters to discuss under that item 19 committee of the whole all right seeing none 20 is correspondence we did receive some letters about um seating in the auditorium for music performances and we received a few letters about masks under coved

156and um a few letters from our school nurses asking for some compassion for the difficulties in their job during the pandemic and in support anyone wish to make any comments regarding our correspondences thank you this time may i have a motion to recess the regular board meeting for the purpose of conducting the budget work session thank you dr lippman and miss poland all in favor all hands up equals motion carries unanimously all right we have recessed now i'm calling the budget session to order all board members are still present we had some some good discussion earlier in our regular board meeting regarding the budget presentation does anyone have anything additional to add to the budget presentation before we begin our public forum all right thank you we will now have our public forum for the

157budget only anyone wishing to address the board in regard to the budget may go to the podium at this time hope nobody gets any called on the way anyone i thought mr maturity was going to ask a question all right i don't see anyone um those at home watching the youtube video there was previous and there was information previously in the meeting with a slide that had um how you can send feedback there is an email address available to send email said feedback specifically on the budget correct all right thank you all right so at this time would someone like to make a motion to adjourn the budget work session thank you vice president van says and dr mcclary all in favor to adjourn and return back to us hey thank you all in favor

158emotion carries unanimously so we are now back in our regular board session um oh i have to have motion to get back there would you like to make a motion to return thank you mr speaker and miss poland all in favor thank you hands up now we are returning here but you'd never extra regular board meeting is tuesday march 8th is there a motion to please adjourn before we do may i say something i just want to wish everyone a safe midwinter recess and also a happy informative educational black history month i love it thank you very much is there a motion to adjourn the regular board meeting thank you vice president ben slice and mr bescalia all in favor all hands up equals motion carries unanimously thank you everyone be safe and have a

159good night