001great thank you all right just need a motion to come out of executive session and 631. So moved. Sherrilyn, I'll second it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. And we just need a motion to recommit a public session. Also in 631. So moved. Christine, a second? Aye. From Chloe? Perfect. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Now we'll stand for the pledge of the flag. 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. comments from board of education so i'll just give my summary of our tour so i was able to take a number of the board members on a tour on opening day started at the middle school went to the
002high school and then on to nti ohio drake and spruce and it's very nice to see all the kids excited to be back at school we saw a lot of a lot of the actual finally in on the first day. Where do I go? Where's this classroom? Where's that kind of stuff? So it was nice to be there to also let the. helping hand for them as we go. So it was nice that we could do that and I appreciate them taking the time out of their day and their jobs to come do that. We did have a presentation scheduled on Camp Lumberjacks, which was our summer program, but we're going to push that to our next meeting and also then give a little update on what they're doing this school year and some of
003our new classes that those Camp Lumberjack kids are in here in North Tonawanda. then we'll turn it back over to mr kennedy unless there's any other comments from the board all right so we're going to go to 8.1 it's recommended the board of education approves agenda order as presented or there are any additions deletions or changes i'm not hearing i will make a motion just in a second cheryl all in favor aye motion carries then we will go down to thank you sir good in 916 on page nine it's recommended the board of education approves the consent agenda as recommended by the superintendent of schools just need a motion christian a second second all in favor aye motion carries and we'll go to 10.1 it's recommended the board of education approves the personnel agenda order
004as presented are there any additions or changes okay i'm not hearing i will make the motion just need a second oh all in favor aye motion carries we will go down to 11.12 on page 13. it's recommended the board of education approves all personalities section 11 has presented just in motion kristin a second all in favor aye motion carries All right, so one of the items for the board to discuss and possibly vote on is our hourly wage. We do have a number of hourly wages in positions in North Tonawanda, and one of them are our school monitors who work and help us in the cafeteria making sure everything runs smoothly. So they have been at or just above minimum wage for a number of years. um and we know that new york state is
005on a push to increase that for all the businesses as they go through what we are finding is that tim hortons and mcdonald's are paying more than school districts uh because they're a private industry and we're kind of like voter tax base for our our pieces but um they are currently at 1320 we know in january there'll be an increase of anywhere from 50 cents to over a dollar uh putting them in close to 1420 and in the meantime we're not getting um a lot of applicants to take these jobs so it was a suggestion that we look at upping that hourly rate to 15 now which we know will be at because that's new york state's mandate to get there sooner than later so comments or questions on the hourly rate increase no okay
006so we can take it as a vote yes so we'll do 12.1 it's recommended the board of education approves the hourly rate increase for school monitors as presented just need a motion so much first and a second second peter all in favor aye motion carries i'm going to report both so no so the next section is of 12.12 is because of the teacher in me and we have so many kids coming early they're going to get out early here so i feel like i have to detain them a little bit so um board goals um are usually set at a retreat the board had set their date for our retreat on september 24th um we purposely waited because the district has a new strategic plan that we worked on last year with the with all
007the teachers and administrators and parents through questionnaires and thought exchange uh questions um to uh just make sure we're we're listening to parents and students for what they want to see and so the board will be working a little bit on the 24th and then at the next meeting in public uh in october uh to set new board goals for for the year that will coincide with the strategic plan and then anything personal that they might want to do for how board meeting runs or how the superintendent interacts with the community so all those are fair game when they're setting board goals for increasing communication and of the like so those will be soon to come and we hope that even though you'll have your requirement done, that you'll follow us and watch for what
008those are in October and November. Without that, then we have communications from the board of that. Anyone have anything? NTP gave donations, I believe. So thank you very much for that. I don't know much about it other than it was very generous. Yes, the details I'm getting on that is that it was the North Carolina Police Department themselves all brought in and collected items and then took them to the three elementary buildings, Drake, Ohio, and Spruce, with backpacks and pencils and pens and erasers and even some sneakers and clothes items and things like that for the kids in those buildings. So they kind of surprised them all and dropped them off there as well, and it was very much appreciated by all the principals and teachers. okay anything over here i hate i hate to
009let our students go and what did you learn yes we have a comment from them oh there we go i was hoping i could address the board about the concern that i had oh yes yes yep that's right yep very good yes you state your name and address and typically we have 10 minutes but try to set our standard whatever you're coming My name is Caleb Toms. I live at 999 Banner Drive, North Tunnel 1 in New York. Today, I would like to address the board about concerns about the existing name change policy that is ongoing in high school. For those of you who do not know, starting last year, the administration building informed the high school that they would be having a name change policy to accommodate primarily transgender and non-binary students. To my
010knowledge and the knowledge of all those who I consulted about the policy, there's been no public announcement made that has been put into place. There apparently has been one school faculty meeting that informed teachers about the policy, but the information provided was either vague or limited. How the current policy works, to my understanding, is a student can contact their guidance counselor to request a name change, and without parental signature, confirmation, or notification, have their name changed on all school documentation. This includes eSchool, which manages schedules and grades, Schoology, and to my knowledge, the yearbook. This alteration to school documents is not visual. Colleges and employers that request a transcript will appear with the student's new name on the documents, not the legal name. This may cause issues in students' futures if they do not change
011the legal name to match the school name after graduation. All of the information I've provided come from sources in the high school guidance department, teachers within the school, and students who have undergone this process already. I also have screenshots of sources to corroborate claims I've already made, but for the safety and privacy of those involved, I have redacted portions of the source material. I'm not here to ask that the policy be scrapped. I understand that the policy exists to support children who identify as LGBTQ without involving potentially unsupportive or aggressive parents. I'm not here to try to strip protection and care from LGBTQ-identifying kids. This policy affects many people that I care deeply about. But what happens when a report card comes in the mail with a different name or a yearbook has a different
012name, etc.? This only delays the notification of parents. Even before this policy, students could ask teachers to refer to them by a different name or a nickname, and teachers would, but this is way bigger than that. It isn't unreasonable to ask for answers about potential issues and provide parents and taxpayers at the very least a blanket announcement about this policy or have the guardians of these kids sign off on changes that affects their child's future. This is going to be a policy at the school. Please don't make it secretive. Make it public and ensure there are no potential long-term issues with it. Can I ask the question, how can we, if you had to bring a solution, what would it be? My solution would be that if you're going to have name changes that affect
013all of the documentation for these kids, that you would at least notify the parents that this is the change that they want to make, and then also have them sign off on it. The parents? Yes, the parent and the child, and also... the school because right now it appears that only the guidance office and the student needs to sign anything or make any confirmation about this. Yeah, so first of all, the school doesn't make up the policy to cause trouble. It's part of, you know, what happens at state law and how the changes are put down. So then we try to stay in compliance. And like you said, some students don't have supportive parents. There are parents who will... fight it tooth and nail, not to let it happen. So we work with our counselors,
014though, to encourage the students to let their parents know that they want this change going forward. And before the most recent policy change, which they're all online in our policy book on their enemies, but we would contact the parents to let them know that the students made a request. However, that deemed not to be. protective enough of the students who were requesting that so that that's why the policy came out from state saying that you know you should do what they're what they're asking regardless of the sex birth or what the parents want so that's kind of how we fell in line with that but i see your point where you're saying if they're screening an issue at home will it cause an explosion whenever everybody here comes home or if our parent comes home
015and there's a name on it that they maybe either never discussed or had difficult words about already with their parents and what happened again. So I can do some more research on it for you and get into what our rights are as a district because you know about FERPA and HIPAA a little bit and how we have to protect that. Where we get into the gray area is that students are minors. So, you know, parents still have some say over what's happening there. You know, sadly, we do have some students who will emancipate themselves at a certain age when that's allowed so that they take control of themselves and they kind of relinquish that control of the parent. So, number one thing, though, is that the policy is not meant to be in private. So
016maybe we need to do a better job about putting those out there. letting people know that there are changes when we're making that through either Facebook and refer them to the policy page because there's hundreds of them. And nobody's going to sit there and read it unless they're an assominee. So, yeah, so we could do that better. And then just confirm what policy services and what our requirement is in the school district for honoring the student request. Is it in the handbook? it's probably not so we did this policy change in march of 2021 was the when the policy came this is when this policy 7554 was when this came about this was the state update on student gender identity was a new policy from state as uh it looks like the first viewing of
017this for the board was february 17th of 2021 in their policy workshop is it in the student i would not i'd have to go back it's in the student section though of the board policy in the 7000 series so um there is there is a part i think we're just getting is that the parents are supposed to sign off on the handbook with all the rules and regulations that students at the high school, middle school, and other schools are supposed to do. So it could be an area where we refer with the policy or have the policy mentioned in there so that when parents are signing off, it's another. have alert that there's something out there that's going on. But yeah, so in the people that you know, you said that you're close, near and
018dear to them, are they finding that as an issue and they're scared that when if they do this at school, their parents will get mad when the report card comes home? The concern that I have is not for necessarily the people that I'm directly in contact with. But the other concern of that was in the discussion with the guidance counselor that I have on file here, that they said that all the legal documentation, the grades, whatever, that would be requested by a college, it's going to have a different name. And so can you be certain that that won't mess up college applications and college credit transfers from students? No one can guarantee that, right? Because there's a hundred people who are going to touch that paperwork when they're processing that. At that rate, though, I
019mean, they're leaving high school, right? So this is their high school document. They're going to college. It'd be no different than someone who got married and chose to... change save their maiden name or change their maiden name they'd be able to legally and they change it themselves once they're no longer considered garbage records so it looks like the district will only take two separate records is where it is so that would be so in that law perspective They have to maintain confidentiality of student information and records. If a transgender or GNC student has officially changed his or her name as demonstrated by current order of birth certificate. So that's when that changes. The district will change the official and unofficial records as needed to refund the change. So we would have it in both formats.
020And if they're applying to the college as Greg Wojtyla, that's what we would send. how because that's how they filled out the form so how are they going to fill out that form uh which could lead to confusion because there's two two two versions of it right yes so yeah tied into the social relationship oh go ahead for the registrar's office yeah we use socials with social security numbers yeah so which would be tied to the person i would assume even if the name changes unofficially the social security number is still the same So I don't do admissions to college, so what's that process? But when they write, you have to get, you have to have a social security number when you apply to the university. So even if it changes somewhere in there, they
021don't, I don't want to say they don't care about your name, because we all do, but it really goes back to the number that's assigned with the transfer. So we have people get married all the time and it's yeah. And if you legally change your name, are you do you that? I've never done it. So would you then legally say I want my social security card to be managed? Yeah, you do. So yeah. So they would have to do well. So yeah. So if I want to be known as Pluto Wontella. That's my Disney character that I still love. Pluto Waitilla instead of Greg Waitilla. When I apply to college, if I'm putting Pluto and all that on there, if I put my social security number, that's going to pull up. So then his question
022is, well, if I film it out, Pluto Waitilla, who's this Greg Waitilla guy? And I would assume that we have the same last name, right? We have the same surname. So they go by name. But we can dig into that a little bit for the post-secondary, where it's going to go, because there's two concerns I hear. What if the parent gets upset when they see it? And then you're saying, won't it cause confusion when they go to apply for a job or those types of things that someone's asking for their attendance record or those sorts of things. So those are the process things after high school that we have to clear up on. Sure. Like I said, I'm not trying to get the... policy removed. I just want, if they're going to have this policy,
023I want it to be completely solid. You know, I don't want this to be a concern because I understand it's in place to protect LGBTQ youth, but it's not really protecting them if, you know, in the long run, they're still going to find out and that's still going to be an issue. And then maybe they bring the school into it with the lawsuit that way. Well, I think one thing to keep in mind too, is a lot of these policies stem from one, this policy is, is, is title nine. it's in the furback it's also in new york state education law so it's not the district just didn't decide hey this is the policy that we want to do new york state department of education says hey this is the policy that you have to
024go forward as a district to receive all your funds so that's you know where something is but it probably is at least worth making a pamphlet that says if you do this this this this file your social security number is still going to file you so the person who's choosing to pick a new name at least knows what what that could evolve down the road if they're applying under a different name or something along the line so and not having gone through it personally i don't know but there's sure it's easy to research and then we can add that or give it to the counselor or there's when someone comes in to say consider all these facts as you go out forth after high school as well Because I know here, Mr. Hussman, I've dealt
025with students who change their name twice in a year. I want to be Pluto, and I want to be Mickey. They're still evolving, and they're not sure what fits them. And so that can be even more confusing. And I mean, as they're going through a very confusing time in their life as well. So we need to consider that at the bare minimum, maybe put a... you know bullets on the policy or have something for kids who are coming in inquiring about that so that they know what happens afterwards okay but thank you for that we'll follow up we'll do some research on our end and then bring it to the board so if you can't come to the board meeting they're all online too thank you is there anybody else who would suggest the board
026right so with no further business coming for the board of education we've seen a motion to adjourn at 6 52 and i will second that all in favor all right motion care assumes that need their form sign can come up to any of us sitting here we can sign it for you for class thank you very much have a good night did they give you a form to sign for your credit thank you so much