001from wilson i'll second that all favor aye aye motion carries we will stand for the pledge anyone wishing to speak i think the world will be voting on tonight i like anything the board will be voting on tonight Seeing any, we'll do the order of our new student board member. Christopher Schneer. I, Christopher Schneer, solemnly swear, to solemnly swear, that I will support the Constitution of the United States, that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of New York, and the Constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge, and that I will faithfully discharge, the duties of student board member, the duties of student board member, to the best of my ability. Okay, we're going to go. Patrick, do you want to
002play the video? Sure. So we have some significant donations that we accepted last month at the board meeting. So we had a replacement display for our North Carolina High School Wall of Fame interactive display. So we want to thank Mr. Russ Peters from the class of 1975 for his generous donation. And also thanking the North Carolina High School 50-year... alumni picnic committee for their donation of $3,100 for the North Carolina student fund. We appreciate the work that John Barron and his committee has done to support our students and support Barron's community. So if you want to. Yeah, and I, Dr. Jablonski, I asked Mr. Barron when we're done with the video, if he could just give us maybe several minutes, just an overview of these efforts. That would be great. Thank you. We have a
003microphone button on this. I could hear Patrick, but you were very hard to hear. Okay. I'd like to thank Patrick for putting that video together. Thank you, Mr. Alesko. And I'd like to invite Mr. Barron to come up to speak about the committee. Thank you. Yep, that's good. And you want to give a little space to that unless you want your belt on by a string. First of all, thank you very much for having us. I haven't been here since we did a presentation to donate some of the stuff for the Wall of Fame back in 2020, I think. And it's a great honor to be here representing this fine group behind me. I was asked to participate in what we're now calling the North Tonawanda High School 50-plus picnic, annual picnic, and that is
004for graduates from North Tonawanda who graduated more than 50 years ago. We run a picnic every summer that has had as many as 800 people. We had 600 plus this year and graduates from the late 40s up to 1975, which is the class that's eligible this year. So I presented to the group an idea that my nephew, who was superintendent of schools in the DePue School District, had suggested to me. I said, I would like to really, and Dr. Jeff, you and I have talked about this, I'd like to get the alumni and the students more in sync. Is there any way? what can we do to try to, you know, build a bridge? How can we help? And he came up with the idea of the student fund. He goes, you know, there's a
005lot of families that can't afford to sign kids up for sports, or they can't afford the uniforms, or the art supplies. And I thought, what a great idea. So thanks to this group, specifically Kathy, who was our coordinator of our raffle. created a great display of prizes, and we had people at that picnic donate $3,100 through bidding on prizes. The North Tonawanda and local business community of over 32 companies donated things ranging from $25 gift certificates to a couple of hundred dollars from some of the vendors. And I've provided that list to Patrick. It would be great if we could recognize them for contributing to this, which allowed us to raise the money. So hopefully that'll be put to great use. We're very honored and proud and we hope to keep doing it. Our plan
006is already to do it at next year's picnic and maybe even raise more money. So if there's anything we can do to help, please let us know. Would anybody else like to add anything? Scholarships. We also give four $1,000 scholarships. We're part of the scholarship presentation in June. And we're already talking about maybe increasing that because we are raising more and more money. And I'll tell you, alumni care about the current students in the state of North Tonawanda High School. And thank you all for the great job you do in raising these kids the right way. We're very proud to be Lumberjacks and Lady Jacks. So thank you. Thank you very much. We will roll into our agenda. We'll go to 9.1. It's recommended the Board of Education approve the consent agenda order as presented.
007Are there any additions, deletions, or changes? All right. Now, if you're interested in a motion. So moved. I'm done. Second. Second. From Stephanie, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. We will go down to 10.17. It's recommended the Board of Education approve the consent agenda as recommended by the superintendent of schools. I'll take the motion to send a second. Second. From Melissa, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We will roll into our personnel agenda, which is 11.1. It's recommended the Board of Education approve the personnel agenda order as presented. Are there any additions, solutions, or changes? Not here any. Just in a motion. I'm Stephanie in the second. From Dennis. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We will go down to 12.24. It's recommended the Board of Education approves
008the personnel items in Section 12 as presented. I will make a motion to second. Second. From Stephanie, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. 13.1 is just the Board receiving the file of the resignation of each and every school board member, which the District Board has received. And thank you, Pete, for being on today. Thanks for your service on the board. Thanks for having me. And then next we want to talk about dates for our board retreats. So when do we want to start to look at dates? We've traditionally done Saturday morning, usually four hours. So I don't know what those calendars are like. I think the only battery that I'm busy is the 27th of September. So I don't know. I don't know. So let's look at our children. Because
009we probably need to kind of get a presenter and topics together. So we have the 4th, the 11th, and the 18th. Jeff and I are away at the conference on the 25th. So we have the 4th, 11th, or 18th as some days go again. That's good. That's great. Thanks. So we'll check with Chloe and with Jeff. As far as topics go, we've done a variety of different things. We've done the start to look at goal setting. We've done just roles and responsibilities. So we can talk about a variety of things. But I don't know if there's anything specific that anyone... would like to touch base on it also has a recommendation as well and some of the some of the recommendations were roles and responsibilities board and superintendent evaluations trust and conflict resolution communication team
010dynamics and policy review and best governance practices or anything with the questions anything that i feel strongly about but i think Talking about goals has been helpful before. I think it helps us get aligned for us to say like this is what the district is working on. This is what the superintendent is working on. This is what the board is working on. But I also think we have a lot of you know on our board. And so I think something like a little bit more involved than like I get to know you like you mentioned maybe conflict, maybe some like goals and responsibility goals. So maybe thinking about how many new people we've had over the past year or so, that might be useful. We can move forward with that. We can reach out to
011some of the staff. Perfect. All right. We'll roll right along then. Anyone that would like to speak on any school business, we just ask that you state your name and address and keep your comments to five minutes. If there's anyone that would like to speak. Yes. Nick Sismire, 771 Remington Drive. There's a lot of hype going on about the New York State electricification law. And I'm just wondering how prepared we are. I'd like to address the board. with specific members and only ask them to answer? Don't anybody help them with the answer? We'll be answering questions right now. Okay, the first question is that... I'm Melissa. Melissa, do you know how many school buses we have totaled? Josh, Dave... Oh, wait, we're not supposed to answer. No, this isn't a back price. This is your
012comments to the board. You mean I can't ask an individual member? More than after the meeting or if you want an email or phone, but we don't go back and forth. Why is that? Just public comment. Why is that? That's the way that we do our public comment. That's not right. That's how we do it. So feel free to continue your comments. We'll check on that. But okay, since I'll address the board. Who knows how many school buses we have? Whoa. Again, we're not going to comment back and forth. Nobody knows how many school buses we're going to have. We have. We had a presentation about electric busing, and we actually went through a lot. Our board, I think, actually does know. Like we said, we're not going to be commenting going back and forth,
013but we actually, last meeting, we actually did talk a lot about busing. Well, I would think each meeting you're allowed to comment on updates and anything else. Why wouldn't you? be able to tell the audience here, how many buses do we have? I want to know how many are electric right now. Oh, boy, this is something. I want to know how much money, what percentage of the budget is for transportation. Was this in the video last month? Yes. And honestly, if you were to send me any of your questions, I will get right back to you every single night. Then why have this meeting? Why have this public meeting if I got to go watch a video? You all work for me. You work for us. Who said you can put up this brick wall?
014We're not putting up a brick wall. We're happy to. We can meet after. We can have a conversation. But we don't have a back and forth. That makes no sense, Matt. I'm sorry. It makes no sense. Then why even have a public comment now? So then you can let the board know what's going on. And we're happy to address it a later date. I don't think that's probably legal. The board's not required to have any public comment by law. But we do by policy. Boy, oh boy. I'm disappointed, really disappointed. Anyone else would like to speak to the board on any city issue? Great. Not hear any. We will go around to the board. Anything Dr. Denise Mearside? Sorry. Great. First, with their the buildings look great. I know it's a lot of work and
015strain on our facilities and buildings, grounds departments, hosting ESY and they do the floor flip at MTI and that hosting regional summer school which I don't believe we've done in many many many years and the constraints on the buildings and the buildings look great. I've reported all the kids got home approximately by 5 15 today. It's really good and I want to go visit. Really quiet over there which pretty unheard of with transportation Thursday so proud of that and then finally we started our K-3 breakfast in the classroom today haven't had a chance to have a deep conversation with Julie the food service director but a couple of quick talks really positive so excited for those Congratulations to everyone for taking off another school year. Reports from Spruce on my child's is that it went
016very well. Very, very happy to be back in school. And I also just wanted to say welcome to Chris. uh first i want to thank uh mr jr for his service from june of uh 2022 through last month so thank you services important we appreciate that and welcome chris so it's good to still have mission here on the board certainly appreciate that excellent first day of school today we had an opportunity to tour the buildings with matt and stephanie so we got the hall six of our schools today saw a lot of great things happening within the buildings. And as we opened school last week with our teachers, we welcomed them back when talking about taking small steps every day because those small steps mean a lot at the end. So I think our staff
017looked into that and they really appreciated that. And then also really appreciate the work that we did for our bus drivers with training this year. We trained them with disability awareness for supporting our students with special needs. So I think we did a very nice job with that. So I look forward to a wonderful school year. Yeah, I have a couple of things. Like everybody else said, welcome, Chris. Happy to have you. Looking forward to what you've been bringing to the board and what you can tell us about what's going on in the schools. I want to thank the alumni group. I was out last meeting for some personal reasons. And so this was actually the first that I had seen it. And I think it's really great that you all want to help the
018current students because it takes a village. And I think you guys are proving that. I got to tour the schools today. It was really great. It looked great. The staff was happy to see us. They were engaged with their students. The students were funny. I got to help out. fourth grader with her locker. First grader told me about swimming in his grandma's pool over the summer. So it was just it was it was a great first day. And and I also want to thank our transportation. I think there's been some challenges probably over the past couple of years, but it seems like things are running smoothly right now. And also considering that we expanded our routes this year to say that we went from to including, I don't know how to phrase it, but we
019went from a two mile radius to a 1.75 mile radius so we could bus more students. The fact that we still had a fairly smooth day, I think really speaks to the work that's been done in the transportation department. So I really want to thank them. So going closer to the last is pretty hard, but echoing what my colleagues have said, and really, especially the generosity of the alumni and crew, I think not having grown up in North Tonawanda, I think it's really heartwarming and gratifying to me to see the dedication to the district, to the kids in the city, that you're working not only for your own class, but you're working for the current classes as well. Appreciate your generosity for that. Welcome, Chris. They compete. I look forward to working together. Professor, welcome
020and anything you want to say in person? I'm sorry, it's an honor to be here. I can't say or talk to many people who have an opportunity such as this. I mean, it's honestly amazing what you guys do on a weekly, monthly, daily basis. It's honestly impressive. And I don't know how you have a free time. First day of school, everyone got in okay. I haven't heard any true issues. Everything's going well. Even though today's the first day, school and activities have been going on for the past month or so when it comes to transportation, food, athletics. So everything's underway. Everything seems to be going well. And thank you for having me. I'm going to do this. Thank you. All right. Yes. And again, just to echo everyone's, John Barron and the team, I know,
021thank you very much for all that you do. I know that's a lot of work to put on those events and to get all the donations and get people to take the hard-earned money and put it towards an awesome cause. So we thank you very much. I know I worked with John on the first round and we were, you know, alongside the committee on that. So we thank, and then ultimately Russ for that wonderful donation. Like they said, first day back was very exciting. It was exciting to see all the kids. having the option to have a free breakfast in each of their classrooms for eight through six, which is awesome. It really looked like they were enjoying it. Yeah, which is great that we have that as something we're able to provide to our
022students. And it was a great visit. And thank you to our transportation department. It's a feat on the first day to get everyone back in the nick of time. And then just welcome to Christopher. We're excited to have you and hear your insights and all the good stuff that happens. especially the high school, but you know, district wide, whatever you're hearing, we'd love to hear it. And it's exciting. And I'll say, this is the first year that New York State's mandated a school board member as an official on our board, but we've been lucky to have a school board member, gosh, probably since 2005, 2006, we've had a student board member in North Palawanda. So it's super exciting. It's a rich history and we're happy to have you on board. So with no further business
023for the Board of Education, we'll see a motion to adjourn at 6.57. So moved. Seventy second. From Melissa, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Thank you everyone.