Board of Education Meeting - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 at 7 p.m.

001[Music] may i have a motion to return the regular board meeting to public press and please thank you mr levine this is beager second any discussion being none all in favor all hands are up motion carries unanimously good evening everyone i called the regular board meeting to order and all board members are present mr matursky would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flags please be advised in the event of a fire emergency and an evacuation should be necessary an alarm will sound please note all marked emergency exits and evacuate well away from the building at this time we request that everyone turn their cell phones and other electronic devices to silent thank you is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented um miss casper zach bogner thank you

002second mrs van slice any discussion on that seeing none all in favor please all hands are up motion theory zero zero dr mckenna i turn it over to you for board recognition thank you so much mrs leather bear we have some excellent recognitions tonight tonight we continue with our school spotlight which highlights the great work that goes on within our buildings this month our school spotlight focuses on casey middle school and the social emotional learning program that they have at that school which is outstanding i'd like to welcome mr pete dobmeyer principal of casey middle school to share more about this initiative mr dobmeyer good evening everyone and uh thank you to dr mckenna the leadership team in the board of education for the invitation to speak about the sel work we're doing at casey

003this year just a little bit of background on sel and then uh what we've been doing at casey castle the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning defines social emotional learning as the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities manage emotions achieve personal and collective goals feel and show empathy for others establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions research confirms that the modeling teaching and practices of sel competencies leads to positive outcomes for students including a decrease in a young person's likelihood to experience anxiety have behavioral problems or engage in unhealthy risk taking as well as short and long-term improvement in attitudes relationships academic performance perceptions of self classroom and school climate above all else dedicating ourselves to

004social emotional learning allows our students to feel connected to one another and the adults who care for them we believe this foundation must be in place before quality learning can occur at casey we've always prided ourselves on relationships we have always had a goal centered on pursuing interaction over transaction and with all that we experienced in the spring of 2020 we knew that at the end of last year we would need to make an even more intentional investment in these relationships for this school year over 20 staff members dedicated themselves to working this past summer to develop a homegrown comprehensive sel program that could be delivered to our students through small community-based homeroom experiences throughout the year students regularly have the opportunity to participate in community circles targeted discussions to build sel competencies share successes

005and stories and to just have fun connecting in many cases these experiences have grown beyond homeroom and have been incorporated into our students regular classroom experiences we have seen our students grow as people that are more reflective and aware of their own strengths and areas for growth as individuals who seek first to understand and to really listen as individuals who show empathy and as individuals who recognize how their decisions impact people in their community all skills that are essential and seemingly more essential than ever in our world today i'm grateful for the open minds and hearts of our staff who have committed themselves to educating the whole child and to our students and families for their participation in and support of this important work here is a video with more on sel at casey thank

006you thank you mr don meyer [Music] when we think of school we often think of a more conventional model where we're responsible for building them up academically and preparing them for success in college and future careers but i think what we've more recently learned is the importance of shifting that focus to building them up as human beings so providing direct instruction and experiences in social emotional learning moves us toward that goal of building good human beings who can positively contribute to society and who can advocate for themselves and take care of themselves as well this year we spent the summer with a group of about 20 staff members building an seo program for casey it starts with the self knowing the self and the next layer would be managing yourself and that can include you

007know how you think and how you feel and then the next level is now you interacting with others so social awareness how do you become aware of others and then manage those relationships on a day-to-day basis we're using our sel skills all the time we wrote messages to people in our life that helps build the relationship because it's the little things that matter in the long run and i think it was really cool that we maintain relationships and we don't just let them stay where they are but we continue to improve them as we go on in my social studies class we would write down three gratitudes that we have and every day it had to be different from anything else that we wrote before and i feel like that really made you stop and

008think about like all the good things we have if these students start to understand who they are and what their frustration point is what that tipping point is who their people in their corner are that they can go to then they start to manage it and i think that's one of the greatest things we can do for middle schoolers because it's such a time of feeling lost you're trying to figure out who you are as you move into the future good morning everybody we'll oftentimes do a 1-10 check-in just to kind of gauge and see where the students are for that day that informs me as far as if i need to talk with students after or catch up with them you know if it's a really heavy stressful week we're going to talk about

009ways that we can deal with anxiety and stress if it's a fun easy week we're going to talk about fun memories and what made you laugh and what filled your cup for that week right and some things are in our control and some things certainly are not in our control as we've learned this year and it's just learning how to deal with those things in a positive way i think oftentimes we put an emphasis on academics and that is important but we also have a realization in this building that the academics can be the outcome you know they're a vehicle for what you want to do when you build whole people pretty much anybody who has a child or as a parent or cares about a kid would say that the most important thing for

010any child when they come to school is that they feel loved and cared for and i think social emotional learning and being very intentional about the way we communicate with kids and interact with kids and build relationships with kids is the most important thing that can happen in any school and that has to happen before learning can take place all right thank you very much mr dob meyer and your staff you've truly done an excellent job and we appreciate all your efforts tonight we are also recognizing transit middle schools aaron patel and alex pizarro who won the 2020 congressional app challenge in new york district 26 with the development and creation of the app open food facts the app was designed to help make people healthier food help them make healthier food choices let's take

011a look at how these students use data science and ingenuity to create this award-winning app [Music] honestly i was very surprised um as it was my first time um winning this kind of like big for coding so um i i was very excited i i didn't expect us to win because um i did done it one year before but this is my second time and i was pretty excited about that one because i mean it's pretty cool i think it was a lot of different things but for me one of the things that helped me is i have a peanut allergy actually and while the app isn't based around allergies it's based around nutrition that kind of gave me an idea like maybe i should make an app based on nutrition food that kind of

012thing [Music] we were actually trying to collaborate with like this google database um we were trying to use it to find out like all the foods um for like american foods when we actually spent like weeks um putting it together with the like the visual studio code or like the python code um it didn't work and it gave us like all these semicolons of like nonsense we could barely read it and we would think what is this we can't even if we can't read it how would like the user read it hello my name is alex pizzaro and our app is open food facts we want to make it a lot easier for people to make healthy food decisions when trying to find new foods to eat for me it was quite relieving but i

013would have been happier if it worked on the first try but usually that doesn't happen so it was it was very awesome because we had a couple of failures and we got a bunch of errors before we were trying to get it to work and so when it finally got working took us a while to do so it felt really nice to finally get it done after like a month and a half of work so pretty awesome [Music] all right congratulations [Applause] congratulations ron and alex we're very proud of you great job absolutely well done are there any board acknowledgements at this time i just want to acknowledge at casey middle school and thank mr dob meyer for your words but to see what you shared in this video years ago you know we were

014hearing from parents about concerns are we doing enough to educate the whole child and what does that mean what you share tonight about social emotional learning and how you're checking in with students and that's becoming part of their routine and to hear students share what that means to them uh it's so heartwarming i know in the past we've heard that from families we surveyed a few years ago and heard that the concern of are we pushing too hard on academics and are we paying attention to that social emotional learning and really you just exemplify what that looks like and yes the academics come when we're taking care of all of those needs of our kids now more than ever so thank you so much for really bringing to life what's happening in your building we've

015heard things about how we're taking care of our social emotional learning throughout the buildings in our districts i know it's not just casey but that was really impressive and so i just want to acknowledge and thank you for that today [Music] and i would just like to mention last month i mentioned about the returning of k to four so i would be remiss if i did not talk about the returning of five days of in-person instruction for middle school and high school so again i just want to thank as i did last night at the ptsa council dr mckenna all of our district leadership everyone teachers staff custodial workers our bus drivers all of the people in including our students because quite frankly not all the students i think were ready to return five days

016a week but everyone did it and it was a process that was smooth and efficient and it is outstanding to see everyone back with smiles on their face and so i would just like to express our gratitude for that thank you very much mr lemay i would be remiss not to uh thank our our district clerk mrs uh lynn carey here who just pulled off another phenomenal election season here uh it goes without saying that her and her team have gone well above and beyond they they implemented some new technology this year which sped up the process but uh you know i i know this is a process that she starts she'll probably take the next couple more days off and then she'll start again for next year but it's definitely a process that takes

017a long time to put together to get it to come off without any hinges or hiccups so congratulations and thank you for a great job you're here okay mr mecca thank you i'd like to acknowledge and thank the community for coming out to support our budget i don't think we should ever take it for granted that our community supports education so much that year after year they're willing to come out and support the budget that we plan so thank you everybody for coming out and showing your support for our school district and the children that we serve thank you all right dr mcclary would you like to read our public expression statement since i believe we have a few individuals signed up yes thank you um welcome to all who have come to observe this

018regular board meeting for policy the board has set aside 30 minutes for public expression a time when we invite members of the community to share ideas and concerns with us we welcome this opportunity to hear from you each person is given up to three minutes in which to address the board you will be signaled with a yellow flag at two and a half minutes so that you may conclude your remarks this is a meeting held in public rather than a public meeting which means we will not be engaging in a dialogue with members of the community this evening rest assured we are listening carefully and we take seriously what you have to say we would also like to ask that you demonstrate respect for us and for one another by speaking to the issues giving

019us ideas and sharing your opinions but not engaging in any personal attacks thank you for your cooperation thank you for those who have pre-registered for public expression and i will call on you and please then speak from the podium dana hensley good evening um my name is dana hensley i'm a mother of four um i have two children in the district and i am a child advocate i am here today because it was 84 degrees out today and our youngest children are forced to wear masks outside during recess and pe my eight-year-old wore a mask last friday during the fun run outside of her school and i find this to be unacceptable i understand that there are rules that the state puts forth but i think that we all know that the state puts forth

020arbitrary rules and they have no scientific basis or rationale they make these rules in the absence of pediatricians of parents of educators and they are wrong in east amherst last week there were eight covid cases for the entire week it is statistically zero if not actually zero likelihood of a child to catch covid outdoors in the dodge elementary school playground i am asking you tonight to apply critical thinking skills to the task at hand to realize that the science is clear that outdoor transmission is negligible abysmal it is not an issue the health of our children for the rest of the school year should be more important than keeping our children masked outdoors during recess and pe when i picked up my daughter today at track practice i drove past full baseball diamonds in front

021of the school and behind the school none of the athletes were wearing masks none of the adults were wearing masks my daughter that runs track her coach tells them make sure that your mask is down when you are running because it's not good for you they can tell that to older children but we're not telling that to five-year-olds to six-year-olds to seven-year-olds to eight-year-olds to nine-year-olds i am asking you please make a motion tonight to end the outdoor masking policy for our children it is extremely important that the adults in this room do what is right for the children in our community if we wait for albany to do the right thing we're going to be waiting forever please end this tonight thank you miss hensley there are no other speakers signed up is there

022anyone in the audience who would like the opportunity to speak i was going to say that person please come to the podium and you will have your three minutes my name is michael littman and i wanted to make a few comments so when i was in college my coach said i taught as a five ps and he said prior planning prevents poor performance we do know that planning is important to success in education in business and in life and no one in reality sees all the planning that the board of education does our administration does what teachers do in their daily planning uh all of those things that lead to success but i think uh miscellanet took my thunder a bit but i was going to talk about our district clerk lynn carey and how

023smooth the election day was i wanted to thank her and her staff for all the work that they did because it did run so smoothly and it was very well done so i know that you've done a lot of planning as all of you do and again as mr mecca also mentioned we want to thank the community for supporting the budget because that's valuable for everyone thank you thank you anyone else and i suggest we close public expression okay thank you dr mcclary we're moving on to our consent nintendo items may i have a motion please to approve consent agenda item seven personnel eight business and nine special needs and student activities as presented mr borenstein thank you mr lemay is a second is there any discussion on any of these items [Music] seeing none

024all in favor all hands up motion carries nine zero zero at this time i would like to thank the following retirees for their service in the district i will read their name the location where they work and their years of service kathleen cristiano maple east elementary 32 years of service ellen fink district office 31 years of service deborah funicane forest elementary 22 years of service kathleen kollak district office 18 years of service veronica crossy high middle school 20 years of service lean nugentic maple east elementary eight years of service and natalie wolf district-wide occupational therapist 22 years of service congratulations and please enjoy your retirement [Applause] moving on to item 10 is there a motion please to approve the may 6 special board meeting minutes as presented in vortex thank you miss casmerick faulkner mr

025mecca is a second are there any corrections or additions to the minutes all right thank you all in favor of approval opposed abstentions thank you motion carries nine zero zero moving on to our president's report we will start with start with adopting adoption of the district vote results is there a motion please to approve and accept the results of the annual district vote as presented thank you mr lemay second mrs van cise is there any discussion okay seeing none all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously nine zero zero the following board members have been elected for a three-year term beginning july 1st 2021 and concluding june 30th 2024. maureen poland swarup singh and michael lippman congratulations to the three winners and i also want to say a special thank you to sean lemay mark

026mecca and eric borenstein for your excellent service i also want to thank the williamsville community for supporting and approving the budget for the 2021-2022 school year mrs carey is there anything you'd like to add thank you mr slaterboro i would like to thank the erie county board of elections inspectors the election assistance from district office and district wide the technology department north high school staff the administration facilities crew and child nutrition over at north mr matursky mr philposky ms and dr mckenna for a team effort assisting in many ways leading up to and on the day of the vote and again i would also like to thank the community for their feedback during the vote and i look forward to seeing everyone next year may 17 2022. thank you all thank you miss thank you

027very much mrs carey excellent job this year on our district vote results um at this time we're going to review our board goals we have a powerpoint presentation that we can pull up on our screen thank you very much so as that's coming up at our august board meeting we approved our goals for this year as a governing body we review these goals in january and we document evidence for our progress monitoring purposes and we did review that during our board meeting in january which can be viewed from our district youtube channel and if you'd like to see the powerpoint you can go to our board docs accessible from our district website we will now complete our end of year review since our june meeting is only a few weeks away we decided to go

028to be a little bit more efficient and split things up this month our first goal is student learning and i was responsible for that goal so there you can see we set our goals at the beginning or we set our actions for for the goal of student learning at the beginning of the year i won't review the things that we covered um in january but since then i think it's important to point out that we did have a review of our um of our student academic progress so it was called monitoring and supporting student progress and that happened at our march 9th meeting and if you would like to see that report that dr valen presented to us you can view that on our district youtube channel um there was a lot of documentation that

029dr bailen supplemented and added to that so it's really good reading if you have concerns or questions about the academic performance this year it's important that we look to the data and not make assumptions about learning loss but actually look to what the data has shown in that area um in terms of the second action goal of review of receiving presentations on instructional programs strategies and supports um let's see beginning well in december we we approve the proposals for curriculum work but i think it i wanted to add to that pretty much monthly dr mcconnell would give his weekly update and it wouldn't include a slide related to our academic learning whether it was the use of wednesdays the extra supports that were being provided that was pretty much addressed on a monthly basis i

030do feel that as a board we did a thorough job of asking those questions and monitoring that situation and in terms of approving and monitoring the district's professional development plan one of the best ways to monitor things is to see them in action you know and we didn't get to visit schools during the height of kovid so it was really joyful to be able to return and and do some school visits and we did quite a few as you can see and we're hopeful to still fit in one more to get in maple east and maple west sometime between now and the end of the year so that is the update on the first goal which was our academic learning outcomes goal and now i'm going to turn it over to ms casper zach bogner

031who's going to talk about student health and safety thank you so much just as in our update in january we have discussed student health and safety every month whether it has been to approve some updated policies or to receive reports at the table regarding student health and safety i did want to point out a couple things one is i believe it's on the next slide there was a third action that has been added since january and that was to reflect some of the advocacy that we have done in terms of supporting the physical mental social emotional health am i not i'm sorry thank you um in terms of supporting the social emotional physical health of students so i wanted to make sure that we had some measures to reflect our advocacy so we did add

032that third action and i also wanted to make note of that i have had some community members express their appreciation of the social emotional learning presentation that we received last month they said that they had been unaware of how many supports and resources are in place in our district to address mental social emotional health of our students so i want to thank mr skanzuzu and dr dabate again for providing that presentation for us last night um last month i think that was very helpful thank you and even again tonight we had a wonderful presentation about some of the social emotional work being done at casey so absolutely thank you miss casper zach logner our next goal was on board district and community engagement and i believe mrs van sice had that goal yes thank you

033so i listed every board meeting basically or any activity that we did that showed our community engagement number one basically serving as school board liaisons and all the different activities ptsa williamsville education foundation erie county school board association nisba and then listed every board meeting what we did what we received including superintendent search um all of the community updates our second goal was on holding two community forums additionally holding forums and public hearings for the district safety plan code of conduct and i also included the budget so this year i think more than any other year we have knocked it out of the park with community engagement and receiving feedback holding multiple we held our two community forums holding multiple forums and sessions for the public to come and actually discuss with us their concerns

034currently we have one with the rescue plan where you can go to the link that's provided on our district website so that you can make comments and i just want to point out we also had a multitude of surveys this year going out to our community asking for feedback on various topics and lastly the board visitation school board visitations and i went through and listed our school board visitations we even through covet when things started to lighten up we were able to hold three different school board visitations at different sites so our first one was both the north high school we were able to view the north capital music project as well as going to casey middle school so that was outstanding then there was a forest elementary paired with mill middle we also went

035to east high school we were able to see the capital project there and then went to transit middle and like mrs leatherbarrow just stated we are going to try to do one more for maple east and maple west i did make a notation that things were a little bit more limited due to covid but i i have to just boast a little i think that stellar that we were able to put this many visitations in during this kind of year and it was phenomenal to go and see our students engaged especially with the high flex hybrid remote model it was outstanding to see that so thank you for that um does anyone have any questions about any of the board district community engagement no thank you mrs and vance and i agree i really like

036the way we switched it up and did two schools and a visit because you know we tried to pick two schools that were either feeder schools or else close geographically and um it maximized our times we weren't having to take additional time for those of you who are working having to take that time off of work and thank you to the board members that they gave of their time to attend those visits so our next goal this is just a chart this chart this show this is available on board docs if you'd like to see it but this um is a record of all of the liaison assignments and who attended which meetings so that is there for documentation purposes our next goal is budget development and fiscal oversight and i believe mr borenstein is

037going to speak about that yes thank you mrs barrow the board of education has a pretty robust oversight program of our budget and our budgeting process and um it was the same this year as we uh walked through the preparation for the 2021-2022 budget we regularly meet including opportunities for the public to weigh in and ask questions about the budgeting process so what's documented here in this slide are all the meetings that we have that are related to the budgeting process and so on ending in last week's successful vote uh which the budget was passed on may 18th and i would just like to conclude my comments by offering my personal thanks and congratulations to mr matursky who does an amazing job keeping us on track and explaining to us some very complicated details of

038the budgeting process and especially this year tom you did a masterful job and i'm grateful for that you you kind of walked us through a very complicated budgeting process and we got the the result we needed to continue our work here so thank you for that and that concludes my report thank you mr borenstein and our final goal was on embracing community diversity and dr mcclary is going to report on this goal thank you again as the as the title mentions that our goal was to encourage and support instructional and leadership practices that foster a safe welcoming and stigma-free environment by embracing diversity in social economic cultural linguistic intellectual racial educational and religious backgrounds and sexual orientation gender identity or expression and to fulfill the commitment to educate all students to their maximum potential so

039the action we had was to review update approve policies attend events and so forth that went towards that goal as mrs leatherbarrow did i will just look in terms of the things that we have done since the january presentation and what we did in march was to revise our district policy about non-discrimination and anti-harassment in the district in terms of language and wording and parts of that particular policy we held a community forum on march 23rd which gave community members the opportunity to hear gave us the opportunity to hear ideas and suggestions from the community and also in april we reviewed our current code of conduct to bring sections of that up to date in terms of wording and decisions and discussions dealing with diversity thank you very much dr mcclary and we will be

040voting on that code of conduct later on this evening we did have a opportunity for the public to uh participate in a forum on the code of conduct last month however for the record no one chose to speak on that topic going on to item c under the president's report is our assignment for graduation speakers so our schools right now are in the process of putting their graduation programs together all of our graduations at both at north south and east are scheduled to take place on june 26 with the rain date being the 27th um i know each school has a different number of graduates but i believe north i just i have a senior this year so i got a message saying that it told us it told me very clearly how many ceremonies

041there will be and the students actually have the opportunity to choose what ceremony they want to attend which is a really nice feature this year because they can coordinate with their friends and that's very meaningful for them to be able to graduate walk the stage and i'll be on the field at the same time and so these ceremonies will be happening on the fields the graduation speeches are going to be pre-recorded and mr vilapowski will work with us to schedule a time to come in right now i have listed as mr lemay to give the south speech are you still on board with that sir thank you i'm going to give the north speech because i have a senior myself and hopefully i'm going to be on that stage giving out that diploma as well

042and mr bescalia are you sat for east yes okay great we have a we have a board member that's um willing to give other time to prepare a speech and come and have it recorded and i understand um mr philboski that you're going to be putting together a nice video where all of the individual ceremonies kind of get patched together that sounds amazing they'll all be live streamed and then post production awesome yeah so they'll be live streamed as well and i know at north we were told we can have four um each graduate can have four people a ton so any any family members and friends they can't a ton in person can watch the live stream which will be very nice um moving on to item d we do hope to be able

043to visit my maple east and maple west i just want to check in with you doctor mcconnell do we have a date yet we're looking at next thursday we're solidifying that with the principles right now we'll know probably tomorrow or by thursday at the latest but you'll know in the next couple of days okay if you can let us know because that's a quick turnaround we want to make sure we have at least three board members to attend that but if everyone can kind of look at tentatively for next thursday i'll have to look at that as well on my calendar our board of education retreat at this point we hope to have two retreats next year especially with three new board members that are going to need to be oriented and acclimated to our

044board so we're looking at thursday july 8th and initially we had said three hours but now that we have new board members i think we're gonna need that fourth hour so i'm looking at 3 p.m to 7 p.m on july 8th our location is most likely going to be here at district office either inside or outside or a combination of both any questions or comments on that from the board thank you july 8th you said july 8th that's correct thursday july i think thursday's the 9th on thursday reorg meeting on tuesday july 6 and our board retreat thursday july yep and i'm sure we will be scheduling a second retreat and throughout the year but we will figure that out after the reorg meeting in july so moving on to items f g um erie

045county association of school boards and nisba's school board information is in fort docks there's some events and things happening there i just want to share with the board that i was recently contacted by darcy oracle from nisba and tomorrow i will be participating in a roundtable discussion at noon with darcy and a few other members from nisba they're we're choosing a few select school districts from across new york state school districts where they've built a relationship with the board presidents and since we've had darcy come in um be our facilitator for our retreat a number of times now we do have a good relationship so i will be participating in that tomorrow at noon and i will submit a report to the board the purpose was for them to reach out to individual school districts

046and talk about what our needs are and how they can better serve us in the future does anyone have anything to report under erie county association of school boards or new york state school board association miss casmar zak vogner hi yes i just wanted to give a really brief report on an event that i attended along with mr lemay and dr mcclary it was a nisba event called your school district's role in defeating uncivil discourse in our society and uh there were three segments to this but the first segment was a keynote speaker dr rebecca winthrop she is from the brookings institute and she was basically talking about the importance of civic education in schools and then the second part was about a new initiative that's going on in new york state called civic readiness

047and a part of that initiative is going to include a pilot program of what they're calling the seal of civic readiness so that will be piloted this fall and that will be either a standalone seal or a plus one pathway to a regents diploma and then that will be rolling out statewide the following fall 2022-23 and i just wanted to uh bring this to the district's attention it did sound like a phenomenal program and i do believe we already have much of the coursework and clubs in place in order to move forward with this deal of civic readiness so i just wanted to be able to report at the table and i don't know if mr lemay or dr mcclary have anything they want to add i'll just add uh thank you and i'll just

048add that uh i'm looking actually on board docs and i don't see it here so i'll ask mrs kerry if she can't add it but uh the powerpoint slide deck i submitted with my original report so i want to make sure it gets added here in the board docs i i highly encourage you if you've got 10 minutes to go through it it's very detailed in its notes i also posted the link here to the actual presentation if you have three hours that you want to spare and watch it it also is very well worth it but uh it really does go over the curriculum and in depth so something we should definitely take put some eyes on and and look at and consider for the future and i'll just add it was kind of

049interesting that today's um nisba monthly newsletter came out and on like the second page there's a nice big discussion about the seal curriculum and the program itself and it as mr lemay said it seems very exciting in terms of involving and engaging students back in terms of practices of all of the things that would be into civics and working together and understanding your community and and just being active and involved so i urge um anyone district-wide to look at the powerpoints or the video itself thank you very much and thank you ms kasmerick boganner mr lemay and dr mccleary for taking the time to participate in that presentation um moving on to our super super confidence report oh god i just wanted to backtrack because i'm just reading everything just so you know on the

050uh graduation uh it just so if people are looking at the agenda east high school says sunday june 26th but it should say saturday oh yeah you want to get confused or looking in here just that's all they're all supposed to be saturday and then the rain dates are sunday you have to hope it has good weather we had good weather last year so hopefully again all right moving on dr mckenna would you like to give your community update sir absolutely thank you very much mr leatherbarrow um mr filipowski if you'll pull that up we'll go through this i think he's got it there somewhere there it is thank you so much first we want to talk about is the plan to pivot i know that uh mrs van seiss already spoke about this but

051we are so proud you know on may 17th we were able to get all our middle school and high school uh kids back in for full-time five days and we couldn't have been more happy about that and uh i want to reiterate what she said and thank everybody all our faculty all our staff all our students all our parents our administration everybody pulled together to make that happen and it was a very happy day in our district and i just want to thank everybody for all of their efforts so now we have uh over 7 200 students uh back in school and that's a great feeling we still got over 2 000 that are on remote and so they're doing well too and we're currently planning for next year with dr darren brown hall and

052we're looking at that as we speak our goal is to have our proposed plan done by the end of this school year so we're working diligently behind the scenes to try to get that all set but i wanted to say that for everybody who helped make that happen on may 17 a sincere thank you very very much for all your efforts it is much appreciated the next thing i want to talk about is the covid19 vaccination clinics on may 19th we we teamed up with damon college and we teamed up with clarence amherst and sweet home schools and we were able to get over a thousand doses out to students 12 years age years of age or older june 4th we're going to have another clinic at maple east elementary school for our students 12

053years of age or older so we want to encourage you to please sign up and get your vaccinations and we're going to continue our relationship with rite aid and we'll see if we can do even more uh we're looking into i don't know maybe there's even ways we can do some things in the summer but we're open to doing as many vaccination clinics as we can because we know this is important and i want to thank christine harding and rite aid for all the folks who put those uh on for us as well the district vote well we want to thank our community for coming out and voting yes for our budget it was almost a three to one margin so we thank you for your support and we welcome a new board of education

054members dr swarup singh poulin and dr mike littman and again thank you to lynn carey for all the work putting on the district vote it was uh just an outstanding job that she did and can't thank her enough for all the hard work that she did athletics update um fall season was successfully fall too it was pretty interesting watching football wasn't it in april it was actually kind of fun uh spring sports have started and really great news happened last week wrestling was allowed to begin on may 17th and we got that going right away uh as soon as the okay came they started practice uh immediately and um thank goodness for that as well us and i want to just mention too assembly woman karen mcmahon reached out to us last week and she

055uh wondered if we had any projects and uh it just so happened i was in conversations with mr matursky and mr musica and we were in need of a new uh scoreboard in williamsville east high school because we still have the original scoreboard in there from 1977 and we can't get parts for it anymore so this was a godsend so uh i said yes we absolutely will accept this funding and we're going to be moving forward and getting a new scoreboard for williamsville east so thank you very much to assemblywoman mcmahon we truly appreciate your help and support summer school information last night at the ptsa council meeting those uh questions from the parents about summer school and they asked if we'd do uh an update tonight in our uh uh board meeting and of

056course we said yes we would and uh so we're gonna give you a quick update on summer school information and dr bailen i'm going to ask you to help out with this report thank you dr mcconnell good evening everyone we are very excited about summer school this year as we all are aware um last summer we were unable to run our summer program so we have some information coming out quite a wealth of information actually is planned to be released this week i'd like to thank mr filipowski he's working diligently to get our website ready that's a great resource for parents as is our connections newsletter which will be going out shortly it has a lot of detail in there and what we tried to do is provide some information on our elementary middle and

057high school programs on our screen here are the dates that summer school is planned to run this is for our larger i would say summer school programs on the next slide we just tried to articulate an overview thank you nick of the very many programs we offer we often talk about summer school but summer school is comprised of a lot of different types of programs the one we generally talk about is our overall summer school program and what that consists of is elementary k through four we have a middle school summer program and a high school summer program and you can see there are quite a number of programs at the elementary level that are very specific to student needs in a variety of areas with our k-prep program we actually invite our students who

058are entering kindergarten in the fall it's a rank order based on the screening that has been done of our incoming case students and we work very closely with the teachers and our families and we're very excited there's about 60 students we generally invite and that is a great way to acclimate the students before they even enter our schools in kindergarten with reading recovery and norton gillingham those are literacy related and those are intended to provide intensive support at the elementary level with reading recovery it's a one-on-one intervention continued learning during the summer and with orton gillingham often known as og it is a phonics-based program again for the students presenting with needs that warrant them continuing the program during the summer so they have started it during the year and that will continue this summer

059for those students that are identified and that's a partnership that we actually have with mr skanzuso's office and the enl summer academy is actually one of our own constructs we're very happy that this has been a long-standing program in the district and we invite our students who are learning english our english language learners it's really the students who are our active ls and you know our population is a pretty sizable one but we invite all of the students to partake not everybody comes and that's true of all of our other programs too but that program runs concurrently during the same time that our um elementary program is running the k-prep is a bit shorter because given the student's age and the readiness we run that for about a month with middle school and high school

060generally those are remediation based but as you know we also have about half of our high schoolers taking new courses that's really impressive we actually think it'll be far more this year so we're prepared for that and excited about it with read 180 that's a literacy program as well again very needs-based but we wanted to share that with you so again if any parents have any questions we're always here to help our two principals this year are heidi buffamonte that's elementary and middle and courtney charleston smith for high school so again we welcome any supports we can provide there are eligibility requirements for elementary and middle school because of the remediation piece and if parents have questions they can certainly feel free to ask but we try to spell those out as much as we

061could in the correspondence and also communication will go out via wits as well as from the summer school principles so thank you again and if you need anything please let me know thank you very much dr whalen does anybody have questions from the board um mr lemay has a question so sorry sure you can walk away no i won't do that i'm sorry uh just a simple question thank you for that but when is the first day of summer school july 1st okay why july 1st before a holiday so we've actually had over the course of the past 11 years sometimes it starts before the fourth and sometimes it starts after it really depends on the calendar first and foremost we do have to observe the july 4th holiday and depending on where that falls

062that does have a role in playing how our summer school calendar plays out there's also a required number of hours of instruction in addition there are contractual requirements around how many days summer school has to run typically what we do at high school is it's backtracked from the regents exams of course when we set the dates we did not know they weren't going to occur but regardless there are still our requirements that must be adhered to in order for the students to receive the course credit so everything is mapped according to those calendar requirements we actually work as a leadership team our principals the summer school principals it's a very collaborative discussion much like what we see with the calendar when we all develop that the same type of development has to happen with this

063calendar it just so happens this year given all those considerations we have to start on july 1st in order to make sure we could run the schedule that we want part of that also is we receive feedback that some of our employees as well as our families preferred a monday through thursday schedule and we've run monday through friday and sometimes that's a challenge for family so given all of that that's where we landed with the july 1st starting okay thank you biscagelia do you have a follow-up yeah uh just the um with the elementary level i'm happy to see reading recovery and og as i've harped on this year in different meetings i think it's imperative with our younger learners um we catch them now you know being in all five days i'm just curious

064has there been talk about um and i know it might depend on faculty and staffing but increasing those numbers a little bit with reading recovery and recovery is very prescriptive because of uh the percentage that's often served so you're actually pulling from a smaller number of students typically we run about two classes maybe three at times but again it really depends on who who's able to come to the program as well but that's a very small population compared to the larger elementary program so what will happen is if there is a need that presents itself the students will be invited to the general program so again it's the best way that that students needs are going to be met so if there's anything that presents itself um in the area of literacy as you can

065see we have extensive supports it's just finding that right program for the student the same holds true for enl so we work really closely with the families is to really determine is the e l summer academy the best placement or would it be that the student would attend the general summer school program the general program offers support specifically in reading writing or math and you could actually be recommended for any of those or both literacy and math it really depends on what the recommendation is and we work closely with the parents as well to see what the best fit is thank you surely and dr mcconaughey yes thank you very much dr bailey and i just want to say too that uh our summer program is huge we have over a thousand students on any

066typical summer that that's part of the pro this year we're even inviting more so it's the size of a school district or summer school it really is quite a big operation and thank you for all your help and and your team for putting that thank you i appreciate it and and last we want to talk about today is uh just an announcement about our willpower for wishes um initiative the student leaders that led the willpower for wishes campaign they raised the total now is it's 108 885 dollars and i really got to say thank you to our psych students and our student government students who led this initiative um we're on this thursday we're going to be having a check ceremony but i just want to say thanks to everybody who participated and especially our

067student leaders who really stepped up and did an outstanding job and uh you know talking to make-a-wish this is going to you know at least probably 10 students 10 kids are going to get their wish because of this so this was really significant and i the kids came through this was a tough thing um this year was hard you know with covid and this was a real bright spot uh like i look at this as like the light in the darkness these are the kids that really stepped up and did something very very special for other students in our um in our community and for our schools in our community and what they did too is they brought all 13 schools together which was very special very unifying so it's really neat to see all

06813 schools work together to make this happen but special big thanks to those student leaders that really brought this together so i just want to say congratulations to everybody who participated in that and made it so successful [Applause] and then my very last presentation tonight is a very special award from the new york state school boards association and this is for uh this is teresa teresa leatherboro for her outstanding leadership and uh she truly deserves and and has earned this and it is with great honor that i present this with you this evening this award you've heard of applause for leadership well-deserved evidence that i attended training that's in question um so at um our last meeting we reviewed the code of conduct and we had a forum on that at this time we are

069going to take a vote to approve it so we're moving on to item beep is there a motion please to approve and adopt the revised code of conduct thank you dr mccleary mr bescalia is a second is there any discussion mr lemay wasn't this tabled and we have to approve taking it from the table no we didn't have to table it because we didn't table it okay no we didn't table it we just we reviewed it no problem and then we held a public forum and nobody spoke now we're voting question though because for other policies we do table them and then bring them back for our second readings that's a good question all right any other questions or comments on the code of conduct right may have all in favor please opposed or abstentions

070seeing none the motion carries nine zero zero and thank you um mr scanzuzzo and your department for all of your work on running the meetings that were necessary with the wellness committees to review and update our code of conduct all right moving on to our finance items may i have a motion please to resolve to approve the resolution to refund repair reserve in 13a authorized tax tertiary funding level in 13b and approved budget transfer authority amounts in 13c as presented in board docs thank you mrs van sice mr maca is a second is there any discussion please seeing none all in favor opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously nine zero zero dr mcconnell and mr matursky would you like to present on the american rescue plan i'll turn it over to mr matursky for this presentation

071thank you dr mckenna good evening everyone uh what you have presented today is the arp american recovery plan and this is actually part two earlier in may we completed part one which was submitting our mandatory assurances to the new york state education department so that was required to be done by may 24th and we submitted those items again prior to that date the next phase of this plan requires us to provide a plan how we're going to use the funds in compliance with the program uh requirements and guidelines and the plan submitted today is uh is providing you that information um before that though i want to share a little bit of the details that went into this as well as the funding mechanism and how we're going to use those funds the initial information

072that we have and the guidelines we're following state that you need to apply for the entire funds you're allocated at the beginning which is what we're doing however the usage of those funds may happen over a multi-year period of time with the final draw being right now it's dated september 30 2023 so that really puts us out to the 22 23 and 23 24 school year the other thing i want to just make mention of is although we're going to submit this plan and it'll be on our website after this meeting we can provide amendments to it over the course of time so that means that we have flexibility in the usage and the timing of the funds so having said that the most important thing i want to share is in addition to what

073we're providing today on the details of what we're using the funds for is that they are this is available on our website for comment and the email comment is arp comment at williamsvillek12.org so all the community may comment back to us on this on this plan and we will take those comments and formulate them uh into whatever the final plan will be so again this is the draft plan the last thing i will talk about is the fact that the funding mechanism here they align to what is in the plan and the items that are identified and one of the items which is required by the plan is the highlight item that says require 20 learning loss that's the plans guidelines that's not our language we just wanted to make that clear um but that

074is what we have to actually select something uh within that category to use twenty percent of our funds um with that i think i'm going to call dr bailin and mr scanzuzzle up here to go over the actual items that we're going to be expending funds on over the next few years thank you thank you hello again um so one of the items that we really thought important and rather immediate was again preparing for summer learning and much of this is really intended as as you can see from the description here is to continue the strength of our program at the elementary level utilizing what is now a new program from the teachers college reading and writing project at columbia university there is actually a new summer specific program targeted at focus on meeting student

075needs and preparing them for the upcoming school year what we did is upon learning of this we met immediately with the the principals at the elementary level the summer school principal as well as the summer school teachers who are planning to to teach the program and really get some input from them and whether or not we all collectively believe this was the best course of action and we are very energized that this program really encompasses what we believe to be a very comprehensive approach and really what comes out in the materials is the joy and love of learning which is so important as we all know so well certainly there's a strong academic focus we have the history with the workshop model really it's also looking at that engagement and that love of learning and

076that joy that we really want to make sure is continually brought to our students so as you can see the literacy skills are very strong in terms of what they focus on and we're looking forward to giving you a report after it is done and completed to let you know how everything went but there's really a strong conviction to moving forward with this in a positive manner and we're very fortunate that this funding allows us to to do that so we want to thank everybody really for the collaboration and the support and it was just really a a a real positive thing to have come to our district so again we'll we'll provide an update to you following our program thank you dr bailey with with this program will there be like pre-tests and post-test

077data there there is data we we have not received the materials yet so what we have is really the program overview and some of the literature and some of the components of the program but we actually plan to have some pre and post test data if it is not provided in the program we are looking at the possibility of implementing some running records to collect some information with summer as you well know because of the duration of the program being so compact we just have to be careful about how we measure it but we are going to be looking to get some data as part of the collection process for summer so again we'll we'll have more to give you when we are more familiar with all of the components on the assessment part of

078it sure good evening thank you um so we're taking a look at uh addressing post covid um social emotional and mental health needs uh k-12 and uh doing that in the area of uh re-certifying our web and link crew leaders at our buildings and also uh taking a look with the additional uh six to ten uh facilitators to train in these areas to bring down to the elementary schools as well so uh that'll be a great impact for the kids to get acclimated with web in the elementary as they transition to middle school and then what they see at the link crew at the high schools so i think that that flow and transition is going to be smooth for the kids and get them acclimated to to what our goals are the completion of

079the trainings are going to provide us with coverage throughout the entire district we're also going to add additional funding for to support a budget line for each building's wellness initiatives within their within the district and we're also going to be using funding to acclimate our science staff to become familiar with their tenants of social emotional learning as they're embedded within our teacher's college program uh so i know that there's books on uh social emotional learning and so to facilitate and train our school psychologists and uh social workers uh in the area to help support kids you know with what they're learning and what they're reading in their classes also going to be an expansion of the everyday speech software that our speech language pathologists are currently delving into and they're also going to include our

080social workers in the elementary and middle school to use those that software program and they're working with students and we're also going to use the funding to work with a licensed clinical social worker to assist in specific case supervisions that exist within our buildings uh to provide additional supports to our psychologists and social workers and and basically our faculty and staff that are dealing with or working with kids that have you know some some needs and you know as we kind of get into the fall we're just trying to be proactive about you know the unpacking of what kids may be bringing um you know that they may not uh show on the surface until we kind of get into school so um you know we just want to be prepared to be able to

081support and uh and provide what we need for those kids thank you you're welcome anyone from the board of questions miss kashmir that goldner thank you mr scanzizzo i'm familiar with the web and link crew because i have kids in middle and high school but for those families who may be watching that do not can you just explain a little bit about what web and link crew are sure so uh web and link crew are basically we have advisors at the middle and high school levels and they're basically working with groups of students who are trained to provide transitional supports to kids and it's almost like a big brother system for incoming fifth graders in the middle school incoming ninth graders at the high school and it's really to help acclimate their transition to a

082new building uh it's not just for ninth graders it's for students who are new to the district as well so those who are uh you know new registrants to the district and and don't know much about how things kind of function it's always nice to have those students who typically are wearing like uh t-shirts that um make them stand out to let them know that they're part of the web and link link crews within their buildings uh to provide questions and a lot of them are actually assigned a group of students that they're kind of mentoring uh to be there for and they'll have breakfast with them uh throughout the course of the school year and it really is a strong connection between september and december uh to really kind of help acclimate and support

083those kids and then it's kind of like on an edge needed baited basis between the months of you know january to the end of june but it's really student-led it provides a great opportunity for students to become leaders uh to reach out and become um you know just uh new friends with a lot of kids that are not familiar with uh the new buildings and surroundings thank you you're welcome hey mr mecca okay thanks actually ladies first okay all right um so it looks like there's no requirement for the arp plan to have board approval is that correct correct okay um can the board please receive a copy of all the email comments received from the community yes all right and then uh one last request provided that uh the board agrees the rest of

084the board agrees can there be an update on this plan at the next board meeting in the event that any changes are in the works by that time or for the board to comment on any changes that we see needed as a result of the community board of the community feedback at the next board meeting you're asking for an update if anything changes from what was presented tonight no more than that i definitely want to see it on the agenda just my own personal opinion i'd like to see it on the agenda for the purposes of finding out any changes that might be proposed by administration but also for us to have the opportunity to discuss any of the feedback we received should we feel that that's necessary i i don't have any objection to

085that but i might offer that it might be more valuable to wait to see transitioning to a new superintendent if there's new if there's you know additions or edits to the plan that comments the results of that transition it's going to be finalized prior to that oh okay well thank you well i don't i have no opposition to receiving the update next month does anyone else from the board of opposition to that i'm fine with that any other questions from the left side of the table okay on the right side mrs van sice and then this is beaker i really don't have a question i do have a comment i just have to say reading this american rescue plan and the funding and where it is i was extremely impressed and quite pleased as a

086parent and as an educator to see where the allocation of money is going because we've heard what are they using this funding for that's where i said is this going to be shared i'm happy that it will be on the district website for people to actually view as you know we heard from mr scanzuzzo it is proactive it's a proactive approach i've talked about how we are going to really need to re-engage our learners to offer the summer learning program that we just heard i'm not sure how many people realize the opportunity that we have in williamsville to have this running program many districts don't have summer school or they're offering virtual and it is such a necessary and beneficial component so when we talk about as the state says the 20 learning loss the

087questions come up okay what about the academic gap what about the mental health the social emotional all of this funding from the district shows exactly what we're doing to help that even as much as not just purchasing the chromebooks but providing that student academic support before during after on top of the social emotional training our staff more i think it's phenomenal and i thank you as a parent knowing that we are realistic and being proactive to help all of our children and not just one subgroup but all of our children because they all will need these things so i just wanted to share that thank you mrs mansite for that mrs bieger yes thank you and thank you for sharing this report i just wanted to ask a question to clarify how arp funds are

088going to be used for programming it mentions that these funds will be used to fund approximately 23 teacher positions just to clarify are those 23 positions so that we can maintain instruction as it is or are those 23 additional positions uh they are the uh the first they are 23 positions to maintain what we have and those positions may be split between for example 13 in one year and 10 in another so again this is really one phase of all the federal funding we're getting um which you'll be seeing more on the esser plans in the coming you know coming weeks too excellent thank you for the clarification i appreciate it and i just had the quest question myself so when we went through our budget process we allocated funds for certain areas and now

089we have this money coming from the american rescue plan so does that then send some money that we already previously allocated back to the general fund or is this like in addition to what was already allocated for those areas it would actually um we have three million about 36 thousand dollars in our 2021-22 budget that's penciled in as federal funding so the way it would technically work is this is going to be accounted for in a different fund so those expenses that normally would be in the general fund will be occurring in that other fund so it's part of our regular expenses um some of it is some of this is new and different and to support the programming and so it's a little bit of a mix of both of those items and it

090allows us to do what we said in our budget proposal that was recently approved last tuesday so it really is a balance and as i said that esser and gear 2 funding is also part of the mix but that right now is is not what we're speaking about um you know the one thing i didn't uh state to and when i talked about the details is the total amount here is four million one hundred fifty eight thousand eight hundred and forty two dollars so that is our allocation amount and again you can go on to review the plan and see how those dollars are allocated amongst what we've discussed excellent thank you very much to the three of you for presenting on this tonight all right we're gonna move on let's see items 14 through

09117 are there any questions comments related to liaison reports legislative matters curriculum or personnel thank you we will now go to item 18a um dr mcconnell mr matursky the annual nutrition fitness report again i'll turn this over to mr maturski uh thank you dr mckenna the annual uh fitness report and nutrition is a little different this year uh we had of course as we know the covet situation so um without due respect to everybody and what we were doing it really is uh kind of a standstill report and we are looking to start the process again this summer get our all our committees ready and to provide um you know some new initiatives that we go forward with in the new school year so what you're really seeing here is a lot of the recap

092of what happened in the prior school year great thank you and the next item is the district energy usage report just a quick summary of that um for the most part uh we had stable uh rates from the prior year and just to remind everyone on the board in our community we use um we are partnering with erie one boces called uh with the smek energy co-op and so we purchased all of our energy electric and gas through them and uh they had really provided us stable rates and even though we had cobia 19 our energy usage from the prior year was pretty much right on it was the same amount so we did well um in all categories and we were well under our budget uh due to again partially due to clovid very

093much and any questions or comments from the board on that right and then information on the new york state school compliance water testing uh that is uh really an initiative that was supposed to occur back in 2020 and uh due to covid the state had postponed that and so um they sent an update to all the districts in april may that said we want you to complete all this testing by the end of this coming june so uh we have initiated our testing um as a matter of fact our first results came back yesterday and so the the law requires us to do a number of things we have to continue to post the information in the new york state health um department website or kurds is a the system we're using so that will

094be done that has to be done 10 days after you receive your results secondly we have to notify the erie county department of health with the results it's just a summary report of the number of results we received and any items that are over the 15 parts per billion which is again the lead requirements and so that has to be done within one day of receiving your results and then the third thing is we have to notify our parents and our staff of the results if there's any items that exceed the 15 parts per billion and that has to be done in writing so our plan is to send attachments of this letter to our parents and that's within 10 days of receiving our results so that will be done there are situations in the

095buildings due to how this process works where you will have items that are over the 15 parts per billion but one thing i want to make mention to everybody here is that actually as part of clobid19 we installed um really all new water filter bottle fillers in all the buildings so those are filtered and i know from some of the initial reports we got back they were so close to zero that they weren't even being reported so we would encourage everybody in our buildings if you want water that's the safest mechanism to obtain your water from but we will be providing this information out i'm expecting as i said in the agenda item the first report will go out next week um because what we've done is we've done the middle or the elementary schools

096first the next ones will be middle and then high and that will be done uh by the end of the first week of june will all the results will be into the lab for testing and the turnaround time is approximately two weeks thank you mr mitchell skate and is there any cover drill right now that limits the use of the water fountains water fountains are still not available for use so the actual spigots bottles are okay but you can't use the spigots they're turned off okay thank you any other questions do we know how long that's going to be in effect or we just don't know yet we do not know it might be in guidance from new york state and department of health for next year okay thank you any questions on the board

097mr mecca yep you actually asked my question which is good but but i do have a related question so the actual water supply itself is not filtered just the bottled portion that is correct our our buildings do not have a filtration system and there are not too many schools that would have that type of system my understanding from someone who has a more technical knowledge of that is you almost have to have a new certification as a filtration plant for schools but we just receive basically water from erie county through the pipes like everyone else does and through our internal plumbing system up to the whatever be sinks or faucets or water coolers anybody else from the board thank you very much mr matarski thank you item 19 there are no matters to discuss under

098special needs and student activities does anyone have a matter to discuss under committee of the hole mrs beager yeah i just have a quick question it actually goes back to your community update uh dr mckenna just a question for you you mentioned that you are busy planning and looking to the fall which is excellent to hear that the district is already thinking of those plans we've learned through this year that um many times our plans are somehow determined by some of the guidance we get from the state and that that continually changes as we have found i'm curious if there has been any guidance sent to our district or all school districts from new york state at this time regarding what the fall instructional model should look like are there any parameters that have been

099shared with us yet there's been no guidance that's been shared yet but the erie niagara superintendents did send a letter to the governor requesting guidance by june 4. so we're on the record with the regional superintendents to please get us this uh guidance as soon as possible because all of the districts are making plans right now and we're making them you know in lieu of guidance but with the guidance sure would make it a lot easier so um we're hopeful well i thank you i thank you and other area superintendents for your advocacy and reaching out to the state because we know it's good practice to be able to make those plans once we have the guidance rather than backtracking once we receive that so thank you for your work both the district and work

100within the area on that appreciate it anyone else for committee of the whole mr viscalia followed by mrs van say um i just uh real quick i don't know if it's a possibility we can look into this i i mean i do have a child in elementary grades and um i do have to kind of agree play sports and they see them without mass on outside is there a way we can look into insurance in legality into that it could be different for outside knowing that not every uh class has recess at the same times you know i'm not saying it's a possibility but can we please look into that um you know with the mass dealing outside if that's okay i will absolutely look into that thank you and that's exactly what i was

101going to ask um so i have already sent an email um the rest of the board saw where i questioned about face masks for our students k-12 i understand um that the state has put right now school-aged children must wear them in the classroom um i do have questions about outside and it does not make a whole lot of sense as we know uh we already know that the governor has changed his his decision already for day cares and for summer camps and so i would like to take a um i guess proactive approach or to really figure out and be a school district where we can advocate reach out to who we need to reach out to to try to unmask our children especially outside is there anyone on the board that wants to

102draft a letter regarding yeah i can work on it okay thank you because that was i was going to bring that up too i did want to acknowledge the speaker that spoke because i do agree that um i mean we we're talking about all these initiatives with getting so many of our kids vaccinated number one which is amazing i mean my own child got to participate at the event at ucc and i'm i'm very grateful and thankful for that it is very confusing to me why the kids can be on the baseball field with no mask but yeah on the playground to be required and i i i tend to agree with the speaker's thoughts on that issue so if we can advocate for that mr vasquez that would be awesome if you could drop

103the letter and then we can get it sent out on behalf of the board so thank you all right um moving on to corresponds correspondence miss um cosmetic bagner did you have something you wanted to share well i did we received a correspondence earlier in may from someone asking about coursework required for seniors but also more generally there's been chatter in the community about how the district changes curriculum or how those things are implemented so i was just wondering about if we have new curriculum or there are adjustments to our curriculum what is the process for that sure we well we have a whole process for that and i think dr balin is actually prepared to answer that question [Music] in 50 words or less dr baby good evening um so there is a process

104and many of you are familiar with components and we also shared this at the last community forum so again we invite any questions that anyone has please ask we're here to help anyone understand our processes and become familiar with those but the development efforts are overseen by the principals the instructional specialist myself as the assistant superintendent for instruction teachers are very involved in the process in fact the curriculum council was mentioned earlier when the board goals were being discussed the way we get to enhance those proposals is by virtue of the curriculum council but even before then the proposals are actually generated by our instructional specialists in partnership with teachers and teachers are the ones that come together and we're very fortunate to have the structure uh supported here in our district for many years

105teachers are at the heart of developing our curriculum changes are often necessitated by change by things coming from new york state so they're many times standards driven or priorities are established either at the state level or the district level those councils the membership is comprised of parents students district staff our administrators building administrators and teachers so there is a wide representation of stakeholders in our district and in fact we invite um feedback from those groups as well the presidents of those um various stakeholder groups are how we get our membership and students are actually brought to the table by virtue of recommendations from their principles so as you know the council reviews the proposals that are brought forward they also receive on an annual basis three program reviews and as a result they delve into

106those very deeply and they ask very good questions about the work the intention why it's necessary and their feedback and their recommendations are taken into account to strengthen the proposals that are brought forth so that really is at the heart of what comprises our curriculum review development and enhancement process and this happens annually so each year you will receive as a result of all of this work the heart of what those proposals are about and we come to request that the funding is there it's already a budgetary item but we want you to know that we're expending it and that starts the july 1st of the following school year so annually that is the process that we follow thank you thank you very much and also with regards to correspondence i just want to thank

107the members of our community who have recently sent letters of thanks to the board for our work and time and effort in our decision to select our next superintendent we've received many letters of support which has been very welcoming and appreciative we also have received a handful of emails that were critical of our decision i want to acknowledge that as well a big part of our role as board members is to listen with openness and with curiosity to all stakeholders we have recently received an anonymous complaint and i'd like to just go on record and ask that going forward if you contact us please include your name so that we can contact you as well and i want to personally say that as a board that oversees the education of students we value diversity equity

108and inclusion it is why we made it a board goal this year and it is why it is essential work that is ongoing within our district there is space for all of us within this community with all of our diverse cultures and beliefs but as an educator i must say that there is absolutely no space for discrimination and bigotry right we practice kindness we practice love and we need to call out things that are against that so i just want to go on record and share that anybody else have any updates for correspondence thank you we will now be going into executive session may i have a motion please to adjourn the regular board meeting and recess into executive session to discuss current litigation and employment matters related to a particular person thank you mrs

109bieger uh mr lemay second any discussion on that seeing none all in favor opposed abstentions motion carried unanimously thank you