Board of Education Meeting - April 13, 2021

001can i get in four dogs may i have a motion to return the regular board meeting to public session please mr lemay thank you mr borenstein second is there any discussion seeing none all in favor opposed abstentions who've been carried unanimously thank you i called the regular board meeting to order all board members are present there is a live stream of our meeting happening on youtube and our district youtube channel mr bornstein would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance through the flag i pledge allegiance to the fight of the united states [Music] to the republic and just stand on our nation [Music] thank you very much is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented mrs van sice thank you mr lemay second all in favor saying all hands up motion

002carries unanimously all right we are moving on to recognition dr mckenna i turn it over to you for board recognition of our schools thank you very much mrs leather barrel we have some excellent recognitions tonight uh this evening we continue with our school spotlight highlighting the great work that goes on within our classrooms this month our school spotlight focuses on maple west elementary and community building here is a look at community building at maple west you are getting so good at looking at graphs and analyzing them like real mathematicians give yourselves a pat on the back remote teaching honestly it's quite a challenge to try and make sure that students have as best experience as possible we really want to make sure that we have a full experience for our remote students and one of

003the ways to do that is to talk to the teachers who are teaching them so we meet regularly with all of the remote teachers to talk about how things are going to specifically talk about making sure that that the students are engaged in what we're doing here at maplewest it's not easy for either end of the screen you know the teacher or the student the other remote teachers we really lean on each other and support each other we're meeting on a weekly basis we were kind of brainstorming ideas leading up to school beginning and even once school did begin we were kind of talking about troubles we were having we were trying to help each other out the community here at maplewest has been amazing i think what's been really great is every wednesday we

004have a supply pickup so those kids are getting the same materials the supplies and books that the kids here in the hybrid program are getting just making sure that they feel a sense of community and making sure that they know that what they're doing at home is the same thing the kids are doing here and you know we're just doing it a different way we wanted to make sure that all opportunities were available to all students no matter which way that they were learning whether it's pictures for the yearbook for spring pictures whether it's spirit days whether it's video announcements anything that we do we make sure that all students have an opportunity to participate kids need to be able to belong they need to feel like they're welcome they need to feel that they

005have a safe place to to go to learn i mean adults we fully know that if we go to a place where we feel valued we feel safe we feel engaged that we're going to be able to be successful there and we just want our kids to be successful close your eyes for a second and i want you to imagine that you are in the world of frog and tote i think it's huge especially in the situation that we're in with just our little remote class just even having that sense of community that they're willing to share with each other talk to each other share things that they're excited about things that they're worried about and have that safe space still within the remote class and that really i think has helped a lot with

006mental health with them and also just that sense of community it's really nice to not feel like in person or hybrid has their own thing going on and then virtual is just off to the side like we've really enjoyed being able to do as many of the normal activities as we can we're just really grateful at all of the work which i'm sure i only know a fraction of that's being done behind the scenes at maplewest i know this year is almost impossible for them and i know they're juggling all sorts of things they've really done a lot and gone out of their way to really work on that community for us so we really appreciate it i'd just like to thank the families for their consistent support and i'd like to you know acknowledge

007my teachers who are teaching remotely they're doing a fantastic job i don't think that there's any question that they're going above and beyond what's asked of them on a daily basis to make a positive difference in the lives of kids there are kids we love them they're part of our school and we want to make sure that even though we're going through a global pandemic and they're learning at home that they're cared about and that they are part of maple west okay next we would like to recognize williamsville south 9th grader dio poulin who competed against more than 2 300 contestants to win the c-span student camp competition grand prize with his documentary trust fall beginning as a fifth grader at mill middle school and under the guidance of mr randy gamero theo has developed

008into a gifted storyteller first creating video announcements for the middle school he honed his craft throughout his time at mill and finished third overall as an eighth grader in the competition last year he has continued his documentary work winning this prestigious national award the prompt for this year's c-span competition was explore the issues you want the president and new congress to address in 2021. theo chose restoring trust in government and details that in his six-minute award-winning documentary trust fall theo's documentary will air nationally on c-span on wednesday april 21st 2021. congratulations theo and here is a look at his amazing accomplishment almost all of the major issues that i've thought about would at least be made better if not solved if the government was more trusted not to say that we need to just decide

009to blindly trust the government but they got that the government has to make themselves more trustworthy so as i started doing more research into this i realized that this was really a big issue americans don't trust their government let's back up the american experiment is one built on successes and failures in order to get out of this pandemic to achieve racial justice to try to reunite a fractured nation we need to hear the truth even when especially when that truth is that the path ahead is going to be long and full of struggle once we come to expect the truth even hard truth we the people can place our trust in a better future our american future just wanted to call and congratulate you today because you're our 2021 grand prize winner wait really really

010[Music] congratulations congratulations bye i'm speechless oh my gosh thank you guys so much when they took they told me i won grand prize i was truly amazed right like and i think that came with that was a very that's a very raw reaction that they captured there you know we found out in the afternoon and i think that whole afternoon and evening we just kept like looking at each other like is this real yeah no uh but it but it is really uh wonderful because when we sent it off you know i remember the the deadline was inauguration day and theo submitted it right before the inauguration it's this big moment for our country and i remember being so proud of the video and being like off you go and to see where it's coming

011and how resonant it is right now it just it we're so proud i just think that one of the reasons that theo's documentary is so special this year is just the power of the message um you know just on on a small scale and on a larger scale that uh to have a child say that we need to restore trust in our institutions is extremely powerful and i just think it resonated uh really well i mean it's super impressive at that age to represent yourself and be able to win this competition was just amazing i mean i think you know what's most impressive watching the video is just the the level of talent that he has as a ninth grader is off the charts we can't wait to see you know what else he's able

012to do in his years here at south [Applause] congratulations theo and we have one more finally tonight it's with great pleasure to share that the district has earned the honor as one of the best communities for music education award while it has been a challenging year our incredible music department has found new creative and innovative ways to deliver instruction to our students we're also proud to share that on monday the new music facilities at williamsville east and north which were part of the 2018 music capital project are complete and now open williamsville south's new music edition will be ready in the fall let's take a look so we're really excited that we've won the best communities for music education award it's sponsored by the namm foundation the national association of music merchants and what it

013does is recognizes districts who have complete community support for music not only from a district standpoint from a funding standpoint but from a community standpoint are there opportunities in the in the community for students to perform to go to watch musical events it's really about community and we're really excited that we were able to be recognized for this once again this is our 12th year in a row that we've won it and it's it's really exciting to get this recognition williamsville north edition has opened windows east edition has opened williamsville south is still in the process of construction we anticipate that to be available over the summer so students will have access to that one in the fall these spaces were designed with sound first there were acoustical consultants who were on the project from

014the very beginning what you see is a product of what you want to hear it really serves the music that well and when you're in an ensemble and you're singing or you're playing your instrument when you can hear that sound surround you it's so exciting and so exhilarating it's just fantastic and it just gives you an overall sense of just like i don't know if this is weird but comfort it's just really nice knowing that we have our own room now when you all play together it's really unlike anything you can ever like do in your life just like playing with a full orchestra and just a piece that you've all worked so hard on is a really amazing experience it smells like a new car in there and like it just it just has

015a lot more space it's not as crowded like in the previous room we were in so i think there's a lot more room to play and that just gives me the feeling that i think we're gonna get a good practice experience my reaction just looking at i was like he did a really nice job with it like they just they just did it really quick they're like they were ahead of schedule from what i could tell like they're doing a really good job with it i'm overall 100 happy with this new space they did a really good job we've always been huge supporters of music in our district i i'm being a district employee for many many years in the district resident for many many years i know how much music means to this community

016and to see this come to life just really amplifies that excitement that we all feel teachers students staff members we all feel the excitement to be able to walk into these new spaces all right all right congratulations great to see those facilities they look fantastic thank you very much dr mcconnell we will now have our oh actually i'm sorry i skipped one are there any board acknowledgements all right we will move on to public expression which is item five on our agenda and at this time i'll call on dr mcclary our parliamentarian to review our public expression format thank you mrs leatherbarrow welcome to all who have come to observe this regular board meeting for policy 1510 the board has set aside 30 minutes for public expression a time when we invite members of the

017community to share ideas and concerns with us and 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 the 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 also would like to ask that you demonstrate respect for us and for one another by speaking to the issues giving us ideas and sharing your opinions but not engaging in any personal attacks thank you for your cooperation and thank you to

018those who have pre-registered for public expression at this time i will call on you and then please step up to the podium and state your name okay the first person who has registered to speak is nicole pohanzik good evening everyone my name is nicole pohanczyk and i'm a district parent of a child in eighth grade and a recent graduate of 2020 from north i want to remind everyone that the budget boat is coming up tuesday may 18th you have to be at least 18 years old get those high school seniors out there to vote u.s citizen resident of the west uh williamsville central school district for at least 30 days you have to bring proof of your id in residency you do not need to be a registered bonus voter you don't need to have

019uh be a homeowner you can you can rent and if you don't feel comfortable you can request an absentee ballot from the district the budget vote is very important this year we need to get the incumbents out and get people on the board that want our kids in school and are not controlled by the teachers union board members can you raise your hand if you were supported by the teachers union all nine of you should be raising your hand proudly yeah probably unfortunately the board members are controlled by the teachers union we see this because in the recent transactions that occurred uh if you had read the 800 page document by harris beecher you can see that the um that their findings were really one-sided this unfortunately what happened with uh the school year this

020year was all an old grudge against dr marzloff i do not personally know dr marzot and i have to be honest that i've been in the district for 13 years and really didn't pay attention i laughed knowing anything about the school board i thought hey we're the number one school district why should we bother they can run themselves after what happened in september i started investigating and saw what happened when we first sued dr mars off it cost the district almost one million dollars then it went to the state and found those charges were unfounded now the second lawsuit costs two hundred and seventy dollars an hour for what if you read it it's one-sided very one-sided and left-out huge pieces of the puzzle so i beg everyone to read that 800 page report we

021paid 270 an hour for it and also remind you that people going with the teachers union is not always the right thing i must admit i voted for a lot of you thinking that was the right way we have a great new candidates coming along the way terry king michael littman and saruk singh and i encourage everyone to vote for the new uh candidates thank you [Music] our second speaker is terry king i am terry king good evening uh my my questions are budget related and two in specific but i know that a lot of time has been spent navigating and really designing developing the budgets been fluid over the last few months with all the uncertainty but now i noticed that there's significant extra funding coming through the federal government in the stimulus cares

022act and the recent act that was uh voted on but recently i read that mike cornell had stated that there was uncertainty about the state reimbursement formula as the superintendent or president of western new york superintendent association that there was a question mark about whether or not the state formula the way they allocate funding to local districts would remain the same based on the extra federal funding and i'm just curious if we've given some thought to that when crafting this current budget that's being voted on and how that may play if that's adjusted and we have to readjust a loss of revenue the second part of that is in the budget was i also have learned that we're really at the lower end of the pay structure for substitute teachers and uh in looking at

023some of the posted sites recently i found that i think we're under the lower 20 more more towards the lower 15 of the western new york district and i'm hoping that we could take a look at that to really improve those pay rates for those that are looking at teaching here in williamsville especially for the substitutes and that may help eliminate some of the available teachers who are willing to come and work in the district on a substitute basis and the second part of that is improving the pay structure for the first year newly hired teachers um that they that it would become attractive not just the long-term pay structure in williamsville but the pay structure for someone coming fresh out of college and looking to have a career here and we speak about excellence

024in education we certainly want to attract the best and so i'd ask us to take a hard look at that so thank you um there is no other name listed for pre-registration we have set aside up to 30 minutes for public expression so if there is anyone else in the community who would like to have three minutes to speak you may step up to the podium and state your name okay thank you dr mcconnell and thank you to all of our speakers we are moving on to item six which is the review of the code of conduct dr mechana i will turn it over to you briefly at this time i'll turn it over to mr scanzuzzo thank you thank you so uh last month our committee on um on the code of conduct met

025to review our code of conduct um there were a few um changes made uh just updates regarding um people who were on the committee um in the very beginning also there were a couple changes made um on page 10 uh talking about um really definitions that we needed to update regarding the um transgender and gender definitions that needed to be updated so really want to talk to nine binary non-binary and gender queer um definitions regarding gender and gender expression are currently uh updated in the in the code of conduct um also on page 11 we talk about um attendance and student responsibilities we just wanted to clarify that attending class meant every day unless legally excused on page 11 and then moving towards the back part of the code of conduct we have with the

026addition of our administrative teams at all of our buildings now on page 27 when it came to students who have found it violated in the district's code of conduct may be subject to the following penalties either alone or in combination with one another and we wanted to add our building administrators and not just the building principles we wanted to expand that to our assistant principals that are now part of all of our administrative teams at the elementary middle and high schools and at this time i would take any questions comments uh but this is just really um a first draft review for the board to take a look at and uh hopefully we can uh have an adoption at the next meeting yes could you tell us the district's plan um in regards to restorative

027practices and where that will fall into play with the code of conduct where we're at with strategic planning with our restorative practices i think i could address that now or i could address it later in our presentation uh but i'll wait to just kind of it'll go well with our presentation that's gonna be forthcoming yes i had the same question so thank you but i also wanted just to make a comment that i did appreciate the updates to the gender definition i think it's a more inclusive definition for members of our community that are in the lgbtq community so i appreciate that thank you yeah and the committee was very cognizant of that and that we really need to update that particular area based on the development and how that area is kind of expanded

028um it's it's uh it's vocabulary and definitions uh to encompass and be as including cl and be as inclusive as possible thank you i just wanted to share um first of all thank you for providing us the updates on the code of conduct um it was interesting to me because i sort of looked at it with fresh eyes over the weekend after coming back from a little we you know a week away um some of the things that jumped out at me that i just wanted to mention publicly was that in the opening paragraphs of the code of conduct it says it's based on the principles of civility mutual respect citizenship character tolerance honesty and integrity and i just i'm really proud to see all of that in there as as the opening of our

029code of conduct for our district because those are character traits that we want to teach our children and those are also character traits that we as adults need to aim to live by so i am very appreciative that that is in there and they also just wanted to point out that there's also a section that says unless otherwise indicated this code applies to all students school personnel parents and other visitors when on school property or attending a school function i think that that's really important as well because there are parts of the code of conduct that speak about bullying you speak about harassment those things are well and clearly defined within the document but i think it's a good reminder that this is a code for for everyone for the adults for the students for

030the parents for the visitors for everyone and i appreciate that that wording is in there you're welcome actually it starts when the kids get on the bus absolutely the moment they get on the bus any other questions for the board all right at this time we will hold a code of conduct public forum if you pre-registered for the code of conduct public forum at this time i will call on you or dr mcclure can call on you do we have anyone that pre-registered for that portion all right so then we'll open it up is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak on the code of conduct whether to ask a question or to give feedback this can be a student or an adult all right i don't see anyone coming forward so

031we will move on with our agenda so we're going on to our consent agenda i'm going to break out a few items this time instead of putting them all together i'm going to start with personnel may i have a motion to approve item 8 personnel this mr speaker thank you is there a second mr mecca second is there any discussion on item eight personnel right seeing none all in favor sentence motion carried unanimously for consent agenda um item eight personnel and now i will put items nine and ten together may i have a motion please to approve consent agenda items 9 business and 10 special needs and student activities as presented mr borenstein thank you mrs van slice is a second is there any discussion on those items seeing none all in favor please all

032hands are up motion carries unanimously nine zero zero at this time having approved our personnel business items and special needs and student activities i would like to welcome lori jonas our newly appointed principal at mill middle school to come join us at the podium [Applause] welcome it's nice to meet you in person i saw your youtube video from your prior district um please feel free to introduce yourself to us absolutely so i'm lori jonas i'm really truly honored to be chosen to be the next leader of mill i am born and raised in western new york spent the last six years in the sunny state of california and moved back here i'm bringing a tremendous amount of professional development and experience i promise that you will be hard spent to find an administrator who loves

033middle school students more than i do i feel that that is a tricky age especially if you've raised one you understand that and i think that you need a really passionate exciting principle to to take the lead in schools that are middle schools i am one of those leaders um williamsville has an excellent reputation and i am very excited that i was chosen out of many qualified candidates to take the next lead at mill so um thank you to dr mckenna and all that we're on the interview panel i'm extremely excited to get started at mel thank you so much it's so nice to meet you thank you you as well thank you thank you about uh miss jonas's background because it's really quite impressive she's been a principal for five years as she said

034from from california some of the highlights you know from her career she has she significantly increased student achievement in the school that she was at um in fact they had the highest graduation graduation rate in the history of the school they went from being the last graduation in their in their district to the top graduation rate in their district and it was very impressive the improvements that the school made under your leadership she's also been part of developing social emotional learning programs in the last district that she was in and that definitely mitch's matches our goals and our strategic plan here she was on the strategic planning committee in her last district as well and we're embarking on a new strategic planning initiative so someone who has experience in working and implementing strategic plans was

035something we felt was was very important at this time she was also on her equity and diversity task force uh in her last district as well another district initiative that we have embraced and so we're looking forward to again working with you because and learning from you because these are initiatives that we're just embarking on as well and for all of the her success uh in her last year that she was there she was the middle school principal of the year for the association of california school administrators for her entire region so congratulations we're proud to have you on board thank you so much thank you [Applause] and i would also like to thank the following retirees for their service to the district i will read their name the building that they worked at and

036the number of years of service andrew bucheco maple east for 30 years of service ann burden district office for 25 years of service peter campana middle middle school 18 and a half years of service theresa casey worked district-wide for 21 years of service robert cooper at lawrenceville drive for 29 years of service and linda naples at dodge elementary for 14 years of service thank you for your service and please enjoy your retirement [Applause] moving on you're on item 11 is there a motion to approve the march 9th regular board meeting minutes um mrs bieger i think you're abstaining though from that one right because you you can't you missed that meeting march 9th can i get elected it's okay can't motion if you weren't here for that i'm not gonna make that one or instead

037thank you and this is van slice is the second are there any corrections to those minutes okay on the motion to approve the march 9th meeting minutes all in favor all right extend our oppose sorry about that and abstentions thank you so motion carries eight zero one and now to the march 23rd special board meeting minutes this was our special board and special board meeting and budget work session may i have a motion to approve those minutes mrs speaker i will take that motion this time thank you and miss casper zach bogner is a second are there any corrections seeing none all in favor all hands up motion carries nine zero zero thank you moving on to our president's report the first item is the community forum i just want to thank the members of

038our community who participated in our community forum which took place on march 23rd after our special board meeting it was a good opportunity to hear from parents and i also wish to thank mrs van slice and mrs bieger for leading that event so anyone else from the board wish to make a comment about the community forum all right thank you we have some board visits um coming up some building visits i should say the dates and times where the upcoming school building visits are listed in item 12b does anyone wish to change their commitment to attend or not attend at this time dr mccleary um unfortunately i have to change from maybe to no okay and that's for transit um that in east on uh next friday correct yes again i'm sorry but i can't

039okay any other changes is there anyone else that's able to join us that didn't think they could previously all right no problem does anyone have anything to report um on either erie county association of school boards or nisba for items 12 c and d all right seeing none moving on to 12 e is there a motion to approve the amended 2020 2021 school calendar as presented mr lemay thank you mrs van slice is a second is there any discussion on that all right i'll just point out for anyone that's asking why we're approving this if we're making an adjustment for the juneteenth holiday right because that was a newly appointed holiday this year so we had to adjust that in our calendar all in favor on the approval of the amended calendar all hands are

040up so that equals nine zero zero thank you item uh f is there a motion to authorize the district clerk to hire election personnel to facilitate the annual district vote to be held on may 18 2021 as presented thank you mr borenstein and mr lemay as a second is there any discussion all right seeing none all in favor hands are up motion carries nine zero zero are there any questions in regard to the dates on the calendar and board docs for the 21 2022 school year this is for the review of the draft board of education meeting calendar item g miss casper zach wagner i just wanted to clarify so originally there was a april 12th regular board meeting and budget adoption that we determined was during spring recess so we are moving that to

041april 19th correct that's the way i read it mrs carey is that correct okay i see a thumbs up on it thank you and then they also just want to propose this isn't this is not in the draft but um mrs van zeus had sent out a little poll to get some dates for a retreat um based on the results of that mrs van shared those results with me july 8th which is the thursday had the most number of votes for a retreat and the time that was most popular was the 3 to 6 p.m so i just want to ask all of you to put that um date in your calendar if you hope to be on the board next year um and for any candidates who are running to also put that date

042in their calendar so that would be july 8th from 3 to 6 p.m and that would be for a retreat so we would have our reorg meeting and then a few days later we would have a retreat all right any other questions or comments on that and also a community forum um the consensus from mrs van slice's uh google poll was that we have two community forums and so i want to propose that we keep the one that's that's after the budget work session and that we also choose a fall forum date in october is any thoughts on that and um mrs van says i know you said you would perhaps send out something to the board to choose that date do you want to speak about that sure so um i gave a couple

043options and one was a date in the fall looking at the end of october or beginning of november um before i actually sent out those dates i wanted to check with mrs carey to make sure that we don't have any type of conflict with the district calendar so once i confirm that with mrs carey i'll send out probably two dates if everyone's okay i am looking at i thought maybe the end of october or beginning of november as it gives our children our students time to be in school and you know kind of work things out and then any um concerns or things that parents would like to bring to us makes the most sense i thought maybe at that time is does that sound okay does anyone feel we should do something differently i

044support that i think um because hopefully we'll have some homecoming events this coming fall um it might also be good to offer like a a saturday date and also a bit perhaps a week a week night and i also was thinking that we could have since we're gonna have two forums we could maybe have one of them be on zoom and another one in person um but we can discuss that once we get closer to it um probably the month before the actual forum we can take a vote as to whether we want to have it on zoom because i will say that we have had more people in attendance when we have the forum on zoom and we we definitely want to be able to you know have people join us and have it

045be convenient for them to join us which as a parent of three i know it's a lot more convenient to just plug into zoom because i can pretty much do it anywhere okay all right thank you everybody for that oh yes go ahead mr lemay i just wanted to make one suggestion uh when picking the dates perhaps looking at maybe mid-october for example the 16th uh because looking at that 23rd 24th we have the nisba convention that starts up that weekend and of course the following weekend is is uh halloween so maybe we should look at that mid-october as instead of the end of october so we'll look at mid-october and then the first maybe weekend in november and we'll see where everyone lies thanks for pointing out the next book convention i had forgotten

046about that so that's really helpful all right we're going to move on in our agenda mrs carey would you like to provide an update on items 12 h and 12 i thank you mrs leatherbarrow uh sold the report on candidate information so far to date there are two official candidates mr sean lemay and reverend terry king the website will be updated after the ballot number drawing uh which is april 20th at 5 30. um and that will have the candidate bios and more information regarding the annual vote so i'll work with mr phillipowsky on that for getting that tab up there and both agenda items have that board information in there for running for the board and erie county board of elections the list of registered voters how i get it it's from the board

047of elections and then there are links to that database and the street directory to verify your qualified voter in the district any questions you can email me or call me all that information's on inboard docs and will be on the website uh so application for the absentee ballot you can email me or call me and i'll get that application for absentee ballot for you my contact information and more info is in board doc's agenda item 12i and any updates again will be posted on the website and i'll work with mr filipowski on that any questions oh go ahead mr barnes mr boyd thank you thanks for that update just to be a little bit more specific about the vote um my understanding that it will be an in-person vote this year however there is a

048an option to be absentee ballots is that correct at this point there was an option for you to request an absentee ballot to request but on generally unlike last year it's going to be an in-person vote in person vote correct okay thank you and um just one follow-up question mr martens he had my first question is there a deadline to request the absentee ballot yes by mail it's uh five days before okay to get it back to me in the mail and then um if you're in person requesting it you can come in person and request a bail it um and you can fill it out a district office and uh turn it back in okay uh the absentee ballots aren't open until a close of polls so we might be working until whatever hours

049to get everyone uh all the absentee ballots picked and turned over and because if someone came to vote in person and they filled out an absentee ballot uh we would have to destroy the absentee ballot that they filled out because they came in person to vote so we have our checks and balances in place checks and balances throughout the new one's voting twice all right thank you very much you're welcome thank you so item jay erie one boces will present its tentative administrative capital and program budgets for 2021-2022 to the members of the boards of education of the 9 19 component school districts for their review and this document is in your board docs packet the dates for the annual needing and boces vote are listed the erie 1 boces vote will be held on

050tuesday april 20th 2021 at 6 00 pm until 6 15 pm the vote will be held remote for board members to attend and the public will be able to view a live stream this will be a real quick one we'll just do it on zoom since we're only voting on one thing all right any questions on that all right um we are moving on to item 13 and dr mcconnell i turn it over to you for items 13 a and b our community update in our strategic planning update thank you very much mr leatherbarrow and the community update today we're going to start with the plan to pivot review i know we sent out uh correspondence to parents uh just yesterday about the plan and what we'd like to do tonight is review the plan

051uh briefly here tonight and summarize the the main parts of the plan but also the complete plan is posted on our website for anyone who needs to refer to it to get any detailed further detailed information so here's a summary of the key elements for our plan to pivot these are the first three steps as you can see on this slide and we've already completed these first three we sent out our survey back a few weeks ago we had developed our committees at the middle uh high school and elementary level we also went down to building a level as well we've done all of this we've moved our furniture we've got uh our plan for our schools and staging each classroom right now at three feet and we reviewed the data from the informational survey

052and we shared that data with our community as well here we are right now uh in the summary of the plan to pivot and steps four five and six and these are the ones that we're doing concurrently right now we're informing the staff and families of the changes in state guidance that's what we did uh actually when it first came out on friday at 5 30 uh we immediately got something out that the guidance had changed and then we said we'd get it out first thing monday morning and we did we made sure that we got the plan out first thing so that our community was aware of the changes we sent out an instructional survey of families asking them to choose an instructional model for the remainder of the year this is important data

053because this is how we know exactly how many students are going to be in each classroom in each school this is what is critically important for our planning at this point in time so i'd like to encourage anyone that's out there uh if you have not filled out the survey yet to please do so we have the survey open until tomorrow at noon if anyone has any uh you know questions about the model please call the principal of your school we've been referring everyone to the principles because they're the ones that know how things impact each of their individual buildings uh step six that's what we're going to be doing then reconfiguring our classrooms uh based on the survey and then we're going to share all the survey results and next week we have meetings

054set next monday and tuesday and wednesday on monday we'll be sharing results and getting feedback from the community as a from our district perspective and then on tuesday the elementary schools are going to be doing their presentations and getting feedback and then on wednesday the middle school high schools will be doing the same and then after we receive all the feedback after next wednesday we'll take next thursday friday make sure we fine-tune the plan and be getting implementation the following monday on april 26th here's some key things from the guidance that we thought was important for everyone according to the guidance districts are to ensure that equity and education and responsible parties should prioritize efforts to return all students to in-person instruction and we felt that this was important because this was in the guidance

055multiple times how important it is for districts to begin this process and they talked about a phasing process also in the guidance and that's exactly what we started to do so the district is addressing the guidance with the phased-in approach beginning with the elementary we also one of the questions that's come up too is why are we not offering hybrid and this is one of the main reasons is because the guidance is encouraging districts to start phasing in to start making steps in this direction so that's what we're doing we're following the guidance and implementing our plan we also believe that this is part of our beliefs it's in the best interest of students to be in person as much as possible the implementation for the plan to pivot uh we'll be moving quite you

056know quite quickly over the next uh you know a couple of weeks but first we wanted to talk about the um the transmission risk because that impacts what happens over these next few weeks and right now it's definitely impacting what's happening in our middle school in high school so under the new guidance you if you're in a zone that's high then you can't come back until you go down to one of these lower these lower zones so what does a high zone mean if you have a hundred plus cases per hundred thousand in a seven day period you would be in a high transmission zone we wanted to point that out because we are in a high risk transmission zone right now in western new york the last data that we uh just pulled and

057uh 410 so this was brand new we just got yes just today good job mr filipowski um it's up to 370 per thousand 10 000 right now so you can see that um we're way uh into the high risk transmission zone right now so what that impacts is that the guidance states that elementary can come back but middle school and high school cannot if you're in the high risk zone so right now we're moving forward with the elementary school uh coming in on april 26th and what we're gonna have to do is just monitor to see the uh the transmission rate uh over the next you know period of time to see when it comes down to when middle school and high school can start going in as well so the district implement implementing the

058plan uh is in full phase right now and what we're going to be doing is our goal is april 26 but again we said it it's subject to change based on those transmission rates we wanted to make sure that everybody is aware of that we monitor these rates every day uh we're in touch with erie county department of health every day and um so if for some reason they change we'll notify the public as soon as possible but as of today right now we're beginning the process for our elementary schools and we're moving forward with middle school high school but we have to pause until that transmission rate goes down here's the plan to pivot timeline april 12th yesterday we sent out the instructional model to families today we're doing our presentation at the board

059of education april 14th tomorrow the instructional model surveys are due at 12 noon april 15 and 16 we're going to take the survey we're going to disaggregate all the data we're going to break it down to the classroom level and then we'll be working with our principals in each school to make sure that all of the spaces and all of the schools are appropriately spaced so that all of our students can return april 19th that's next monday that's when the district presentation will be when we will be giving an overview of the results of that survey and we'll be getting community feedback from our community as well and we'll be sharing information about that later this week on april 20th as i mentioned before that's when the elementary presentations will be going on and they'll

060be getting feedback from our elementary parents and then april 21st our middle school and high schools will be giving their presentations and getting feedback from their parents as well and then april 22nd and 23rd we're going to take all the feedback we're going to take all the data and we're going to make any final changes and adjustments to the plan and april 26 2021 the implementation of the plan begins and at this time we'll be beginning with our elementary students k-4 again this is just a review of what i just said elementary is ready to go and we're phasing that in on monday april 26 unless the guidance changes and the middle school and high school they're going to continue in their current high flex model at this time at the middle and high schools

061students will return four days in person when the conditions allow so that's where we are with our middle school and high schools and again we'll be monitoring this on a daily basis so that's a brief review of our plan to pivot and what i'd like to say to everybody too is please make sure that you look at our website now because the detailed plan to pivot is posted it's quite lengthy but you'll see that all of those steps are in there and it should give you an enormous amount of information regarding the plan but also i do want to tell everyone that if you have any specific questions regarding your child's school regarding their classrooms please reach out to the building principals they are ready to take your calls and i know they already have

062been quite busy since we launched the plan yesterday and now the social emotional um the next phase we have the social emotional and i pause you i'm just on that face right there um just on the plan to pivot i just want to make a brief statement sure um first of all i want to thank you dr mcconnell and i want to acknowledge our district leadership team and our building principals because many of these individuals were on spring recess last week and as you know the guidance came out during the resource on a friday evening and um dr mcconnell including members of the leadership team several of our principals they worked friday night saturday sunday i mean people were calling in from airports um you know it's just it's the the level of um time

063and effort where many districts just said okay it came out on friday we'll we'll deal with it on monday it didn't happen here in williamsville and here in williamsville as soon as they came out you were on your way to go home and you're like oh i guess i'm working late and so i just want to acknowledge that first off we had been working on our plan to pivot for for many weeks and as you could tell from our weekly updates that we've been giving we've been trying to keep the public informed along the way so when the guidance came out we were ready to pivot uh we had our plan um pretty much uh more than drafted we were ready to go so we were able to move you know quickly and expeditiously and

064yeah we still had to work a lot and i give the team a lot of credit over the weekend and a lot of support from many people who made it happen um but again we we worked hard we worked diligently because we know that this is in the best interest of our students and that's why you know the time energy and effort is certainly something that's worth putting in and we'll continue until the plan to pivot um comes to fruition when we get our kids back in safely and into our classrooms i appreciate that and um i know the board appreciates it as well i also want to say that um the board collectively and individually would like to be able to address the district's reopening plan here this evening we are are however unable

065to do so due to pending litigation um we will not be able to speak or comment on the plan at this time but we do want to remind you that the district's plan to pivot is set out on the district's website as dr mcconnell has indicated and now if you'd like to go on to the social emotional portion of your yes we've been also working very hard in our social emotional uh learning programs and i'd like to call mr scanzuzzo i know dr devate i'm going to go through part of this and then i'm going to turn it over to them at one point in time through this presentation is dr debate still here there she is but i will get us started and then i will turn it over to um those who have

066been working tirelessly and diligently to make sure that our students have um i would say one of the most outstanding overall plans that i've ever seen to deliver social emotional support to our students so the first uh first thing i'll start off with is the strategies that we're using in our schools right now we embrace what i call a toolbox approach there's not any one way to work with with children because there's not a one size fits all student students are not cookie cutters so we have to have various approaches and eclectic approaches we've actually referred to it as a mosaic of approaches because that's how our students are and we know that we feel our teachers need a toolbox at their disposal to try to help any problem and issue that comes up and

067we're trying every day to equip our teachers as much as they possibly can be the foundation of the programs and practices that we started uh started this back actually not just this year this is what started really just a few years ago really when we started down uh training with restorative practices there's a couple of we call these baseline strategies that all of our teachers need to know and at least have a tier one level of knowledge and most have a much more extensive knowledge base than that but our check-ins and community circles are really important every day i know those of you out there who have you know children in our schools like i do the daily check-ins and regular check-ins are very important it's when our teachers reach out and see each day

068how our children are feeling how they're doing and really check their their emotional well-being of a quick check and the and the building circles are also uh the community circles are very important because they literally get in circles and they talk about how they're feeling and the thoughts and emotions that they're going through and the teachers have been trained to look for signs and to address those signs as quickly as possible so this is some really uh excellent training that we've been embracing for the last couple of years and then this year we really put a full court press on to make sure that uh it's being implemented in our buildings uh consistently some other key programs that we've been training our staff in is one is the castle program the collaborative academic social emotional

069learning program and this is where we teach our teachers about the five key competencies for social emotional learning their self-awareness self-management self-awareness responsible decision-making and relationship skills this is key training because what this does is it helps our teachers be able to embed into their daily lessons these concepts and it helps them to to teach our kids and it helps them to look for signs and kids again as well so we've done a lot of training in this and we're going to be continuing the castle uh program in our district as well this year i'm very proud to say that we we teamed up with the university of buffalo and uh with the institute on trauma and trauma-informed care and we've done a great deal of workshops um with the university of buffalo these have

070been very informative again helping our teachers understand trauma uh how important it is not to uh ever look away from trauma but to make sure that it gets treated make sure that it gets addressed and make sure that if uh how to get our children linked with the proper services to help and support them through any trauma or difficulty that they may have so this uh um relationship with the university of buffalo this year has been great and we're going to continue to keep cultivating this as we move forward another relationship that we've had for um multiple years but it's really come into play this past year quite a bit is with the alberti alberti center for bullying abuse at the university of buffalo as well and this year we entered into a um it's

071a a grant that we did it's a program it's called nabit and it's norms and bystander intervention training and what we're doing with that is we're training our students and our staff as well to look for signs so students are actually looking and helping and supporting other students and they're finding ways to if they see students in in need to be able to reach out and get support for their fellow students as well we're doing this program right now at east and it's going to be uh moving to north and south of beginning at the end of this year but implementation next year in those schools so very exciting program and it's helping our uh quite a bit and again uh i give dr devate and mr skanzuzo a lot of kudos for working so

072cooperatively with the university of buffalo they have been an incredible partner through this uh time um and we are the only district right uh in western new york that we know of that's participating in this project at this time we're helping create it even that's right and working with them to create it so it shows you the the innovative staff that we have and the progressive staff that we have to make sure that our kids are getting the very best services restorative practices we've been doing this now this is the third year and it's really we wanted to be into the third year of our pilot this year but coveted kind of put things on paul so we're really going to be embracing our third year next year and that's uh really going through the

073last the third phase of that program is restorative justice and i know i'll let dr dabate talk about that um in just a minute some more things some structures that we have in our schools that we think are outstanding and giving support to not only our our students but our staff and our community we have child study teams in our build in all of our buildings we have an extensive rti uh program that we have in our district our academic intervention services program um is i think absolutely outstanding we are constantly assessing students assessing their needs getting them support not only social emotionally but academically as well because we know when students are feeling stressed academically that's something that lends to greater problems and social emotional difficulties down the road so we're really trying hard

074to make sure that we address all the academic needs that our students have as well our shared decision-making uh district and uh just end building programs we have and we have wellness programs in every school we have a wellness council we have our guidance plan of course our code of conduct which we looked at today and the committee was just reviewing and an extensive professional development catalog with many professional learning opportunities and we do have a very extensive catalog and with many social emotional uh offerings for our our staff and uh that's where we're working with the university of buffalo and many other programs as well to make sure our staff is getting the best professional development possible and i want to know too when you can see how many um of our team that

075we have on board to help and support our our students we're very proud of the team and the investment that we've made in our team we have 14 psychologists in our district 15 social workers 14 counselors at the middle school 15.5 counselors at our high school and we have we the 20 assistant principals who are now part of our wellness teams they're part of our ssts they are working hand in hand with our social workers they've become critical uh support through this process of all our social emotional programs so this team has really been invaluable through this process and they work as a team yes we have certain people assigned to different buildings but if there's needs that have to they have to triage and go to a certain school or a certain situation they

076work together so we can use them in various places throughout the district as necessary so i wanted to let you know too that we do have um a strong team that's ready to help throughout the entire district and now this is the toolbox basically the that i was talking about before and uh dr dabatti i'll turn it over to you to uh talk about this comprehensive program so this is just a sampling of both our prevention and intervention so everything that dr mckenna was referring to is really it's comprehensive and it's integrated so the the um community circles and the check-ins provide for us the basis for helping students feel that they are in a predictable connected safe in in uh environment am i doing something wrong [Laughter] anyways uh so so this chart just

077identifies again our prevention intervention uh model so if you think about the professional staff and the tool box or tool kit resources that dr mckenna was referring to this is where we are equipping equipping equipping our teachers and our mental health staff with the skills that they need to be able to address what the students bring to us each day so we do have a tremendous opportunity for our teachers to find what speaks to them where where they need more knowledge and to be able to get it so for example under our professional catalog we've done uh culturally responsive training this year we've we've done the trauma with the ub uh institute of trauma we've uh done abuse um intervention and prevention aaron's laws and new law and so we had staff able to take

078that training in the fall and early winter and then this spring we will be bringing some of this to our students as they are supposed to be trained in these uh prevention and intervention strategies for understanding um you know what when they may be not safe and who to go to to help them uh inclusivity we have done our lgbt plus training cue training first for a lot of our staff and it's it's at different levels too we've had foundational information and then have training for staff that want that that has a little bit more uh nuts and bolts to it uh just the terminology that we were talking about before in the code of conduct is important but it's also important for our staff and our faculty to know how to support students what

079happens if you sometimes make mistakes you make a mistake and how to apologize for that and walk back and and make sure that we are sending that message that all are included even if because the terminology sometimes is awkward to us that we can recover from that and and maintain that respect and civility that we talked about even in our code of conduct so important and that is so dear and to our hearts and dr mckenna was talking about this strong team that we have with our mental health folks yeah we they work across the buildings but we also meet on a regular basis so that we are all kind of in the informed about what's happening and somebody has a strategy that they've used then somebody else can pick up on that strategy so

080we're sharing ideas all the time uh so that's that's just the i can go on all day to talk about the professional development catalog the other part of that is for our students as well is the prevention programs that we have for them those peer-to-peer peer interactions that are so vital for our students to be able to learn and work with their peers we've seen it through the student government kind of opportunities that our students have had we've started some social emotional learning workshops with our students that are in student government and they are so hungry for this kind of opportunity it's been such a a pleasure to work with them to really see how dedicated they really are to these issues of diversity and inclusivity and taking care of each other so sources of

081strength nabbit these are all peer-to-peer programs that talk about students supporting each other and we don't we have a lot of adults but we need students hear things before the adults do and so students need to help each other and then bring us adults in to further support so that's all that's that third column that's all the the wellness opportunities our students have we you know this year has been abbreviated and lots of changes and things but our schools have done unity days spirit weeks they do community circles they have social skills programs so those things are still happening for remote students and for in-person students and then the middle part is really starts with intervention and but it's also prevention as well and that's what our mental health staff is doing we are continuing

082to do our one-to-one counseling our teacher consultations our our presentations for whole classrooms around social emotional learning supporting teachers that maybe don't feel comfortable or didn't feel comfortable doing a community circles having our social workers or counselors or psychologists go in and run the community circle with the teacher and then pass the baton off to that teacher to be able to continue using this model so it's really important our our staff has been wonderful they've delivered supplies they've delivered food to students homes they've met with students in driveways on in the back patio to do the counseling to do the support the family engagement has been big especially at the beginning of this pandemic our teachers as well as our mental health folks were really spending a lot of time with parents trying to help

083them through the struggles that they were they were facing so they have stuff stepped it up and everybody's working really hard everybody's really tired but we got to just keep going don't we so we will so i don't know if there's anything else for that but oh the restorative justice piece i just wanted to kind of mention that tom kavanagh from he's out of the university of colorado and he came and we in june 2019 we had a great opportunity we had probably about 70 staff members trained with him around restorative practices and we were just getting ready to start to launch that in the 1920 school year and so there was that little bit of a hiccup but the premise of that is really it's about relationships and if you break a relationship it's

084about mending the relationship and that's why the community building circles are so important because if you break a a norm of that community then you bring that apology if you will to the community to the circle and to restore and to understand that we all make mistakes and we can be forgiven and we can go to go on from that so that's the big the basic premises of our the restorative justice program so we'll be working on that more next year thank you doctor thank you and i've been in uh circles with dr davante and they're and they're very powerful and very important uh and very meaningful uh mr skanzuzo and just to add uh on to what dr davante said i'd like to just also share with you that our school resource officers play

085an integral role in the visits that were taking place with our social workers our psychologists and reaching out to students who are not engaged you know the first time second time the third time you know just really trying to make them a part of our community and reach out and knowing that the supports are there from from that aspect as well so it's really been a a large endeavor uh that we've been able to um you know reach out to families of uh of kids that are struggling during this time and families as well uh this was not easy uh there isn't a manual for anybody to follow and uh unfortunately um you know it it's happening but we're doing the best we can to serve our community as best as we can moving forward

086i mean our scl plan is embedded within our strategic plan so it's going to be one of the three areas of concern that the strategic plan is going to be focusing on uh so as far as mission vision and goals uh the sel and social emotional learning is going to be part of that you know we talk about the eclectic menu of strategies supports and best practices that we offer at all of our schools just in a variety of ways so there isn't one fits all menu it's really what buildings feel comfortable doing and they're they've adopted um you know methodologies that they're using within their buildings to support their kids and families um we're happy about that and you know overall it's supporting mental health it's supporting behavior and it's supporting academics and um

087you know this is really kind of you know where we are um we brought all stakeholders together to unite under a common cause and and that's kind of you know where we're at and we know that there's going to be much more work to be done in the fall knowing that and we're hoping you knock on wood that kids do come back that there's going to be some peeling the layers of the onion to get kids transitioning back to what was normal and there may be some um some some considerations and submissions that they have to deal with before they can move on and we're going to be there to help them support that so just the um just knowing that that's going to be at the forefront and it's going to be real it's

088something that we're going to be working towards arming our our wellness committees and our mental health staff on being able to support kids in that endeavor we've been having you know teachers as well as we're planning on coming back i know we've been talking you know with the mental health staff and our teachers to make sure that they're prepared you know for even an early return right now but i know we just mentioned you know next fall we've already been talking with dr baylen about this as our um as we begin next year those staff development days we want to dedicate to these practices and these um to make sure we have baseline understanding of our teachers of these uh very very important skills and another thing i'd like to say too we're doing a

089lot in diversity that melds with this i i look at the the culturally responsive teaching and the cultural response of classroom work that we've been doing this year even though it's diversity it is absolutely sel as well and again we mentioned getting being part of the seed program the seeking educational equity and diversity to be part of that national project we're also looking forward to melding that as part of this i believe we talked about our first steps is getting our assistant principals on board so that they become the key people uh in in all of the buildings so we start to make sure that that gets spread out throughout all 13 buildings as well so a lot of really exciting things that are happening in this area um we could talk about this for

090hours we're talking as we go through this but um we're excited about it and we're we know that we've got a lot more to go but we've got a good plan moving forward and um we're going to make sure that we do everything in our power to make sure our kids our staff and our families get the most support uh as possible i don't think any questions maybe that people might have uh thank you i just first of all uh mr skanzas and dr dubai thank you so much for this presentation i did have a question on you know understanding that the restorative practices implementation has been going on for a few years one that implementation is complete do you anticipate any changes to the code of conduct as a result of that and if

091so could you speak to that for a few moments sure so right now the restorative practices endeavor is happening at high middle school and i you know i i hate to forecast what may or may not be happening and if this is what the district is going to adopt because we have buildings like we say using eclectic you know models of pbis and and restorative practices and community circles and just you know bits and pieces of all this and restorative practices is the model that we are going to adopt and train to ensure that all of our stakeholders staff are buying into this and are going to um follow it to the model of the protocols the guidance and and have it embedded within our our district um then the code of conic will definitely

092have to be taking a look at because the two have to meld with one another right and so there's there's definite ways that restorative practices um takes a look at discipline and the code of conduct is our umbrella that oversees our guiding practices for student expectations and that encompasses not just every day every day in school but extracurricular sports and the whole the whole gamut so having said that um you know we would definitely have to take a look at the code of conduct so that it reflects and mirrors what our practices are taking place and what our adoption of our new policies and practices are within our buildings and that would happen like through the wellness committee when you review it it's the wellness committee correct that um reviews the code of conduct that's

093correct okay thank you and i think it's just important to know that the restorative practices then is a another option in the tool box if you will because we will still have to have a progressive discipline because there could be those situations where students aren't connected to the community and do not want to make reparations in the community and so we may have to then fall back and use our uh progressive discipline uh because that forcing someone to do a restorative practice as a consequence could cause more harm than good i'm so glad you spoke to that because it's not uh this or that no and it's not just let's turn the flick switch right on it's something that is it's a buy-in piece it's something that is done over years really implemented in the

094curriculum um on a daily basis i can just say as i'm middle parent um high middle has done such a fantastic job of implementing this but also explaining its appearance if parents do attend the pta meetings um it's been explained multiple times and the point that you just mentioned it's not a replacement for a discipline because you have to be as a student willing to acknowledge and take responsibility for your role in your behavior in order for the restorative practice to work and and sometimes that's not the case so i i greatly appreciate all of your comments and your time and energy for being here tonight does anyone else from the board wish to speak on this mrs beager yeah thank you so much for the presentation i i want to express my appreciation also

095for all that's been shared and it's interesting because in many presentations um we see what's coming or what's working at and this one uh in particular really hit home for me because so many of the examples that you were sharing um wellness activities options things of this nature i've seen mirrored in my own children and i have children at three different levels so uh i've heard my middle schooler talk about circles and it's just a practice and something that he's grown accustomed to um which warms my heart because i have prior training in restorative practice so i um not only know the benefit but to know that my child is part of this and and experiencing this makes me really proud of our district but also the kindness initiative that was mentioned i have a

096six-year-old right now who's writing thank you notes to people friends family members because that's what's happening in his classroom and um that's something that has really grown and i haven't always seen so um as a board member but also just sharing as a parent that these initiatives that you've been working on with your staff i really see through the eyes of my children as a parent so thank you for for all the work that's happening for the committees that uh are doing this good work and i look forward to seeing this continue in our future thank you thank you and i'd like to just publicly thank all the teachers who adopted this methodology because this is another layer you know of of their of their uh planning for their kids it's not just about delivering

097a high level curriculum it's embedding these important what we feel is very important um you know topics that kids are going to walk away from to become part of who they are as they grow up and especially at the elementary buildings and laying that foundation and then it continues on in the middle and high schools as well so uh it's just uh it's i'm proud of that and i'm i'm happy that our teachers are have really adopted this um and uh have kind of run with it thank you any any other feedback from the board um mrs van slies followed by mr bescalia so i do want to make one comment with that you beat me to it i just i think our i think first of all what the district continues to do with

098our sle it is extremely hard we all know this we have been thrown into a situation that no one has ever experienced before um and the exhaustion from everyone is out there we know that we have a community that's divided what i love is that our focus in the district remains on the students the staff our administrators our teachers are working tirelessly as well as the board in the entire district leadership and all because we are focused on those students and we see the growth in them we know it's not ideal but we see the growth and i do appreciate what the staff is doing they have thrown off their hats and said yes we're in this situation we're already dealing with multiple things but they have what looks to be they've jumped in the

099ring especially to embrace the social emotional learning piece and we do see it with the students because they remain positive optimistic and they're they're trying they're trying to make the best of it and we as parents are often reminded kindness goes a long way and we're the best role models for them so um i think the district has also done a great job teaching the community and our own parents um what that looks like with social emotional so there's a lot of gratitude that we have so thank you mr bescalia i was going to have a question but it's now a comment i'm glad to hear that restorative practices will be implemented well hopefully um in the code of conduct not only just for the day-to-day schools but the extracurriculars um i know i put

100my district that i'm in has restorative practice and and we've implemented it in extracurriculars and things like that and it really helps develop a sense of community outside of the uh school as well the school day um whether it's with sports teams or music um so i i was happy to hear that that was going to be one of my questions um and i was also i like hearing about i believe was the abbreviation that the students getting because i was on vacation this with a family member my actually my nephew from israel east was one of the students picked i should know the abbreviation i guess but i was when he was going over with me he was excited to explain what it was and um you know i was happy to hear it

101it made me excited when i was on vacation when i was not thinking about things like this but um i think that's a nice piece because when you have students recognizing and working with other students it's it's a big difference it's a huge impact um when you see your peers helping each other out rather than even a teacher sometimes um so that's something i'm excited that i heard about so yeah ned endeavor is through uh dr nickerson amanda nickerson yep uh so it's fantastic and she's been great and we'd also we were doing some work with um um i wrote our name down here uh kim morrow uh who we had to kind of suspend some of our work because of the covid19 she's really somebody who specializes in anxiety and she was doing some

102work with our staff members very well received just a no-nonsense kind of way about it so that coupled with what we're doing with the institute of trauma and trauma-informed care there are some really uh high-flying people who who are working with our staff members who live and breathe this every day and uh you know i'm just proud to say that you know we're doing everything we can in our power to bring experts in to work with our staff members to get our students and themselves in a better place and i think it's just maybe important you just reminded me that the ub trauma institute is working with us on trauma-informed educational practices so it kind of is hard when you hear trauma-informed care that this it's really the educational practices that we are really focusing

103on to be trauma-informed um so that teachers know how to respond versus to react to some things that are maybe from a child's uh traumatic past that are happening in the classroom absolutely thank you um so dr mcconnell i'm gonna ask you to go quickly through the testing update but i also want to request that all the powerpoints from this get uploaded into board docs yep you don't see it on there right now and the the slide that had the three columns i think would be a a tremendous resource for us to be able to go back to in the future yep absolutely and um we're on testing update we'll go quickly through the testing update dr bailey who's been working very hard um with our testing uh protocols and procedures right now is going

104to bring us up to date on where we are good evening everyone great to see all of you um just quickly for testing and just like to remind our parents um that everything that's in our powerpoint they did receive in our letters we sent letters home uh regarding three through eight testing at the end of march on march 25th and we sent letters home regarding the regents exams on april 1st so much of what they'll see here they have seen in the letter so that will be familiar to them just quickly we did try to put a couple of slides together and they're subject specific the first being english language arts and identifying within the established window for new york state the dates that the testing will take place we worked very hard with our

105building principals and our district administrators to look at our instructional models and when students are in school and keeping in mind too that our students who are 100 remote and in their remote option also have the ability to come into our buildings for testing purposes so of course we did invite all of our families uh to partake in a couple of surveys to let us know what their intention was regarding their children and we thank them very much for doing that it's essential in terms of our planning so on our first slide our ela is represented our second with math you'll notice too there's a couple of dates that are assigned as makeup assessment dates not all of them have to be utilized but we did want to make sure that we communicated that there

106are also options for makeups in the event that the original initial administration date is not something that a student is present for so there are some allocated makeup assessments as well as far as new york state science that one will take place in june the state did extend the window originally it was just a few days now it is a week long just as a reminder our grades four and eight are those that are tested for science um the construct of the tests have changed significantly so we did put a slide together again this was in the letter itself as to what um the participation regarding the assessment looks like as well as the test themselves um just as a reminder again assessments can only be administered in the buildings they cannot be administered remotely

107again we did reach out to families and thank you so much to our families because they did an amazing job responding to the survey if for some reason a family was unable to respond please reach out directly to the school they will assist you so that that option is certainly available as well um just to synthesize on now with ela and math specifically each subject only has one session as you remember from the past there were multiple testing dates and multiple parts that's no longer the case the number of questions has been reduced it'll take about an hour we're estimating for the test to be completed they are still untimed but because there are no written components for ela or math we do not believe that it will really take much longer than that really

108it's a multiple choice construct that we're looking at and with science there are some short answer questions there are no practical science labs or performance tests to be given so that's an important out regents exams we didn't know the dates there those are driven by the state their established dates they're on a singular date again any student who's enrolled in those courses as long as they are passing the course is eligible for an exemption we have an extensive faq that we put out there's about 25 questions that are on there we will add to those as more questions are received but we did of course send a notice to parents on april 1st and the responses are due by the 23rd so as always with testing if there are any questions please uh certainly let

109your building principal or your school know they're happy to assist in any way that they can thanks dr anne i have one i have two questions um one is about ap exams i know that was an address on here but at the um north pta meeting last night um i think and i need you to just sort of clarify it are ap exams also being offered remotely it depends on the exam that's driven by the college board they had a whole matrix of what exam was offered in one format so it actually depended on the test not all exams were available in each of the formats that were presented so once again the schools had to do quite a bit of work and planning and looking at who was enrolled in the various courses and

110then reach out to families accordingly but the college board actually offered a chart if you will that actually showed what the exams were and what formats they were available so it varied by test because i do recall last year there being substantial issues there were um taking the ap exam and then trying to submit it exactly completely lost yeah so would it be your recommendation that if they're going to take the ap exam that they come in to take it so what we did is we actually preferred and if you look at um and and this may have been part of north's uh presentation i'm not certain but a lot of our conversation at the high school level is actually centered around where the assessments are in person that was our uh delivery method um

111and that is why is because unfortunately last year and they weren't really they were not problems on districts and the college board had tremendous technology issues to the extent that some tests were actually lost or not able to be recovered and that's after students work multiple hours to enter their information which is really just beyond words right so um i would definitely say where possible in person and that really showed in the way we mapped it out is where we saw that there was an in-person administration that is the way that we um attempted to proceed and we do understand there are situations where that is not always possible but in person was really that was one of the driving factors of uh some of the decision making around the planning is we knew that

112there were huge issues last year and we don't want to see that repeated they have sure districts it's better but you know again we don't know that for certain i have a follow-up though like if i'm a parent and my child's scheduled to take two ap exams this year which is my reality um will i receive an email asking if my child's going in school or doing it remotely or it will just be i believe what the schools did is they settled we settled on a um preferred delivery method again most of them are in person there were very few that actually fell into more of a roman remote category but the principals and uh counselors and staff at the school were actually the ones reaching out to family so there really wasn't a choice

113per se i didn't miss an email no you did not even know no and that's a good question because we reached out with the regents and we reached out with 33 it was a little bit different with college board because of some of the factors i just described but no there was no um selection to be made in this case no okay thank you and then just regarding the standardized tests and the reasons exams um it's somewhat of a loaded question sure um what will the district do with the data that comes from this year's exam results that's a great question and some of that is yet to be answered because the state will ask us for data that has not been asked of yet last year they actually much of it is downloaded in

114terms of the exemption component so that was part of what had to be reported last year but frankly their systems are not at a point now where anything has been shared with districts as far as specific reporting so i believe that's one of their next steps is to tell us what it is that they're going to need from us but from from a student's standpoint this is one thing i do want to emphasize is it is completely a decision of the pam the family and the student as to whether or not they're going to engage with the assessment if for some reason the result is not what what the student or the parent desires there's still an option to exercise the exemption after the score has been received the score will not count as part

115of the grade and i know that's been a conversation we've had as all of you are aware but that was a cognizant decision on our part after much discussion is that that would not be in the best interest of students at this point so we want to make sure it's as low risk as possible but as far as reporting they are basically constructing their reporting as time goes on and it's been ever changing so i don't think we'll know the totality of that answer until we get a little bit closer to the time that they're given and even after the fact so i will be happy to share any updates that we receive on that front um with the board and with the public when we have more information to share thank you very much

116any follow-up questions mrs van says so you answered a couple things that just for clarification that many parents maybe are still talking about um so unlike ep regents examinations are not offered remotely they must be in person correct that is correct that's a as of a new york state education department and someone that's remote can still choose to come in absolutely that's correct whether or not you're in one instructional model or another is not a determining factor the choice was presented to all students and families regardless of the model and i'm glad to hear um you know yesterday we were on with the north ptsa and glad to hear you um basically re reiterate that all three high schools will be following the same thing that if a student so chooses to take the exam

117of the four that are being offered they have that choice the grade will not be counted so it's not they will not be penalized in any way whether they take it or not and even if they take it and they're not maybe happy with that grade they can go with the e on their transcript yes that's correct the only other thing i would add beyond that is if it in future administrations as long as they have not received a diploma they can actually take the exam again as you know new york state allows retakes for a higher grade or if they want to challenge themselves and see if you know they want to do it over again that is fine as well as long as they've not received a diploma they can certainly do that

118too one other important note is all of the august regents exams have already been canceled those will not take place so we're really looking at next school year and beyond but yeah our faq is really informational it's quite long so we apologize for that but we wanted to make sure that there's so many questions when you get into you know requirements and how it impacts you know diplomas and different types of things it's very comprehensive so i would say to parents we did provide the link in the letter to please look at that and review that because it answers a lot of the questions that may be out there for families and we try to put up everything up front because we know that these decisions are not easy ones to make but they do

119come with low risk so i don't think there's a wrong decision even if a student does decide to take it certainly you know there are actions that one can take after the fact if they're not pleased as long as they're passing the course so that that's one piece i know that is definitely part of new york state's plan is they want to make sure that the course piece is taken care of before any exemptions are are offered but you know we're in a different time and place so you know we just want to make sure again the communication is important so hopefully we've provided a wealth of information and if anyone has any questions that are still unanswered to please reach out to us we're happy to answer any questions and i do love that

120um each time we log into wits i mean things are coming right you know write to us what what do you want in person five days remote transportation the next day i got on boom is your child willing you know it's got the student's name is your child going to take this yes or no so it really shows the amount of work that the district and the leadership is doing um to gain this feedback in the preparation and planning so that's very very impressive thank you we appreciate that and we did really labor over especially the regents one as to when to release that but knowing that we still had a few weeks in the current quarter or semester um was really important that we got the information out as soon as possible so we

121appreciate everybody bearing with the you know there is a lot coming but you know again ask questions if anyone has anything we're welcome to have those conversations so thanks thanks for that thank you thank you and i agree the communication has been outstanding and even from the building level um the team one of the math teachers teaches the algebra one sent out a lengthy email explaining that there are no consequences or negative repercussions for choosing the exemption um it was very clearly explained and um that was i very much appreciated that as a parent thank you very much it's been a definitely all hands on deck effort we appreciate everybody's participation and contributions to all of that it's been great and i know we didn't go very quickly through the testing update but it is

122really important so um we will now go into our strategic planning phase we'll be very quick but first i want to say thank you to dr bailey and her team they have worked tirelessly and it really great job thank you um strategic planning we've been moving right along in our last meeting what we did is we got common templates all set for goal setting and action plan development and we began writing district goals that's where we are right now the next stage we're going to meet again in a couple of weeks which is the strategic planning committee and we're going to begin the building structures right now it's time to start assembling the building team so that's what we're going to be doing in our next meeting with the strategic planning team in a couple

123of weeks so that was a quick one because uh but we're moving right along and making good progress with the strategic plan all right thank you so we're moving on to item 14 and we're going to start with our budget um 14a and here comes mr mitarsky good evening everyone uh it has been a a very challenging budget development process this year however i think what you see where we're winding up is in a very good place not only for the 21 22 year but for the future uh so what i'm going to do is just go briefly over what um what we what we're at doing today what what we're at and it's going to provide a quick budget summary everyone will want to know about what's happened with new york state aid with

124federal aid just a brief review of our program continuation expenses for the community and then going into tax rate information and then a buddhist budget notice and the property tax report card which are required to be approved and a final summary so the major takeaway i think tonight is that we're continuing all of our programs and essentially everything's maintained all the extracurriculars all the non-mandatory programs you saw that list that happened in january with all those items and uh that we were all not wanting to touch well we don't have to touch any of them where there's no budget reductions here in this budget and it also considers long-range planning as applicable to the 22-23 and 23-24 year as you're going to be seeing shortly so federal aid and state aid we received our report

125from new york state and after the legislature approved the budget and you can see that we have a budget allocation now of 44 million 669 999 that's going to be the aid coming from new york state and then there's a an amount in there for federal aid of 3 million one hundred 36 two dollars and that provides us with the forty seven million uh dollar forty seven and a half million dollar um revenue budget on that end what i wanted to highlight though is the information below which is showing how some of that federal aid is going to be allocated to future years and that really is key for us to maintain program in the future i will say as you're going to see in the next slide that we don't have all the information

126on the federal uh revenues at this point however all budgets are developed with some flexibility and and if you look at our revenue budget you'll see part of our flexibility is we have fund balance and reserve appropriations in it 9.7 million dollars that allows us flexibility on that end and there are similar flexibilities on the expenditure side so again the allocation has been done on these federal funds per the information we received currently the crrsa is the items that was approved in december those funds can be used in 21 22 and 22 23. the american rescue plan is a multi-year plan and again uh those funds can be used in 23 24 24 25 actually also um 22 23 as well as 21 22. so it really is a wide scope for those plans um

127as far as what's you know going forward in the future we really don't know when covet's going to truly end so we have to be aware that the economic recovery whether it be local or new york state might be challenging still but again that's why the federal aid is planned in the way it is and that's also why we have the other flexibility pieces in our budget um the one thing i did want to point out is if you look at the end there's a long list of items that federal funds can be used for some of it's requiring for the ability to address student learning items that may have happened during kovic but this one item is stating that other activities that are not uh necessary to maintain the operation and continuity of services

128in local education agencies and continuing to employ existing staff to the local educational agency that's a key item that was the last bullet point of the report we received on the federal dollars because that allows us to pay salary and benefits so this is not new this is just really more for the community we have about a 5.8 million dollar increase this year you can see the majority of it is for our salary contracted salary increases and um that results in a 2.92 budget increase here's the point that we wanted to address is that we have the revenue budget is balanced with the expense budget we have a balanced budget and the reasons for that from our last meeting is that the elimination of the star reduction an 8.6 million dollar reduction you can see

129that we were very concerned about that and that has now been restored by the new budget we also had the elimination of the governor's proposal on services aid and when that was eliminated not only will allow those aides to continue in the future it also was an increase to what we were provided by the governor by 681 thousand nine hundred sixty two dollars and then the foundation aid uh another major point uh a pro about four million dollar increase which all helps us and as i mentioned already we have flexibility on the revenue side for federal dollars so just looking at the tax rate again this is just an update um at 150 000 house a basic star subsidy is 55 021 cents enhanced would be 3919 the estimated tax rates 1804 but that's using

130last year's numbers equalization rate assessed value and historically those assessed values do go up so the rate will go down and most importantly because we are under the tax cap all of our residents will definitely receive the star refunds or credits based on what program they're on this isn't small type but i think if you look at it on uh the actual screens that you have you'll see that this is what the budget notice looks like the only items i'm going to point here are the key items they uh it's required by the state for us to complete that has to be submitted to the state uh and the key items here is it really is going over what your tax levy is and the fact that you are under the tax cap so that's

131what those columns are it does show you the comparison between last year and this year and then this piece also shows you what a contingent budget would look like just so everyone understands the contingent budget situation would be if you cannot have a tax levy increase so it's zero you're seeing that the amount is still an increase in our budget because of the additional federal aid and state aid so that's why that's not an equal 3.3 million dollar reduction on each side it's less than that in addition you see we're also required by law to do a three-part budget which is the program component capital and administrative and our program component which it should be is the highest amount represents about 78 which is really where you want to be the property tax report card

132has some similar information um i'm not going to go through these pieces because it's it's showing the same thing it's showing a little bit of enrollment on the first part but the piece that's a little bit different on this report is it shows you what your fund balance and what your estimates are for your reserves and so these are all estimates and it's looking for not where we're going to end up this year it's looking for the following fiscal year and the major changes you're going to see is our capital reserve about 10 million dollars of that is looking to be allocated to our security project that was what was in the proposition last june and so we expect that project to start work sometime next year in 22 in the spring probably and continue

133so those dollars will be allocated to that project additionally the other items are pretty constant not a lot of change the major increase would be the sub reserve for trs which i'm expecting to be able to put some additional funds in at the end of next year so with that it comes to conclusion of this very unique and difficult budget development process we had a lot of support from all of you from dr mckenna from all my colleagues and i think we got to a good place our next item aside from this meeting when we do the approval is the may 6 meeting where we do the annual budget hearing which is again required by law ptsa candidates night and then the budget vote is on and school board election is on may 18th thank

134you very much mr matarski and i want to personally thank you as soon as the state budget came through you immediately provided information to the board um and like the numbers just like like you just worked them right in and we know that that budget came late from the state so so thank you for all of this information we should certainly have been on a little bit of a roller coaster ride this year with the budget any questions or comments from the board mr pascalia just one quick question um so looking at the budget i know i you know try to read and obviously politics change every year but as far as i understood the foundational aid will be given back within the next three years or what what districts should have gotten over the

135last 10 years or so am i correct and things could change but yeah you are correct uh it's a three-year implementation period and the way it is supposed to work is 50 was supposed to come this year of what your amount is another 50 next year and then you should be at 100 okay there are there are a number of different formulas as you can kind of think there always are so it depends upon where we fall within those formulas but that is that exactly the way it should work but as as of now it's looking like districts will be getting that foundational aid yes that's good to hear i'm glad to hear that that was my question mr lemay can i just follow up on that a little bit there so are they back

136paying the quote-unquote owed amount of the foundation aid or is this just moving forward it's going to be fully funded my understanding is it's just moving forward to be fully funded okay thank you yeah and yes thank you for quite the roller coaster ride this year i'd say a lot a lot more than just a little one that was a good question mr maya i think it's important and i know dr mcconnell you um sent out a statement about this but um we really had our state senator ed rath and our assembly woman karen mcmahon um they were both very helpful to our district and to to the entire you know state of new york um and getting those education dollars back and especially with the foundation aid and the um issue with the star

137rebate so um bipartisan efforts on that front and we're very thankful as a district so on that note may i please have a motion to resolve to approve the proposed 2021 2022 budget and tax report card dr mccleary thank you and mr borenstein ii is there any additional discussion seeing none all in favor all hands are up that means motion carries nine zero zero dr mckenna do you wish to make any comments at this time for our public and invite them to come out and vote to support our budget well absolutely of course come out everyone to support our budget and i do want to thank the team that worked on the budget you know this year for not only this year putting forced a very sound financial plan but a plan for the next

138three years which i think is really important for our district we look at the long-term financial and fiscal uh responsibility of well-being and health of our district this is a very important budget this year and it was a lot of teamwork and a lot of people worked on this and um i think mr matursky for you know his leadership uh through this process as well and the entire leadership team we had many discussions about this budget and in the end it really worked out incredibly well and i thank the board as well because there's a lot of input from our board of education regarding this budget as well so it was a real team approach and i'm very proud of it because it sets our district up for uh success for the next three years

139and please come out and vote all right thank you so i'm going to lump a few items together for the sake of time may i have a motion to resolve to approve item 14b modification of daycare contract 14c recommendation for external audit firm 14d annual internal audit risk assessment report e to approve the tax property tax supplement and transfer amount from tax reserve and 14 of the budget transfers so may i have a motion please to approve items 14 b c d e and f mrs beaker thank you mr lemay ii is there any discussion on any of those items we'll start with mr mecca followed by mr lemay um i i would like to keep uh 14b separate um it uh carries a large dollar amount that we're sacrificing as a school district and

140is stewards of the financial resources of the taxpayers of uh williamsville school district i i don't want to lump that up in with everything else and vote on the on those things as a group all right so i can amend that then and just we can pull out b so why don't we start with item b then and i will um redo that motion to um just have a motion then to approve item 14b the modification of the daycare contract so emotion approval for that motion oh mrs van says and may have a septum mrs speaker thank you and discussion um mr mecca do you want to continue the discussion on that sure thanks so i mean we we all view the world through different lenses and as a person with humanity i believe that

141everyone deserves some amount of grace through this pandemic including people who own businesses however we're agreeing if we vote in the affirmative on this to sacrifice almost two hundred thousand dollars in income as a in my role as a good steward of the finances of the district i'm having trouble coming to terms with this i i'd be willing to hear what other people have to say but when i read this i initially thought how can i support this all right any further comments from the board um miss dr mcconnell oh i'm sorry mrs bieger go ahead that's okay i just um just to follow up i i believe the reason for the decrease is because of the it mentions the 87 decrease in student tuition so i think the contractual fee just sort of mirrors

142the decrease in student tuition but i appreciate you bringing up your concern because i uh i hear what you're saying i'm wondering if we can hear more from district leadership to help explain mr maturski please i know you know the details of this yes uh this is certainly a difficult one um when the just for kids uh program came to us to talk about this they have not had a program this year for the most part they're they they i do not know and i'm not going to say this as a fact but whether they even have the financial resources to pay the full fee if it would be required they did share with me that their unemployment expense this year has been hundreds of thousands of dollars and and they're responsible for that so

143they have a lot of other colbit related expenses the what what i tried to work out with them was not just an idea that they would be given this as a freebie that is why the contract is extended for one year so that we actually get that full amount back and from them in a regular year so that was not something they offered initially that was a negotiated item to try and make us whole with the fee amounts that is in that contract and just giving you some history going way back to when we did not have the just for kids program we had the y program the y program provided us about fifty five hundred dollars for the entire year this is significantly increased so i granted that's over 10 years ago but uh

144i think that's a little bit relevance here because if we were to still have had that and not had this type of a contract we we would not have this type of funds coming in so again it's a partnership situation it's not an easy thing to do um but we're we are all trying to get through this together thank you mr machersky for that explanation any further discussion on behalf of the board um let's start with mr macan we'll go down the table sorry sorry just just one one more concern then um and i i'm moved by your comments mr matursky and i i it's helping me to see it in a different light i want to be a hundred percent sure that we're not putting ourselves in a situation where this could be considered

145a gift of public funds do you want to respond to that mr mitchell's kid a gift of public funds would be if it's an expenditure that we're providing on the revenue side it's it's it's a contract so we have a contract with them if if the board doesn't choose to approve that then they're required by law to fulfill the contract amount i think it would then become a legal issue to be honest because then the question becomes they have not been provided the spaces to provide the program now you're going back through that situation and uh i don't you know i think that i don't know where it would end up i'll just say that that that becomes a legal uh issue all right mrs van sais um so my stance is a little different

146um i saw this as a one time as it's explained here and i was quite pleased so mr mitsuruski i would like to number one thank you for the incredible work you do with with the budget we all know how reputable you are and once again you came through sorry that it was so much so much stress and anxiety this year but with this i'm quite pleased um they weren't able to actually provide their service um due to covid and like we said they're they're a partnership so i looked at as the district was really helping them continuing a partnership i think our parents would be very upset um if we did not continue this partnership i think it's very beneficial for many many families so um i think it's excellent and knowing that next

147year things will be up and rolling and we continue where we were at um i really was very happy with it mr biscagelia uh mr mecca i understand your feelings i thought the same thing when i first read it um this lance kind of stole some of my thunder um as a parent of an elementary student i know how many families use um just for kids um and i think it would be a disservice to the families if next year we're back to normal you know knock on wood um and this wasn't available to them for uh you know if everyone's back work full-time if this wasn't available i think it would be kind of a shock and and difficult for families um i just my question previously was going to actually kind of be

148on what mr mecha said is and reading over as long as a one-year thing i'm i'm okay with it i just i i would be very fearful of dropping it totally and and hearing what uh you had to say about you know it's they might not be able to fund it and you know they didn't have the opportunity i i i had a hard time going against this so thank you mr mascara all right i think we're ready to take a vote all in favor post obsessions motion carried nine zero zero may i have a motion done to approve items 14 c d e and f mr lemay thank you followed by mr borenstein as a second any discussion on those items mr lennae a few questions here for district especially when it comes to

149uh servers and networking and stuff like that from the internal audit assessment report i see in the report that we're still running uh windows service 2012 and i know support cycle for that's running out pretty soon i'm just concerned i want to make sure that we're on a trajectory to get those out of our system and also for the audit for next year uh how i read that report i just want to get confirmation that they're going to again re-audit us on our i.t infrastructure again next year is that correct uh we first of all i'll address you your last question yes every year we do really a cyber audit which is done by freedmexic also and they also look at these same items the risk assessment pieces updated every single year on all the

150items in a report so what they do in addition is if there is anything that's written up as a question they review it in detail so when you read the report you'll see that they even included a section from what they looked at last year and so that will definitely be done again by them as they go through their normal process next year in addition in going back to the um the windows we are updating items um it's you know we do it in concert with erie one boces because they that's where we are buying our licenses from um so yeah the infrastructure and we actually are working on some other things um internally uh to try and create uh with you are all aware of the fiber the second fiber path that we're bringing

151here to all the buildings as well as here um our plan is also to bring in a backup server room here and so that is also going to help us in the future excellent excellent and i'm happy to hear the uh the the annual audit uh i mean cyber security and nit security is changing literally uh on a daily basis so i'm glad to see that we're gonna keep a constant audit with that so thank you welcome other questions or comments seeing none all in favor all hands are up motion carries nine zero zero item 15 um under liaison reports um mrs carey i just want to point out that um there's a few ptsa meetings going on this week um thursday i know dodge has one and i'm not able to attend that due

152to superintendent interviews similar conflict on thursday for high middle ptsa as well right we i have a conflict too oh god um crystal i couldn't hear you god i'm trying to remember which school it was oh it was maple east i have a conflict with them thursday mr lemay followed by dr mcclary yeah there's a delegate assembly meeting on that thursday as well i've already uh let erie county association of school boards know that i won't be in attendance so me i remember that being an issue when we thought that date okay perfect and just as reminded board members if you are not able to make a pta meeting please make sure that you're communicating with the pta presidents at the school to let them know that you won't be in attendance are there any

153legislative items to discuss you've got a new budget from the state level so we're good for that um i do not see any items for 17 or 18. dr mccanna we are on item 19 our facility update again i'll turn it over to mr maturski for our facility update uh just a a a little bit of information on that you saw mr russo's information earlier on the music wing all that really is there are a number of pictures of both east and uh north that happened last week so just to show you a little bit more of what the spaces look like and i know you'll be visiting them shortly and you'll see for yourself what they what they look like thank you and they are beautiful we enjoyed the visit at north and i'm

154looking forward to the visit at east coming up um mr bornstein speaking of the music project i just want to recognize the fact that we're going to be hosting uh some of the larger music organizations in our region on friday april 30th in the afternoon the buffalo philharmonic the empress amherst symphony and others to show off uh the crown jewel of our music program the three facilities and so um to me this is not just something that we should be proud of internally this is something that we should be proud of for our community and so to the extent that dr mckenna and i can work on making this a big deal in our extended community that's a great thing well this is an extraordinary project and we're very proud of it and um any

155way that we can let this community know you know what these facilities are um i think it's a good thing and if there's ways that we can even maybe work with them i think there's some ways that uh in the future that would be very beneficial as well sure very good thank you thank you any other questions or comments from board members regarding district facilities all right may i have a motion please resolve to approve the bid awards for the 2021 repair reserve work as presented mr bornstein thank you mr mecca is a second any discussion all in favor thank you mr lemay had to leave the room motion carries eight zero zero um item 21 does anyone have any matter discuss under committee of the whole all right saying none we will now be

156going into our second executive session may i have a motion to adjourn the regular board meeting and recess into executive discuss into executive session to continue the discussion on collective negotiations mrs van size thank you and uh miss speaker second any discussion on that seeing none all in favor opposed abstentions motion carried eight zero zero and we will now recess you