001good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome tonight's regular scheduled board meeting on 12 16 2021 of the horsehead central school district board of education tonight we are also in person as well as via our internet connection and video we remind people that we are under a mass mandate and then also ladies and gentlemen we wish to ask you to please be careful out there as the infection rate in the area for covet 19 has been on the rise in the district we are starting to see a slight decline from the thanksgiving holiday recess but we know we need to really get past the beginning of the new year so we want to thank all of our students staff community members for helping us achieve as safe as possible our educational platform throughout this pandemic at this
002time i'd like to turn the meeting over to our board of president miss christine dale okay can everybody please join me in the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] i just want to comment how festive it looks in here so thank you for that i know it wasn't for us but it looks really nice okay so first up on the agenda we have the approval of our minutes from uh november 18th as well as november 30th our public hearing on the capitol project can i have a motion please so moved second any comments or discussion on either of these items okay all those in favor
003say aye aye all those pose nay any extensions okay next we have our time for our community questions and comments a couple of ground rules about this if anybody in the community would like to pose a comment or question i'd ask you to come up to the podium state your name and your address and you have three minutes we do hold to that three minutes strict so i will stop you when you get to that point i just want to remind you that any comments or questions please do not refer to specific people personnel issues like that if if there's anything related to that you would go to the superintendent directly so if anybody would like to make a comment or ask a question i'd invite you to come up now okay thank you i'll
004turn it over to our report from caitlin all right good evening everyone winter sports are in full swing boys swimming picked up a win here at our home pool boys basketball started their season with a home win boys bowling won against maine end well boys are wrestling won the title one title at the elmira tourney and testing for all after school activities have begun the green room players have started rehearsals for both the annual variety show and the spring musical once on this island the variety show will take place january 7th here in the auditorium at 6 pm once on this island will show on march 17th through the 19th look out for tickets to go on sale soon the wind ensemble orchestra and newly created jazz band had a successful concert this tuesday look
005forward to next week for the high school's choirs concert on wednesday as well as the intermediate schools concerts through the week concert band will have a concert next month on january 11th next week is winter spirit week and student council is very excited to see some holiday spirit among staff and students all of the classes are currently having a friendly competition to see which class can donate the most toys for toys for tots in celebration of christmas feel free to donate senior shout outs have begun on the school's social media accounts so keep an eye out for your friends and family the national honor society is collecting coats and gloves for hearts for the homeless and monetary donations for the victims of the recent tornadoes in kentucky and surrounding states any of these donations can
006be dropped off in room 158 or at the tables outside the cafeteria i'd like to share my congratulations to the board on passing on the passing of the second part of the capital project students are looking forward to seeing how the school changes and updates even more on top of that students are already excited for the winter weather or for the warmer weather to start and start using the new inner courtyard and spend some time outside thank you for your time great thanks caitlin now we have our presentation so we have a presentation on learning management system update so mr gill why he's getting ready kaitlyn did anybody use it today it was a great day too mr coughlin i don't know if we're out aloud i know i saw him he might be he's
007moving around we had a little septic problem today here so i will check on that but i i i do not know the answer and i don't want to get myself in trouble mr gill it's going to take a moment to load up the presentation i'm not sure if you would like to move on to other items and come back during your super intense report if if the board is okay it will shorten my report a little that's fine uh just so that you know um with some of the interesting things with covid19 uh obviously our athletics extracurriculars uh have some ongoing issues that we have to either address or update but one that is very concerning that superintendents in the southern tier are really worried about is we have been informed by new york
008state public high school athletic association that they are unwilling to change state championship sites some of the sections have already started to change those sites because the sites have a mandatory vaccination clause which all student spectators and athletes must be able to show proof of mandatory full vaccination in order to be on their property one such is rit this affects indoor track and it will affect state championship cheerleading our superintendents are writing a letter to hopefully help mr zeus understand that although he may not wish to address it the individual schools that pay his bills do want it addressed and that's widely seen across the state but if he chooses not to we need to prepare our community because if one student is unvaccinated we will not participate we cannot single out an individual and
009we are not going to ask students to get vaccinated to do that but i want the board to know in addition masking in athletics still remains to be an issue we have some issues with because of our location being next to pennsylvania and i'd like to make the a reasonable recommendation to our safety plan that when we are in new york state we will follow new york state's masking rules and anybody that comes to our gymnasiums will follow them even if they are not used to doing it in their own gymnasiums when we go to another new york state we expect them to follow new york state but one way or another our students and athletes will and that is more about the mask above the nose and below the chin and not a chin
010strap however we will take care of our own issues if that's the case but when we play across the state lines pennsylvania does not have a masking because we are a new york state school we are obligated for our students to follow it but i don't want to eliminate competition for those students if they have to go across the state line because of our proximity i think it's reasonable if our students know that they have to be masked and play unmasked students that it's minimal contact with them but we do what we're supposed to do according to the state department of health for new york state students and i would hope that the board would see that as reasonable in the middle ground because sooner or later we are going to have to come out
011of this does anyone on the board see any major problem as long as we follow our rules with whoever we're competing against and the reason i ask that is because we know a lot of our students once they play on travel or they go outside of school are playing in a variety unmasked events or have that option any comments from ward if there's no hesitancy what i will do is i'll put that into play for starting next week and if we've lost any contests from out of state because we put a hold on it we will attempt to reschedule them i know mr tate is over there i couldn't see him but mr detay if you can do that for boys basketball and then also look at all of our others we do have to
012keep and be mindful of any significant rise or infection rate wherever we're going and the only thing is if a county is under a state of emergency we will not travel into that county if the state of emergency is declared for covet 19. does that also make sense right now there are only two erie county and monroe county monroe county rochester and buffalo are under a coveted state of emergency but that can be lifted at any time and once it's lifted we would resume play in those areas mr gillard mr adams [Music] i would ask dr douglas that there would be heightened mitigation or testing that would be put in for a team that did travel outside and was not able to and that's a good point that i forgot so thank you what happened
013is when we did find out we actually went through a three-day testing mitigation with that specific team just to try to make sure that the team didn't lose any future because of a potential outbreak with another because we did three days with that team because we're kind of using the test to stay protocol even though we can't use it for athletic we're using that model what it was is our one team when we found out about it was already four days into the cycle so we wanted to get the seven one other team was in day one so we test them straight through the week and i'm happy to report that we had absolutely no positives out of that we can't always say that but that i think is that layered mitigation that we're trying
014to just be as successful and safe as possible thank you can i just make a comment yes um so i just want to you know i know there's not a lot of people here in the audience but i'm hopeful that there's maybe people at home listening um i just want to make a comment you know really asking of the parents and the spectators to really be diligent in wearing masks whether you're in a home environment at one of our home games and also if you're going to visit at another new york state school that you are respectful of the new york state rules with with masking but at the end of the day it's all about the students and it's all about enabling it being able to and allow them to continue to play and
015participate um and so we all need to do our part in maintaining that safety environment so um it's just you know you know we've been seeing pictures and and videos and things like that where um that that diligency that's even a word um is is completely being followed so i just i just ask for everybody to do your part so our students can can continue to safely participate yeah and i want to thank you for that and also just add one other piece because we are not restricting spectators at this point to the seating capacity we have shoulder shoulder as long as they are fully masked we also have to warn if the numbers continue to increase or we have a significant outbreak the district will minimize those coming in because we do broadcast we
016owe that to the students to try to keep as much of any potential impact to the team in their competitions as minimal as possible we don't wish to so we're still moving forward we're seeing some changes in the data like i said from thanksgiving break but we still have a major break to go through i can't tell anybody or ask anybody to do anything different just please be safe and be mindful of that especially our athletes and our extracurricular activities as one disappointing day of news could ruin an event for a couple weeks for several people so we're all in it together so that's what i have thank you for that i will come back after the presentation and carry on some others are you all set mr gill thanks to uh chris and bill
017yes we're all set let people move all right so um just a quick update on a process that we've embarked on on this last several months to let the board of education community know where we're heading with what's called our learning management system or lms as an acronym because we need acronyms more in education so our lms system is our platform and we'll get to a definition in a moment we have been using its learning we talked last june of the fact that that contract expires and the it's learning has removed themselves from north america as a an area of their business and therefore we're left in a position to find another learning management system and to work towards an implementation at the end of this during the school year in preparation for next school
018year so to go about a process we make sure we get the stakeholder groups at the table we had two teams that were created a core team and a larger team we didn't have time for creative names so forgive me uh this core team was supposed to be those that are very highly tech intensive and understand technology and really no ins and outs without much learning and can tinker very quickly so it was a voluntary they volunteered their time they met after school several times and i'll show that in a moment to talk about what we call non-negotiables the things that we're looking for to hold tight when it came to selection of lms and to find necessary language association with the lms and develop a timeline for this work i'll go into more detail
019on each of these teams in a moment after which then we brought in a larger group of volunteers to meet after school to really choose these a couple lms and get into the dirt and mess with them and do a variety of tasks to determine what was going to be selected that gives you an idea who is on that core team to start with a mixture of teachers and administrators members of our land techs and our instructional texts and then our larger team was that same group plus some additional teachers again they all volunteered their time and anybody that asked for participation to be part of it we we welcomed no one was turned away from either these teams in the end so here is kind of the outline of those meetings that tiffany and
020bill led to review um what is the charge what's the purpose what is our our task here to do some common learning so that you can move forward with some common understandings and what is a non-negotiable list and i'll show you what they came up with momentarily meaning two again reflect on that list and review some lms and what's out there and determine what those top three lms contenders would be given the non-negotiables and then proceed to give that information on and then the larger team met what's great about this larger team is they chose to meet a fourth time they weren't scheduled to but they selected to come back a fourth time because they really felt they needed further conversation during their second third meeting they did talk with the vendors the sales people
021of these particular programs not only do they take those um um non-negotiable what we hold tight but they also okay well what's what would be nice to haves what are some other priorities we might have like to see in a system keep in mind that in between each of these meetings seven in all there are a feedback loop there was an expectation that they would go back to their um their stakeholder group have conversations talk with students even in some cases and show the students particular lms systems to toy with get some feedback even from them and just collect concerns questions from from the field this is the definition that they worked with much like a vision statement or anything else much time and effort was put into this to be very articulate what they
022were trying to accomplish and what we saw as a tool to learn for learning in the future as a system post covid so it's a cloud-based centralized tub used to document track report and deliver educational programming this lms will promote collaboration and communication among students staff and families throughout our radar nation so here's a non-negotiable list that they worked on over the course of two meetings we must make sure it's compliant with new york state that's a it's a right there must have that if it doesn't it can't even be looked at and onboarded as a system we might have to make sure it talks with our base system microsoft if it doesn't we can't move forward because we have teachers that use google classroom and other aspects of google we want to make sure
023that there's some connectivity there's other parts of google classroom that are more important than that that sort of it's not really an lms but that platform that we wanted to make sure some of their work would be integrated into the system we have to make sure it works with all our student information systems school tool talk we have to keep one of those two systems stable as we integrate the other you can't go out and get a new student management system or student information systems and an lms all at once you have to make sure that you have one that's stable integrated and then if you want to switch your student management system remove sis or your information you create you have to have a stable environment on one side or the other every night
024we have systems that sync we have to continue to make sure that that's updated and our our student management systems and other tools connect automatically without anybody having to press any buttons single sign-on we always talked about when it came to insularing single point access works with multiple devices it can work with a phone ipad laptop apple is integrated as much devices as possible we wanted to make sure that there was support with local support we want to make sure that locally we can reach out and have support from those whether it be gst boces or another boces or their the vendor was located nearby or had representatives that could be here to be on site to assist accessible tech support we don't want to be on the line and waiting we want to make
025sure we hit instantaneous it's learning to provide that we want to make sure that we have that here communicates directly with students it allows the ability to communicate directly with students provides adaptive technology especially when differentiate looking for modifications or students with disabilities and has an assessment and feedback loop available a tool within it useful and meaningful analytics any data any system can shoot out information but we're data rich information poor we want to make sure that the data is what we need it's what we want it's not just hey look at all these pretty charts but we don't know what to do with it so it had to be very useful and meaningful i think is that the last one tiff now tiffany and and bill were very much and with kelly as well
026i'm very much involved in these conversations i just want to pause for a moment and there's any clarity or any questions you have about those those non-negotiables provide that for the board and tiff and bill can respond okay oh sorry forgot the age-appropriate interface we wanted to make sure that it doesn't have the ability to switch its view for someone that's a senior as opposed to someone's kindergartner so does it have larger icons it goes to a tile based or does it have you know can it change based and can we adapt to the student need that was the last one here are the three that this is the last task of the core team that were met those non-negotiables these are the three that are being reviewed and discussed now and the next action
027steps that come forward the um that larger team had sandbox ability and were able to mess with some of these systems and talk with the individual vendors themselves and get a feeling to what they liked and what they heard from them the first task of the larger team was to tip those foundational high priorities but then start to talk about what else might we need and what are some nice to haves as we look at these three systems specifically so they reviewed that presentations from those three remaining lms's and the review criteria was utilized [Applause] [Music] tiffany built a nice job to put together a a very succinct system in which a rubric is created if it lets me move through it so that's frozen that's unfortunate yeah i can try that thank you no
028so uh i could i could post a slate for the board doc so it can be seen it's a list that goes through um different page for each of the lms's and a criteria for student lens and teacher lens and a four-based rubric system i believe it was to rate that particular lms on that [Applause] criteria that they were looking for so you can see step one was to review the lms on the student lens and like i said unfortunately it is locked up and cannot show that to you i could try one more thing now the whole system's locked and i'm not going to go through a force quick right now so we'll go back to this i will be sure to share that so it's put on vortax so next steps we're going
029to share the details the team's work of building in district admin we're beginning to price the different vendors talk about what their offer their abilities will need to select an lms shortly develop a timeline get a professional learning plan and understand how the data is going to migrate and a test site to start working out any kinks now for that fall implementation it does say initial implementation we know that you're not going to throw a whole large package all at once to teachers there's got to be an understanding this is the expectation to start then give more professional learning okay now let's move it up to this level let's move it up to this level we're gonna have explorers that are gonna go forward and do a lot off the bat we also know others
030are gonna need more support so we'll benchmark the implementation because these are robust programs these aren't um small learning management systems are by nature robust so we'll have an initial implementation we want to make sure we work out all our kinks for that fall 2022. that's all i have questions so actually hmm so my question is really easy um so one i think the process the the process that you went through um is great and and the people that you included that's awesome um i think this is going to be you know when its learning was put into place you know that was a huge learning curve for staff for students and for parents right so are you going to build in some sort of like awareness sessions training sessions specifically for parents i mean
031obviously i know you're going to do the professional development with staff and the students are going to have that hands-on use but you know for those parents that are trying to help their students navigate through that kind of stuff to be able to do um sessions with them as well yeah we are definitely actually there's two three different plans there's going to be a plan of how what we need to do for staff to save their information from its learning and move that over and what that looks like so that there's going to be a rollout for that the other piece then will be the professional learning for our staff in many different avenues and options for them so that they can learn because not everybody can learn the same way so we want to
032offer that in the spring as well as through the summer and then all through next year as well and then we're looking at evening sessions for parents so we can do some different options there one that the lms company can actually come in and do some of that but then we'll have some videos that we can get from from the vendor as well okay great great good warren so with the final selection process if the team feels strongly about let's say company a and they present that to the administration and the building principles could they say we feel we want company b and um turn down all of the team's work this is why we had those rubrics done so we can look back at hard and fat we had seven or eight administrators on
033that larger team so it's not like either team they had a feedback loop as well so it's not like the members of the administrative team are ignorant to what those final three were and their input was already provided during the process so there's no one being blindsided during this process both those teachers involved and our administrators for the last seven meetings have been feedback looped to those other groups so when they come forward the really the only some people that haven't been in the room to be honest with you would be the executive team we've been the ones a little bit more on the outside of this conversation so uh to to to look at those rubrics and to get the feedback from our admin and our teachers and then look at the financial piece
034and what the you know to ask hard questions of members of those team to feel good about what a selection might be i can't answer that until we go through that process but i know that there is one that's rising to the top but it's because we're informed we do have conversations there's a feedback loop one of the things warren i've been through this twice now once as a principal once as a superintendent i think what happens is i've put a lot of faith and trust into the team my job is to vet any decision that they have with my team with their pros and cons and stuff and i may go back to them and say okay answer this or i wonder this or this money but a lot of it is the collaborative
035the decision ultimately is at the district level we all know that because we have to end up recommending something to purchase through either boces or through the board but implementation you have to strongly keep in mind that we're not the ones implementing it and the ones that are implementing it we have to make sure that we've done our due diligence and give them a platform that is helpful for them the students the community keeping in mind what they need too and i think that's how we've operated and i would say if anything it's thoughtful discussions to arrive hopefully more of a consensus to bring to me thank you borrowing my neighbors mike mine's not working so thank you for the presentation and obviously a lot of thought was put into the substantive criteria which i
036think is well done but just two questions one i know it's not you know anything kind of of our doing that it's learning is changing and no longer going to service this area but so as part of the question process to these candidates did we get any kind of you know as far as we can tell their roadmap doesn't involve them potentially leaving the market for one reason or another right good good question that was definitely something that was looked at as far especially having a presence in new york state and well-invested matter of fact one one of the vendors that was on the final list list is actively seeking out those that used to use its learner right but it's a business model right and take that on and promise the integration of their
037the work from one to the other seamlessly so um that was also a consideration of the committee because there's a lot of work that was put into its learning over the years to to save and have materials and to be able to capture that and bring it over would be powerful for everybody in time saving but um yeah that was definitely a conversation that was ongoing i'm sure yeah and i think another piece is the supports we looked at supports in many different layers we looked at what do what do our staff need supports what do the people behind the scenes need to look for it's how readily is that available so that comes also with not even you know are they going to be around but what what can we have as supports and
038help as we go through this process okay great and then the other question and i you know certainly i think meeting all of the non-negotiables and then the nice to haves is the most important but is did some part of the review involve looking at the financial aspect of it as well so that if there was you know if two were close on that the initial criteria but materially different on the financial side we'd have that full picture before we make a selection absolutely actually that's what i talked to tiffany and bill about last friday and they've already set up those meetings to to get that number those numbers plus we want to see what is the professional learning offered by the company on an ongoing basis at what cost uh what could be considerable
039you know what we're going through boces and aidability as a consideration uh as well as what's the upfront cost for and what's the bank of your buck i mean there are of those three systems there is a tier there's some favorite there's a favorite in there um and it it it'll if a price point you know is that enough to say there's got to be a financial decision in the end right a little bit i think right now we're good these are all three companies that are well established in public schools they're not exorbitant in their price they're gouging i think we're good it's just what are we going to get for the cost and what's the promise of support moving forward is that the 24 7 is a localized gst boces person that supports
040it which is great if possible those are considerations that we we should look at long term we'll have initial upfront costs that i know will be high that's a given because we're going to pay for setup installation all the background all the work that goes into integration and then the training also comes with a price and then year two it starts to wane and then you get in the routine cost and that so we gotta look at what the routine cost is in the at the end as well year three or four what's the cost of the district compared to those three yeah and tony away from year one because if we get what we need with that integration from its learning to the new one then it's worth that cost yeah yeah tony are
041all three boces go serval the either through cross-contract or local agreement but all three are last one the d2l right space at this point of the other boces in new york so we would have to reach out probably yeah whether it's cross contract or anything the big thing is every one of these are eligible for our boces aid ratio so we would have an initial upfront cost but that would come back to us and aid the following year and every year after that okay yeah okay yeah it definitely answers my question i mean i certainly it's not the kind of thing where you want to just pick the lowest bidder but i just the opposite right we want to make sure the substance is there but i just wanted to get a sense as to
042how the financial piece was being thought of too so thank you you know it's a great uh point then that that's really what that comes up to our level now i wouldn't ask that of that team i want them focus on instruction yeah right now it's those are the financial questions that tom and i get into and ask him have wonders about what we're going to get for it makes sense i assume there's some districts in the state that use all three packages are you able to call up some of those and get their evaluation and kind of recommendations and pros and cons yeah we actually did that for all as well as had some of our students pilot a little bit and got some student feedback as well especially at the middle school in
043high school um so that all played into part of our review great thank you um going down memory lane i remember when things first started being in my basement that i outfitted for my daughter's um office and we had um it's learning that those one-hour trainings that my daughter and i watched and it was pretty frantic time back then and i think one thing not saying it's any less frantic now but you have we've in most things with coven i think reflecting from a county perspective we're a little better than we were in the past and maybe not so much franticness back then i think you did a great job as far as the evaluation groups but from a parent input you know after we got through that i still have i brought it up
044on my phone i have a folder for my daughter that still has school tool um is learning in heartsonia to manage the apps that i need just for my one daughter um not from some of the feedback i got from parents and i understand back in the day it was kind of a little more frantic um the needing multiple platforms for one child for their educational needs has from a parent perspective and i don't assume there were many or any in those evaluation groups has is that part of the rubric is are we still going to be will a parent still be going between school tool to get grades and having to go back to its learning for the content in artsonia for mugs and magnets no as a parent myself you know i can
045tell you that i mean grant my kids have an advantage of a tech director as you know um so is it an advantage bill yeah there's some support at home um but you know we did take a look at that i think part of what use your statement there was true in that you know i think the way we looked at its learning was a reaction of time now we're looking at this where we're going to have a lot more people on board who know the system so that when you're reaching out to a teacher you're not a teacher who's probably had some time with this to grow and maybe answer some of those questions um and that's i think the big difference right here as far as the multiple systems the reason why we
046were looking at the lms's and some of the things you saw on the integration there where we're looking at microsoft and google we do have some teachers with google and some with microsoft what this does is kind of bridges both of them together so that my fifth grader is going to have almost the same exact experience as my third grader and that's really i think i totally understand that as a parent you weren't trying to log into different things and we're looking a lot of how it integrated with our student information system that was a lot of the questions that we asked up front like who can actually you know so that we can look at the grades and things of that nature now there's some work involved here that probably that's why we're really
047trying this timeline you really want to get into that data migration because we on a daily um every night we transpose 52 000 bits of data from one platform to another and you know that's something we have to really take a look at and we're we're focused on it yeah thank you i i would say that um there are some it's not a full integration system it's robust from a from an instructional point but there are going to be times where school tool is going to be required to look at as a parent you won't find a one-stop shop in this aspect i think lms's are growing that way but it requires a integration at with the student management as long as we're still using a school tool system perhaps when we solidify this particular
048lms now we look to is there a better sync that can happen with our student information system is there a different tool out there that works better but by onboarding this early and for all the great work that this team has these teams have done we have the time which we didn't have before to get through these kinks and figure out how does this work and what can we make happen very you know not have to do it we purchased it's learning i think in june may june sorry we started to integrate yes in august and it went live in september right so uh i think if we are pushing the schedule i would like to make to be offering a purchase in january so that we can begin all this work throughout the spring
049i mean it's a fast with a lot of thought going into it we spent a semester research okay thank you all thank you do you have anything else from your superintendent report okay yeah thank you miss dale coming back to several things that are going on uh one for parents out there we've been doing a lot of tests to stay and test to stay issues whether it's with sports or the extra days we have sent out and please direct people to our website but test to stay is from day one to day seven or when you enter into one of those days in other words if you found out on day four you've gotten tests five six and seven but please understand as a community day eight day nine and day ten the child is
050still under isolation or quarantine and cannot participate in any extracurricular athletic events here and should be isolated at home however on those three days they can ride the bus in the morning in the afternoon when it comes to direct contract tracing one of the things that has been the most challenging at the beginning of the year was both lunches and transportation i think our lunches have been handled by going back to the six feet as much as possible and that has been helpful and our kids have been doing wonderful at it but our bus transportation because we have to transport students to school has had challenges we've had challenges where parents are not sending their students with a mass to the bus and they were put on the bus and given a mask and then
051the student is wearing it and then taking it off the district just sent out recent information is we are putting in a hard and fast rule the children will be wearing a mask on the bus a failure to remove a failure to respond and wear that mask appropriately will have a warning a written warning and then a removal from the bus from here on out for a period of time if need be it will be a full suspension of school we don't wish that so we wish for people to comply and help because all it does is it technically puts other kids at the risk of losing their in-person education now we advocated over this past week with our local county about changing the distancing direct contacting rules for on buses similar to what's in
052the classroom and lo and behold we ask a question finally within three days we get an answer and i want to thank the county for pursuing that on our behalf and now we are able to contract trace on a bus at three feet instead of six feet which will minimize a large portion of direct contacts that we were not seeing have any type of issue except that they were being excessively put out and that puts stresses on tests to stay but it also puts stresses on parents so we are moving to that right now uh if you are already put out on a bus for direct contact we are not adjusting going back we are just moving forward and we apologize for that's the only way we can handle it we asked parents to remember
053that if you break the date of service in the test to stay test to stay can no longer be offered to you in other words if you show up on day one day two and then you're out on day three you are under isolation for the remainder of the time once we started it must be in consecutive days up to day seven then eight nine and ten so please help us out we are very happy a lot of people are participating the squires has been there every day i've gone over a couple days as we get through this surge we are going to look at the potential of returning it to at least the elementary buildings and looking at what opportunity to break up the traffic line that's over at the field house which hopefully
054will expedite it but we're trying to be mindful of our staff and and the labor that it takes to do tests to stay for the board of education remember we will be entering into a board of education retreat on january 12 4 o'clock it will be at the high school cafeteria and it will involve administrators it will involve the board of education it will be about selected labor for helping us with diversity equity inclusion discussions on our policy as well as how we address many things that we have addressed over many years but put more discussion behind it going forward in january with the help of corning incorporated some outside individuals are going to help us uh on behalf of corning incorporated as well as in conjunction with the board in the district so i
055remind you of that cafeteria four o'clock i would ask you to arrive about 15 minutes ahead if possible on january 12th if the board can i will be having nancy send out a sort of a doodle calendar i'm requesting that the full board not meet as a board but as small groups of three to travel for a full day in february to meet our mandatory requirement of getting out and seeing our district but also in two senses we have a lot of construction and facility issues so we'd like to take part of that day for that as well as a part of the day to help the board understand as i know you try to every day what's going on in our classrooms and throughout our district and then at the end of the day
056we will divide the board up at the various levels elementary the middle level in elementary and high school and have a district-wide staff chat during the month of february that will focus on the key issues of how was it as we started the pandemic how is it different now and how can we try to move forward the best we can within the parameters that we can because i think that's important from all staff to be able to let the board hear some of that with the administration so we will get that day i will try to zero in on one of the weeks and try to hopefully get it so that all boards can be there i think you'll be very impressed with the facilities as well as the dialogue with everybody at the end
057of the day as i said earlier the cova data has been increasing just like last year right after thanksgiving for about a week and a half our concern is last year we had two weeks at the holiday winter break which helped to mitigate upon our return this year we do not we really only have five school days in the winter break and that is one of the reasons for the adjustment because that gets me to ten ten and a half days from the time that students will most likely be out and they return on that monday to hopefully minimize some of the covet issues here in school and start fresh with our test to stay and hopefully guidance will be changed in the future from the state but right now we are where we're at
058and everybody's been doing a real good job about it we have received some questions and some complaints on both sides of the mass mandate as you can see it is a mandate in all areas but unfortunately schools have one of the the key pieces that if we do not comply with the department of health our funding stream on the state side can be removed and that's nothing that the community can withstand so we are not like local businesses or other counties across the state that are saying we won't comply with the mandate we are a government agency that must otherwise we risk the opportunity to offer education as we know it to our students so we ask people to please understand ladies and gentlemen there's obviously tick-tock and social media is such a wonderful thing
059but there is something that's going nationally on tick-tock of threats to schools but it's so generic it comes up all the time law enforcement knows that they are now spoofing the telephone numbers like you get all the car insurance ads or your warranties out so that you can never trace them but the language is so generic and nondescript that law enforcement are starting to deem these as just nuisance social media now it's horrible if something ever happened but i remind everybody we must be vigilant if you really know of something get to somebody see something say something so please understand that we always look at safety as our number one priority we have worked with law enforcement in the regional areas and they have basically been telling superintendents that these are nuisance reports at this
060point because of the non-descript nature and very shoddy wording in addition ladies and gentlemen at our last meeting we did have a resolution of the board we have tried to offer you know some clarity to the distractions that have come unfortunately we are under a mass mandate i want to thank the horseheads police department as they've addressed it and also tried to offer the individuals that had the concerns here some compassion that it is not our interest or our uh want to cause anybody any legal jeopardy so we did not follow through at this point with any arrest for disruption of public meeting endangering the welfare of children and upholding governmental business but what we did is we did put in an official warning in the horses police department has assured us that this will
061not be happening again as a result we have a officer who will be here checking everybody in and ensuring the compliance with the department of health until such time that they hopefully remove it in the near future again we offer my office if anybody wants to talk or have those conversations i try to reach out to everybody and make sure that at least i can explain whether we agree or not at least they've been heard so i want to thank the board for addressing that and also giving me some levity not to jam one of our community members up but also to make sure that it's very serious we will not be able to accept that as behavior on the school grounds so that concludes my report at this point i do want to end
062by saying thank you to everybody coming out for our capital referendum it is never easy when you look at that but i hope that over the past years with this referendum in the next referendum we will move forward the same way i always worry about capital increase in cost but luckily we have well over and hunt that we're looking into that into the out years and trying to factor as much as it in but right now we are in a wild swing time right now so our project that we have is protected but we do have a small project that we are working on to save the district millions of dollars once we finalize horse heads 2030 with a new facility and a new district office senior center and community center in center street and
063to do that our uh past two summer projects will be combined with the help of federal funds to try to bring it to the best uh position in light of the ongoing economical changes that are going on daily with supply chains so thank you everybody and i thank everybody for coming out with a super majority on the capital project both have passed that way and it says something about the horseheads community thank you okay thank you dr dr douglas okay next we have um board reports so again i just want to echo what that what dr douglas said about the capital improvement vote so thank you to everybody who did come out we are extremely excited about the improvements that have been made thus far and about the plans moving forward so i do think
064it will help enable horse heads to be the premier district in in the area so we did not have an audit committee this past month but we did have a policy committee so i'll turn it over to that to that committee policy committee met on december 2nd and we discussed a sexual harassment policies they the recommendation based on new federal law is to [Music] bifurcate the sexual harassment for staff policy from the sexual harassment for student policy and so that's what you see in front of you today for a first reading we tabled the diversity equity and inclusion policy as well as our class rank policy discussion we are recommending the deletion of policy 43-17 teaching about drugs alcohol and tobacco since it's a not a mandatory policy and the subject matter certainly has changed
065over time and is the policy a little outdated at this point and also we reviewed the policy on use of credit cards that with changes for first reading tonight okay thank you next we have our finance items for action we have 8.02 through 8.16 can i have a motion please any comments questions or discussion on any of these items okay all those in favor of 8.02 through 8.16 say aye aye all those pose nay any abstentions all right item nine our personnel items for action we have our hr recommendations can i have a motion please so moved second any comments questions or discussion marianne okay an item under instructional substitutes uh candidate number five i will be voting no and i have a question regarding candidates six seven and eight in category e it says
066substitute teachers non-degreed but with student teaching experience and i'm wondering are they first semester graduates will they be graduating in january or do they need another semester to be achieving their degree okay the ones who will not be receiving a degree first semester i would be voting no and if there is someone who is going to complete their degree requirements um midterm and their for be ready to substitute then i would vote yes so caitlin are you able to tell us just so we know which ones okay miss corbett the first one that you said i'm just trying to find it uh construction substitutes number five it says e5 okay i was looking below that and there wasn't a five definite no because it's non-degree okay any other comments or questions on this warren how
067about no on e5 i'm especially concerned with the candidate who also hopes sorry i'm not very technical um the candidate in section f who is going to be the contract substitute and it says non-degreed student teaching experience if that person is indeed not going to complete degree requirements after the first semester then i would be voting no on candidate f2 be getting their degree in the spring six and seven yes they do meet the board policy qualifications to these instructional substitutes in our district okay but not uh candidate six she also meets the board policy to be an approved instructional substitute in the district okay so i will only be voting no then on um candidate e5 thank you okay any other comments or questions okay all those in favor say aye aye all those
068pose nay we have marianne's and warren's two nays and any abstentions okay next we have our miscellaneous items for action 10.02 through 10.05 can i have a motion please second any comments questions or discussion on any of these items warren i have a question on 10.04 the 95 consultant agreement so as i understand it staff has been trained or some staff members have been trained this month and materials have been provided to them once they're fully trained the materials that they're provided um is that enough for a classroom set or it's just materials so that an individual can be trained and and they're trained i can like tiffany could speak more to this but uh these are our reading teachers specifically they're not full classroom sets i don't believe but i think the material is
069for them to turn key and use they're not consumables necessarily but you use for a teacher in the class a reading teacher in the classroom are you talking about the reading teachers the 95 yes so i would say they initially got the first part um and with the implementation rollout and that we're going to be purchasing more but they wanted to get in and see what they really needed at first to see if we had enough with our needs for a covid that looks a little bit differently so we purchased a classroom set it's it's not like a classroom that you would fill in a in a traditional classroom it's more of do we have a class set that fits the needs of the students for rti so in essence i guess where i'm going
070is if each student needs a product that this company's selling they will have that product to succeed yeah they will okay yeah okay any other questions or comments okay all those in favor of 10.02 through 10.05 say i i although and any abstentions okay we have no board policies up for action tonight but we do have item 12 we have four board policies first reading that mr johnson had discussed as part of the policy committee review so any questions or comments on any of these to bring back to the policy committee okay these will be up for action at our next meeting moving on to item 13 board member comments i'll open it up to anybody that has any comments before we close doug i just wanted to share quick kudos to the students and
071the music staff that were involved in the jazz band wind orchestra and strings orchestra presentation the other night was really well done and it was a very successful night great thank you any others kevin i wish i was more perceptive than not needing to appreciate a well than when it runs dry but unfortunately over the last three weeks my family has been dealing with my daughter on an extended leave due to covet related symptoms and in the midst of all the problems that traditionally come with that i want to publicly thank the middle school the administration and the teachers that might specifically that my daughters have my daughter has but also want to take that as an opportunity to expand upon that with all the teaching staff here at the district first of all my
072apologies for not truly understanding the amount of burden that teachers take on with so many kids out in varying levels but for their commitment to individually try to keep up and push the enormous boulder up the hill to keep in this case i can speak directly for my daughter on track it is very appreciative and uh reassuring that um as somebody who graduated from horse sets my daughter coming here was going to the school district is the correct decision and i thank all the teaching staff and administration very much for that okay any other comments okay i would just like to close with a couple one i'd like to welcome rich and i'm not going to be able to pronounce your last name correctly viccolado nick colada is our new director of transportation that was
073approved tonight so welcome to the district and we're happy to have you on board um and then the last thing i just want to say is just wish the entire district all staff administrators parents students the rest of the board just just a wonderful safe and happy holidays whatever it is that you celebrate i hope that you all have time to be able to take the time to spend it with family and just to give yourself a break and just enjoy the time so thank you for all the work that all of you do and i just wish you all the best during this holiday season so we will be um i'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn we will be adjourning to executive session so can i have a motion please so
074moved second all those in favor say aye aye all those pose nay any abstentions okay and just so that the public knows we will be adjourning to executive session for the discussion of individual personnel matter there is no action to be taken and that will conclude the meeting at the completion of it thank you